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3.
Achieving What You Really Want in Your
Business I
still remember something I heard in a
seminar I attended in June of 1985 that
remains quite profound to me to this day.
The leader of the seminar said to the
audience, "You either have what you
want in life, or you have the reasons why
you don't." That
was such a simple statement for me to
hear, but it instantly resonated deep
within me. And I knew it would have far
reaching implications to me for the rest
of my life, too, as it told me that my
success, or lack of success, would be a
direct result of my own choices. With
this in mind, when you see the names on
the list of top producers in your office
year-after-year, do you notice how many of
the same names seem to be on that list
quite regularly? There's really no
accident why this is true--it's because
they've been doing the things that
constantly produce large amounts of
commissions for both themselves and the
office. And the other agents who never
make it onto this list are busy doing
something else throughout the year. But
yes, they're feeling busy throughout the
year also. Achieving
the success you've always wanted in real
estate involves: 1)
Identifying the ideal prospects you want
to work with 2)
Having both the people and presentation
skills to close these prospects on working
with you exclusively The
rest is really just details. To
show you an example of this, when I first
began my career as a commercial agent
years ago, I was intrigued by a man in my
office who had very little knowledge of
property values in our real estate market.
But interestingly, he always made great
money. And it took me some time before I
recognized that his success came from his
ability to both identify prospects, and
close them on working with him as their
real estate agent. But despite his lack of
knowledge of fair market value in our
marketplace, he certainly talked to his
clients and prospects like he knew exactly
what he was talking about at all times.
This made people feel certainty around
him, which compelled them to want to work
with him even more. Now
granted there were some times when I saw
him with egg on his face when working with
savvy, full-time real estate investors who
knew value better than he did, but these
times were definitely rare. And his
confidence, assertiveness, and willingness
to completely attach himself to his
prospects whenever he smelled opportunity
and not take "No" for an answer,
made him very successful throughout his
career. In
drawing a parallel here, I once read how
Thomas Edison went about inventing the
light bulb. It took him over 1,400
attempts before he successfully emerged
with a light bulb that would work, but it
was really his thinking along the way that
I found to be quite extraordinary. He was
so absolutely, positively convinced that
he would find a way to do it, that he
considered every one of these 1,400-plus
failures an indication that he was one
step closer to finding the right solution.
By eliminating what didn't work one step
at a time he reasoned, he was continually
getting that much closer to what would
work. That's how certain he was in knowing
that he was going to find the solution. I
don't know about you, but I find this to
be an amazingly powerful way of thinking. How
many inventors do you think would have
still been trying new ways to invent the
light bulb after only 30 failed attempts
at it? And can you imagine the power
of applying this same kind of thinking to
your real estate business also? The
more you're convinced with absolute
certainty that you'll achieve the success
you aspire to in your business, the more
you'll guarantee it happening. Getting
rejected during prospecting, being turned
down for an exclusive agreement, and
having deals fall apart on you are all
part of being a real estate agent. Heck,
the most successful agents in the business
are the ones who experience the most
failure along the way towards achieving
that success. They're the Thomas Edisons
of the world who are convinced that
constantly putting themselves out there
and experiencing short term failure, puts
them that much closer to achieving their
dreams. For in reality the difficulties we
experience throughout our real estate
careers everyday are not really failures,
they're just temporary outcomes. And the
more that we understand this, and the more
that we just move on to what's next for us
to do without all the emotion and drama
that can be attached to these temporary
outcomes, the faster we'll achieve the
success we want for ourselves. To
be the successful agent you've always
wanted to be means moving through these
temporary outcomes quickly and not letting
them get to you. For when you instead try
to avoid them in the future, this often
requires pulling back from doing what will
have you be more productive. The power to
quickly move through these outcomes and be
as successful as you want to be is in your
resiliency, and in your letting go of your
attachment to how negatively you feel
about these outcomes. As
another example, if you look at a list of
the Major League Baseball players who have
struck out the most times during their
careers, they are, one and all, the
greatest players who have ever played the
game. This is because the people who give
their all towards achieving magnificence
throughout their careers, are also the
ones who experience the most failure along
the way. But they know that by focusing on
getting everything right the next time,
and letting go of their most recent
failure immediately, they'll achieve the
results they've always wanted for
themselves. So
have the mindset throughout your real
estate career that no matter what happens
to you on any given day, you have the
ability to immediately rise above it. And
know with absolute certainty, like Thomas
Edison did, that you're now really that
much closer to producing the results
you've always wanted for yourself in your
real estate business.
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