Ask yourself: why does anyone have followers? It’s because they own it. Good leaders let their passion for what they do sweat out of them. You see this flicker in their eyes and you know they have something special about them. They live, breathe and sleep it. You get excited just hearing them talk about it, because they reek of passion. If you want to get somewhere, you also must own it. If you aren’t ecstatic about what you do, why would anyone else be? If you want others to get it, you better let it seep out of your pores.
You must take ownership of your passion.
One of the greatest things about the age we live in, is that opportunity is all around us. If we open our eyes and minds enough to see it, it’s there, ripe for the taking. To become great at anything, you must train yourself to see and act quickly on opportunity when it presents itself. 
Magicians never tell the secrets to their tricks. Once they do, the magic and wonder disappears, and the magician is no longer valid to anyone anymore. He can get replaced by someone cheaper or younger. In business, you can learn a lot from them. To someone that lacks your skill, your knowledge is extremely valuable. They will constantly try to pick and prod it out of you and if you let them, you lose your leverage and power. A lot of people want your knowledge, but they don’t want to do what it takes to get to that point. They want you to do the research, spend the time and test it out first then just give it to them. I wrote about this in 
value and they will take your ideas, use it for themselves and forget you ever helped them. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. When I first started, I would give away too much. Pretty quickly I created competition for myself. You give man a fire, and he’ll burn everything down. I found out that if you create a titan, they will forget they were once merely human with you. 
We grow up in a world that is constantly asking for permission to do the things we want to do. In order to drive, you’ll need a license, in order to get a top paying job, we need the education and qualifications. We are constantly needing “permission” to succeed and do what we want. However, to do anything revolutionary, you can’t think like this. If you wait around always seeking permission, you can never do anything great and rarely get much accomplished. You’ll spend months or even years waiting on others to say yes to you. 
A lot of people can’t stand waiting to fulfill their desires. They want it now, and they want it delivered. We have groomed ourselves to be this way. We live in fast food nation, where you place a call and get a hot pizza in 20 minutes delivered right to your door. The problem is that instant gratification rarely ever leads to outstanding results. You are never going to get 5 star steak delivered to your door in twenty minutes and it taste like it does at the restaurant. 
Undoubtedly, you realize you have competition in your business. There is always someone else trying to out do you and take your customers away. It’s important to know what they are doing with their businesses, but you shouldn’t structure your business around them. A lot of businesses battle each other and are constantly reacting to the competition. When one business offers a special the other runs out and tries to beat it with a better offer. When one company offers a new product or service, another runs out, throws on a new coat of paint, and puts their version out there too. The problem with this is that you start focusing solely on the competition and responding to them rather than doing what matters. Instead of innovating, you start imitating. Real growth and incredible change doesn’t occur when you are constantly responding to the competition. You’ll never do anything revolutionary by creating the the same or a little better than everyone else. Copying leads to mediocre results. Innovation can lead to big wins. When you don’t do things different, there isn’t anything that stands out about you amongst the herd out there. You just blend in with everyone else. Stand above the herd and create something something new. Do something different. 
The other day, I attended a seminar where the speaker, multimillionaire Blake Mallen, said: 
Most everyone has this vision for where they want to go in life. We all have dreams and aspirations. However, there is something that can hold you back from them. It’s your level of comfort. You have this comfort zone that you know and are familiar with. Perhaps it’s how you always have done things. Your personal level of comfort will determine what you do and how far you will go in life. How is your level of comfort working out for you? Are you getting everything you want? Or simply staying where you were last year and the year before that? 
I got a sad email today from a person who believed that I shouldn’t encourage everyone that they can achieve anything they want. They believed that some people simply don’t have it in them to be successful. They asked: “How are you going to believe that Tom that works in a factory, broke and without a good education is going to succeed?” My answer: I see it everyday. Most all of my entrepreneur friends came from nothing. No rich uncles to pass down wealth, they didn’t have the genius of Steve Jobs. Heck half of them never went to college! They are regular everyday people that went after their goals and succeeded. Pessimists are the great destroyer of our world. They see the bad side in everything. They view the world through grey colored glassed and never see a brighter future. They neglect to ever take chances or try new things because they are live in a world of fear. Pessimists are also some of the starkest critics and hate to see someone to succeed. When someone succeeds they have something to compare their own mediocre lives to. Have you ever met a successful pessimist? I doubt it. 
