Secret of Successful People

I read somewhere recently (I do not remember where) that successful people get up much earlier in the morning than normal people.  I've got to say this is true.  I work for a few very rich people, and that is one of the primary things I notice - they are up at 4am doing work of some sort.

I've been flat out getting out of bed before 8am in the morning - that is until my daughter was born.  It's the perfect chance to reset my body clock, since she wakes us up at about 3 in the morning, so I am going to see what I can do.  It's currently 3:30am.  I've just changed my daughter and my wife is now feeding her, so I've decided to do a bit of work and start my day early.

I find that if I do start early, while I am productive in the morning - I'm very tired very early.  I know that I do some of my most productive work in the evening - but only provided it is quiet and I'm not disturbed - something that is going to happen less and less as my family grows.

Other traits of successful people?

They make quick decisions - they don't procrastinate over things.  They think about them, they talk about them with others, and if they like the idea, they put someone to work on it.  If they don't like the idea, they file it away, either in the bin, or in the back of their head to be called on at a more appropriate time.

Things do go wrong, and don't work out.  They are quick to assess if something isn't going to work, and cut it quickly, rather than try to make it work by throwing lots of money at it.

They deal with expensive items in niche markets.  It's all just a matter of scale.  You can buy a $50k car, and sell it for $55k with very little work.  Let's say you only sell 1 car per month (which is shitty by the way).  You've made $5k which equates to about $60k per year.  That's just selling 12 cars a year.  If I sell a deck of playing cards for $10  (a really NICE deck of playing cars) and I make $2 per deck, I'm going to have to sell 30,000 decks to make the same money.  That's alot of work.  Don't work harder, work smarter
Expensive items give more room for profit. You can change the price by hundreds, even thousands, and it won't look like the price has actually moved that much.

Money attracts money.  Most successful people come from rich families, so they have the money to start with to go out and purchase expensive items to sell.  So how do regular Joe's like you or me get there?  We start small.  Learn how to buy and sell things small scale, then work our way up.

One thing to consider when you are starting your small business idea.  While just closing shop might seem like a good idea, if you don't like running your business anymore, don't forget you can sell your business.  Some people make their living just doing startups, selling them, and then moving onto the next big thing.