How To Reinvent Yourself, Part II: When Systemic Failures Cause Crises Outside Our Control

Part I- is an overview of how forces outside us can cause or contribute to our failures.

Part II- is about what we can do personally and the actions we can take to reinvent ourselves.

Email me if you want the part I article, and I will forward it.

Recognizing when a career tune-up becomes necessary:

What does someone who was super successful in their field do when they discover their career has stagnated or completely stopped??The business successes they immensely enjoyed for the last 10 to 30 years have disintegrated.?

Many lending programs or other services the company offered ceased to exist at alarming rates, resulting in a 50% or more layoff of staff, including salespeople, support, and administrative staff.?The same has occurred with tech giants, online media, product manufacturing, distribution, and retail outlets.?Twitter, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Disney, Salesforce, Microsoft, Netflix, Cisco, Goldman, Chase, and other corporate giants have laid off thousands of staff.?Layoffs are coming in the millions by the first half of 2023.

Layoffs are occurring in mainstream news and online media because of consolidations, and the public is tired of focusing on woke ideologies. ?Disney just fired their woke president and reinstated their prior president, who wants to refocus on traditional values. Many corporations cast conventional values into the garbage can and are paying the price.

What can frustrated folks do about their stagnating career? ?They need a new strategy or to formulate a new plan.

Success may only be possible with significant modifications to one’s thought processes, actions, habits, and willingness to accept new risks.?How long should we keep trying??Albert Einstein receives credit for stating,

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting a different result.”

There may be a point when one acknowledges that it’s time to develop an entirely new strategy. ?New technologies and discoveries may allow for completely new ways of thinking about how to interact with businesses, associates, prospects, friends, and customers.?Seeking out and engaging in a new paradigm shift may be very helpful. A brand-new round of results orientation may be close by.

One of my all-time favorite rock groups was Traveling Wilburys, their song, “End of The Line,” has a verse with a great message:

“You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring (end of the line)

Waiting for someone to tell you everything (end of the line)

Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring (end of the line)

Maybe a diamond ring.”

The Traveling Wilburys, a group of British-American iconic genius musicians, delivered some of the most profound music.?Bob Dylan, George Harrison of the Beatles era, Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jim Keltner, the “leading session drummer in America.” Another of their classics was “Handle with Care.”

The message in “End of The Line” is simple yet powerful.?The lyrics are about allowing outside forces to dictate life plans and actions, hoping these forces will bring you unearned benefits.?This simple verse defines most unsuccessful people.?They frolic through life’s forest, believing they are essential, entitled, and privileged but without the need for effort, plans, or strategy.?Superficial and dependent lifestyles, entitlement, television, procrastination, and procreation dictate their lives. ?They undoubtedly sit in front of the TV eight to ten hours a day, consuming the media and advertising garbage while waiting for the phone to ring; of course, they are hoping for the elusive “diamond ring.” That is why the government has sponsored lotteries—but wishing and hoping are not strategies.

There?may be?a point when the strategy we have successfully engaged in suddenly quits working.?I have found this circumstance in my professional life two or more times.?Self-destruction or the need for reinvention into a new enterprise is not new. ?But the option of which choice is best is straightforward.

Internal forces are those associated with personal and personal relationships that may cause us to get off purpose and deviate from a successful strategy.?Needed changes may be?due to?external forces, such as an unexpected war, interest rate increases, economic headwinds going in the wrong direction, regulatory intervention, or?internalized pressures. ?Both internal and external forces could result in severe self-induced cash-flow constraints, an unexpected illness, divorce, emotional problems, substance abuse, the death of a loved one, partnership dissolution, age bias, or staffing problems.?The list is never-ending.

“You do not need to be a victim of worry.?Reduced to its simplest form, what is worry??It is simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit.”

Norman Vincent Peale,?The Power of Positive Thinking

Once you have acknowledged that you need a?reset or reinvention, the first decision is whether to stay in your chosen field or select an entirely new one in a different profession.

A great start is going online and downloading the book “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell H.?Conwell,?written in 1925.??His simple quote defines the message!?The book is about pursuing success through what you already know in your chosen field; instead of starting a new profession in an entirely new area.??

“You can journey to the ends of the earth in search of success, but if??you’re lucky, you will discover happiness in your backyard.”

Many new and different techniques and strategies are available:

Let’s suppose that we decide to stay in our chosen field!

1)?List the elements of your past strategy that were successful.??Also, list those that are currently failing or have become obsolete.

2)?List daily action habits you practiced in the past that yielded great results and limited results—Internal (you) vs. external (the market).

3)?Some people must acknowledge how they contributed to their unsuccess. ?Many (many, many, many) refuse to recognize or rationalize how their actions contribute to their failures.

4)?Locate one or more mentors or multiple successful friends who have positive attitudes and possess the characteristics you espouse to emulate.????Your mentors and genuine friends will serve as “mental teasers” if you rationalize or choose to deceive yourself.??You will get zapped by your friends if you are dishonest or lie to yourself about the truth of your actions.

The “hard-core-truth” or “tough love truth” is that many people create barriers to success.?(They may find themselves both broke and having to buy the beers).

The reasons for failure may include the following:

a) The primary reason is a lack of?motivation without a go-get-um attitude.?We must be willing to be ever-present and to go the mile and a few more if necessary.?Outwork everyone around you.?Be results-oriented, and do not give up. ?

b) Lack of tenacity to carry out a plan.?Tenacity is the number one crucial trait of a successful person.

c) Inadequate training or rejection of the concept of change.

d) Inability to accept or understand how to accept rejection.

e)?Lack of a written action plan with daily action habits.

f)??Poor allocation of time?usage.

g)?Ineffective focus on the most critical tasks.?Use the 80/20 rule. 20% of your focused daily actions result in 80% of your results. ?80% of your daily activities result in 20% of the results.

h) Rationalization leads to failure.?Rationalization is a defense mechanism (ego) in which apparent logical reasons are expressed as an opinion to justify one’s behavior or thoughts.?A person may use the reasonableness of their viewpoint to cover up unacceptable behavior and blame another for their failures.

I)?Projection. ??People usually try redirecting or deflecting their feelings, flaws, and other quirks onto another and shift blame or ignore problems.??The person usually compensates for inadequacy by boasting about successes, purchasing things, displaying items suggesting success, and expressing unwarranted opinions as a defense mechanism for weakness and insecurity.?This person retains the title of success but casts off failure to others.

j)???Research the most successful top 10 people in your field, study the group and find the characteristics that result in their success.?List the defining characteristics or attributes that led to their success.??Emulate their actions.?The list will become a blueprint to create new daily action habits that lead to success.

l)??Your action plan should focus on elevating yourself to the top 20%. ?Or not?

Constructive Ideas to assist in the process of reinvention:

With a properly written action plan, an implementation strategy, tenacity, confidence in oneself, and “positive motivation,” you could be dropped off in Cheyenne, Wyoming, start a new business in the same field, and be successful within 24 months.

Friends do business with friends!?Most businesspersons know that their success corresponds to the number of business relationships they create.??Successful relationships become friendships and are two-way?streets.?You must assist in creating successful opportunities for your business friendships. ??Nurture their successes as if they were your own. Regularly make referrals without the need for compensation. Your network will reciprocate ten times over.

Communicating with business associates is necessary to meet goals and determine if lead prospects are progressing, stalled, or becoming dead frogs.?Responding to others’ requests is essential as a common courtesy if one intends to develop lasting relationships. ?A return phone call, email, or text with a short status update is a beautiful event. ?Short is excellent and gets the job done.

Those who regularly communicate with others show mutual respect and dignity and will be successful. ??Those who do not will fail because they view themselves as the center of the sales process rather than the customer. ?Non-communicators eventually eliminate themselves from the playing field and eliminate any possibility of developing lasting long-term relationships.

Regular texting, emailing, and online zoom meetings as the primary sources of communication have limitations.?I have never developed a lasting friendship with anyone based on texting or even emailing. Most zoom meetings are painful experiences and test one’s patience. ?20% of the content has value, and 80% usually has none. I doubt one could ever enjoy long-term sustaining relationships without person-to-person conversations. ?

There are people in our business that we should avoid.??Certain people bring nothing to the relationship other than superficiality, wasted time, disappointment, and eventual disgust. ?The disgust may even be with yourself and why you put up with this person in the first place. ?Disgust with oneself is self-defeating. ?

Some people that we meet are self-centered, egotistical, and even sociopathic. ?Their world is only a reflection of their sphere.??They?may be?parasitic, sycophantic, negative, defeatist, secretly hostile, pathological liars, of which there are many, or jealous of the success of others.?Because of their self-admiration, they usually expect the phone to ring one way, inbound toward them.??Identify these folks, and eliminate them from your life, pronto. ?

Industry terminology and jargon may change, but success concepts will be similar.?My examples relate to the real estate lending business during my 45 years and having operated a half dozen other companies with hundreds of employees.

Because of our recent experience with the Covid-19 shutdown, the importance of systems designed to create portability in active working stations has become paramount.?Transferring one’s workstation to a home office or other workplace and continuing daily activities to communicate with prospects and associates has taken on an entirely new meaning.

1)?Review vendor support relationships. ?Vendor(s), usually independent contractors, are assigned delegated responsibilities, always reflecting your professionalism.?Vendors may include service providers like loan processors, underwriters, and Insurance brokers. ?Many of us need one or more 3rd?party marketing specialists to connect, communicate, and solicit to the outside world.??Replace those who do not possess a master’s competence.?

2)?Legal & regulatory compliance expert.?With the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and multiple government agencies, federal, state, and some overlapping, even redundant, an expert is required in your field. That includes labor relations.?Part of the reason for the complexity is the hope that you will make a mistake and the system can zap you with punitive measures.?You are liable for the actions of your experts.

3)?Accounting Support includes a top-rated CPA or Enrolled Agent Tax Expert, in-house accounting, trust accounting, outside auditors, retirement planners, trust fiduciaries for retirement plans, etc.

4)?Tech support.??Most business owners and salespersons need hardware, desktops, monitors, multiple servers, backup systems, Wi-Fi connections, phones, and phone/computer interfaces connected to the outside world by high-speed cabling.?We need a tech support person to be an on-call diagnostic expert who can remotely connect to your system or portable computer upon request and fix problems.

5)?Software support.??A customer relationship software package (CRM) is a must.?Many are available as a software package installed into your system or online.?You also need an office support system like Microsoft 365, which has outlook, a word processor, and a spreadsheet.??Many practitioners use loan processing, trust accounting, servicing, and accounting programs.?You may enhance your efficiency by installing multiple monitors, perhaps 3, to use your software packages to maximum efficiency.?If someone sends you an email, you may want to transfer the data into a CRM to record history with that person, forward it to another, or use the loan processing system for data storage.??It is helpful to have a commercial-quality server and workstation security software package to protect against unwanted solicitations and viruses. ??Also, remote desktop connection software is now almost a necessity.?Go to My PC, Team Viewer, and Log My In are examples.?Lastly, some need a cloud-based backup system for server and desktops data

6)?Connections with others for meetings and presentations have now become more accessible with software such as Zoom and Go to Meeting.?We expect this creative software design segment to improve over the next 24 months.

7) ?Marketing and support systems.?Marketing is a complex subject that needs a ton of elaboration.?I will only mention limited aspects.??We need a product or service to personally develop a master’s competence level, a list of ever-growing prospects, a direct mail or email marketing system, and a high-quality interactive website.??We should install a consistent customer relations management (CRM) program to manage communication with your prospects, which will, in turn, help us develop business relationships and friendships.??Your CRM is one of the primary engines driving your business forward.?Friends do business with friends.

8)??Some folks rely too much on social media.?Social media giants like Facebook, GETTR, Instagram, LinkedIn, Parlor, Telegram, Tik ToK, Twitter, YouTube, and many others are corporations that rely on advertising to make a profit.?The more you are bombarded with advertising and buy things, the more profits they make.?Most of the platforms are also ideologically driven.?Whether one can derive viable business contacts from social media needs to be explored by experts in that field.

You must realize that your data and correspondence are not private.?But instead, your data is used to determine how they can monetize your connection to their platform algorithmically.?Computer algorithms can determine where your interest lies and what you may be willing to purchase.?Profits and having you become dependent on them is always the motive.

?9)??The term “social media” is, in most cases, a misnomer.?A more appropriate name would be “social disinformation media.” Many attempts to provide natural information are biased propaganda designed to sway public opinion.?Social media news bias, political polarization, geopolitical preferences, and cancel-culture actions boil down to how they can manipulate you to make a profit for them.?In most cases, these platforms are interested in controlling your narratives about everything.?They want to sway your opinion.?They also want you to develop more reliance and spend time on their platform.

?In almost all cases, our success depends on forming relationships. ?The more connections that become friendships, the more business a person will develop.?I shared this earlier in this article.

10)?Social media linking for relationship-building: When you receive a request to connect on social media such as LinkedIn, and you get a sales pitch, good buddy sales 5 minutes later, disregard the pitch.?The salesperson either does not care about building a relationship or is ignorant of the concept.??

11) Organizational size.?Some folks want to build a company with brick-and-mortar square footage and a substantial fixed cost base every month, including rent or ownership expenses, hiring, equipment, insurance, liability for others, and the stress of dealing with staff.??Calculating fixed and variable costs that will expand and contract as needed is difficult.

Judging the elasticity of demand for your product or service may take time and effort.?Elasticity refers to the business adapting to rapid up-and-down fluctuations in business volume.?For example, loan volume production in the real estate lending business can expand and contract overnight, as we are currently witnessing.??

The government can raise interest rates, pick winners and losers, shut down all private enterprise businesses using a fraudulent scheme, and instill fear, insecurity, and anxiety.?During the COVID fiasco, the government protected large corporations.?At the same time, they allowed for the systematic destruction of small and moderate-sized businesses across the country.?

Major news stories, whether actual or the usual propaganda lies and deceptions, may cause people to get skittish.?Buyers, borrowers, manufacturers, distribution outlets, and end-use consumers may need time to readjust or decide to exit from any decisions altogether.??Supply chains may be constricted or locked up.

12)?We must also be concerned with the scalability of your operation, meaning the ability to adjust to taking on much higher volumes when needed.?Flexible scalability requires that your infrastructure be large enough to quickly increase staff, equipment, and support systems that all move in tandem—or reduce staffing and expenses when necessary.

13)?Another option is to outsource all or part of your support systems necessary to drive your business forward.?There are excellent independent individuals and companies whose sole function is to provide professional support services for a fee.?Costs are generally reasonable.?Examples in real estate lending are transactional coordinators, loan processors, loan servicing, escrow officers, and legal documentation providers.

14)??Working from a home office is great and using independent contractor support staff has many merits.

15)?Outside services contractors generally stress you less, assuming they are highly competent and professional.?They are hard to find and keep busy.?Also, elasticity and scalability become problematic when you try to be the do-all, catch-all for your company.

Each of us will have ups and downs.?Getting back up can sometimes be challenging.?The willingness to bounce back and fight is a learned talent.?Repeated attempts will reward you with the ability never to give up, snap back into a prosperous new energy plan, and charge forward to success.

An excellent start to reinventing oneself is:

A WRITTEN PLAN, A COMMITMENT TO A NEW PARADIGM SHIFT, SCHEDULED DAILY ACTION HABITS, AN EAGERNESS TO BE EVER-PRESENT, A GOOD ATTITUDE, DRIVE, TENACITY, AND A WILLINGNESS TO TAKE ON NEW RISKS IN UNCHARTED TERRITORIES.

Thank You

Dan Harkey

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