How To Take Seven Very Simple Steps To Success

With A Lifetime Guarantee! Plus A Special Free Bonus! It's Not Rocket Science!

Everybody wants success, you, me, everybody. However, not everybody knows how to get it. Those that do achieve lasting success follow the following seven steps, whether it is Volkswagen or Mc Donald’s, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or Heinz baked beans.

We could dis-assemble, or reverse engineer if you like, any success story you like and what we will find is an adherence to these seven steps. And if it works for those people, then there is no reason on earth why it won’t work for you.

1.Core values

What are your core values? Whatever they are, write them down.

For example, if it’s writing how about the following:

A high-quality product. In other words, great content, something that offers the reader something of value. Like this article, I am offering you seven things which you can put to good use in your quest for success.

Delivering on your promise. I am doing that right here and now. I am giving you what I promised I would give you in the headline above. You are not going to be left feeling that you have been short changed.

Long lasting good advice. If you stick to these seven steps they will serve you well, ad infinitum. This is a road map to success that will never wear thin. Over many decades These seven steps have been tried and tested and are trusted the world over in just about every single field of endeavour. That is not going to change overnight, make that ever.

2.USP’s, or Unique Selling Points.

Keep this to a short list of three things, do not bombard your target audience with information overload. How about…

Authentic and authoritative (I have been in advertising, marketing, sales and public relations, working on major brands for advertising agencies like McCann Erickson, and big corporations like McDonald's, since 1984. I even once worked for the NASA space Agency!

Sound and useful (These are all highly successful methods used by every single company or business that has ever been successful).

Tried and trusted (See above).

I could change that at some point depending on how things pan out. But it’s a good starting point.

3.Production values

What I am talking about here is presentation. How you use the tools Illumination have provided you within their great editor to enhance the look of your article. The use of italics, bold and font, for example, to catch attention or emphasise a point you want to get across in your text.

I am also talking about the visual content, like the photographs you use(which I cannot stress enough, must be captioned citing the photographer’s name, Joe Bloggs, along with where you got his photograph from, Unsplash).

Your big photo at the top should scream out

“ HEY, LOOK AT THIS! THIS IS BEST ARTICLE YOU ARE GOING TO SEE ALL DAY LONG."

Your photograph, and headline/sub-heading, has to entice the viewer to explore further, to discover, what you have got to offer. Try to make your visual and literal offering something that will appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The wider the appeal, the greater the chances of success. Hopefully, I have done just that with my own headline and sub-head and photo, etc at the top of this article.

4.Branding.

Here I am talking about the branding of you as a writer as well as the branding of your writing.

We have a great writer here on Medium, Jim McAulay🍁 who has done a superb job of branding. His profile photograph looks fun. His description of himself is a nice, complementary, affirmation that he is a fun guy, he says his favourite things are eating his family and not using commas. And fun is what you get with Jim. He writes a nice article and at the end, he always finishes it off with a little joke. I try to read a Jim McAulay at the start of every day, just so I can start the day with an insight and a chuckle. Perfect.

And to balance it out, although it is not recommended here on Illumination for technical reasons, Jim has a Canadian maple leaf symbol attached to his profile. It is a symbol that makes me feel good. I don’t know if Jim is Canadian or if he lives in Canada, all I know is that it calls out to me that here is where I will find quality content. The Canadians strike me as really honest to goodness, decent folk who have something very worthwhile to say. I'm in.

Another writer who uses a logo is Rebecca Stevens A. 🦋 .She has a beautiful blue butterfly. That is what Rebecca and her writings are, things of beauty to behold, to read, to enjoy and to learn.

In both cases, the writers have chosen attractive, universal symbols of goodness. And if you read their writings you will find that they both deliver in spades. What they have done is reach out to your subconscious feelings about Canada and butterflies. Cognitive neuro-transmitters are doing all the work of joining up the dots, of making all the right connections.

And to prove that I not only talk to myself (and before I get carried off to a padded cell for doing so) I also listen to myself. I have now come up with something I can use to promote myself.

That is what I am, a basket of juicy green and red apples which are good for you! A Liam Ireland A Day Helps You Work Rest and Play!

5.Personality. Each and every one of us has our very own unique personality. It is up to you to get that across. If you read Jim McAulay or Rebecca Stevens who I mentioned above you'll see what I mean. Writer Britni Pepper is another person who bristles with personality. I have never met a single one of these writers, but I feel like I have known them all my life as really great friends.

6.A message.

A mission statement if you like. Something that sums you or you’re writing up in one sentence. Some might call it a slogan.

In my own case my profile says ‘Looking for lighting in a bottle as a reader and as a writer. In Britni’s case, I read in one of her articles the perfect message.

Looking to make the world a better place.

It is what she does, as a writer and as a person. You could not ask for more. And of course, she delivers by the bucketload.

And finally, the all-important, one-word quality we are all looking for in others and try to present in ourselves,

7.Desirability. This is the plain and simple quality that makes us all think or say.....

“ I want it, and I want it now!”

It is something we not only want, but we want to keep it forever. The entire advertising industry is constantly seeking to enhance what they have to offer with desirability.

Near my house, there is a small drink vending machine. My wife and I pass it every single day almost. I recently commented on how desirable those tins and bottles looked. I just wanted to buy one, even if I didn’t actually need a drink. My wife replied…..

“ Yeah, looks great, tastes shit.”

She didn’t mean it, she just said it as a joke. In fact, those thirst quenching drinks are really satisfying on a hot summer's day.

However, after laughing out loud for a minute or two, I thought even if what you have got to sell is not that good, you can at least make it look like it is something you desperately want or need. The point is, they have created desirability, regardless of whether or not the drink delivers.

The Bonus Free Offer !

Here is that special free bonus I promised you, a little history lesson and a piece of popular cultural knowledge. I always deliver on a promise, it's one of my core values.

This additional section sums up nicely how desire works. If you have ever heard of Pavlov’s Dogs, but you are not too certain what it was all about….what Pavlov did was a series of experiments whereby he was able to produce desirability. First, every time he fed the dogs he rang a bell.

The dogs then came to associate the sound of the bell with juicy mouth watering food. Then, Pavlov rang the bell and gave no food. But those dogs were still salivating with desire for some of that juicy, tender chunks of meat.

Pavlov had discovered how to trigger desire and a multi trillion dollar industry was born and has never looked back, except to say, thanks Pavlov.

This element of desire not only helped to found consumerism, but also popped up in popular culture. In the film Jaws, every time Steven Spielberg wanted to make the audience nervous and fearful with expectation, he had a bell attached to a buoy sound off. It made you think that the ferocious shark was nearby and was about to strike some poor swimmer. It was going to happen any second now. It was imminent.

Now, if all I have said above is true, then by rights this article should get curated and go viral. If it doesn't, then perhaps I ought to take up fly fishing again on the idyllic grassy river bank. In other words do sweet bugger all, because as we all know, fishing simply legitimises doing nothing. And there is absolutely nothing bad or wrong with with doing nothing.

Now Think !

So, think about what you can do in following the above seven steps to make your success an imminent, foregone conclusion.

I sincerely hope you have learned a little about how you can set about becoming successful in your writing and indeed in any field of endeavour where you seek it. At the very least, I hope you have enjoyed reading this article.

Please feel free to reach out to me with any observations of your own. I am always open to new ideas. I am not quite the 'Daft Old Sod' my own lovely four children seem to think I am. Not yet anyway. Perhaps, like Jim McAulay, I ought to eat them, though due to my education, my pedantic personality and my role as an editor, I am duty bound to keep the commas. And this comma is coming to a full stop. Well, not quite finished yet......

The Bargain Of The Century !

Almost my last word, I have given you somethings of value to take away from this read. Things that you can apply to your endeavours in your search for success.

And I have to tell you that you got this one article full of great advice for not a penny more than the monthly subscription to Medium!

If a private client had asked me to write this, with the beautiful photographs included, you'd be looking at anything up to 500 dollars! In other words it's for next to nothing!

For just the price of a coffee you have an action plan to plot your way to success. And then you have all that other wonderful Medium and Illumination content to read. I'd call that the bargain of the century.

So, good luck with your endeavours and just stick at it, and never, ever give up in pursuing your dreams of success. You will get there, it is just a matter of a good action plan and time.

Time for a laugh !

Apples are great....you can eat them raw, make apple cider, apple tart, you can even play duck apples with them. It's like all the other fruits aren't even trying.

Thanks to Jim McAulay for the inspiration for the joke at the end.