Beautiful.

High on seven days of wins I duly decided to figure out what the hell it we each define as ‘successful’.

What is it, this success they talk of? Does it depend on the weather, on the individual, on a strange series of events that largely passes us by and only on occasions directly influences what we do, and how we do it?

Some of the greatest achievements in life have been largely out of my control. You know when you feel completely lethargic and then suddenly a call comes in, or an email plink-plonks on to your desktop, and turns everything around?

Those are the things that your subconscious has been urging in your direction all along, but your conscious was simply outwitted. You’ve laid the groundwork, put in an excessive amount of time to ensure the victory of a project, and then all of a sudden the fruits of your labour come home to roost.

It all comes back to realising how monumental your contribution to the world actually is. To be belittled by nothing, to rejoice in your awe. Because you – you – are amazing. Every day you do a dozen things that completely rock. Every hour a legacy of profound proportions pops out of your cerebral cortex and changes someone’s life.

You, my friend, have all it takes to be incredibly regarded. So why don’t you give yourself the credit you’re due?

In any case, in the true spirit of my 10 in ’10 posts that I started in earnest nearly 2-and-a-half months ago, I wanted to share for you my personal insights into the ‘ten’ets of success.

And then I want you to share yours with me! Don’t be frightened: this is your first step on the road to being stunning, in your own eyes…

1. Inspiration. Having the opportunity to widen your horizons, gain access to new ways of thinking, is everything to you. And so it should be – it’s the lifeblood of any creative achievement. Inspiration takes myriad forms: only the other day I joined a ‘virtual book club’ where we all listened to a smashing title from Audible.com and then discussed it at length over Skype with a very real glass of wine in hand. Stunning. open-the-mind stuff. Today I had half a dozen great ideas for future blog posts while watching my beloved Everton turn Bolton over in the English Premier League. Preparing for a Mastermind Group instead of some ruthlessly dull coding tapped an inner well of logic I’d never even knew existed. Sometimes walking works equally well: fresh air is the saviour of the terminally lethargic. What I’m saying is this: in the most unlikely, sometimes ordinary, of places, hides a divine force so mighty that it can change your world completely. Its alibi is inspiration.
2. Authority. There’s a segue from inspiration to here. With enough creative thinking you’ll quickly gain the ground to become a respected raconteur or frantically followed father of your niche. To become a thought leader takes enormous commitment and wild hours of practice, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dull. With your mind on the job and heart in the subject, you can become a master of your sphere in months. Just make sure to commit some time to it daily and you’ll be where you want to be, and more, more quickly than you could ever believe.
3. Niche. The most difficult element of all. But it’s also the simplest. When I began blogging in the first place, I was all over the place. No focus. Ford would have had a fit. Second time round I obsessed about being so specific I would quickly start to lose what limited grip I had on reality. A nerd, if you will. The secret is in finding a happy medium that pleases both you and your audience. But then again, it all reverts to definition of success. If you want to blog for fun, then do anything you want. Anything! But if you want to reach an audience exceeding 1, you need to live vicariously through your readers. See what they see, feel what they feel (who knows what their wives will say) and hang where they hang (unless you’re targeting Jesus). There are some very big issues out there. If you find one that tallies with your passions, there are dozens of reasons why you should stick to this and give your own take on the situation as a ‘pillar post’ (an article that defines, and sits right at the heart of, your blog).
4. Quality. Unless you’re this author don’t churn, don’t blog relentlessly, and don’t create turgid posts for the sake of it. Anyone anywhere would prefer great, invigorating and exciting content than a crap shoot. Use the smile strategy: will my wonderful blogfriends be delirious with joy at least once during the reading of this article? Win a Ferrari! If not, why are you writing it?
5. Consistency. Set a frequency and stick to it. If you have the strength and your efforts the potency, do it as often as possible, but never let yourself or your reader down because they’ll know. They just know when it isn’t working out, aside from their RSS readers being gloriously unfull and their minds craving caress from your finely-crafted character marathons. If you don’t have the time write a monthly post that will kill with its deadly relevancy and smart thinking. In fact, build a brand around your busy lifestyle. Chances are you’ll create an aura of respectability around you simply by showing your readers your devotion in spite of you having to sweep the floor with a broom up your arse.
6. PPPI. You might remember this from a long-ago post if you’ve been bothered enough to have messed around here in the past. It’s Passion, Pride, Patience and Integrity (or thereabouts) and it’s the beating pulp of flesh and sinew that provides kinesis to your blog’s body. Long to write about your devotion to x? Fabulously delighted to be involved in y? Tenacity coursing through your bits and pieces like F1 cars through the tunnel at Circuit de Monaco? Want to be as honest and open about your business as an accountant? You’ve got PPPI. Go to the top of the class and the apple is yours for the taking.
7. Friendship. While I consummately detest the concept of selling products consisting of more hot air than a rising balloon, there are some blog-related membership services doing the rounds right now that are wrapped around the idea that building friendship with your readers is the holy grail. These are – apart from being an utter rip-off since they’re not free – based on sound principles. Johnny B Truant was right when he said that it’s all about having a relationship with the people you write for. Not individually, amorously, or financially: but a good old fashioned bit of banter, empathy and care. Do it – you can’t go wrong.
8. Mentoring. Sharing knowledge that takes us closer to achieving a common goal is something that can never be underestimated – in power or value. If you’ve got to point 8, which is this one (I understand mathematicians aren’t hot on my trail so such signposting is all helpful, I would imagine), then you’re ripe to be sharing your genius with others. Giving Back is a priority theme of my 2010 Me Manifesto and I urge it to be one of yours.
9. Value. If everything else slips by the wayside, ensure – always – that you’re providing value. Go the extra mile to give stuff away for which others would expect payment. Knock out some amazing judgement calls that in your experience have moved mountains. Bring to the world your experiences and results. Seriously: that’s all it takes. Get your philosophies and strategies out there and you’ll be stunned how often people have never even considered what you consider may be a routine and mandatory process to success. The simplest things are often the most impressive. What are 10 things you do that, when you discovered them, made you go ‘wow’ – or at the very least, helped you see things from a different point of view? Another useful takeaway: because I spent most of my time online, I figure everyone knows all about social networking. They don’t - there are perfectly normal people out there who, yeaow, haven’t even registered at twitter.com yet! So test the water and keep on adding stuff til they pop overfortified with your inspirational ideas.
10. Happiness. And this is ultimately what it’s all about. Success begins and ends here. It’s a long street with many crossroads, but if you can keep your eye on what’s truly the most important to you – and follow your heart – then you’ll stay on the straight and narrow.

What are your strategies for success? Share yours, savour others.

To your success!

Some boffin once said specialisation is the work of an insect, not a human. I disagree. The pride and respect garnered from focusing long and hard on one subject is beyond measure.

I once played guitar, solidly, for two years. In those two years I found new and rewarding friendships, was invited to riff on stage with some amazing musicians, travelled far and wide learning the craft and generally discovered new heights of creative technique. These benefits were galvanised by a new-found ability to write songs. Writing songs helped me to refine my general writing abilities.

The knock-on effects were endless. I place incredible measure on those friendships. Music has an intense ability to link people – it’s no surprise that harmony, coined so often in relation to voices or instruments in sync, is also often referred to as a component of solving world conflict.

Rather than encourage you to get your hands on a big organ, I’m suggesting that you spend some time this weekend thinking of things you really, really enjoy. Ski jumping. Sewing decolletage. Eating pickled onions straight from the tub. Swimming with dolphins.

How do they make you feel? What have you learned from these hobbies and passions, both directly (better necklines for your own handmade dresses, longer airtime, the ability to handle that skank bitterness in your mouth) and indirectly (membership of the Dressmakers Circle, avoiding being drowned through advanced mammal handling techniques)? Where will your desires in this direction, take you next? What do others think about your fondness for these skills and crafts? What do you enjoy most about them?

I loathe to use commercial terms but I strongly recommend, right now, you work on an audit of your passions. Write down everything that springs to mind when you think of them – the emotional, the spiritual, the financial, the physical.

Armed with this information, huge swathes of storylines for blog posts will inevitably crop up. Then it’s time to make a start and jot down a few draft ideas that could be fleshed out in the future to make those posts complete.

Once you have a half dozen or more ideas, create a Google Calendar and add these posts in. Perhaps schedule posts twice a week on your passions, if you can – once a day is perhaps a touch lunatic unless you have time on your hands.

Stick to the calendar, write from the heart, and always – always - respond to people who are kind enough to comment.

Tell me what stirred your passion to such an extent that you couldn’t but tell others about it. Did it end up on a blog, or in a real-world chat?

Who REALLY killed Archie in Eastenders? Did you know this storyline’s scriptwriter came from my home town?

But the most incredible pleasure and education awaits those who spent an hour a week reviewing past successes, or even past failures, to see how they have evolved and become more incredible as the days and weeks pass by.

I was reminded of how things have changed for me when I checked out the first two episodes of the Customergency Chat podcast.

Last year I was obsessed with finding ways businesses could improve their customer service using technology. The tools we have at our disposal to refine and enhance the way we deal with our clients, are frankly amazing.

So I got together a bunch of people who were expert in their fields, and talked through their contributions to improving customer service for everyone.

The roll call was impressive – presidents of big web companies, gurus from the social media spectrum, and, well, me.

While the guests knew their stuff, my podcasting smarts were yet to transpire. Notably a reoccurrence of the same channel of sound in the first couple of minutes of episode 1. This was, of course, intentional. By creating a recording environment akin to a cave, offset against discussion of cutting-edge subjects, I was attempting a stab at irony…

Luckily the content more than compensates for the naivety of the broadcaster. Looking back, it was an incredible idea, and I certainly got some listeners.

But here’s the rub of it all. As a learning experience, reverting to past times is peerless, not to mention a huge exercise in self praise. You see how it all began, you feel how you are now, and you live through the hiatus that created and defined you as you are today.

Those episodes grandstanding nostalgia? Why, they’re still on iTunes.

Links below:

• Customergency Chat – Episode 1
• Customergency Chat – Episode 2

Today I rose, dropped 30 minutes on the streets and returned home for a warming shower and a long kiss from the bird.

What are you to learn from this?

That it’s ok to not have discovered your niche yet.

Let’s rewind to yesterday. On the agenda: creating an eNewsletter. Guys, gals, you know this: I ain’t a designer. Period. There is no way you could make me a designer. I’m as design as you are necrophile. We make terrible bedfellows, the design and I.

Fact, I was so design intolerant yesterday I was gonna outsource the frickin job just to get it out of my greasy hands.

But my heart told me NO!

My heart told me that you have to persist. I already knew the value of patience (aka its big brother tenacity) from my PPPI blogging basics lecture a couple of weeks ago. But the persistence rush was strong and logical and so I gave it a few hours until daybreak.

Boy, am I glad I did.

This morning, a totally new perpective. A durable, irresistible urge to follow the Can-Do path. So now I’m buzzed, psyched and primed to do an awesome job on this eNewsletter. Gonna brush up on a few CSS basics (if I didn’t learn them when I was creating that site recently, I never will) and bless the world with some more DT creative shenanigans.

It’s refreshing, thinking about your niche in this way.

One day it’s foggy. The mists never clear. You have a hog of a 24 hours and you think you’re never gonna crack it.

Then sunrise comes around (I never live on the right side of the country to see this and, well, frankly, it bugs the bejesus out of me) and something – from somewhere – casts a bright, white light in your direction. The bright, white light is a manifestation of enlightenment. You’ve been a carpenter in your heart all your life and suddenly your hands turn a block of wood into an armoire. You’ve always wanted to butcher but for the first time, you’ve slain a lamb with your bare hands.

I exaggerate – naturellement – but what I enumerate here is that your niche – your nicheuality – is just around the corner, if you haven’t yet acknowledged it.

Because niche really, really matters, it’s so important to plug away at what your heart is telling you to do. To crush it; to deliver it with a smile. We all have niche, whether we like it or not. Once you break the seal and discover yours you’ll be endowed with multiple sub-niches, too.

I speak with the experience of talking to legion niche miners who have nailed it and found theirs. The truth is: I haven’t, yet. But I’m living vicariously through these characters who have. And I believe them, wholeheartedly.

Live pure, live real. Live every second in absolute contentment. When you waiver, pretend, and be confident that salvation of your sentiments is just around the corner.

Now get out there and seize the day by the scruff. Your niche, and complete blogging contentment, is just around that corner…

It’s PPPI:

• Personality
• Passion
• Pride
• Integrity

You’re already exceptional. You don’t have to be a clown, or exceptional ugly (unless you want to compete with me).

What you need is focus. Focus on your passion, focus on your audience.

Read widely, understand your market. It’s practically simple. Empathise, identify with. Then relate to them, build a community by finding ways to solve their problems (or find problems they didn’t even know they had) and figure outcomes to exceed expectations and delight.

It all begins and ends with honesty. No BS. No membership marketing. No ‘BUY THIS BOOK, IT’LL BLOW YOU AWAY’. Just plain and simple delivery with passion.

Take a watch. Incidentally it’s not pain etched on my face – it’s enthusiasm. I only have one face for enthusiasm, which is the same as ‘no, no, don’t hit me in the knackers with THAT!’

Make sense? Drop me a line and tell me your essential advice for blog success!