Staying the Course

Over the years in business, I have seen two distinct personality types as they relate to success. Those that stay the course and those that jump from place to place. Consistently I have seen the one's that stay the course in whatever path they have chosen outperform those that hop around.

Most people want success but few have the discipline and focus to attain it. You must decide first and foremost on what you are going to commit to. Then you need to do everything to learn it, do it, hustle and get better at it and most importantly, stay the course. The temptation to jump ship and do something else is a distraction. Stay the course. Focus on what you decided to do and do it well over time. This is the road to take if you want long term success.

Let's take a few examples:

- Steve Jobs started Apple in the 70's. He's been focused on computers and doing what he's doing his whole working life.

- Ralph Lauren has been interested in fashion and design since his teens, he has never deviated off of this path.

- Richard Branson started the Virgin brand of companies in his early 20's. Although he own's a large assortment of many different companies, if you ask him and study them, he will tell you that his businesses are all comprised of the same Virgin brand principals making the overall company a "Branded Venture Group" company.

These are just a few examples of high profile people you may have heard of but the reality is, I know a huge amount of successful people not quite as high profile but still extremely successful that have followed the same formula. They have focused on something they wanted to do, plastics, computers, sales, technology, hotels etc and they have stayed the course their entire working lives.

I haven't met too many people that jump around from one place to the next that are successful. In all honesty, I haven't even met one.

So the take away here is this:

1) Find something you want to do forever and decide to do it

2) Stay the course and persist in order to attain success in that field.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group