Episode #174 – The Napoleon Hill Success Formula for Animal Health and Veterinary Professionals, Part 5
Julea: Welcome to “The Animal Health and Veterinary Employment Insider,” brought to you by The VET Recruiter. In this podcast, Animal Health Executive Recruiter and Veterinary Recruiter, Stacy Pursell, founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, provides insight and practical advice for both employers and job seekers in the Animal Health industry and Veterinary profession. The VET Recruiter’s mission is to help Animal Health and Veterinary Companies find and hire top talent, while helping animal health and veterinary professionals attain career-enhancing opportunities that increase their quality of life.
In today’s podcast episode, we’ll be talking more about the Napoleon Hill success formula for Animal Health and Veterinary professionals. Hello, Stacy, and thank you for joining us today.
Stacy: Hello, Julea. As always, I am glad to be here with you today.
Julea: For those in our listening audience who may not know, Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author, and he’s best known for his book Think and Grow Rich, which is among the 10 best-selling self-help books of all time.
So far in this podcast series, we’ve we explored two of the most important foundations for success, which are character and hard work. We’ve also addressed about “going the extra mile,” having a cheerful attitude and a positive outlook, and being persistent. Then we discussed the correct mindset that a person must have to set themselves up for success, as well as the actions they must take. Stacy, what’s the topic for this week?
Stacy: Julea, we’re going to continue with the actions that people must take to be successful, because success really is about taking action. Yes, there is certainly an important mental aspect involved, but that mental aspect is the precursor to taking action. Mentally, you must be prepared to take action, and then you must take that action.
Julea: That makes sense. Where would you like to start today Stacy?
Stacy: The Napoleon Hill quote that I would like to start with today is as follows:
“If you do a job another’s way, he or she must take the responsibility. If you do it your way, you must take the responsibility.”
This is all about taking responsibility for your work, and taking responsibility is an important step on the road to doing excellent work and doing that kind of work on a consistent basis. When you take responsibility for your work, you own that work and you feel responsible for the outcome. As a result, you instinctively want the outcome to be as positive as possible. That’s because when there’s a positive outcome for your work, there is a positive outcome for you and your career. It’s a good thing for you to take pride in your work and for the quality of your work to be a reflection of the value that you bring to the position and your employer.
In fact, this is just one of a number of quotes that I have today that deal with providing more value to an employer for one of two reasons. The first reason is to earn a promotion with your current employer. The second reason is to “sell” yourself to a potential new employer. And you must remember that a person who makes a move for a new employment opportunity almost always receives more in the way of compensation and benefits than they earned from their previous employer.
Julea: What other quotes do you have for us?
Stacy: The next quote I have is as follows:
“A little job well done is the first step toward a bigger one.”
This quote is a reminder that success is more of a process than a single event. In fact, it’s a never-ending process. In other words, great success is nothing more than a string of small successes linked together.
Julea: So is essence, people should strive to do small jobs well so that they’re given bigger jobs, and so on and so on.
Stacy: Yes, that’s right! Every assignment, no matter how small, is an opportunity for you to prove yourself to your employer. Specifically, it’s a chance to prove how valuable you are now and can be in the future. As a result, you should never think that a task or a project is not worth your time or is below you. Instead, strive to do the job with excellence. Consider it an investment in the future of your career.
And there’s another consideration, as well.
Julea: What’s that?
Stacy: Personal branding. We’ve discussed before that the best way a person can brand themselves is as reliable, dependable, and trustworthy. Before you can brand yourself as being trustworthy with big things you have to brand yourself as trustworthy in small things. As we just said, it’s a process and it’s a progression. And when it comes to building trust, there are no shortcuts. You have to build trust in small things before you can build them in big ones.
Julea: What other Napoleon Hill quotes do you have about earning a promotion?
Stacy: The next one I have is, “You don’t have to do more than you are paid for, but you can push yourself ahead mighty fast by doing it voluntarily.”
Once again, this has to do with showing initiative and “going the extra mile.” The speed with which you earn a promotion is in direct correlation to the amount of effort that you put forth in pursuing that promotion. That’s because effort is one of the things that can set a person apart from their co-workers. If you take two people who have roughly the same level of education and the same skill set, the one that puts forth the most effort will be the one that stands out. If those two people were competing for the same promotion, guess which one would get it?
Julea: The one who puts forth the most effort?
Stacy: Absolutely. And once again, personal branding is a factor here. Just like you want to brand yourself as someone who is reliable and trustworthy, you also want to brand yourself as someone who puts forth tremendous effort.
Julea: But isn’t that an invitation for a person’s boss to keep giving them more work?
Stacy: A high performer or someone who is interested in reaching their full potential or growing their career should not be afraid of more work. They recognize more work as a sign of trust from their boss, and more importantly, they view it as an opportunity to further prove themselves. And that leads us to our next quote by Napoleon Hill.
Julea: Which quote is that?
Stacy: This next quote is as follows:
“If you want a job done promptly and well, get a busy person to do it. The idle one knows too many substitutes and shortcuts.”
Julea: That does seem a bit counterintuitive. Can you elaborate on that one?
Stacy: Certainly. I know what you mean. It would seem like a good idea to give a task to someone who is not busy, as opposed to someone who is busy. But the quote stated, “If you want a job done promptly,” meaning if you want a job done quickly and efficiently, get a busy person to do it. What Napoleon Hill means with this quote is that busy people know how to maximize their time. They know how to get the most amount of work done in the shortest amount of time, and not shoddy work, either, but high-quality work.
According to Napoleon Hill, the most effective people have a sense of urgency. They set deadlines for themselves, and as we talked about in our previous podcast episode, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” In addition to deadlines, the most effective people also establish priorities within the timeframe of those deadlines.
Julea: So you’re saying that by setting deadlines and sticking to them, people are more effective because they learn to do what is most important and they figure out a way to do those tasks as quickly and as effectively as possible?
Stacy: Yes, that’s right! The key is to challenge yourself, which is one of the key ingredients of many of the things that we’ve been discussing. A person cannot reach their full potential without challenging themselves, and this includes challenging themselves in terms of the amount of work they can finish in a set amount of time and the quality of that work, as well. If a person continues to challenge themselves in these areas, then they will become better in these areas, they will achieve more and enjoy greater success, and they will move closer to achieving their full potential.
Julea: Stacy, we’re just about out of time. Do you have any more Napoleon Hill quotes for us?
Stacy: As a matter of fact, I do! And this one also deals with the quality of a person’s work. It goes like this:
“Do your job precisely as if you were your own boss, and sooner or later you will be.”
This speaks to the quality of the work a person does on a daily basis, because as we’ve discussed, a person’s work is evaluated on two main attributes: the quantity of work they complete and the quality of that work. This means that a professional should think about how their boss would want them to complete their work and then strive to complete it in that fashion. According to Napoleon Hill, if you complete your work that way and you do it in a consistent fashion, then sooner or later, you will be your own boss.
Julea: Meaning that you will be running your own business or own your own business?
Stacy: Yes, or simply that you will get a promotion and you’ll have your boss’s job. Or it could be both of those scenarios eventually. They key is to think like your boss, especially in regards to the work that you do—both the quantity and quality of that work—and good things will happen.
Julea: Stacy, is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up today’s podcast episode?
Stacy: Yes, one more thing. I believe our discussion of the advice and wisdom of Napoleon Hill these past few weeks really underscores the importance of personal branding. As you might imagine, personal branding wasn’t even a catchphrase early in the 20th century, but it still existed as a concept. You can see how it was woven through everything that we’ve been talking about. If there’s one thing that I want our listeners to take away from our discussion of Napoleon Hill, it’s that personal branding has a tremendous influence on the amount of success that a person enjoys during their career—or the lack of success they enjoy. I hope that our listeners take it seriously and that they strive to provide the most positive experience possible with person they come into contact with.
Julea: Thank you, Stacy, and thank you so much for all of this great information and wisdom from Napoleon Hill.
Stacy: It has been my pleasure Julea, and I look forward to our next episode of the Animal Health and Veterinary Employment Insider!
Julea: That’s all for today’s show. For Stacy Pursell and everyone at The VET Recruiter, thank for your listening and we invite you to join us next time when we address more employment issues in the Animal Health industry and Veterinary profession. We hope that you’ll join us then!