Once you’ve succeeded, you might think it’s time to relax and enjoy it. But anyone who’s a stand-out and has risen to the top of their profession knows that it takes constant planning, effort, action, and results to maintain their brand of success. Advertising your journey and transformations is also necessary to stay relevant and recognized. As the saying goes, there is no rest for the weary, and few work harder at building their career and getting results than Steve Stanulis.
Stay Busy
One key to success is effective action. But action with defined goals can be a waste of time. Defining and writing down your goals allows you to build a plan around them and break them down into step-by-step actions. These actions can be part of your daily grind, which should only require you to progress toward those goals. If the actions are too tough to complete in a single day, break them down further. This process will constantly focus on achieving your goals using your daily grind as the key tool.
How did Steve get to where he is? In addition to his main hustles, he paid attention to the people around him and took time to analyze the entertainment industry he worked in while he learned and planned his goals and the actions required to achieve them. It wasn’t an overnight process, but it took commitment, dedication, and hard work – one day at a time – to reach each new plateau. For some of us, getting a spot on the Sopranos might be our lifetime claim to fame or an impressive milestone enough; for Steve, it was just another stepping stone and part of his constant push along the path to “lasting” success. In truth, there is only one way to win long-term: never to give up and embrace change.
Continuously Evolve
With each career transformation, there was a set of unique challenges to overcome. For example, as he transformed from celebrity bodyguard to actor, director, and producer, internal growth, learning, and change were required on a strong foundation of positive thinking, self-confidence, and self-belief to enable his metamorphosis. Steve has said, “I’m not afraid to put myself out there,” demonstrating that along with a positive mindset, there needs to be a willingness to try, potentially fail, get back up, and try again. Without this self-commitment, continuous evolution won’t be possible. No one has ever emerged from the womb with mastery of something new; it takes disciplined time, practice, learning, and growth to reach that next level.
Share Your Progress
To keep your audience interested, engaged, and intrigued, it is often necessary to leverage and reinforce your current brand while also showing how you are stepping out, growing, changing, and getting to that next level of whatever you are pursuing. For example, Steve executive produced the film Monica which recently won Best Italian Film at the Venice Film Festival. What an incredible achievement! Steve is certainly proud of the cast, great production work, and recognition the film has received. There is even potential Oscar buzz due to the content and positive feedback for the film. Monica is a great example of what can be shared, and although not every project will get to this level, without effort to try and achieve such a great outcome, it wouldn’t happen.
Stanulis Films’ upcoming projects, such as Great Kills and 15 Days with Kanye, will be advertised and shared with the public when released and are certain to garner press. Sometimes timing your work is separate from sharing the outcomes of it – such as Monica’s potential Oscar territory – to allow for the right conditions. Another key to keeping everyone engaged and excited is to space things out, announce major milestones, and focus on the positive results once they are achieved. So, each of your project journey segments becomes part of the overall story of your success. Sharing one bite at a time keeps everyone hungry for that next tasty morsel of achievement.
Steve has shown us that characteristics for successful maintenance of your online presence and brand require careful thought, goal setting, focused action, and the daily grind. Converting goals into incremental actions you can take to reach them and then integrating them into your daily plan will create a constant, focused effort that is achievable, sustainable, and, most of all, effective. When focused on the right hustles, your efforts can yield incredible results. “Overnight successes” are seldom truly overnight; the right mindset, unyielding commitment to success, and hard work are what get you there.
