I have really enjoyed the past five years. I have had the privilege to interview 94 different super achievers, as part of my research towards completing my PHD. One of the Billionaire super achievers I interviewed, had some rather interesting, if not confusing advice, on how to invite huge levels of success into your experience. He simply said "You need to have a clear vision, think strategically, plan prepare and then quit as soon as possible".
Up until the "QUIT" part, I completely understood what he was saying. As soon as he mentioned the part about quitting, he had moved me into a new paradigm and pulled me right out of my own comfort zone, value and belief system. I have always taught all my clients and believed emphatically that success is all about consistent daily effort, never about quitting.
As you can imagine, my shock must have been visible to the billionaire, who had not only managed to accumulate one billion dollars, but had done it more than three times over. He looked at me squarely in the eyes and repeated his earlier statement, "The secret to huge success is all about quitting as soon as heavenly possible" When I listened to the recording of the interview afterwards, I realized that at that stage of the interview, I had uttered an audible "Huh", which was probably loud enough for people miles away to hear.
He began laughing at that point and said, I see you look a little confused by my statement. My shock and disbelief must have been really visible, as he continued to re-enforce his point by adding "Whatever you are doing in your business right now or in the future, the way to become a super achiever, is to find innovative ways to stop doing all of it as soon as possible. In fact the sooner you stop doing anything at the office the better".
At this stage, although I unsuccessfully tried to hide my shock from him, and blurted out that quitting, seemed completely counter intuitive and flew in the face of everything I believed. He once again laughed, leaned forward and said, "What I am referring to when I say quit as soon as possible simply means this. You are the founder of the vision and co-creator of the strategic plans, your role is to discover creative ways of successfully delegating as much and as fast as possible to other people, so that you can keep a long term strategic focus going".
He believed that Delegation was a form of quitting
No matter how great you are at creating a crystal clear vision. Your role as founder of the vision is to remain focused on the big picture and to get specialists in to carry out the functions in each operation. Once you have mastered the art of delegation, you can multiply your efforts and the size of your endeavours, by utilizing the specialized skills of a very large number of specialists. When you try to do everything yourself, you stifle your efforts and get bogged down, working in your business, rather than on it.
The success in any business is driven by your ability to stop doing every part of the job of running the business as soon as possible. Your role is that of a visionary leader. Leave the day-to-day stuff to the people, who specialize in those areas.
How do you make this work for you?
I am sure that you are like most people and are thinking, "I get the concept, but how practical is it to delegate everything to other people? Obviously when you first start a business, you do not have the resources available, so you are forced to be the jack-of-all-trades. You will be responsible for sales, customer service, doing the books, even taking the rubbish out. The simple secret to long term, sustainable and massive success, is to work really hard to generate sufficient sales to gradually remove yourself from the business.
Obviously, your first goal is to get someone to take out the rubbish for you. I think most of us get this part right. It is the next phase, where we need to gradually find innovative ways to gradually remove yourself from as much of the other responsibility as possible, as quickly as possible. The secret to make this work for you is to hire specialists as soon as humanly possible, who play at what you find really tough to do every day.
Visionary Leader
Your role as the visionary leader is to build the business as quickly as possible, to a place where you do only two things namely create strategy and lead the organization. The sooner you can go from everything to nothing, except leading and creating direction, the sooner you will create a successful thriving organization.
Aim to Turn your Labour into Leadership
By now you should realise that to become really great and create massive success, you must find innovative ways of turning your labour into great leadership, as soon as possible. Your role as the creator of the vision is to avoid involvement in the daily running of the business and instead focus your energy on ways to work "ON" the business.
Work On your Business
It became clear to me after that interview; why he had managed to achieve billionaire status more than once and I was a few hundred million short myself. I have always worked really hard in all my businesses, instead of delegating all the things I am not that skilled at doing, to more talented people. I have changed my focus and from now on, I will be focusing my energy on doing what I am really good at. How about you, have you also seen the light?
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