I heard a guy say many years ago that the person you will be in five years will depend on the people you associate with and the books you read. The more I think about this statement the more I believe it is true. If you spend your time only around small minded people who talk about other people, you will become a small minded person that talks about other people. If you are around people with dreams, desires, and goals, you will become a person with dreams, desires, and goals.

In society today many people may not have the opportunity to be around people of influence, so they must find that association another way. Through the books they read. People learn the most by the people they associate with, but the second greatest influence is the books you read.

I get a chuckle when I think about how I learned to sell hotels. It was 1990 and the company I joined probably let me join just to prove the point that not everyone can sell a hotel. Ha. They thought you had to have education, contacts, experience and know the business. Well, that’s wrong.  What you needed was the desire. The company I joined didn’t have some training program that developed the broker. No sir. They had a metal two door file cabinet with seven listings in it. My training program consisted of the managing partner taking me over to that metal file cabinet and opening the doors and saying, “there it is, if you can learn it, great, if not, that’s ok too.” Then he walked away. You might think I am kidding but I am not. That was literally it. The point is, I learned the business by being around other hotel brokers and listening to them talk and watching what they did. That was the greatest teacher I could have had.

We often give our children guidelines that we don’t personally follow. We as parents want our children to be around good kids, wholesome kids, kids with manners, kids that plan on college, kids that have been raised well etc. and the list could go on for pages. We seem to want and even possibly demand these type friends for our children, yet many times we don’t look for these same qualities in our friends.

Trust me when I say, it’s likely you will be in five years much like the people you most associate with. Dreams, visions, and goals are most influenced by the people you are around.

Over my years I have hired many hotel brokers, and some have failed. Possibly it’s because I tried too hard to coddle them and train them when what I should have done was open the metal file cabinet and patted them on the back and walked away. Ha. KT