Key to Success: Just Do It!

The mega brand Nike is known worldwide for its catchy slogan “Just Do It!” I think this is partly because so many of us want to feel like we relate to this phrase and it in some way speaks to us, but my experience as a speaker and trainer tells me different.

I recently attended a REIA meeting (Real Estate Investors Association), which take place all over the country and is a great place to find quality investors (a portion of the market that is way underutilized by the REALTOR® community in my opinion).

What struck me about this meeting were the similarities I found in the attendees now compared to last meeting I attended almost three years ago. At one point, the host asked the crowd a very important question, “How many of you have purchased at least one property in the last year?”

It sounds like a pretty simple question for a group of investors but I was amazed to see that, just like the crowd I witnessed three years ago, only about 10 percent of the crowd raised their hands. I started thinking about this and my experiences with literally tens of thousands of REALTORS® and sales people over the past years and I came to three conclusions.

First, people love to learn new things. We love to expand our knowledge wherever possible.

Second, people love to plan. We enjoy setting up our new business plans. We love setting up the latest software on our computer. We love to categorize our databases and organize our offices in a way that gives us the best chance to succeed. Bottom line – we love to feel like we are setting ourselves up for success for the future, which leads me to my last conclusion.

Very few of us like to ever actually implement the final step that is necessary to activate what we have planned for and see if we really have what it takes to succeed on a high level.

I believe for many people this is because they are afraid to fail. Sometimes it is easier to live in the world of your “potential” always feeling you “could” do this or that, rather than finding out that you weren’t actually able to do it. As long as you don’t take the final step you can always still live in this world of “potential.”

Here is the truth though – almost anyone can achieve a high degree of success if they follow the right patterns laid out by their plans, but at some point, it is time to take a leap of faith in your own abilities and see your plan through to completion. One of the greatest pieces of advice that I got when I was younger was from someone who told me I had many talents. He told me that in anything I wanted to do I should just “jump and the net will appear.” This has been proven true time and time again.

Which brings me to my last point – there was a study done recently on the top 100 fastest growing small businesses in the world that are growing during a time of global recession. They wanted to know why these small businesses were growing while everyone else seemed to be downsizing and struggling. When they polled them to see why they were doing so well they were expecting to hear things like great customer service and systems. While these were important, the number one thing that they all pointed to was something called Speed of Implementation. What that basically means is that when they had good ideas… they actually followed through with them!

What I am really saying to you is that you can’t allow articles like this, which are meant to be business or self-help for you become “shelf help.” Shelf help is any good advice or idea that you have received, and instead of acting on it, you have placed it on your shelf collecting dust while you go about business as usual. Don’t let that be you anymore!

Jared James is the CEO and Founder of Jared James Enterprises, an internationally sought-after speaker and trainer. James built one of the fastest-growing real estate teams in the country, was inducted into the International Hall of Fame for one of the world’s largest real estate companies and wrote a best-selling book—all before the age of 28. As an acclaimed speaker, James keynotes events for major real estate organizations and conducts regular webinars and training for nationally known organizations like NAR, CRS, Yahoo Real Estate,Trulia and Zillow Academy and blogs regularly for RISMedia.