What does it take to be successful?
Several years ago I heard part of a speech from Darren Hardy where he was explaining what it really takes to be successful and it really struck a chord so I wrote it down. There were a few paragraphs I’d noted with the last one finishing as follows,
“Success is not mysterious, success is simple but hard. Success is simply a result of daily disciplines compounded over time. Success is not for those who want it, it is not for those who need it, success is only for those who are relentlessly committed to doing the work for it every day.”
Every time I re-read this and share it with others it reminds me of the principles written about in The Compound Effect book (highly recommend it 😊). The way I see things is that having the compound effect on your side doesn’t have to be painful and difficult. Once you understand the principles of how to progress in your desired area – whether that be in health, in property or in something else – it’s then a case of applying those principles consistently by making them part of your routines, lifestyle and habits.
So for example, this is why I’m a huge fan of having a morning routine that entails a handful of impactful components, like exercise, a healthy breakfast, meditation and personal development time.
When it comes to property, I know people who will do certain tasks on set days and times each week i.e. their sourcing time, their agent phone call time etc. Having structure baked into your quarters, months, weeks and days is, in my view, crucial to being successful in your property business.
For me, I will use 20 minutes on a Friday afternoon (see the routine there? 😊) to review the week’s progress and to decide my top 3 projects for next week, and even get the specific activities scheduled in the diary. These planned sessions are blocked out times in the diary to focus on working on the right things and towards a specified mini completion point with no distractions like inbound phone calls, emails, texts or social media. For example, one task from this week was building out a big spreadsheet to help me understand and evaluate the pros and cons of 8 different options for lending to finance the purchase of a block of flats and a restaurant.
It’s this repeated weekly cycle that I’ve found to be the biggest contributor to results I’ve had in the last 8 years. The weekly and daily rhythms are my compound effect. However I’m very conscious that even when we do arrive at a certain level of success at something we need the self awareness not to get complacent (I’ve felt the pain of complacency with our SA business in the past 😊). To borrow more words from Darren, he said – “You never really arrive, you never really own success, you only rent it, and the rent is due everyday. [I think that’s brilliant and poetic.]
My daily rent includes my morning routines and working on one of my proactive needle moving activities for 90 minutes with phone and email off.
What about you? What ‘success rent’ do you need to be paying each day with your property business in order to start or continue benefiting from the compound effect?