Giving Creates Success

Duane Black has seen company after company in the home-building business focus only on their percentage of profit in every final sale. That’s what they think about all day long because that’s what they think they’re in business for and how they’ll be successful.

Every one of them had their profit margins decline over the years, because all they focused on was the end result. So they found themselves in an ever more competitive environment delivering an average level of product, an average level of customer service and an average level of community and environmental involvement. But customers don’t want to pay a premium for “average.” Customers don’t get excited about “average.”

So these companies ended up not making big margins. Soon they had to do bigger volume to try to offset their mediocre product. And their volume negatively affected their quality, so the spiral went downward and it wasn’t long before they were in real trouble. That’s the tragedy of the outside focus.

Duane’s many years in the highly successful SunCor Development Company have been characterized by the company’s inside focus. SunCor decided long ago not to obsess on volume of sales. They trust that volume will occur naturally; they let volume show up when volume is appropriate.

They’re more focused each day on perfecting the inner system that will create great communities and phenomenal land planning. For example, they insist on always having really good architecture, they don’t build unless they have great locations and they always have a staff of people who love what they do and are aligned with it and therefore are naturally, effortlessly committed to doing a great job.

Duane doesn’t want his people to have an attachment to results so that not getting them will make them feel discouraged. Instead, he trusts the universe to reward the inside game. It’s a process of being who you want to be right now, instead of straining to reach a future goal.

The absence of stressful external goals and never focusing on how many houses they were going to sell to accomplish this level of success – they had the ingredients of success built in. It was an inner process they committed to, followed through on and delivered.

SunCor’s enduring desire was to build a quality product and to provide good customer service. The other goals – the goals of result, the goals of success – weren’t needed. Things occur naturally from the inner desire of who we were going to be.

We can allow the results to emerge in the world outside of us if we take care of this world inside. And there’s so much less stress. You never need be disappointed when you have a “down month” in results. Down months happen. There’s nothing wrong with them. But if your quality of work keeps evolving upward, better and better results over the long run will show up.