Online and Offline Business Success is About One Thing

The Client!

Zig Ziglar was one of the first real sales trainers and motivational speakers I heard speak live…and it transformed my thinking and my life!

Zig Ziglar said something all those years ago that has stayed with me throughout my business life and has been the basis of every entrepreneurial endeavor:

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

I’ve always thought of it as pushing others up. I’ve heard other describe it as pushing people forward.

Regardless of how you phrase it, one thing is certain, if you push enough other people up, you can’t help but ascend the ladder along with them. In fact, if you help others succeed, they will generally bend over backwards to make sure you do too.

Some of the skeptics out there may disagree with that last statement…but I have found it to be true over and over again.

People are wonderful!

And, like you and I, all most people want is a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

If someone owns a business, they want to make sure their family, friends, and employees are taken care of and that they have built up a successful enough business to either sell it when the time is right, thus providing for themselves and their loved ones; or, they want to pass it along to the kids, other relatives, and/or loyal employees when the time comes.

The Life Lesson My Grandfather Taught Me

My grandfather was an incredible force in my life, an example of the type of person I have just described and have always aspired to become!

In the early 1980s, Chevrolet decided they were no longer going to have what they call a point, that means a dealership presence in a given area, in downtown Detroit. Detroit had weathered the riots a few years before and GM was moving most of its dealerships to the suburbs.

So, after almost 50 years in business my grandfather was closing his doors. Trumbull Chevrolet was the first dealership in downtown Detroit and an institution for decades. They were a casualty of the times; and, of urban blight and suburban flight.

The thing that amazed me, and has stayed with me for the last 28 years, not unlike the Zig Ziglar quote above, was that prior to closing his doors, my grandfather made sure every person working for him had a job.

That’s right!

In the midst of the worst economy since The Great Depression, my grandfather got 73 of his 74 employees jobs before he closed his doors once and for all.

The 74th person was the real lesson!

The 74th person was a man I knew only as “Little Joe.”

Little Joe had started with my grandfather many years before. By the 1980s, Little Joe was too old and too well-paid for him to be placed anywhere. Consequently, Little Joe was the one person my grandfather couldn’t find adequate employment for. In corporate America, Little Joe would have been out of luck!

Not so with my grandfather!

My grandfather, having no other option that would sit well with who he was as a man who loved and cared for his employees, hired Little Joe to help my grandmother around the house, drive her to the store, basically help her with whatever she needed help with.

Joe was probably the highest paid helper/companion in Detroit at the time. My grandmother was showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease and needed a companion more than anything. Little Joe needed a job.

It was a marriage (or a job) made in heaven!

Little Joe could barely help himself most days, but that didn’t matter, my grandfather was faithful to Little Joe and Little Joe loved my grandfather and my grandmother.

A Business and a Life Lesson Learned from the Detroit Riots

In fact, during the 1968 Detroit riots, my grandfather’s dealership, a block away from Tiger (Briggs) Stadium in downtown Detroit, was not touched. During that entire summer of upheaval and rioting? Not a window was broken not a single car was vandalized.

While National Guard tanks rolled up and down the city streets and into the suburbs, Little Joe sat with my grandfather, so he would be safe…and they protected “the store,” together.

My grandfather came to find out later that many of his employees, people who lived in the neighborhood, had more or less let it be known that Trumbull Chevrolet was not to be touched. My grandfather had made it a point to hire his neighbors, and his employees became his second family.

When he needed them, his second family took care of him…and their business.

So, while Detroit burned, my grandfather and Little Joe sat and watched from the dealership’s showroom windows. And his employees, who also loved him, made sure he was OK and that the dealership, and the office building that had held the Detroit Lions offices, also owned by my grandfather, were not touched.

He had made it his mission to help the people of Detroit and they returned the favor…and then some.

Like I said, people are wonderful!

People deserve to be treated with integrity and honesty. If you treat people according to the way you want to be treated and help them get what they want…you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

And, you’ll be able to sleep at night!

In sales and marketing, and particularly in Internet marketing, I see things that, even after all these years in sales and marketing, I do not understand. Seth Godin says much of it has to do with Little Lies…or at least that’s how it begins.

I agree!

But I also believe it speaks to who we are as individuals!

It is so easy to succeed in business, any business, if you help enough other people get what they want. Forget about the shortcuts, forget about the “fast and easy,” and forget about the secrets to success.

There is only one secret to success:

The Golden Rule!

Who among us wouldn’t help someone who has helped us get to where we want to be in life? Who wouldn’t treat us as we wish to be treated…if we’ve treated them well?

It’s about pushing people up!

The “secret to success”? Push enough people up or forward and treat them as you would like to be treated.

It really is that simple!

John Zajaros
The Ultimate Internet Image
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
216-712-7004

I just thought I would share a moment with you. The sun was setting, it is mid-October and the clouds were beautiful, purple and billowing. I live not too far from the spot where the video I shot (below) was taken and I love walking there.

After overcoming a life-threatening and life-altering illness, one that put me in the hospital for months from December of 2004 until April/May of 2008, it is as if my eyes are seeing things for the first time, that I am once again experiencing life.

I am beginning to see the possibilities in life again, the things that make my heart beat a bit faster, and the things that don’t necessarily mean success as much as they simply make life a bit more fun. I have experienced all the trappings of success, have been known as a “success” for much of my life. To have had it all vanish, all the trappings, while fighting for my life was disconcerting but I always knew, if I could just get through to the other side, I would have it all again.

Interestingly, having made it through catastrophic illness, having beat back the most dreaded of diseases and lived to start again, my perspective has been forever altered. The “things” I once thought important are no longer so and the “trappings” of success are now viewed for what they are, impermanent and easily replaceable. The things of value, the things that really matter, friends, family, my faith in people, my faith in Something Greater have all been restored, renewed, or significantly strengthened.

Success no longer has the same meaning…but success still has the same definition!

Figure that one out for yourself….

By definition, success is a progression, an improvement in your overall quality of life on daily basis. Tony Robbins talks about CANI! CANI! is “consistent and never ending improvement.” Tony Robbins talks about the improvement in the quality of your life on a daily basis, incrementally, continually, and consistently. Early Nightingale and Napoleon Hill talk about progression toward a worthwhile goal or ideal. Interestingly, every great thinker has equated success with progress, a progression, a journey that includes never ending improvement.

If that is the definition of success…I am a success!

Every day of my life has become a success, a mural of sorts, and I thought I would share just a moment of it…me and my little dog, TuffGuy…my Higher Power is the painter, my life the canvas!

The video below will be up around the web, on my personal blog, The John Zajaros Blog, and elsewhere. It’s just a moment, a glimpse, and Martin Scorsese has nothing to worry about.

I challenge you to find your own personal place or places, your space if you will, that spot or those spots you can retreat to, that inspire you, not only your entrepreneurial spirit, if you have that sort of wish for your life, but personally and spiritually. Because those personal places are the best places to take a step back and renew, recharge, and refresh the Spirit before facing the ups and the downs life invariably throws at us daily…on our journey, our progression, our never ending quest!

This has just been a moment of personal reflection:

The Quest Revealed!

As stated, the most significant and meaningful trappings of success are no longer the same for me. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t get excited about a new Hunter sailboat, almost purchased a while back, or a comfortable houseboat for Connie and I to retire on. TuffGuy, Bart, kids, and whomever else wants to come along with us, as well! Well, maybe? But the landscape has changed, the Master Gardener has done a real job on me, I no longer yield the same produce and life on the other side of H#ll is indeed Heaven!

We are tested throughout our lives but one thing I know with absolute certainty…Tony Robbins is right! CANI! is the real “secret” to success. Only through constant, consistent, and never ending improvement, never quitting no matter what the odds, will you prevail.

Not only will you prevail, life will be amazing!

But you must demonstrate:

Faith– in yourself, your loved ones, your friends, your Higher Power (in what ever form you see it) and, most importantly, your Self!
Hope– above all, hope! Without hope, when things are their blackest, you will falter! You must have HOPE!
Determination– there were times when the only thing that kept me going was determination, that refusal to quit regardless of what everyone and everything was saying!
Persistence– just a bit different from determination, a one-two punch of sorts. Determination is the mindset, persistence is the implementation!
Goals– It is not enough to want something, you must have concrete goals and a plan of action. Without goals you are truly a ship without a rudder, blowing this way and that!
Burning Desire– this may also be called “The One Thing!” It is not enough to have goals, it isn’t even enough to have a plan of action, you must want it, whatever “it” is, with all your heart! You must want it in the pit of your stomach, it must burn within you like nothing else…it must make your soul ache!

IF you are able to define, clearly and concisely, what your “One Thing” is, write it out, burn it into the very fabric of your being, and then have complete faith in the reality that it will be yours, put the plan into action and improve upon it in some way each and every day, constantly and consistently, you will prevail!

In the words of one of the greatest statesmen to ever walk the Earth, “Never, Never, Never, Never Quit!” And you will prevail!

John Zajaros
216-712-6526 (home/business)
866-835-2913 (toll free)
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@johnzajaros.com