The Secret to Success

Success is usually earned by persevering and not becoming discouraged when we encounter challenges. Paul Harvey, the famous news analyst and author, once said: “Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that someone will ask me, ‘What’s the secret of it?’ I shall say simply this: ‘I get up when I fall down.’” 

^{"Perseverance is demonstrated by those who keep going when the going gets tough, who don’t give up even when others say, “It can’t be done.”"}

-"Perseverance", James E. Faust

Becoming an entrepreneur can be a difficult journey, but it can also be a fulfilling one. We just need to keep our priorities straight, our integrity strong, and our faith unfaltering. I listened to a speed about the Hero's Journey and the thing that stuck out to me the most was that a lot of us are worried about the wrong things. The Hero's journey is all about you, but it's not about you at all. Live every moment of your life like it mattered, because it does. 

Things to do:
Find great role models, and ask them great questions. 
(Ask about triumphs and regrets and things they wish they had learned sooner)

Questions to ask yourself at the end of your life:

• Have I contributed something meaningful?
• Am I a good person?
• Who did I love and who loved me?

Ask five people to tell you something that you are better at than anyone else?
Find your God-given talents and then intersect that with things you love to do, things where you lose track of time and love to practice for the sake of practicing it.

There was a great interview done with some successful entrepreneurs asking them about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. This was all done in search of the answer to the question, "Are successful entrepreneurs born or made?" So what was the answer? What's the big secret? The secret is perseverance. The secret is staying the course even when obstacles get in your way. 
"So in the end, what made them different from others who hadn’t been as successful and fulfilled? They had stayed the course. Day after day; year after year. Other would-be-entrepreneurs might have been even more talented, but they became bored. Hopped from industry to industry. Tried to get rich quickly. Relied on “who they knew” to attract opportunities and favors rather than mastering a skill. Tried to take advantage of others instead of doing what was right. The entrepreneurial heroes in front of me loved the great game of entrepreneurship. So they showed up, every day, in the same industry, with the same people. Through trial and error, successful and failed decisions, they made tiny deposits of industry expertise, business knowledge, and trust which built a web of assets that made running a successful business much easier and served as a formidable barrier to competitors. Are successful entrepreneurs born or made? Are entrepreneurs blessed with a rare gene or shaped by their parents and childhood? Turns out, these aren’t even the right questions. Entrepreneurs become successful, one small investment at a time, in a never-ending process. Because entrepreneurial success isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. A journey taken one determined step at a time, in a way that builds lifelong treasures."

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway."  

-Earl Nightingale