Kaycee's zone: The Importance of Sacrifice to Our Careers

Kaycee's zone: The Importance of Sacrifice to Our Careers: What does it mean to have your precious time sacrificed, even when the sacrifice has no direct benefit to you.  I have been puzzling over t...

The Importance of Sacrifice to Our Careers

What does it mean to have your precious time sacrificed, even when the sacrifice has no direct benefit to you.  I have been puzzling over this all day.

I found the following definition of a sacrificial lamb on Wikipedia:

A sacrificial lamb is a lamb (or metaphorical parallel) killed or discounted in some way (as in a sacrifice) in order to further some other cause. In typical modern usage, it is a metaphorical reference for a person who has no chance of surviving the challenge ahead, but is placed there for the common good. The term is derived from the traditions of Abrahamic religion where a lamb is a highly valued possession, but is offered to God as a sacrifice to obtain the more highly valued favour of God.
Sacrifice typically means to give something up of value to get something even more valuable in the future.  Sacrifice always implies giving something up or doing something, or some sort of work, that is distasteful.  The people in the world who achieve the most are the ones who are able to sacrifice.  For example, Tiger Woods practices golf six hours a day and has since he was very young.  Anyone who achieves something great is able to sacrifice.

The concept of “sacrifice” is something that is amazingly important to our lives.  We need to constantly be sacrificing in order to insure that we are advancing in our lives. One thing I do know is that it is only through incredible sacrifice that our lives can change.  This sacrifice has reminded me of the incredible sacrifice we need to do in order to live the lives we want to live.

There are lots of forms of sacrifice out there.  Mother Theresa is someone who sacrificed by caring for the dying, the sick, the poor, the hungry and others.  She took people that society had abandoned and cared for them with compassion.  She stated of sacrifice:


A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the  fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.
Sometimes you too need to sacrifice in order to get ahead.  Sometimes you need to move away from the familiar and what you expect in order to get the results that you are seeking in your life.

Recently, I had an experience with my immediate past employer who wanted me to help train another employee who will take over from me after working with them for several years. Even though the date I stated on my letter elapsed and the company were unable to meet up with their recruitment process to get someone that will take my place in the company, I sacrificed one more month for them to scout and get one person so that I can teach him my job before leaving the company. 

In your job and in your career you are going to be called upon to make sacrifices. It is exceedingly important that you make sacrifices.  All of my life I have been fascinated with success and what makes certain people more successful than others.  As I have studied the most successful men and women out there I have seen that they have all made tremendous sacrifices in order to succeed.  In order to do anything and be someone of great substance you need to learn how to sacrifice.

One of the greatest causes of failure in life is the inability to make sacrifices.  For example, many people spend every kobo of money they make, go into debt, and never save money.  The failure to save money results in them never being able to afford the sorts of material objects they would like.  Saving money is a sacrifice.

When children are growing up they learn early on that if they want to get good grades in school they are going to have to not play video games or be out playing and instead are going to have to sacrifice “fun time” for “serious time” and do their school work.  Notwithstanding, many children simply fail to make this sacrifice and never learn how to do so.  The children who do make the sacrifice and study may end up becoming doctors or lawyers, for example.  The ones who never make this sacrifice, despite average or even excellent intelligence, may spend their lives moving from job to job in fast food restaurants, or do other things that are largely insignificant in terms of the impact they could end up having.

In our careers and lives, the most important thing that we can do is constantly and consistently sacrifice so that we can achieve greater rewards.  We must always be sacrificing in order to grow.  We often also need to sacrifice to help other people.  A 2004 article in the New York Times discusses the importance of sacrificing for another:


Matthew Berenguer’s parents sacrificed all they owned so he could get the one thing he could keep forever: an education. When his father lost his job, they lost their apartment. The family put everything in storage, and all seven of them lived in homeless shelters. If that was not hard enough, his parents had to decide how to spend what little money they had left: continue paying storage fees for their belongings or send Matthew to a summer program at Syracuse University.

His parents chose his future over theirs.

The storage company auctioned their belongings. Their beds and sofa? Gone. Their piano? Gone. His sketchbooks, which he filled with vivid pencil sketches during subway rides? Gone. His father’s library, which gave Matthew delicious moments of escape and education? Gone.

Other families now have the bits and pieces of his life. But Matthew, who got his first taste of college life that summer, insists he got something far more precious.

”I was grateful we lost everything,” said Matthew, a senior at Rice High School in Manhattan, who hopes to attend Cornell University. ”I was very materialistic. This changed what my values were. I found out I still had my mother, my father, my family.”

His parents’ sacrifices continue to pay off. Matthew was among that year’s winners of a New York Times College Scholarship, which provided him with a $30,000 four-year scholarship, a summer job and a mentor. He and 19 other young people — some from countries around the world and others who never would have ventured much beyond the block — possess that wondrous mix of talent, determination and optimism that enabled them not only to overcome considerable obstacles, but also to thrive.

The power of sacrifice is something that can change lives and has huge meaning.

I know there is meaning in the one month extra I sacrificed to my former company. I came upon a definition of the word “sacrifice” from Latin.  In Latin the derivative of the word “sacrifice” is “sacred office”.  “Sacred office” means to hold one’s work or mission sacred and close to one’s heart.  Anything sacred requires that we hold it in deep reverence and respect.  What is sacred is holy and divine.

The message I want to bring to you and the message this brought to me is the importance of holding my work as holy and divine and others also holding their work holy and divine.  Whether this was a message from God, I do not know.  What I do know is that it has made me believe in the importance of our work and doing everything within my power to hold my work as the most important and sacred thing in the world. I have dedicated my career and life to getting people properties and making them realize their dreams of becoming home owners and a search for meaning in this has helped me realize the importance I place on my job.

The final message has nothing whatsover to do with me.  The final message is all about you.  You need to hold your work sacred and divine.  A job is sacred.  The work you do is sacred.  You need to take your job seriously and you need to take your career seriously.  The more you put into it the more you will become.  The more you appreciate something the better you will get at it.  You need to remind yourself of this every single day because it is about the most important factor in who you will become.

Kaycee's zone: Putting Yourself Out There and Your Heart, Body an...

Kaycee's zone: Putting Yourself Out There and Your Heart, Body an...: I started my career selling stone coated roof tiles from site to site in Lekki, Lagos. Not only did I sell the product, but I did the wo...

Putting Yourself Out There and Your Heart, Body and Soul

I started my career selling stone coated roof tiles from site to site in Lekki, Lagos. Not only did I sell the product, but I did the work myself and then, over the course of several years built up the business. In fact, it was something I planned on doing for the rest of my life until I made the decision to venture into real estate consultancy.

You need to be doing something that your heart, body and soul are in.

Prior to becoming a real estate consultant, I have been a roof contractor for the rest of my life because it was something that I understood and knew I could do well at. There was only one reason that I was successful in this business: I continued trying various combinations of things until they worked.

When I first started the business I started passing out flyers in various neighborhoods to see if people were interested in having the work done.  My flyers looked good and they were printed on stationery; however, I still got very little response.

I would estimate that if I passed out 500 flyers I would be lucky to get a few phone calls about the service. The people would call on the phone and I would go out and give them an estimate and they would say ”we’re getting several estimates … we’ll let you know.”

Passing out flyers like this rarely turned up any work and after having done this for some time I started to wonder if it was even possible to make a living doing this business. I was not getting the sort of response that I was hoping for.

I became so frustrated by this that I decided that the only solution was to dramatically increase the level of my brochures circulating by trekking even farther down the nook and cranny of Lekki each day under the scourging sun.

At this stage of the game most people would quit. In fact, other people I knew that had started and gone into the business when I did ended up quitting around this time. They thought it was too difficult to get work.

They were absolutely right.

Going around and passing out flyers and mailing them was a difficult way to get work. When you did this you had to hope that the consumer might be interested in you and if they were not, you were out of luck. People are trying to sell things to people all day and why would someone want to buy what I was selling anyway?

The thing about passing out flyers, however, is that it is a good way to avoid rejection. You do not have to be there when someone takes a look at the flyer and thinks to themselves ”I have no interest in this. No thank you.”

Even when the person calls you in for an estimate you do not have to feel bad when you do not get the job. They tell you ”We are getting several estimates. We will let you know.”

When you do not get the job you simply think to yourself that the person must have got a better price, must have known someone and so forth. Your thoughts basically revolve around the fact that whatever happened, it was not your fault.

As time went by and I continued passing out more and more flyers, I quickly realized that this was not for me. I figured that the more I passed out flyers the more estimates I would be able to give but that, overall, I would never make a great living doing things this way.

It is no fun sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring with good news. This, however, is what so many people do. They sit by the phone, by the mailbox, by the email—waiting for some good news to come about. They just wait and they wait and they wait.

I decided at some point that it made absolutely no sense for me to continue sending out all of these flyers to people. I needed to find people and convince them to do roofing work with me. I wanted them to use me and I needed to get out there and hustle instead of sitting around hoping that the phone would ring. The only way I was going to make the most of my business and my life was to take action and just start talking to everyone I could.

I had a little ritual I would follow before I would go out. I would take a shower and iron a shirt and even my shorts. I would make sure I looked as good as I possibly could. I wanted to make an incredible impression.

Then I would go building site to building site in the best neighborhoods to sell my roofing services.

I immediately noticed it was working much better than the old way I was selling my services. At first I would tell people about the product and attempt to interest them in it and many people would purchase it. But it was not all that easy. People would say things like:

·         Can you supply material to site before we pay?

·         Can you do the work and give us few months to pay-up?

·         You can do it but I want to wait until I get the money to do it.

The reason I was selling and getting more work was because I was showing up and making my best impression in order to make a good impression. However, the reason I was not selling as effectively as I could was because I was not doing a good enough job ”closing” and I was allowing others to control when the work was done.

I then changed my approach. I started telling people I would be on the street tomorrow and if they did not want to do it then I could not do it. I told them that in return for allowing me to do it the next day I would charge them half of what I normally would charge.

My business went through the roof. Practically most clients would do it. It worked like a charm.

It was all because I (1) got out there and (2) learned to change my approach.

So what does this mean to your career and life?

The first lesson is that you need to put yourself out there to the maximum extent you can. You need to be seen and you need to be vulnerable. When I was passing out flyers about my roof business I was not being as vulnerable as I could have been. When I was dressing up and going site to site I became vulnerable.

It is only when we make ourselves vulnerable that we can begin to reach our full potential.


I never would have succeeded in the roof business without talking to so many people. You need to get out there and meet people and continue doing it. You just cannot stop getting out there if you are looking for a business or job.

You need to get out there. If you are just applying to jobs on job sites you may get results—but imagine how different the results would be if you went door-to-door. I can assure you that you might piss some people off (I did selling roof), you might get some rejection (Casanova certainly did), but you will end up better in the long run.

Maybe you feel you are in a profession where you cannot go door-to-door like this (even if you are in law or medicine, I can assure you are not)—if you truly believe this then use the phone. The more ”in your face” you are with your job search work the better the results you will get.

In order to face so much rejection, though, your heart needs to be in whatever you are doing. This is a must.

You need to be doing something that you like. If you are not happy in what you are doing, or if you are not meant to do what you are doing, you are never going to have the passion and desire to really make the most of yourself. You need to be 100% behind what you are doing with your heart, body and soul.

Your career? Your heart needs to be in the work.

The reason that your heart, body and soul need to be in your work is because when you go out into the world to do that work you are going to face rejection. The best people in any profession are those who are not afraid to take risks and put themselves out there. You need to be willing to face rejection all the time. You are going to get a ton of rejection when you believe in something. You are always going to get lots of rejection.

Tons of it.

One of my favorite stories about rejection is found in Chapter 2 of the book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ where Napoleon Hill writes:

As this chapter was being completed, news came of the death of Mme. Schuman-Heink. One short paragraph in the news dispatch gives the clue to this unusual woman’s stupendous success as a singer. I quote the paragraph, because the clue it contains is none other than DESIRE.


I believe in the power of DESIRE backed by FAITH, because I have seen this power lift men from lowly beginnings to places of power and wealth; I have seen it rob the grave of its victims; I have seen it serve as the medium by which men staged a comeback after having been defeated in a hundred different ways; I have seen it provide my own son with a normal, happy, successful life, despite Nature’s having sent him into the world without ears.

You need to desire to succeed in whatever you are doing and make sure that it matches exactly who you are and want to be. Your heart needs to be in what you are doing and you need to be behind it 100%. If you are not behind what you are doing you are going to fail because in order to succeed in your business and career, your heart, body and soul need to be in the game.

I regularly write about the human side of business. If you would like to read my regular posts, please click 'Follow' (at the top of the page) and send me a LinkedIn invite. And, of course, feel free to also connect via Twitter, facebook, google plus. 

Your Sense of Fashion and Your Home

Fashion influence has become global and its inspiration can be found everywhere. It is seen as the ultimate style embitterer and designers are seen as the leaders in the aesthetics. Décor and couture have often had ties to each other historically, and the styles and trends sometimes even follow each and become intermingled. Recently, it has become more and more common that a fashion designer will design a room, building or product. Apart from appearing well dressed and groomed, people in that trend conscious society a times want to be regarded as hip. This influence stretches to their homes, which they want to be as immaculate and style savvy as possible. Fashion designers are given commissions to design buildings, interiors, tableware, interiors of cars, luggage, the list is endless. It is proof of their discerning tastes that organizations trust them to the hilt. Marock Resources is connecting home buyers with the product marketplace, the organization is dedicated to researching and sourcing the best homes, bringing together the projects, products and people in the sector.  

A lot of what we see in interior (homes) is strongly been influenced by trends that have its origin in fashion. There is a direct influence from the fashion pages of magazines on the décor of a home. Fashion influences such as colour blocking where rooms in the house are painted a particular colour have become an almost common occurrence amongst the stylish. Some clients might opt to have their rooms painted in different shades of blue or go extreme and have lilac room, pink room, giving the children in the house the permission to choose colours that suits their taste as opposed to before where all the rooms were painted cream or off white.

Another example is the animal prints such as the tiger and snakeskin patterns, which have always been in fashion. Now other animal prints such as the zebra are currently being seen as very fashionable especially with homes that have minimalist décor. The black and white stripes are popular for cushion and rugs especially in Africa where clients are now becoming continent proud and want a product or interior touch that asserts this new establishment order.

Botanical influences are also very hip at the moment with fashion houses as Hermes, Pucci and Etro showing strong jungle flower prints to evoke the spirit of summer. It is very fashionable to have large frame prints or drawings of flowers hanging on the wall in houses which can be very effective against walls painted with white or in ivory.

Coming closer to Africa and Nigeria in particular we can see the lasting influence of African textiles that people now wear asserting naturalistic pride such as Ankara, Aso-Oke and Adire. These exotic beautiful fabrics are captured in pillows, bedspreads, cushions and now rugs for modern stylish Nigerians. Their homes scream “Afropolitan”, a sign of their trans – Atlantic dwellings that binds their foreign educational backgrounds and their need to show that they are Africans. With interior design and fashion, this has been made possible. The next time you visit a friend’s home to be sure to look out for these fashion influences in their houses and compliment them. Fashion thrives on praises.

Marock Resources is a Lagos based RealEstate, Roofing, Gutters, Stainless Handrails and CCTV Cameras dealers, dully registered with the CAC in Nigeria. We have designed a formula that incorporates quality with an agreeable price. We install roofing, gutters and downspouts. Our installers are very knowledgeable, courteous and quality craftsmen. We oversee our job sites and stay in contact with you at every phase.

Problems Solving Made Easy With Marock

Much of what we do is done as a result of habit. We eat, dress, and move about in habitual ways, following patterns and paths that we adopted long ago and rarely think about. This is natural and convenient, since we do not have the time to rethink every common task that we confront. But when our normal pattern is disrupted, or our normal path is blocked, we are obliged to rethink the matter. Such disruption captures our attention; at that moment we have a problem. Most often our problems are minor, but they are problems nevertheless if they compel us to reconsider what we ought to do. Our habits develop in a context in which many ordinary beliefs are accepted without question; normally we have no need or occasion to question them.

Problems, minor or major, mundane or abstract, arise from a conflict of some kind between the beliefs that are held and some situation to which those beliefs seem somehow inappropriate. This collision between situations and beliefs that do not “fit” them gives rise to uncertainty, to doubt. Not being sure of our next appropriate step provokes inquiry.   Charles Sanders Pierce says, “The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle Inquiry.

Of all forms of inquiry, the most fruitful and most dependable is the application of reason to the problematic situation. We examine and reexamine the problem from every point of view that occurs to us; we marshal the relevant information that is available to us; we seek some new insight into the situation, or try to construct some new set of beliefs that will enable us to overcome the problematic doubt and its discomforts.  John Dewey put the matter this way:

…thinking takes its departure from specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity and trouble. Men do not in their natural estate, think when they have no troubles to cope with, no difficulties to overcome. A life of ease, of success without effort, would be a thoughtless life, and so also would a life of ready omnipotence.

Of all the problems we encounter, the most serious, broadly speaking, have to do with the avoidance of suffering, the fulfillment of duty, and the achievement of happiness. These goals are not easily attained; to advance them we need to increase, as far as we are able, our ability to control ourselves and the world about us. And this, in turn, makes it essential for us to learn as much as we can about causes and effects.

Medical investigators, for example, traditionally have sought to discover the causes of specific diseases so that patients might be cured, returned to health by the elimination of the cause of their disorders. More recently there has been greater emphasis put upon health maintenance promotion, investigators seeking to identify those aspects of diet, exercise, and environment that produce physical vigor and mental stability. Similarly, in all the fields of human endeavor that bear upon serious human problems, science and technology have advanced our control of the world around us by increasing our understanding of it. Scientific theories devised and confirmed, scientific laws discovered, instruments invented and machinery designed, all these represent so many problems solved, so much effective thinking and productive reasoning.

It is the mark of the educated mind, as John Dewey observed, to search for what is doubtful, and to derive pleasure from the resolution of those doubts.  Where problems do not arise because of some disruption of our habits, we are likely to seek out what is puzzling or problematic for the satisfaction we derive from inquiry. In mathematics and some other fields of study, the solving of problems becomes the central focus of activity, each problem solved opening the door to new problems, with new challenges for the inquiring intellect, so also is it in real estate.

In the Nigerian Real Estate market, we at MarockResources has mastered the skills and technology that will make your inquiry and problem solving so easy even beyond your expectation, thereby making your problems and inquiry into the property market our business. We are a firm of Real Estate Managers reputed for due diligence, requisite skills, singular deduction and utmost dispatch in carrying out any assignment given to us. We are determined to provide exquisite services to all corporate and individual property seekers. In the event you are renting, buying or selling a property and you are in need of Advisory Services/Consultancy, Facility Management, Mortgage Arrangement/Facilitation, Sales of sites and services, Renovation and upgrades of your properties and Land Acquisition. We also offers services such as Roofing (Stone Coated Roof Tile), Roof Gutter System, Stainless Handrails and Security Cameras.

We at marock Resources will surely give you our utmost and adequate attention to your budget, preference of location, your style and taste. Immediately you need any of our services, we intensify efforts by employing/deploying all human resources into it by spreading our drag net to satisfy you and deliver in the shortest time possible.

AT OUR CORPORATE OFFICE, we believe that honesty and integrity is our ointment that drive us to deliver efficient services to our numerous clients.

OUR MOVE: We are your one stop “Real Estate firm”

Your MOVE: Call us now. +234 (0)8038479985

Visit: marockresources.com for more information.