Achieving True Success

While working with hundreds of clients during our firm’s 35 years, I’ve learned a lot about how our top clients achieved true success with their companies.  One observation has stood out – there were no overnight successes.

Two entrepreneurs who did not realize true success “overnight” at their companies are the following:

• James Dyson is now worth about $5 billion from manufacturing vacuum cleaners.  But initially he had to go through 5,127 failed prototypes before a model was successful.
• Theodor Geisel wanted to be a writer, but his work was rejected 27 times by publishers.  Some even called his work “pure rubbish”.  But he persevered and today we know him under the pen name “Dr. Seuss.”

Over the years I’ve read a number of books and articles on how to be successful in business.  It seems that most of the time authors state that it takes discipline, desire, determination as well as dedication to realize business success.  Each of these four are superb qualities.  But the one thing I’ve learned from and observed in our most successful clients is that all possessed the quality of DILIGENCE.  And diligence is a quality rarely found if ever written in printed material.

A dictionary definition of diligence is when a person is characterized by steady, earnest and energetic effort.  What I’ve noticed when advising top clients is their diligence in making a constant and sustained effort with integrity in what they were undertaking.  By doing so they remained on the right path to Achieving True Success.

Merry Christmas and a successful New Year from all of us at Kasper & Associates!

Ed Kasper, Founding Partner