Read local paper. Read Wall Street Journal. Call Trading. Pull S&P Sheets of favorite stocks. Research. Call analyst. Check research from another firm. Re-read local paper. Check horoscope. Read prospectus. Arrange office. Develop prospect list. Re-organize desk. Raise desk chair. Alphabetize prospectuses. Pick up your children. Pick up any child. Pick up wife or husband. Pick up significant other. Pick up something. Buy a burial plot. Discuss marketing strategy with another broker. Ask the manager for better list to call. Call different companies for a better list of names. Talk to people. Cold call. Explain, in detail, to sales assistant how your limited success is his/her fault. Go to stationery store for supplies. Look at computers. Learn more about product. Suggest a better type of coffee to your branch manager. Suggest to the branch manager ways he might better run the office. Practice marketing letter. Talk to the wholesaler. Go to lunch with the wholesaler. Take an afternoon off at movie theater to think about marketing plan. Complain to other brokers. Empty wastebasket. Cancel out of "planning makes a difference" meeting. Explain to new brokers what is wrong with the firm and what won't work. Shop for a computer. Read want ads. Listen to tape. Ask manager if you can re-take Series 7 test (You think you can get a higher passing score). Re-take Series 63 practice test. Look for part-time job. Arrange for part-time job for your wife or husband. Help arrange Tupperware party. Handicap horses. Talk to family members. Talk to a broker in another town. Chew out wire operator for not telling you soon enough about an error you made. Look at new car. Consider changing firms. Play golf or tennis to release tension. Read "How to be Successful" book. Re-organize your office. Bring in a computer. Ask manager for a different office. Buy flowers. Write a newsletter. Lower your desk chair. Visit with the manager. Go to meeting. Check quotes. Follow tape. Go to the doctor. File prospectuses by geography. Alphabetize statements. Take a coffee break. Organize statements by account number. Talk shop with other brokers. Call a friend. Call your wife or call your Husband. Call your ex-wife. Call your ex-husband. Check your mail. Read your mail. Write a letter. Write a letter to management explaining how they are inefficient and unorganized and how they waste time and money. Go have drinks with friends. Go to the gym. Check the market. Go to the front door to check weather. Have more coffee with fellow brokers. Buy a plant for the office. Go home at 4:00 p.m. Job well done. After all, you have been there since two hours after market opened.

"I'll get organized tomorrow." 

"I'll get to work tomorrow, just too busy today."

By now you have checked the appropriate activities that you feel should be part of your daily life as a new or average producing stockbroker. 

Now, it is time to grade your test.

This test is unique in that there is but one correct answer, one sure to win activity, and all the other options are sure to fail activities. Those who came and left before you flunked the success test every day. The average people around you, who take the same success test, flunk it daily.

Stop for a minute. No, stop for an hour. Look around you. 

Keep in mind, there is a difference between being busy or active and being productive. Watch what others are doing. Look at their specific activities and how long they take for that activity. It should not take you long to figure out why a few people succeed in our business and why most people fail in our business. 

There is one activity that probably none of the brokers in the bullpen are doing. That is why they still are in the bullpen! If there happens to be one person doing it, you better do what he or she is doing and do more of it than that person. 

Look at the superstar in your office. He or she is the one in the private office. You know, tan, dresses well, happy, laughing, and has a golf game at 2:00 PM. 

Now, clearly, he is not as smart as you. He does not have the special investment insight that you do, or even the knowledge or understanding of the markets that you do. 

Watch him or her and see if you can figure out their secret of success. Do not make another move until you figure out what they do that most washouts never figured out, or, figured out and decided that because they were different, they did not have to do what all successful brokers do more of and better than the failures around them. 

If you think it has something to do with the diploma or award on the wall, you had better save yourself a lot of time and resign from our business right now. 

If, by chance, no one is making any money in your office, if the office feels like the "dead zone" with no electricity in the air, then no one is doing it; the activity, the single most important success activity common to all successes in our business. Any ideas yet what it could possibly be?

I am going to divulge to you the success secret of our business. Are you ready? 

Mind you, there is a 100% correlation between performing this activity and success in our business. 

Anyone and everyone, with any background, from dud to genius, all with different skill levels and aptitudes, who has done this consistently, has achieved success in our business.

The secret to our business is the one and only correct answer in the earlier test. You must talk to a lot of people every day, intelligently, and show them, intelligently, why they should do business with you.

The more people you talk to intelligently and the more you ask them to do business with you, intelligently, the more you will learn, the better you will be, the better you will do, and most importantly, the better your clients will do. The better you do, the more you will accomplish. 

Notice, I did not qualify "talking to" by saying you had to be all-knowing. That will come with practice, time, and reading on.

Sorry to disappoint those of you in the group who have the graduate degrees and who may have concluded that books and study would serve you as well in our business as they served you in school. 

Time to leave the safety and security of the ivory tower. Time to walk in the streets. You "know." Now you must "do." 

If you are one of the many poor souls that do not believe in "the secret," and if you cannot embrace the concept with a passion, save yourself a lot of time and get out while you can! Seek a career that is better suited to your perception of the world.

Learning about yourself, as you are talking to people, by understanding the investment process, by understanding the selling process, by implementing a common sense approach to productive sales activities, and by monitoring and measuring performance, facts will be converted to action and action will result in your achieving your goal.

Your success is guaranteed!