Being an Airbnb host for over a year now, I’ve had various experiences with our guests. Some a bit odd, but overall our guests are really fabulous and interesting people from all over the world.
This past week has been one of those odd experiences though. There were many details on this case going back and forth, but in shortish this guest didn’t have his own Airbnb account. He had instead had a friend book our place for him through the friend’s own account. I thought this was very odd as setting up an Airbnb account is very easy. I’m always accepting guests who are new to Airbnb (when you’re new, you have no reviews so therefore can be considered a gamble). They’ve all been great guests. In other words, I would have gladly excepted this booking too. Through the friend who had done the booking, I had received the name and mobile number of the actual guest.
What happened next was on the day he was suppose to arrive. There’s suddenly a text message on my mobile early in the morning with an explanation that he wanted to change the booking to following week.
While I really and genuinely do appreciate our quite diverse guests and I appreciate this person’s effort to book our place. Still. If a person cannot bring themselves to do a simple task such as open an account to book for themselves and to communicate with me directly, then why on Earth should I except this form of behaviour? Besides the point here, but in truth the way it’s set up with Airbnb I can’t make changes on behalf of a guest even if I wanted to.
It got me thinking though later in the day. What we get out of anything in life, be it meeting a friend, meeting people in general, conducting business, doing favours — you get the point — it is all in much we put in to it ourselves. If you want honest and reliable friends, you better be honest and reliable yourself. If you want your therapist to truly care for you, then you better at least show up for the appointments and be honest with yourself.
Business works in the exact same way. If you want to work with successful people, you better step up yourself. Because if you worked really hard to be successful, then you will expect that out of people in your immediate environment.
How do you become successful? Start with eliminate, or at least minimise, people who have a negative outlook on life and/or who are not supportive to your ideas. Then put your head down and get to work. Get rid of all distractions and Make That One Decision. Not for your friends, not for your family, not even for your children (if you have any), but for YOU and YOU alone.
You see, if you KNOW you’re good at what you do and you truly want it, then there is no other way around it: You will be successful.
You need to have, or at least it helps to have, creative people around you in order to for you achieve success. How much or how little you accept from yourself is what you can expect from others. See how it works?