The 2 Keys To Business Success You Won’t Like To Hear.

Creating success in business - or life - is a combination of two very important decisions.  Doing the hard things that everyone else is too afraid to do and ignoring everyone around you who disagrees with you.

Make no mistake – both are hard to do.  And both are amazingly important.

If you’re not tough enough, you can’t win.

It’s just that simple.  You can design the best “business models”, create world-class ideas, and rally to your cause amazing advocates.  But that doesn’t have much of anything to do with your likeliness of being successful.

“Ideas are only as good as you are tough enough to bring them to reality.”

That’s where start-ups and business leaders fail.  They emulate the smart things that they read in magazines like INC and Fortune and in great books and blogs from leaders like Brad Feld and Fred Wilson.  But they don’t live them.

And knowing isn’t the same as doing

It’s not the same as trying and failing.  It’s not the same as figuring it out on your own.  Thinking for yourself.   Taking advice and ideas and “owning  them”.

Reading words is a great start.  It you aren’t learning - exploring and gaining new skills - then you aren’t going to get better.

But, you have to change.  And change is hard.

Quality difference is the key to success.

You being different is what changes things. And not just being different to be spiteful.  But being different because that change drives you closer to you goals. You need to change in order to be successful.

Once you realize that and start heading down that new path, you’ll realize that not everyone understands what you are doing — and “why” you are doing it.  And since they don’t understand, they’ll tell you that you’re off-course.  That you are doing something wrong.  That you are making mistakes.

And you’re not.  They’re wrong.

Which is why you need to ignore them.

You can take the time to explain and win them over or you can just execute.  It’s usually easier to “do” than to explain and persuade.  (And you can’t do one really well while attempting to do the other at the same time.)

Which means you have to make a decision.  A tough decision.  Do you convince or conquer?  Flail or fight?

That’s a decision that you have to make each day of the year.

Each morning you have decide if you are going to be tough enough.  To ignore the travelers on the path as you blaze a trail to where you want to be.

That decision is yours:

1. Be tough.  Hang in there.  Learn from your mistakes.  Do what is hard.
2. Sometimes you need to ignore awesome, smart people on your way to success.