I have the privilege to collaborate with smart clients. As I help them achieve their highest priority grassroots and PAC outcomes, I have observed certain habits and work practices of my more successful clients. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I am adept at observation, detecting patterns, and problem solving based on those observations.

Some of the most delight-inducing observations are the success patterns among high-achieving grassroots and PAC leaders. These “immutable truths” are a reflection of what I have observed.

• Constantly strive to increase order and discipline in your life. Discipline usually means doing the opposite of what you feel like doing.
• Jealously guard your time, your most valuable resource. You can never make up the time you lose. Free yourself up to focus on the essence-building functions of your grassroots and PAC programs.
• Each day, “catch someone doing something right” – especially your grassroots and PAC volunteers. Praise lavishly.
• Read and study outside of the government relations profession. The books we read are a road map to our life. They tell us where we have been, where we are going, and why we took one path and not another.
• It is not your job to be liked by all co-workers. It is your job to deliver results and value.
• There are no new PAC or grassroots objections known to mankind. It’s our job to be prepared for them.
• Those who can influence people to give money and time to political involvement causes are master motivators and influencers. If you do this successfully, leverage this skill for future career opportunities outside of traditional government relations roles.
• Cut all ties with lazy, negative, or dishonest volunteers (and all others of this ilk, if possible). Life is short and they consume energy that is better directed elsewhere.
• Success comes more quickly to those who develop great powers of intense sustained concentration. Get focused by asking the right questions.
• Knowledge work requires focus. When practiced unconsciously, multi-tasking makes us multi-stupid.
• Keep an active mind, and continue to grow intellectually. We either grow or regress. Nothing stands still.
• Always have lofty goals and passionately focus on them. This forces you to use your time wisely, and illuminates new ways of getting things done.
• An hour of creative thought can be worth a month of hard work. Get in the habit of precise, regular and integrated thinking.
• First impressions are lasting impressions. Put your best face forward.
• The best way to get started is to get started. Do it now.
• Mind the pattern of your life and work. The “why” of the pattern is not essential, but the awareness of positive and negative patterns breaks the chains of stale thought and action, and conversely, allows you to re-create what works.
• If the purpose of your life is security, you may fail. Security is the lowest form of happiness.