Have you ever met someone who is amazingly talented and highly credentialed in a wide variety of areas? A person who is phenomenal in both the diversity and quality of their work, yet has just never truly achieved success? Someone who may be a gifted artist, an investment pro, graduated from law school, and has people skills galore – yet, they just haven’t made it. Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps this is you. Why, with all the resources and skills at your disposal have you not found success?

Success is a result of knowing where you want to go, creating a specific roadmap to get you there and having the discipline to stay on track.

Individuals and organizations fail to achieve success because they have never done the work of defining who they are or what they do and then sticking with it. People fail to succeed for the same reason businesses do; they are not focused in the way they invest scarce resources. Each person or business has only a limited amount of time, energy and capital to use pursuing their goals and dreams.

Most fabulously talented people fail because they don’t set limits. Have you met someone who has three or four different business cards? They are so busy doing a little of everything they never shine at any one thing. In order to succeed, you must select some one thing to be the vehicle of your success. You can’t be committed to two visions any more than you can drive two cars at one time.

Crafting an effective mission statement provides the framework for using resources in ways that will best support all your efforts to achieve the goals you set. Individuals, families, churches, charities and businesses all benefit from well thought-out summaries of who they are, what they do and why they do it.

Establish your vision. If you don’t know where you want to go, just how do you propose to get there? Do you really want to entrust your future to nothing more than luck? If so, quit reading and go buy a lottery ticket.

Once you have a vision, specifically outline the process of attaining it. Set a series of goals, beginning with step one and continuing all the way to where your vision becomes your reality. Vision and goals are useless without discipline. Stay focused. Invest your resources only in ways that achieve set goals; using each dollar, hour or calorie wisely to get you closer to your vision and not wasted on impulsive activity.

Another aspect to achieving success is being realistic. What are you really willing to change? What are you truly able to change? What are you willing to do? What are you willing to risk?

Set yourself up to succeed. Identify smaller goals and gradually build a foundation of success. As that foundation gets stronger you can increase your expectations, expand your vision and build as high as you can imagine. Even though each step won is a small one, they eventually combine, serving as your road to the top.

Success isn’t really all that complicated if you remember that Vision gives you direction, Focus determines the method, and Discipline makes it happen.

When we think about leadership-especially in regard to building and growing a successful small business-it’s easy to envision the traditional top-down leadership that so often goes along with the term. We often think about leadership along the lines of being a major political leader or being the chief executive of a major Wall Street company. And while this certainly is a respectable vision of leadership, when it comes to small business, we’ve got to see beyond this traditional view.

Following are the top 5 principles of successful leadership that I’ve found make THE difference in whether your business flies or flops:

Principle #1:  Leadership Means Having People Skills.

Let’s face the facts-most small businesses don’t have scores of employees to lead. Instead,  leadership revolves around building successful business relationships with clients and friends of the business. Whether it’s negotiating the next big deal or selling the product or service represented by your business, your suppliers, customers, and all parties in between are who the small business owner must strive to lead.

Principle #2:  Leaders Must Be Adept At Solving Problems.

Being a natural leader makes it that much easier for a small business owner to be able to reach outside the box and come up with creative solutions to the problems and dilemmas faced by any business. It should come as no surprise that the list of qualities found in leaders corresponds very closely with the list of qualities found in problem solvers.

Principle #3: Leadership Requires Building Confidence.

Inspiring confidence in others when it comes to the capabilities of your small business is something that’s essential to success. Without this leadership trait, it would be quite difficult to handle the necessary business operations like securing financing and developing a strong sales plan. Remember, healthy confidence begins first with the leader, only radiating outward from there.

Principle #4:  Leaders Depend On Big Picture Vision.

Because the small business entrepreneur must successfully manage so many different facets of a business when leading it from inception through the growth stage, having “20/20″ big picture vision is an essential leadership quality. Without this keen sense of vision to serve as a guiding light through the ups and downs-and ultimately to success-a business will gradually lose its course and drift off path.

Principle #5: Leading A Small Business Demands Boundless Energy.

It’s not always easy to keep plugging along no matter how overwhelmed you might be, but maintaining a constantly enthusiastic aura of energy is key to developing a business from the ground up. Most proven leaders will tell you that they only found major success after hitting rock bottom first. Boundless energy makes bouncing back from inevitable lows possible.

In small business, effective leadership goes well beyond the scope of leading employees alone-in reality, reaching goals means leading every single aspect of a business to success.

Is a Good Work Ethic important?

Yes, (no surprises there then) at the very least it is important. But if you own or are planning on owning your own business, it is absolutely essential.

If you are an employee having strong values of hard work and diligence will pay you dividends if you are with the right company. As an employer myself 3 of the key factors I am looking for straight away in staff are, honesty, positive attitude and a good work ethic.

Without these key attributes potential staff are simply non-starters with us !

If you own or want to own your own business, the chances of any real and lasting success, without a really good work ethic are extremely unlikely. The likelihood of failure, huge.

Now I don’t believe we are born with or without a work ethic – I believe it develops (or doesn’t) over time. Perhaps largely influenced by our upbringing and associations in our more formative years.

If in all honesty you do not consider yourself to have or have had a good work ethic – don’t worry ! If you want it you can have it, starting right now.

This ability to change our own lives through education, choices we make and free will, is what separates us from the animals. How neat is that !

If you want to succeed in business the ability to work hard and apply yourself is essential.

I know from my own experience that you can develop a tremendously good work ethic over a period of time if you practice self discipline – and do what you need to do.

If you’re not sure what that is here are a few ideas to get started with:

- Educate yourself about what a good work ethic is and what you have to do to acquire it.
- Associate with people who already have it and see what makes them different.
- Read articles on what it is and how to obtain it.
- Take your own inventory and see what’s holding you back, get rid of bad habits and move forward.
- Remember, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.

Make the right choices and changes that you need to make – and start today.