It’s kind of funny in an ironic sense. Yet it is so very sad.

The biggest failure of all is silent.

You can experience this failure and never even realize it.

Day after day, same old same old.

The drudgery. A life of ho-hum.

Breathing, but not living.

Sure, you’re satisfied. But you’re not happy.

Because you choose to do nothing.

Doing nothing – the biggest failure of all.

You may argue with that last statement.

You didn’t choose to do nothing.

To some extent, you’re right.

You didn’t actively choose to do nothing.

It just happened.

But deep down inside, you know that you let it happen.

By not rocking the boat. By settling for the status quo.

By not sticking your neck out. By not trying.

By being so afraid of failure that failure is the only possible outcome.

By doing all these things passively, you actively choose to fail.

You will never know the potential within you.

You will never see the impact that you could have made.

You will never experience the elation of living your passion.

And we all suffer.

We’ll never know how great you could have been either.

BIGG success if life on your own terms.

Today, you can choose to exist or you can choose to live.

You can change careers.

You can start your own small business.

You can do anything you want to do.

You just have to choose to do something.

Sure, it’s scary.

Sure, it’s not easy.

Maybe we can help.

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A lot of people are parked. In most cases, they don’t realize how much risk they are taking by remaining stationary.

Parking for fear

For some, it’s a perpetual state. They don’t move because of fear – fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of what others will say or think, and even fear of success.

They think they can avoid risk by remaining parked. In reality, they are taking the biggest risk of all. It’s sad because they are doomed to the life they now have if they don’t change.

Parking to celebrate

Others are parked because they just hit a BIGG goal. It’s healthy to take a little time to celebrate your successes. However, you’ll never reach BIGG success if you rest on your laurels. John Wooden said it best:

“Remember this your lifetime through;

Tomorrow there will be more to do.

And failure waits for all who stay

With some success made yesterday.

Tomorrow you must try once more,

And even harder than before.”

Parking to look at the map

In some cases, people are parked because they don’t know where to go next. This can lead to failure if you spend too much time off the road.

If you’re not sure how to reach the next level of success, maybe we can help you with the map. Check out our coaching packages.

Parking is at your own risk. Get on the expressway to BIGG success – even if you have to throw it in reverse first.

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Any of these addictions can destroy your life, to be sure. They can be so destructive that other people see it. They see you screwing it all up. They see you throwing your life away.

If you’re lucky – if they love you enough – they step in. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” King David said in Proverbs.

The invisible addiction
The worst addiction makes the top of the list because no one sees it. You may have this addiction and not even realize it.

But it’s there – lurking inside your head. If left unchecked, this addiction grows like a cancer inside you and eventually consumes you.

It drives your thoughts. It runs your life. Yet you’re not even aware of it.

You think you’re being prudent. You’re thinking you’re being wise. But you’re addicted. You’re hooked on your past mistakes!

This addiction manifests itself in one of two ways:

You stop taking risks
Anybody who does anything will make mistakes. As an entrepreneur, you do much more than “anything” – you turn nothing into something. You create value in the process, for yourself and others.

You will fail from time to time. When faced with failure, the average person stops trying. They give up. They get hooked on the mistake and it drives their life from that point forward.

They don’t take any risk. They get stuck in mediocrity. They never reach BIGG success.

The cure
So many people think, “I wish I had …” or “I wish I wouldn’t have …” when things don’t turn out as planned. And things never turn out as planned.

Successful entrepreneurs think, “Next time, I will …”

So forget about your mistakes and remember the lesson. Bring your experience into your next decision. You’re stronger and wiser now. You’re better prepared for BIGG success!

You double down
Some people do the opposite. When faced with a loss, they double down.

They desperately try to “get their money back.” They stop investing and start gambling and scrambling. They’re afraid of failing. They worry they’ll be embarrassed. They will do just about anything to try to “rescue” their investment of time and money.

The funny thing is – in some cases, this turns out to be the best response. You’re not a failure until you give up. However, you may be better off focusing your resources on something else.

The cure
Remove the emotion from the situation. Seek help from people who have been there. It’s tough to know whether to push on or move on. Ultimately, the decision is yours. Let logic rule and, one way or another, you’ll reach BIGG success!

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“Don’t live by old sayings that don’t apply to you. For instance – ‘Have a Plan B.’ Having a Plan B means you believe that Plan A might fail. Having a Plan B requires that you put time and energy into what you could’ve been doing for Plan A to make it work. And if Plan A doesn’t work, guess what, get a new Plan A.”

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There’s some real wisdom in his quote. We’ll look at it line by line:

Believe

He’s emphasizing how much we have to believe in success, not in failure. We have to believe, in ourselves and in our plan, in order to succeed. The first person who has to be on board with our plan – the first person who has to follow us so to speak – is ourselves. If we’re not in line, we’re in trouble!

Throw away the security blanket

There’s another thing that comes to light with this quote. Think Linus van Pelt, Charlie Brown’s best friend and Lucy’s younger brother. He never went anywhere without his security blanket. 

We can’t succeed if we hold on to our security blanket, or blankets, as the case may be. We have to throw it away once and for all if we’re going to succeed bigg.

A lot of times we hold on tightly to that security blanket just in case. Just in case, things don’t go as planned.

Well, here’s the brutal truth – no matter how good we get at planning, things never will go as planned.

That’s when we have to hunker done. We have to double our efforts to make our plan work. We have to overcome all the obstacles that we will face and keep the faith.

The covenant with Nature

We must keep on believing that we will succeed because we have no choice but to succeed. When we reach that level of resolve, the forces of Nature begin to conspire with us, instead of against us.

It’s not a miracle. It happens too frequently to think of it that way.

It is no accident. Because that implies a randomness that doesn’t exist.

It’s isn’t luck because it happens more often to people whose thoughts lead to certain behaviors. The more determination we have, the luckier we get!

It’s more like a covenant. Nature says, “This is how much you have to believe. Here is what you have to let go of in order to have my blessing.”

Now, let’s look at the next line …

Setting priorities

Since we only have a certain amount of time, we can’t afford to waste it if we’re going to succeed bigg.  It’s all about priorities.

We tend to think that:

• we’re super-human
• we can do ten things at once
• we don’t need to focus on just one or two major objectives at a time

The bare naked truth is … all of that is a lie!

We do have to determine what is most important right now in pursuit of that bigg success of which we dream. Then we have to focus all our energy on only that.

In the last part of his quote, he says,

So the question is, how do you know if Plan A isn’t working?

One way to judge it is if you keep running into the same wall over and over again.

You’ve tried to climb over it.

You’ve tried to go around it on one side.

Then you tried the other side.

You tried to dig under it.

You even tried to blast through it.

You’ve tried five times, but the doggone wall hasn’t budged.

Plan B is like Step 2

It may be time to start thinking of your alternatives. And here’s where we deviate slightly from Steve Harvey. Because we think Plan B is like Step 2 on your path to bigg success. You have to have a clear picture of what bigg success looks like to you before you start. Then you need to map out the steps to get there.

With your plan in place, you’ll focus all your time and energy on Step 1 before you begin to take the second step. So we’ve thought about it before we start, but we don’t worry about it until it’s time.

We think Plan B is just like that. Before we start working on Plan A, we should have thought about Plan B. We’ve prepared for the contingencies. But that’s where we stop.

And the important distinction is this ….

Plan B doesn’t send us back where we were before. Plan B moves us ahead in a way that Plan A didn’t. It makes that wall insignificant.

The only path to bigg success

But it doesn’t pay to spend too much time thinking about Plan B because the wall we face probably won’t be the wall we expect. So now we’re back on track with Steve Harvey.

Think about it a little, but don’t dwell on it. While you’re pursuing Plan A, keep Plan B out of your head. Because you have to if you want to succeed bigg.

Your mindset has to be, “This is my only path to bigg success.” By thinking that way, you will find bigg success. 

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Thank you for checking in with us today. Join us next time as we begin a two-part series on the ten early warnings of a business in trouble. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Last time, Jonathan discussed why it’s so important, especially in tough times like these, to understand how to operate online because it’s an inexpensive way to swap work for money. Let’s get back to the conversation …

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Jonathan, I believe that really good entrepreneurs are masters at minimizing risk. I think one of the great secrets of being online is that you can test concepts with a relatively small amount of money compared to what it used to cost us in the real world. You find out fairly quickly whether or not that concept can get traction. If it doesn’t, you move on. If it does, you keep funding it.

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That’s such a great observation. We were talking briefly before we started recording. You said that it seems like everything I do is a success. And I said, “No, everything that lasts that I do is a success.”

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Test, listen, adapt

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Because you have two successful blogs, you have this book and then you have best yoga center in New York? You have the magic touch.

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I do a lot of different things. I’ve had failures offline and I’ve had failures online. I will continue to have many more failures in both worlds. I can tell you, hands down, that I have lost so much less money in my online failures. I’m able to jump back in to the next adventure in the blink of an eye online. Whereas when something goes wrong offline, you have a substantial amount more money, overhead or time invested in it. Everything is recoverable in my mind, but it takes longer. It may take months or years. In the online world, I’m sort of off and running. I have tried and failed online too many times to count, but that’s just part of being an entrepreneur. You’re constantly testing. The ability to listen and adapt are critical to survival, whether you’re online or offline.

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Getting started online

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So for our audience, Jonathan – they may be thinking, “This sounds interesting. I may like to explore this online world. But I have no idea how to build a web site. I have no idea how to get started with an online business.” What would be some critical, career renegade, first steps for someone like that?

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Step 1 – Buy my book!

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Ha-ha, good suggestion! Does your book help walk people through that?

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It’s interesting. When I started writing this book, I didn’t intend for it to have so much online advice, but it turned into a massive encyclopedia of references answering that question. So, if you’re interested in blogging, starting an information business, or figuring out how to turn your knowledge into a revenue stream – not just little products but real businesses – the book offers a ton of information. It also offers a ton of links and resources to other places where you can go a lot deeper because I don’t believe any one book is capable of covering the entire space. Beyond that, though, there is so much free information when you start to explore the blogosphere. I would start out with an idea, with what interests you. Search on it. Find the blogs where people write on a regular basis. To me, one of the critical things for almost anybody who is trying to build a reputation as a leader in any field is blogging. That’s something you can leverage into working for someone else or starting your own business. To me, it’s an amazing way to position yourself as the go-to person in your field of interest in an astonishingly short period of time. Anybody can start a blog, probably in less than an hour, and it costs almost nothing to do.

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I became a renegade because I couldn’t find anybody to pay me what I thought I was worth. Then I found out I couldn’t afford to pay myself what I thought I was worth. What do you do about that? I had to adjust the value a little bit, but over time it’s been just fine!

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A very special offer

Jonathan amazed us with a special offer for you. He’s put together a sixteen-hour video training course called Career Renegade Flight School. You could expect to pay $1,000 for similar programs. He’s giving it away for a short while with proof that you’ve purchased his book. Go to Career Renegade to learn more.

Thanks, Jonathan, for the great advice!

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Thanks so much for stopping by our site today. Next time we ask, “Is your idea worth your money?” Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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