Is Your Word Your Law? The Actual Blueprint to Success

Do know anyone who never does what they say they will? Are they successful or are they broke? On the flip side, do you know someone who always does what they say? They always return the phone call or the email and the take their commitments seriously? One way to tell if someone is, or will be successful in business and in life is if they follow through and keep their word. The follow through could be commitments to others or commitments to yourself.

Your word to others:

The investment community is a pretty small place. As you do deals and go to meetings, you tend to run into the same people over and over. By the time you get to the top of your game, you would have done business, in some fashion, with most of the other players in the industry.

It takes years to build a solid reputation. That reputation could be ruined in less than a day. For example, I know many real estate wholesalers that were not honest with their buyers. They end up selling a bad deal or two, and not disclosing issues with the houses that they were aware of. Once this word got out, they were out of business.

At our recent Denver Success Summit we had a property management company commit to buying all the attendees a drink at our networking happy hour. This is someone that has participated in several of our Success Summits and someone that we trusted. There was a miscommunication about him speaking at the event, and he got upset. We thought we had it worked out, but he decided not to show up and to not participate in the happy hour networking event. That means we had to take care of it.

The fact that we had to cover the cost was not a big deal. In fact, we were happy to do it! What bothered us was that he let us down. Clearly we cannot trust his commitments going forward, so he will not be invited back. He said that he expects about $100,000 in profit from our last event with all the new clients he picked up. If that is a real number, he is potentially giving up $100,000 in profits by not covering a $500 bar tab. That does not seem worth it to me.

We get a lot of business and close a lot of deals because we do what we say. We are sometimes too harsh on the front end, but truth is not always easy to hear. It has always been our business model to be brutally honest with our trusting clients, and to always return phone calls and emails. Those simple steps have separated us from our competitors. That is no different in any other business. Too many companies and individuals fail at the follow through, and they are destined to mediocrity because of it.

Your word to yourself:

There is very little in this world more important than being honest with yourself. You cannot change who you are or accomplish what you want until you are. This is true with the reality of where you are now and where you are headed. This is also true with your promises.

I work off of a task list each day. I am writing this article because my task list tells me to. Once something finds its way on my list, I find a way to get it done. It is that simple. Me writing it down is my commitment or promise to myself to do the task, no matter how big, how small, or how scary. No matter what! Things do get bumped to the next day or a later day, but they never come off the list until they are done, and I never stop working until my task list is clear.

For this reason, I am able to accomplish anything I want. I first just need to determine what it is I want and make a plan to get there. I break the plan down to action items and then I write those items down. Again, once they are written down, the mission gets done.

It is so, so important that you always follow through. If you are not sure you can get something done, don’t commit to it. Keep your word, keep your reputation, and keep enjoying your success!