At a recent continuing education class, I was speaking with some other home inspectors, and one of them asked the group what was the one trait that made them successful. Most of the group gave predictable answers, touting their experience or explaining how thankful they were for their good fortune. I didn’t provide an answer at that moment, as I couldn’t pick out one particular thing that lead to my (relative) success.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered: Can success really be boiled down to only one attribute, and if so, what would that attribute be?
Obviously, intelligence comes to mind. Your I.Q. certainly plays a significant part in your career, but there has to be more to it than that. We all know people that are really smart, but just can’t seem to get it together, in either their personal or professional lives.
Could something else be driving this? Is there something (other than your I.Q.) that determines your level of success? What are the other factors that have an influence on your chances of success?
While intelligence certainly plays an outsized role in determining our level of achievement, many other factors contribute to our success. Business acumen, likeability, professionalism, wisdom, tact, attractiveness, confidence, humility, and appearance all have an impact on our bottom line. Very few people rank high across-the-board in all of these measurements. We may be very smart and likeable, but lack confidence and professionalism. Or we’re attractive and confident, but are lacking in humility and tact.
The fact is that no one is perfect; we all have limitations that we must account for in our business lives. There’s a great story in the book Rebel Without a Crew by the filmmaker and entrepreneur Robert Rodriguez, where he talks about how he shot his first movie with a budget of only $7000. He basically came up with a list of his assets, meager as they were, and put them to work.
All right, we got a turtle. Turtle’s gonna be in the movie.
All right, my friend’s got a broken down school bus. Work the school bus into the script.
My cousin has a pit bull; got a place for him too.
The world thought he was some new genius filmmaker, but he was simply someone who made the most of his situation. He reconfigured the whole movie to fit the reality of his life. To quote the old axiom, he did the best he could with the hand he was dealt.
No matter what qualities we feel we’re lacking in, we’re not tall enough, we’re not young enough, or we don’t articulate well enough, there are other traits where we’ve got an advantage. There’s certainly one (or more) areas where we’re better than average. Figure out what those things are and play to your strengths. If you’re good looking, get out in front of the agents. If you’ve got some mad computer skills, get your website in front of them. If you know enough to be able to build an entire house by yourself, you’ve got to figure out how to best share your knowledge.
My belief is that in business, like everything else in life, success is dependent upon many different variables. These distinctive personal elements all come together to form our character. Successful people recognize their character and play to their strengths, taking advantage of their gifts and building their career on the things that they do well.
But most importantly, successful people achieve success by trying new things, learning from these varied attempts, and using that accumulated knowledge to improve. Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi Jr. said, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”
Don’t lack will. Keep trying; keep learning; keep improving. You will achieve success. Guaranteed.
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Thanks, Joe
