Several generations of Americans have now graduated from the education system believing that a good excuse is a Get Out of Jail Free card. Flunked a test? Forgot to finish your essay on time? Late for class? No problem… IF you have a great excuse.

I knew a girl in college who killed off her grandmother three times in three semesters. Got her out of taking a final (didn’t study), out of being penalized for skipping a week of class (rock concert), out of not having a paper written on time (didn’t even try). Granny never found out. And lived a good many more years. And this girl went on to the Dean’s List, grad school, and a PhD.

The lesson learned: You can be instantly forgiven… even felt sorry for… if you just deliver a good enough excuse for screwing up.

That’s a really, really, really bad lesson to absorb. Because once you get out of school and into the real world, you have a very rude discovery to make: No one gives a rat’s ass about WHY you screwed up. The fact you DID screw up is all that matters. Your excuse will comfort no one but you, as you lick your wounds and look for another job.

The hardest thing to teach budding freelancers is the “Professional’s Code.” It’s very simple: You show up where you’re supposed to be… when you said you’d be there… having done what you said you’d do.

That’s it.

The phrase “show up” includes the physical act of appearing where you’re supposed to be… as well as the virtual act of meeting your deadlines.

I did NOT grow up with this code.

I was a victim of the school system, where few consequences couldn’t be negotiated. (Hell – the cops back then even poured out your beer and sent you home after pulling you over. I knew dozens of guys who’d been nabbed while driving with a bottle of Schlitz in one hand, and not a one of them ever suffered a DUI. Right or wrong, that’s how my corner of the generation grew up.)

As a low-level employee with no skills – my standard gig for the first decade or so of my adult life – half the job really was just showing up on time. However, once the idea of going solo as a freelancer copywriter took hold, I started looking seriously at how the really successful dudes were conducting themselves in business.

I vowed, going in, that I would meet all deadlines, no matter what. And BE that guy who could be trusted with delivering the goods to anyone who paid me.

I saw the alternative, in gruesome detail, during my time in a catalog art department.

There were multiple deadlines for photo separations, camera-ready art boards, and every word of copy. And anything that wasn’t done by the printing deadline… didn’t make it into the catalog.

The printing presses were in Nashville. They ran 365 days a year, and you booked your slot six months in advance. You missed your deadline, too bad. You paid anyway for the time and manpower. And your catalog didn’t mail.

Missing a hard deadline was a mortal wound to your ability to continue doing business. You had nothing to mail. No money came in. Clients wandered away. Banks were not nice about outstanding loans coming due.

Wow. That’ll sober you up.

In 25 years of writing copy for clients, I have never missed a hard deadline.

Let me repeat that: 25 years, zero violations on my deadline record.

This concept of never missing a deadline is the hardest thing to teach rookie freelancers. It’s almost like you gotta experience disaster first… and it’s gotta make a deep impression on you… before your mind can shift into Professional Gear.

This is why surgeons endure such rigorous training. Saying “Sorry, I was distracted” after botching an operation doesn’t cut it.

Pilots, too. Accountants. Snipers. Astronauts. Film editors. Lead singers.

You screw up… you disembowel the entire gig. And your fabulous excuse doesn’t fix anything. No one wants to hear it. Because of you, other people now have an emergency on their hands.

Entire kingdoms have crumbled from screw-ups by people who thought they had a great excuse. (”I had that 3-penny nail right here, sir. I dunno, it must have slipped from my hand back there. My arthritis has been really bad, you know, and…”)

In school, a well-crafted excuse will get you sympathy and a do-over. In real life… not so much.

And yet… I am NEVER surprised when confronted with a fresh case of someone I’ve put massive trust in… screwing up. And offering an excuse. It’s the default brain setting of almost everyone out there.

It’s really not that tough to adopt the Pro Code. It takes a commitment, and requires the skill to tell others “no” when faced with a tough choice. And to tell yourself “no” when your very natural urge to flake out and bail on your responsibilities flares up.

Everyone would rather party, or even veg out… instead of buckling down and finishing the job they signed up for. That’s the easy path. Being a true rebel nowadays means embracing responsibility with gusto and energy. The last rebellious act in business, really, is to commit to success. No matter what.

Your social life will suffer. The family will get mad at you. No one will understand, and you will toil without immediate gratification from outside sources. (Your rewards must come from your own heart and sense of self-respect.)

And it all rests on a simple foundation. If you take on a job, you do it. You kill the whiny beasts in your head, wrestle your attention deficit disorder into submission, push through pain and grief and disaster to do what you promised you’d do.

That’s how that US Airways pilot saved all 150 passengers and crew in an emergency landing in the Hudson River. That’s how all professionals worthy of the title treat every responsibility they have.

It’s hard to do. It’s kinda lonely at times. But committing to it will instantly change your life forever.

And remember: It’s no crime not to have this code already in your bag. But once you’re made aware of it, you lose big by choosing to ignore it. (So, yeah, it’s a dirty trick on my part to throw it in front of you like this.)

Today – in business and in conquering the mounting ills of the world – we need professionals more than ever. The hardest and most rewarding jobs will not get done through excuses.

[Ed. Note: John Carlton is an expert copywriter, a pioneer in online marketing, and a teacher of killer sales copy. He knows marketing inside and out. Discover how to get your hands on the kick-ass secrets of the world's smartest, happiest, and wealthiest marketers.

Think you have a good excuse for not yet having an Internet business? Wrong. With ETR's Internet Money Club Independent Learner Edition, you'll get a step-by-step playbook to making money online. All you have to do is take action.]

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I recently let my guard down and let my wife talk me into making one of my rare visits to a nearby shopping mall – one of my least favorite places.

The place was mobbed, as though people were determined to have one last go at the good life, perhaps sensing that shopping malls might soon be turned into homeless shelters. I watched with great interest as people stood in long lines to pay for the on-sale merchandise they clutched tightly in their arms.

Strolling through Foot Locker, I examined a number of tags to see where the goods had been manufactured. No Honduras or Sri Lanka here. No sir. Virtually everything I looked at was made in none other than Cambodia.

My mind became an instant time machine. It hasn’t been that long ago that Richard Nixon was explaining that the reason he secretly bombed Cambodia was to “end the Vietnam War sooner.” Hmm. As I recall, that didn’t work out too well.

It also hasn’t been that long ago that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge slaughtered 2 million of their own countrymen, leaving their skulls neatly stored on rows of shelves in warehouses. Cambodians have always been fastidious about such matters, you know. Just one of those unfortunate things that seem to happen when communist revolutions are carried out in the name of “the people.”

But all is well, because the Khmer Rouge are long gone and Foot Locker has found a great new labor force to satisfy Americans with big appetites for material things and too little cash to pay for them. Now, however, even cheap Cambodian products have to be put on sale in order to entice cash-strapped shoppers to buy.

What I thought about mostly, though, as the mob threatened to swallow me alive, was the contrast between the salivating materialism at the mall and a show that Dateline did on foreclosures a while back. The show was grim, to say the least.

The Dateline documentary featured a lot of people who were lamenting that they hadn’t read the fine print in their loan agreements when they bought their houses. Many, of course, couldn’t afford their houses even at the original interest rates they paid. But many more found themselves in trouble when the adjustable-rate time bombs built into their mortgages exploded.

Dateline didn’t leave anything to the imagination – sheriffs serving eviction notices on visibly shaken people, movers putting furniture and personal belongings out on front lawns (where their owners had 24 hours to take them away), tears streaming down people’s cheeks as they bemoaned the sobering reality that they had no place to go.

One young man, with his daughter’s arm around his shoulders, sat on his front step and, with tears in his eyes, kept repeating, “I’m a loser.” You’d have to be pretty hardhearted for that not to grip you. Having been homeless myself at one time in my life, I could relate. I know what it feels like to have nowhere to sleep.

So I have a message for that young man: Even though I don’t know you, the odds are that you are not a loser. You’re just a person who’s made some bad decisions. And now, like me and everyone else who has made bad decisions, you’re experiencing the consequences of your actions.

But that shouldn’t stop you from learning from this experience and profiting from it in the future. In the words of Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad (who was once so broke that he and his wife had to sleep in their car), “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”

The day I started paying closer attention to the news was the day I started realizing that I wasn’t uniquely stupid in making many bad decisions.

• How smart were the wealthy people who invested in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme?

• How smart were the top brass at the Big Three automakers?

• How smart were Barney Frank & Friends for pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into making sub-prime loans to people who couldn’t afford any kind of loan?

• How smart were the corporate boards of Citigroup, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, et al. that were not able to continue without handouts from taxpayers?

If you’ve lost your home, your business, and/or your money, don’t be intimidated. The guys running many of the biggest corporations in the world have managed to lose billions, which makes them many times dumber than you.

Sure, the deck is stacked against you, because you don’t have billions to work with and you don’t qualify for a taxpayer bailout. But the way I look at it, the deck is stacked against everyone – because no matter what we do, we aren’t getting out of here alive anyway. In the words of British economist John Maynard Keynes: “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

With the economy in shambles, now is the perfect time to get all this squared away in your mind. Get up off the floor and listen: You’re not dumb, and you’re not a loser. You just haven’t learned to be as clever as the guys who make super-dumb decisions and still walk away with millions.

Regardless of where you are today, I can tell you where you will be next year at this time: exactly where you should be according to how resilient you are over the next 12 months, how determined you are, how hard you work, and how good your decisions are.

Just be sure to keep in mind Robert Kiyosaki’s warning that people who avoid failure also avoid success. Above all, remember that there’s a lot more to success than bean counting. If you have love and good health, you’re already successful.

A loser is someone who quits. If you never quit, you never lose.

[Ed. Note: You may have made mistakes. You may have failed. But that doesn't mean you can't live the life you always hoped for. Learn how ETR can help make your dreams come true right here.

For a treasure chest of proven ideas, strategies, and techniques for increasing your income many times over, check out Robert Ringer's bestselling dealmaking audio series.

And be sure to sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter.]

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There’s one thing that all successful Internet marketers and business owners I’ve come in contact with have in common.

A sense of urgency.

Successful entrepreneurs look at practically every moment of every day as a challenge -and they attack it accordingly. This need for achievement motivates them to turn their ideas into action.

On the other end of the spectrum are “passive” entrepreneurs. They live every day pursuing their dreams safely, never taking risks or pushing the envelope, and hoping something good will happen.

I’m not just talking out of my keister here. I’m a living, breathing example of a former passive personality.

It wasn’t until a mentor shook me from the doldrums and forced me to take that first step into the unknown that I started to see some serious results.

Why? Because successful people act from a sense of urgency.

So today, I want you to do exactly what I did. Ditch the passive nature and begin looking at your dreams with a SENSE OF URGENCY.

Tell yourself, “Today, I’m going to make a change and act from a sense of urgency. And these are the first two actions I’m going to take…”

[Ed. Note: Rich Schefren - one of the world's best small-business strategists - knows a thing or two about what it takes to be successful. The businesses he coaches have done over $500 million every year - piling up more than $1 billion in sales every two years. Visit his blog to learn how to streamline your business while skyrocketing profits.

The ability to sell is another trait shared by successful entrepreneurs. If you don't know how to sell, you're LOSING money. It's time to amp up your selling skills. You can learn how to do it from Gene Schwartz, one of the world's best copywriters. Get the details here.]

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The law of forced efficiency says: “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

The fact is that the average person today is working at 110-130 percent of capacity. And the jobs and responsibilities just keep piling up. One recent study concluded that the average executive has a backlog of 300-400 hours of reading and projects at home and at the office.

What this means is that you will never be caught up. Get that out of your mind. All you can hope for is to keep on top of your most important responsibilities. The others will just have to wait.

The key question you can ask is: “What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?”

Every hour of every day, there is an answer to this question. Your job is to ask yourself that question, over and over again – and to make sure you’re always spending your time working on whatever is most important at that particular moment.

The more accurate your answers to this question, the easier it will be for you to set clear priorities and overcome procrastination.

[Ed. Note: In his book, Eat That Frog!, personal effectiveness expert Brian Tracy shows you how to zero in on the critical tasks and organize each day - you'll not only get more done faster, but you'll also get the right things done! Get your copy and learn how to stop procrastinating right now.]

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