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.
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 Once they do, the magic and wonder disappears, and the magician is no longer valid to anyone anymore.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: 
It seems a lot of people are looking for the easy button for their lives. They want to hit a button and have their lives instantly fulfilled overnight. I hate to break it to you but there is no easy button to achieve greatness in anything. To get where you want to go it’s going to take work. Serious hard work. I think Americans see musicians and actors all of the sudden pop up out of nowhere and become famous and wealthy. They think that it can be done instantly. What we don’t see is the years of hard work that got them to that tipping point that they broke over. All achievers put in hard work into getting there. There was some magical chant or potion that made them that way, they simply put in the time to get where they wanted to go. 
I think there is a desire inside all of us to be accepted. We try to look, talk and think like everyone else. What happens? We become like everyone else. We hide who we are inside, in order to fit in with the herd. We lose what makes us great. Our personality, ambitions and style. We give up our originality so that we can become a carbon copy of what “we are supposed to be” in everyone else’s eyes. Frankly, we do this because we fear others will think we’re nuts. We worry that others will call us crazy. 
Today I watched the death of a professional.
