Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. It is the week of October 12th. Has anybody else caught on to the fact that this year, as unusual, very, very difficult, challenging, strange, productive … probably has not been the kind of year most of us anticipated in January and February. You know, somebody said to me … “Describe 2020.”

I said, “Well, January and February … I’m talking about our profession of Real Estate … was actually pretty good. January and February was pretty good. Now, you know, different parts of the country acclimate differently because of weather to January, February for Real Estate production. And then, of course, the first week in March is when the pandemic really became something that was foremost and in front of us all the time. March and April … I mentioned this last week … were very challenging, listings were cancelling, appointments were falling apart, deals were not closing … nobody really knew what the end result would be to this terrible virus and what we’ve all had to deal with, experience and work with in our business. And then, of course, May came and the light seemed to come on again and Real Estate started to take off in May, June, July and August, and I mentioned this several times to you … became outstanding months for most people.

But it’s interesting because what I’ve discovered is the people that are doing something have a different belief system, they have a different attitude, they have a different approach, their expectations are different … or, in essence, Bill Gove, great motivational speaker … 60s, 70s and early 80s … up until the 90s … when he was in his 90s … Bill Gove used to say all the time … There’s the valley people and the mountain people. There’s the hill people. There’s the valley people. You know, these people are looking up and these people are looking ahead … and we have to decide which one we’re going to be.

I’ll tell you a cute Bill Goves story. I had Bill speak at one of our retreats back many, many years ago … a wonderful man … and unfortunately, he passed away and we don’t have him with us … we have his memory and his good thoughts. And I said to Bill, “You know, at your age, what do you do all the time?”

And he said, “I do one or two speaking engagements a month,” and he was in his 80’s.

I said, “What do you do the rest of the time?”

He said, “Well, I live in Florida and there’s a group of us … we play golf, 9 holes of golf, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

I said, “Good for you. That is great. Out in the fresh air, the sunshine, with friends.” I said, “Are all the fellows you play with about your age?”

And he had such a great sense of humor. He said, “Mike, the group I play with are so old, we settle all of our bets after each hole we play because we don’t know who’s going to be able to play the next one,” which was a cute way to look at life.

But see, the truth is Bill … I think his strength was the positive attitude that he kept. So when I look at the differences between those that have and do what they want and those that don’t, I always thing of Bill Gove because of the mountains, the heights that we can achieve and the people in the valleys that really never get what they want.

So I gave you three thoughts last week … I’m going to give you three or four more today on the differences between the two people. I’ll start with this one. The haves … the people that are succeeding in our business today are very, very, very choosy about who they spend their time with … whether it be a prospect, a Buyer, a Seller, affiliates, agents in the office and their lives.  I wrote down they don’t hang around negative people. It’s a very difficult one. It’s a very important one. But Earl Nightingale used to say all the time, “We become like the people we associate with.” We become like the people we associate with.

So, you know, I keep saying that we are nothing more than a summation of the five people we spend our time with. So who do you spend your time with? And what kind of attitudes do they have? And are they supporting what you’re trying to accomplish and do? The people that have versus the have-nots are looking for people that they can support and they’re looking for people, of course, that will support them in return.

Many, many, many, many years ago I asked Earl Nightingale, “We all talk about having friendships, which are so important in our lives.” I said, “How do you define a friend?”

And Earl, in his simplistic but brilliant way of presenting ideas, said to me, “Michael, a friend is a person that when you’re down is going to help lift you back up to where you want to be. But a friend is a person that when your ego is too strong and too big and you think you’re too smart will knock you back down so you can see the reality of life.”

Well, you know, should we be hanging around negative people? And a lot of hang around negative people because they try to pull them up and that’s very commendable. It’s a wonderful behavior and attitude. But the truth is if you’re around a lot of negative people and we become like the people we associate with, wouldn’t it be possible that we’d be drugged to that level of negativity? There’s enough negativity in the world without being around people that are negative all the time.

So really strong Real Estate people are in a Mastermind Group of positive people. They have accountability partners of positive people. They have role-play partners of positive people. And sometimes I watch how people react with each other, and you can tell by the smile on their faces and their body language and their behavior patterns that they’re looking for that positive reinforcement, which we all look for and need.

The next point that I wrote down for the differences … and this is a tough one because throughout North America, the industry is always the same and yet it’s different. Now, throughout North America we have Buyers and Sellers, we have prospects, we have leads … and there’s a certain process we follow. However, throughout the country, a Real Estate transaction in Canada, for example, is handled differently than it might be handled in Iowa. Buyers and Sellers still have to come together, signatures have to be done, presentations made, objections handled, but once the transaction comes together, there’s differences in how they’re handled. The Northeast, for example, used attorneys, closing officers … the Southwest uses escrow. Different functions with the same result.

So the next point I want to give you guys and gals is this … the people that are the haves … that are succeeding, they support the people who support them. They support the people who support them. If you’re blessed to have a great Broker/Manager or leader in the office and it give you that support, give that support back in return. If your Broker, your company, offers, for example, a transaction coordinator … which can be a vitally important service for an agent to follow, and they’re going to charge a fee of some type to pay for that service and that service available, support them because they’re supporting you.

So I’ve always said you should support the Broker, the Manager, the leadership … if you’re getting support in return. But at the same time, you should support the affiliates are the people that really do pull the transaction together to the point of the closing. So you learn to support the people that support you the most … and that’s probably one of the hardest parts of Real Estate because often, we don’t see the intricate work that these affiliates are doing to help us do transactions.

The next thought I wrote down, which would be the sixth of our several weeks we’re going to be working on these thoughts together … they’re always working on improving their skills so they can do a better job for the customer because, the truth is, as much as we don’t think at times of ourselves as salespeople … I don’t understand … I’ve never understood why this industry does not see themselves as Real Estate people … but guess what … the Buyers and Sellers think we’re salespeople, so developing the skills of a salespeople is vitally important and those skills vary.

It’s like the spokes in a wheel. There’s a lot of spokes in a wheel. There’s a lot of skills we have to develop … and the haves are spending time virtually every day, working on, developing, critiquing, learning, growing, strengthening the skills they have so they can do a better job on a regular basis for their Buyers and for their Sellers because the truth is it all comes down to how does the public, the Buyer, the Seller, perceive the service we offer and the strength of our service often depends upon the skills that we have.

So the next point I want to bring up to you is something I learned from Earl Nightingale a long time ago. I wish I could say it was recently, but it wasn’t. We were sitting in the office one day and Earl was famous to always have 3×5 cards handy to jot notes down. He handed me a card and he said, “Mike, I want you write this down because I was very lucky to be able to talk to him on a regular basis during my tenure with this company.” Earl said, “I want you write down the world knowledge.” I wrote it down. “Equals.” I wrote equals. “Confidence.” He said, “Mike, do you understand how important it is to have a strong knowledge of the products and services that we sell?”

I said, “I do, sir. I understand that.”

Because he said, “The stronger your knowledge of the products and services we sell, the higher your confidence is to go out and present and sell them.”

I said, “That’s logical. That makes sense.”

He said, “But understand, then, the stronger your knowledge of the skills required define the prospect to make the sale. The stronger your skills are, the more confidence you have to go out and present the service we have.”

So the knowledge of the product, the knowledge of the service, the knowledge of the service you represent, the knowledge of the skills required to do a transaction becomes vitally important. I agreed. I said, “How can I disagree?”

Then he said, “I want you, under the word knowledge, write the word ignorance.” I said okay and wrote the word ignorance. Then he wrote, “Equals … write down the word fear.” Our lack of knowledge is, of course, referred to as ignorance, and the ignorance creates the fear we have to do the job that we’ve been assigned to do. In this case, to list and sell Real Estate at the highest level and quality possible, so the service that we render the Buyers and Sellers is looked upon as being the service they need to have so they can sign a contract with us.

So, therefore, the haves are always working on strengthening their knowledge, which gives them the confidence to do the job. The have-nots are often ignorant of the basic fundamental skills required, the knowledge of their service, the knowledge of their product, the knowledge of their company and what their company can offer … and as a result, they have fear, and when they have the fear, they can’t do the job that they say they want to do. Knowledge equals confidence. Ignorance equals fear.

So we’ve looked at one … two … three … four more thoughts between the haves and the have-nots. I have many more, but as we try to keep the Mike Ferry TV to 10 to 12 to 14 minutes each week, we’re at the 12 minute mark, so we will look forward to talking to you next week. Have a great week.

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Mike Ferry is the global leader in real estate coaching and training. Watch Mike each week as he discusses a variety of topics to help real estate agents and brokers. Grow your real estate business by improving your mindset, developing your skills and creating a plan of action to increase your production!