The Success Secrets: Just Keep Moving Forward

This down & dirty video explains one of the Success Secrets I am using every day this week.

The Success Secret of Just Keep Moving Forward

This is my first shot at video so you’ll have to tell me what worked, what didn’t work & if I should do more videos in the future or just stick to writing.

You’ll also see several Success Secrets hiding in plain sight within the video.

Can you spot some of them?  I’ll share the unspoken Success Secrets from this video in my next post.

Thanks for watching!

Michael

The Success Secrets: Acknowledge — The Art of Acknowledgement

My personal favorite among the success secrets I use on a regular basis is the powerful success secret of knowing how to acknowledge someone.  

The Art of Acknowledgement.

Go ahead and laugh if you want. 

It’s perfectly okay

because so few people use this success secret these days let alone know how to use this success secret properly that I don’t mind you laughing, pointing fingers and completely dismissing this topic entirely.  That just helps keep acknowledgement all the more powerful and effective for me and those few who still use this success secret.

So, how do you use acknowledgement? 

Well, let’s clear one thing up right away. 

It’s not about kissing someone’s ass or being phony with a compliment just to gain a favor or good will.   Most people see right through that act and you actually come across as insincere or worst case scenario, a fraud or phony.  Not the type of person to aspire to in my book. 

Acknowledgement is about being genuine, being real, being honest and delivering more than just a compliment. 

Acknowledgement is about honoring someone by recognizing their accomplishment or something they’ve done that has made a significant difference.

This could be a significant difference the person has made in your life or in the life of someone close to you, or even someone else who has in turn influenced you in some way, shape or form.

For me, it is about acknowledging from my heart in such a way that the other person either feels it in their heart, their soul or their gut.  Or sees it so deeply in my eyes and hears it in the tone of my voice that they receive it pure and true such that it could never be mistaken for an off-hand compliment or simple courtesy.  It is delivered as genuinely and honestly as you would thanking your parents for giving you life or telling your child how much you love them. 

Is that a bit too intense or extreme for you? 

Maybe so…

For me it’s been a profound life changer in so many ways I could write a book about it and never cover the impact it has made on me and the people I’ve been able to acknowledge.

Let me give you an acknowledgement sample, an acknowledgement example from my own life to help illustrate this.

A few years ago I had the good fortune to go see Motown legends, The Funk Brothers play a concert in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills.   If you don’t know who the Funk Brothers are, I suggest you go get a copy of the incredible documentary STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN. 

Suffice to say, these incredible musicians were the backbone of Berry Gordy’s Motown music empire and for most of their lives these musicians were unknown to the public and never given due credit for the amazing contributions they made to more #1 hit songs than the Beatles, Rolling Stones & Elvis Presley combined!

So, after the concert, I had the distinct pleasure of being able to meet the Funk Brothers after the show & spend some time talking to them. 

Many other fans were there as well because these men were very accomodating & open to finally meeting their fans after all these decades in obscurity. 

But what set the evening apart for me was I knew each man’s name and unlike the other fans that evening, I addressed each man personally by name, looked him in the eye, held his gaze for a moment as I shook his hand & thanked him for the difference he had made in my life. 

Because without that soul enriching Motown music, I may not have made it through a lot of the pain & turmoil of my early life when I often contemplated suicide. 

Call me melodramatic but the Funk Brothers kept me going when I wanted to give up and quit on myself and what life I had. 

I expressed my gratitude to Bob Babbitt,  Joe Hunter, Jack Ashford, Joe Messina, Uriel Jones and Eddie Willis as if my life depended on it. 

I didn’t mention that I had ever contemplated suicide or anything so melodramatic.   I just thanked them from the deepest reaches of my soul.

I won’t share each of my conversations with these men, but the last legend I spoke with was guitarist, Eddie Willis. 

When we shook hands & I looked him in the eyes, he held my look longer than the others & I said “Mr Willis, my name is Michael Walker and I cannot express how much of a priviledge it is to finally meet you & shake your hand.”

There was a moment of silence as he looked at me & we both had some tears start to well up in our eyes.  I’ll never forget the words he said next.

“Michael, you have no idea what a pleasure it is for me. ”

I choked up a little and managed to say “It’s truly an honor, Mr. Willis.”

He held my hand a bit longer and said “Michael, you are the first person in my entire career to address me as Mr. Willis.  That you know my name is the best acknowledgement you could have ever given me. ”

I smiled back at him, “Thank you, sir.”

He looked me in the eyes just a little bit longer and said “No, THANK you.”

The Success Secrets: Motown 

In honor of Motown turning 50  years old, let’s take a look at the success secrets of Motown.

Sidenote:  Some of you recall Motown‘s 50th anniversary last year but I think they were premature because Motown didn’t come into existence until 1960.  Berry Gordy did form a record company in 1959 but it was called Tamla Records and the name wasn’t changed to Motown until 1960.   At least that’s how I understand the chronology.

There are many success secrets that factored into Motown becoming a huge success but for the length of this blog I’ll limit our discussion to the top 3 success secrets of Motown that I think anyone can apply to their life or business today to create successful results.

The Top 3 Success Secrets of Motown

1. Start where you are with what you have. 

 Berry Gordy started out small.  Sure he had big dreams & a large scale vision for what he hoped to accomplish but he was realistic.  He started with where he was with what he had.  He had a whopping $800 he borrowed from his family & bought a small house on Grand Avenue in Detroit.  He lived in the upper half of the house while converting the bottom half into a recording studio & record company office.  Thus Hitsville USA was born.

Even after Motown became a huge success and he was selling more records than any company in the world, he kept the Motown empire running out of that small house, which is still there to this day.  If you ever get a chance to visit Hitsville USA, it is well worth the trip to Detroit to go inside and experience this piece of American music & business history.  It’s amazing that so many #1 hits were created in that little house.  More # 1 hits than the Beatles & Rolling Stones combined!

2.  Surround yourself with people more talented than you.

Berry Gordy was a decent enough songwriter.  But perhaps the smartest move he ever made was hiring Smokey Robinson to be one of his main songwriters for the studio.  He hired several others, including Lamont Dozier & the Holland Brothers, Brian & Eddie (better known as Holland-Dozier-Holland).  Without their enormous songwriting talents, it’s hard to imagine Motown becoming as big & influential as it became.

Berry Gordy was also admittedly a mediocre musician.  So, he wisely enlisted the talents of some of the best jazz musicians he could find & added them to the Motown musicians roster.   Known as the Funk Brothers, these incredibly skilled musicians played on nearly every song ever recorded at Motown.   Their story is as mesmerizing as each & every one of the talents who contributed to Motown’s success.  I implore you to get a copy of the fascinating documentary STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN to learn more about the Funk Brothers.  You won’t regret it.

Lastly, Berry Gordy was not much of a singer, so he smartly surrounded himself with very gifted singers ranging from Stevie Wonder to Diana Ross & The Supremes to Marvin Gaye.   Had he worried about being perceived as the least talented person on his staff or within his company, he would not have achieved his tremendous success.

3.  Know what you want to accomplish.

This sounds so obvious but I often encounter people who have no clear vision of what they hope to accomplish.   Saying you want to be rich is not a specific outcome.  It is vague to the extreme.  So is the cop out answer “I want to be famous.”  Famous?  For what?  Anyone can be famous for 15 minutes nowadays.   It’s an exercise in being pointless.

Berry Gordy wanted to put black music in mainstream America.  He deliberately utilized the techniques he’d learned from the automobile manufacturing plants he worked at in Detroit and envisioned for himself a hit factory for music.  He hired experienced white marketing executives to help him implement his plan.  He held weekly brainstorming sessions & meetings with the clear cut task of creating a hit song every week.  EVERY WEEK!  He knew his target market intimately and sytematically strategized and executed carefully thought out plans to integrate black music into the distribution system exclusively reserved for white music.

Whether you want to create your own business or simply create your own personal success, the success secrets of Motown are lessons anyone can learn to use for their own personal achievement.

NOTE:  The Top 3 Success Secrets of Motown is an abridged exceprt from The Seven Success Secrets of Motown by Michael D Walker.

“Don’t judge yourself by others’ standards … have your own. And don’t get caught up into the trap of changing yourself to fit the world.  The world has to change to fit you. And if you stick to your principles, values and morals long enough, it will.”   Berry Gordy Jr.

The Success Secrets: Succeed or Fail

Now that you’ve thought about what success means to you, the most underrated of the success secrets I’d like to explore with you is the concept most people have regarding  the word “fail” or “failure“.

Even if you are already considered a success in any area of your life, this is one of those words that your mind often automatically reacts to because of the meaning & significance most of society attaches to this four letter word.

In Japan, there is currently a troubling trend among high school students  committing suicide because they did not pass their college entrance exams or were not accepted into a university.   Obviously these students firmly believe getting into the right college is a critical step in their future success.

So, those are extreme examples of how powerful & influential the meaning of a word can be to a group of people.

But I invite you to consider what meaning you attach to the words succeed or fail.  You have the ability and the power to choose a meaning that impacts you favorably or negatively.

“But you can’t change the meaning of a word!”   I know some of you are thinking this right now.   My own friends & family have argued this point with me.  I am glad they did because it brings up a fantastic opportunity to open up our minds and learn more info to help us with our own personal success secrets.

Wikipedia defines the word “fail” the same as “failure“.  In fact, it just re-directs you from “fail” right to “failure“.  Bless their all inclusive souls.  That act alone–of slapping the words together to be interchangeable–is worthy of a seperate blog post.  But let’s keep on track.

They define the word as “the condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective” which would be harmless and semi-useful if they stopped there.  But they add in this deightful kicker, “and may be viewed as the opposite of success“.   Yeah, there’s the old kick in the teeth….

But here’s where it gets interesting!  That’s only their definition of the word.   Let’s go to a more traditional, in-depth source: Webster’s Dictionary.

Webster defines the word entirely different:  To fall short, to fade away, to become absent, to become deficient

There’s multiple definitions including the dreaded “to be unsuccessful” and the dire “to stop functioning normally (the patient’s heart failed)”

And that is more empowering for sure.  But here’s where I argue the gold is for everyone.  This is where I adamantly believe the success secrets are in this word.

“Fail” orginates from the Latin word fallere, to deceive or disappoint.

Do you see that?  The word originally meant “to deceive or disappoint”.   Over the centuries it has been used in such ways to take on a meaning it likely was never intended to fulfill.

This is where I firmly agree with great friends & mentors I’ve studied such as Kevin Hogan, Paula Abdul and Dan Kennedy.

I know, that’s as diverse a group of 3 friends or mentors you’re likely to find anywhere but I love each of them & am grateful for having them in my life.

The cool thing is they each teach in their own unique style to regard failing as just a result, a piece of data for you to make note of as you pick yourself up off the ground and reset your options for your next efforts for taking more shots at what you want to accomplish.

Far too often as I was growing up and even as I went about life in my 20′s & 30′s, people I knew often equated failure as the exact opposite of success; as though the two were light years away from each other.  Such a belief or viewpoint couldn’t be further from the truth I’ve experienced in my life.

I’ve found it to be the exact opposite:

I’ve found that success & whatever you experience that you label as “failure” are linked so closely together they might as well be the heads & tails of the same coin.

They are so close to each other that only a slim edge of perception separates success from failure.

You’ve heard the stories about someone giving up & some stranger comes along & succeeds right where the other person quit.  Or the stories of someone ready to give up but instead they pushed through their disappointment & suddenly had incredible success soon after stepping past where they had wanted to quit.   Sometimes those are simply motivational speeches but most of those stories are borne from real life experiences where success was within reach even when they had thought they had failed.

I know this has been a long post but I hope it’s made you think and reassess how quickly or carelessly you may or may not throw about the words “fail” or “failure” and what you have them mean and how much power and real estate you grant them inside your heart and your head.  Because when you strip this dangerous word of it’s current meaning you can shift the way you see your life & start to recognize how close you are to the edge of success.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this success secrets topic and how you’ve lived with the word “fail” throughout your life.

I’ll leave you for now with this piece of success secrets wisdom

“We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t.  Success often lies just the other side of failure.”  Leo F. Buscaglia

Thank you to everyone for your comments on my first success secrets blog posts  & for those bold enough to share what

SUCCESS 

means  to you. 

It’s no secret that I asked you to write down your thoughts because it makes you think and give consideration to what pops up in your mind when a word like success is used.  It’s also very useful to be able to go back & look at your answers later on & see if anything has shifted in your mind or your emotions or changed for you over time. 

And sometimes you forget about something you wrote down & if I ask you to go back & read your notes you might discover something, some little gem of an item that you hold dear but somehow slips out of your conscious intent from time to time.

How do I know this?

That’s easy because it constantly changes for me.

Yes, it does. 

Throughout much of my life my definition of success has shifted and changed shape.

When I was a child, age 5, my definition of success was someone who had cash on hand to pay for comic books & ice cold bottles of Coca-Cola.  You remember when you could buy them in a glass bottle?   God how I miss those!   What comes out of the can nowadays does not taste the same to me at all.  Whenever I travel to Mexico I specifically seek out places that still sell Coca-Cola in a glass bottle.  And when I do find it, it still tastes the way I remember it as a kid! 

Sorry for the trip down memory lane…

But that was my definition of success, OK? 

By the time I turned 13 my definition of success meant any hour where I didn’t feel pain & didn’t have to rely on anyone for anything because I was simpy trying to survive the anguish of physical, sexual & drug abuse that I no longer trusted most people & I felt pretty damn sure that if I put up an emotional brick wall between me & the rest of the world that no one would ever be able to cause me pain ever again. 

When I turned 15 my definition changed even more & it’s continued to change over time, with the big changes occurring during my younger years and smaller changes taking place over the last several years.

So, what’s my point?  

 To let you know that not only is it Ok for your meaning of success to change as you grow & evolve  but that it’s probably inevitable.  

Life has a wonderful tendency to throw some challenges at you & try to encourage you to decide what’s more important to you between two things you thought you couldn’t live without.  

So, if you did write something down I invite you to put that paper or document somewhere you can easily find it again in a few weeks because I will probably ask you to take a look at it in the future.  But for now can you think of how your definition of what success means to you has changed throughout the course of your life thus far?

You might want to take a few minutes now & write down what success meant to you when you were 5, at age 15 and then again at age 25 or 35. 

Did you notice any major shifts between those ages? 

Do you still see success in the same way you did when you were younger? 

Has success always been a fixed and determined kind of thing for you to always strive for?  Or is it a fluid & dynamic adventure that changes in relation to the circumstances you’re dealing with in life?

I’ll leave you with something my dear friend Paula Abdul told me a few days ago:

“There are no rules for success– there are only rules for your professional ethical behavior” 

-Paula Abdul