DESTINY MAKERS

Three keys to success

Lately People have been asking me how we grew The Sweet Spot so fast. "How did you get to be in 30+ cities across the United States and Canada?"

Mostly, our success is based on three factors.

1. Consistency

2. Persistence

3. Fearlessness

We got to where we are by doing a few things. One, we consistently make sure we offer a product that is the best in the market place. We also consistently search for the best performers. But that is only the beginning. consistency means waking up every morning before your 9-5 friends and putting in more hours than they do. It means keeping yourself informed so you have a creative edge. It means answering a million emails and returning a million phone calls. It means studying the greats and finding out what made them successful. Consistency means spending hours and hours looking for answers to the problems that you face.

Persistence is like consistency except concistency takes drive; persistence takes heart and drive. We have had shows that flopped. In fact, we had a show once in Rochester in the middle of winter and by the luck of the draw we hit a snow storm on our way to the show. We could have cancelled, we could have returned home, but we decided that we would never cancel a show, ever. In retrospect maybe we should have because the weather was nasty. That night the entire audience stayed home. We had an audience of about 7 people. Yes 7 people. We had more performers than audience members. I told our cast that we should perform as if we were performing to 1000 people - and we did. That show ended up being one of our best shows to this day.

Despite the good show, we lost a ton of money. Based on that reslut we might have decided not to return to Rochester, but we persisted and retuned again as scheduled in three months. This time we prepared even harder and it showed in the numbers. Now when we go to Rochester, we have venues packed to the hilt. Also, because we persisted through the show storm that night we gained a new partnership with a bigger and better event producer. If we had given up maybe we would not have made that one important connection that took us to the next level in Rochester. There are many other instances in various cities where we could have folded our hand and walked away, but we persisted and ended up winning in the long run.

Fearlessness is difficult to explain simply because fear, like love, is diffucult to define. Some people think you have to be born fearless. I think it is a philosophical view point that once understood, you can employ it whenever you need to. For me its all about knowing that there will always be failures and mistakes in life. It is all about knowing that you will always feel some kind of fear when you have a huge challenge or task ahead of you. The beautiful thing about fear is that the moment you embrace it you realize that it was not that bad after all.

So be consistent, persistent and fearless, and you will see the results faster than you think.