The opening chapter of Secrets of Female Entrepreneurs Exposed is by Suzi Dafnis. She is the co-founder of Pow Wow Events and through her career Suzi has worked with some of the world’s top achievers.

In her chapters she explains that one of the biggest stand out qualities of successful people, is their ability to “THINK DIFFERENTLY”. To emphasis the point she talks about a television ad produced by Apple computers in 1998. Do you remember see it?

In case you don’t I will explain it to you… The ads featured a montage of black and white videos of people such as Albert Einstein, Richard Branson, Amelia Earhart, Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, and Picasso. While this is playing some very soft and flowing music begins to play. Then a voiceover kicks in with the words of a prolific poem.

I really wanted to share the words with you, so I did some googling and it popped up. It is called “Here’s to the crazy ones”. I hope you like it…

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.

They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?

Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?

Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,

we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think

they can change the world, are the ones who do.

After putting together 15 Secret Exposed books there are certain names that pop up again and again through peoples chapters as they talk about their ‘hero’ or ‘inspiration’.

As you would probably guess at the top of that list is Richard Branson, with people crediting part of their success to his rebel spirit that echoes through everything he does.

However, another hero at the top of the list to many, especially the contributors of the books Secrets of Female Entrepreneurs Exposed and Secrets of Inspiring Women Exposed, is Anita Roddick, founder of ‘The Body Shop’.

This morning I woke to the news that at the relative young age of 64. Anita Roddick passed away but not without leaving an indelible footprint on the world.

The daughter of Italian immigrants, Roddick saw her business ‘The Body Shop’ mushroom into an empire of more than 2,000 stores serving more than 77 million customers in 51 different markets.

But more so than her business and financial success, it was Roddick’s almost cult like following and her extremely loyal customer base that was the envy of every major corporation on the planet. With her mission statement being - “To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change”, it was clear there was always a bigger purpose to everything she did.

When asked Roddick said it was her mother’s frugality during World War II that inspired her to being campaigning for environmental issues and question retail conventions.

“We reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could. The foundation of The Body Shop’s environmental activism was born out of ideas like these,” she wrote on her website. And this was all before recycling and environmental awareness was fashionable.

So for me, it was be her success off the business field that will become her real and lasting legacy. Roddick ‘walked her talk’ she campaigned against human rights abuses and was an environmental activist.

To read the full story of Anita Roddick, get a copy of ‘Business As Unusual’, which is available in all good bookstores and of course through ‘The Body Shop’.

Along with my pile of 20 other things to do today, I was asked to answer a number of questions for Growth Business magazine. I am excited to say that they are going to be writing an article on me, which will appear later in the year.

Anyway on the list of question to answer was is one What is Success?

It is a rather interesting question because you can answer it in so many ways, can’t you. Well here is my answer, I hope you like it.

Dale, what is success to you?

Of course everyone has there own definition and interpretation of success. For me success is about three words; Balance, Happiness and Impact.

Firstly, there are many different facets to a persons life. It is a waste of time being a multi-millionaire if youre unhealthy, your marriage is in taters, you have a poor relationship with your kids and you do nothing for your community really, what is the point. I believe that for a person to be truly successful they must take some time to focus on each aspect of their life. It doesn’t mean every area needs to be a perfect 10 (nobody is), however it is important to keep things balanced and in the right perspective.

Secondly, people need to focus on doing things that are going to make them happy. Don’t wait because weeks quickly become months and months quickly become years! Maybe it is a dream holiday with the family, taking up a sport or hobby or time with special friends. Remember this saying, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”

And thirdly, at the end of our lives I believe that we should be able to say I gave more to the world than I took from it. So for me, making a difference and having an impact on people is an important thing. And I really see the things that I am doing now as just the beginning.