P.E.P.P. Preparation Execution Persistence and Patience: A Rulebook To Achieving Success In Any Area Of Your life!

This Blog has been put together with the intention to help you see the process of success as manageable and realistic. In anything we do in life these four key elements play a very important role. We must prepare before we go into battle. We must execute our plan, or our plan is worthless. Action is required along with having a positive outlook that good things will happen. We must persist! We must not let little obstacles stand in our way. Finally we must have patience. Things take time to work. We live in a world of instant gratification, where people want things and they want them now. People want to become the best, the "Michael Jordan's or the Warren Buffett's", yet they are not willing to go through what the best go through to become the best. These examples can go on forever. We must be willing to have patience as we prepare, execute, and persist!

I want to help everyone reading this to see success as a fun journey. People must have fun in life or things become stale. These next few paragraphs will help you with a step by step process, you will understand the formula to have success in life, both personally and professionally, however you define success. By the way, that is the very first step! You must define what success means to you. To many times we are living life inside someone else's plan for success. Define success for you personally and professionally and then put a plan together that is right for you! Finally you must execute your plan.

For someone who cares about helping people set themselves up for success by helping people change the way they look at life, I have been fighting this battle for the past 12 years and continue to fight everyday to help more and more people set themselves up for success in their personal and professionals lives. I have had the privilege to work with over 100,000 people all across the globe helping them get on the right path to success (however they define the word "success"). Working with people through self-help, motivation, financial planning, career planning, business planning, leadership and sales development, and building self-confidence, I have seen a lot of people and companies who are truly searching for answers about themselves and their very own lives. I have decided to find continued ways to help as many people as possible with the power of P.E.P.P. The P.E.P.P. Formula can and will help you improve your life if you actually take action with these suggestions.

Improving one's life is a two-way street. First, one must know what do to and how to do it, and second one must take action! I have run across a lot of people who hear but don't listen, others who listen but don't understand, others who understand but don't agree, others who agree, but don't think they have the ability to accomplish, and finally those who have the ability to accomplish but don't execute (no action).

It is my goal to get you to actually execute, take action, and improve your life to reach your definition of success in many different areas of your life. As you read about P.E.P.P., think about ways you can take immediate action that will move you in the right direction towards your dreams, goals, and desires, in any area of your life. Taking the first step is sometimes the hardest, but once you do and you create momentum it is amazing what results you can and will produce. Remember to always be moving forward in a positive direction! Get out of the "rocking chair" mode. A rocking chair never moves forward, and we always want to be moving forward. Whether you move forward an inch or a mile, that doesn't matter, as long as you are moving in a positive direction. I challenge you to write your thoughts down and then execute your plan. Who knows, you just might come up with ideas that can change your life.

Use P.E.P.P. to improve you life! Prepare, execute, persist and be patience and watch your dreams become a reality.

Spend More Time Reviewing Your Finances

Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen teamed up to write a book called The One-Minute Millionaire. It’s a fantastic book written in two parts, so it’s great for people who are more creative and want to read a story, and for people who are more analytical who just want the facts. One of the points they make in the book is that millionaires spend an extra few minutes on their finances every day. Some people say they don’t have time to focus on their finances, but we’re not talking about hours and hours of reconciling bank statements. It’s an extra couple of minutes deciding whether or not you really need that pair of shoes you just picked up. It’s an extra couple of minutes figuring out what you have left in your checkbook. If you really want to get serious about monitoring your progress, spend a few minutes a day on Quicken or some other financial software that helps you track you’re spending, saving, and investing. Just spend a little extra time every day and see the progress you’re making.

In order to monitor your financial progress, obviously you need to have some defined money goals. For some, this may mean sticking within a budget and monitoring that closely. For others, it may mean determining by what day they want to have their debt paid. You may have a desired income goal for the month – or maybe you’ve been eyeing something in a store for some time and you’re saving the money to pay cash for it. Whatever your money goals are, you must determine how long it will take you to reach those goals and strive every day/week/ month to achieve them.

Finally, make a commitment to yourself that you want to WIN The Money Game. Make a commitment to stick to your budget, to pay off your credit cards, to live within your means, and to pay cash for everything. If you need help staying accountable, ask a friend, family member, or co-worker to keep you on track. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone checking in on your progress. If you should happen to falter or take a couple of steps back on your progress, re-commit to yourself that you WILL accomplish what you set out to do: WIN The Money Game!

Block Out The “Noise”

There is so much “noise” going on right now in the world. The economy, job losses, a new “stimulus” package, tax cuts, retirement accounts moving in the wrong direction (including mine), housing troubles, etc… Wow! If we get caught up in all the “noise”, it would be very easy to become depressed and have a completely negative outlook on life as a whole. So what we must do is shrink our “universe” down to our biggest asset; which is ourselves! You are your biggest asset to make changes in your life, to help resolve issues you are going through, to find a job, to make money, to build a better relationship with a loved one, and the list can go on and on. Plus, you can’t control the stock market, the government, what happens to your home price, the price of oil, but you can and must control you. Too many people rely on others (where they work, their families, their church, the government) to support them, or to tell them what to do next. This type of thinking shrinks one’s own ability for “free or critical thinking”. If we allow others to think for us and make decisions for us we are not growing our biggest asset, we are actually shrinking that asset, and making it a liability. We can’t change the past, but we can influence the future by taking steps today towards a better life. What are you doing today to grow your biggest asset?

There are three uses of our time. We can invest our time, spend our time, or waste our time. When you invest your time you are growing your biggest asset. Focus on ways to invest your time. How? You can:

• Read a book
• Spend quality time with a loved one
• Find your true calling in life and begin the proper steps to find a new career or job
• Work on your resume
• Network to find other avenues of business
• Go to the gym and get a workout in
• Pick up the phone and make that call you have wanted to make
• Take some quiet time to gather your thoughts
• Take the first step in making a situation better

The list could go on and on, but by investing your time you are growing your biggest asset....YOU. Take time to do at least three things that will truly help you grow your biggest asset. Have you taken action? What progress have you seen? What seems to be working? What changes might need to be made? What have you learned by creating action in your life? Write down thoughts about your progress and/or your thoughts about where you are going. Take 15 minutes right now to begin.

If you haven’t created any to do lists or taken any action, I suggest one of two things at this point. Either get serious about getting serious and start doing something NOW, or forget about change and just be happy with where you are in your life. Sound harsh? Only you can change yourself, and if you haven’t started yet, either do so or stop kidding yourself.

Execution Is A Funny Thing

Execution is a funny thing. Most people know what to do, but actually doing it and taking action is a completely different game. In the execution phase an organization must focus on giving everyone necessary the proper training and development to be successful! Everyone must flawlessly execute their roles and responsibilities! The right skills and tools must be given to people inside the organization to execute the plan of attack!

There must be time given to learn the new skills and tools and everyone must not waiver and execution must be encouraged from day one! The organization must coach people along the way to help them get comfortable with all the skills, behaviors, tools, and changes. It works the same with individuals. Let’s look at driving a stick shift again. When learning how to really execute we go through different stages of learning. All of us have a comfort zone and we must work hard at expanding our comfort zone if we want to improve. Remember the first time you drove a stick shift? Let me take you back one step prior, remember when you sat in the passenger’s seat, before you knew how to drive a stick shift and watched somebody drive the stick shift that knew how? You probably said what I said at the time, “that looks easy”. At that point with driving a stick shift I was in what I call unconscious incompetent. In other words I did not know I was stupid. Not calling anyone stupid, just want to make the point. Now you get behind the wheel and the car dies, you restart the car 12 times, and someone is yelling, “push in the clutch”. Now I became conscious incompetent, or now I knew that I was, yes, stupid. But something happens after you practice over and over and over again. I finally reached the point to where I could drive the car, but I still had to think about it. This is the conscious competent stage. Good yet still must think about things as you go. You probably won’t admit it, but we would talk to ourselves and say things such as, “easy on the clutch” or “make sure to get in reverse not fourth gear”, or we would be stopped on a hill and someone was right behind us in our rearview mirror. We would say “&^%$” and then burn out the clutch to move forward. Now at some point you reach the stage where you are so good that you don’t even think about it anymore. You just start the car and off you go. This is the unconscious competent stage. It becomes second nature. This takes time and lots of practice to be able to execute on an unconscious level. As people go through these levels of learning we must encourage even the slightest of positive improvement or movement in the right direction!

First we must help people realize what they don’t know and help them create a learning gap, or they will think that they already know “how to do it”. If we shatter confidence when someone is in the conscious incompetent stage, it’s likely they will never expand their comfort zone. Remember when we talked about justification. People can justify why they never learned to drive a stick shift, or talk themselves into believing that an automatic is better. They do this when they feel discouraged when learning anything new. Justification is the mask when there is little confidence.

Once the execution phase is coming in for a landing and people are in the conscious competent stage mid-course adjustments must be made if needed. Getting everyone executing the fundamentals and principles of the plan of attack should be the number one focus. Results should be on the back burner with faith that executing on the right activities will provide the right results. Results are the end zone; executing on the right activities is each first down along the way.

Action Eliminates “Quiet Desperation”

Hopefully by now you have thought about and written down all the things you want to accomplish, both personally and professionally, and you are beginning to take action and move in the right direction. This is where we have to make it clear that we are not a “motivational speaking” company. The Chad Carden Group is a consulting organization that believes in getting results by execution and not by spending a lot of time discussing theory. Now to do that, we have to be realists. We tell you like we see it, and either you like it or you don’t. That being said we are not writing this to make you mad, but to make you think. Most people will never accomplish what they want to accomplish this year or next year or in their lifetime because they do not put their plan into action.

Having a vision, goals, and a plan on how to achieve these things is important and the first step, but without action it is 100% useless. We believe in writing down goals, visions, plans, and thinking positive, and at CCG we do all these things. But positive thinking alone won’t change anything. If you want to get in shape, just having a positive attitude for thirty days won’t do it. You have to have a great attitude along with taking action, such as going to the gym, eating healthy, exercising, and doing the things that you probably don’t want to always do. You could have the best workout plan, but without actually getting on the machine, lifting weights, doing pushups and sit ups, or running, the workout plan is 100% useless.

We all have heard or read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you want things to be different you have to change what you do. Simple, period, that’s the way that it is. It reminds me of a story I once heard about a bear in a cage. The zoo put this bear in a cage that was ten feet long. They put the bear at one end, and put the food at the other end. Every day the bear would walk ten feet and eat, then go back over and lay down. Walk ten feet and eat, then go back over and lay down; he did this for ten years in the zoo. Everybody would watch him. They removed the cage one day, ten feet forward the bear would go over and eat, and then go back without bars….ten feet forward the bear would go over and eat, and then go back without bars. Now here is what’s scary, they moved the food fifteen feet away from the bear, and the bear went ten feet and stopped.

So many people in life get comfortable with what they have. They are ten feet forward and ten feet back. They get up and do the same things over and over and over again expecting different results. Then when the game of life is over, a lot of them look over their shoulder and say, “what happened?” Now the beautiful thing about living in a free society is that you don’t have to change or do anything differently. I believe that most people are living lives of what is called “quiet desperation.” Quiet desperation is where people have enough that it is not worth doing anything different, but they always ask the question: “Isn’t there more to life than this?”

So if you are sick and tired of being sick and tired with some area or areas in your life, change your actions, which in-turn, will change your results. What can you do today that will help you accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish this year? Maybe you need to change careers, maybe you need to save some money, and maybe you need to move a relationship forward (or get out of one). Whatever it is, we suggest you do it and you do it today. Like the Nike slogan: “Just Do It”.

Build Skills And Abilities

How do we build confidence? By building and developing our skills and abilities. Most of the time we get “skill” and “will” confused. Too many times we fall into the “will” trap when it’s truly a “skill” issue and take the wrong approach with discipline instead of persistence in helping build the skill. Most people will make excuses or display avoidance behavior when they don’t have the confidence in their ability. Rarely does one display a “will” issue when they have confidence in their skills. If you know how to drive a stick shift you are more willing to drive one. If you don’t have confidence in driving a stick shift you might make “excuses” or come up with reasons why you can’t drive a stick shift. Same holds true with giving a presentation, or a sales call. If you’re confident in your abilities you will be the first to step up and say I can and will do it, but if you’re not confident excuses begin to creep in and others might look at it as an attitude problem or a “will” issue. Most people will make up excuses, not because they have a bad attitude, but because they don’t feel confident with their ability or their comfort level is low. That is why persistence while executing is crucial to positive movement, along with giving lots of encouragement along the way.

I was watching a football game the other day and was amazed by how intense it got when the game was close at the 2 minute warning. It seems as if the offense, which couldn’t move the ball all game, suddenly had a new game plan and was moving the ball at will against a defense that had stopped them up until that point in the game. However, if the game hadn’t been that close, the team’s intensity may have gone down and the players could have begun to “give up” and get ready for next week’s game. Sometimes that is how we are as human beings. If we have had a great year, and things are continuing to progress in a positive way, then our intensity goes up at the end of the year. If our year has just been the same year over and over, then we are saying, “I can’t wait until next year, things are going to be different, I am going to start over……” Get my drift?

I am going to challenge everyone reading this to persist through obstacles and those “curve balls” that life throws you, no matter what you are going through, persist! Don’t “write off” this year, this month, or this day. Don’t wait until next year, next month, or tomorrow to make changes, do it now. Make forward progress now and think about how much further you will be when next year, next month, or tomorrow is here. You’ll never know what progress you can make unless you take action. Here is one of my favorite quotes: “Actions may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action”. Benjamin Disraeli (Former British Prime Minister).

If things are going great, do something positive to keep your momentum. If you would rather forget the recent past, do something positive now, that will move you in the right direction. Once again, we cannot change the past, we can only influence and impact the future.

Thinking Big

I have to believe that all of us sometimes don’t think big enough. I think big, and that has allowed me things in life that others may not have the chance to experience, yet I was very humbled after I read a story about Steve Wynn. Steve Wynn built the first “Mega” Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada (The Mirage, which is now owned by MGM). When Steve built it he had a construction loan, and his goal was to pay off the loan in seven years. When he went to his accountants and all of his financial team, he asked them what it was going to take to pay off the loan in his seven year timeframe. After they did the math they told him that he would have to profit $1 million dollars a day, 365 days a year, for the next seven years. If that happened he would be free of his loan in seven years. $1 million dollars a day profit, after he paid all his staff, and all his bills he would need to have $1 million dollars left each day, every day for the next seven years. Wow! To me that seemed impossible, but to Steve it wasn’t. Steve set his vision, to pay the loan off in seven years, and then he shared his vision with everyone on his team. They put a game plan together (preparation), and began to execute. What happened after they began to execute their plan? Well, Mr. Wynn didn’t pay off his loan in seven years; he did it in 18 MONTHS!!!! A year and a half is all it took for him to pay it off, which means he probably profited $4, 5, 6, 7, 8 million dollars a day, every day!! The best part about it is that after 18 months, all that profit went back into the company’s pocket and he could do what he wanted with it; he could invest it back into the business, save it, or spend it! Now I am not saying that all of us are going to profit $1 million dollars a day, but I would say that this story is a great reminder for all of us to think bigger than what we do; also that taking time to prepare a great game plan is the first step to executing. As Steve said, “Doubts don’t build empires…..Imagination does.” So let your imagination run as you set your vision and goals. Stretch you mind, spirit, and body and you just might be amazed at the results. Sarah, who is my wife and best friend, and I have been blessed at a very early age in life, but we make it our mission to “stretch” our thinking, and we encourage you to do the same!