Mike Ferry: And welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV. It is, of course, now 2022 January the third, Monday. And of course, we wish all of you a happy, healthy, prosperous new year. One of the fun parts of the work that I do is I get a lot of questions asked of me and especially in the months of November and December, and the questions usually revolve around, you know, what’s going to happen next, etc. So, I sat down earlier today with my assistant, Laurie, and I started dictating some of the questions that have been asked over the last couple of weeks. It’s kind of fun because the random questions that come from our coaches, our coaching clients, our wonderful prospects, our attendees that are at events throughout the course of the year and in many cases, random questions from people I’ve never heard of before. I don’t know which our who’s and who’s our which, but I’ve got about 11 or 12 questions that have come over the course of the Christmas holiday I want to share with you. So, the first question that I’m asked a lot, I probably was asked this one hundred times in December. What do I expect to see happen next year with interest rates? And but of course, now we are talking about now, what do we expect to happen? Well, I think everybody is saying the same thing.

Mike Ferry: Interest rates are going to go up a little bit in the first quarter of this year. I asked a very prominent mortgage banker out of Florida. I said, what do you anticipate by mid-year? And he said he felt they could hit close to four percent. And of course, the consequence of that is multiplying all the time. Average sales price is going up, making it more difficult for buyers to qualify. And that’s just part of the inflation we’re dealing with today, and we had it all of last year also. Of course, what that being, the fact inflation and prices rising and interest rates increasing, it’s going to push some of the buyers out of the market. Which means the listing inventory should start to grow as long as we’re listing property. I think we’ll see interest rates going up. I asked a second mortgage banker right after I talked to the first one and this was mid-December. I asked another prominent mortgage banker what his thoughts were on the interest rates, and he said probably a max of 3.6 to 3.7 during the first half of this year. So, I don’t think interest rates are a problem for anybody, for anything except for a buyer that may be a little marginal in terms of making the purchase and making that transaction go through. Second question, will we see any change in the inventory?

Mike Ferry: While I’ve been saying for six months, we should start seeing a change in inventory. Meaning a little bit of growth. Now yes, there are certain markets in the country where the markets are still, you know, as hot as you could be, and then those markets are not going to see a big change in inventory. But I do think there is one issue that nobody wants to talk about which I do, and then people get mad at me all the time. And that is the fact that inventory is really an issue of agents working every day at increasing inventory. Which means that if we’re spending all of our time representing Buyers, which normally would be a very, very productive activity the last 18 months, that’s been a very challenging and difficult activity because the properties are all selling instantaneously with multiples and multiples of offers. So, you know, I really feel that if we could get 30 percent of the agents in North America to actually just talk to their database, to just actively talk to people around any transactions they have, we would see an increase in inventory. Why? Because real estate is probably the most talked about topic for the last 12 to 18 months throughout North America. So, I don’t see any big change in inventory. I see inventory raising because I see the number of buyers qualifying being reduced a little bit.

Mike Ferry: But I also feel we control the inventory and market by our conversations with people. If we’re driving buyers around all day long, we’re certainly not working on getting inventory. I really believe that Real Estate agents, you and I do control the amount of inventory that is for sale by our activities every day and conversations with people. I thought the third question came up a lot and this was something that NAR economists brought up, and so did some of the chief Wall Street people in the third quarter of last year. Is it realistic to think there’ll be a 15 to 18 percent appreciation on real estate again in 2022? I don’t know the answer to that, but I would say to you, you know, if limited inventory still exists and the starts for the homebuilders are not going up, we’re going to see an appreciation on property again. And it’s going to be interesting because as interest rates rise and appreciation goes up, it makes it a little bit more challenging for the average buyer to buy. I hope for all of us that own property and hope that you’re a homeowner. I would hope that you get that 15 to 18 percent appreciation because that asset is an invaluable asset. This next question, I actually put a smile face in my notes on this one. Mike, why do you keep asking us to learn scripts and dialogs and use canned presentations? That’s something I’ve been asking of people now for going on 48 years that I’ve been doing coaching and training.

Mike Ferry: The reason for that is, is simply, you know, the problem we have is we often don’t have the confidence to go out and engage in a conversation with somebody that we know well or somebody we don’t know at all. So my belief has always been, if I know what to say, I can get better engaged with people I don’t know, and therefore I can do what I’m supposed to do. But if I don’t know what to say, if I’m totally lost for what to say to a potential prospect or just be standing in a social environment like you might have been doing over the Christmas holidays, just standing in a social environment with somebody you don’t know, it is often awkward. So therefore, if I know what to say, prospecting, showing buyers property, negotiating a contract, pre-qualifying a Buyer or a Seller making a listing presentation… If I know what to say, I have the confidence to do the job that I have to do, which is the reason why we keep asking agents to learn scripts and dialogs. Mike, I don’t have any sales experience. What do you recommend to get me going a little faster? Well, this is a direct sales business and we’re in a crazy business because a very, very tiny percentage of all the agents and Real Estate have any direct sales experience.

Mike Ferry: You’ve heard me say in the past, if you watch Mike Ferry TV, over here, we have people that are in retail sales. You work in a store. You work in a shopping center. You work for a very popular brand. People come in and out of that store. Your job is to display the product. Find out if they want to buy it. That’s retail. Direct sales is you take your product or service out, and you have to find somebody to get engaged with your product or service, listing presentation, showing property, etc.. If you don’t have experience in drug sales, Real Estate is a tough business because we are directly involved in a direct sales business. So therefore, excuse me if you would, the people that succeed at the highest rate not only know what to say and know what to do, but they understand that if they are going to go out and find people, they’re going to have to go out and get experience succeeding and failing involved in difficult conversations, practicing on prospects, what you want to say to make your business a little bit better. So, if you don’t have any sales experience, put together your database, keep building it and talking to those people because there are people that know you download all the scripts and dialogs, whether it be my scripts and dialogs or somebody else’s.

Mike Ferry: Download them. Third practice and rehearse and practice and rehearse to build the confidence. And then fourth, start prospecting, talking to five, 10, 15, 20 people a day, because that will give you the experience and the feedback. If what you’re doing makes sense and what you’re doing is leading you to a potential prospect, an appointment. Mike, rejection is a problem for me. Please give me some advice. Well, I have said for many years. That the easiest way to learn to handle rejection is get a lot of it as quickly as you can, meaning, you know, pick up the phone and just start calling people and say, do you want to sell your home? Because they’re going to real quickly in almost every case, say no. And after five, 10, 15 of them, you won’t even pay attention to the no. But here’s what I don’t understand, you call your best friend, you’re on a holiday and you’re in your best friend’s town or over this last holiday, we just experience whether it be Christmas or Hanukkah or New Year’s, whatever you celebrated and you call somebody and say, let’s get together for lunch or dinner and they go, No, I’m really busy. I can’t do it. You say, OK, I’ll call you soon and let’s get together.

Mike Ferry: They rejected you, and you just walk right by it because somebody that, you know, said no and you understand that somebody, you know, could say no. Then why would you let a total stranger you’ve never seen before, and we’ll never see again. And you ask them, do you want to get involved in buying or selling Real Estate? And they say, no, why would you let that bother you? Does it make sense? But the other side of that is if you get told no enough, you get very used to being told no. Seventh question this last year’s been overwhelming with the pandemic, boy, is that understandable. The fact that I’ve done more business than I ever dreamed possible and made more money than I ever dreamed possible. How do I handle overwhelm? It’s part of the growth process. The majority of our coaching clients had their biggest financial year of their lives during 2021 and all anticipate and expect to have a bigger this year, bigger year this year because the properties are going up in value and whatever commission check you charge or commission rate you charge, is growing in terms of the amount because the property prices increase. Watch, the overwhelm is something that you learn to live with. Time blocking, managing a schedule and not getting wrapped up and spending your entire day, managing a listing or managing a listing sold is how you learn to handle overwhelm.

Mike Ferry: You handle overwhelm by getting more transactions in process, delegating to the professionals that are all around you because the affiliates really do most of the work on a transaction. Once we get a contract signed and then accepting the fact that you are a great agent and you can do a lot more business than you’ve done in the past. And as long as you accept that, overwhelm will not be a big problem for you in the future. Mike, we understand you’re going back to normal life schedule of events, which we are. Last year was, well, the year before last was crazy. We didn’t do any live events, I don’t think we I think we did two events Superstar Retreat and Production Retreat in a studio with 50 people all socially spaced, wearing a mask. We did it, of course, via virtual. So we had a lot of people watching it virtually, but only 50 people in the room twice this year. We did a management retreat live limited to 200 people, Superstar Retreat Live limited to twenty-five hundred. We had 2600 in the room. I did four two-day events September, October, November, December. Let’s see Fort Lauderdale, DC, Dallas, Orange County, where we had three to five hundred people per event. This year, if you go to our website, we’re going to have a full schedule, meaning we’re going to have a minimum of 15 to 16 up to 25 events writing events to the schedule.

Mike Ferry: Watch for something in your area. We’re also going to have some virtual events at the same time. So, here’s the fun question. Mike, I did 18 deals in 2021. Is it realistic for me to get to 50 in 2022? Depends on your work ethic, depends on your discipline. Depends on the tightness of your schedule. Depends on how many people you talk to. The strength of your presentation. It depends on how badly you would like to accomplish that goal. Can you keep that goal and plan written in front of you that you read every day? Can you see the benefits of going to 50 and is still going to be a challenge? But if you said to me, Mike, I want to go from 18 to 30, I would say that’s a realistic number and not that you can’t do 50 because you certainly can. But I also think in goal setting, being realistic is a very important part of the process. Last question that I have written down. What are the biggest distractions we have to keep us from moving forward? Distractions are the leading cause of low productivity and the big distractions today. Cell phone. Just before we started recording, Pedro said, I think your phone was ringing and of course, it’s on silent.

Mike Ferry: So I didn’t hear it. And of course, I don’t have good hearing anyhow. And then, of course, things like an iPad, etc. These are the big distractions. So I have many recommendations for you. When you walk in the office, ff you’re going to be using the office phone for your contacts, turn your cell phone off and turn your iPad off because they are distractions, which in many cases, people in the office are a distraction. But we’re so happy to have people in the offices again that we have to work a little bit harder at smiling and nodding and going back to work every day. Life is full of distractions, and our ability to control distractions is our ability to become more productive. So we had a fun year in 2021 doing our Mike Ferry TV. Tony Smith and I shared the platform. As you saw many times, we did a lot of fun things. We have a lot of fun things planned again in 2022. We’re glad that you’re here. We’re glad that you’re participating. We’re glad that you’re watching. We’re glad that you’re learning and we’re glad that you are part of what we’re doing together to help you become more productive. Let’s make it a great 2022 and I’ll see you next Monday. Thank you.