Today I want to talk about something profound—something I really believe in:
The pursuit of excellence.
Hey Moguls, Chris Clothier here, and I believe in it so much that it’s something we address with our 80+ team members in our company on a regular basis.
These same ideas can certainly be applied to your business…
So, when I talk about how success is gained in the pursuit of excellence… what does that mean?
Go in reverse
I consider myself to be a problem solver… so to me, the pursuit of excellence means that the output of your work is the perfect intended result.
And what I like to do is work in reverse: take what I want the result to be and back into it, to the starting line.
To me, the pursuit of excellence is all the steps for the expected outcome of perfection—all these people and tools that must be lined up to be effective: people, processes, systems.
I like to think of it as an assembly line of information, our people, our service and our product—making sure that all the roadblocks are out of the way for our team to succeed. We expect them to deliver the perfect result to our core 4:
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the client
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the resident
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the vendor
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our team
Every day, every hour
I also recognize that the pursuit of excellence is an every day, every hour kind of thing…
It's a mental training of not accepting anything that's less than perfect; striving for perfection—but working toward excellence. And excellence is a habit that we have to abide by… that we have to be able to do every day.
Think of the opposite…
If you elect to be lazy, that's a habit.
If you elect to be excellent, that's a habit.
The one thing about excellence is that if you pursue it every day, you will create a competitive edge.
Let me say that again: You will create a competitive edge if you commit to excellence every day.
When we think about people who are lazy… and people who are average… and people who are complacent... well, those traits fall away when you choose to commit to excellence.
See, when your mindset is excellence every day, you can fight off being average. You can fight off being lazy and complacent.
Go team, go
And that's why in my business, we talk with our team about the pursuit of excellence every single day—that’s what sets us apart.
It’s one of the main topics we talk about during our staff meetings… we challenge everyone to be excellent, to be great—because we know they can.
And we tell them that it’s their peers—not the leaders—in the office who will ultimately decide if they get run over because they can’t keep up with our expectations. Their peers will challenge them to level up.
Here’s a perfect example...
We interviewed a guy recently who we thought would be a really good fit in our work culture here. And what I liked most about him was his attitude and mindset…
He shared with me that knew he was going to come into our office and be surrounded by fantastic people… and he knew to succeed with our team, he needed to be a hard worker and competitive and the best, just like our team. His words.
Amazing, right?!
To me, that says it all. It all starts with the right people.
And our team knows that we expect them to excel at the very highest level and to come in the door expecting to be excellent every day with that mindset to perform their job to the very best of their abilities.
See, success is not guaranteed. We have to earn it every day.
So what does excellence really mean?
To me, being excellent is doing more than what others expect of you. And when you have that mindset and that pursuit of perfection, then you're going to be successful.
By creating experiences for your team that show commitment to being excellent at the highest level in your business, then you're going to have tremendous success.
How do you define excellence?
What does excellence mean to you? How do you pursue it? Share in the comments section below.
Hire the right team members that fit your business culture.
Coordinate your people, processes and systems to be lined up and working well together for a successful outcome.
Talk with your team on a regular basis about excellence—striving to be the best by doing more than what’s expected.
Make excellence a habit.
Commit to excellence daily in every thing you do.
Chris Clothier
owns and operates three multi-million dollar a year marketing brands including 1-800-SELL-NOW, Find Cash Buyers NOW and Find Private Lenders NOW; each brand, under the REI Marketing umbrella, is designed to help real estate investors and agents reach a specific marketing niche.