New Day One: Drive + Passion + Urgency + Innovation + STAMINA = Success
I appreciate you all taking the time to read these past few months over the NewDayOne mission and articles. We are very excited for a prosperous and successful 2014 and hope you are all inspired by the articles and by the idea that any moment can be your first moment of the rest of your life. This is what these articles have all been about. Each ingredient is unique and a skill that needs to be implemented consistently into your daily life. Both in life and in business, success is the goal. I hope you all had the opportunity to read all of the previous articles, but if you haven’t, I urge you to because there is no greater motivation than the knowledge that you have people who believe in you and want you to succeed. And that’s what we here at JohnHart provide. You provide the ingredients and the success is yours!! Here now is the fifth and final installment in the series…
Success Ingredient #5: STAMINA
With the Olympics right around the corner, it’s hard not to marvel at the strength, talent and stamina of top world athletes. Besides the ability to beat out most of the worlds’ competition in their field to get there, athletes that are the best in the world are able to gauge the event they will be competing in and know when they must reserve strength and when they must accelerate it. Long-form sporting events, such as track, speed skating and swimming, require athletes to start strong, but also carry reserve strength and energy for later in the race. If they start out strong but retain nothing, they won’t earn a medal. If they start at a slower pace, thinking only of saving energy til the end, they won’t be able to make up the difference and will most likely compromise a medal as well. You don’t want to have trained your whole life to make it to this incredibly prestigious point and then fail miserably.
This is such a strong analogy for our industry. Stamina is the need to be able to perform at your top ability all the time. It’s being able to save what you will need for later, meanwhile excelling at what needs to be accomplished right now. As I stated in the URGENCY article, the only thing worse than people who promise you nothing are those who promise you the world and cannot deliver. Delivery is everything. No one cares about how many extra hours you put into a deal, or mistakes that took hours to be corrected or how an important document gets to where it needs to be at the last minute. No one cares, and neither should you, unless it doesn’t happen. Then it’s excuse after excuse after excuse. Clients don’t want to hear excuses (they most likely won’t turn into repeat customers if you need to give excuses for reasons why their deals aren’t done on time or correctly) and I don’t want to have to coach you on which are the best excuses to use because we want to achieve and maintain a zero mistakes policy. The way to do that is to be meticulous, methodical, consistent and thus 100% successful.
Furthermore, as an athlete, you don’t want to do anything during your competitions to tire you out anymore than you need to. Coaches tell runners to drop their shoulders or drop their knees because creating excess tension in their body expends unnecessary energy. Coaches tell swimmers to stay under the water for as long as possible when they first dive in to help with the aerodynamics and to scoop more water with their hands to propel them further because this saves their energy for the end, when they will really need it. If you expend more energy than you need to, it might compromise your performance and subsequent success. We want to create that same level of dedication and training by methodically planning, carefully scheduling and consistently coming through on the promises we make to our clients. You don’t want to be spending your time correcting deals that have errors or going back constantly and double-checking your work. You would rather be making new deals that bring in new clients and thus new business.
If you have a 100% success rate, you will most likely ALWAYS perform better. You will feel better about yourself and your endeavors, you will strive for more successes and achievements, you will not fear failure, your clients will respond to your confidence but also your accolades and reputation and you will have a long, healthy, successful career. This is the sort of life we all want to live. But if you set your standards too high and don’t maintain a level of consistency and routine, you start tensing up, feeling overwhelmed, making minor mistakes that lead to major mistakes, blame-shifting, becoming defensive, crabby, unprofessional and inconsistent and your career, consequently, goes nowhere. Obviously, no one sets out for this sort of career in this industry, but it happens all too often. And one of the main reasons is because people start out with visions and expectations of grandeur, only to grow frustrated, overwhelmed and disappointed when they were not properly equipped to have a successful career in the first place.
This is the reason why we here at JohnHart take the idea of team and training so seriously. We don’t want our agents to burn out. We don’t want you to be overwhelmed or improperly prepared or unprepared at all. We want to give you every opportunity to succeed and every reason to want to. If you fail a client, it doesn’t only represent you, but all of us. In the same vein, if you achieve tremendous success, we want to celebrate with you. We want to be your coach and your cheerleader. We want you to realize that this is a career that requires dedication, consistency, training, education, and determination. It also requires skill, precision, self-promotion and confidence. It is one of only a few industries where you have to have so many skill-sets honed while still maintaining a level of knowledge and education in an ever-fluctuating market.
If you cannot maintain a consistent level of performance, you will not be successful. Bottom line. There is no gray area here. But the good news is, if you have the drive, passion, urgency, innovation and stamina, then those are all the ingredients you will need. This is why this article series has been so important. We are not just interested in taking in 40,000 agents so we may have 14,000 that are successful. We are not interested in sifting out the good from the bad or the hungry from the lazy. We are interested in you. In every single one of you. And because we are interested in you and investing in you, we need you to be willing to invest in yourself. Running isn’t a team sport, but it is when you run relays. This is the same with all sports that have relay aspects to them. When you became a real estate agent, it was in a market where it’s all you — your successes, your failures, your determination, your motivation, your commitment. When you signed on to be an agent here at JohnHart, you signed on to be a part of a unique team that wants to promote your talents and strengths and educate and facilitate opportunities so you no longer have weaknesses. We want you to succeed every time.
Remember what I have said in all of the articles I have written thus far: You have the ability and freedom to set the course for your career and your destiny. You are your own best friend and worst enemy in this business because it is one of a very few industries where what you get out of it is completely dependent on what you put in. If you have found yourself unmotivated, uneducated, and uninterested, and have found that your rewards mirror that, you have the choice to make the change for yourself today. This is the moment. It should be exhilarating and exciting and probably a little bit scary if you are dreaming really big. Start creating, imagining and living your destiny. There is no end to your potential and there is no better moment to start than right now. Find your inspiration. Find your passion. Fulfill your destiny. Your past does not define your future. It takes a lot of hard work to achieve the kind of success we are talking about, but it is possible. It is all up to you. Choose you. Choose success. Choose today to be your NEW DAY 1!
After working with, and for, many different real estate firms, it became apparent to Harout that there was a major disconnect between what consumers needed/wanted and the service that was being provided to them. It was upon this realization that Harout founded and opened JohnHart Real Estate; and as the CEO/Principal Broker he has continued to break from the norm and redefine real estate with an insatiable appetite to give his clients the service and attention they deserve.
Very well written. Another great article!!