Summary: Synopsis When the was writing Masters of Success, Dr. Misner asked thousands of BNI members what they felt the secret to success was. They mentioned factors like vision, goals, systems, passion, and persistence. Then he asked several highly successful people what they thought it took to be successful. They provided the same list. So did a number of undergraduates studying business--except that the college students also mentioned luck. So if we all know what it takes to be successful, why is it that we're not all as successful as we'd like to be? There is no secret to success. Success is simply the uncommon application of common knowledge. When you ask people the secret to their success, you rarely hear a secret. What you hear about is unwavering adherence to a system or a plan. Successful people focus on the goal and work through or around everything else. Success requires not just knowing what you need to do, but doing it--over and over again. Brought to you by <a href="http://networkingnow.com">Networking Now</a>. Complete Transcript of Episode 423 - Priscilla: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you? Ivan: I am in Europe this week for a quick trip for BNI and will be leaving here today. Priscilla: That sounds fun. Was it fun? Ivan: It is a necessary business trip. Priscilla: Well, I hope you got a lot done. Ivan: Yep. Wherever I go, I try to get as much done as I can. You know, I like- we have talked about this before on the podcast, that I try to tell roughly where I am at and what I am doing so that members understand that I am not just sitting out, or as someone in an email once said to me, hanging out at the beach with a margarita. Priscilla: Although that sounds good also. Ivan: It sounds good. I have been known to do it, but I am generally traveling a lot for BNI and meeting members all over the world, which is what I really love doing. Priscilla: Great. So are you going to tell us what is success today? Ivan: Yes. I am going to tell you what is success. Over my career, I have observed people with different personality profiles, backgrounds and different approaches to business achieve success in life. A lot of times, I have wondered if there were any recurring themes running through their success stories if they could clearly illustrate what creates success. A number of years ago, when I was interviewing BNI members for a book I was writing called Masters of Success, I asked thousands of BNI members what they felt the secret of success was. You know, they generally told me things like vision, goals, passion, persistence, systems. These were the things that they said it took to be successful. I thought that was really interesting, so I did ask really highly successful people who had attained great wealth or personal success in business or science what it took to be successful. These were people who were in the book like Erin Brockovich, Buzz Aldrin the astronaut, and many other successful people. They generally told me that success involved things like vision, goals, passion, persistence, systems. Sound familiar at all? It was the same list. This made me really curious, so much so that I was teaching at the time at a state university in southern California. I asked hundreds of college students over the few years that I was working on this book what they thought was the secret to success, what did it take to be successful. These were all undergraduates in business with little or no real world business experience. What I found amazing was that they also said success involved things like visi...
