One of the questions I am often asked involves "how to get ahead." I thought it might be helpful to share some lessons from top U.S. executives.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway: "You follow your passions. You find something you love. The truth is, so few people really jump on their jobs, you really will stand out more than you think. You will get noticed if you really go for it."

Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder and CEO, DreamWorks: "I don't think it matters how small or how big the task is, if you can do it just a little bit better than what is expected, you will be noticed and rewarded."

Keith Wandell, recently retired CEO, Harley-Davidson: "Just stay true to your values and your principles."

Helena Foulkes, president, CVS Pharmacy: "So I love to run. I like to run long distances. And I think a lot of times making business decisions is like being a marathoner. In other words, you know what the finish line is that you really want to get to but, along the way, it's not always pure joy. There are really hard moments. But if you keep your eye on the prize, it's part of what drives you to get there."

John Gainor, CEO and president, International Dairy Queen: "I think it's very important that you don't want work to be work. It has to be something that you can enjoy. And if you find that, you can build a great career and enjoy what you're doing. But I think (another) thing is equally as important, and that is you need to treat every employee no different than how you want to be treated. Every person in an organization or in a store, their job is critical."

Meg Whitman, president and CEO, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise: "Be clear what matters most. And what matters most is your family. There are trade-offs that you will make, but remember, at the end of the day that is probably the most important group of people in your lives, and that has been true for me from day one. Do something that you love. We spend a lot of time at work ... if you find yourself in a company where you're being asked to do something that you don't think is right or you're feeling uncomfortable about the leadership and the direction of the company, run, do not walk, for the doors."

Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO, IBM: "Never protect the past. If you never protect the past, I think ... you will be willing to never love (it) so much (that) you won't let it go, either. Never define yourself as a product and, in fact ... never define yourself by your competition, either. If you live and define yourself by your product or competition, you will lose sight of who your customer is."

Adam Goldstein, president and COO, Royal Caribbean Cruises: "Try to stay in one place ... That's not really very realistic in today's day and age, but there are so many advantages if you can have a long and fulfilling career at one place. The relationships that you have with the people are very, very special. Your knowledge of the business, the industry, the different departments, what's going on in the company, the lingo -- I find it very fulfilling."

Kirk Kinsell, president and CEO, Loews Hotels & Resorts: "Don't take yourself seriously, because no one else will. That points back to my leadership style. I oftentimes tell people my favorite subject is me ... and then I explain it to them and say, 'The reason why it's my favorite subject is because I invest in myself and understand who I am because I strongly believe I can't lead. I can't work on others unless I know myself.'"

Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors: "Do something you are passionate about; do something you love. If you are doing something you are passionate about, you are just naturally going to succeed, and a lot of other things will happen that you don't need to worry about."

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Alphabet (formerly Google): "Find a way to say yes to things ... a new country, to meet new friends, to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse and even your kids."

Mackay's Moral: Learn from the best to get ahead of the rest.

I have written seven best-selling business books, and the title of each of them could have been "Prepare to Win."

My publishers never thought that was a catchy enough title to help sell books, particularly business books, so I went with "Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive," "Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt" and so on.

But the real message of all of them, plus this column, is the same: "Prepare to win." In my own way, I was preparing to win the bookselling challenge by finding a title that would make readers want to learn more.

Life is all about preparation. Preparation is all about hard work, sacrifice, discipline, organization, consistency, practicing the right concepts and more.

I subscribe to the wisdom of the oft-quoted sports maxim, "The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win."

Many people have the will to win, but they aren't willing to put in the hard work and time required to become great at something. What makes this even more challenging is that preparation is not a one-time thing. You can't prepare to win once and then just let success flow. Great performers possess the will to prepare to win over and over again.

If you are unprepared to meet a challenge, you have little chance of succeeding. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

Historian Dumas Malone tells the story of how Thomas Jefferson handled the first meeting to decide the organization of the future University of Virginia. The university had been Jefferson's idea, but many others came forward with their own interests and agendas.

Jefferson showed up with meticulously prepared architectural drawings, detailed budgets for construction and operation, a proposed curriculum and the names of specific faculty he wanted.

No one else was even remotely prepared. The group essentially had to capitulate to Jefferson's vision. The university was eventually founded more or less in accordance with Jefferson's plan. Preparation pays off again.

And here's an amusing story that further illustrates the value of preparation: A farmer who owned land along the Atlantic seacoast constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic because they dreaded the awful storms that raged across the ocean, wreaking havoc on buildings and crops. As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals. Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer.

"Are you a good farmhand?" the farmer asked him.

"Well, I can sleep when the wind blows," answered the man. Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired the man. The man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work. Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore. Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the man and yelled, "Get up! A storm is coming! Tie things down before they blow away!"

The man rolled over in bed and said firmly, "No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows."

The farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. He hurried outside to prepare for the storm. To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarps. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops and the shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. Nothing could blow away.

The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed so he could also sleep while the wind blew.

Mackay's Moral: Don't blow it -- prepare to win.

Walt Disney used to talk about the four Cs to success: curiosity, confidence, courage and consistency. He believed that if you applied these four Cs to your life, you could accomplish practically anything.

But there was one C that Walt said was the greatest of all -- confidence. He said, "When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably."

No one is more emblematic of massive success than Walt Disney. But that wasn't the case for Walt early on. He was anything but successful. He had several business failures and was told by an editor at the Kansas City Star newspaper that he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

Maybe that's why confidence was so important to him. He certainly was no quitter.

Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet many people don't believe in themselves as they should, and they find it difficult to become successful.

Would you buy a product from someone who is nervous, fumbling or overly apologetic? No. You would be suspicious of their product, their trustworthiness and their ability to provide follow-up service. You would prefer someone who is confident and speaks clearly and knows his or her stuff.

Confidence enables you to perform to the best of your abilities, without the fear of failure holding you back. It starts with believing in yourself.

As one of my favorite motivational authors, Norman Vincent Peale, said, "Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy."

One word in particular in the above quote stands out: humble. Confidence does not mean arrogance, in fact, quite the opposite. Humility is a quality that must accompany confidence in order to instill trust.

You don't acquire confidence overnight. You can't wake up one day and think you are good. You have to work at it. You have to practice the right concepts, get the best coaching you can and develop mental toughness. You have to think like a winner.

Coaches and managers can tell their players and employees to be more confident, but if they don't prepare and work hard enough, confidence will always be lacking. It's easy to fire people up, but they also have to be willing to prepare and pay the price to achieve a high level of confidence.

My friend the late Jack Kemp told me the story of how his coach motivated him when he played quarterback at Occidental College.

Before the football season started, the coach called Kemp into his office for a private meeting. He said, "Jack, you are my guy. You are the leader on this team. You are the one I can count on. Every year I pick just one player, and you are that player. If you live up to your potential, you have what it takes to achieve greatness. But it's important that you don't tell anyone else."

Jack told me that when he left that room he was ready to run through a brick wall for that guy. What he didn't know until after the season was that his coach said the same thing to 11 other players.

Kemp went on to play pro football for 13 years, served nine terms in Congress representing Western New York and was Republican nominee Bob Dole's vice-presidential running mate in the 1996 presidential election.

A wonderful complement to confidence is a sense of humor, as the following story illustrates. Being able to laugh at yourself is the ultimate demonstration of confidence.

A New Yorker fresh from a business trip to Texas was telling his associates about his experiences. One of them asked, "What impressed you most about the people there?"

"Their confidence. Here's an example. We went duck hunting on Saturday. We sat in a blind all day long and never saw a thing. Then, right about sundown, this one duck flew over our heads. One of the guys stood up with his shotgun and fired. And the duck kept right on flying.

"Nobody said a word for a moment. Then the shooter shook his head and said to me, 'You're seeing a miracle! There flies a dead duck.'"

Mackay's Moral: Confidence is keeping your chin up. Overconfidence is sticking your neck out.