Clark expands on rule No. 1: “If we don’t like, understand, or believe in a product, we are going to be a disaster when we try to sell it. Great salespeople believe in their products. That is one of the secrets of their success.”
Rules two and three go hand-in-hand and emphasize the importance of surrounding yourself with like-minded, high achieving people. As author Thomas C. Corley found in his five-year study of self-made millionaires, the most successful people “make a point to limit their exposure to toxic, negative people.” Ultimately, “you are only as successful as those you frequently associate with,” he says.
Keep in mind that Munger’s three rules are most effective if you’ve chosen a career path that interests you. “I have never succeeded very much in anything in which I was not very interested,” the billionaire says. “If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart.”
Buffett agrees that passion pays off. “Being successful at almost anything means having a passion for it,” he said during a recent conversation with Bill Gates. “If you see somebody with even reasonable intelligence and a terrific passion for what they do and who can get people around them to march, even when those people can’t see over the top of the next hill, things are gonna happen.”
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