The Triangle of Success: Confidence, Communication and Commerce

In this episode, I discuss the three critical determinants of success, which I refer to as the 'Triangle of Success'. Emphasizing the need to define success for oneself, I explain that success begins with discovering one's purpose, maximizing potential, and being productive. I highlight the importance of three skills to achieve these determinants: confidence, communication, and commerce. By developing these skills, individuals can fulfill their purpose, maximize their potential, and make a significant impact. The episode encourages listeners to grow their confidence, enhance communication skills, and embrace the act of selling their value.

00:00 Introduction to the Triangle of Success
00:31 Defining Success: What Does It Mean to You?
03:17 Purpose: The First Determinant of Success
05:06 Potential: The Second Determinant of Success
07:18 Productivity: The Third Determinant of Success
08:33 Confidence: The First Skill in the Triangle of Success
13:07 Communication: The Second Skill in the Triangle of Success
17:02 Commerce: The Third Skill in the Triangle of Success
19:37 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

Dr Uche Okere: 0:00

Everybody wants to be successful, and there is no shortage of advice on how to achieve success in any area of life that you want to achieve success in. But I have found that there are three critical determinants of success, no matter what area of life you want to achieve success. These three things will determine the extent to which you achieve success. And this is what I call my triangle of success. And I want to share Those three things with you today. But before we begin to talk about these three things, let's begin by asking ourselves what success is. What is success to you as an individual? Have you sat down to ask yourself what success is to you? What does success mean to you? You see, because it's important that you define success for yourself, because If you do not have a working definition of success, then how would you know how to get there? If you do not have a destination, how would you know what path leads to that destination? Because not every path leads everywhere. You need to have a certain destination, a certain definition of success for yourself. That is how you will know what choices to make, what decisions to make. Who to have with you on your journey so that you can arrive at that place that you have defined as success. But it's also important because if you do not have a definition and a working definition of success, how will you know when you get there? How will you know when to stop and celebrate? How will you know that you're achieving the things that you set out to achieve? So it's important that you define success for yourself. So can you sit down and ask yourself what success means to you? Because for some people, success means the bank account balance, how much is left in the bank account. That is what determines success for them and that's why they will do any and everything to make sure that that bank account balance keeps increasing irrespective of who is hurt, irrespective of what they lose, irrespective of what happens to their integrity and their name. So, what is success to you? For some people, success is the number of degrees they have. So the number of letters after their name, what is success to you? Have you sat down to determine what success is to you? In addition to defining what success is to you, who defines success for you? Because that person better be trustworthy. That person better be somebody that you can rely upon and you can really bank on. You can almost stake your life on their word because we're all trying to achieve success. Whoever defines success for you determines the direction your life travels in. They determine the direction your life travels in because every day we wake up and one word that determines our actions is success. You're spending your life, your precious life, trying to achieve success. So the person who defines it for you is really, really important. I have a working definition of success for myself. I have a definition of success for myself. And there are there things that define success for me. Number one is purpose. Purpose defines success for me. What do I mean by that? I mean that until a person or a thing does the thing it was designed to do, the thing it is supposed to do, then it is not successful. Think about it. Think about it. A car that was designed to transport people from location A to location B. No matter what else that car does, it can be the best displayed car in a showroom. It can be converted into anything. Think about it, whatever beautiful things it's converted to, an artifact, a thing of beauty and class, until it does what its manufacturer designed it to do, that car cannot be said to be a success. Underlining this belief that purpose defines success is the fact that you have a purpose. It's the fact that I have a purpose. It's the belief that I have a purpose. And as a Jesus follower, that is where I get that conviction from. That is where I get that idea from. That principle comes from my study of the Word of God. That every human being has value. You were created in the image of God that you're not just here to pass time, but God sent you here on assignment, gave you a purpose that there are things that will not happen. Good things that will not happen in this world, if you were not present. There are things that only you can contribute in a way that you alone can contribute it. So what are the things that determine your purpose? So success therefore begins with the discovery of purpose. Answering the question, why am I here? Why was I born? What did you send me here to do God? So that's number one determinant of success for me. Number two determinant of success for me is potential. Potential is the seed that you carry. Your potential are the things that you're capable of doing. And there are things that God has put inside of you. When God created you for a purpose, all the abilities that you need to fulfill that purpose were put in you in potential form. They were putting you in seed form. And your job and my job and my responsibility is to go through life, developing those potentials, because the process of developing them prepares me to be the person that can manage the success when I eventually get the success. So, success, therefore, is determined by the extent to which I discover those potentials. I develop them. I turn them from potential into actual results. It was Dr. Myles Monroe who said that the richest places in the world are not the oil fields of Saudi Arabia or the gold mines of South Africa, but they are somewhere just down the road from where you live. Somewhere just down the road from where I live, in fact in my case just behind the estate where I live is a burial ground is a cemetery is a place where people are buried when they come to the end of their lives. Dr. Myles Monroe said those places are the richest places in the world because, in there are buried songs that were never written, books that were never written. Speeches that were never given. Inventions that were never made. People had these things in potential form within them, but they never developed them. And they were sent to their grave with those things. Apostle Paul in the Bible came to the end of his life and he said, I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have ran the race. Now, he was saying, I've done everything I could have done. I'm dying empty. That for me is success. I want to get to the end of my life and have no regrets. Not because I succeeded in everything I did, but because I tried to do everything I was convinced I had to do to fulfill my purpose. That is how I want to die. That's how I live my life. So that's another determinant of success for me, the extent to which I maximize my potential. And the third determinant of success for me is productivity. So how much I produce, this is tied to my potential and it's tied to impact because my potential, my purpose is to make a difference in people's lives. My purpose is tied to the impact I make on people and that is measured by productivity. We are not designed to just be consumers in the world. No, we're designed to be contributors, to be producers because we're designed, we're made in the image of God and God by nature is a creator. In the beginning, God created, we are in his image as creators. So we too are supposed to create, to make things that will have a difference in people's lives. So how much am I being productive and impacting on people's lives? These are the three things that determine success for me. These are the things I wake up every day and I ask myself. So what degree today am I going to fulfill purpose to what degree today? Am I going to use a bit more of the potential that God has put inside of me to fulfill my purpose and to be productive in making a difference in people's lives. So how do I achieve these three things? What are these three skills? If you like in my triangle of success, that determines that a person achieves success. Let's go. As I share these three things with you, number one, I believe is confidence. Confidence, I believe is the very first critical determining factor in how far a person goes in achieving success. Confidence is an internal thing. Yes, it manifests externally, but it begins from within. It's a feeling of assurance. It's a knowing that something is going to happen as it pertains to an individual, it's the assurance that I am able to do the thing that I am about to do. An area where people struggle with confidence a lot is with speaking, is with public speaking. So when an opportunity comes to stand up and speak in front of a group of people, confidence means knowing that I can stand up and I can say the things I need to say, say it excellently in a way that people will understand what I am saying and I would have communicated my message. That is confidence. It's an assurance. It's a feeling of assurance that you're able to do the thing that you want to do. It's a feeling. That means it's an internal thing. It's a mindset thing. And that's where all success begins from. All success begins from the inside. All success begins as a mindset thing. Jesus said, A good man out of the good treasures of his heart brings out good things. The translation of the Bible says he flings out. Good things. It's an involuntary action. It's not a thing that he intentionally decides to do because a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. An apple tree cannot bear orange fruits. A person who is not confident on the inside cannot display confidence on the outside. So to be a confident person means being a person who knows. And they can do the thing that they are supposed to do. That means, therefore, that if I want to be a more confident person, I have to be a person who convinces myself that I can do the things that I have said I will do. How to do that is to begin by doing the little things that I have said I will do. Keeping my word to myself is a starting point of building confidence. Keeping my word to myself. When I promise myself I'm going to read a book, I should finish that book. When I promise myself I'm going to take a course, I should take that course and complete it. When I promise myself I'm going to help somebody, I should do the thing that I have said I will do. Because that way, when the big responsibilities or challenges come and I'm about to do the thing that I have been asked to do, I can depend and rely on the fact that I have done the thing that I said I will do in the past. Therefore, I will be able to do the thing that I am saying I will do in the future. When it comes to confidence, you have to realize that everybody struggles with one level of a lack of confidence or another. There is nobody that is born with a hundred percent confidence. We all have our challenges and struggles with confidence. And what this means is that when you are trying to do something and you're scared of doing those things, and it feels like you're stepping out of your comfort zone that you should go ahead and do it because that is how you develop confidence by stepping out of your comfort zone, by doing the things that feel like you cannot do them. Because when you've done them the first time, the next time you want to do them, It will feel less scary. You will be more confident to do those things the second time you are trying to do them. So do you have a desire to start a business? Do you have a desire to begin to put yourself out there with your message on YouTube, on social media, on Facebook? Start doing it. It's scary. Yes. I know you will get some negative comments. Yes. Unfortunately, there are people like that in the world. They will have a go at you, even if they don't know who you are, but you know who you are. There are people who know who you are. They know you're a person of integrity. They know you are an honest person and you know your intentions. So don't allow the opinions and views of people who do not know who you are rob you of the impacts that you can make in people's lives with the message that God has put on your heart. So step out, begin to do the thing that you can do, the thing that you feel like you can do. Do it scared because next time it won't be as scary as it was the first time. That is how you build confidence. And that is how you achieve success. Number two, critical determinants of success is communication. The ability to pass on information and have the recipients of the information, receive the information and hear what you intended to say. I've heard people say, Oh, please don't hear what I am not saying, because that happens. Sometimes we say something, but people hear what we are not saying. I like to take responsibility when people misunderstand me. I like to force myself to be a better communicator, to give people no choice, give people no option, but to actually receive the actual information that I am presenting in the way that I am presenting it. Communication skills are critical to success for a number of reasons. Number one, because all of your success will happen in the context of other human beings. All, without exception, all of your success will happen in the context of other human beings. And because that is the case, then you will need to communicate with them in one way or another. Another reason why your communication skills are critical to your success is that no matter how skillful you are, you will need your communication skills to pass on, your skills and the knowledge that you have acquired. No matter how skillful you are, your communication skills will limit the expression of your skills. You have to be a person who communicates excellently. Communication depends a lot on confidence. You have to be confident and be willing to put yourself out there and begin to communicate. It's one thing to be confident to communicate, but it's another thing to have something to say. You will be a better communicator when you have something to say, when you have something of value to give when you have something that is worth listening to. So put yourself out there, begin to put the things that you have to say out there. as with confidence, you will not be perfect when you start. No, you will not be. And you should not expect yourself to be perfect. Even when you start, no matter how long any of us has been communicating, we will not be perfect. I began to communicate publicly quite early. I was born in Nigeria. I grew up in Nigeria, getting opportunities to speak in church and in meetings and conferences and things like that. So at 27, I moved to England and I had the opportunity to continue speaking. One of those Sundays I was asked to bring the sermon in the local church where I was attending and I did that with all my passion, all the vigor that I had and as far as I was concerned, I had communicated excellently. I had said the things that I needed to say very, very well, but at the end of the service, this retired Reverend gentleman walks up to me, shakes my hand and says Uche, that was a very, very good sermon. But it was a very good sermon wasted because I could only make out 25 percent of everything you said. You were speaking too fast. Now it dawned on me. Nobody had said that to me before, but it dawned on me that that was a weakness in my communication. To be better communicators, we have to know the areas that we have to improve. When I received that feedback, I began to work on it. I'm not there yet. Perhaps if you listen to some of my listen to my podcast or listen to what some of my videos or stumbling into some of the things I put out, you might still find me at some point racing away with my words because when I get excited, I tend to do just that. But it's something I'm conscious of and I intend to continuously improve upon. What are the areas of your spoken communication that you're working on improving? What are the areas of your written communication that you're working on improving? You need to know them. That's the only way that you can improve. Practice, practice, practice your communication skills. Don't stay stuck at the level that you are. Finally. The third critical determinant of success that I see is commerce. Now I could have used selling here, but I wanted to use three C's because that's one of the things I try to do to be a better communicator. I try to use alliterations. I try to present information in threes. So commerce, number one, confidence, number two, communication, number three, commerce, what do I mean by commerce? Very simply, it's the ability to sell. You have to be able. To sell at every point in time, you are either being sold to, or you are selling without exception at every point in time, you are either being sold to, or you are selling. If you want to fulfill your purpose, if you want to make a difference in people's lives, you have to get to the point where you are intentionally selling your own views, selling your own opinion, presenting them. Now you need confidence to do that. You need to be confident in the value of what you have. You need communication skills to do that. You need to be able to convince people and bring them over to your side to see the value of the thing, of the information, of your viewpoints that you have to bring along. But see, I find that there are many people who struggle with selling, actually selling, asking for money in exchange for the value that they provide. I used to have that challenge because I grew up in an environment where selling was something we had to do. My mom had to sell because we were poor. We didn't have enough. So I saw selling as something that poor people did as people who were something which people who were desperate did. And then I also saw selling as something which people who were insincere did because they were trying to take things off poor people. They were trying to take things off people. But I've grown to learn that selling is actually doing something for people. If you have something of value that people need, then you will be doing them a great favor if you are selling that thing to them, if you make that thing available to them for a fee because that's the way that you can continue to serve them at a high level. That's the way that you can continue to serve them sustainably and ensure that other people also have access to that thing that you are selling. So do you have a problem with selling? You would have to sell at one point or another. When you attend a job interview, you're selling. You would have to sell at one point to another. So what are your mindsets about selling? You will need to change your mindset about selling and be comfortable to sell. Be comfortable to ask for a financial reward for the value that you provide. Those who achieve true success in life, those who fulfill their purpose, maximize their potential and reach high levels of productivity by making an impact in people's life are people who master confidence, are people who master communication, and they are people who master Commerce. So that's my encouragement and challenge to you today that you go out there, grow your confidence, develop your communication skills and learn to sell so that you will truly be a successful person who fulfills God's purpose for their lives, who maximizes their potential and who is as productive as they can be. God bless you. Bye bye.