Monday Motivation, 9.28.2020

Written by: Ben Rogers

Every Monday, The Rogers-Long Team meets for one of its two weekly meetings. The Monday meeting always ends with “Monday Motivation” in which a few minutes are spent listening to one team member presenting a quote, a quick reading from a book, a scene from a movie, or anything else they find motivating to provide a “spark” to the whole team on a Monday morning.

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy that means “change for the better” or “continuous improvement.” This philosophy believes that “improvement in productivity is a gradual and methodical process.”

I can talk all day about changes we can make in our team’s productivity: our structure, our systems, and our schedule. It’s a good thing to always be improving; but why be good when you can be great?

I’ve yet to find a way to improve at work and become great at work without prioritizing improvement at home. I’m fortunate to have many accountability partners at work at and at home: most namely my teammates at work and my wife at home. I’m also fortunate to have incredible mentors at work and at home, including more experienced business owners and my business coach at work and my father and “dad coach” as it relates to improving at home.

One of my mentors recently gave me a book titled “The Resolution for Men.” It is a book marked by faith, courage, and challenge. Below I have copied some challenges from this book. Whether or not you have faith in God and whether or not you are a father, the following challenges can still apply to your life at home and at work. I am copying directly from the book, so it will only use the words “father” and “he” but I would encourage you to use those interchangeably with “women” and “she.”

• “A father should love his children and seek to win their hearts.”
  • According to Jon Gordon, the heart’s electromagnetic field is 5,000 times more powerful than the brain’s. It is important to seek to win the hearts of others instead of just winning in general. Again according to Gordon, “the heart acts as an emotional conductor and radiates how you are feeling to every cell in the body…this energy field can be detected up to 5 to 10 feet away.” In short – when you’re winning over others’ hearts, it’s a compounding effect.
• “He should model how to walk with integrity and treat others with respect. He should call out his children to become responsible men and women.”
  • Walking with integrity isn’t just about keeping your head held high, focusing on eye contact, and saying “mam” and “sir.” It’s about keeping to your promises and your convictions. As a model to others, you do what you say you’re going to do while always be respectful of others. Accountability without a relationship is harassment, so when you have successfully won the hearts of those you associate with, it will become easier to “call out” others to become responsible men and women.
• “You are accountable to God for the position of influence He has given you.”
  • I believe in God. Whether or not you do does not apply to the following statement: we are all accountable to those who have given us much. Luke 12:48 states that “To whom much is given, much is required.” We are all given a lot and whether you like it or not, you are in a position of influence. Stay accountable to those that have given you this position: you must step up, and you must always seek continual improvement. Wake up every morning and say to yourself: “I WILL GET BETTER. Circumstances will not throw me off the path to improvement.”

I hope this helps you in your constant path to improvement – first at home then at work. When you can prioritize improvement at home, you have the opportunity to be great everywhere else. Your children, your teammates, and others you associate with will feel inside their hearts what is valuable as you improve. As the authors of this book state, “You can’t fall asleep at the wheel, only to wake up one day and realize that your job or your hobbies have no eternal value, but the souls of your children do.”

Ben Rogers, The Team Leader of The Rogers-Long Team, has been in the real estate business since 2012. In 2014, he began The Rogers-Long Team with Kevin Long, which produced over $25,000,000 in volume production in 2017. In addition to selling homes and leading the team, Ben hosts a podcast show called the “The Bottom Line”, which can be found by clicking here. The Bottom Line is a Podcast that links lessons learned from sports, business, and life and is targeted at those who are striving for excellence, while ‘Average Sits on the Bench’.