What does it mean to succeed in life and business? Is the most successful person, the richest person? Is the happiest person, the most successful person? Is the person that leaves the biggest legacy, the most successful person? What about the person who has the most control of their time?

I initially started thinking about this question in regard to business. When I worked for a big consulting firm, I really knew my subject area, but we worked crazy hours and would travel for extended periods without seeing friends or family. I remember working late many nights and watching the client go home at five (we had a policy to always work later than the clients). I wondered who was winning in this equation?

I was probably making more money and definitely knew the technology better, but they had a lot more control over their time. And, in the end, isn’t time our most valuable commodity? To paraphrase Ben Franklin, you can always make more money, but time once spent is always lost. So one of the driving factors behind starting my own business was that I could still do the work I loved (building IT systems), but I could focus on more local projects and have better control of my time.

When I first started out running my own consulting business, I felt successful because I was doing just that. Even though I was probably working more, I was doing it on my own time (usually after the kids were in bed). For a while, that made me feel successful.

Then, I felt like to really be successful, I needed to build a company that could run without me. This would allow me to do things like actually take a vacation. So I moved forward in securing client contracts, getting office space and hiring employees. So am I successful now? Would I be more successful if the business were ten times its size and had locations throughout the US? Is bigger always better?

McDonald’s has an interesting history that is relevant to this discussion. They started out as a small hamburger chain with a couple stores run by the McDonald brothers. Ray Croc was a milkshake salesmen who came along and was impressed with their business. He felt like he could really take their formula and grow the business dramatically. He offered the McDonald brothers a deal to work with him in growing the business.

But they felt successful exactly as the business was and saw no need to grow it. Ray Croc finally raised enough money to buy the business from them outright and the rest is history. There is a similar story regarding Starbucks which, for many years, was a local Seattle coffee company with a couple shops until Howard Schultz bought out the original owners and rolled out a nationwide growth plan. Are these bigger businesses more successful than the local ones?

And, if the bigger businesses are more successful, is the biggest business the most successful one. I guess that would be one of the oil companies or possibly WalMart. Should the goal of every business owner be to build one of these monoliths of commerce?

In my opinion, it really depends on the vision of the business and its owner. If I set up a business whose main vision is to serve the people of Aurora, IL and their specific IT needs, then I could be small and successful. Or what if the vision of my business is to create the next #1 PC game. Id software created the bestselling game Doom when they only had 10 employees. Also, businesses do not need to be big to be highly profitable. Most of the “millionaires next door” own and run small local businesses like garbage collection.

So I think business success like life success can be defined in many different ways.  In my opinion, the most important thing is to add value to the world in whatever you do. This usually involves exploiting your talents and skills.  I also think that success is more of a journey than a destination. The most successful people and businesses tend to be those that are continually striving and re-defining success. They never rest on previous successes or as Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel) puts it “Only the Paranoid Survive”

You need to define what success means for you and then focus on making it happen. Then once you’ve achieved one level of success, re-define the goal a little higher and keep pushing.

Stay hungry

Arnold Schwarzenegger

In  the World is Flat, Thomas Friedman says that not so long ago if you were born outside of the US and you wanted a highly successful business or research career, your goal would be to get to the US as soon as possible. Nowadays, Friedman concludes, that’s no longer true. You can be highly successful wherever you’re at.

His example was India. Not that long ago an Indian who graduated from the top university would want to come to the US for the best jobs. Now they can do just as well (or better) staying in India. Much of this is due to the telecommunications boom which makes it trivial to communicate across large distances along with the rise of offshoring. In fact, I email or chat with co-workers in Pakistan almost daily.

The world is becoming a much smaller place. It’s relatively easy to hop on a plane and be anywhere in the world in less than 24 hrs. So that raises the question: In order to be successful, does it matter where you live anymore?

Many people say that if I only lived in this place or that place then I would be successful, but some of the most successful people have lived in the middle of nowhere and become the leader in their industry:

• Gates: When Bill Gates moved back home to Seattle to build Microsoft, it was a sleepy northwestern town. It was the rise of Microsoft that turned it into the thriving technology mecca that it is today.
• Buffet: To be successful in finance, the common wisdom is that you have to live in New York, yet Warren Buffet is the richest and best-known portfolio manager. He built his business far away from New York in the heartland of Omaha.
• Walton: You can’t get further out in the middle of nowhere than Bentonville, Arkansas, yet Sam Walton built his retailing empire from there.

So very successful people have built businesses out in the middle of nowhere, but what about the intangibles like the weather — don’t they contribute to your happiness and eventual success? I find myself falling into this trap sometimes. My thinking goes, if I lived somewhere like San Diego, I’d be happier due to the weather which would lead to more success in my life.

I lived out in San Diego for a year where it is always 70 degrees, sunny and rarely rains. In the Chicago area, we get weather like that about 2 weeks out of the year. Every other day is either too hot or too cold.

But the most recent research has dispelled the myth that your external environment makes you happier, as I learned while reading the Happiness Hypothesis:

People who live in cold climates expect people who live in California to be happier, but they are wrong. People believe that attractive people are happier than unattractive people, but they, too, are wrong

He goes onto to say that studies have repeatedly shown that demographic and environmental factors have very little influence on happiness. People are happy based on the people around them and their internal goals.  Conveniently, these are also the things that make you successful in business. The most important factors are daily persistence toward a goal (achieving Everyday Excellence), and surrounding yourself with good people.

Now, an argument could be made that the best people when it comes to technology, for example, are in Silicon Valley. But remember it’s so easy to work together now from different locations. Many of my favorite web applications were built by teams scattered all over the world.

And not being in the same place as everyone else in your industry can be an advantage because it prevents group think. Buffet is able to be more independent in his stock choices because he’s not influenced by wall street.

There are some exceptions. As my relatives in Tanzania will tell you, it’s hard to become a huge business success in a third-world country with no access to markets, education or private property, but for most people your location should not restrict you.

I would concede that location is not irrelevant, it’s just not as big a factor as it used to be, and you shouldn’t let it be a barrier to your success. It doesn’t matter where you’re at as long as you’re the hardest worker.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

A large part of success in life depends on who you associate with. There’s something about having other people around you that push you to do more than you’d do on your own. In many ways, iron sharpens iron.

I’ve been in work environments that are firing on all cylinders where people are pushing each other to learn more and more about their trade. I’ve also witnessed the opposite, where people just don’t care and it turns into a downward spiral.

In general, I like to do activities on my own, but I find that I achieve the most when I’m competing with or being challenged by others.

I do my best programming when I’m surrounded by other great programmers. We talk about geeky stuff and in that group the “coolest” person is the one who knows the most about the programming language at hand.

I do my best long runs when I’m running with someone else. If the partner is a good fit, that person will push me to do more than I would on my own.

So how do you find the right training partner?

• Circle of Friends: Often times there is someone in your circle of friends that could be a good fit. If not in your immediate circle, then let people know that you are looking for a training partner and have them tell their friends. People won’t be able to help you if they don’t know you’re looking.
• Local Groups: Depending on the size of your city, there may be local groups for about any kind of activity you could be interested in whether it’s running, politics or sewing. Check out meetup.com for groups near you and to find people passionate about your specific interest.
• Hire: Certain training partners can be hired such as coaches and personal trainers for the gym. Michael Hyatt has a good blog entry on hiring the best trainers possible.
• Electronic: When all else fails there are always electronic versions. For some of my runs, I listen to Lance Armstrong ‘s Nike+Ipod Training tips. He has some real gems like “Remember, pain is temporary but quitting lasts forever!”

Find the right training partner and you will accomplish more than you ever could on your own.

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

-Proverbs 27:17

A young comedian once asked Jerry Seinfeld to share his secret to being so successful. Seinfeld explained that a comedian is successful because he has funny jokes, and the key to having funny jokes is to work on them as much as possible.

To enforce this habit, Seinfeld set up a big calendar on the wall in his house. Each day that he wrote or worked on jokes, he would mark a big X. Any day that he did not would remain blank. So, when he was regularly writing jokes it would form a chain of X’s across the days. The trick, he explained to the young comedian, was “Don’t Break the Chain!!!!”

After hearing about “Don’t Break the Chain”, I wrote in my journal something like “try to run, write, read or code every day”. Because those are things I enjoy and want to improve on. It’s been a really effective technique and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been blogging so much (which may be good or bad depending on your perspective ).

I didn’t know that the productivity gurus had picked up on this idea and given it a cool name until I was recently reading A Year of Change by Peter Clemens and he mentioned the “Every Day Mindset”:

What is this mindset? Put simply, it is a mindset that remembers that this day you are currently living will only ever happen once, and it therefore encourages you to make the most of it.

He expanded on Seinfeld’s basic calendar with X’s and outlined it this way:

• Enjoy Each Day: Don’t get so obsessed with time management or end goals that you don’t make sure and enjoy each day.
• Take Small Steps: Try to improve by 1% each day.
• Make Your Habits Daily: If you only do something 3 or 4 times a week, it’s easy to skip it, but daily habits (like brushing teeth) stay with you.

I agree with the majority of his points, and the fact that time is our most limited resource — I don’t want to waste a single day.

Sunday, July 27th 2008 will never happen again. Make sure you don’t break the chain!!!

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.

-Ignacy (Jan) Paderewski, Polish Pianist & Composer