Achieving Career Success Is Hard Work
By Cheval John
Sometimes things might not go the way you planned it if you are trying to build your business or achieve your career goals.
Life always “gets” in the way of your plans.
The ones who are successful are the ones who understands that they must adjust to what life throws at them.
At times, they might complain about the fact that they did not get into the desired university like Harvard.
Or complain that they were not drafted by a specific team if they are a professional athlete.
However, they decided to push through their shortcomings on not achieving their desired goals and work very hard to be successful.
That is what separates the most successful people who are in the minority and the rest of the world who decide to complain and feel sorry for themselves.
Jerry Rice, who is the all-time leading receiver in the National Football League (NFL), was overlooked by many major universities because they thought he was not the right fit for their football programs.
So he ended up playing football at Mississippi Valley State University in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
During his time in the FCS, he excelled as a wide receiver and even had a huge campaign during the 1984 season when Mississippi Valley State scored 629 points that helped them to gain national attention.
After his collegiate career was over, he was drafted by the San Francisco 49ners, where he won two Super Bowls in 1989 and 1994, respectively.
In the process of winning two Super Bowls, Mr. Rice became the all-time leading receiver in the NFL.
Mr. Rice did not allow the setback of not playing in a major collegiate football program to stop him from making it to the NFL.
Instead, he worked extremely hard to become one of the best receivers in the game of football and was able to achieve greatness as an NFL wide-receiver.
It is always important to never allow setbacks to ruin your chances of achieving your dreams as a writer, podcaster, professional athlete, etc.
If you put in the hard work and dedication, you will enjoy the richness of achieving success in your dream career.
Have you faced any setbacks on your journey to a dream career? You can leave your comments below.
Video courtesy of the NFL Network
Pushing To Achieve Your Career Goals
By Cheval John
The thing about chasing your dreams as a writer, public relations practioner, sports professional, etc. is that things will not come easy.
You might think there is an easy path to achieving success.
That is not the case.
For example, those who aspire to play professional in Major League Baseball (MLB), have to go through the different levels of the minor league system.
If that person is really good, they will get called up to the Majors within a few years or even a year.
Now let’s delve deeper into the minor leagues.
The people who are in the minors don’t have a huge salary like their counter parts in the majors.
They have to travel for most of the year and probably have to pay their own way as well.
That can lead to them having stress and even doubt their abilities to be a major league baseball player if they have been in the minors for such a long time.
Most might think about quitting their journey to become a major league baseball player and will end up giving up on their dreams of playing baseball in the MLB.
For those who keep their dreams alive, they will eventually achieve their goals of playing baseball in the Majors.
People like Alan Zinter.
Mr. Zinter spent a long time trying to make it to MLB.
At that moment, he had a family to support and it seemed like he was not going to achieve his dreams of playing baseball in the Majors.
I can guess that they were times that Mr. Zinter wanted to quit.
But he saw that he had to keep on chasing his dreams because people were looking up to him.
Eventually, Mr. Zinter kept his dreams alive and made it to MLB in 2002 with the Houston Astros and again in 2004 with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Though it was short lived, Mr. Zinter achieved his dreams of playing Major League Baseball.
Maybe you had thought of quitting your podcast, blog, writing career, etc. because not many people were listening or reading your blog.
You might have been feeling a sense of defeat because you see others are successful with their blogs or podcast with the high number of downloads or viewership.
The truth of the matter is that everyone have faced that sense of defeat and wanted to quit at one point or another in their writing or podcasting journey.
I know I have at one point or another wanted to quit podcasting or blogging.
The thing that has kept them going with their podcast or blog is they understood that it is a marathon and not a sprint.
The truth is that people are watching you whether you see it or not.
You have to keep on pushing towards the obstacles in order to achieve your goals as a writer, podcaster, professional athlete, etc.
You might never know who you will be impacting for the better when you finally achieve your goals of succeeding as a writer, podcaster, etc.
There Is No Silver Bullet To Success
by Cheval John
One of the most important lessons about achieving your dreams of being a writer, etc., is you must be persistent.
If one door closes, you must be aware that another door will open.
Sometimes we forget that lesson because we are afraid of experiencing rejection.
It is true that rejection hurts because we want to be liked by everyone.
The problem is that some people will not like you even if you are a nice person.
They will always try to find something to put you down if they see the opportunity.
If you are building an online business, you will certainly experience rejection along the way because no one has ever heard of you.
You can keep on trying to associate yourself with an A-lister within your industry in order to gain traction in your business if they mention you to their audience.
The only problem is that everyone else is trying to do the same thing in reaching out to the A-listers.
If you want to achieve success with your online business, you must put in the hard work and dedication to make your business succeed.
You also must build your audience from the ground up because you will achieve greater rewards from finding the right audience.
I was very fortunate to attend the Self-Publishing Success Academy class taught by Kimanzi Constable and Jimmy Burgess earlier this year.
The program was excellent because both of them shared with us how to achieve success with our self-published books.
They did not taught the lessons from theory, they taught from their experience on achieving their own success with their self-published books.
They also taught us that a person must build trust with the people who are the decision makers of the large websites or podcasts because if you send a generic pitch, you will end up being on their bad list for your disingenuous approach to being a contributor to their websites.
I applied one of the strategies that helped me to get on a couple of podcasts including Caryn FitzGerald’s Coffee And Coaching Podcast.
And yesterday, I “made” an appearance on “The Travel Wisdom Podcast,” hosted by Ladan Jiracek.
Mr. Jiracek, a world traveler who currently lives in India, interviews people who are also world travelers, authors, speakers, polyglots(a person who speaks three or more languages) etc.
I did my research on his podcast and felt that I could share valuable information with his audience because I had studied abroad in Mexico for a month and studied/interned abroad in Chile for 3 months.
So I sent him an e-mail about the possibility of making an appearance on his show.
I was happy when he said that he would like to interview me on his podcast.
The cool part was that I was able to interview him on my podcast, “What’s The Word?”
I can say that the lessons that Mr. Constable and Mr. Burgess taught about doing your research on the podcasts that you want to make an appearance on and the large websites you want to guest post on, helped me to make those guest podcast appearances.
I also believe that it is just the beginning of achieving my goal of financial independence because I understand that running an online business is a marathon and not a sprint.
So if you want to succeed in your online business, you must put in the hard work and dedication to succeed.
In the end, you will enjoy the success that you achieved because you did not take any shortcuts to succeed.
What are your thoughts on achieving success in your career whether it is writing, etc.?
You can leave your comments below.



Arrogance Always Leads A Team To Lose
By Cheval John
The New York Giants had the football matchup won against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Sunday night.
They were leading Dallas 26-20 with under two minutes to go and were in the red zone to possibly seal the win.
New York had forced three Dallas turnovers in the matchup.
Most of the time when a team have three or more turnovers, they should lose the game.
On the fourth down play, quarterback Eli Manning was flushed out of the pocket and threw the football away that resulted in the turnover of downs.
That football play by Manning left Dallas with about 1:40 to drive about 80 yards to take the lead.
Quarterback Tony Romo, who is currently leading the NFL with 4th quarter comebacks, was able to led the team down the field that included a game-winning touchdown pass to tight end Jason Witten to stun the Giants.
If Manning had taken the sack and not try to throw a touchdown pass in the red zone, Dallas would have only had less than a minute to go down the field and they would probably have not won.
Let’s just say that Manning gave Dallas an early Christmas gift that benefited Dallas.
When businesses don’t look at better options that will make them better, they will end up driving their company to the ground.
They will have the arrogant attitude that the old way of doing business still works in this day and age.
Companies who stay with the mindset of the old way of doing business will end up losing their customers and will be like Blockbuster, Kodak and the Giants.
When companies or solopreneurs take the time to listen to feedback from their mentors or customers,
they will always win new business and build fan loyalty.
What’s The Word?
Hope everyone will check out this episode of What’s The Word? with guest Scott Barlow, who is the founder of Happen To Your Career.
He shared about his journey to how he started Happen To Your Career and also his podcast by the same name.
Video courtesy of the NFL
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