Home
>
Success
>
Top 10 Strategies Of Highly Successful Professionals

Top 10 Strategies Of Highly Successful Professionals

Last Thursday evening, I was the guest of a group of therapists who interviewed me about how I've built my businesses over the years ? both my therapy offices and my coaching business. Their probing, and very pointed, questions dramatically helped me clarify exactly what strategies have worked for me and my clients over the years. I hope you enjoy it. It is as solid and tight a summary of what has worked for me over the years as anything I've ever written. I'm quite proud of it, at least as an accurate reflection of what has worked for me.

1. Clarify the vision. Many of us have a tendency to be lazy about defining exactly what we want and where we want to be in a few years. Set your course as clearly as you can! A vague desire to "Work less and make more money" may be a comfortable day-dream, but it is not a success strategy!

2. Turn the vision into a mission. Once you know where you want to go, you have to be clear, get passionate, get DETERMINED to arrive! Develop a series of vital reasons, personal motivators, personal drivers that pull you forward. Why are you doing what you do? If you only want to make money, get a job! (It's easier!) What's your driving purpose?

3. Get a mentor. Hire a coach or create a frequent, steady, EFFECTIVE working relationship with someone who has been where you want to go, or perhaps more importantly, has a proven ability to help others get there. (Great sports coaches don't have to be great athletes! But they do have to know the game and be experts at helping their athletes win!)

4. Get a map and a compass! Develop a detailed, specific working plan. Work with your coach on this, and write it down! It doesn't have to be long and detailed, but it does have to make sense, and it has to give you direction and purpose for getting from where you are, to where you want to be. It should be detailed enough to tell you precisely what to do first, each Monday morning.

5. Improve the plan whenever possible. There is a contradiction here. Use and trust your plan, and rely on it! At the same time, life will give you unexpected opportunities, sudden short-cuts, and amazing possibilities. Be ready at any moment to jump on a "real" opportunity, but be very cautious about running off on every whim or impulse. How do you know the difference? Check with your coach!

6. Hang-out with talented people. Pick up the phone and introduce yourself to people who have achieved want you want to achieve. Read about them, get on their mailing lists or take classes from them. If they don't teach, develop a class and invite them to be your guest expert! But find people who are walking on the same, or a similar, path to your own, and follow in their footsteps, or walk beside them, or encourage them to catch up with you. Success loves company!

7. Work very hard. Again, there is a contradiction here. To achieve a high level of success takes an ability to play very hard, sometimes for a long time. If you've defined your vision accurately, the distinction between "work" and "play" will begin to blur, and you'll find yourself willing (eager!) to work a lot. It takes sustained, efficient, focused effort to achieve great things. I know of no short-cut.

8. Keep good records! This means accurate accounting, a personal journal of what works and why, notes about your best customers and the coolest things your competitors are doing. Jot down ideas, keep track. Especially, monitor the money.

9. Work smarter everyday! I think the biggest single thing in my success is that my family has no history of being in business, and even making money is a bit "suspect", but they LOVE learning! Early on, they taught me that everything I could ever need or want in life was in the local library. Learn from the competition. Learn how they did it 100 years ago! Read "Wired" and "Fast Company" to see how it might be done next year. Take the best, and leave the rest.

10. Always be planning your "next" million dollars. Whatever you're doing today is already becoming obsolete. By the time you read the book or attend the seminar, someone has already found a "better, faster, cheaper" way to do it. Always be looking over the horizon, seeking the next opportunity and figuring out how to incorporate it into what you already have and love. Keep growing!

? Copyright 2003 by Philip E. Humbert. All Rights Reserved. This article may be copied and used in your own newsletter or on your website as long as you include the following information: "Written by Dr. Philip E. Humbert, writer, speaker and success coach. Dr. Humbert has over 300 free articles, tools and resources for your success, including a great newsletter! It's all on his website at: http://www.philiphumbert.com

cleaning help near Mundelein ...

In The News:

Uber teen accounts now feature live video streaming from the driver's camera, but encrypted recordings stay on Uber's servers for up to 14 days.

Router firewalls and software firewalls serve different roles in protecting your home Wi-Fi from unwanted traffic and suspicious connections.

A Chrome extension with 70,000 users and a 4.7-star rating began injecting fake update warnings after a threat actor acquired and weaponized it.

Amazon's Alexa+ rolls out free to Fire TV devices across the U.S., but hands-free microphones and stored voice data raise key privacy questions.

Meta's new teen accounts settlement sets a default two-hour daily limit on Instagram and Facebook, plus night mode and school mode restrictions.

The CareCloud data breach exposed Social Security numbers, banking information and medical records belonging to more than 3.75 million people.

Waymo reveals its custom 5-nanometer chip and dual computing systems designed to take over instantly if the robotaxi's primary computer fails.

Identity theft now includes account takeover, phone hijacking and payment card exposure. Here's what to look for in identity theft protection services.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

The FBI and Justice Department seized domains tied to QScan and QTRouter, tools allegedly used by China-linked hackers to breach NASA and other agencies.

Uber Eats drone delivery launches later this year through a Zipline partnership, starting in Dallas and Houston with a goal of one million daily flights.

Medicare Open Enrollment scams start with data broker targeting months before October. Learn why August is the time to remove your personal info.

The World Humanoid Robot Games' crashes show how far the technology still needs to go to be useful, "Survivor" reality TV star and robotics scientist Christian Hubicki says.

X-Humanoid's TianGong Ultra ran 100 meters in 9.32 seconds at Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games, beating last year's winner by more than half.

A tap-to-pay charity scam is turning small $15 or $20 donations into charges of nearly $5,000, with victims losing thousands before they notice.

Kurt Knutsson shares seven emergency preparedness lessons from surviving Hurricane Katrina inside a New Orleans hotel as conditions turned desperate.

A contractor stored credentials in a Google Doc set to "Anyone with the link," and Google Search autocomplete eventually surfaced the password string.

New Orleans 911 uses Carbyne AI to triage repeat auto crash calls, but strict limits keep human call-takers in control of all other emergencies.

A single card skimmer can generate $1 million in stolen funds, and Secret Service video shows criminals installing them in under two seconds.

ChatGPT, Meta AI and Google now use memory, connected apps and past chats to personalize ads and responses in ways most users overlook today.

MagicalAuth by Glide.id uses cryptographic SIM credentials to verify bank logins without sending SMS OTP codes that scammers can intercept or phish.

A humanoid robot named Lightning Bolt ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, edging Usain Bolt's record.

An AI agent using Claude AI canceled another person's gym booking after finding a security flaw in the reservation system's authorization checks.

Trump signed a memorandum allowing vetted private U.S. companies to conduct cyber operations against foreign criminal organizations under oversight.

Your Social Security number appeared in a breach, but exposure and identity theft are not the same. Here's how identity restoration actually works.