The Three Enemies of Success and How to Overcome Them
By Joachim de Posada

There are certain behaviors which affect people´s dreams and aspirations through life. The ones I will be describing in this article have probably destroyed the careers of millions of entrepreneurs, business owners and even professionals. I know it well because I have seen it, I have experienced it and I have been a victim of it. There are projects I never started, others that I never finished and some that I should have started but never did. At least I feel that I wasn´t totally affected by these behaviors because after all, I did start writing and finished three books.

The three enemies are:

1. Seeking perfection
2. Procrastination
3. Lack of follow up.

I constantly encounter these situations in the world of business. I also have friends that these enemies have cost them thousands of dollars, one friend in particular, has never achieved the level of notoriety he should have achieved because he allowed two of the enemies to devour him. These destroyers are like pit bulls when they take a hold of you. They simply won´t let go and they might have you in their claws for your whole life.

Do you remember your school days? What did the teacher tell you every day? You have to study to make an A. That is good advice and your teacher was right. You should always strive for the A´s no matter what. You parents also repeated the same message, “you need to study hard so that one day you will work for a nice big company, have a great position, security and you will be able to raise a family and enjoy the luxuries of life”. How life has changed! Security is superstition. It doesn´t exist in nature and it doesn´t exist in the corporate world.

The problem I see is that millions of people follow the advice even after leaving college and the university and they don´t start new projects because the project is still not at an A level. It might be a C or a B so it is not good enough to start it. The project then dies because it will never take off the ground. The Wright brothers had an idea and if they would have looked for perfection, we wouldn´t be flying now a days.

The search for perfection robs you of free time, riches, personal development and goals you could have achieved if you had started them even if they were not perfect.

I used to have a professor at the University of Puerto Rico that would tell the students the first day of class. The A goes for the author of the textbook, the B goes to me because I teach it and the C goes to those of you that will invest millions on this university when you become millionaires. This guy was right, he knew that those that got a C were not perfectionists and they would start projects with little information or track record and would take the risk.

There is a saying that says perfection is the enemy of the good and another one that says don´t fall prey to analysis by paralysis.

A famous motivational speaker, whom I have met on several occasions, Zig Zigler used to say “anything worth doing in life is worth doing wrong” He would repeat that phrase and then when he had the audience in the palm of his hand, he would add “until you learn how to do it right”.

This is a profound and very true message. Years ago, in a conference sponsored by market guru Gary Halbert, now deceased, he introduced me by reading my bio and then he added that I had given him the most important advice in his life. The message was precisely the one principle I am discussing here. Gary would not start his projects because he wanted them to be perfect and so he would never start them. He learned his lesson and from that day on, he started projects and perfected them as they unfolded.

The second enemy of success is procrastination, leaving everything until the last minute or not doing it at all. To be able to defeat this enemy, you need lots of discipline and to make a commitment that you will defeat it. Make a list of stuff you procrastinate and schedule those tasks in your planner or agenda. Do it right now, don´t procrastinate. Speakers take note. How long have you had your book in mind but you have not gotten around to it?

The third enemy is lack of follow up. This one in particular really irritates me because it cost industry millions of dollars in sales that could have been closed. Even in the middle of a recession, when you would think that people have the need to make some money, they still don´t follow up with the prospects and clients. To the thousands of sales managers that read this article, if you simply establish a follow up system and you enforce it, your sales would increase tremendously. When you tell a prospect or client you will be calling them next day at 9.00AM that is what it means. Call at that precise hour, not 10 minutes or sixty minutes later. The client that you don´t call at the exact hour is thinking that if you are not that interested even before signing the order, imagine when the order is already signed and you have been paid your commission.

You must schedule that call on your agenda and call at the exact time the client is expecting you to call. I recommend sitting down every day for fifteen minutes, to plan what you are going to do and schedule all your activities.

We are in a very competitive world and only those that have the discipline to do what needs to be done, will be successful. If you resist the urge to seek perfection before you start anything, you don´t procrastinate the important things you have to do and you follow up with those you have promised you will follow up with, you will be very successful, it doesn´t matter whether there is a recession or not.