Keys to success #1: Focus on your strengths

You know yourself best. What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?

My strengths are in sales, marketing, people skills, creating ideas (not always good ones mind you!).

My weaknesses were dealing with regulatory red tape in business, attention to detail with regard finances, managing the cash flow and tax implications of business.

EVERYONE has strengths. The question is do they recognise them as strengths?

If you cannot come up with any strengths of your own, then stop right here, close your eyes and think of a time you felt like a "winner" and somehow managed to beat the odds - whether it was competing against others to get a job, public speaking, winning an argument... anything that made you feel like you did a good job or achieved something. Whatever you did, took strength. Appreciate that fact, and recognise that strength within you. You will have more strengths than you realise, they just haven't been unleased yet!

In business and life in general, you need to focus on your strengths and let someone else handle the things that bog you down.

Once I let go of the admin and finances of the business, and focussed on what I did best (which was sales and marketing), the company's sales and profits boomed. Nobody told me this, I had to learn the hard way, but you don't need to.

Delegating my weaknesses to someone that could step up and do it for me was a difficult but necessary key to the success of my company.

My business was my baby and I wanted to do everything in it - how dumb was that?! It probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars because I put off delegating it for far too long.

Go with your strengths, but be sure to oversee the things that bogged you down and understand them. You don't have to do the work on these things, but you must understand what they are about so you can spot a problem early, or take advantage of an opportunity early as well. It's your venture and/or business, so you are ultimately responsible for it's performance (revenues, cash flow etc) and meeting any regulatory requirements (taxes, salaries etc).

Remember, you are the money making "machine".

Your job is to create the revenue, and that should be your focus.

Once your venture has created profits, you need to invest them wisely for the mid and long term. I purchasd properties with the view of eventually retiring on the passive rental income.

My absolute focus was on making money today.

I lived and breathed sales revenue and profit margins. This was my full-time "job".

I then took the profits, and invested in income generating properties that we just leased out to tenants - which generated even more income on "autopilot". This way, I did not have to watch my investments all the time, in fact, I have prooperties that I have never walked into other than the day I inspected it prior to purchase.

I have a property manager look after them (another form of delegation) so I could stay focussed on what made money - my business.

Having done this for 20 years or so, I am amazed how things build up over time. The capital appreciation and the income just builds in autopilot mode.

Now don't misunderstand... property was something I was comfortable with. You may be more comfortable with paper assets (stocks, bonds, ETF's etc) or even commodities such as gold, silver, oil, gas etc. Go with whatever is comfortable to you. Just be sure to invest your profits for tomorrow and let them compound over time. Compounding is a very powerful wealth creation tool.

Just focus on your strengths and delegate your no-so-strong skills to others. This is the way to maximise your strengths and time to create the wealth you're looking for.

Lessons:

• Focus on your strengths and delegate the stuff you cannot do, or cannot do well.

• Focus of uncovering as many of your strengths as you can. You may be surprised as to what you find!

• Focus on revenues, profit and cashflow

• Invest your excess profits in income generating investments that will run in "autopilot".

• Use time to compound the growth of your investments.