I read a lot.  As a Keynote Speaker and a Key Note Taker, I have to.  It’s my job and my passion.  My new favorite book is Albert E. N. Gray’s The New Common Denominator of Success.  Here are my Key Notes:

1. The common denominator of success – the secret of successful people – he or she has formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.
2. Successful people don’t like doing these activities any more than unsuccessful people.  They just do it.
3. Success is achieved by the minority and, therefore, unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes, nor guided by our natural preferences and prejudices.  Your natural likes and dislikes got you where you are today.
4. Successful people have a purpose strong enough to form the habit of doing the things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.
5. Habits form futures.  If we don’t deliberately form success habits then, unconsciously, you will form non-success habits.

An example of this appeared in the Wall Street Journal (September 9, 2008, “Snack Vendor – or Undercover Job Recruiter?” p. D1).  After numerous failed returned phone calls, Executive Recruiter, David Perry, staked out a leadership candidate’s favorite fly fishing spot in Montana.  He met another hard-to-reach recruit on a remote mountain bike trail.  On another mountain, a sales executive who is an expert skier, is tracked down by Mr. Perry on an expert’s ski run.  Mr. Perry is an amateur skier.  Finally, one recruit was mailed a $600 plane ticket, leaving that week, to the potential employer’s office.  In all of these cases, Perry was successful.

Successful people have formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

Have a Tenacious Purpose,™ Ignore the Critiques and Break All the Rules

Successful people have a purpose strong enough to form the habit of doing the things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the Purpose they want to accomplish.

“You’re trying to ruin us.”  This is what Roy Disney said to his brother Walt in 1934.  Walt decided to produce Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the first full-length animated feature film), motion picture critics went into shock. Who would watch a cartoon for over an hour?  Half-way through filming Walt ran out of money.  Bankers refused to fund it.

The extreme pressure and anxiety caused Walt to suffer his third nervous breakdown in 1935.

In mid-1935, he convinced Bank of America to loan him $5 million dollars to complete the film.

The rest, as they say, is film history.  Snow White was seen by twenty million people in the first 18 months.  It took in a record-breaking $8 million its first year (at 25¢ per ticket!) and had made over $100 million.

Successful people have a purpose strong enough to form the habit of doing the things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the Purpose they want to accomplish.

There are critiques in the executive recruiting industry with this brazen approach to headhunting.  “It cheapens the reality of the hard work that goes into executive search,” says Peter Felix, president of the Association of Executive Search consultants. “If you’re in the business of recruiting leadership candidates, you have to bring tact, grace and integrity to the profession,” adds industry pundit Joseph Daniel McCool.

Mr. Perry earns about $500,000 annually, in an industry where the average partner earns between $350,000 and $400,000.

The secret of the successful people – he or she has formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

Let’s hear from you.  What are your success habits or the success habits of successful people you have witnessed?

What is your Tenacious Purpose?