The secrets of success.

WARNING!! If you don’t really want to be successful, don’t waste your time reading this.

Being successful is simple. There are just a few rules to follow. Here they are.

Do you really want to be a success or are you just talking about it. It is hard work. If yes is your answer, read on.

What do you love or more importantly, what are you good at? Are you willing to learn some skills to become successful? Are you really? It’s going to be difficult at first and you will back slide. Alright, continue.

Are you willing to do almost anything legal to succeed? Great, you might have a chance.

Do you have successful friends? That’s a very good place to start. Learn how they did it. I know the secret, do you know it yet? Ask them to tell you their secrets of success. You have friends don’t you? If you don’t, make some. Pick successful people. That is a good practice to becoming successful.

I was lucky to have a father who was self employed. It doesn’t matter what you want to be. The route is the same for all endeavors. The secret is first of all, the desire to be successful.

So, do you want the next secret? I will tell you in a moment.

Are you willing to work harder than you ever have in your entire life? If “yes” is the answer, read further. If not, be like the rest of humanity and be prepared to get by and grumble.

Can you save some seed money for your future? If not, your chances might not be very good, but you still might be able to make yourself successful. Do you have some family or friends who believe in you? There you go. Ask them to take a chance on you. Perhaps a few out of all your friends might. If you don’t ask, you will never know.

Depending on what you dream is the amount of money needed may be quite small.

Alright then, you don’t have the money yet. No? No problem. Get a part time job doing what you really want to do. Do you have the skills needed to land the job? No?

Then do what ever it takes to get those skills. Go to night school at your local junior college. Find a person who will hire you in that field. Work for nothing and become the best employee ever. Nobody said this would be easy. It is just the opposite.

Let’s say you got hired at the job that will teach you the skills needed to make you become who you think you deserve to be. Then what?

Remember, you are probably still working another full time job by the way. You have bills to pay like all of us. You’re right, this is hard.

You might dig in the garbage to recycle to help your dreams come true. You could get another night job and clean offices after working all day. You don’t like that idea? I did it, why can’t you?

Alright, now you have saved some money and gained the skills needed at the job of your dreams. How long did it take? A year, five years? It doesn’t matter. You are on your way now. The easy part is over. Now the fun starts.

I will use myself as an example.

I worked for my father from the age of seven or eight holding the flashlight when the iceboxes broke down and he had to fix them himself. I became a great flash light holder.

Then I became old enough to sweep the floors and the parking lot. I became a pretty good sweeper. Maybe one of the best. As the years passed, I actually went to work with my father at his second job and I mixed plaster and cleaned up the job sites.

After a few years I got to work with the tools of the trade. I talked to our customers and learned how they became successful. Most of our customers were business owners and rental property owners.

I started working full time for my father at eighteen and learned from him how to become successful while going to college at night. It was not always fun or easy.

I worked for my father for ten years and learned to be very good at my trade and I saw how he ran the business. The secret is coming.

I learned to be honest with all of my customers about my skill level and about my work ethic. If the job was too much for me or too big, I would say so and refer them to someone else.

I always did my best at retuning my phone calls. If you return your phone calls, and have the skills of your profession you will become successful. Many contractors are not very good at returning or answering their phone calls.

The first thing I often heard on my phone calls was, “I called several people and you are the only one to call me back.” Each returned phone call in my case was worth at least $150.00. I did small jobs and could do six jobs a day. Do the math and you will see that that was a nice piece of change each day. My overhead was thirty percent by the way.

How do you get customers? Try everything. I sent postcards to anyone that I thought might own rental properties and who might need my services. I used the phone book to find my customers. I called motels, hotels and large apartment complexes. Those were my target customers.

I also worked for homeowners, but multi unit customers offered more work over a year compared to individual homeowners. Know your market.

I sent my post cards to doctors, contractors, apartment complexes, and the like. Anyone and everyone I could think of who might own properties were my target. Who you send your information to depends on who your customers are.

After some hard work and saving some of my money, I was able to put ads in the local newspapers and specialty magazines. That’s when the fun really started.

I could do thirty six jobs a week if people called me. I picked the right jobs, and I worked six days a week. It’s really easy.

I worked for thirty-eight years, six days a week and built a business.

I considered all of my customers to be my friends, by the way. Some I liked more than others, but I learned something from all of them.

I tried to do the best work possible. Money was never the goal in mind. The goal was always to build a business by doing the best work possible. I made friends and learned some valuable lessons along the way. That is exactly what happened, and I made a good living.

If you show up on time, do good work, answer your calls, and charge a fair price for your services, you cannot fail.

Do you want to get rich quick? It doesn’t happen. You become wealthy over several years through hard work, dependability, honesty and integrity.

If you are willing and able to do all of these things in your field, you will become a success.

I know you can do it.

The economy always turns south and becomes difficult every so often. Save some money while the times are good. Invest in things that will pay off in the long run, like the stock market and real estate.

If you do these things your life will turn out great. If you don’t, you will end up like the ninety percent of Americans who have little savings or wealth at the end of their working lives.

Remember, you get to pick how you live.

The most important of all of these things by the way, is to pick your spouse carefully. You never want a partner in business if you can help it. It just makes your life more difficult. But having the right spouse will make your life much easier and more fulfilling.

Why do we work in the first place, except to raise a family and to take care of them properly.

Good luck!