SEEK INSPIRATION INSTEAD OF COMPARISON

When you are in business, whether you are new or becoming established, sometimes you want to measure yourself against others that have achieved different levels of success. I have done this many times myself. 

Now this is where it gets tricky. 

Let say you ask a few mortgage brokers that have been in the business a while how many deals they funded in their first year.  You get varying answers, such as 10, 25, 125, 500 etc. 

You look at your funded volume and COMPARE yourself to the other brokers answers. You're sitting at 4 funded files and you are 8 months in. Self-doubt begins to creep in. “I'm not as good as them”, “I'm not going to make it-I am not even close to what they funded”. “Why am I even doing this business”,  “I am a failure” etc. etc.

Sound familiar? These are words that I said to myself repeatedly in my first year (2003), when I looked at my gross income and it was at $7000.00. Other brokers that started the same time as me were killing it and I was almost bankrupt. I was feeling pretty shitty and thought about throwing in the towel. 

I had to make a choice-shift my mindset and keep going or walk away.

I had to begin to look at the other successful brokers for INSPIRATION instead. My mindset began to shift to “Wow, that is amazing. Congratulations! How did you do it?”.

I listened, I learned and I took notes. Then I adopted it to fit my personality, my values, my market and my why. The following year my income jumped to $60,000.00 and continued up from there. 

I made my business my own. I continuously learn from those brokers that inspire me. Sometimes I take on too many ideas and try to reinvent the wheel, but I have learned to pause and ask myself if there is any benefit to making a change to what I am doing. If not, I stay the course. 

Comparing ourselves to others is like comparing apples and oranges. While they are both fruit that is where the similarities stop. 

Your goal is to figure out who you are, who you want to be in your business and take the actions to become that person. If there is someone in this business who models what you want to achieve, be open to learning from them and look to them for inspiration. No need to compare-they are not you and you are not them.

Whatever you choose as your own personal measure of success, celebrate it when you achieve it. I will be right there cheering you on!

RENEE