Many people are always cracking their brain thinking of how to make a lot of money and always pondering over which industry they should go into to make the kind of money they want.
However, they fail to realise that they can build a fortune no matter which industry they are in because money is in ALL industries.
To be successful in your career and to make the kind of money you dream of, you can accomplish it in any industry as long as you’re one of the best.
So the only question you have to ask yourself is, “How do I be among the best in whatever I do?”
In order to be among the best, there are 4 key ingredients you’d need to possess. They are 1) Passion, 2) Burning Desire, 3) Knowledge and 4) Unique Competitive Advantage.
1. Passion
This is the one thing that I’ve repeated many times since I started my blog. You can find me talking about following your passion and doing what you love doing in a number of my past articles.
And I’m going to carry on talking about it and I’ll keep reminding you of it until you turn blue in your face because this is the single most important factor that’ll determine whether you’ll succeed.
This is also the single element that transformed me from being as lazy as a pig to being highly motivated every day to write for my blog.
One of the requirements to being the best is that you’ve got to work really hard to excel in whatever you do.
The top achievers in every industry had to put in 15-20 hours a day, 7 days a week to go from being an amateur to becoming a master.
If you’re doing something of which you have no passion, you’d easily be burn out by the amount of energy you have to put out to achieve the kind of success only top achievers would achieve.
And since your work is going to fill a large part of your life, you might as well be doing something that you love doing! Why settle for anything else?
The one reason why extremely successful people don’t retire even after they’ve made enough money to last them a few lifetimes is simply because they love what they are doing.
Bernie Ecclestone
Such is the kind of passion you’d need for your work to propel yourself to be among the best in any industry.
2. Burning Desire
Every highly successful person is extremely focused on excelling in the work he/she does because he/she has a burning desire to succeed.
Successful people are the extremely hungry (for success) people. They’re hungrier than anyone else to succeed and that is why they work harder and they learn harder than everyone else.
Other than passion, it is the desire and the hunger in you that will drive you to go out there every day to work toward your success.
It is your burning desire for success together with your passion for your work that will drive and motivate you to keep going in times of adversity.
You have to create the burning desire in you. You have to know why you want success. Is it for your family? Is it because you want to prove yourself? Is it because you want to help people? Is it because you want to be appreciated?
Everybody has a different reason for wanting success. Go figure out yours.
If you want to be among the best, stay hungry. Your hunger will stir the emotions in you to make success an absolute MUST for you.
If you are truly hungry, success is no longer a want or a good to have. It becomes a MUST. And when it’s a MUST, you’ll do whatever it takes i.e. stretch yourself out of your comfort zone.
The best people will do whatever it takes to achieve the kind of success they crave.
3. Knowledge
“Businessmen must move with the times…the correlation between knowledge and business as the key to success is closer than ever.” – Li Ka-Shing
, Asia’s richest man
I couldn’t agree more with the above quote. Our mind is the greatest asset we can invest in. No other forms of assets even come close. The potential return we can yield from investing in our mind is virtually unlimited.
Stocks and real estate may give you a return of 100%, 200%, or maybe even 500%. But your mind can potentially give you infinite return, if developed correctly.
This is why highly successful people are always hungry to know more and to learn more.
Reading is a very good way to enhance your knowledge. All successful people are avid readers.
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” – Mark Twain
Books are medium which people use to share their knowledge, experience and ideas. And they are people who’ve been there and done that. Therefore you can find in the books the wisdom of a person’s lifetime of experience.
I’ve always believed that no one is ever great enough to stop learning. You stop learning only if you want to stop progressing. But you should never make that your intention.
Your intention should be to progress toward success, achieving success and mastering success.
Besides books, you need to read newspapers and trade publications to keep yourself abreast of all the new developments and industry trends. And you need to be aware of new government policies that may affect your industry.
I once had a Taiwanese client who’s a highly successful businessman who told me that he makes it a point to read 7 news publications every day to keep himself updated on industry and world developments.
You have to continue to learn and do more in order to constantly raise your level of competency.
Only then can you climb higher mountains and reach higher peaks. Only then can you enjoy higher self-fulfilment.
One word of caution though. When it comes to learning, the most limiting sentence you can say is, “I know.”
Have you been guilty of that? Most likely.
In fact, that sentence is merely a reflection of your own ego. Your ego is what will hold you back from growing. It is extremely important that you do not assume you already know everything.
Let your ego go and learn with an open mind. Only an open mind can allow the wisdom to flow through to help you become a wiser person.
4. Unique Competitive Advantage
The number one killer in any business is ‘sameness’. That means there’re no unique differences between you and your competitors other than your company’s name.
Usually, when that happens, the competition will be based solely on price and the one offering the lowest price will win.
However, in such circumstances, even the winner may not really win because in this kind of competition, no one really makes a lot of money since profit margin is shaved to the bare minimum in order to remain competitive.
So in order to prosper, you have to conduct your business in a totally different way and it has to be highly valued by your customers.
A famous example would be Domino’s Pizza’s unique competitive advantage of “Pizza delivery in 30 minutes or it’s free”.
Since no other pizza restaurants are able to match their promise, this advantage had helped Domino’s Pizza to capture a large market share.
In every business, you must create a unique competitive advantage in order to set yourself apart from your competitors.
This goes the same for you even if you’re self-employed or an employee who don’t run a business.
The best people in any industry are those who know how to differentiate themselves from the pack.
They are the people who truly understand what their customers (or their company’s customers) want and strive to exceed their expectations.
They will always give their customers (or their company’s customers) a compelling reason to do business with them or the company they represent.
In today’s highly competitive business world, you’ll perish for sure if you fall below your customers’ expectations.
You’ll barely survive if you just manage to meet your customers’ expectations.
You’ll do pretty well if you exceed your customers’ expectations.
And you’ll only truly PROSPER if you provide your customers with an incredible experience doing business with you!
To sum it up, you have to create a tremendous amount of value for the people you serve and you have to find a way to deliver that value efficiently.
And I’ve written a previous article on creating value which you should read up. This article basically talks about how to increase your income and creating value is one of the factors.
In that article, I’ve provided two examples on how a self-employed financial adviser and a teacher were able to earn an income that’s way beyond their peers.
Remember to read it up.
Cheers~
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