The Drum Major Instinct Ralph LoVuolo Sr

The Drum Major Instinct

By Ralph LoVuolo Sr., The Mortgage Godfather

“Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. Yes, don’t give up this instinct.

It’s a good instinct if you use it right.

It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important.

Keep feeling the need for being first.

I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.

I can’t give you greatness. And really,

I can’t make you first. You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared (Hamilton).”

Today I was especially inspired by a video message that I watch almost every day from Darren Hardy. This and more was his message on the Anniversary of the passing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If you desire to read or listen to the entire sermon, please see the link at the bottom of this message. The inspiration kindled in me the need to discuss that which I see as my calling, i.e. to help motivate you to become everything you are capable of; to assist you in seeking that spectacular destiny that lies within each one of you.

The essence is within you, but as is said, “you must earn it” and the shame is that so many of us do everything possible to avoid the hard work required to earn that for which our destiny is called.

This morning I was discussing with a client who was bemoaning the lack of discipline being exhibited by a young man in his employ. My client was, in effect, pleading with me to help this young man not only see what he is capable of but to help him strive for that destiny. I don’t motivate. I can’t motivate. All I can do is place before people the possibilities of life. And as you’ve heard from many others, life is filled with possibilities. Earning your destiny takes discipline, it takes time, and it takes focus. Ah, there it is…. FOCUS. When you do what I do for a living, you’ll hear the phrase “to be successful, you need to……” such and such and so-on and so-on. I’m sorry, but if the person writing or saying those few words writes or says anything other than “focus,” they will be giving out incorrect and incomplete instruction and advice.

Please feel free to argue the point here. Try it first with yourself. Then try it with someone whom you trust, someone who thinks. If there is anything

certain, it is that success comes to those who know what they want and then focus on those actions that will get them where they want to be.

I had my own business as a mortgage brokerage company in the ’80s. It lasted ten years and I am forever grateful to God for the blessings and challenges that came to me during those years. One day two of my salespeople asked if I would join them for lunch. I agreed and we jumped in one car to take advantage of some downtime to discuss whatever was on their minds.

The conversation quickly turned to those salespeople who were not pulling their weight and were causing our processing team to be spending too much time on the applications that were being produced by the laggards. Then the two of them turned on me. “Why can’t you motivate those guys to be better and learn what they need to do instead of taking all the time away from those of us who produce good business?”

“Motivate them? Look, I spend a lot of time training them, teaching them, and helping them learn our business, but what I know for certain is that I cannot motivate them to do anything, not anything. If I could push a button that would motivate people I’d be a billionaire”.

In the time since that car conversation and today, I have been deeply immersed in trying to find the secret of motivation. There is no secret other than focus. But to find focus in something you love is not an easy task. Motivation comes to most people in waves. It comes and goes. It depends on what we sincerely want as our goal. What we want as our end-of-life accomplishment. Yes, it is that long a process.

There are gaps in our lives where we think we know how we feel and think about what we are doing. During those gaps, we put a lot of effort and focus on accomplishing certain goals. If we lose the focus it is almost always because we lose our “WHY”. Why are we doing this task and the task we need to do next to accomplish our goal. We have those goals because we are inspired and know why we get up every day. We’re not discouraged easily as long as our why is firmly understood by our thinking and feeling brain.

Simon Sinek writes plainly in his bestselling book, “Start with Why” that when WHY diminishes, WHAT we do must suffer. Those of us in leadership roles must be sure that our minions understand their core WHY. If the WHY is lost, the WHAT we do must diffuse. Our motivation (our WHY) that we imbued in our core team at the beginning of our quest gets lost unless we stay clear with our followers every day; they have their own WHY. It might even cause us to lose our own central WHY. That is the reason it is so incredibly important that when we start to build a team around our central WHY that we give everyone participating in the WHY of that which we started.

Why therefore is central to Motivation. Let’s look at it again from the point of view of a single practitioner. An MLO if you will. I’m not going to tell you to have a perfect focus on your WHY as someone who doesn’t give a hoot about making money. I’ve seen many very fine people who were and are desirous of earning massive amounts of money as their WHY. Some of them want to be to #1 MLO in their company based on production. This of course usually results in them earning the most in their company. Nothing can make me happier if that is their goal. Your own WHY is not important to this discussion. What is vitally important is that you have a WHY and a firm grip on it. WHY produces focus. Focus produces success.

I suggest you re-read the first 2 paragraphs of this missive, copy the words, and put them in your pocket to be read every day for thirty days.

Ralph LoVuolo Sr. is known as the Mortgage Godfather. He can be reached by email at ralph@mortgagegodfather.com.

Resources: Hamilton, Wallace. “‘The Drum Major Instinct,” Sermon Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, 24 Jan. 2019, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/drum-major-instinct-sermon-delivered-ebenezerbaptist-church.

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