Business Busters: 10 Ways to Avoid Career Killers

Fundamentals are stressed in everything from sports to business. Focus in on basic tackling and blocking and success is much more likely to follow. Here are 10 ways to avoid career killers.

10. Set 'em and forget 'em goals. Successful people treat goals as "do or die."

9. Complex communication. You can't persuade people who don't understand. Keep it super simple.

8.  One-shot-wonder effort. If it's worth trying once, it's worth following up and persevering. Most achievements occur after several rounds of follow up.

7. Treating others how you want to be treated. Instead, deploy Tony Alessandra's Platinum Rule: Treat others how they want to be treated.

6. Trying to make brilliant decisions instead of facing the hard decisions. Don't procrastinate. If you make hard decisions now, it will lead to brilliant results later.

5. Quitting during the middle mile. You can't always see the finish line, but you must have faith that it's just around the bend.

4. Big idea immobilization. Lots of people have great ideas. Successful people know how to implement with simple, no-fail systems.

3. Fatal distractions. Focus time and budget into activities that lead to money. No, that probably does not include redecorating your office.

2. Disappearing discipline. Successful people have the discipline to do the things that others don't want to do. (think: getting up early, making cold calls, creating systems for accountability.)

1. Forgetting about what's important to others. Whether you're building a new business relationship, applying for a job, or writing a marketing message, never forget that "what's in it for them" is what matters.

Foremost disability insurance field authority Daniel C. Steenerson, CLU, ChFC, RHU, is the founder and principal of San Diego-based Disability Insurance Services--the nation's leading disability brokerage agency that's earned the distinction as the largest wholesale distributor of disability insurance products in the United States. He may be reached online at www.dansteenerson.com.