Success requires, no demands, a level of intensity that is absent in most environments. That is why most people do not produce consistent power-results.
To succeed at a high level, you must have intensity. What is intensity? According to Webster’s, it is a passionate and serious attitude or quality. The dictionary defines it as a “rare emotion. In physics it is defined as: strength of a source of energy such as light, electricity or sound per unit of area, mass or time.”
Are you concentrating enough energy to any much less every event in your life? If not, that is a problem and perhaps the reason for the lack of success that you are achieving.
So how do you change? Keep reading...
From my experience, too many people pay only lip service to intensity. In the gym, too many people spend over one hour with no sweat and might I add no results. This example is easy to see and understand while at the same time serves to help us understand the problem-self deception. Millions of workers go to their place of work every day while only providing the minimum effort to maintain their job but not enough energy to make a substantial difference.
Electrifying effort always produces electrifying results. Will it produce electrifying results tomorrow? Unequivocally, no. But eventually, only results are the possible result. What is the next step?
Simple action items include:
• Time block every day next week in 15-minute blocks (what are you going to do and when?)
• Single out one opportunity or problem and schedule sufficient time
• Concentrate your effort until you have the result of your plan. For example:
1. Do not stop until you have added a new referral source to send you business
2. Do not stop until the referral source has become hooked on you as a source
3. Do not stop until you have the new marketing plan producing results
4. Do not forget the value of 1.0 (it will never be perfect, so don't wait).
• Follow up and repeat
Obviously, identifying and obtaining business from a referral source takes more effort and time than can be given to it in one quantum but that only means that now you must block enough time each day that within a short period of time the effort will result in a referral source (and don’t make your first goal to speak at the NAR next convention when you have never spoken at the local Realtor Association. That sort of goal is merely work avoidance behavior and or self-sabotage of which we will cover in the coming weeks).
Consider this: Effort is wasted until a solution is in hand. Then and only then have you expended enough energy to say that you have even tried.
Let me give you an example: When I was starting out, my father instructed me to call "the trim man" to be here on Thursday to keep the house on schedule. On Tuesday, my father asked: “When is George coming?” My answer: “Well, I called him, and left a voice mail message.”
My father stated: “If he isn’t here on Thursday, you didn’t even call and the effort was wasted since it did not result in the result you wanted.”
Is this the acid test of acid test or what? If the result is not superior to the effort, then the effort was in vain and is equated to the lack of even expending the initial effort. Many past employees have taken exception to this acid test. They want to say that their effort is equal to or even superior to the work they are paid for. But, I have to tell you, in the world in which you and I live, only results matter.
Acid tests are harsh but they measure effort and results clearly.
Joel Pate is an entrepreneur and founder of multiple successful companies in the mortgage, real estate, and marketing space. For more information on Joel, contact him at
