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One
of My Greatest Examples of Personal
Commitment I
remember one time I was in a seminar
over 20 years ago and the man leading
the seminar said, "You either have
what you want in life or you have the
reasons why you don't." This one
statement was so profound to me that
it's continued to stay in my mind ever
since then. Because we live in a world
where people like to make excuses for
why they haven't accomplished what they
want to in their lives, rather than just
doing what will work instead. With
this in mind, Thomas Edison was someone
who definitely knew how to get the job
done. He tried over 1,000 different ways
to create the electric light bulb, and
none of them worked. But he was
convinced that every new approach he
tried that didn't work brought him one
step closer to finding out what did
work. And he decided it was time to put
his butt on the line to find what really
did work... He
made an announcement to the world that
he was very close to finally discovering
how to create the world's first electric
light bulb, when in fact he wasn't close
at all. But he knew that by putting his
reputation on the line in front of the
entire world, he would open himself up
to entirely new ways of finding how to
create the first successful light bulb,
which of course he did. In
my own personal life there's probably no
one I know of who better exemplifies
this total commitment to having what he
wants in his life than my friend Rick.
Where other people would see obstacles
to having what they want in their lives,
Rick just doesn't see them. I
remember one time when we had just
graduated from college and we were out
to lunch with a group of other young
business professionals. One of these
professionals had a bit of a big ego and
he was talking about how he graduated
from UCLA with a Bachelor's Degree in
Economics, and how he would have pursued
an undergraduate degree in business at
the University had one been available
for undergraduates at the time. (At that
time UCLA offered only graduate degrees
in Business, and had no Bachelor's
Degree program in Business.) My
friend Rick mentioned that he had just
graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in
Business from UCLA, and the other guy
looked confused and perplexed at how
this could possibly be so. And when Rick
told him how he did it the guy became
belligerent in front of all of us, angry
that someone else seemed to be one step
ahead of him at getting things done.
(And after the lunch one of this guy's
friends apologized to Rick for how this
man had behaved in front of him.) What
Rick had done was meet with the
Chancellor of UCLA and tell him that
despite the fact that the University
didn't offer an undergraduate program in
Business, he wanted to graduate with a
Bachelor's Degree in Business
nonetheless. And the Chancellor
eventually granted Rick's request,
enabling him to graduate from UCLA with
a Bachelor's Degree in Business! Now
how many people at that age would even
conceive of being able to persuade the
University to do this for themselves?
Yet Rick not only conceived of it, he
was completely determined to make it
happen for himself, and through his
determination the University went along
with him. I
still find that amazing for me to think
about. And
at times over the years when Rick has
invested in stocks, sometimes he's gone
one step further than the average person
would to get a solid feeling about a
company. So sometimes he'll walk into
one or more facilities owned by
companies and begin chatting with their
employees, simply wanting to know
how the employees feel about the
company, how management is treating
them, and how they feel about the
direction the company is moving in. No
matter how a company looks on paper, if
their employees are miserable about how
they're being treated, the company may
not be the best one to invest in. Now
how many investors out there do you
think have ever taken an extra step like
this one before investing in a company? And
then there was the time when Rick
special-ordered a car from one of the
major automobile manufacturers. He found
out the exact day the car was being
built, went to the factory and worked
his way inside, and began talking with
the company's foreman. And in a short
period of time Rick had enrolled the
foreman in making changes to the car
during the manufacturing process that
the company would normally never do. The
foreman went to his people on the
assembly line, told them the changes to
make on this one particular car, and
when the employees asked him why they
were making these changes on this one
car the foreman responded by saying,
"It's government business." And
after that exact moment, the foreman
walked Rick over to the area where the
company stored all of the seats they'd
be installing in their new cars, and
told Rick to pick out whichever seats he
wanted installed in his new vehicle. How
many people would have had the
foresight, the guts, the commitment, and
the rapport skills to make something
like this happen? Rick
had an outstanding career as a
commercial real estate broker, and he's
had an outstanding career as an investor
also. And it all comes from his vision
and commitment to what he knows his life
can become, and his determination to
lead the life he's always imagined for
himself. And I must add that doing it
all ethically and treating people
appropriately along the way is very high
on Rick's priority list, too. I'm
mentioning Rick because I see a lot of
brokers out there letting themselves off
the hook with excuses as to why they
can't produce the results they want to
in their businesses. One of the simplest
solutions for most any commercial agent
who wants to develop more business is to
do more prospecting, as I find that most
commercial agents are not doing the
prospecting they know they should be. If
you're not currently prospecting 10-12
hours a week in your commercial real
estate business, how much of a
difference would doing this amount of
prospecting make in your income if you
did it every week for the next twelve
months? And
if you like your answer to this
question, just get this amount of
prospecting done every single week in
your business from now on, with no
excuses.
Click
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