Real Estate Success: Where is it Hiding?

My own personal experience and a lot of research have taught me that there are three dimensions of success in business that one must master if they are to achieve real estate success. The first two are quite well-known. The third dimension of success remains hidden to many. The first two you have likely already invested heavily in:

1. Mentality – a characteristic attitude, belief, outlook or disposition.
2. Methods – particular approaches, techniques, systems or procedures.

I refer to the third dimension of success as “hidden” because it is the one dimension that a great many agents never become aware of, never see and never learn to master. Even though it may be hidden to many, its influence on your success is nonetheless massive, arguably greater than the other two. That third (hidden) dimension is:

3. Mind – Our unique personality, and the strengths and weaknesses we possess as a result.

I say “significant success” because it is possible to scratch out an existence, maybe even build an “above average” business, by mastering only two of these three dimensions of success. However, only by mastering all three will you build a truly great business, and achieve your maximum potential. Average is just that, where the majority of people fall. Being above average isn’t much better, to be honest with you. That’s the phrase someone uses when they want to kindly say, “She’s not the very best, but…” But what about those who don’t want to settle for good, average or even above average? What about the ones who want to be the outliers? What about those who want to build a business that sets the standard for great? What about those who wish to become the ones others try to copy?

Being above average is to success what being above ground is to living.

  At the first company I founded, Innermetrix, I quickly realized that I had learned a whole lot about the first two dimensions, Mentality and Method, but something still wasn’t clicking. The wonderful training I’d received at Johnson & Johnson already gave me the benefit of having the proper mindset and business methods. Yet, success still evaded me. I was surviving, but not thriving. The problem was that I thought I had a good mastery of the only two dimensions that mattered. I never gave a thought to the third hidden dimension of success. I was thinking in all the right ways, and doing all of the right things, or so I thought. What I wasn’t doing was factoring in my own unique personality, the third, and at that point in my life, hidden dimension of success. Hell, I didn’t even know there was a missing third dimension. Once I did that, however, everything changed!

My desk suffered death by sticky note.

  I had been guilty of applying the best practices, for others. I had been mistakenly attempting to succeed how others had succeeded, not how “I” needed to succeed. Yes, many of those best practices still held true, but only when I learned to apply them in a way that was true to my natural talents, not someone else’s, did they actually start to work.

Here’s an example: One of the things I knew was important was to be organized. No matter how hard I tried to do this, though, I just sucked at it. I tried technological reminders that should have helped keep me organized. My desk suffered death by sticky note. I tried to simplify my processes as much as possible, but still I just struggled.

Some tasks simply are not our natural talents.

  It wasn’t until I learned more about my personality and realized that I naturally SUCK at organization that things began to turn around for me. Based on how my mind is wired, “being very organized and orderly” is simply not a natural talent I possess. And, try as I might, no amount of learning, effort or positive self-talk was going to change that. Sure, I could fake it, but it would never amount to more than a false pretense. As long as my business depended on me being the king of organization, it would be depending on a weakness – just like a house resting on a weak foundation. The right mentality and methods weren’t going to change that. Eventually I learned everything I could about my own personality, and the strengths and weaknesses it brought to my life. I also incorporated this information into how I ran my business in every single aspect, and only then did the company start to thrive. I had learned to master that third hidden dimension of success! None of this would have been possible without my first having mastered that third dimension of success. You can have the best mindset, be the most optimistic, work the hardest, study under the greatest coaches and employ the very best practices in the world; but if you fail to adapt all of that to your own immutable true self… you will fail to achieve your maximum potential!