Category Archives: Career

One more day

Career, Family, Life

Life can change so quickly. Don’t wait to do what you know you need to do. Every single one of us knows in our heart what changes we need to make in our lives. There are no gray areas, no questions and everyone knows what to do. We just sometimes don’t want to do it.

I have attended many funerals for people far too young to have passed away. I suspect that with many of them, they woke up that morning and did not know it was their last morning. The bible says to not put off till tomorrow what you can do today. That is very sound advice for family, health, business and life in general. It doesn’t mean you have to accomplish the full thing, it just means you have to start. It is the starting where I believe God gives us a special grace and a special anointing for that moment because he knows it is the most fragile period. The starting point is the hardest part.

I believe each person who is at the one yard line of life, if they have their mental faculties, want one more day. If they were given that one more day, they would tell everyone in their life that they love them, they would do the best they could to fix a strained relationship. They would do the most important things for their family so there would be no question, they were loved.

There are some things I can change in my life and some I can’t. For instance, I am ugly and I stutter, but there is nothing I can do about those things. It is how God saw me in his eye before I was conceived in my mother’s womb. He knew a thousand years ago exactly what I would look like and be like and talk like and the precise time era I would live in. On grave stones there is a beginning date and an ending date and usually there is a dash between the dates. God knows the length of the dash and he knows exactly when we will be called home. Yes, called home. That is what heaven is, our ultimate home and he knows exactly when each of us will open the front door to that home.

Don’t put off doing what you know you need to do. In fact, do it or start it before you go to bed tonight and ask God almighty to give you the strength and will power to see the decision through. We all have fears and anxiety and all hide things behind the veil so other people can’t see it but we know what needs to be done.

Face the fear of the thing you are most afraid of and I believe you find out that it is simply a shadow. Psalms 23 says; that we shouldn’t have fear when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Let me say that again. The valley of the shadow of death. Have you ever seen your shadow? It is much larger that you actually are. It looks scary because it is so large. That is what God is talking about in Psalm 23. He says to not let the size of the shadow scare you into thinking it is so big. The thing you probably fear the most, when you face it head on, is probably not that big after all. KT

Writing an outline

Career

Don’t laugh, but when I retire from selling hotels I want to try my hand at writing books. The kind of books that intrigue me are detective novels and suspense books. I read on average a couple of books a week. The authors I really enjoy are like John Sanford, Lee Childs, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor etc. I feel pretty certain that what I write will pale in comparison to these authors, but I want to give it a go.

In all the books you read about how to write effectively, they all say you need an outline to start with. This will probably give you some insight to the quality of books I will write because I cannot think through outlines. Ha. I have tried but the computer chip in my brain just doesn’t work that way. Even with each blog post I write, I literally do not know the full structure of each post until I get into it. Many times, even the blog post takes a different route than what I first thought it would. I literally only can write and create a message or story when I start writing.

Many times in business I will just start writing an email or a message and let it take me to where it needs to go. My brain simply doesn’t not work on the outline program. So maybe when I write the first book it will start with a police detective and end up with a ski boat. Ha. I may be one of these guys who write only one book that ends up being sold at the dollar store.

Why am I telling you this? Think about life for a moment. Many people get lost in the plan or the outline and never get to the real life part. They have the perfect plan and the perfect outline but cannot shift gears and put it into motion. You have seen these type people, that have everything perfectly organized and in place and every idea or thought is written down and changed and rewritten until it is perfect. The problem is they cannot get past the outline stage. In life, many people only have the outline but never put it into practical life experience.

I am not saying to just go off into life and education and jobs without a plan. What I am saying is to be honest with yourself if you are stuck in the planning stage and unable to get into motion. I had this guy years ago that worked for me that was so organized it was a little scary. He knew every answer and had every document and every file and everything he needed to succeed. The problem was he never went out the front door. He was stuck in the planning and outline stage of life.

Sometimes we just need to go with what we have and trust the Lord that he will direct our path. In our line of work which is sales, the most important call you will ever make is a new sales call. The new client and the new project is the life blood of what we do. If a salesman only works on the stuff he already has and does not continually fill the pipeline, he/she will become stagnant and most likely fail in our business. In our business it is the voice of a new client that keeps us in the game.

See I told you, I had no idea when I started this blog where it would end up. Ha. KT

80-10-10

Career, Life

In every organization, group, business or church there is an 80-10-10 rule. It simply says that 10% of the people are leaders and visionaries for the group, 80% are maintainers and then the final 10% are inhibitors.

Let’s take them by title. The 10% leaders, they are the ones who set the example, serve on committees, share ideas and believe in the future growth of the organization. The 80% are very important because they make up the bulk of the organization and they also believe in the growth of the organization and will serve where asked. They are faithful to the future of the group. The only difference between the leaders and the maintainers, are the maintainers don’t want a leadership role but will put their support behind the ideas and future of the organization.

This brings me to the inhibitors. They are in every company and every organization and they are easy to spot. They are easy to spot because they never agree with any change or any idea and are usually the ones that talk behind behind everyone’s back. They look good, smell good but they basically have “stinking thinking.” The sooner they can be identified and marginalized the better for the organization. They will always be there and will always be involved but it is critical to the organization that they not be in leadership roles. They are the ones that gossip, talk down the organization and they try to carry as many people with them as they can. They are the ones that you see whispering their brand of thinking to anyone that will listen.

Like everything in life you need to decide what category you are in. If you are an inhibitor, you simple need to move to a company or organization where you can have a positive impact and feel that you are a part of something good instead of tearing down the company you are with. This is not scriptural, but I think when God sees us gossip and when he sees his children acting in such a non-Christian manner, it particularly hurts his feelings.

We all want to be where we are wanted and respected and where we feel we are a part of what is going on. My advice is to find a place where you can be in the 90% that celebrate the organization doing well. KT

Change in business

Career

Sometimes an unexpected change can be God’s way of doing for us what we need done before we even know we need it. The New Testament is pretty clear that God is there for us but he will not intrude uninvited. That said, there are moments when I think he lets a change happen that we need, even though we didn’t know we needed it. I will give two examples.

When I was in the Marine Corps, we were having a two week drill at 29 Palms California. Don’t let the reference to “Palms” make you think it was a vacation spot. Far from It. The Marine Base at 29 Palms is a two hour drive to the middle of the Mojave Dessert. We were in tents for two weeks in the middle of the desert. It was 130 degrees in the day time and we were in full military uniform all day every day. We even slept in our uniforms. Got the picture? Well there were two camps and we were stationed in the west camp and had already gotten set up and unpacked and ready. I was with my own unit and my own guys. Our Captain came in and said he was transferring me to the other camp with guys I didn’t know. I was not happy. As it turned out, he wanted me to be his personally driver for the two weeks to handle all the dignitaries that were coming in. In short, it was a blast and I had fun and even got to leave 3 days sooner than the rest of my unit. So what started out as a bad change turned out to be better for me.

The second example was when I left JLL in May of 2007. The idea was that I would sell hotels on my own and work on a few hotel deals each year. Just me selling by myself. We had gone out to eat with Lanie and Brad about a week after that. At the time Brad was still on staff at the church and he expressed an interest in learning the hotel business. I told him we would think about it some and maybe we could work something out at some later date when I knew what I was going to do. He was married to my daughter so the father in me was concerned about income and stability for my daughter and new son in-law. The plan was we would revisit the idea at some time in the future. Well, the next day Brad resigned from the church and called me to say he was ready. Ha.

My first impression was, how we could have gotten our wires any more crossed up. One day he was gainfully employed and the next day he was looking for job. Well as you can guess, I scrambled around and created a job for him to help me sell hotels.

The point is, God knew I needed Brad to help me when I didn’t even know myself. God knew what I needed and he did for me what I would not have done for myself. That single decision was what launched Hotel AG. If Brad had not quit his church job we might have never formed Hotel AG. God is good and he knows better than we do what we need.

If you are a tither and a believer, sometimes God does the unexpected and lets you see a glimpse into where he sees your future. Many times those decisions come in the form of an unexpected change in our lives. Therefore not every change is a bad thing and we need to step back sometimes and watch God at work in our lives. KT

Intellectual property

Career

Bill Gates said “Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”

Technology is changing every day and the “new thing” will not be the “new thing” in six months. Someone, somewhere will built it better, smaller and cheaper. Your great idea of an app, a dot com. website or computer program will be challenged and most do not survive long term.

I made mention of this in a blog last week but look at Blackberry and Kodak for example. The technology of those companies and the market share that they both controlled lasted for a while, but competitors came along and stole the market from them. Kodak had a 100 year run with selling film before digital cameras and phones were invented with memory chips. Blackberry owned the smart phone market until the iPhone. Look at Intel processing chips, they were used in just about every laptop computer. Since laptop computers are being replaced by tablets, Intel has had to change their corporate strategy to remain viable in this changing market.

Why am I telling you all this? The thing that will never change in business is the human element. Take our business for example. It doesn’t matter how great the technology becomes, it will never replace the voice and the thinking of a salesman. There will never be an app that can have a conversation, understand numbers and negotiate a contract. The problem becomes when we as salesmen began to let technology become our main focus and we can easily lose our way. Emails and texts are much easier than a phone call and require much less preparation. We have all experienced an email that says something in writing that the sender did not mean to imply. When you are speaking with someone, you hear the voice and the meaning behind the words. In an email all you see are the words.

If you think about your business last week. Which technology did you use most? If the phone was at the bottom of the list, this blog post should be a wakeup call. My State Farm insurance agent who has insured everything we have for many years called me last Friday to just say hello. He didn’t have anything to sell me or any reason other than to say hello. He could have emailed me, sure, but he called instead. When I hung up with him, I realized that is what I need to do much more of. That call did one very important thing. It reminded me (his client) that he appreciated my business and was thinking about me. In business that is very very powerful and it is the single one element that technology will never replace.

So in business, when you look at your desk and you see a computer, it represents websites, emails, and scans. The cell phone represents calls and texts. I am guessing that on the side of your desk you probably have a phone. If you ask yourself which of these devises represent the most important thing in business, let me tell you, it is a phone call. Just like my State Farm rep, he choose the phone to reach out to me and that my friends is business 101. The human element is so very powerful and unlike computers and emails, it genders trust and respect and repeat business. KT