The Success Profile is a model I devised to illustrate the dynamics of personal achievement.
First, a digression.
This graph shows what happens when a ball bounces. It’s a simple plot of the ball’s height against time. The bouncing decays and the ball comes to a standstill, because the energy it had at the beginning is converted into heat and sound on each bounce. Unless work is done to replace that energy, it will stop.
This is how many people go through life.
If you think of this as a graph of success (and “success” means whatever you want it to mean – more on that later), then in any particular endeavor, long- or short-term, this is typically what happens.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ”
— Lewis Carroll (Through The Looking Glass)
The plans are made, enthusiasm is boiling over and the project begins. Gradually, problems start to crop up. Results fail to match expectations. Enthusiasm wanes and effort diminishes, to the point where all interest is lost and a boost is needed to restore motivation.
Take Internet Marketing as an example. You’ve set out to make money online and your research throws up IM as the road to riches. You find your way to the Warrior Forum and, before long, you’ve purchased your first Warrior Special Offer (WSO) – a HUGE course, with TONS of secrets, written by a well-known GURU. It’s a 37-day challenge to make a grand in a week and it costs $37. You get a special offer because it’s the guru’s 37th birthday.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this. It’s all part of building your knowledge through experience. What matters is how you use that knowledge. So, enthusiasm is high, and you start work with a vengeance.
You choose a niche, buy a domain name and hosting through GoDaddy and/or BlueHost. You install WordPress through CPanel and build a squeeze page, with an opt-in form, using an autoresponder from Aweber to build your list. You offer your freebie report as an incentive to sign up. You write half a dozen articles and submit them to EzineArticles. Throughout this, you’re using the special Secrets you’ve paid for. Then a few more articles. You check your stats. Nothing… Go back to the beginning and check everything – filling in the bits you overlooked and missed out. Keep checking the stats. Still nothing.
Enthusiasm and motivation eventually hit rock bottom and you scan the WSO’s for something else that offers the success you’re looking for. You buy another product and your enthusiasm goes up, but not to the level it was when you started out. The process is repeated, each time with dwindling motivation, until you either give up altogether or languish in the Slough of Despond, as a perpetual newbie.
Now look at this graph. You’ll notice it’s the bouncing ball reversed.
I call this the Trampoline profile, because it’s what happens when you keep pumping in more energy when you hit the trampoline. You get a bit higher each time. But there’s a physical limit to how high you can bounce, so once you reach that limit, there’s nothing more to play for. You’ll lose interest and the graph reverts to the bouncing ball profile.
In terms of the Success Profile, what this means is that we take on board the lessons from our experience and use them to go from strength to strength. As with the trampoline, though, we reach a limit and, once we realize we’ve peaked, and it’s hard work just to maintain this limit, we lose interest.
For the Internet Marketing example, you’re doing well to begin with. Your WSO’s are working for you and you’re building on what you’ve learned from your gurus, so you keep on buying until you realize you’ve hit a plateau. You’ve reached your limit and it doesn’t scale any more. Rinsing and repeating is no longer going to cut it. What you need is a way to move up a level.
In other words, you need a Success Profile that looks like this:
I named this the Trampoline Staircase profile, for obvious reasons. Each step has a trampoline, so before you reach your limit, you simply jump across to the next level. That way, you never reach a limit that you can’t break through. In theory, you could bounce your way to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza with carefully placed trampolines!
I said earlier that success can be whatever you want it to be. If peace of mind or a greener world are some of your yardsticks for success, that’s great. You can cast a set of Success Profiles and provided there are no inconsistencies between them, you can work to keep them all in good shape.
In your projects, and for each of your Life Protocols (shown here), you can define Success Profiles and use them as your guide for change. You will often be using subjective judgements but in IM, since we’re focusing on wealth (didn’t I mention that?), you have a quantitative way of measuring your success. You can measure it in terms of dollars per month. In the trade, the tendency is to talk of four- five- or six-figure incomes per month to give an order of magnitude rather than a specific earnings figure.
Okay, so what does the Trampoline Staircase profile mean in practice? Let me give you an example from someone I watched recently on Talk Marketing Now. Kieran McDonogh, a really nice, enthusiastic IM guy from New Zealand, used the expression, “align yourself with success.” I thought it gave a great insight into one way of climbing the Staircase. Essentially, Kieran said that when you’re a five-figure (per month) earner, associate with six-figure earners. Once you’re settled in the company of six-figure earners, associate with seven-figure earners. In my model, this comes under the Occupational Protocol, but I’m sure you can see how the concept can be adapted to other protocols. Kieran was preparing to dine in the company of Donald Trump, by the way!
I’ve introduced two concepts here: the Success Profile and the Life Protocol, both of which come from my current work in progress - A Basic Model For Success (I’ve said before, I take concepts from things I’m familiar with elsewhere and form associations. I’ve done that here, once again). I’ll come back to these ideas regularly, so if they aren’t too clear right now, stay with me – you’ll find them valuable in the future, once we start to build up a fuller picture.
Here’s a plan for you to follow, now that you’ve read this.
- Choose the first area you want to focus on in building your success.
- Identify where you are on the Staircase and who your peers are on that step.
- Gaze up at the next step and see who you should be aiming to associate with.
- Research your potential future friends – IN DEPTH.
- Have something REALLY USEFUL to say that is on their level.
- Do everything you can to gain their attention and befriend them, but don’t be a nuisance.
- Jump up onto the next step and start bouncing.
That’s it, in a nutshell.
See You Soon,
Terry