How To Achieve Mastery In Any Area Of Your Life

Everyone desires mastery. Whether that’s a kid playing little league baseball or a home service business owner, the art of mastery is essential.

Mastery is the state of complete control. In the natural sense, no one who begins a quest is a master. Everyone starts at ground zero. Like a blank canvas, you will splatter all your paints first before you could unleash your inner Picasso. Your level of mastery will depend on how persistent you are in achieving it.

If you have been in HVAC for 10 years, you are better equipped in the biz than rookie contractors.

Here’s the thing: Change is inevitable and passive, but mastery is intentional and active. 

In other words, spending time on an activity doesn’t make you a master, even if you do it for years. Your personal evolution relies on your mastery motivation, which means attaining mastery is an active pursuit. Unless you seek mastery, you’ll never reach it. 

No other author explains mastery like Robert Greene. In his book, appropriately entitled- wait for it – “Mastery” he explains how people can achieve mastery. If you’re interested in learning mastery, I’ll break down his book and share his concepts with you.

Mastery – Robert Greene

Robert Greene is one of the perceived authorities when it comes to persuasion, motivation and influence. His books often revolve around the said topics and contain actionable principles that aspiring leaders should follow. You may know him from his works: “The 48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of Seduction“.

“Mastery” is Greene’s fifth book. In it, Robert Greene examines the lives of renowned historical figures and successful contemporary personalities. The goal is to dissect their rich stories and uncover the genius behind their admiration. What sort of things led to their success? Why are they widely admired?

These are the things discussed throughout the book, along with strategies you can implement in your own life and career. If you want to attain the same success, it pays to heed the concepts of Robert Greene on mastery.

To complete the book, Robert studied the neuroscience and cognitive science behind history’s masters like Darwin and Da Vinci. According to Greene, mastery can be nurtured systematically in 3 phases:

• Apprenticeship – This is the baby step phase. You know nothing of an industry, but you’re willing to learn it. During this stage, you begin to learn the basics of a particular field. 
• Creative-active – Through immersion and consistent practice, you manage to deepen your understanding of the field. Moreover, this is the part when you begin experimenting with your own unique style and method.
• Mastery – Mastery is the pinnacle of expertise. Not everyone achieves this phase because it takes years of practice and commitment. Normally, it takes 10 thousand hours or 20 years before one attains the skills, knowledge and intuition in a field. During mastery, you achieve a high level of focus and experience and can bend the rules to get incredible results.

Want to be a master in the residential home service industry? It will take time, trial and error. However, what if there was an expert who can help you skip those pitfalls and pursue success continuously? Wizard of Sales® happens to have the home service industry navigation skills to help you. Book a call.

How To Achieve Mastery

Mastery is the state wherein you achieve complete control of yourself. With it comes the obedience of the environment and reality to your autonomy. People who become masters are the ones that enjoy money and are fulfilled doing the things they love.

While normally viewed from an economic perspective, mastery transcends various aspects of a person’s life. There’s mastery of your anxiety and worry, mastery over leadership skills and mastery of finances. One will choose mastery over the things most relevant to them.

For residential home service entrepreneurs like yourself, you may choose to be a master in the following regards:

1. Time and schedule
2. Finances and budgeting
3. Lead generation and sales
4. Marketing and advertising
5. Leadership and people skills
6. Your specific industry trade
7. Business strategizing

For whatever reason you want mastery, Greene has six basic principles to help you attain this state:

Everyone Has A Calling or Life Task, Find Yours

There’s this one foreign coffee commercial in the past that I vaguely remember, but it asked one interesting question.

“For whom do you wake up for?” (Trust me, it sounds better in the local dialect).

Our human existence is anchored on motivation, not necessarily people. Some may choose to exist and strive for success to please others. While other people’s internal forces nudging them forward could be a noble cause or vocation.

The point is that everyone has their respective motivating factors. This is called your calling or Life Task.

Children, for example, are primarily drawn to exploration because this satisfies their natural curiosities. On the other hand, adults may end up working in service for money or other people’s approval. It is not because they want to, but they may have muted their genuine motivations because of social pressures.

For business owners like yourself, there are layers of reasons that pushed you to pursue that industry. Ideally, your calling should be linked to your natural inclinations. If you’re a plumber, there’s a level of peace seeing customers’ water fixtures up and running smoothly. For HVAC, the joy when clients feel the kiss of cold air is an intoxicating bliss.

If your line of work isn’t your passion, your doubt and reservations will bottleneck your progress to mastery. The only way to overcome this is by letting go of all these reservations and fully embracing your vocation. That’s the only time everything will feel right and you’ll pursue mastery with child-like wonderment.

Only then will the rough road towards mastery become sustainable, even if it takes years.

Go Through the Apprenticeship Phase

If mastery takes approximately 20 years, you would think apprenticeship will occupy a lesser time, but that’s not the case. The apprenticeship covers around 5-10 years.

This is your transformative phase, where you take the leap to pursue something you’ll invest your life in, indefinitely.

During your apprenticeship phase, your goal should not involve money or status. These are natural results of mastery, not principal motivations. The stage of apprenticeship seeks to transform your mind and your character. You don’t lead your company for recognition, you lead to infect your team with a positive culture that uplifts everyone.

That means, taking the leap and changing your motivation into something more meaningful. Only then can you be an apprentice.

How does this relate to the residential home service industry?

In the world of business, there are always going to be things you’re good at and things not so much. I’m certain you could do the technical stuff in your sleep, but how about the other equally vital business elements? This includes leadership, financial management, planning and strategizing.

Apprenticeship means finding the areas where there are growth opportunities. In Justus Von Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, it’s the limiting factor that limits success.

Go beyond the theoretical knowledge you acquired and accrued through the years. Gain practical insights on how the world works. Train your other skills and relevant disciplines.

Look at Charles Darwin, while inclined in science, it wasn’t until his voyage that he discovered his passion for biology. The 5-year trip strengthened his commitment as an enthusiastic biologist and naturalist.

The same goes for you too. Go beyond the technicals and explore the practical, economic and social of your industry.

Find the Right Mentor, and Learn

Anyone can achieve mastery even without guidance. The level of mastery by the end is more often than not similar across the board.

There’s just one problem. Those with mentors will reach their destinations more quickly than people without mentors. If you can, don’t waste time learning without proper guidance. Good mentors can accelerate your training phase.

The difference between self-learning and mentorship is information. While you can gain insights from generic information from books, e.g., best psychology books you can find online, books mentors will tailor the learning to your situation. You get valuable feedback that further spruce up your development.

Titans in the residential home service may extend help in areas you lack. However, it’s unlikely that they will invite additional competitors through you. If you can’t locate the perfect one-person-mentor, find various people who can fill the gaps.

For example, Wizard of Sales® is a wonderful mentor in your company’s sales, leadership and culture. We have supported businesses with weak core values and guiding principles. Now, they enjoy the fruits of having a strong team and tight-knit family. If you need support on these fronts, book a free call.

What made mentors important is their experience. They can relate realities you never encountered yet and steer you out of trouble. Once you’ve internalized their teachings, move on and surpass them.

Develop Your Social Intelligence

Apart from studying the practical details surrounding your business, developing social intelligence is also a vital pillar of mastery. This is especially true for residential home services that constantly meet and deal with clients for sales calls.

Social intelligence refers to the ability to see people’s true nature. Business owners tend to imagine people instead of looking at their core personalities. This will improve your relationship-building efforts and quality of thinking. For businesses like residential home services, this is valuable, especially for ensuring sales success.

More importantly, social intelligence helps build the perfect team and create the best culture for your company. On the other hand, social naivety only breeds mistakes, conflict and confusion within your company.

Incubate Your Skills (Creative-Active)

One difference between children and adults is that kids is having an open mind. Free living and no worries, these are the characteristics of children. However, when we grow older, adults limit themselves to rules and restrictions.

Masters possess dimensional minds. A quality where child-like passion and focused-slash-disciplined learning converges. 

Multi-dimensional knowledge is important for mastery. By having this skill, you gain deep knowledge of a subject matter and apply this in original and flexible ways.

Combine Intuition & Rationality

Intuition is another thing that separated the experts from the masters. Experts may have the knowledge and skills to succeed in a vocation. Masters, on the other hand, had an inner sense that made the public’s perception of them odd. Still, this allowed them to rise to the top.

Look at Albert Einstein, he had a mental image regarding how the universe operated that others couldn’t see. Like him, business owners like you could also harness the power of intuition paired with rationality. All it takes is continuous devotion to the craft and commitment to experience.

For example, sudden market changes and shifts could be smelled from a mile away by masters in business. Conversely, rookies will find themselves scrambling and gasping for air when crises arrive. In business, intuition is valuable, it could mean the difference between success and failure.

Mastery is not an easy ordeal. It takes years of practice and devotion to achieve. Nevertheless, achieving mastery is the pinnacle of all your training and hardwork. In business, it means you solidified your place at the top spot.

So, looking for a mentor who can help you protect and defend a happy, healthy and wealthy culture? Searching for the master sales expert who can impart the craft of selling to your sales team? You came to the right place. Wizard of Sales® can help your team be the best it can be, all it takes is booking a call.