You Can Make It Happen: A Nine Step Plan for Success

For the people who know Stedman Graham as one of the nation's most quietly active community business leaders, it may be hard to envision the time when he was held back by considerable self-doubt.
He was. He grappled, also, with his share of daunting obstacles to the success he has worked at length to enjoy. Graham explains, "You are not your circumstances; you are your possibilities." He is tenacious in his commitment to the idea that all can overcome adversity and build self-esteem by determining who they are, creating a vision of success for themselves, and then working doggedly to realize this vision.
In formulating his Nine-Step Plan for Success, Graham draws candidly on his experience as a professional athlete, the founder of the not-for-profit Athletes Against Drugs, and as a corporate and community leader who sits on the national boards of Junior Achievement and the Urban League. This plan is grounded in his conviction that the circumstances of your past are not nearly as significant as your belief in your capabilities and your determination to carry through a plan to accomplish your goals. Graham explains, through revealing anecdotes from his own life and the experiences of others, how the negative effects of a poor self-image can be incapacitating at worst, and limiting at best. You Can Make It Happen shows how to chart a course that can enable you -- just as it enabled him -- to superimpose success over all of the doubts, insecurities, and life difficulties that threaten to keep achievement elusive.
Step by step, You Can Make It Happen demonstrates clearly how to

• Decide who you are
• Swim with the stream
• Create a vision
• Keep on keeping on
• Take the high road even if it is the hard road
• Weather the seasons of change
• Build your dream team
• Step out of your comfort zone
• Commit to your vision

An inspirational as well as an instructional book, You Can Make It Happen is a moving message of hope from a compelling new voice in our culture.

Stedman Graham is chairman and CEO of S. Graham and Associates, a management and marketing consulting firm based in Chicago. He is the author of ten books, including two New York Times bestsellers. Graham lectures and conducts seminars for businesses and organizations around the country. He is a former adjunct professor at Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and is currently a visiting professor at several other universities. Active in philanthropy and community work, he is on the international board of Junior Achievement, is founder of Athletes Against Drugs, and is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago.