Richard St.Johns 8 Secrets of Success
There are some pretty obvious secrets to success in business, the most obvious to start from your strengths; what you love to do most. The clip below is Richard St.John’s presentation called 8 Secrets of Success, made at Ted, Ideas worth spreading. For a business, this is only part of the story, it’s incomplete, but a good start. Watch the video, it only goes for 3 minutes or so, read my comments, and have a think for yourself.
The 8 Secrets Richard St.John describes with some comments
Passion – The interesting thing is: if you do it for love, the money comes anyway.” (Richard St. John) I prefer the words – ‘money follows success’
Work – Nothing comes easy – you do have to put in the hours, sometimes many, even if you are tired or distracted, find the discipline
Get Good- practice, learn, get some depth. In Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers – The Story of Success, he suggests that success in any field is practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. You may also prefer to read the wikipedia article Outliers (Book)
Focus – on one thing, a point made by 
Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema in their book ‘The Discipline of Market Leaders’ is to try not to be all things to everyone, narrow your focus and seek to dominate that market.
Push Yourself – through self doubt, fears, let downs etc
Serve – others, not yourself, what do your customers want?
Ideas – listen, observe, ask questions, solve problems, make connections
Persist – through failure and crap, remember there are no overnight sensations.
There are many things you can do in business to be successful, but it is obvious that you should start from what you are already good at.
Necessary, but incomplete from the secrets to success for business?
Let’s start from the idea that while all the above is necessary, as well as good health, it is missing the following:
1. Knowledge about how a business works – revenue, to make or buy, marketing & sales, running the business, and profit (or surplus for not-for-profits)
2. Be clear about your purpose – to help decide what you will do or not do, ok, read this as strategy.
3. Understand simple arithmetic and how it applies to a business
What do you know?
Many of my clients are often blind to their talent, or what their business might be capable of. To me it often stands out. My customers come to me to work on a website for their business and out of the initial conversations we find some core products, then we get to work on developing those into their business. But it is only a start. The above 8 Secrets are part and parcel of the work that needs to be done, over and over again.
