Summary
We sometimes find ourselves losing ground in the never-ending cycle of striving for financial success and keeping up with the rapid innovations designed to help us accelerate to light speed. The threshold of complexity is constantly hitting us in the jaw, forcing us to pause and regroup. Some people can regroup and move forward, while others fall off the wagon and accept failure as a solution.
For many self-starters, failure is not a solution, but rather an opportunity to regroup and move forward to future growth and improvement. For others, they slip into a conscious cycle of failure and become a part of society's debt serfs.
What does a super successful person (self-starter) in their field do when they discover their career has stagnated or completely stopped? The successes they have enjoyed immensely over the last 10 to 50 years have disintegrated. Standard industry practices and cultural norms have evolved, so once effective techniques are no longer as effective. Technology has replaced human connections.
Success may only be possible with significant modifications to one's thought processes, actions, habits, and willingness to accept new risks. Adopting technology to leverage our effectiveness is paramount.
Doing the same thing repeatedly may not work. Albert Einstein receives credit for stating,
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting a different result.
Emerging technologies, innovative and revitalized techniques, and discoveries can open doors to new ways of engaging with others, colleagues, prospects, friends, and customers. Exploring and embracing a new paradigm shift could be a game-changer. A fresh wave of results might be just around the corner.
One of my all-time favorite rock groups was Traveling Wilburys; their song, End of the Line, has a verse with a great message:
You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring (until the line is exhausted). Waiting for someone to tell you everything (end of the line)
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring (end of the line)
Maybe a diamond ring.
The Traveling Wilburys, a group of iconic British-American musicians, delivered some of the most profound music. Bob Dylan, George Harrison of the Beatles era, Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jim Keltner, the leading session drummer in America. Another of their classics was " Handle with Care.
The message in End of the Line is simple yet powerful. The lyrics relate to
allowing outside forces to dictate life plans and actions, hoping these forces
bring unearned benefits. This simple verse defines most unsuccessful people. They frolic through life's forest, believing they are entitled, privileged, and somehow crucial to society, but without effort, plans, or strategy. In most cases, they become parasites living in the host's blood, meaning the taxpayers.
Superficial and dependent lifestyles, entitlement, television, procrastination, and procreation dictate their lives. They undoubtedly sit in front of the TV for eight to ten hours a day, consumed by media and advertising garbage while waiting for the phone to ring; of course, they are hoping for the elusive diamond ring. That is why the government promotes propaganda about how easy it is to obtain free stuff and sponsored lotteries. Wishing and hoping are not strategies, but they make an excellent name for a classic 60s rock song, "Wishin' and Hopin'" by Dusty Springfield.
I have experienced failure on multiple occasions. The need for reinvention, rather than a spiral of self-destruction, is a renewed cycle of personal growth. However, the choice of which is best is straightforward.
Internal forces refer to personal and professional relationships that may cause us to stray from our intended purpose and deviate from our successful strategy. The needed changes may also be due to external forces, such as an unexpected war, interest rate increases, unfavorable economic conditions, regulatory intervention, or internal pressures. Internal and external forces could result in severe self-induced cash-flow constraints, family financial pressure, an unexpected illness, divorce, emotional problems, substance abuse, the death of a loved one, partnership dissolution, age bias, or staffing problems. The list is never-ending.
You do not need to be a victim of worry. Reduced to its simplest form,
What is worry? It is simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit.
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale,
Once you have acknowledged that you need a reset or reinvention, the first decision is whether to stay in your chosen field or select an entirely new one in a different profession.
A great start is going on to download the book, Acres of Diamonds, by
Russell H. Conwell, written in 1925. His simple quote defines the message! The book is about pursuing success by leveraging your existing knowledge in your chosen field, rather than starting a new profession in an entirely new area.
You can journey to the ends of the earth in search of success, but if
You're lucky; you'll discover happiness in your backyard.
Suppose we have decided to remain in our chosen field!
Take a moment to reflect on the successful elements of your past strategy. Equally, consider those that are currently failing or have become obsolete. This exercise in self-reflection is a powerful tool for self-awareness, putting you in the driver's seat of your career reinvention. It fosters a sense of introspection and control, empowering you to steer your career in the right direction.
Could you list daily action habits you practiced that yielded great or limited results? Choose internal (you) vs. external (the market, economy, or government).
Some people must acknowledge how they contributed to their lack of success. Many (many, many, many) refuse to recognize or rationalize how their actions contribute to their failures. Sorry for the blunt statement, but I have watched this recurring process for over 50 years.
Seek out one or more mentors or multiple successful friends who have positive attitudes and possess the characteristics you aspire to emulate. These mentors and genuine friends can serve as invaluable guides, providing the support and guidance you need to reinvent your career. Their presence can make you feel supported and guided in your journey, knowing that you're not alone in this process.
The hard truth, or tough love truth, is that many people create barriers to their success. (For example, they may find themselves both broke and having to buy beers while complaining about not getting results, which is a revolting development.) This 'hard-core truth' reminds us that our attitudes and actions can often be the biggest obstacles to our success and that we must be willing to take a hard look at ourselves and make necessary changes.
Reasons for failure may include the following:
A lack of motivation without a go-get-um attitude. We must be willing to be ever-present and to go the extra mile and a few more if necessary. Outwork everyone around you. Be results-oriented, show tenacity, and do not give up.
Lack of tenacity to carry out a plan. Tenacity is the number one crucial trait of a successful person.
Inadequate training or rejection of the concept of change may be a barrier to progress. Our lives are defined by constant change.
If we fail to respond, we will become one of those characters who sit at the bar and brag about the successes we used to have and how much money we had. The conversation is nauseating when it deals with people who lived in the past.
How to Accept Rejection - Inability to Understand the Process.
Lack of a written action plan with daily action habits.
Poor allocation of daily time usage, combined with ineffective action habits, is a barrier.
Failure to focus on the most critical tasks may be a barrier. Apply the 80/20 rule: 20% of your focused daily actions yield 80% of your positive results, while 80% of your daily activities produce only 20% of your desired outcomes.
Rationalization leads to failure. Rationalization is a defense mechanism (ego) in which apparent logical reasons are expressed as opinions to justify one's behavior or thoughts. A person may use the reasonableness of their viewpoint to justify unacceptable behavior and blame others for their failures.
Projection. Some people try to redirect or deflect their emotions, flaws, and other quirks onto others, shifting blame or ignoring problems. These individuals often compensate for their inadequacies by boasting about successes, purchasing things, displaying items that suggest success, and expressing unwarranted opinions as a defense mechanism against weakness and insecurity. These simple folks boast the title of success, but they cancel out their failures.
Research the top 10 most successful people in your field. Study the group and identify the characteristics that contribute to their success. List the defining characteristics or attributes that led to their accomplishments. Emulate their actions. The list will become a blueprint for creating a new daily action habit plan that will lead to success.
Your action plan should focus on elevating yourself to the top 20% of productive and successful people. There is no apology for the lack of success when the strategy to obtain it is so clear.
With a properly written action plan, an implementation strategy, tenacity,
With confidence in oneself and positive motivation, you could be dropped off in Cheyenne, Wyoming, start a new business in the same field, and be successful within 24 months.
Friends do business with friends!
Most businesspeople recognize that their success is directly tied to the number of business relationships they establish. Successful relationships often evolve into friendships and become two-way streets. You'll need to help in developing successful opportunities for your business friendships. Nurture their successes as if they were your own. You can make referrals regularly without requiring any compensation, if you don't mind. Your network will reciprocate tenfold.
I believe that communicating with business associates is essential to meet goals and determine whether lead prospects are progressing, stalled, or becoming inactive. Please respond to others' requests as a common courtesy if one wants to develop lasting relationships. A return phone call, email, or text with a short status update is a grand gesture. Promptness is excellent and gets the job done.
Those who regularly communicate with others demonstrate mutual respect and dignity, and as a result, they tend to be more successful. Those who do not will fail because they view themselves as the center of the sales process rather than the customer. Non-communicators eventually eliminate themselves from the playing field, eliminating any possibility of developing lasting, long-term relationships.
Regular texting, emailing, and online Zoom meetings are the primary sources of communication, but they have limitations. I have never developed a lasting friendship with anyone based on texting or emailing. Most Zoom meetings are painful experiences that test one's patience. Twenty percent of the content has value, while 80 percent usually does not. I doubt one could ever enjoy long-term sustaining relationships without person-to-person conversations.
There are individuals in our industry that we should steer clear of. Certain people bring nothing to the relationship but superficiality, wasted time, disappointment, and eventual disgust. The disgust may even be with yourself, and why you put up with this person in the first place. Disgusting oneself is self-defeating.
Some people that we meet are self-centered, egotistical, and even sociopathic. Their world is only a reflection of their sphere. They may be parasitic, sycophantic, negative, defeatist, secretly hostile, pathological liars (of which there are many), or jealous of the success of others. Because of their self-admiration, they usually expect the phone to ring in a certain way, with the call coming in toward them. Could you identify these individuals and remove them from your life as soon as possible?
Industry terminology and jargon may change, but fundamental success concepts will remain essentially unchanged. My examples relate to the real estate lending business, where I have been involved for 45 years, and to operating a half-dozen other companies with hundreds of employees.
Due to our recent experience with the COVID-19 shutdown, the importance of systems designed to create portability in active working stations has become paramount. Transferring one's workstation to a home office or other workplace and continuing daily activities to communicate with prospects and associates has taken on an entirely new significance.
Could you review vendor support relationships? Vendors, usually independent contractors, are assigned delegated responsibilities, always reflecting your professionalism. Vendors may include service providers like loan processors, underwriters, and Insurance brokers. We need one or more third-party marketing specialists to connect, communicate, and solicit the outside world. Replace those who do not possess a master 's-level competence.
Legal & regulatory compliance expert.With hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and multiple government agencies, federal, state, and some overlapping, even redundant, an expert in your field is required, including labor relations. Part of the reason for the complexity is the hope that you will make a mistake, and the system will punish you with punitive measures. You are liable for the actions of your experts.
Accounting Support includes a top-rated CPA or Enrolled Agent Tax Expert, in-house accounting services, trust accounting, outside auditors, retirement planners, and trust fiduciaries for retirement plans, among other services.
Tech support. Most business owners and sales personnel require hardware, including desktops, monitors, multiple servers, backup systems, Wi-Fi connections, phones, and phone/computer interfaces, all of which must be connected to the outside world via high-speed cabling. We need a tech support person to serve as an on-call diagnostic expert who can remotely connect to your system or portable computer when you need to resolve any issues.
Marketing and software support. A customer relationship management (CRM) software package is a must. Numerous software packages are available for installation on your system or for online access. You also need an office support system, such as Microsoft 365, which includes Outlook, a word processor, and a spreadsheet. Many practitioners use loan processing, trust accounting, servicing, and accounting programs. You can enhance your efficiency by installing multiple monitors and utilizing your software packages to maximize productivity. If someone sends you an email, you may want to transfer the data into a CRM to record the history with that person, forward it to another recipient, or use the loan processing system for data storage. It is helpful to have a commercial-quality server and workstation security software package to protect against unwanted solicitations and viruses. Additionally, remote desktop connection software is now a necessity. Go to My PC and TeamViewer is an example. Lastly, some individuals require a cloud-based backup system for their server and desktop data.
Connections with others for meetings and presentations have become more accessible with software such as Zoom and GotoMeeting, provided they are not overused. We anticipate that the creative software design segment will improve over the next 24 months.
Some folks rely too much on social media. Social media giants like Facebook, GETTR, Instagram, LinkedIn, Parler, Telegram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube are corporations that rely on advertising to generate revenue. The more you are bombarded with advertising and buying things, the more profits they make. Most of the platforms are also ideologically driven. Experts in that field must explore whether viable business contacts can be derived from social media.
Please note that your data and correspondence are not private. Instead, your data determines how they can monetize your connection to their platform algorithmically. Computer algorithms can determine where your interest lies and what you may be willing to purchase. Profits and the desire to become dependent on them are always the motive.
In most cases, social media is a misnomer. A more appropriate name would be social disinformation media. Many attempts to provide natural information are biased propaganda designed to sway public opinion. Social media news bias, political polarization, geopolitical preferences, and cancel-culture actions ultimately boil down to how they can manipulate you to generate profits for themselves. In most cases, these platforms are interested in controlling your narrative about
everything. They want to sway your opinion. They also want you to develop greater reliance and spend more time on their platform.
In all cases, our success depends on forming relationships. The more connections that friendships become, the more business a person will develop. I shared this earlier in this article.
Social media linking for relationship-building: When you request to connect on social media, such as LinkedIn, and get a sales pitch, a good friend sells five minutes later. Disregard the pitch. The salesperson either lacks interest in building a relationship or lacks sufficient information to do so.
Organizational size. Some people want to build a company with brick-and-mortar square footage and a substantial fixed-cost base every month, including rent or ownership expenses, hiring, equipment, insurance, liability for others, and the stress of dealing with staff. Calculating fixed and variable costs that will expand and contract as needed can be challenging.
Evaluating the elasticity of demand for your product or service can be time-consuming and require effort. Elasticity refers to a business's ability to adapt to rapid up-and-down fluctuations in business volume. For example, loan volume production in the real estate lending business can expand and contract overnight, as we are currently witnessing.
The government can raise interest rates, pick winners and losers, shut down all private enterprise businesses using a fraudulent scheme, and instill fear, insecurity, and anxiety. During the COVID-19 fiasco, the government protected large corporations while systematically destroying small and medium-sized businesses across the country.
Major news stories may make people skittish, whether actual or the usual propaganda, lies, and deceptions. Buyers, borrowers, manufacturers, distributors, and end-use consumers may need time to adjust or reconsider their decisions. Supply chains may be constricted or locked up.
We must also be concerned with your operation's scalability, which refers to its ability to adjust to handling significantly higher volumes when needed. Flexible scalability requires that your infrastructure be large enough to quickly increase staff, equipment, and support systems that all move in tandem or reduce staffing and expenses when necessary.
Another option is outsourcing all or part of your support systems necessary to drive your business forward. Excellent independent individuals and companies provide professional support services for a fee, and costs are generally reasonable. Examples in real estate lending include transactional coordinators, loan processors, loan servicing, escrow officers, and legal documentation providers.
Working from a home office is great, and using independent contractor support staff has many merits.
Outside service contractors generally cause you less stress, assuming they are highly competent and professional. However, they are hard to find and keep busy. Also, elasticity and scalability become problematic when you try to be your company's do-all, catch-all.
We will have ups and downs, and getting back up can sometimes be challenging. The willingness to bounce back and fight is a skill that can be learned. Repeated attempts will reward you with the ability never to give up, snap back into a prosperous new energy plan, and charge forward to success.
Systemic failures outside our control: Part I, Reinventing ourselves is an article contained on my website.
Outside forces are destructive at work because the U.S. has 106,000,000 people not in the workforce. There are the officially unemployed (6.1 million working-age Americans) reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the other 25% (26.5 million) who have searched high and low for a job but cannot find one and have dropped off the rolls. Then there is the subset that is not in the workforce, not looking for a job, but otherwise employable. The social safety net benefits from the COVID-19 free lunch hangover have remained too high to entice people to seek gainful employment. Part I explores why forces beyond our control are causing havoc in people's lives.