I’m really excited about the positive feedback I’ve been getting on my new book Success Tweets.  I have a goal of giving away 10,000 copies of the eBook version of it by the end of June.  To claim your free copy, just go to www.SuccessTweets.com. 

I am in the process of doing a blog post to further explain the ideas in each tweet.  Today is Tweet 15…

Napoleon Hill on visualization: “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”  What is your vision for your future?

I am a big Chinese food fan.  I sometimes find inspiration for blog posts in fortune cookies.  It’s been a while since I did a fortune cookie post.  But, as luck would have it, last night my fortune cookie read, “Advancement will come with hard work.”  I agree.  This post is about doing the work necessary to make the vision of your career success a reality. 

While you need to visualize your life and career success, your vision is for naught if you don’t have the will and determination to work hard at making it a reality.  There’s a quote that I’ve seen attributed to many American football coaches, “Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.”  You have to be willing to work hard if you’re going to succeed. 

Yes, you need to work smart, not just hard, but hard work is the best way to create the career and life success you want and deserve. Fortune Magazine says it succinctly: “There is no substitute for hard work.” This career success coach agrees.  Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at age 16.  However, he had nine years of hard work and intense study to get to that place.  Few of us are willing to work that hard at that early of an age.

The success literature is a full of quotes on hard work.  Take a look…

“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.”   Margaret Thatcher

“I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson

“Love conquers all, but if love doesn’t do it, try hard work.” Unknown

“If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.” James A. Garfield

“When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.” Steve Pavlina

“There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas Alva Edison

“The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished.” Unknown

“Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.” J.C. Penney

“Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends.”  Charles Lazarus

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” Margaret M. Fitzpatrick

“Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.”  Nadia Comaneci

“Hard work certainly goes a long way. These days a lot of people work hard, so you have to make sure you work even harder and really dedicate yourself to what you are doing and setting out to achieve.”   Lakshmi Mittal

“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”     David Bly

Here’s a story my friend Andy O’Bryan tells about his success journey…

The year was 2004.  I had left my high-paying marketing director position and was trying to get traction with a fledgling home business. To pay the bills I was cold calling from 9-5 for $400 a week.

From 7pm to 1am every night I was interviewing. Authors, speakers, coaches, trainers, gurus, icons, industry leaders. For a while I was doing 6 or 7 interviews a week.

Life lessons, business advice, sales training, inspiration, just an amazing amount of content came out of these sessions.

The calls were recorded and the mp3′s were put up on a website:
http://www.AudioMotivation.com.

Co-founder Josh Hinds and I grew this site to over 1,500 paying members and 800 affiliates. There are over 100 interviews in there. It was a very challenging but extremely rewarding time of my life.

Andy now has a very successful home based business.  But he put in the time and hard work it took to make it so.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people heed the advice in Tweet 15 in Success Tweets.  “Napoleon Hill on visualization: ‘What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.’  What is your vision for your future?”  Achieve is the key word here.  And achieve goes hand in hand with hard work.  Successful people not only create a vivid mental image of their success.  They put in the hard work necessary for realizing that vision.  There are no two ways about it.  If you want to create a successful life and career, you need to put in the time and effort necessary to succeed.   Sometimes this means working longer hours than others.  This career success coach has found that a well focused extra hour a week can yield big results.

That’s my take on Tweet 15 in Success Tweets, and hard work, high performance and success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you want to create the successful life and career you want and deserve, you need to become an outstanding performer.  As a career success coach, I always tell my career success coaching clients that outstanding performers are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.

This is a tough time to be looking for a job.  Many of my career success coaching clients are having difficulty getting interviews let alone landing a job.  However, I heard a story not too long ago about a new MBA from NYU who got five job offers.  He did it by creating unique resumes especially tailored to the job for which he was applying.  This takes work, but in this fellow’s case, the hard work paid off.

In the old days – before computers – creating unique resumes for every job for which you apply would have involved a mega amount of work.  In the digital age, it’s a lot easier.  Spend a few minutes cutting and pasting and you have a unique resume tailored to the exact position for which you are applying.  However, when I advise many of my career success coaching clients to adopt this approach, they balk.  They argue that one resume is good enough.  The truth is that one resume is not good enough.

In 1972, when I left college, I spent a lot of time writing a resume and cover letter.  Then I took them both to the copy shop and had a whole lot of copies made.  The only customization was typing the unique name and the address of the company at the top of the cover letter. 

The digital age has changed this.  Yes, it’s easier to create documents on a computer.  And that’s exactly why your main “resume” should be a series of pieces of information that you can arrange in a way that is most likely to catch the eye of the recruiter who reviews it.  In other words, one resume doesn’t cut it – you need to customize every resume because every job is unique.  A one size fits all resume won’t demonstrate that you are aware of and honor that uniqueness.  This takes work, but it’s worth it.

Then, once you get a job, you need to work hard at it.  Dale Winston CEO of Battalia Winston International, an executive search firm in New York says, “When things are tough, you have to try harder.”  She advises her clients to expend 20% more time and effort than their colleagues.  This isn’t for everyone, but from personal experience, I can tell you it works.  If you do this — and I did — you’ll get a reputation as a hard worker, someone who can be counted on to deliver.  And with that comes both job security in this uncertain economic climate and the fast track to getting promoted.

You can also volunteer for unpopular tasks.  I once got a promotion because I volunteered to head my company’s United Way campaign one year.  Trust me, running the United Way campaign was not a job that many people wanted.  I did a good job on the campaign and met a lot of senior people.  One of them liked me and the work that I did, and offered me a job in his division.

The common sense point here is simple – and sobering for those who are looking for career success shortcuts.  Be willing to go the extra mile.  Create custom resumes for every job for which you apply.  Once you get a job, work harder than others.  Volunteer for unpopular jobs – and then do a great job.  Yes, if you want to become an outstanding performer, it’s important to be a lifelong learner, set and achieve high goals, and get organized.  But it’s also important to do something a lot simpler – and totally in your control; be willing to work hard.  Hard work will help build your brand and put you at the top of the promotion list, and bottom of the layoff list.

That’s my take on hard work and career success.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with the rest of us.  As always, thanks for reading.  Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense, to get daily success quotes, and to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter “Common Sense.” 

Bud

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

Consistent high performance is a key success competency.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I am a big Chinese food fan.  I sometimes find inspiration for blog posts in fortune cookies.  It’s been a while since I did a fortune cookie post.  But, as luck would have it, last night my fortune cookie read, “Advancement will come with hard work.”  I agree.

While you need to create positive personal impact, become a dynamic communicator, and develop your interpersonal skills, it is all for naught if you don’t have the will and determination to work hard.  There’s a quote that I’ve seen attributed to many American football coaches, “Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.”  You have to be willing to work hard if you’re going to succeed. 

Yes, you need to work smart, not just hard, but hard work is the best way to create the career and life success you want and deserve.  Fortune Magazine says it succinctly: “There is no substitute for hard work.”  Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at age 16.  However, he had nine years of hard work and intense study to get to that place.  Few of us are willing to work that hard at that early of an age.

The success literature is a full of quotes on hard work.  Take a look…

“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.”   Margaret Thatcher

“I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson

“Love conquers all, but if love doesn’t do it, try hard work.” Unknown

“If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.” James A. Garfield

“When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.” Steve Pavlina

“There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas Alva Edison

“The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished.” Unknown

“Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.” J.C. Penney

“Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends.”  Charles Lazarus

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” Margaret M. Fitzpatrick

“Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.”  Nadia Comaneci

“Hard work certainly goes a long way. These days a lot of people work hard, so you have to make sure you work even harder and really dedicate yourself to what you are doing and setting out to achieve.”   Lakshmi Mittal

“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”     David Bly

Here’s a story my friend Andy O’Bryan tells about his success journey…

The year was 2004.

I had left my high-paying marketing director position and was trying to get traction with a fledgling home business. To pay the bills I was cold calling
from 9-5 for $400 a week.

From 7pm to 1am every night I was interviewing. Authors, speakers, coaches, trainers, gurus, icons, industry leaders. For a while I was doing 6 or 7 interviews a week.

Life lessons, business advice, sales training, inspiration, just an amazing amount of content came out of these sessions.

The calls were recorded and the mp3′s were put up on a website:
http://www.AudioMotivation.com.

Co-founder Josh Hinds and I grew this site to over 1,500 paying members and 800 affiliates. There are over 100 interviews in there. It was a very challenging but extremely rewarding time of my life.

Andy now has a very successful home based business.  But he put in the time and hard work it took to make it so.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people build their competency in four areas: creating positive personal impact; becoming a consistently high performer; becoming a dynamic communicator; and becoming interpersonally competent.  Hard work is a key to becoming an outstanding performer.  There’s no two ways about it.  If you want to create a successful life and career, you need to put in the time and effort necessary to succeed.   Sometimes this means working longer hours than others.  I have found that a well focused extra hour a week can yield big results.

That’s my take on hard work, high performance and success.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud