Earlier this year, I encouraged small business owners in my area to share their tales of success with me and my community LIVE at Journey to Success 2014, a charity networking event that also happened to commemorate my biz anniversary. About a dozen stories were submitted; many will appear as articles here on YourWebChick.biz. Here is the second of three storytellers who were chosen for Journey to Success, Dr. Steven Greene of mAke the grAde:
The journey to success… it’s a process, that’s for sure. And the process has layers…heck, the layers have layers…but in the end, I learned that there is outward success and there is inward success.
I was trained as an educator; in addition to classroom teaching, I started tutoring privately. As a result, my company – mAke the grAde – emerged. My mission was simple: to help as many people as I could to learn and succeed. Initially, my journey created a great deal of success for my clients in a variety of ways. Some got better grades or simply felt better about themselves. Others were able to get into competitive colleges, experience less stress at home or achieve a greater sense of self-confidence. I was enjoying that “outward success” – the business was lucrative and my clients were all very happy. In fact, 100% of my new business was referral-based. By all measures, everything was going according to plan.
Only one thing was missing to complete my “inward success”. I felt the urge to bring my message to a larger audience. I believed that I needed to bottle all the information that I had accumulated into a package and provide it to a larger population. And so began the next stage of my journey to success: becoming an author and Internet ‘guru’. It’s interesting that topics and techniques that work very well in one platform don’t always translate well into other platforms. What I was able to explain and teach to someone in three minutes face-to-face became a challenge to explain on a web page or video. However, I was determined to make it work and thus became a student of the process. Ironically enough, I wound up using many of the skills and techniques that I had taught to others for years in order to learn how to create success in new spaces and new areas and with new populations.
It’s been a journey and it is definitely not complete. In fact, I’m not sure where the exact end will be. But I have learned that the journey and the method may end up being just as important as the success itself.
Dr. Steven Greene is an Educator, Entrepreneur and Professional Powerhouse. He has spent 20 years teaching students, professionals, and business owners how to create success and reach their goals. Dr. Greene is the author of 4 books (How to Contact Your Contacts, Building Business By Building Business Relationships, The Super Study Guide and Vocabulary: The Erudite Enigma). His simple goal: End each day better than one started it. You can connect with Dr. Greene on LinkedIn, or follow Make the Grade on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and YouTube.
