7 Success Principles That I Live By Daily

I was recently asked what advice I would give to those who wanted to suc­ceed and achieve their goals. I always take ques­tions like this very seri­ously, because to be hon­est I think I’m still work­ing to achieve the goals I have set for myself. How­ever, I’ve been liv­ing by 7 prin­ci­ples since the day that my par­ents (mother and step­fa­ther) moved us out of the trailer park.

Truth is I come from very hum­ble begin­nings and I remem­ber them vividly. My father left my mother when I was very young. My mother had no for­mal edu­ca­tion beyond high school, so she was required to work three jobs to sup­port her two girls and even then those three jobs often didn’t make ends meet. We strug­gled and we learned what it was like to be poor. I was young, but I believe grow­ing up in these cir­cum­stances and watch­ing my mother do what­ever it took instilled in me the drive that I have to suc­ceed.  Since I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the fol­low­ing principles:

1. Prin­ci­ple 1: Never ever give up or count your­self out.
2. Prin­ci­ple 2: Strive to learn some­thing new every day.
3. Prin­ci­ple 3: Keep the pas­sion about what you do.
4. Prin­ci­ple 4: Be will­ing to share your knowledge.
5. Prin­ci­ple 5: Don’t rest on your laurels.
6. Prin­ci­ple 6: There is no job too small, there is oppor­tu­nity every­where – it’s your job to be aware of it.
7. Prin­ci­ple 7: Be will­ing to help oth­ers achieve their dreams.

Watch­ing my mother strug­gle and do the best that she could I vowed that I’d always be able to take care of myself. I’ve done that. I always thought that I wanted to work in account­ing, because it was secure and you didn’t hear of many lay­offs when it came to num­ber crunch­ing. I wanted to take the sta­bil­ity route – but real­ized my pas­sion was in some­thing else… marketing.

The real­iza­tion came from a gig that I truly started as a hobby in 1998 – it was a small Inter­net com­pany, called The Min­ing Com­pany. I agreed to write arti­cles for $100 per month on how indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses could com­mu­ni­cate using online tech­nol­ogy – wow, who ever would have thought it would take me down the path it did. This oppor­tu­nity, that I con­sid­ered a hobby took my career path down a dif­fer­ent road. I started to study con­sumers every day – what made them respond, what trig­gered the cor­rect response and what did they want from com­pa­nies that would make them buy. Over time I had learned more about the con­sumers mind than I ever would have had I grad­u­ated col­lege with a mar­ket­ing degree.

In 2003 I was accepted to write for the Mar­ket­ing col­umn for About.com, for­merly known as The Min­ing Com­pany and now owned by The New York Times. In 2009 I became a pub­lished author of Con­sumer Behav­ior for Dum­mies and all because I lived by the seven rules above.

The Facts: You can do what you put your mind to, if you are com­mit­ted and you are dri­ven there is noth­ing that can stop you; too many peo­ple give up too soon. I still write for About.com and now con­sult with busi­nesses on using inte­grated mar­ket­ing to reach poten­tial cus­tomers and get them to respond by pur­chas­ing their prod­ucts or services.

I even went as far as to write my own def­i­n­i­tion of mar­ket­ing, because I felt the def­i­n­i­tions that were used were too vague. My mar­ket­ing definition:

“Mar­ket­ing is the process of teach­ing con­sumers why they should choose your prod­uct or ser­vice over your com­peti­tors; if you are not doing that you are not mar­ket­ing. It’s really that sim­ple! The key is find­ing the right method and defin­ing the right mes­sage to use to edu­cate and influ­ence your consumers.

Com­pa­nies make the mis­take of think­ing that mar­ket­ing is just “one” thing, but mar­ket­ing is every­thing that the con­sumer encoun­ters when it comes to your busi­ness, from adver­tis­ing, to what they hear, to the cus­tomer ser­vice that they receive, to the follow-up care that you pro­vide. It’s all mar­ket­ing and cre­at­ing the deci­sion within the con­sumer whether or not to choose you ini­tially or for repeat business.”

I’ve been blessed with so many oppor­tu­ni­ties from speak­ing, to being pub­lished by a top pub­lish­ing com­pany and under a rec­og­nized brand, to work­ing with tremen­dous clients. My secret is that I strive to learn some­thing new every day and I believe this makes me stand out in knowl­edge and from among my competition.