Top 10 Powerful Pieces Of Advice To Be Successful.

As a coach, I run into many great pieces of advice from books, clients, workshops, seminars, and instructors. Here is a powerful cross-section of great advice I’ve used in business and life:

  1. “The first few months at a job, just shut up.” You will learn who to talk to and who the idiots are very quickly.
  2. “If it takes 60 seconds or less to complete, don't complain or postpone. Just do it now and get it over with.”
  3. "Talent without work amounts to nothing". For example: If you take one writing workshop and wrote every day a few hours a day, in 10 years, they'd all have a decent book published. Maybe not the Great American Novel, but a decent one.
  4. “If you're at work, take a hour and don't work during lunch.” My old boss (who was very successful in business) took an hour everyday and made us stop working and go to lunch.
  5. “When looking for a job, look at the company's mission statement." If you can't figure out what they do in 3 sentences or less, walk away. They have their head up their butts.
  6. “Most people who seem confident aren't or started without confidence.” The trick to being self-confident is to fake it until you're not faking it any more.
  7. "If you don't ask, you don't get." It’s not rude or out-of-line to ask.
  8. A business class professor said on the first day of class: "Look around you and shake the person's hand next you and get to know them and everyone in this class. Over the long run, that will be more valuable than anything I can teach you."
  9. “If you want something you've never had, you're going to have to do something you've never done.”
  10. “Mistakes are like stones in a backpack, carrying them with you can make you stronger, but theres a point at which you need to drop them to even move forward.”

Do you have any great pieces of advice to share that’s impacted your career?

Image provided by laughlin at flickr.