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Let’s talk about the inevitable frustration of success, about building a business slowly. I have one piece of advice if you’re still building your business: Don’t be in a hurry to become a success. If you become impatient, the impatience will wear you down. I’m not suggesting we sit back and wait for success to find us. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m suggesting there are no shortcuts to the top. Shortcuts don’t work in our business in the long run. I’ve seen a few advisors achieve an awful lot in a short period of time, but in every one of those cases, something was wrong. And you can guess what that something was.
I know now, looking back, success takes extraordinary patience, because to be successful at what you do, you have to be great at what you do. And you get great in this business the same way Tom Brady got great at football. You put in the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice. How then, on our way to success, do we combat the inevitable impatience?
Well, one way to combat impatience is to understand it comes from within. It doesn’t come from the people in the line in front of you at Starbucks or cars in front of you on a highway. Obstacles irritate us. Things that take too long anger us.
Frustration and anger are reactions we can control.
Those folks in Starbucks, they don’t stand between you and your goals. If you have the patience to wait, you’ll be at the head of the line. Feeling cross is not going to make the line move any faster. As well, in order to succeed as an advisor, you have to depend on others, at some degree, clients being an example. You have to be patient with people. You certainly can’t move any faster than your clients are willing to move.
Getting angry, saying the wrong thing, that’s not going to help. It’s going to damage the relationship. It’s going to set you back. You don’t want to do that. It also helps you to keep in mind, if we build our business as if someday we’re going to sell it, we’ll build a better business.
In order to sell your business, the business has to be profitable, and achieving profitability takes time. Knowing what works takes time. Building a client list takes time. Putting down roots in the community, establishing a reputation, all that stuff takes time. Filtering out unrealistic expectations takes time.
Learn to do something right every single time.
Nobody can argue those points. Patience may well be fleeting, because we live in a world of Twitter, Instagram and Google. People today are in a hurry even though they’re not late. We can get most anything we want right now, but success is not for sale. You can’t order it online. It has to be courted, and courtships always take time.
Let me tell you a story you may or may not know. You can find a can of WD-40 in about every garage in the world, like 160 countries. Everybody knows WD-40.
What people don’t know is the origin of the name. It was called the Rocket Chemical Company. It was founded in San Diego in 1953, and the product was used to displace the standing water that caused corrosion in nuclear missiles. The company failed the first 39 times to perfect the formula. Success was achieved on the 40th attempt. WD-40 stands for Water Displacement 40th Attempt. 1969, they changed the name to WD-40. I can tell you the same story about Apple, Starbucks and Walmart, almost any great company. The lesson is simple, don’t be in a hurry to become a success.