How is that Working for You?

I generally try to avoid Dr. Phil, but I do like a line that he has made famous—“How is that working for you?” The basic idea is that if you are doing something that isn’t working out well, maybe you should try something different. We can usually see when someone else is spinning his wheels, but recognizing the same behavior in ourself can be more difficult.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Are you getting the results that you want? If the answer is no, then you need to re-evaluate your actions. And more importantly, you need to re-evaluate your thinking.

Ultimately, our ideas determine our actions. What we think determines what we do. If we don’t change our thinking, we can’t change our actions.

For example, I once was consulting a contractor who was having trouble generating leads. “I’m doing retention and proximity marketing,” he said, “but I’m not getting enough leads. I’m running out of marketing money.” I suggested that he do door hangers, which he did. But he didn’t follow my advice completely.

When I suggested door hangers, I meant (and said) that he should hand them out himself. He was sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. Instead of spending the day twiddling his thumbs, he should have been pounding the pavement. However, he found it easier to hire someone else to do this, at a cost that quickly depleted his remaining marketing funds.

This particular contractor refused to question his own thinking. He believed that doing door hangers was a different approach to his problem, but in fact it wasn’t. He believed that throwing money at a problem was the solution, and so he continued to throw money around, even as it dwindled. He didn’t change his actions because fundamentally he didn’t change his thinking.

A Million Reasons to Fail

There is no shortage of people who can tell you all of the reasons why you will fail in accomplishing your dreams. But such pronouncements are really a confession—they are telling you why they fail in achieving their goals and dreams.

When I was a teenager I played on the high school basketball team. I had always been a starter on the team, but one year several “friends” began telling me all of the reasons why I wouldn’t be a starter in the upcoming season. I hadn’t grown enough, I wasn’t fast enough to play another position, I simply wasn’t good enough. Such negativity began to weigh on me and I started to believe it. Ultimately it had an impact on my performance.

Some people do not like the idea that others harbor big dreams. It is a slap in their own face, a reminder of their own failings. But rather than re-evaluate their own conclusions and make the requisite changes, they prefer to drag others down to their level of misery.

While we cannot change such people, we can take steps to reduce their impact on us. We can refuse to deal with them. We can recognize the fact that their failures are no reflection of us. We can reject their self-pity and rise above it. Most importantly, we can associate with people who are not jealous of other’s success, but admire and encourage it.

What are you Waiting For?

A recent “Thought of the Day” from the Napoleon Hill Foundation asks this question, and then points out:

Far too many people spend their entire lives waiting for that glorious day when the perfect opportunity presents itself to them. Too late, they realize that each day held opportunity for those who sought it out.

Waiting for the perfect opportunity is a futile endeavor—it will never arrive. As the quote states, every day holds opportunities, and the ones we take advantage of today will create additional opportunities tomorrow. A building—and success—is constructed one brick at a time.

There are countless ways in which contractors bypass opportunities. The most significant is not engaging in continuing education. Knowledge is a powerful tool—the more we know the more we can identify opportunities. And the more successfully we can take advantage of them.

For example, many painting contractors loathe sales. They know that they must sell jobs, but the entire experience leaves them filled with anxiety, dread, or boredom. They just want to paint. But each lead is an opportunity. Improving your sales skills allows you to take advantage of that opportunity and be more successful. Would you prefer to give 10 estimates to get 1 job, or get 4 jobs from the same number of estimates? Would you prefer to sell at the “going rate”, or get premium prices?

What we do today determines what we can or cannot do tomorrow. The bridge we build today can be crossed tomorrow. The bridge we burn today will leave us stranded tomorrow.

Dominated by Fear

Too often, we let our fears dominate our thinking and our actions. It is not uncommon to let the possibility of failure stop us in our tracks. And in the process, the possibility of success is also stopped.

Failure is a part of life. No action is guaranteed to lead to the desired results. But the failure to act will most certainly keep us from achieving the goals we desire.

An effective way to overcome fear is through planning. Planning allows us to envision the end goal and the means to achieve it. Planning allows us to project possible obstacles and the means for overcoming them. Planning builds confidence—it is a kind of test run during which we can “practice” the steps needed to achieve our goals.

To use a simple example, let us say that you want to run a marathon one year from today. You are currently a couch potato and the thought of running 26+ miles seems impossible, and it probably is in this context. But if you develop a training plan the goal seems much less daunting.

With the marathon 12 months away you can plan specific steps to build your endurance. You can research suggested training methods, diet changes, exercise regiments, etc. You can map out milestones, such as being able to run 10 miles in less than 90 minutes within 3 months. Armed with this knowledge, and a plan, you will be more confident that you can actually achieve your goal.

The same is true of business goals (or any goal for that matter). And the bigger the goal, the more important it is to plan.