I received this quote in my email today and wanted to share it with everyone:
| "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure." | |
— Colin Powell: U.S. Army General and statesman. |
I went to a Get Motivated seminar this spring that had Colin Powell as a speaker. He was a great and powerful speaker. If you have not heard him speak, you need to.
I look at this quote and look back on my life. There is a lot of truth to this. So many people do everything in their power to avoid FAILURE and don't realize that they are missing a great opportunity to learn. I can tell you that in my personal life, I have failed plenty of times. Each time I fail, I try to analyze the situation and see what I learned. Then when I see myself doing the same thing that made me fail, I stop and look back upon that failure.
HARD WORK. This is such an ugly two words. If you are successful in Real Estate, then you know what Hard Work is. I see so many people get into this business thinking they are going to have tons of free time, drive a nice car and make lots of money! Then 6 months to a year they find out they were Wrong! They have that "Get Rich Quick" mentality. I run into a lot of these people, not always in the real estate world. These people always seem to be jumping from one scheme to the next to find that easy money. One week they are selling Avon then the next it is the Curby vacuum cleaner, then it is Quickstar, or maybe real estate. The thing is they have this mentality that this is the ONE, this is the ONE that is going to make me rich, this is the ONE I am going to stick with, this is the ONE that is really going to work.......... I have seen family, friend and acquaintances go through this and even myself for a short while.
One of two things will happen with these people. One, they will get discouraged and find a dead end job to go work because they need a steady paycheck. Two, they figure out that there is no such thing as Easy Money or Get Rich Quick. They make a decision to work harder and smarter and stick it out. That is what happened with me. I sold real estate for a few years. Did awful. Then I sold manufactured homes for a while and did awful. Then I was told I could be rich if I sold Quckstar and did that for a very short while. Then I got back into Real Estate and found a mentor who built expectations for me and I started to WORK HARDER to make sure I did not let her down.
Go figure, HARD WORK paid off.
PREPARATION This is such a powerful thing. Not only in real estate but in every day life. I know that when I have been on an appointment and was not prepared, it was a failure.
So as Colin Powell states: "There is not secret to Success, It is the result of Preparation, Hard Work & Learning from Failure." it just goes to show that doing 3 simple things and being persistent in them we can all be Successful. So the next time you are down because things aren't going the way you want them in your life, look to see if you are doing all three of these things.