Who all is Vested in Your Success?

Who all is vested in your success? by Sal Celly

Good evening, everyone. It’s Sal Celly. Hope you all are enjoying your weekend.

As we get into the winding down of 2022 and the holidays, I wanted to write about- it takes a village to be successful. What do I mean by it takes a village for there to be success? It’s not the result of just one person. There are so many factors and so many people that need to be vested in your success, that will help propel you to your destination-you still have to put in the work, but you alone cannot do it. This is equally important in your personal life as well as in your professional life.

Steps Needed for Success

First and foremost, you need to have conviction and faith in your ability and the Why- the why needs to be strong enough. And that will drive the how. So that’s the first step. If you yourself are not convinced about the direction in which you’re going or you’re want to go, and what you’re wanting to achieve, and how much effort is required, you will fail. As a result, the first step is, you need to have that strong sense of belief and conviction and persistence and perseverance and continue to push forward. I’m not saying that along the way, you won’t have to make adjustments and tweak your approach-you will. But that’s about the How- the Why doesn’t change. So that’s step number one.

Step number two is for you to have a circle of influence, and identify key people that are going to help you in your journey. That is what I’m talking about when I say it takes a village. Some of these people could be accountability partners, mentors, advisors, coaches, and people you can bounce off ideas from- it could also be people who are going to poke holes in your approach. It could be your peers, it could be people you’re competing with it etc. The key is that you have to surround yourself with the people that are going to help you become successful.

These people are not going to come to you, you have to seek them out. And very strategically, you have to fill in the gaps. Sometimes God is going to show you the pathway, and God is going to put certain people

in your reach, but you still have to go out and make the ask. Don’t expect the village to propel you forward, you have to continue to move forward with the help and assistance of the village. That is a key difference.

I have experienced this many times where you go out and connect the dots. And when you look back, you will be able to recognize how everything seemed to fall into place. Along the way, there are going to be some false starts, there are going to be some adjustments, you will take two steps forward, you may take a couple of steps backwards, and you may go sideways. But until and unless you have your circle of influence and the people that you trust, and the folks that are vested in your success, you cannot win by yourself.

Necessary Pre-requisites

There are a couple of things that are necessary for you to move in the right direction. One you have to be open to feedback. If you’re asking for feedback, you have to be open to it and not all the feedback is going to be positive. As a result, you have to be willing and open to negative feedback and constructive criticism. And then what do you do with that? Do you just brush it off and continue with the way you are going? Or do you incorporate it? Do you challenge it? Do you rationalize it? Do you discuss it, evaluate it in your approach and strategy , and then come to a conclusion and then make adjustments? Nothing changes, if nothing changes. All the feedback in the world is useless if you don’t do anything about it.  Right?

Actually, the first step is to identify the people that are going to help you get successful. Number two, seek out those people. Number three, ask them for feedback. Number four, evaluate the feedback and where applicable, implement it, adjust your approach, and then take it back to the market again, and see if you have a better response now. This is a repetitive process that you keep on doing- as you tweak the approach, and as you adjust it, and as you continue to evolve, it becomes better and better and better.

It is a Process

You never arrive at the end destination and stop- you continue to adjust and tweak and modify and evolve, and then retest. That’s what the whole Agile methodology is concerned with-it’s not just about agile product development, it’s about agile life-it’s about everything that you do, you don’t have to sink in a huge amount of effort and time, and then take it to the market and then solicit feedback. No, you do it iteratively and constantly, and you continue to evolve and adapt and take it to the market and test it and then again, adjust and so on and so forth. The key is to adjust, execute, implement, measure and rinse and repeat. You have to do that- if you don’t, and you just hear the feedback and advice, and you don’t change, then it becomes a completely worthless exercise.

You don’t want to do that. Because then you’re wasting the other person’s time, you’re wasting the other people that are giving you feedback and you’re wasting your own time. So don’t do that. Implement, execute, and move forward. And keep adjusting, rinsing and repeating. It’s very frustrating for somebody that is taking the time and helping you adjust your messaging and your positioning, but then you don’t change. And after a while, those people will stop.

You may not know the exact people that are going to be filling those boxes. And that’s okay-identify the roles and then start soliciting and asking and finding those folks to fill in the boxes. You’re going to face resistance-not everybody is going to be willing to help. There will be some people who will reject you, they will say no-this is a useless idea and is not going to work-that’s okay. You have to kiss many frogs before you find your prince. It’s a numbers game and you need to recognize that not everybody is going to be bought in and buy into your vision- not everybody’s going to be as passionate as you are. And that’s okay.

But you need to identify a few people, I would say at least five or six that are going to help you move in that direction. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. So fill in the gaps where you have weaknesses and solicit assistance and feedback and build out the team, and your Geopod that is going to help you be successful. This was a quick post about it takes a village to be successful. We will delve deeper into this topic on subsequent posts. Enjoy the weekend. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email us at coach@maximizeu.life. Thanks.