Wendy McLellan stated at one of his famous essays:

While everyone else seems to be talking about the need to balance work and the rest of life, Richard St. John is convinced the real key to success is work.

Lots of it.

"You can't achieve success with moderation," said St. John, author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich (Train of Thought Arts Inc., $34.95) and president of the St. John Group, a Toronto communications company.

"You can't have balance and success at the same time. I'm not saying you can't have both -- you just can't have them at the same time."

It's not just his own theory, even if it sounds a little radical. St. John interviewed 500 successful, rich people over 10 years and examined their experiences to figure out how they achieved success.

The group includes a Nobel prize-winner, a Hollywood actor, an astronaut and a billionaire. He identified eight common elements among the group's members.

These achievers share a commitment to hard work and long hours doing jobs they love. When they take a break, it's often a long one.

"No one wants to hear you have to work hard, but if you don't put in the hours, you're not going to have as much success," said St. John, who was in Vancouver last week to promote his first book in what he hopes will become a series.

"Lots of kids think it's easy -- they'll just get rich. They don't think about working hard. But if you love what you do, you don't think about it as hard work."

St. John said the successful people he interviewed were ordinary-looking, considered themselves of average intelligence and had suffered their share of bad luck. This was not at all what he expected to learn when he started his research.

He wrote the book with himself as a teenager in mind. As he finished high school and faced his future, St. John had no idea what to do next or how to decide.

His book is graphic, written in easy-to-read sections with a cartoon character named Spike to guide readers.

From his research, here are St. John's top eight factors for success:

1. Passion. Find the work you're passionate about and money will follow. Don't expect it to be easy -- you may have to try a lot of jobs before you figure out what you love.

2. Work. Successful people work hard, but they love it. They're "work frolics," St. John says, because they have fun working.

3. Focus. Become single-minded in pursuit of your goal and develop the ability to ignore distractions.

4. Push. Don't allow shyness or self-doubt to sabotage your goal. Find ways -- and other people -- to push you toward success.

5. Ideas. Anybody can come up with good ideas -- instead of thinking of them as creative, think of ideas as things to solve problems. Don't forget to write them down.

6. Improve. Successful people constantly look for ways to improve. Strive to become the best at what you do. Focus on your strengths and practise, practise, practise.

7. Serve. Even if you find your passion and work hard, you won't succeed unless you provide something of value to people. It's not about charity, it's about delivering a service or product others need or want.