The good news is that leaders are not born, they're made. The list below is designed so you can quickly learn from the best leaders of our time and model their success. You may want to print out this list and highlight the areas you want to work on. If you are taking the time to read this now, you are demonstrating an important quality that tells me you are ready for explosive success. When you are aware of your own strategy for success and have a plan you are dedicated to following, you will gain incredible momentum, making you unstoppable.

Get ready to “kick it up a notch” and achieve the results reserved only for the true business leaders and achievers. Model these 10 qualities giving 110 percent, put them into practice consistently and you can totally transform your business life.

1. Ambition and drive - Giving you the energy you need to hurdle obstacles and tackle the seemingly impossible tasks. Unstoppable determination bringing you through the rough times when all hope seems lost. Perseverance by holding onto the vision/mission/core values of your business life. Giving you the energy to evaluate each situation in an objective manner, always pulling you in the right direction.

2. Disciplined work ethic and high standards for quality - This includes traits such as honesty, integrity and a concern for people. When you put your all into everything you do with an emphasis on quality, you will essentially be putting your personal seal of excellence on your products or services. In your pursuit of obtaining quality, focus on being effective. This means you are doing the right things, and therefore focusing your energy in the right direction. Eighty percent of your time should be focused on running the business instead of allowing the business to run you.

3. Courage and action orientation - When you are optimistic enough to take risks that others are unwilling to take, this will set you up for huge returns. Be sure you evaluate all aspects of the situation and take educated risks, but take the risks. If it did not take courage, then everyone would be doing it. Courage is not a feeling; it is a decision. True courage is pushing forward even though you may have experienced a setback or a failure the last time you tried something new or different. If you are not afraid of failing, you will possess the ability to continually take risks until one of them turns into your pot of gold.

4. Self-confidence - This is having the right attitude in every aspect of your business and life. This probably is the one trait that is fundamental and critical for long term success. It allows you to adhere to the fulfillment of your goals every minute of the day because you are confident that you will obtain the results you seek. Evidence of a truly positive and self-confident person is seen in personal responsibility. Blaming is not in a self-confident person's vocabulary. Positive people are proactive in everything they undertake. They don't blame the economy, bad luck, a bad relationship, the weather, unlucky situations, the market or their employees. Proactive people figure out how they can personally change, instead of focusing their energy on where others should change. People with a positive outlook on life and business learn from every situation and experience - both the good and the bad. They figure out ways to avoid poor results in the future and decide on ways to not repeat a negative situation.

5. True leadership - This is the ability to make decisions, regardless of popular opinion in accordance with your business vision, while inspiring those around you to follow through on the direction you set in motion. Some call this delegation; I prefer to call it inspiration. Think about it. Do you like to be delegated to or inspired? The leaders who are able to make sound decisions at rapid speed are those who know what the end result looks like. They have seen the finish line and know the excitement of crossing it first. The best leaders are those who come up beside their team members wherever they are, teach those people how they can cross the finish line and experience the same joy and excitement.

6. A creative mind - The ability to think on one´s feet is critical if you are committed to a high level of success. Controlled flexibility is a key component to success. There must be structure and systems in place right from the start in order to create a self-sustaining operation and to ensure you are not simply changing for change's sake. Effective change is evidenced when you regularly are evaluating and adapting your business plan and goals to meet your vision/mission/core values that have been set from the beginning. This success habit assumes there is a business plan in place, and that you are following what has been laid out in the plan.

7. A complete understanding of your gifts, strengths, talents and behavioral style - When you know yourself better than anyone else, you will be able to control the situations you allow yourself to be involved in. When you know others better than they know themselves, you will be able to take the right approach when working with them. This will give you the advantage, because you have accelerated your knowledge and now have the edge you need to succeed in all your business transactions. If someone else knows you better than you know yourself, you continually will find yourself in a mess, wondering how you got there.

8. The sincere desire to understand and to help people - When we find ways to help enough other, people win. Discover ways to give other people what they are seeking in an entertaining style and you will set yourself apart from your competition. Positive relationships in all areas of your life will accelerate your business success. In this day and age, “soft skills” often are more important than technical skills, especially for business owners. If you get it right in the small areas of your life, you´ll get it right on a larger scale as well. The results you experience in your personal life will be multiplied in your business life, whether positive or negative.

9. Kick it up a notch - Gain and maintain a positively high level of belief for everything that is possible. Set lofty goals and expand your personal vision for what it possible. The leaders who set and evaluate their goals regularly are the ones who achieve more than 92 percent of the population combined! Once a goal is obtained, high achievers raise the bar incrementally again and again. They are not afraid of failure because failure for the common person is just a learning experience for an achiever. Achievers continually set goals despite the uncertainty of whether it looks at the time like they can accomplish the goal or not.

10. Giving back - The companies that give to worthwhile charities or causes and contribute to their community will be the ones who experience an over-abundance of blessings in their business - often from unexpected sources. This is a fundamental law of finance that has been proven time after time. These are the people who attract clients to them instead of always trying to chase down the clients.
ND