Whether you are training hard, losing weight or excelling in your career, there will be a point when all your hard work becomes insufficient in driving you further and you plateau. What you’ve been doing to this point is not enough anymore, so you’re stuck on a level - and you want to get off it quickly!
This plateau could stem from personal or professional issues, but usually results in boredom, frustration, loss of enthusiasm or lack of commitment. It can spell the end of a promising career if you don’t identify that you’re stuck, and put a plan into action to move away from the level you’ve plateaued on.
Imagine you’re on a platform waiting for a train, but you’re running late for an appointment and so you’re feeling impatient. You see and hear the train coming from a distance, but it’s an express and it doesn’t stop at the station you’re at. It whooshes by in a blur, the wind ruffling your clothes and hair, and you think to yourself, “Gee, what was that about; which train was that?”.
Now imagine you were standing half a kilometre away from the train station watching the train come along the tracks towards the platform. It would look a lot slower from this vantage point. It would be much easier to understand the train was an express service because you were looking at it from a very different perspective.
This is Mat Steinwede’s story and he uses it as an analogy to explain career plateaus. “We need to understand where we’re actually at. Step back from your career for five seconds and get out of that day-to-day stuff, because sometimes although you’re trying to push yourself harder, you’re actually slipping backwards,” Mat explains.
When he was facing a difficult time personally, Mat said he “hit the wall” and stopped being interested in his business. This led to complacency and he lost some good staff members as a result.
Be prepared to leave your ego behind.
“I really looked hard and close at what I needed and spoke to a couple of close friends and mentors. Mentors are people who won’t just tell you crap to be nice; they’ll give you constructive criticism or guidance on stuff that you can’t see,” he says.
Mat lists his mentors as: Real Estate Academy CEO Lee Woodward because he acts as a sounding board and helps with Mat’s “tweaking” process; his partner because “she’s got the woman’s spin on everything”; and his business partner because he is honest.
“You have to be really careful about who you choose and why you choose them but, at the same time, you’ve got to be inquisitive. You’ve got to sift through who is good and who’s not, and that’s a bit of a learning process. There will be some knocks through that,” he adds.
“There’s a real thing with mentors; be prepared to leave your ego behind,” Mat advises. As a salesperson it can be difficult to leave ego and pride behind, but Mat says allowing those two drivers into your career means complacency is never far behind.
“It is a real tough thing to get through and work out what [you] need to do here, but I find mentors keep your ego down a lot of the time.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re writing $150,000 or $250,000 or $300,000 a month, if you want to keep your pride and ego away, find a good mentor who’s doing it better than you,” Mat says, explaining the knowledge that there was always someone better out there was why he kept pushing himself to improve.
Using the often quoted saying, “the most interesting people are the most interested”, to explain his point, Mat says curiosity could be a great way to build your knowledge.
“Curiosity will quickly propel you to where you want to go. If you keep being a sponge, it’s amazing how much you can learn. “Always have something like Hot Topics, a motivational CD or even a good music track in your car all the time. It’s amazing how much the radio clutters your mind every day,” he adds.
So if you’re stuck on a level, face it and identify it. “Just remember nothing bad lasts forever. It will change, it will get better, but it takes you to decide for it to get better. Don’t just succumb to the negativity. Step up to the plate, get a little bit better, learn a little bit more, and it will pass. You’re responsible for you, so get responsible,” Mat concludes.
Mat Steinwede The Real Estate System includes Mat’s tried and tested strategies with letter and report templates, the order tasks that should be completed and tips on achieving peak performance. For more information on Mat Steinwede The Real Estate System visit: www.realestateacademy.com.au or call 1300 367 412.