As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been invited well inside the inner sanctum of many of the very top sales, marketing, success and money making gurus around the country and actually the world. Being a part of this exclusive group, I now get to literally rub elbows with these top experts. If you don’t know what I am talking about, please take a look at yesterday’s dose of The Prescription.

One of the most important things that has really hit me full force being around these over-achievers is that they all have particular traits that set them apart from the pack. Specifically, their attitudes, actions, persistence and passion, plus a great number of other qualities are what separates these winners for the losers.

I’ve also discovered that to be really and truly successful you will have to separate yourself from 98 percent of the rest of the world.

Most of you are familiar with the The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity ). The principle states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients."

Most people in business reluctantly accept the concept. Sales managers almost universally see that the vast majority of sales are created by a very small percentage of their sales force. Unfortunately over time, most businesses, owner and managers have seen this rule go much farther to the small minority producing a significantly larger percentage of the income. Most of the top folks I’ve been hanging around with believe that the successful 2% actually generate well over 80 plus percent of the income.

My questions for you are:

Are you a part of that 2 percent at the top?

And if not, do you want to be? NO I mean do you REALLY want to be?

And if you say you really want to be, are you willing to do what it takes to get into that top 2%?

Because you CAN get into that special 2 percent, and its not just by how smart you are, or how hard you work, or how you invest your time and money. There actually is a formula, a specific recipe for success that the top 2% live by day in and day out. And it is something you too can follow to be successful.

The first and sometimes the hardest step is that you have to be brutally honest and completely realistic with yourself and about yourself. You have to get your mind out of the fantasy world crap that you see on most of the bull-shit television shows and in the crap filled magazine you see as you’re checking out at the grocery counter. The TV and “celebrity” magazines make it look like it is either completely easy to achieve success or you have to be a total crook and cheat to make it. It is nowhere near as easy as the Paris Hilton’s of the world would like to make it look; or shows like CSI-Miami where the famous and near famous spend their days hanging out at some resort pool or racing their million dollar speed boats, or by playing slap-and-tickle with a handful of other celebs. That ain’t real life. And I can tell you, the highly successful people I’m getting to associate with are not anywhere near like those pretend successes.

It is definitely NOT as easy to make it as they show you. Its tough and you have to be tough!

So my next question has to be – Are you really tough enough to be successful?

Are you truly willing to take the ton of pure BS necessary to really make it to the top?

When you try something and it does not work exactly like you thought it would, what do you do? Do you fall apart emotionally? Do you go home, crawl into bed, assume the fetal position and spend the night or day sucking your thumb and crying for “mama”? Do you blame everyone else on the planet except yourself?

OR – Do you examine what happened, make appropriate adjustments and try again.

There’s a really great quote that has been attributed to both Mohammed Ali and to George Foreman.

“It really doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down that matters. The only thing that counts is how many times you get back up.”

Based on a minimum amount of research I believe it was former heavy weight champ turned indoor grill salesman – George Foreman. I also base that belief on the fact that Ali didn’t get knocked down all that often.

Regardless, the point is – top performers – the people who are in that top 2% - have all gotten knocked down; and most have gotten knocked down more than once.

So, the next principle I want to share with you about getting yourself into the top 2% - after being brutally honest with yourself is –

You Have to Be Tough and Determined.

Over the next several blog postings, I will be sharing with you 14 Principles of Success. These are the exact principles that the very top authors, speakers and achivers I’m hanging out with have used to get to the pinnacle of success. They are the principles I am actively using to move myself upwards toward their level of success. And they are the same principles you can use to propel yourself upwards to more income and personal fulfillment.

Each Principle will be followed by a question or questions that will help you evaluate your attitude about the Success Principle. You may want to write down each question, record the number of your answer. At the end of this series I will show you how to evaluate yourself and your potential for success.

QUESTION 1:

What do you do when you are faced with a serious problem?

1. I ignore it because I’m confident it will go away all by itself

2. I gripe and complain about it to my family and friends.

3. I delegate it to an associate and let them worry about it.

4. I brainstorm, recalculate, rework the issue until I can create a workable solution.

REMEMBER – The first principle I mentioned was that you have to be brutally honest with yourself. Answering this and future questions is a great place to start that honest reevaluation of yourself.

In my next posting, I will continue sharing with you what to do when facing a difficult problem in your business... 

Until then this is Doug Huggins reminding you…

“Problems are the price of progress: don’t bring me anything but trouble – good news weakens me.” – Charles F. Kettering