Living Life by Design

How many of you reading this remember Zig Ziglar? He was a world famous motivational speaker that dedicated his life to helping people be the best they could be. Back in the mid 1990’s I became involved with a Multi-Level marketing Company that promoted Zig’s teachings. One of the stories he told was about training fleas. He said that you could put fleas in a mason jar (how you would actually get fleas in a jar is a story for another day) and they would jump and hit the top of the jar trying to escape. They would do this over and over until they learned to jump just high enough not to hit the lid. At this point you could remove the lid and the fleas would not escape. Even though freedom was right in front of them, they lost hope & conditioned themselves to only jump so high.

I recently sat with a relatively new loan officer who had been in the business for only a year. I remember how excited she was when she was first licensed. She was going to make $100,000 her first year. She was fearless and made Realtor calls, purchase some leads, made cold calls over the phone, etc. She saw some initial success because of her efforts. I must admit it was painful at times seeing her struggle with constant rejection. I’m sure it was equally painful for Zig’s fleas to jump and hit the lid over and over. My loan officers zeal for success began to wane and she fell into a pattern of just doing enough to get by. Going through emails, watching internet video’s, talking with Realtors who are now friends and long lunches began to be more important than continuing to pay the price…much like the fleas who lost hope and jumped lower and lower. I explained to the loan officer, if she would just keep doing the things others weren’t willing to do, she would be more successful than she could imagine. She didn’t, and I eventually had to let her go.

The success formula for the business is not a secret. The directions are very clear and easy to follow. However, following the instructions and actually doing the work is where most fail. If your dream is not big enough to get you through the pain, it’s ok…really. It’s YOUR dream and only YOU can pay the price for it…