The Mistake That Ruins Everything

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It’s so frustrating to keep getting beat.

The only people who get frustrated are the people who try. The lazy and the mediocre never get frustrated because they don’t really expect to win. But those that come early, stay late, and do all the extras expect results. They’re the ones who really get furious when they can’t get things going.

You know something’s wrong, but you’re not sure what it is.

You know it can be done because you see others doing it. You know they’re not that much sharper than you. It’s infuriating to see them winning when you’re not.

So what’s the answer?

After you’ve got the basics down, you must zero in on the exact essentials that will either guarantee your success or guarantee your failure. Most people will reach this point of frustration and then give up – thinking they’re not good enough. For hard workers, it’s rare that you’re not good enough – it’s almost always that you don’t quite know enough. It’s those last hidden pieces that can unlock your success.

In every field there are invisible, unwritten laws of success.

They are only discovered by massive trial and error over long periods of time. These are the non-negotiables. These are the things that will always be true, and until you get into alignment with them, they will bring you down. On the other hand, if you get into alignment with them, they can shoot you to the top.

Everything has recipes and formulas that work.

The great thing is that you don’t have to discover these all over again by your own trial and error. You can learn from the ones who have gone before you. Follow the recipes exactly, and you will get a predictable, guaranteed, positive result. Tinker with the recipes too much, and things change.

They’re the ones who found the way to success.

Thomas Edison had 10,000 unsuccessful attempts to make a lightbulb. It took him forever in the invention phase to come up with the process. But once he found the formula, in the same time, he could make hundreds of thousands of lightbulbs by shifting to production using the formula. However, if he had decided to start tinkering with his formula, production would go down to nothing until he got the new process perfected. That would be because he had shifted out of production back to experimenting and inventing again.

Too many in business want to “reinvent the wheel”. Too many aren’t humble enough or hungry enough to follow the pattern of success. They’re more interested in doing it their way than being successful. The result is they take perfectly valid success formulas and game plans and dismantle them with their own “ideas”.

It would be like buying a brand new car and deciding that you think it would run better on pickle juice, so you pour pickle juice into the gas tank. If you do 20 miles per gallon on gas, how many miles per gallon do you think you’re going to get on pickle juice? Zero. So the questions is, do you want to go some place or not? If you do, leave the pickle juice in the pantry and put gas in the car.

Ingredients, sequence and timing.

Once again success is like cooking. It takes the right ingredients, mixed in the right proportion and sequence at exactly the right time. That’s why cooking shows are so successful. They show you exactly how to make amazing meals. They take the guess work out. Just follow the steps.

Recruiting, training and developing organizations works the same way. That’s been my business since 1975. In our world, success hinges on getting new people off to a solid start. We know how to do it. But in spite of everything, some new managers want to try their own ideas. Big mistake. Instead of going into production they start reinventing the system. Their new people fail and they fail.

In the Weidel Academy there’s a video, The Hidden Secret to Explosive Growth, where I show in a few minutes how to avoid the common big mistake that most make. This mistake ruins everything because new people don’t survive long enough to realize their potential.

Mastering this step sets you up for a life time of success in management.