Welcome back. Good morning it is the week of February 15th, and I think some of you know that on February 1st we made a little declaration to all of our coaching clients throughout North America that February was Mike Ferry Coaching Clients Listing Month and that 100 percent of our energy and time should be spent on taking listings. And, you know, we all know the shortages and play the shortage of listings. But I think what we forget all the time is, you know, we’re going to have projected … And I think it’s a pretty good projection, we’re going to have over five million Real Estate transactions take place during the calendar year 2021; Half of those have to be listings sold. Last year we did over five million. Half of those were listing sold. So we know that listings are being taken. The question is, are you participating in the listings being taken? So I don’t know if you attended the Production Retreat. I don’t know if you were able to get a copy of the notes but one segment of the retreat was really written by seventy five of the top agents in the country that we coach. And I had asked them all to share with me, “What is the most important thing you’ve learned?” And we titled that segment of the retreat ‘What I’ve Learned’ and we were only able to cover some because of the time allotment. Well, they covered about six to ten of those ideas.

But I want to take the last five that we did not talk about because I think these are vitally important. If your goal is to achieve the goal you’ve set for the calendar year 2021. If your goal is to become a stronger listing agent, these ideas are, I think, imperative to what you learned, use, understand, execute, etc.. So it won’t be a long message today, but to be five points that I think if you pay attention, you can use all five of these points. Here’s here’s number one. Doing more deals, taking more listings each year is 50 percent mindset, 50 percent skills and 50 percent activities. Now, I know automatically some of you are going to say, for goodness sakes, Mike, can’t you add 50 + 50 and 50 … it’s one hundred and fifty percent. I’m trying to give one hundred percent as it is today. I understand it’s one hundred and fifty percent. But I think that the mindset, the skills and the activities are all critical to the process. And let’s face it, to be competitive as a listing agent, it takes a lot of dedication, probably a lot more skill, which you’re willing to learn; More time, which many times we don’t want to invest, but it takes one hundred and ten percent more energy and effort to get the job done. So really strengthen your mindset, strengthen your skills, strengthen your activities.

You’re going to win the game. The third … Second point excuse me, create the habit. And this is a tough one – About working your best competitors even when your skills are the best or better than your competitors. What do I say that? Because you know, the sellers in today’s market and the buyers are looking for the most qualified agent. They’re looking for an agent that you show up on a Listing Presentation, and you have a copy of your daily schedule and say, I want you to see what I do all day long. Once I take a listing like your home, do you get it sold? That is called outthinking and outworking your competition. But outworking your competition is making sure that seventy five percent of the activities that you’re involved in each day revolved around lead generation, lead follow-up, pre-qualifying going on presentations and negotiating contracts. That should be where our energy is spent. Number three on this list: Beware, this is the tough one. Beware of creative avoidance behavior. What are those little things you choose to do during the course of the day that you probably should not be doing? Because, you know, let’s face it, selling Real Estate is not always as much fun as we would like it to be. No, it’s very productive, very profitable, very satisfying. And for most of you, the satisfaction and the money is pretty good, especially with the prices going up as much as they have in the last, say, 24 to 30 months.

So the prices have outpaced sometimes our abilities to think about how big our commission checks are. Well, here’s what you have to understand. This creative avoidance behavior… You’ll create things to get in the way. You’ll create distractions. You’ll create stories. You’ll create excuses that will keep you from doing the job you have. It’s called human nature. It’s perfectly normal, perfectly common. And I don’t know many people starting with myself that haven’t been involved in creating some type of behavior to avoid doing the job that you’re being paid to do. The fourth point, I’ve learned is that repetition is part of the process. It’s not always fun, it’s not always exciting. But if you do what you’re supposed to do each day, you’re going to win and achieve the goals you’ve set. The goal I set for our coaching clients for the month of February was that, every coach and client take a minimum of four listings in the month of February. Excuse me, I think I might have said March. So every agent should take at least four listings. Now I’m getting reports from agents and some by the 15th have already taken five or six. So the question is, are you taking enough listings to make your business grow? I had the funniest complaint probably now … Two weeks ago on Friday, I guess probably two weeks ago.

“Mike, the problem I’m having, I’m taking four or five listings a month and every listing I’m taking is selling. I can’t keep anything in inventory at all. So what’s the solution to my problem?” I wrote back, “You have the solution.” The purpose of taking a listing is to get it sold. The purpose is not to accumulate a bunch of listings that are going to sell. I said feel blessed that everything you’re taking is selling and understand that you’re taking four to five listings a month. Well, see, here’s what’s interesting. The repetition of doing the same thing all day long is the process. That’s what it’s all about. And it’s not always fun. It’s not always exciting. But if you do what you’re supposed to do and you know what you’re supposed to be doing, you know, you look in that mirror and I’ve got a mirror here in our recording studio. And if you look in that mirror, the person that’s causing the problem is the person looking back at me, and that’s always myself. And then the last point of our short message today, remember, when you take the path of least resistance, you’re almost always going to fail and never achieve the goals you’ve set. The path of least resistance is showing up at nine o’clock, nine thirty in the morning when some agents already have an hour and a half head start on you and the path of least resistance is not calling your leads back because you don’t want to hear what they have to say and they may not be qualified.

The path of least resistance is not Pre-qualifying and sending out the listing package, as you know you should. Path of least resistance is not doing the prospecting that you know you have to do. Path of least resistance, not calling your database, which is the name of the game today. So you always have to understand that if you continue on the path of least resistance, for example, working with buyers when you could be working with sellers, you’re not going to make the progress that you want. It’s very hard to set a high production goal and take the path of least resistance and expect to get there. So I’m going to be doing a webinar, I guess it’s in a couple of days and it’s called What I’ve Learned. And I’m going to go through about 40 of these kinds of thoughts. If you’re at that webinar, hope to see you then, if not, Ill see you. Well, next Monday lets see … last Monday was the holiday or is this Monday the holiday? I guess today is the President’s holiday. So you may not be watching this till Tuesday or whatever the case may be. Have a great week. Make it productive and take a listing. Thank you.