Pencil Yourself In for Success

Monday Morning Match is a quick post - maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea - intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.





"There are two patron saints to whom I have tremendous devotion: a sheet of paper and a lead pencil. Mark down at least once a day everything you do and every time you do it. It will not only make you proud to see all you do; but it will humble you by showing you all you don't do."

~ William Doyle

I hate to sound like a broken record in many of these blog posts but there are two things a successful Realtor should do every day - "business development" activities and "business support" activities.

Most agents choose to spend their time on the business support activities because those things don't involve rejection, fear or conflict. Remember though that if you spend too much time on the business support activities and no time on business development, there soon will be no business to support.

Instead of getting hung up on the insignificant things, remain focused on those things that will lead to a successful transaction.

If the things you are doing this week aren't helping you build relationships, solve any problems or have more fun, it might be a good idea to find something else to do.



Photo courtesy of Chucknado via Flickr

Dive In

I enjoyed a relaxing evening at our pool last night. I had taught in the morning and then attended a class in the afternoon before driving back to Columbus, so it was a welcome respite from a long day to sit back, enjoy a cold drink and have pizza with the family and then watch the kids play in the pool and jump off the diving boards.

It was on those diving boards where I saw a little girl who inspired this blog post.

I don't know her but she seemed like a pretty cool kid. Her name was Reese and I am guessing she is about 7 or 8 years old, maybe 9. She was standing on the high dive getting ready to dive for her first time from that height.

She stretched out her arms, bent at the waist and then...straightened up and walked back to the end of the board.

She walked back to the edge, repeated the process and then...chickened out. She jumped feet first.

This process repeated itself a few times and each time, more and more people were looking on, including the lifeguard and her older brother who were each encouraging her to "just do it" with calls of "it'll be easy" and "just trust yourself, lean and fall forward."

"I'm scared," yelled Reese as she jumped feet first again. "I'll do it next time," she said at least three times.

And then, she summoned up the guts and did it. She dove off the high dive. A perfect entry with minimal splash. Even the Russian judge would have scored her well (once you factored in the degree of difficulty and her age, it was quite impressive).

Reese emerged from the depths with a smile on her face almost bigger than her cheeks could hold. She proudly swam to the ladder, climbed out of the pool and you know what she did next? She walked right back to the high dive to do it again.

Up the ladder she went. She walked... no she strutted to the end of the board, yelled to her mother at the other end of the pool to "watch me dive, Mom" and did it again. Another perfect dive.

Her fear completely vanished, Reese had determined that she was now ready to move on to a front flip. Seriously, after a few more trips up the ladder and off the board head first, she almost seemed bored with diving from the high dive and, since she realized her fear wasn't as strong as she imagined just fifteen minutes earlier, she figured she could do a front flip just like she does easily off the low board.

And she did.

I am sure by now, you know where I am going with this story, don't you?

What are you afraid of when it comes to your business? Have you done anything today that involves business development activities or are you staying in the shallow end of the pool focused on the easier, safer business support activities? Working with those first time buyers might be in your comfort zone but trying to break in to the high end market of $500K and higher seems a bit "above your level" of confidence, huh? Making that tough call to a Seller who needs a drastic repositioning of his asking price in order to generate some buyer traffic isn't going to be easy so perhaps you should just wait until the listing expires and blame the "tough market" as the reason the house didn't sell.

Take it from Reese. It's just the first one that seemed hard. After that, it starts getting fun.

Rest period is over. Get up there and stretch out your arms, bend at the waist.

No one is going to push you. You've just got to dive in.

Why Wait?

Monday Morning Match is a quick post - maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea - intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.

It's been a while since my last post. In fact, I didn't even make an effort last week.

Now, of course, I have an excuse. Don't we always have an excuse?You see, I really was busy with some things that we had going on at the company so I just didn't have the time to sit down and plan out a blog post in my mind.

Have you ever "been there and done that"? You have plans to do something proactive in your business but you spend the week being reactive. You allow other things to get in the way and you begin to justify why you didn't get done what needed to be done?

We don't attend a company event or training session because we "might have a buyer" that needs help that day.

We skip making calls one morning because we're waiting for a home inspector to call us about a walk through.

We cancel a coaching session with our manager so that we can prepare for a listing appointment that is a week away.

Procrastination is the friend of failure

There is an old Spanish proverb that says "Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week," and I think it may just be true. We allow procrastination to get in our way because that's the easy thing to do.

Our exercise and health can wait until tomorrow. We'll just run more on the weekend or we can start eating healthy next week.

Our financial decisions aren't thought out the way they need to be because it's often easier to spend based on impulse instead of planning and foresight.

We fail to spend a proportional time of our week engaged in business development activities and instead we hide behind the business support activities because they are usually easier and don't involve any challenge or adversity. (Managers - are you focused on the "business development" activities that will help your office's bottom line? Recruiting, retention and agent development?) 

So what will you achieve this week. Instead of completing a "things to do" list, why not create a "make it happen" list. What can you "make happen"? Instead of saying you are "going to do" something, believe that you're going to "make something happen."

Why wait? I think now is a perfect time for you to take that next step closer to success.

Get out there now and start building relationships, solving problems and having fun.