What does it take to be really successful? A young girl asked Richard St John this on a plane and he realized although he had achieved considerable success himself, he didn't know the answer to her question. So he set out upon a ten-year quest to find the answer. His book ‘The 8 traits successful people have in common, 8 to be great’ distills the research over those ten years into the principle 8 main areas, which leads to success.
Richard completed 500 face-to-face interviews with extraordinarily successful people such as Bill Gates, Google Founders as well as numerous other success stories. He interviewed speakers from the TED lectures and successful people in many different fields ranging from arts to medicine. Some of his interviewees were not well known and for a control group he interviewed people who hadn’t achieved much success. Interestingly Richard found there were another 300 factors that also helped people succeed such as having a mentor, setting goals, a positive attitude etc. because although they helped some people, many others achieved great success without them.
So what are they?
- Passion – Successful people love what they do
- Work – They work very hard
- Focus – They focus on one thing, not everything
- Push – They keep pushing themselves
- Ideas – They come up with good ideas
- Improve – they keep improving themselves and what they do
- Serve – They serve others something of value
- Persist – They persist through time, failure and adversity
I like this book as it is easy to read, has clear graphics and its style is upbeat and humorous as you would expect if you had watched his 3 minute TED lecture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6bbMQXQ180
This is the last post for 2013 and I’ll be back the first week in January. I look forward to sharing more information to help you with your career in 2014.