Welcome back to Mike Ferry TV. It is the week of October 19th. The year is slipping away fast and I certainly hope you’re doing something productive to make sure it doesn’t slip away from you. I’ve discovered after doing this work I’ve done for so many years that often, in the month of October, we get one of two or three responses from Real Estate people.

Response number one is … “Mike, it’s October. I’ve had a dismal year. I’ve not done what I wanted. I’ve not come close to achieving my goal, so therefore what I’m going to do is I’m just going to kind of pull back a little bit and just relax and wait for the new year to start.”

To which I go, “Wait a minute! You still have half of October and you have all of November and December, there’s somebody that wants to buy and sell Real Estate in your marketplace. Let’s go find them and do a transaction.” But many people, because they have not succeeded at the level they want, give up before ever ends.

We also have people, and this happens very commonly, that will have achieved a major portion of all the goals they’ve set by the middle of October … and then they just pull their foot off the gas pedal and just kind of coast. And, of course, here’s the challenge with that. You know, the new year starts usually around the first week … maybe the first 10 days of January … and if you haven’t been working in October diligently and haven’t been working in November diligently, and then of course we have the holiday season so often in December, and then you don’t start until the 10th … look at the fact that you’ve spent almost 3 months not engaging yourself in our wonderful business of listing and selling Real Estate. Man, it’s hard to get that button pushed to get restarted again.

So we advocated to everybody that we work with, and we’ve done this for virtually 45 years … it is great to celebrate whatever holiday you choose to celebrate in November and December, and to spend that time with your family and friends, 100% … do it. But, there’s still business being done throughout November and December … and there’s certainly a lot of business in month of October. So to give up too soon makes no sense.

I’ll share a story … I had a wonderful agent that I had known for a long time set a goal that was way beyond her wildest imagination, but we talked about it and she set a goal to make $600,000 for the year. And it was fun to watch the productivity as she moved toward that goal. She calls me the end of June so delighted, so happy, and we were so happy for her that she had earned $450,000 in the first 6 months. Wow … I mean, based on this, she’s going to make probably $750,000 to $800,00.

Well, as the year progressed … as we got to mid-December, I called to say, “Well, how are you doing?”

And she said, “I’ll hit my $600,000. Isn’t that interesting?” She set a target to make $600,000. She had earned $450,000 the first 6 months. Then, in the next 6 months she made $150,000. She only did enough to achieve the goal. Don’t be afraid to stretch. Don’t be afraid to go beyond what the dream is. Don’t be afraid to accept the fact that you can do more than you’ve ever dreamed or imagined. We’re going to look at that today because we’re going to continue our conversation about the haves and the have-nots and what the differences are between the two people.

So the next thought I wrote down … and this is one that I’ve always had a lot of fun with. I’ve been talking about it for 45 years. The people that do the most keep their emotions between the lines. So, I always use this example … if you take a pen and you draw a line across a piece of paper … and it’s not going to show well, but you get the idea, and then you draw a second line about an inch below that and you write the word “emotions” between the lines. I say, that is the goal for a good Real Estate person.

Buying and selling is emotional. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. But, it’s emotional for the Buyer and the Seller. For the Seller and the Buyer, they’re going to be involved at a level. Our job is to stay with the reality of what has to be done … and our emotions get in the way. This happened in a Real Estate office that I worked in, which now seems like a hundred years ago. One of the agents, a good guy and very successful … it was a little strip mall type of office with a plate glass window in the front and the up desk for handling the ad calls was here and his desk was there, and he had a bit of a temper at times, but he was really good … he was a good agent. He would get a little explosive and we’d have to watch that … and old-fashioned telephones that were attached to a cord. Remember those days? The rotary phone.

I walk in the office and he has got the phone and he’s standing up and he’s yelling and screaming and he cannot believe it and I hear him. Boy, I walked away quickly because he was making so much noise. And, all of a sudden, I look up at him and he’s pulled the phone cord out of the wall and he threw the phone out the window and the window broke. Well, that was a little bit of uncontrolled emotions. And, of course, I kiddingly said to the manager, who unfortunately had to let him go from the company that particular day. I said, “Where does it say in the Sales Training Manual that if you’re really upset, you throw a phone through the window?” Well, that’s not keeping your emotions between the lines. So what I always say is this … narrow the lines. Don’t get involved in the drama of the transaction.

We get involved in the drama of a transaction, in my opinion, for one of two reasons. Number one … we’re getting a big commission check and we’re trying to justify that commission check to ourselves and to our clients so we’re handling all the drama. Or, number two … we only have one transaction, and that one transaction is naturally vitally important to you and your family for paying your rent and your car and food for your children to eat. So that transaction’s important and it really becomes big … and when it becomes big and there’s something going haywire, it’s easy to get emotional to get upset.

I’m always amazed when I get … we do a seminar, one of our speakers, Ron or John or Ira or Tony, Larry … they do a seminar and somebody gets mad about something they say and they type these nasty emails and it’s three or four paragraphs. “I can’t believe that person said that I had to manage my time and I can do what I …” Wait a minute.

I write back, “Wait a minute. It was a suggestion. Learn to manage your time. What are you getting emotional about?” Well, what we usually discover is something else is going on in their lives which is brought into the Real Estate transaction. Keep your opinions and your personal life out of the transaction. This transaction is for the Buyer and the Seller. Our job is to bring them together, to logically work to bring the two parties together so they can both be satisfied with what they’re trying to attain. But, if the commission, or our emotions, or our opinions get too heavily involved, guess what happens? The emotions take over the transaction … and that is never going to work well for the Buyer and the Seller.

So the next thing I wrote down for the haves and the have-nots, and this is probably one of the hardest ones … especially today when we have such a small group doing so much business and such a big group doing such a little amount of business … the haves have learned to control their egos and keep things as reality-based as possible.

It’s an interest business because a little bit of success in Real Estate really does go a long way. At the retreat we did a month ago now in Las Vegas … and we had this beautiful studio setup and from what we were told, it really did look like a retreat. We had 50 people in the room socially distanced, 6 feet apart from all directions, that were in the room with me and it allowed me to then be a little more expressive because it’s easier to be expressive to a live audience than just a camera. At least, at my level … so I would qualify that. But it was interesting because, you know, we see the fact that egos become very big very quickly.

We were talking to some of the agents at the breaks and afterwards we had lunch together each day, and we talked about the fact that where else but Real Estate can you get a commission check this big for doing on deal. So I asked the participants, and if you have a chance to listen to the retreat, which hopefully you do, and if you were there, you’ll remember this … I said to someone, “Give me your average commission check.” And this young lady here … average commission check … $4,500. Six feet to her left … average commission check … $24,000.

Well, you know, you do 100 deals at $4,500, you make a lot of money. Or you do three deals at twenty-some thousand … you make a lot of money. And the ego often becomes the ruler of the transaction. And, see, the people that are really going to sell the most transactions and earn the most money are not worried about themselves, they’re worried about what the customer is receiving and what they’re getting. Are they getting the value that they’re looking for? Are they getting the service they want? Are we pricing it to sell or are we pricing it so we can control getting a listing that is never going to sell? So egos become a very big part.

If you look at the word E-G-O, it means that everything has to revolve around me, whoever that person may be. But if you cross the “E” off of ego, what’s left? “GO.” Go take care of the client, go take care of the prospect, go take care of the customer, go do the deals and your rewards will always come if you do the deals properly.

The next point I have for today … they understand the importance of three words. These came from Neil Schwartz 40 years ago to me, so thank you Neil, always, for these three words … what is the attitude you have as you start the day? What is the attitude you have as the day progresses? What is the attitude you have as some of the things get a little haywire in the course of your day? Because maintaining that positive attitude is the difference between the haves and the have-nots. We know that for a fact.

But the second word is the word “approach,” and that is so important. Physically, how do we feel? How about the smile on our face? Our energy? Our enthusiasm? The firmness of our fist bump and our elbow tap because we can’t be shaking hands today? The approach of the smile that they can’t see with the mask on, but they can see because of your eyes and your voice and your inflection? That is … the attire that you’re wearing? That is all the approach, and yet I go on LinkedIn twice a day and I’m seeing all these Real Estate people, they got the 3-day beard, the hat on backwards and a t-shirt on and they say, “I’m the best Real Estate person in history.” I don’t know who they think they’re impressing because I’m not impressed … and I talk to people all the time and say, “Are you impressed with the fact that an agent’s going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball hat on backwards?”

And they go, “No. I think it’s the gardener.” So … see, we’re being judged, we’re being evaluated, so therefore the approach we have can really win them to our side because the haves want to win them to our side … or it can also have them very quickly decide not to work with us.

But, then, the third word that Neil taught me years ago is the word “expectations.” Are you approaching every Buyer and Seller with the expectation of doing your job at the highest level? Provided the highest quality service? And getting a contract signed? Because, see, I, still, work from the crazy expectation, whether it be doing our simple little programs we do for you each week on Mike Ferry TV or I’m doing my Mornings with Mike calls every Monday morning or I’m doing one of our Think Big calls, which I do on Monday also … or I’m doing a seminar, like a Superstar Retreat, my expectation is … every person, every time, is going to do everything I suggest. Isn’t that a wild expectation? But it’s a whole lot better than having the expectation that I hope that somebody, somewhere does something that I suggest. And I have to tell you, I think my expectations are pretty good because you don’t last 45 years with negative expectations. So, I think Neil’s points of attitude, approach and expectations are vitally important.

So we still have more to talk about on the haves and have-nots. We’re going to continue this conversation for a couple more weeks, so thank you for today.

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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!