I am a third-generation service business entrepreneur. My father is an entrepreneur; my grandfather was an entrepreneur. In fact, a Lockyer male has not worked for another person for over 100 years. I did not initially want to go the route of entrepreneurship. Honestly, my dream was to be a long-haired lead singer in a heavy metal rock and roll band. Obviously, that did not happen.

What did happen is that this Florida boy ended up going to college in West Texas. Actually, to get a ministry degree. That’s its own story. Seemingly, I ended up not quite being college material. However, while at that college, I met the girl of my dreams. A cute little red-headed, yellow rose of Texas rocked my world, and I fell in deep.

Once I was done with college (it rather being done with me), I decided to move back to Florida. Before that, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the redhead. I proposed to her, and she accepted. I then packed up my worldly possessions and my cat and moved home to Florida.

While en route back home, I would stop and check in with my parents via a pay phone. Yes, these were the days before cell phones. I was telling my parents about my redhead, how I wanted to make a life with her, and how much I was in love. That’s when I asked my dad about pitching me an idea for a business I could start so I could support my new love and start a life together.

Now, my father was a well-known local service business owner, involved in the community and our local church. Many came to him for business advice, and he freely gave it. Several times, he spawned ideas for businesses for young men in our church after layoffs and life changes so they could become entrepreneurs and support their families. He would help with the service, the name, and even coach these budding entrepreneurs, helping them get on their feet. I was not unlike many of the young men my dad had helped, so of course, I reached out to him on one of these calls and asked him to pitch me an idea for my business.

It happens that our preferred “family” painter had just finished painting my parent’s home. While prepping the house for painting, our family painter had pressure washed the exterior of the home. In the process of that cleaning, he also jumped up on the roof and pressure washed away the black, ugly stains that had covered the roof and tarnished the beauty of the shingles. My dad explained the process and told me, “It really made the whole house look great. Seems to me this would be a great business to develop. You wouldn’t need to have x-ray vision to see if a homeowner had a Kirby vacuum in the closet. You will be able to see right away if they need their roof cleaned or not. Easy to find a target prospect.”

You know what’s flooding my mind now? I am about 12 hours from home, ready to get married to my cute little redhead, and raring to build a name for myself. All I could think about all the rest of the way home was roof cleaning. I mean “think” like Bubba in Forest Gump talked about shrimp when Forest and he were in Vietnam dreaming about buying a shrimp boat. I was looking at every roof as I drove east on I-10, dreaming about the types of roofs, pondering how to reach my customers, thinking about how to build cleaning systems, etc. Truly obsessed with it.

Now, if you ask my father today why he pitched the idea of roof cleaning to me back in 1991, his story is a bit different than mine. My dad knows I am afraid of heights. He knew I didn’t like working outside. He knew it would be physical work. He tells everyone he was just trying to pitch to me the scariest, dirtiest, hard work business idea he could muster in an effort to drive me back into college and finish my degree. He underestimated how “ready” I was to get married and make babies. Have you seen my cute little redhead?

Well, now I am a roof cleaner. I have started a roof cleaning business. However, the same demons that plagued me through high school and college were stumbling blocks in my business as well. The truth is I have two diagnosed clinical mental differences.

Early in elementary school, I had “ants in my pants,” and in the 70s, ADHD was not a diagnosed disorder. My next-door neighbor, Bertha Shouldice, worked at Barry University in Miami Beach, Florida. They had launched a program trying to identify learning differences, largely in boys, affecting performance in school environments. My neighbor asked my parents if it was okay for her to take me afternoons, after school, to participate in this program. I was in the second grade.

The program found that mostly boys (and sometimes girls) had a condition where they were not unintelligent but rather bored and distracted easily. This was an early understanding of ADHD. Tests and studies were done on our group, and many of these findings were passed on to our teachers so they could help us adjust to a school-based learning environment.

This all sounded great. You would certainly think that tests, studies, and identifying learning differences to help a young boy do better in school would only be positive. For me, it was quite the opposite.

These findings revealed to my teachers who I was and how I was made up as an individual, and this information became part of my permanent record. For years, I had a string of frustrated teachers, pushing me for results and always telling me the same thing over and over, “You could do so much more, have much better grades if only you would just apply yourself.” The expectations were raised for me dramatically, and I did not know why.

I remember it wasn’t until I was in seventh grade, middle school. I had a WONDERFUL social studies teacher who sat me down as I was failing her class and was almost doomed to repeat the seventh grade. (I had already repeated the third grade.) She pulled my record and opened it up to me. All of my report cards, all of my teachers’ notes, everything on me up to that point as a student were in that file.

She then pulled out a single report and put her finger on a number. A number seemed so innocuous. How could one number mean so much? She was so excited and so frustrated all at once. I had seen that look before on several teachers’ faces who had preceded her.

A number, three digits, that supposedly said so much about my potential. That number 159 was the first time I had ever seen it or really understood it. She immediately compared me to Albert Einstein and others, but this time, the look of frustration turned to compassion as she told me she was going to move me out of my regular social studies class into an AP social studies class. I did not know what AP meant. She explained that it meant advanced placement.

ADHD is like having a mind like a supercharged, high output race car engine that someone has screwed up the firing order on the spark plug wires. Yes, those with ADHD diagnoses are more likely to be geniuses, but the application of the horsepower is off somewhere. In the past, teachers would only see that number and have such high hopes of having another little Einstein in their class; however, in reality, I was much more closely associated with Eddie Munster.

My social studies teacher explained that she thought I would do better if I was in a higher-paced, work at my own pace, student-led learning environment. You know what I did? I earned my first A ever in my school career. From that day forward until I graduated, I never received less than a B in social studies. Now math, that was a different story.

As an adult, I still struggled in my business. My ADHD was bothering me, and I was on medication. Through counseling, I was encouraged to go and see a psychologist.

All my life, I would get obsessed with some aspects of my life and leave others to flounder and fail. Through testing and study, I added another diagnosis to my already cluttered mind. I was diagnosed with OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. Do you know what someone’s life looks like that has ADHD and OCD together? An obsessive that cannot pay attention to their projects.

I only tell you this because we all have learning differences/ circumstances to overcome. We all have unrealized talents. We all have defeats in our story. I had a mixed bag of all these that were dragging my business down. I had to compensate and compensate quickly.

Compensate. Now, that is a wonderful and miraculous word. Compensate, like driving a car or a boat. When you are on the wrong path, just steer back onto the right path … COMPENSATE. It was such a revelation. I needed to either get really, really good at understanding when I was on or off the right path, or create margins, borders, or bumpers (systems) that kept me on the right path in business and in life. Compensate, to me, became systemize, and we were off to the races.

Systemizing a business was so freeing for me. Creating business systems helped me keep track of my score, how I was doing, if I had a good day. I would work the system like a mathematical equation, and BOOM! I had a REPLICABLE result.

For many years, I have used my hand to remind me of this system, as the illustration here shows. Notice the gap between the thumb (Be DELIBERATE) and the index finger (EXECUTE)? It is the widest gap on our hand. It hit me many years later why that gap is there in my easy-to-remember keys on my hand. I knew, for many, having an idea or a plan was much easier than EXECUTING that idea or plan. Most get caught up in that gap between DELIBERATE and EXECUTE, and they never see their dreams to fruition.

I did not realize it until I was at a Howard Partridge, Phenomenal Products convention that this existed or what it was called. Howard was speaking on failure to implement. Later he wrote a book on this concept. Howard explained that many of us have dreams and goals. We have plans for our businesses and for our families, but rarely do we follow through on these dreams or plans. He described this as Failure to Implement.

I then realized why the gap between the thumb and index finger was significant. Being DELIBERATE was having a dream or a plan. Actually, EXECUTING was the biggest struggle in life. IMPLEMENTATION was the obstacle or chasm that most goals and dreams were lost to, so very few people ever move onto EXECUTION because of the lack of implementation. Thanks to Howard Partridge, I was able to identify this and add it to The Five Keys model.

These five words have a deeper meaning. They are five words that can aid in or direct every decision or goal in your life, personal or business. Five words that are disruptive and divisional in culture and society. Five words that, when marinated into your thoughts, can be transformational. While others around you seem to struggle with life, you will take on challenges with ease and seem to have a charmed life.

In this book, I am going to break down these five keys into five sections. In each section, three chapters will help you grasp the concepts of this easy system. I will start out on the concept of each Key. Then tell a story from my life on how I practically used that Key, either from my personal or business life. Then round off the third chapter by sharing one of my systems for making that Key work practically and giving thought and advice on how you can implement that Key into your life.

I will teach you how to identify patterns and how to capitalize on those patterns over and over again. Life is full of REPLICABLE patterns. Knowing how to identify and even come to depend on these patterns will help you achieve your life’s goals.

For a time in my life, I was a professional tournament fisherman. In fact, in 2006, my fishing partner Thresher Klier and I achieved one of my life goals (On the Bucket List) and won the Redfish Tour National Championship. It was our rookie season.

Fishing, though thought to be based upon luck, is certainly based on skill. Many will say phrases like “The fish were not biting today” or “They just were not hungry today” to describe how successful a fishing trip had been. I ask you, do fish ever stop eating? When was the last time you stopped eating? Do you not have to eat every day? Fish do as well.

The fact is fish, like people, eat several times a day. (Stay with me here even if you do not like fishing. Roll with this comparison. It will make sense to you.) Yes, their appetite may be off now and then. They may have a craving for a particular food just like we do.

Just like you and I, even when our appetite is suppressed due to weather, emotion, illness, or stress, there is surely something on your list of favorites that will soothe even the deepest despair and heighten your cravings. For me, that is chocolate. It does not matter what mood I am in and how long ago I have eaten, tempt me with chocolate, and I’m in.

Fish are the same way. However, you must figure out where they are, when they are hungry, and what they are craving at that particular moment. Learning to anticipate or even depend on these variables is called establishing a pattern.

So how do you accomplish that? You use the Five Keys to Pattern Success.

How do you find and marry your wife? The Five Keys.

How do you develop a successful marketing campaign? The Five Keys.

How do you revolutionize an entire industry? The Five Keys.

How do you build a multi-million dollar business? The Five Keys.

You are five steps away from accomplishing your goals. Five steps away from your life’s work. Five steps away from a championship. Five steps away from peace and stress elimination.

I have used these same Five Keys to accomplish seemingly impossible successes in my own life. Seemingly unreachable goals in a short period of time. Like winning The Redfish Tour National Championship our rookie season by using these Five Keys to create a system for replicating success over and over.

Establishing these patterns for me has led people to think that I lead a charmed life. In reality, I am only putting to use my God-given time, talent, opportunities, and relationships. You, like I, have an ample blessing of all of those above. Acting on these blessings does take some work.

Nothing admirable is ever easily accomplished and success rarely ever goes uncriticized. When you start to focus on this system — and by that, I mean start having success in your own life — you will be criticized. Success is but a mirror. To some, it reflects (and thereby confirms) the positive steps they are taking to have success in life.

To others, it reflects the missteps and laziness that have led to their demise. Once you start replicating success repeatedly in your life, your peer group may need to be upgraded. You will stand out, a...