Welcome back to challenges that we face in Selling Real Estate Part 2.

Last week we talked about 5 different thoughts that could or could not break your second half of the year and we don’t want it to break in a poor fashion. So, we looked at accepting the fact that change is inevitable as the first thought, and I think it’s probably the hardest thought of the 5 I gave you last week. So here we are on August 12th, and we’re going to go through number 6 through 10. And I think that you’ll enjoy the time we spend together today.

6) Time is not always on our side.

Time is not always on our side. Now when you think about that, you know that is a simple fact of life. Because time is not always on our side. We have to stop wishing and hoping for better results and start doing the things that bring you better results. No matter what stage you’re in the business, time is always running out. You know, the sad part about it is it takes usually any place from 3 to 6 months for a new licensee to really get up and get active and get their first 1 or 2 transactions in process. But that first 3 to 6 months goes by like that, and all of a sudden, you’re sitting there in a situation where you don’t have the income that you anticipated, don’t have the transactions, and understandably, mentally, you get somewhat defeated if you start on day 1. Start today as being day one and say to yourself, no matter how many transactions I’ve done this year, I’m going to do 2 or 3 more than I’ve done in the past, in a given period of time, because time is running out.

7 ) Everybody that you admire and adore will eventually leave

Everybody that you admire and adore will eventually leave. When I first read this, I thought, gosh, everybody’s going to pass away, everybody’s going to die. And that wasn’t what the author was thinking about at all. He wrote, “We have to realize how temporary relationships often are.” You get a potential buyer or seller. Maybe you get the listing. You start to develop a relationship with that particular seller, and then all of a sudden, it’s 3 months, 6 months and the listing hasn’t sold. That relationship is going to sour pretty quick when there is not the type of activity that they anticipated … that you may have sold them on in the first place. So, for thoughts regarding extending a relationship and these four thoughts come from Doctor Günther Klaus, one of my mentors for many, many, many years:

1) Enjoy them while you’re with them.

2) Learn from them.

3) Teach them.

4) Know how to make a profit with them, for them.

So together, you can keep that relationship going. Relationships are temporary. Every once in a while, I think about the fact that starting in about 4 months, we’ll be beginning our 50th year in the Real Estate business as a training company. I’ve been doing this longer than many of our clients have actually been alive, and it’s so interesting that as long as we can enjoy the relationship, we can teach them something to make their life better. We can learn from them in return, and we can profit together. A relationship shouldn’t last forever. But then I’ve watched over the years we’ve done all four of those things simultaneously, and the relationship still disappears. It’s called life in the big city.

8) Hard work doesn’t always guarantee a high level of success

Hard work doesn’t always guarantee a high level of success. You know, there are so many fallacies about “what is hard work?” And, if you think about it, if I said to you, define hard work, you’ve been in the business 5, 6, 7 years, you’re an experienced veteran, you’re doing a fair number of transactions per year. And can you define what hard work is? Hard work is not just the physical presence of what you’re doing, but it’s the mental presence of what you’re involved in. Because mentally, hard work is much more difficult than it is physically. We know what we have to do physically to get a listing. The question is, can you mentally go through the steps and the rebounds and the bounce backs and the negativity and the failure to get to that one? Yes, to get to that listing. Remember, you can’t always control the unpredictable circumstances of the Real Estate business. Think about that in relationship to hard work.

9) Enjoying what you do is a choice

Enjoying what you do is a choice and an inevitable responsibility to learn how to enjoy the many ups and downs of this business. It’s so fascinating to watch the choice where your attitude is here, and then the upset where your attitude is here. And it happened from one phone call. You know, you called a lead. You have a 3 by 5 card. You got a lead there ready to list. You call them, they don’t answer. You call them later in the day, they don’t answer. You call them the next morning and they say, well, I’m sorry, but we decide to list with somebody else. So here we are with high anticipation. High excitement. We know this is going to be a chance to do something really good for both them and ourselves. And then it’s gone like that. Watch the ups and downs of Real Estate. We choose how we’re going to react to the circumstances of Real Estate. I have to tell you, many years ago, I was invited by a Central California Board of Realtors to do a two day, I think it was 2 and a half day seminar, and I was excited about it because, first of all, I could drive to that particular location instead of having to get on a plane and fly for 4 or 5 hours. And they told me they would have about 300 people. And I get there probably at 3:30 or 4:00 the day before it starts, and the people in charge pick me up at the airport. We go to the meeting room, and they have a beautiful meeting room. They have 300 chairs set up. I mean, it was first-class operation all the way. We went and had a nice dinner together. The next morning, I said, I’ll be there at 8:00 for 9:00 start. The president and the education director said, okay, they’ll be there too. And at 8:30 it was still the 3 of us. And that happens. Sometimes people get tied up in traffic if they get late, but at 8:45, it was still just the 3 of us. And at about 5 minutes to 9, a man comes in with a cane, probably in his mid 80s, big smile on his face and said, “Am I the first one here?” I said, “You are, sir, indeed.” He said, “Well, I’m sure there’ll be a big crowd.” Finally, at 9:30 there was the man with the cane, the president of the board, education director, and myself. Nobody showed up except for those three people. So, to make this thing work, I said, “I have a great idea. It’s a Denny’s restaurant across the street. Why don’t I buy you breakfast and give you an outline of what I was going to talk about?” And we did that for about an hour and a half, and then I drove home. Sometimes the circumstances that we anticipate and expect to not actually come to us the way we thought.

10) You are the author of your business and life

And this is an interesting point. You are the author of your business and the author of your life. We choose the path we take as we choose the reaction to the path we take. If you were to write a book, how many chapters would you have that would attract somebody’s attention? And they would want to look forward to hearing about the life you’ve led so far? Well, we’re the author of the book. You know, Sabrina, my wife says to me all the time, you need to write a book about your life as a speaker, as a trainer, as a coach. I said, “boring!” I said nobody wants to read that kind of stuff. They want to know today what we can do today to make today a better day for each of us. So remember, we are the author of our own life.

So it’s the week of August 12th. August for many of our clients, is always a record setting month, and it’s a record setting month because they stay highly motivated. And next week we’re going to talk about some thoughts on how to stay highly motivated.

Thanks for today. See you next week.