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.

Accountability

You have probably heard a lot about holding employees accountable for their actions. But how do you hold yourself accountable? After all, you make the rules for your business, and you can break them whenever you want.

One way to hold yourself accountable is to share your plans and goals with others. If you proclaim your intentions to the world, you are more likely to follow up on them. If you keep them “secret”—to yourself—it can be rather easy to let things slip.

It is quite easy to set goals and then promptly forget them. The details of running a business, not to mention life itself, can distract us or send us off course. We can make excuses and procrastinate. There is no shortage of reasons why we can’t actively work on our goals. And this is even easier when those goals reside solely in the inner recesses of our mind.

Many contractors start their business because they want “freedom”—they don’t want the restrictions imposed by a boss or large corporation. They want to be able to do what they want, when they want. But such “freedom” is not a recipe for success. Success is not gained by following one’s whims, but by setting goals and pursuing them.

Ultimately, we can only be responsible for ourselves. We are the only person who can decide what we want out of life and how we will achieve it. And that requires that we hold ourselves accountable.

We Get What we Expect

We Get What we Expect
Dan Miller has an interesting story about a recent handyman experience. He was installing some lighting and:

Twice in this process I recoiled with the stinging shock of electric power surging through my arms – but wait – there was no power yet attached. I hadn’t connected the line to the power source. Just the “anticipation” of power convinced me I had already “felt” a serious shock.

I have witnessed the same thing with contractors, particularly when it comes to dealing with a complaining customer. When the customer calls with a problem, they immediately jump to conclusions—“The customer is just picky”; or “The customer just doesn’t want to pay”; or “You can never please some people”. In each case, the contractor has a certain expectation that may or may not be true. But he will invariably act as if it were true, which can often be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If we approach the customer with a negative attitude we are establishing a confrontational situation. This will certainly not help the situation, and will most likely lead to an actual confrontation. We wind up getting exactly what we expected.

I’ve had customers call up and claim that “all of the paint is falling off of the wall” or something of the sort. Knowing that this is very unlikely, it would be easy to conclude that the customer is going to be a problem. But if I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a trillion times—customers can exaggerate. They just paid good money for a paint job and the slightest problem can become a huge concern.

Rather than jump to conclusions or set up expectations about the customer’s motivation, the proper approach is that of Lt. Friday from Dragnet: get the facts. Then, and only then, can we deal with the actual situation, rather than the fantasy we have created in our own mind.