Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. Obviously, it’s not Mike Ferry… Tony Smith here, Vice President of The Mike Ferry Organization, and I am thrilled to spend a few minutes with you this week, Mike Ferry TV. It’s the week of January 18th.

So let’s start right off with a little Hard-Hitting thought. OK, here we are on the week of the 18th of January. 1/24th of the year is over, so half of the first month of 2021 is over. You only have twenty three more chances in 2021 to achieve all the things that you set out to achieve in your business plan this year. So I hope that shocks you a little. I hope it doesn’t scare you. You still have plenty of time, but it should be an awareness that you start to understand and we’re going to tie right into that with some thoughts today. OK, we’re going to talk today a little bit about why is changing behavior so hard? Boy, it’s hard sometimes, isn’t it, to change behavior? Why is it so hard to change behavior? And I’ll give you some examples. OK, so the first thing I want to look at is there was a Mike Ferry email that came out to our clients a couple of days ago. And on that email, there was a series of questions. Here we are the first couple weeks of the year and Mike Ferry ask us, OK, so how many days so far have you followed your schedule? At at least seventy five percent? How many days so far this year have you followed your schedule, at least seventy five percent. The second question, do you have a schedule that you’re trying to follow? Here we are a couple of weeks in.

Are you actually trying to follow a daily schedule right now? He wrote down, if you’ve had distractions, are you working to eliminate them? If you’ve had distractions, are you working to eliminate them? Next he wrote down; have you been able to attain your prospecting contact goal each day that you’ve worked? So maybe you’ve worked 8 or 10 days so far this year. Have you been hitting your prospecting contact goal each day? He questioned how aggressively you’ve been calling your leads so far this year. Have you been calling your leads as aggressively as you’re supposed to be? Question: How many appointments have you set and done so far this year? Two weeks in. How many appointments have you set and done? And then how many contracts have you signed so far this year? Boy, that was a tough email from Mr. Mike Ferry, right? He approaches us, right, right between the eyes with this series of questions. How much of this have you done? What I see here is changing behavior, for example. Are you running your time now, your daily schedule, kind of like you did before you got into 2021? Are you behaving with your schedule kind of like you did in 2020? Are you behaving with your prospecting kind of like you did in 2020. Are you behaving with your lead follow-up the same way that you did in 2020 and right down the row. OK, we are in the business of changing behavior.

That’s what we do here at Mike Ferry. That’s what it’s all about, is helping you change behavior. And here we are a couple of weeks into the year and you should be well on your way of working towards changing your behavior. So let me ask you a question, why is changing behavior so hard? Why is it so hard, you know, for most of you, I’m hoping at least, that around the end of the year last year, you set this incredible business plan for yourself. You’ve got some ideas about the business you want to do transactions, income, money, the whole thing. Right. And I’m hoping you have some pretty grand ideas of what you would like to accomplish this year in your real estate business, but it requires changing behavior. What are the odds of you achieving those exciting goals that you wrote down? If you don’t change some behaviors, the odds are almost zero, aren’t they? So the only way you’re going to achieve the better … the more the more income, the more deals, the more listing, better life. Whatever it is is if you somehow figure out how to change behaviors. And we have to look at why it’s so hard. And if Mike was standing here today, I could see him and go, OK, so how old are you physically? Physically, how old are you right now at this moment? OK. 55 years old. How old are you right now? 55 years old.

At 55 years old doing some things the same way. OK, so I have 55 years of experience in some areas doing things, some things I’ve been doing in my whole adult life a certain way. Well those behaviors get locked in pretty well. So the first reason why people don’t change behavior is they don’t understand and appreciate the fact that you may have been coming to the office or getting up at a certain time in the morning as a business person for a long, long, long time. And then you expect to change that behavior in two days. If you don’t change the behavior in two days, you give up on the idea so you can see the length of time that you have. Some of these habits really works against you in changing the behavior, right. Another reason people don’t change behavior: They don’t tell anybody what they’re trying to change. They don’t really get a full group of people supporting them in what they’re trying to do. Most people haven’t even talked to their family about their business plan for 2021, have you talked to your family about your business plan? Have you talked to your broker or manager and gotten really specific about what you need to change to start the year if you have a coach? Boy, I sure hope you’re working with your coach on what behaviors you need to change.

Are you willing to keep addressing those behaviors week in and week out until you actually make some progress and change? I mentioned support system. Most people don’t create a solid support system to change a behavior. Sometimes you have to flat out ask for help. You know, if you have a problem with what you eat and how you work out, sometimes the only way that you’ll ever change that behavior is if you get a nutritionist and you get a trainer at the gym or you get a workout program that you’re held to and you’re held accountable, you have to ask for help. If you have challenges with hitting your prospecting contacts, have you asked for help? Have you asked for another agent that does know how to prospect daily to help you? Have you set up the accountabilities? Have you set up the support at home? All right, so we don’t change behaviors because we don’t have a support system behind what we’re trying to do. OK, we oftentimes don’t change behaviors because we’re simply not patient enough. Like, we just, you know, we want things so fast, don’t we? Everything – we want it so fast. You know, I want to lose weight and I want to lose it by Friday. I want to make more money and I better see signs of it by next week or I give up.

Sometimes we have to work on understanding the patience required. All right. Sometimes why we don’t change behaviors: We won’t even write down the behavior we need to change and we won’t even consider the action steps to change it. Well, Tony, I need to have a better behavior of my morning routine. OK, action steps. What time do you go to bed? Do you go to bed at midnight and expect to have a good, solid morning routine, the first step is you’re going to maybe have to have a conversation at home or with somebody about let’s go to bed earlier so I can get up earlier. All right. You know, action step. I have a problem with my morning routine. Many times some people won’t even decide what to do. Like at the end of the day today, will I decide some of the things I need to get done tomorrow? Will I prepare in advance for things that need to happen? OK, so behaviors don’t change because we won’t write it down and we won’t create action steps to change the behavior. On the other side is just flat. Behaviors don’t change because we simply simply want it without the work. We want to close our eyes and have the behavior change right, you and I both know that if you were to identify the one piece of work that you’re going to have to do every day to change a behavior, maybe it’s I need to write down every single thing I eat for three months.

Everything I eat… That will help you change a behavior. Maybe I need to keep a really solid track of every contact I make, accumulate those contacts day by day by day, and do an analysis at the end of the week of my contacts for the week. And you have to put in that work. Well, I don’t want to do the work. I just want to make my calls. That’s pretty hard. Change of behavior. I want to adopt a world class Listing Presentation, the Mike Ferry way. Right. You’re going to have to lay out the work you’re going to do. The first week I’m going to chant and and repeat the script over and over and over again every day for the first week. The second week I’m going to start writing the Listing Presentation down every day. The second week I’m going to bring on a role play partner so that I can role play it at least once a day and so on. What are the action steps and what is the work that you’re willing to do? And then the last reason that people won’t often change behavior is many times they won’t even address the sacrifices that they have to make.

Right. I want to change a behavior, but I want everything to just be perfect. All right. Well, if it comes to prospecting, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices and you’re going to have to understand what they are. You’re going to have to maybe sacrifice your deep desire to never look embarrassed or never get rejected. You’re going to have to understand that. You have to accept the rejection and the embarrassment that you’re going to take if you’re ever going to change your behavior and prospect every day. Sacrifices, you’re going to have to maybe stop having that 40 minute coffee routine with other people in the office. Right. Sacrifices. You’ll probably have to wake up earlier than you are. Then you like to wake up so you can get set up to pull it off. What are the two or three sacrifices that you’re willing to make to change your behavior? If you’ll consider changing two or three or four behaviors, you have to really appreciate the ripple effect. OK, for many people, if they change their morning routine behavior, clear down the line here, it dramatically changes their income for their family. Or if we change our eating habits and our workout routine clear down the line, it changes are our self-confidence and our desire and our stamina. The ripple effect of changing even one behavior can be huge.

So what I would ask you to do with two weeks into the year, let’s isolate and really bring to the surface the one or two behaviors that you will absolutely commit to making. And then let’s go ahead and use some of the tools I’ve given you now to make sure you change the behavior; write it down and write out the action steps, get a support team, understand the sacrifices you need to make. Really think through that. You’re going to have to be patient with it at times and persistent. Tell a lot of people about it, let’s do a few of those things, let’s start changing some behaviors and let’s start going down the road in the right path. Now, good news. This is the week of the Production Retreat. We have our annual Production Retreat here in January. This week; this week’s Production Retreat is when many of our agents just get fired up and get totally set into the things they want to do for 2021. I hope you’re going if you are. That is spectacular. If you’re not, you might want to consider it – Production Retreat 2021 is one of our best events of the year, so I hope this helps. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with me on Mike Ferry TV. I’ll look forward to seeing you soon.