As I was out walking this morning, really pushing both my pace and my distance, I had a flashback to my youth. I remembered one time I was running a marathon, and was having an awesome day – it actually turned out to be my PB of 2:38:30. I was waiting for a friend who was also running, expected to finish around 3:45, and so I went for a jog back out along the course. I learned a lot that day, as I noted how much more effort it seemed to be taking for the people who would be finishing in 3:15, 3:30, or even 4 hours. I was, at first, really surprised by that revelation. Not because I was discounting the effort that it takes for anyone to complete a marathon, but, I think, because I was discounting my own level of preparedness and fitness – both physical and mental.

You see, at that time, I was a full-time athlete, running 120 to 150 miles a week, and training with people like Peter Maher, who went on to lead the Olympic Marathon in Athens for most of the race, and others for whom 2:20 and fast was not that uncommon a time. We were FIT! We ran twice a day, 4 or 5 days a week, and I ran further than 20 miles in one run at least 3 times a week, with my long run being in the 30 mile range. We did track workouts up at York, and often were training at the same time as the Canadian Mens 100M team were training. We were surrounded by high-level people and training, and it rubbed off on us. And when we put in the work, we saw the rewards, many times over.

Flashing back to my jog back down the marathon course that day, I still remember one lady’s comment to me those 23 or so years ago. I was urging her on, to keep moving up this mountain of a hill on the course, and she said ‘It’s EASY for you to say – you’ve already finished the race!’ Hmmm, yeah, I remember thinking, the race actually was pretty easy for me, but not for the reasons I think she meant. It was ‘easy’ for me because I had trained so hard and scientifically for it, and peaked on the exact race day. I had run that race so many times in my mind, and had actually run the course several times in the past, so there were no big surprises for me. All in all, I was prepared for it, to the best of my abilities at that time.

So, why am I relating any of this to you? Well, like I started out saying, this came to me this morning, and, as I usually do, I started to look for the analogies with my life today, especially with my business and the agents in my market center. This is what I came up with . . .

- When we want to be winners in the race that is our real estate business, we must train ourselves in many disciplines. We must train ourselves in scripts and dialogues; we must train ourselves by previewing properties; we must train ourselves by role-playing AND real-playing; we must follow proven models; we must avoid the urge to change things that are proven to work

- We have to actually do the work; we must take action

- We have to measure our results

- We have to be accountable

- We have to be honest with ourselves

- We have to know our motivations; we must constantly revisit them

- The harder we work, the luckier we get

- We can’t let the rain or the snow or the heat stop us from doing our work, because our competitors won’t let it derail them.

And perhaps the most important thing of all . . . .

The more we do our work, the less like work and the more like play it becomes. Those track workouts that used to leave us on the verge of puking at the beginning of our training cycle became real fun as we got fitter and fitter and shared our pain together. The more you get out there and lead-generate, the more you do all those things that are part of being in this, the greatest profession there is, the better it gets!

Tags: chris, milton, newell