It is so important to visualize what you want to accomplish and then live your life and run your property management business as though you have actually achieved the level of success you want. Robin Spizman and Rick Frishman tell the following about successful Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author Jack Canfield about this important principle. They say:
“Jack Canfield, along with his partner Mark Victor Hansen, has built a hugely successful business through his famous Chicken Soup books. There are more than 100 million copies in print worldwide, and the pair holds the record for most books on the New York Times’ best seller list at one time-seven, in 1998….To help people envision success, Canfield holds a party that he calls ‘Come as You’ll Be.’ Guests dress up to be who they’ll be in five years, after they’ve achieved all of their goals.
“ ‘I’ve had guys dressed up as Hugh Hefner,’ Canfield says. ‘I’ve had guys shop up in tuxedo, as if they just won the Oscar. I once had a young man walking around with a cell phone saying, ‘J.Lo, it’s over.’ By dressing up as they want to be, guests take the first step in making it happen. They literally visualize their success—in the mirror.
“It has an internal effect on the subconscious,’ Canfield explains. ‘When you start visualizing and feeling strongly about what you want, you move toward it. We want to program that subconscious mind with strong images of success. It’s like a GPS system. If I see myself as really thin, now I have a destination in there, and the subconscious starts charting a way to get there.’
When your subconscious charts out the way to help you reach your goals, you will attract people into your life who can help make your dreams come true. Canfield tells an example of this about when he and Hansen had the goal to sell 1 million books in a single day.
“A month [after they set this goal], they attended Book Expo America, the large annual convention for publishers, and Canfield was sitting on the shuttle from the convention center to the hotel after a long day. A woman sat down next to him and introduced herself as a buyer for a national bookstore chain. They chatted for a bit, and Canfield mentioned the goal of selling a million books in a day.
“The idea sparked the woman’s interest. She began to formulate a plan for appearances at airports throughout the country, traveling from the East to West to many cities in a single day.
“‘I asked her why she would be willing to help us reach our goal,’ Canfield recalls with a laugh. ‘She said, ‘Dummy, if I sold a million books in one day, don’t you think that would make me look good?’ Some people would say that’s lucky. But when you send out your thought with certainty, you attract the people who can help you.” –Where’s Your Wow, pp. 7-8.
You are now more than halfway through a year that you likely set goals to achieve before the end of this year. How are you doing at reaching the goals you set for yourself in your business? Are you attracting the kind of clients into your business that will help you achieve your goals? Are you attracting the right kind of team members to help you sell what must be sold to help you reach your goals? How many new properties do you want to manage by the end of the year? In short, are you envisioning your success and living into that picture?
In 1976, author Steve Chandler had lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Tucson, Arizona. Not one person in the restaurant knew who he was. He was publicizing a movie he had just made that was a box office disappointment.
During the lunch, Steve asked Arnold: “Now, that you have retired from bodybuilding, what are you going to do next?”
His answer floored him. Arnold said: “I’m going to be the number-one box-office star in all of Hollywood.”
Chandler tried not to laugh because his first attempt at movies didn’t promise much.
Instead, he asked him: “How do you plan to do that?”
He said: “It’s the same process I used in bodybuilding. What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture, as if it were already true.”
In the early 90’s, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the number one box office star in Hollywood.
Schwarzenegger later said:
“The most important thing is that you see your goal in front of you. You always have to see it in front of you, because that will become the motivating influence for you. If you want to be a champion in something, or let’s say that your goal is to be the police chief in your town, you should always have that in front of you, because at every move you make throughout the day, you can ask yourself, ‘Will this get me to my goal, or will it deviate from the plan?…Every set that I did in the gym, every repetition I did on chin-ups or on squats with 500 pounds, I never said to myself, ‘Oh my God, another rep.’ I said, ‘Yes! Another rep, another rep,’ because that will make my dreams turn into reality.”
Schwarzenegger has had ups and downs throughout his life, but the lesson of putting your goals in front of you and living into the picture of your dreams is one none of us should forget.
Steve Chandler in his book 100 Ways to Motivate Others makes this great observation:
“Enlightened leaders get more out of their people because they know that each of their people already has everything it takes to be successful. They don’t buy the excuses, the apologies, the sad fatalism that most non-performers skillfully sell to their managers. They just don’t buy it.”–p. 22.
Remember, if you tolerate mediocrity in others, you will be mediocre yourself (because you will surround yourself with mediocrity). Don’t buy the excuses and apologies of non-performance. Instead, create expectations that you want, visualize what that looks like, and live into the picture.
If you would like to discuss how proven business systems can help you reach your vision for your property management business, schedule a time to visit with one of our franchise developers here.
