“All the so-called ‘secrets of success’ will not work unless you do.” This is a quote by an unknown author that hit the nail head on. So many people desire success yet they wait for it to slap them in the face. We’ve all heard of the old saying, “Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat!” We aren’t saved by our faith alone, but by our “Works” also. Basically, if you want something done, you’d better get your butt up and do it. The Lord worked for 6 days and then he rested on the seventh. There is much to learn from all this. Basically success, fortunes and dreams aren’t created by themselves. They are created by work.

Hard work always pays off

Now, there are different kinds of work. Hard work is not defined by how much you sweat or how many ditches you can dig. Work is defined by your productivity. “You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.” ~Jim Rohn

For me to make $1000 by working 10 hour days for a week straight is work alright, but is it productive work? If I were your employer, I would say yes! If I were the employee, I would say no! You see, there is something that ants understand very well. They understand the power of a small word called “leverage!” Can a single ant feed an entire colony? Do a few ants collect the food while the rest hang out with the queen? No! So, think about who you’d like to be in this scenario. Do you want to be the worker ant or the queen? The worker has only leveraged his own efforts. True success comes when you can figure out how to leverage your time with the efforts of others and at the same time, adding value for everyone involved.

There are only 24 hours in a day. We all get those same 24 hours right? So, whether you get rich or whether you get broke is a measure of what you have done with your 24 hours. Success, the same as failure, doesn’t happen overnight or in one swift decision. It happens by one small act or failure to act, duplicated over and over, for a period of time! Work requires action rather than sweat. Work requires productivity rather than the ability to just stay busy. Work requires will and ambition rather than complaining and remorse. If success didn’t involve work, I think almost everyone would be doing it! Then again, there are those who still would not do it because thinking can be work.

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Understand that the first philosophy of the ant is: Hard work always pays off. In the words of an previous mentor of mine, “The field is white, all ready to harvest, so just forget yourself and go to work!”

I am beginning to realize the power of social networking sites. It is amazing to me the amount of traffic you can drive to your site through various sites such as Facebook and MyBlogLog. Twitter is a fun one as well. I am adding this site to MyBlogLog and am required to post this little snippet to verify my ownership.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

The title of this article pretty much sums the entire thing up! Expectations will kill your business and your momentum. What do I mean by expectations? When I say expectations, I am speaking of all the little thoughts you have in your mind of what might be expected of you. If you are a leader in your industry, you might be expected to perform better than all of your competition. If you hang around wealthy people you assume that you are expected to be wealthy as well.

Always trying to live up to someone’s expectations will kill your motivation, it will kill your self-confidence, and it will kill your income, because you will always feel you are not good enough, or that you don’t measure up. Now, if you are always having those feelings, what happens to your self-esteem? What happens to your motivation? It all plummets and you’re left feeling like you don’t measure up to anyone around you.

Now, I have seen this turn into, for use of an analogy, a snowball effect. Once you feel you don’t measure up to all the expectations everyone has put onto you, at least you think they have, where does it stop? Pretty soon you feel you don’t fit in with anyone and become a little disoriented and lost. It can even go to the point where you will start telling little white lies to cover your lack of measuring up to this fiction of an expectation. It will be so subtle that you won’t even realize it is happening. Believe me, I speak from personal experience. I have been there and only realized it when someone spoke these same words to me.

My advice: Care less about expectation! Who cares what others think about you and what you are doing. Who cares about what others are expecting you to do. Just do what you want to do regardless of the circumstances. Everything is your choice! To have someone’s expectation floating over your head 24/7 will drive you mad. This is a another side of being a victim of outside circumstance. Rather than physical things effecting how you operate, this is all mental. The same concept applies though, how you operate should not be effected by anything outside of your own mind. And expectation is not you or what you want to be, it was portrayed onto you.

In a way you must be a little bit of a rebel to live this principle. It is about being the leader. It is about creating your own expectations of yourself, and being true to that. Don’t worry about others, their views of you or their results in life. That doesn’t matter when it comes to you. The only thing that matters is what matters to you!

So, stop settling for and striving for what others would like to see you do. Just start living and do what you want to do!

I attribute my knowledge of this philosophy to the one and only Jim Rohn. I am sure this analogy has been around for some time now. What a visionary he truly is and what an entrepreneur. I guess it makes complete sense that in order to effectively teach people to become entrepreneur minded, you must know what you are teaching about. True knowledge comes from doing and doing creates results. What better way is there to gain a perfect knowledge than experience?

So on behalf of Entrepreneurialism, I bring you the 10 philosophies of the ant. What better way to understand, than by analogy. Some of my most respected mentors and role models have always taught by story. The relation between philosophy and real life stories embed principle and trigger memory to recall those principles because they are tied to those stories. So that sometime down the road of life, one might be going through a similar situation and remember the principle. How valuable is that?

So here are the 10 philosophies of the Ant:

1. Hard work always pays off.

2. Know your objective, or the task at hand and do just that.

3. Never quit. If an obstacle arises, find a way around, over, under or just go through it.

4. Take shelter in a storm and dodge the bullies with magnifying glasses.

5. Selfless service. When you assist others in getting what they want, you will get what you want!

6. Remain loyal and honest. True depth in any business comes from respect and a good name.

7. Prepare for Winter while it is Summer.

8. Think of Summer while it is Winter.

9. Strength comes in numbers.

10. Never say Die!

The list could probably be longer but 10 will suffice for now. I will expound on each of these philosophies in the next 10 articles and will relate each to a principle vital to the success of any entrepreneur. Now that I think of it, luck could be number 11, but I think luck has such a small part in success. Either you want it, or you don’t! That is my philosophy.

I read a story today that relates a story that applies to everything we do and become in life, and the causes for it. It starts off with a boy and his father hiking through the mountains. The father gets a little bit ahead and the boy slips and bangs his leg on a rock and yells, “Ouch!” Almost immediately he hears “Ouch” coming right back at him. A little startled he yells out to the mountains, “Who are you,” thinking it was someone mocking him. He gets the same response. He then yells, “You coward,” and just the same way it has been happening, he heard the same response! Getting more frustrated and about to burst into anger, he looks to his father and asks him, “What’s going on?” His father just smiles and says, “Son, pay attention!” He then yells back to the mountain, “I admire you, You are a Leader, You are a champion, You can do anything!” With each phrase he received the same response in return.

The boy looks and little confused so the father explains, “Son, people call this an ECHO but really this is LIFE. It gives you back everything you say or do. Life is a reflection of our actions!” If you want more love in the world, it first starts with creating more love in your heart. If you want more competence in your team or your employees, become more competent yourself. If you want more respect, give more respect. If you want all out massive success, help others to become successful.

This relationship applies to everything, in all areas of life. Your life is not a coincidence….it is a reflection of YOU!

I am not defined by my circumstances, however my circumstances define who I am being! How many people think just the opposite? How many people live in trailer parks thinking of themselves as trailer trash or live on the streets and consider themselves bums? There are very few people who understand the fact that their surroundings, their income, their clothes, their language, their job, and their results in life are not what defines them. That is just telling them who they are being, acting, and thinking as.

Many of the great and successful entrepreneurs of our time knew, even in times of bankruptcy and serious hardships, that they were successful and great! When I first started in Network Marketing I was making about $40k a year working a job. This is a great example of knowing who I was to become instead of who I was being for the previous 10 years of my life. I was speaking with people who were making well into the 6-figure income range and was a little intimidated. I was speaking with CEO’s and big business owners and thought that these people knew more, had more going for them, and were larger and better people than me. At first, that is the mindset I had, and that was who I was being. Do you think anyone wanted to get started with me in my business? Not very many did until I could change the view I had of myself. I had to change my belief of who I was and what defines me. My income surely does not define me nor does a label such as CEO. That is just who I was being at that moment in time.

In order to be successful in any venture and especially in Network Marketing, a person has to have a clear understanding of where they are going, who they want to be, and how to get there. Coming from a person who used to make the national average in income to someone who makes well beyond that now, I had to envision that for myself and become that person before I even had the results. I guess you can call it “Thinking outside the Box!” In other words, having the ability to look beyond your current situation. That, is what defines you!