All posts by Keith Thompson

What would you do differently?

Family, Life

I was watching a sappy Christmas movie the other night and it was about this lady that had died (she thought) and was given another week to see if she could change how she lived. She basically lived for work and put everything and everyone second to work. She began thinking about all the ways she would change her life if she just had another opportunity. In the end, she got to come back to life for a second chance.

In real life, you don’t get that chance. Once you pass, all that you leave to the ones you love is the memory of how you lived your life and the words and wisdom you taught them while you were alive.

The lady in the movie said to herself, if I just had another chance, I would;

I would do things differently

I would have different priorities in my life

I would take the time to make a difference

I would put my family first, not my work

I would take care of my health

When I died I would not wish I had spent more time in the office

I would really look at the things and people around me and listen to the music of life

I would not waste life’s minutes on strife, anger, jealousy and vengeance

I would embrace the talents I have and not lose minuets on the ones I don’t have

I would live each day as though it was my last

I would choose joy, love and peace

We all think we have a lot more life ahead and there will always be time to change our lives. What if you are wrong? What would you change in your life if you knew your time was up?

Merry Christmas. KT

The God Combination

Career, Life

The term God combination is how I refer to the following:

Your look, eye movement, speech, hair, mannerisms, the way you walk, the cadence of your voice, the conviction in your speech, hand movement, height, weight, the look in your eyes, the dilation of your pupils, your smile, your frown etc. Also how you slow or speed up your words for hidden meaning, your focus, intensity, actions, etc.

I could go on for 3 pages on just the various things that make up your combination that is unique to only you. There has never been and ever will be a person with your same combination. You are a one and only creation.

I have always said that real life connections happen in person. You cannot see any of the above personality traits in emails, texts, phone calls or websites. It only happens in person.

The point is to recognize that you were created for a purpose and given a combination by God that only you have. I cannot express the importance of this. You really need to let what I am saying today move from your mind to your heart. Basically, not only hear it, but also understand it. It could just be the piece of wisdom that changes your life as you know it and it could be just the piece of wisdom that finally allows you to except yourself and to stop trying to change who you are. Self-love, self-respect and self-esteem are literally the cornerstones of a confident, happy and successful life. You may need to read this blog several times a day so it can move your spirit to where you understand what this means. It means God created you just the way he wants you to be.

I have seen this in action probably thousands of times where I have had a phone call or email exchange with a new client that was just ok. Ok, but not great. That was followed up with a face to face meeting and in the meeting, everything changed. It is in the meeting where the other person sees firsthand the combination of you and decides if they like you and can trust you. This is where the magic happens in our personal life and in business.

In summary, I may be ugly, marginally intelligent and have a speech impediment,,,, but that is the combination God wants me to have. I don’t know why but it is what it is. I can spend my life trying to be someone I am not or I can make the decision to embrace who I am and get on with life. I suspect you have that same decision to make. KT

Integrity selling

Career

Years ago in the early 90’s I was in a corporate meeting where the topic was integrity selling. Everyone instinctively knew what the word integrity meant along the word selling, but the course that day made a huge impression on me.

Basically the term means to do it right, tell the truth and don’t be phony. We have all met sales people that did not have your best interest in mind and were only focused on making a sale. Over the 26 years I have sold hotels, I would like to believe that we have been honest and straightforward with clients, buyers and our staff. I have probably told thousands of buyers that the deal they were calling about wasn’t right for them and I have told many sellers not to sell now. As a salesperson, telling a buyer not to buy and a seller not to sell seems like the speedway to failure but the opposite has proven to be true. Many of these clients and buyers have become friends of ours and in many cases, we have done a lot business together. Why? It is because they trust us to tell them the truth.

I had a call with a seller yesterday where I told him to pull his asset off the market because there just wasn’t enough interest at his price level. Common practice would say to keep it on the market and hope for the best but we have always tried to tell clients the straight truth so that we are not having to answer six months later why we were wrong. I would say over the years I have probably declined almost as much business as I have accepted because to me, making money on one deal is not as important as earning a client’s trust for the long term.

For me, integrity selling means to act in such a way so that you are not ashamed. It means to sleep well knowing that you have told the truth and done your best. In sales organizations, all the charts are about sales volume and frequency of income. The chart that is the dearest to me is where I can track on a few fingers, the people that have failed that bought a hotel from me. So for me personally, this is the most important chart I will carry with me when I retire.

So, live life with integrity in all you do because the truth is much easier to remember. KT

The last 15 years

Family, Life

Sunday night I was upstairs in our home turning off the lights because our granddaughters had spent the day with us. I straightened up the rooms a little (very little, ha) and began thinking that these are the same rooms that were my daughter’s rooms when they lived at home.

I was taking a trip down memory lane looking at my oldest daughter’s middle school annual when she was in the 8th grade. I looked at the writings her friends wrote in her annual and all the items still on her bulletin board from high school. Then I started thinking about my youngest daughter’s room across the hallway and all the stuffed animals she used to have and how I would come up each night and pray with them both before they went to sleep. How I would kiss them good night before bed time and hold their hands and tell them I love them.

I was standing upstairs last night wondering how the years have slipped by without my notice. How it still seemed that my two daughters should be in middle school and high school and how I should see them each morning at breakfast. Then I realized that period in my life has passed.

Life is funny that way. Time doesn’t slow down for anyone and before you know it, a period or cycle in your life has changed. There were times when my daughters were little that I thought they would never get past diapers and be able to walk and dress themselves. Then a few years went by and boys started hanging around our house and I knew our life was changing and would never be same. I also knew there was strong possibility I would go to prison when I saw a couple of the boys they were dating. Ha.

I suppose the first lesson of the day is that all periods in life change and the best we can hope for is to accept change with grace as we all move through life. The second lesson would be to enjoy the moments as they happen and be there mentally and emotionally so you can bank the memories. I don’t care how old my children get, I am going to hug them, kiss them and tell them I love them. When the lord calls me home, they will never have to wonder if their daddy loved them. KT

Life examples

Life

In life there are good examples and bad examples to follow. I believe we need both. We need the good examples to emulate how we want our life to be and the bad examples to know what we do not ever want to become.

I had to leave home when I was 17 years old and a senior in high school. I was the captain of the varsity football team and senior class president and yet my home life was a mess. I found a room to rent with a gentleman that was a friend of a friend and got a night job at the Rex Chair Factory. I would go to football practice and afterwards when all the other players went home to dinner with their family, I went to work at the chair factory.

Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this because at the age of 17, I had to choose the examples I wanted to follow and the examples I didn’t. In all of our lives we come to a point that we have to choose what we want to be when we grow up. I had to choose a little earlier than most but looking back on that period in my life, I clearly see God’s hand at work. God saw to it that I met the right kind of examples to follow and recognized the examples that I didn’t want to be like.

I guess you could say that the bad examples in my life almost played a greater role than the good ones. See, it was the bad examples that keep me from going off track and becoming someone I didn’t want to be. While even though at that time I didn’t have a wife and family, I did however know what I wanted it to be like when I did.

Much of life’s most precious blessings can be seen when we step back and take an honest inventory of who we are and how we got here. In my young years I had family members and people I worked with that showed me the way. I also had family members and people I worked with that showed me what I didn’t want to become.

Sometimes in life you are faced with having to change your heroes and examples in order to be around people you most want to be like. There are a few mental imagines that I developed when I was young that I carry with me to this day. They are images of the type of man, husband and father I want to be. You probably have similar images of who you want to be and what it will feel like when you accomplish the images you have dreamed of.

Choosing life examples are important so be careful to choose wisely. KT