Category Archives: Career

Greatest failures

Career, Family, Life

I don’t know what you are trying to do or thinking about doing in your life, but I came across some pretty interesting facts that I would like to share with you. Many times, people will try something, but if they get rejected or fail one time, they quit trying and just believe/assume it was not meant to be.

If the following people quit after one try, I dare to think where we would all be.

Henry Ford – went bankrupt twice within four years trying to start a car company. Interesting point is that the same investors in Ford Motor Company were the same investors that lost money in the first two companies.

Albert Einstein – His parents thought he was retarded, and a teacher told him he would never amount to anything. He did not speak until he was four years old and did not read until he was seven.

Walt Disney – Went bankrupt in 1921, and he literally ate dog food to survive. He went bankrupt a couple more times before inventing Mickey Mouse and finally creating a company that was successful. Newspapers said he “had no good ideas for film productions”

Michael Jordan – Missed more than 9,000 shots and lost 26 games where he was entrusted to take the final shot

Beethoven – His teacher once said of him that he was hopeless as a composer. He lost his hearing and still went on to become one of the greatest composers of all time

J.K. Rowling – She wrote the Harry Potter series. Her manuscript for harry Potter was turned down 12 times, and she was depressed, penniless, divorced. When she wrote Harry Potter while she was on welfare.

Steve Jobs – His biggest failure was the Apple Newton in 1993. They didn’t think he could invent anything that the broad market wanted. The Newton was the basic idea for the Blackberry, and the owners of Blackberry literally owned the global smart phone market and thought they were invincible. Well, Steve Jobs invented the iPhone in 2007 and all but closed down Blackberry.

Stephen King – His first book “Carrie” was rejected 30 times, and he almost quit. It was his wife who took the manuscript out of the trash and told him to keep trying.

Oprah – she was fired from her first television reporting job because she was deemed “not suitable for television”

Steven Spielberg – He dropped out of Junior High School. He was persuaded to go back to school, and they placed him in a learning disabled class. He only lasted a month before quitting school all together.

Abraham Lincoln – he had 12 losses in various areas, job and elected positions before he won the election for the President for the United States.

Bill Gates – Invented a thing called a Traf-o-data that failed because no one thought he could invent anything that the market would buy. He went on to create Microsoft and changed the computer world.

Fred Astaire – Was turned down for his first audition, and they said “he can’t act, he can’t sing, he is slightly bald, he is not handsome, but can dance a little”

Babe Ruth – When he retired in 1935, he held the record for the most home runs and also for the most strikeouts. The Boston Red Sox traded him to the New York Yankees because they said he was just a fat pitcher. He went on to lead the Yankees to seven World Series Championships.

So, think about these things the next time you try something, do something, say something, and get told you can’t do it. KT

Stepping off the wheel

Career, Family

Stepping off the wheel in life means several things. It can refer to retirement or just taking a weekend or an evening with your family where work is not allowed.

Retirement causes me anxiety. The idea of not being able to do what I do for a living does give me pause. I suppose many male adults feel this way about work because it signals a big change in life. The term big change may be a huge understatement. It is one of the biggest shifts in a person’s life. It is a daunting thought to go from having a job, places to go, people to meet and objectives to accomplish to whatever it is you do when you retire. I will eventually get there, but it won’t be today.

Let’s focus on the term “stepping off the wheel” as it refers to time with your spouse or your family. If you have ever seen a mouse in a cage, he usually has a little wheel where he can get on and run for a while. Even a mouse gets off the wheel from time to time and doesn’t run. I know people that carry their iPhone to bed with them and answer emails until they go to sleep and sometimes even check their emails during the night. I think this type of person really needs to get off the wheel and learn when to shut it down.

Many years ago, I started turning the sound off on my phone and plugging it in to charge when I got home; I would leave my phone in the hallway. It was, and is, my way of stepping off the wheel, even if it is for a period of time. Now, we have iPads that also have our email on them, and even though our phones are turned off, we still see what’s going on when we open the iPad. I have learned myself well enough that if I look at the iPad at night and see an email from someone in business, many times I will not open the email at night because I know if I get my mind running in that direction, it is often hard to turn it off. Therefore, I save most business emails for the office the next morning and deal with them as needed.

At Christmas time, make a decision to step off the wheel when you get home and spend time with your children and your spouse. You will never have those moments again, and once they are passed, they will never be exactly like that again. Hopefully, you will have many similar moments, but it will never be exactly the same. So, hug your spouse, sit by the fire, watch an old Christmas movie (preferably White Christmas), and be in that moment. Get in the floor with your little children, cover up with a wubby, hold them close, and tell them you love them. Be with your family and be there mentally in those moments. Trust me when I tell you that in your later years in life, it will be those moments and those memories that you will cherish and not some business call or some deal you worked on.

Stepping off the wheel at family time is the greatest business decision you can make. KT

Understanding things

Career, Life

Albert Einstein said, “you really don’t understand something unless you can explain it to a six year old.” George Patton said, “you really don’t understand something unless you can keep it simple enough to explain to a private first class.” Both of these men said basically the thing: there is a difference between knowing something and understanding something.

I am not sure I agree with Albert Einstein’s opinion because I have tried to explain things to young children and have come up short many times. I am also not sure I agree with George Patton because I have also tried to explain things (the hotel business) to other like minded adults and have many times come up short. That said, these were two pretty smart people, and we should pay attention to their wisdom and what it means.

The space between your brain (the knowing) and your heart (the understanding) is only about 12 inches, but the difference between the two is enormous. It is one thing to know something and be able to talk about it in front of people, but it is an entirely different thing to understand it.

King Solomon of Israel was the wisest and smartest person that has ever lived, and he wrote the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Bible. He was the smartest person because when he became king of Israel, he was only 12 years old. God told him to ask for anything he wanted and it would be granted to him. Again, he was only 12 years old. Solomon’s request was that God would give him an understanding heart. Think about that. He could have asked for anything in the world and that was the 12-year-old boy’s request. God granted him an understanding heart like no other person in history has ever had or ever will have. That is why the book of Proverbs is so real time, even today because the understanding it was written with transcends time.

Two of the smartest people I have ever known never went to college and one of them didn’t even graduate high school. So, what I am saying is it is not about education and head knowledge, rather it is about heart knowledge and understanding. Simply put, it is understanding what you know. As stated above, there is a huge difference between knowing something and understanding something.

When you pray for wisdom in a certain area, don’t forget to pray for understanding because the wisdom is the application of the understanding. When you understand something, you always know, but many times you can know something without really understanding it.

So, pray for wisdom and understanding because having simply head knowledge does you no good if you don’t know how to use it. KT

First two hotel sales

Career

I started selling hotels almost 25 years ago. My very first hotel sale was the Quality Inn located in Athens, GA. It was 1990, and I was broke and looking for a career to support my family. I had a good friend that sold hotels, and I showed up on his doorstep to learn how to sell hotels. It is important to know that I did not call him and ask if I could join his company, rather I just showed up. I believe he looked me over and saw that I was desperate and out of mercy, he said ok.

On that first sale, I earned $7,700; at the time, that was many weeks worth of income based on what I was used to earning. After that closing, I said to myself, that was kind of fun, let me try it again. The second hotel was the Inn At The Peachtree located in downtown Atlanta. On that closing, I earned $26,000. I decided on that day that I was going to be proficient in selling hotels. I had never had a job or business where making that kind of money was an option.

In an earlier blog post, I referenced flipping a switch in your life. That second closing was the switch for me. I started with a company that was just at the point of breaking out in a big way, and the people at the company were all well educated and very successful. I was just this dud who was broke and needed the money, but I did have a reason that was greater than my competitors. It is called a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters.

Everyone said I would never make it and did not have the skills to learn the business. Sometimes in your life you need to be told how limited “they” think you are. Sometimes positive affirmation is very important, but to some, like me, I needed to hear those folks tell me I couldn’t do it. Well, I flipped another switch in my life and went out quietly and won the U.S. rookie of the year award that very first year. The nay sayers didn’t tell me anymore that I couldn’t make it, instead they softly patted me on the back and said kind words, but still did not believe in me. The second year, I won the U.S. award for selling the most hotels of any broker in the country. I had found a career that worked for me and one that I really enjoyed.

Why am I telling you this? It certainly is not to say look at me, rather it is to tell you that with the proper motivation, education, class, skill and, in my case, fluent speech does not matter. What matters is looking into my two daughters’ eyes and my wife’s eyes and knowing that they, and they alone, believed in me.

Today, there are probably less than five brokers in the U.S. that have sold close to a thousand hotels; by the grace of God and the motivation of my family, I am one of them. To God, the only ability that matters is “availability.” Family history, education, clothes, class, speech and skill are simply not needed to succeed. The most successful people I know all started without the finer points of life, but all chose to measure their success only by their own qualifier, what they had the potential to become.

It is Thanksgiving, and I am so very grateful for my friend giving me the opportunity to learn how to sell hotels and for the heart-level motivation I needed at that time. I am thankful. KT

Hotel AG

Career

I want to tell you something about Hotel AG that many people don’t know. While we have a good company, we have even a better environment. The people that work with Hotel AG actually enjoy what they do and where they do it. It is a rare occasion to see a privately owned company with the retention rate that Hotel AG has.

Years ago, I was involved in starting a company called ThompsonCalhounFair with my two best buds, and we were a hotel brokerage firm just like Hotel AG. We were prosperous, conservative, and knew that what we had was a very special company. In business, being involved in one successful startup is a gift, but for it to happen twice in a lifetime is a blessing. Hotel AG is that second blessing for me.

Hotel AG started in 2007 and almost went under in late 2008-2009 during the economic fallout, but we survived through the downturn to watch the company grow to what it is today. Over the past 7.5 years, we have only lost one broker and a couple of staff members when during the same period, many large companies laid off half of their staff. The work environment is very special to me and something that I will protect because it is an environment where people trust each other. There are no locked doors, and the staff actually like each other. There is a camaraderie that is rare and very hard to duplicate.

With all the economics aside, Hotel AG is a rewarding company to be involved with. I believe in business if you are a leader creating an open and trusting work environment, the possibility exists to grow something very special in the marketplace today: a company where people are able to reach their personal objectives and enjoy doing it. One of the things I am most thankful for is the opportunity to be part of Hotel AG.  KT