Last week I distributed a blog about insanity and reminded you all of how insane it was to keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Someone posed a question to me about when and how to identify, or let’s say self diagnose oneself as insane.

Basically what they wanted me to specify was the difference between insanity and good old persistence and consistency. There is a difference and it is very important to be aware and careful when making the determination.

A large number of businesses of all kind literally do not make it because they lack persistence and consistency. Perhaps many of them suffered from feelings of insanity or even had to deal with hearing such from colleagues and family members so they eventually gave up.

Today I want to talk about the differences and help you to determine if you are in fact insane or if you are fighting the good fight, planting beneficial seeds and waiting for a harvest.

The first thing to do is assess the situation.

What are you attempting to make work? Has it been done before? Have you done the proper research? Is your audience even the least bit interested? Are you setting a realistic goal?

Once you’ve answered all of these questions you may have your answer, if not move on to step two which is to assess your progress. This can be done by asking yourself one question. Are you getting anything from your efforts? Let’s talk about event attendance. If your property just started making an effort to host monthly events then you may find yourself struggling to get the attendance up but don’t throw in the towel on your strategy if you see the numbers increasing each month. This is where persistence and consistency comes into play.

You’ve assessed the situation and discovered that what you are doing makes sense, then you’ve assessed your progress and you see that it is at the very least working. This tells me that you are not insane. This tells me that all you need is to remain enthusiastic and to continue strong in your efforts.

I’m reminded of Thomas Edison. Talk about tenacity, this guy attempted to make his dream of the light bulb work 10,000 times.  The important part to remember is he didn’t redo his experiment the exact same way every time. He took what worked, threw out what didn’t work and kept plugging away at his dream. Had he continued to do it as always never learning from his mistakes I doubt I’d be mentioning him at all today. Another thing to remember is that had he given up the later would still be the same. 

This brings me back around to the point I made a few weeks ago. Don’t throw out the idea of resident events all together. Think about it, they do yield benefits…. the question is, how do you make your efforts worthwhile? Or better yet, how can you connect residents socially in a more effective way.

Innovation is good when it comes to things like this but not only do you have to be innovative to be successful you definitely want to be consistent and persistent.

For more info on resident retention and satisfaction log onto www.residentkeepers.com