Originally published as: Crave Success? Then Get Up, and Get Moving March 15, 2017 at Restoration and Remediation Magazine (R&R) By Jon Isaacson At the beginning of the year, discussions about resolutions, goals and the pursuit of success are common. Everyone wants success, or at least they say they do, but what is success? Success is a moving target. The path to success is often non-linear as not all roads lead to success and neither is there a clearly marked single lane leading to success. Leaders with an entrepreneurial vision are not afraid to travel the paths that are unmarked, offer no guarantees and are less traveled by those who would rather talk about their plans for the pursuit of success. There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. - Colin Powell Because there are no shortcuts, the personal investment in success requires payments made in sweat and time, both of which will test your perseverance. Progressing through layers of success is often determined by what we do when everyone else is doing nothing as well as our ability to endure failures. There are only so many hours in the day, so we must be effective with the time we spend on the clock and creative with the time we have off the clock. Entrepreneurs are no strangers to the smell of oil burning at midnight. Sports anecdotes are common in business as we enjoy the correlations of working hard as a team, being motivated by inspiring hard-nosed figures, fighting to the last minute, practicing our craft and being rewarded for our efforts. In the archives of iconic coaches and historic motivational half time orations, there may be none more revered than Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.” – Vince Lombardi Who doesn’t want to win? Who doesn’t want to succeed in their entrepreneurial efforts? As you fantasize about your dreams of business accolades, do you find yourself declaring among friends and co-worker about how good you could be at something? Do you ever find yourself stating, “If I only had the time …or the money …or this one tool.” Perhaps you are not the most objective person to be answering this question. If you don’t have the ability to be honest with yourself, perhaps you should ask an earnest friend. While the effectiveness of resolutions is arguable, there is value in setting goals. If you want to take yourself to the next level in your personal and professional development, it’s time to make a plan for how you are going to use the hours that you have — make a plan for what you will do with the hours everyone else is wasting. If you have a family that should come first in your time off of the clock, family is the component of life that will be there whether you succeed or not so don’t burn those bridges or lose valuable time in caring for those relationships. Your values should always be God, guns, glory — wait, that’s a different article. We understand that athletes have to put in the time lifting weights, running sprints, practicing the minutia of their profession, but somehow we don’t apply this mindset to business. The will to prepare to win as laid out by Vince Lombardi involves those sacrifices that an individual makes when they are not required to be working in a structured environment. Whether you have 30 minutes a day or several hours, be intentional about making a plan and executing to the best of your ability. The difference between knowing what you should be doing and starting the process of achieving it is one step. Stepping forward does not guarantee that you will succeed, but standing still guarantees that you won’t. If success is a moving target, how will you train yourself to hit the target that you have set for yourself? If success has many paths, and no path is guaranteed, what will you do to start moving down the road? If success is an investment in personal and professional growth which requires payments in sweat and pain, when was the last time you did so? If success is determined by what we do when everyone else is doing nothing, when are you going to get off your butt?
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How many people do you know who have a college degree and are working directly in the field that they studied for? Over the years of working with and interviewing professionals, there is a much more common thread of hard working people who put their careers in motion, met adversity and found a way to keep themselves moving forward. Thankfully we are a resilient species, we can find means of inspiration in our journey and if we are fortunate, we find people who will help expedite our progress. Andrew McCabe is an entrepreneur who has found ways to improve himself, is building a brand and has joined forces with like minded professionals who are seeking to innovate in their sector of the service industry. Our thanks to Andy for taking to the time to share a bit of his story and some of the snippets of success that have helped bring him to where he is as an independent adjuster, author and founder of a restoration conference. You don't meet many people that set out to get into the insurance industry, how did you find yourself involved with this profession? I took a job as a marketing manager for a restoration contractor straight out of college. I have a marketing degree, so I thought it would be a good start. I soon learned that I knew very little about "real" B2B marketing. Colleges don't teach networking or relationship building. I was quickly moved into Project Management with WRT and ASD classes. The rest is history. Currently you are engaged in several entrepreneurial ventures so let's break down a few of those components. Do I understand correctly that your main gig is as an independent adjuster? Currently I write estimates for contractors across the country as my main gig. I only recently started working as an independent adjuster out of necessity because we had a CAT [Catastrophic Loss Event] hit Bend, Oregon and it was all hands on deck. What was the catalyst for launching out on your own? The catalyst for starting out of my own was out of necessity, I had been fired three years in a row from three different jobs. I decided in late 2012 that I would never be fired again so I decided to work for myself, go figure. So, I started writing Xactimate estimates for whoever would hire me and most folks thought I was crazy and that the idea would never take off. But now we're here we are almost 5 years later there are several companies across country that do exactly what I do; write Xactimate estimates for other people I feel like the market is changing and the restoration industry which has been historically 15 years behind the time is going to be swept up in these changes. Writing estimates independently is only the beginning of what I see as a automation of the entire industry. You have written a book and developed a program around that publication titled The 24 Hour Tech, what is the story behind developing this program and what is the elevator pitch for how it benefits the water damage service providers in our industry? The 24 hour tech is another example of desperation and necessity being the mother of invention. I was working with a ServiceMaster franchise in Scottsdale, Arizona as the sole estimator, project manager and general manager. I was stuck with whomever the owner decided to hire in the given moment and I found myself training and retraining employees two and three times a month. I also found it difficult to find time to get to every single project that I had to estimate in any given day. The TPA [Third Party Administrator] framework made it almost impossible for me to do all the jobs that I needed to do. I needed to find a way to have the water damage technicians do my job for me in that I could sit back at the office and do estimates while they gathered the data and took the pictures for me. I developed The 24-hour Tech System to accomplish both things. I was able to train new water damage technicians quickly and I was able to get the information that I needed as an estimator back at the office without having to visit every single job myself. The crazy thing in my mind is that the franchise did not provide a system of training or documentation that accomplished what the 24 hour tech accomplishes so elegantly and simply. One of our taglines is "connect, collaborate and conquer", you have brought together a group of industry professionals and are putting together a conference that will meet this year, Restoration 2.0 Summit. How long has this idea been in the works and what was the catalyst for making it happen? I had/have been receiving email after phone call from folks who all have the same problems, frustrations and desires. There are so many of "US" out there, that someone had to give it a name and a place. That is the Restoration Alliance. The Rebels are the forward face and voice. But the Alliance is deeper and wider than even I could have imagined. We decided to hold this event in December/January this year. It just felt like the right thing to do. For those who haven't heard or may be on the fence, what is the primary benefit of attending R2.0? The primary benefit of the Restoration 2.0 Summit is connection and inspiration. We are all in this together, even those who chose to go it alone. We've covered three areas of your efforts, what would you say is a key piece advice either collectively or individually for restoration professionals as a collective body? I've been writing this email for the past several days, and I could go on for pages if I had the time. For brevity's sake I will say this: we need to look for and recognize the humanity in the things we do and folks we see every day. Yes, the "system" is flawed and downright frustrating. If we pause to see the PERSON sitting across from us, and next to us, we can start to find the wins without giving up our souls. You can find more about Andrew McCabe and his work through claimsdelegates.com, he is on LinkedIn and tweets as @claimsdelegates. The Restoration 2.0 Summit will be hosted in Bend, Oregon on September 29, 2017. ᐧ I could wish that I was cool enough to discover thoughtful gems such as this video by myself. I have Portland State University to thank for bringing me into contact with something that I viewed as a means to an end but ended up learning a thing or two. The attached video is about an hour long, so you may need to review it in a few settings or listen over an extended commute as I did. This material came to me as a component of my undergraduate studies in Criminal Justice but the parallels to the industry in which I have devoted more than 15 years of my life are rather astounding. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky is a respected author, the speech follows the material in her book Trauma Stewardship, and speaker, including a TedTalk on this subject matter. Her keynote speech was given before service providers including hospital staff, counselors, teachers and various practitioners who come into contact with people in trauma and how those professionals ensure that their tanks are fueled enough to continue to respond. We have always said, that our team members have to remember that while we restore damaged properties for a living and have seen "a thing or two" (to borrow the tag line from Farmers Insurance), many of our customers, if they are lucky, are experiencing their first water or fire damage. When water, fire or other disasters strike home or business, there is emotional, mental and at times physical trauma. Something deeper than building materials is impacted when a structure is damaged. Our teams are meeting and responding to people in stages of trauma, most obviously when they are responding to conditions such as the recent hurricanes or the sad reality of a crime scene clean up. My interest in the parallels was peaked as so I jotted a few notes as I listened, so my unpolished review includes these thoughts: 1. There is a collective toll from serving those in trauma which can be exacerbated when the system that is supposed to be supporting those on the front lines is compromised, broken and/or dysfunctional. Our job as leaders in our fields, at whatever level we find ourselves, is to work towards a system that enables, encourages and empowers our team members to care for themselves, care for the team and care for our clients. Emotional intelligence and empathy are key (more thoughts on this HERE). 2. Many people respond to repeated trauma by attempting to numb themselves. Numbing has consequences as a) shutting yourself down is removing the one thing in your power which is your ability to "be present" (you will have to listen to hear a more eloquent explanation of this by the author); b) shutting out increases the likelihood that you are losing awareness of doing harm to self, others and those you are serving; c) you cannot selectively numb out and numb back in, if you numb out in the professional arena it will have collateral damage into other arenas of your life. In contrast to numbing oneself or shutting things out, which have negative long term effects, we want to find ways to expand our capacity to be present. The author/speaker present simple concepts such as breathing exercises and provides other tools as well. Leaders should be aware of these consequences and lead by example in practicing positive measures as well as presenting these tools to their teams. 3. A major component of personal health relates to your ability to effectively move trauma through your system. When we regularly are caring for those impacted by trauma there is a toll on our selves and our teams known as vicarious trauma which we should be aware of so that we can address in positive ways. 4. For those that think Laura is just "rainbows and unicorns" spreading psycho babble, foremost she brings her experience from being on the front lines of trauma response and she has some rather stern warnings to those who might pigeon hole themselves as victims in there roles of responding to trauma. The speaker shares the power of an attitude of gratitude and shares how those principles can practically be applied to meetings to weave this vision throughout an organization. At one point the speaker gets rather pointed with the audience reminding them that this job is not being done to you, you have chosen to serve in this field, some people may need to find other lines of work and those that remain need to connect with what brought them to the field and carry on. Trauma isn't always about one major event but rather can be cumulative which includes vicarious trauma from serving those who are in trauma. Those in positions of leadership in service fields should be aware of these concepts for themselves as well as for their teams. Investing in a holistic approach to personal and group health can go a long way to strengthening individuals while building a group that is poised to help themselves, the team and their clients. |
AuthorThoughts on personal and professional development. Jon Isaacson, The Intentional Restorer, is a contractor, author, and host of The DYOJO Podcast. The goal of The DYOJO is to help growth-minded restoration professionals shorten their DANG learning curve for personal and professional development. You can watch The DYOJO Podcast on YouTube on Thursdays or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
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