My grandmother just had her 90th birthday – in fact, we had a private family party for her yesterday and a huge open house today.  As a tribute to her I scanned in hundreds of photos, interviewed her on video and did enough genealogical research to figure out what the story of her life entailed – the same process I did several years ago for my other grandmother.

If you ever go through this process it’s fascinating to see how certain individuals in your personal history rise to the forefront when you shine a light back through your family tree.  One thing that seems to stand out – whether you find someone who was successful financially, in their family life, built an incredible social institution or just a legacy of being a game changer in a segment of society – they were always people who found ways to serve others and bring out the best in them.

Want to be a leader in your organization?  You won’t do it by being a lone ranger and doing everything yourself.  You’ll soon run out of time in your schedule and the people around you will be jealous and undermine your success.  Instead, find the gifts in people around you, find ways to empower them so they successful in their own area and then give them every tool necessary to build on that success.

My grandmother was a great cook – but where she really made her mark was as food services director for a nursing home – not really a place where culinary experts go to hone their skills and make a name for themselves.  Not one to settle for the status quo, she instead trained a staff of people under her to produce great meals.  Not only did she empower hundreds of staff during her years there but the thousands of residents and their families who visited them knew that she cared because of the quality of the meals.  As such, there aren’t many people in our 50,000 population community that don’t recognize her name.

I have a couple hundred affiliate marketing web sites that I’ve built over 15+ years on the internet.  In many ways I’ve tried to do my own thing behind the scenes and make a comfortable living for myself and my clients.  However, I’ve watched a couple guys come from nowhere and in a couple years time build a small empire.  How’d they do it?  Look for a key player, find a way to provide a service to them and in turn learn what they are doing – then come to them with a proposal to use the key player’s influence and promote their new idea.  Suddenly they are catapulted into the 6 figure a month income category.

Are you building relationships with your clients, community leaders, key players in your business niche (or any other niche for that matter) or are you such a lone wolf or caustic personality that destroys the relationships around you that could make you successful?

Success is about relationship - not only nurturing and caring for your own client base but also those key players and community leaders you can learn from and may just have the influence or idea that can be a game changer for you.