Success: The accomplishment of an aim or goal. That is a pretty scanty definition of success in my opinion because different people have lofty goals and rarely achieve them. Some do arrive at success but many don't. Think about your goals and aims that you have set for yourself - are you there yet? Are you even making progress or does it seem that circumstances are against you and holding you back? Do you regularly down grade your aims and goals?
After my eight years in the U.S. Air Force I took my second honorable discharge and went out into the business sector. I will not elaborate on my achievements while in the USAF as they don't apply to success in the highly competitive business world. Suffice it to say I was a driven man who craved upward mobility. Long before I left the USAF I had decided that adjusting insurance claims really appealed to me. I had friends in the Jaycee's trying to convince me to go into life insurance sales and I even took the qualification test with NY Life and scored second highest to the then CEO who held the highest score. I was offered a highly lucrative job which few if any before had been offered. I declined and continued my pursuit of adjusting insurance claims.
I had sent out several resumes and ended up with three job offers from three national companies. The one I chose was with Hartford because of the person who interviewed me. At the end of the interview he opened his notebook and wrote some words on a piece of paper. After he had offered me the job and I accepted, even though the other two offers were equal or better, he tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to me. There was one sentence on it and I was told that as long as I adhered to that sentence I would have future success. The man who wrote that sentence was John Hill the state manager of Florida who ultimately went on to be vice president of claims for Hartford Insurance Group. He believed in what he wrote and applied it to his personal life and he gave me the best advice/gift that one professional can give a new employee. I don't believe he shared it with everyone but he did share it with me and he told me it would take me far if I stuck to it.
The sentence John wrote was: "Find out what your employer expects of you and then give them consistently more". Those simple words took me on a journey that was not only successful but highly rewarding throughout my entire career. I took that piece of paper home with me and read it over and over and decided that I would take the advice of John and apply it to my work. Now some 47 years later and reflecting back to that day when I was given that gift, I have known success beyond anything I would have ever dreamed about or imagined. Using that simple but straightforward formula I could list accomplishments directly related to that gift from John that are simply too numerous to list in this blog or even a series of blogs.
Later in my career when I was in a position to hire employees I shared that sentence with only a couple people but they also went on to achieve success in a highly competitive business environment where many fail or stagnate. I am now sharing it for others who want to accomplish some level of success in their life and can take and apply that simple sentence and concept to their goals and aims. Of all the books and programs written about success and excelling in the business world that sentence boils it down to its simplest form and I can attest that it works. It is a different lifestyle that you have to personally decide to adopt and apply to your life but when you do it is capable of taking you farther than you ever could imagine. John provided me the best advice possible for success and I thank him for that gift. Good luck....
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