Talent, ambition, vision, sacrifice, stick-to-itiveness and resilience are all major qualities I'm sure you'd agree, but I've simply lost count of TOO many absolutely brilliant, creative and serious entrepreneurs who are still wallowing in mediocrity they sought for so long to rise above. In most cases, it's heartbreaking.

It really got me thinking about what could possibly be ONE defining trait or quality of those we admire in our quest to be successful. Here's one conclusion I came to.

I've never met an individual who I considered to be truly successful on personal and business level who wasn't filled with good feelings about themselves! The kind of people who can look in mirror and say "I like you a lot"! More than that, they can exclaim "I love you"!

Sound corny? If you think so, consider this question before you click on to something else:

In business, how could you possibly feel good about what you are doing if you didn't feel good about person doing it?

Yes, I'm talking about psycho-cliche of self-esteem. The kind we hear about every day on talk shows, read about in countless self-help and parenting books, and, gratefully see becoming a long-overdue part of education system in our schools. Feeling not only good, but great about oneself is arguably most important success-building characteristic a person can possess!

Think about this. Most of us were NOT raised when concept of self-esteem was a part of our "fibre", as it is now. Some of us may have been fortunate to have come from families that fortified fact that "I am good", "I am special" and "I like and love ME!" However, most of us were nutured without learning, and having instilled deep within us, belief that "I deserve all good things in world I desire". That built-in sense of confidence allows us to grow (and keep growing) in order to be able to have ALL blessings that life is just waiting to bestow upon us. In other words, SUCCESS!

I thoroughly enjoyed studying world religions in my last year of high school, when it became very clear to me that every "faith" has concept of self-esteem as a cornerstone of it's beliefs. The Bible has as one of it's injunctions: "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself".

But doesn't this beg question, "How could you Love Your Neighbor, or anything else for that matter, if You CAN'T Love Yourself?" An unfortunate reality that translates into business ie: "If you are not able to love and respect yourself, then how can you expect others to even just respect (and trust) you?" And isn't respect and trust a cornerstone of successful businesses and entrepreneurs?

Beware, any would-be restaurant franchisers out there, this article is published and I had idea first!:-) And so it should be with your marketing materials. Laughter and smiling, like music, are among few universal languages where we all share same dialect. Humor equals warmth and friendliness. Which equates to kind of person your prospects will want to do business with.

I'm not suggesting that every piece of promo should produce gut-wrenching hysterical laughter but subtle injections of personable humor can score big points with would-be customers. Let me cite a few examples. Jim Wilson of VirtualPromote effectively injects his personality into lead page of his website (http://www.virtualpromote.com/promotea.html ). This is a long tutorial that eloquently expouses 'there-are-no-experts' tactics of website promotion. Could get boring pretty quickly, but not with Jim. There is a short prologue, then an introduction and just where a reader's attention may begin to wonder, Jim puts forth these two paragraphs:

"The final reality to materialize was: I was hooked. This Internet publishing stuff is addicting. Something new to learn every hour. Sleep became a thing of past. My phone is always tied up and my family gave up on my attending things like movies and meals.

If all this sounds familiar: you are an addict. Especially if you are reading this at 2:00 A.M. But there is hope. You can get traffic. You can debug cgi and HTML. Java can be learned. Forms really do work, eventually. You can add more phone lines. Sorry, can't help with family problems. Let me know if you figure that one out."