Monday Morning Wake Up Call

Monday Morning Wake Up Call: Your Motivation, Inspiration, & Direction for the Week Ahead

Here Comes September! September is a week away. If that sentence doesn’t make your blood run cold and your soul want to hide in a corner, I don’t know what will. Seriously—where did this season go? Although summer’s official end date is September 22, there’s something about the shift in tone after Labor Day that delivers the curtain call for summer. Now there’s no time for doom and gloom. We’ve still got a week! So, now’s the perfect time to kick off your last-ditch efforts to soak up the sun and the summer’s last hoorah! Get in the spirit and make some plans! Think family picnic, a ball game, a trip to the beach, a hike in the woods or a day by the pool Get your batteries all charged up because it’s going to be a busy – but GREAT fall market! Something to Think About: Summer is the time to kick back and enjoy the fruits of our labor, but now is the time to embrace the final stretch of your business for 2017. What will you do differently to have different results? Weekly Challenge: Have fun and play, then let’s get back to work! Words of Wisdom: You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. Henry Ford The questions you ask are more important than the things you could ever say. Tom Freese Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude. Ralph Marston Today is always the most productive day of your week. Mark Hunter Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. Samuel Johnson Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

Monday Morning Wake Up Call

Monday Morning Wake Up Call: Your Motivation, Inspiration, & Direction for the Week Ahead

Here’s to Trying Something New    Have you ever noticed how often you say “No?” Not just to things that merit refusal, but to fresh ideas, new possibilities and the chance to make unexpected discoveries? Whenever you say no, you potentially miss an opportunity to discover something new, or to try something you haven’t tried before. You can’t say yes to everything, of course, but you could almost certainly say yes more often. When someone invites you to join them in something they love—and that you haven’t ever tried—what do you say? Do you take the chance to try it? Or do you politely turn them down?  Learning and living are the same. When you stop learning, you start to die a little every day. There are scientific evidence links between brain cells can regrow at any age if you give them some exercise. Your brain is a case of “use it or lose it.” So, try it. Say YES to something you would normally turn down this week. Try different food, different music, or go somewhere you’d normally avoid. It doesn’t need to be anything dramatic. What matters is that you open yourself to more of what life has to offer, instead of hanging back and staying with what you already know. Something to Think About: The world is a huge, glorious experiment, not a set of rules to be followed and boxes to the checked. How much you are willing to join in that experiment is up to you. The closer that you stick to the same script, the less you will discover what might be even better. What holds most people back is fear of losing what they already have, however imperfect it might be. Just remember that you are in control of the experiment. You can try a little change as easily as a huge one. And if it doesn’t work, you can always go back and try again. Saying no really is the real risk because it closes the door forever on anything different. Weekly Challenge: Try a new way of prospecting for new business this week, even if it scares you a little bit! Words of Wisdom: Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the best. John C. Maxwell To my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. Nancy Reagan Just keep taking chances and having fun. Garth Brooks You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. Charles Robert Buxton Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. Zig Ziglar

Monday Morning Wake Up Call

Monday Morning Wake Up Call: Your Motivation, Inspiration, & Direction for the Week Ahead

Which Type Are You? There are two types of people in the world. The intelligent group likes to stick with what they know. The curious group likes to try new things and learn about things for themselves. For many people, life is about having a sound plan, good stable job, and once they find that, they don’t want to rock the boat.  The other group is always looking for new ideas, new adventures, and finds that rocking the boat can be exciting and fun.  For the intelligent, or stable person, they have carefully built their security, based on research.  But that security can be overturned any day by some unexpected event which was not planned.  If that happens, it’s natural for that person to feel uneasy.  Change is inevitable, and at some point, change will be forced on them and they might not cope well. That’s because the world never stands still. Look at the changes that have occurred in the past 50 years! For the curious group, change is normal. In fact, they often seek out change. They could still face upsets and setbacks, but they’ve learned how to learn and cope positively with the change. They are more adaptable. Which is better? I think that each of us has natural tendencies and talents, combined with upbringing, that ultimately determine which path we take in life, but how you handle those changes, challenges, etc. is what makes the real difference! Something to Think About: The best way to deal with change is adaptability.  Change is a basic law of nature. The species most tightly tied to a single niche environment are the ones most likely to become extinct. The most adaptable species—not the fastest, biggest or most clever—survive and prosper no matter what happens. Want proof? Look around you at all the pigeons and sparrows. Not much danger they’ll die out anytime soon, is there? But they aren’t powerful birds like eagles or even clever ones like parrots. What they are is supremely adaptable. Weekly Challenge: This is the time to ramp up your business, ensuring a successful last quarter. Make one change to your business, to adapt to what is happening in your marketplace today. Words of Wisdom: If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Maya Angelou The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward Every human has four endowments - self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change. Stephen Covey Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. George Bernard Shaw The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. Carl Rogers

Monday Morning Wake Up Call

Monday Morning Wake Up Call: Your Motivation, Inspiration, & Direction for the Week Ahead

17 inches In 1996 4,000 baseball coaches gathered to hear Coach Scolinos speak. After 50 years of coaching, at age 78, he had just retired. When he walked on stage, he had a string around his neck from which a home plate hung. A full-sized, stark-white home plate.  He said: “You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing a home plate around my neck! I may be old, but I’m not crazy.  The reason I stand before you today is to share what I’ve learned in my life, and what I’ve learned about the home plate in my 78 years.”  Scolinos asked, “Do you know how wide home plate is?” After a pause, someone said “Seventeen inches?”.  “That’s right,” he said. “From the days of Babe Ruth, In Little League, minor leagues and the major leagues, it’s always been 17 inches. SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big-League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?”  Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” he hollered, drawing raucous laughter. “What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy.  If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target?  We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches.  We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it.  If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.’”  “Coaches… what do we do when your best player shows up late to practice? Or when our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven?  What if he gets caught drinking?  Do we hold him accountable?  Or do we change the rules to fit him?  Do we widen home plate? " “And it’s not just in sports.  With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids.  Our jobs. Appointed officials. It’s everywhere. We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards.  We just widen the plate!” “If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach today.  It is this: If we fail to hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards; if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the standard; and if our schools and churches and government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look forward to… With that, he held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark black backside. We have dark days ahead!” Coach Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching the lives of hundreds of players and coaches. Something to Think About: His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your players—no matter how good they are—your own children, your churches, your government, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches." Is there an area of your life, where you have widened the plate? If so, consider setting your standards high and raising the bar for yourself and those around you! Weekly Challenge: It’s that time!  Summer is winding down, so now is the time to start reaching out to your sphere of influence to see who has a real estate question or need. Talk to 25 people this week and send out one marketing piece to everyone in your book of business. Words of Wisdom: Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Steve Jobs Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality. Ralph Marston We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward the world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents, and interests. Sheryl Sandberg The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves. Ray Kroc You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. Michael Jordan