From the book (Think and Grow Rich) by Napoleon Hill (Page 89)
My belief in the theory that business associations are vital factors, both in failure and in success, was recently demonstrated, when my son Blair was negotiating with Dan Halpin for a position. Mr. Halpin offered him a beginning salary of about one half what he could have gotten from a rival company. I brought parental pressure to bear, and induced him to accept the place with Mr. Halpin, because I BELIEVE THAT CLOSE ASSOCIATION WITH ONE WHO REFUSES TO COMPROMISE WITH CIRCUMSTANCES HE DOES NOT LIKE, IS AN ASSET THAT CAN NEVER BE MEASURED IN TERMS OF MONEY.
Non-Negotiables
When I decided to focus on building my consulting business, I had to decide on the type of things that I’d be willing to do and NOT willing to do. Deciding on what I was willing to do was the easy part. Deciding on what I was NOT willing to do and actually NOT doing those things was the hard part.
One thing that I decided not to do is communicate (verbally) with buyer and seller clients about their transactions, instead I determined that I would speak to the buyers and sellers through the agents and brokers that I referred the buyers and sellers to.
It is a simple plan, however, the plan isn’t where I find the challenge. It’s my habit of speaking directly to buyer and seller that’s the challenge. After all, it has taken me several years to successfully get into a good groove of communicating directly with the buyers and sellers. And even though I’m happier when I’m dealing directly with other agents and brokers, I still find myself in communication directly with more buyers and sellers that I would like.
It’s becoming easier and easier to focus on communicating exclusively with only the agents and brokers. I believe things are becoming easier because I determined that (me) speaking directly with the buyers and sellers is NON-NEGOTIABLE! And as with most dramatic changes, this new way of conducting business isn’t going to happen over night.
Just yesterday I found myself on the phone with a seller. The good thing is that this was the only buyer or seller client that I spoke directly with yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always prospecting for new buyers and sellers, it’s just that I only plan to talk to them once only to refer them to an agent that will handle their business the same way that I would handle their business.
We all have certain type of people that will bring us down if we spend too much time with around them. For instance, if you’re the type of person that loves to travel yet you spend your time around people that don’t… you’ll probably find yourself not traveling.
If you’re the type of person that prefers working a 9-5 job as opposed to having your own business, you may find yourself starting a business if you’re spending most of your time around entrepreneurs.
Once we’ve decided what we want to do in life, we have to decide what we’re no longer willing to do. We must establish our Non-Negotiables! We can’t fool ourselves into thinking it’s going to be easy coming up with our Non-Negotiables. If it were so easy, everyone that goes onto a diet would stick with it until they lost the amount of weight they planned to lose. Instead, most people will start a diet and say they’re not going to eat this or that only to continue eating this or that!
As long as we keep on trying to do better we WILL do better because most dramatic changes DO NOT happen overnight!
~ Matthew