“The secret to Amazon’s success is half luck, half good timing, and the rest is brains.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon
Mr. Bezos happily admits what is so hard for us to accept…that we are not responsible by ourselves for an out-sized success. And that is why big fat success is so rare. You’ll have to bust it for sure, as Gary V says in Crush It. Every big successful person has. But if success doesn’t come as big as you had dreamed, as soon as you dreamed, may this soothe you:
“We vastly underestimate the extent to which success happens because of things the individual has nothing to do with.” See here.
While this may be true to some extent, I think it is a dangerous mindset to get comfortable with. We have become entrepreneurs in order to take more responsibility for our lives, including both our successes and failures. Certainly, there are larger forces at work around us but I think we must operate with a mindset of personal responsibliity for our actions and outcomes. Not easy for many of us to do, or even encouraged by society, but it's how I try to approach my business every day.
Trish
http://www.thehomebusinessroadmap.com
Hi Trish:
Personal responsibility is most important, if not ALL important. You must do the thing and be true to yourself.
The idea with this post is to recognize that results are not something you can control. Because any success that is dependent on something that others have to give, e.g. their money for your product, kudos, recognition, none of that is in your control. (Ok a bank robber has a gun, hehe.)
Only your own behavior, your own actions are under your control.
Bezos was perhaps a bit extreme, but he personally is not responsible for the huge Amazon success. Actually, For the first few years, they were in the red. Without those investors, they'd have sunk years ago.
And today, he personally is not responsible for the millions of customers. Affiliates are. And even the affiliates depend on THEIR readers wanting the books listed on their sites.
What he is responsible for is having stayed with it for ten years when they were in the red; for wanting to give customers a really good experience online, and much else. He works around the clock and is most talented.
But all successful people do that.
So yep, personal responsibility is yours to do the things that are right and truthful. The results, especially big results, are not something you can control.
Because that requires the cooperation of others.
And if you don't do what it takes, well then there's no chance of any success with others at all.
That's what I was thinking. Does that make sense?
You bet. You certainly can't directly control what others do or don't do.
"You can't directly control what others do or don't do".
That's the really big lesson that we have to learn in network marketing.
Because people will do what works for them. Every time.
And maybe that is what works for us, as their sponsor. And maybe it's not.
There are things we can do to make it more likely that the two coincide. And we can choose people to work with who are more likely to want to do what works for us.
We can control our activity in increasing the number of people we work with, and do our best to provide effective tools and support.
But essentially we depend on what others do.