And welcome to Mike Ferry TV … the week of February 17th. Last week, I said to you to start our short little presentation that I asked Cydney and Ron from our staff to give me some thoughts or some topics that they felt were important at this time for all of us in Real Estate. One of the topics was … and I think we talked about it last week … getting the most out of each 90-day cycle, but then they said to me, “If we’re going to talk about the 90-day cycle, you have to talk about the rewards, which is the money that we earn.”

You know … it’s a strange topic when you talk about money … and I’ve been talking about money in seminars virtually all my 45-year career …. I mean, virtually for 45 years, I commonly will say to an audience, “There’s three things we want to do while we’re together … learn some new sales techniques, which are important … or at least refresh the techniques you have. Second is have a lot of fun in the process of our time together … and third is to think about the amount of money you can earn if you do the things we talk about.”

Of course, when I get to that third topic about money … a lot of people squirm … a lot of people get nervous. Now, you’ve seen me in seminars … or you’ve seen me work and I’ll commonly say to an audience, “How many people here want to make more money?” and all the hands go up and there’s a lot of laughter and we have a lot of fun with that … but I always talk about the fact that many, many years ago, down in the south … in the state of Alabama … which is a great place and a great part of this country … I’m doing a seminar … and we had this theater, which is kind of a theater you would go see a play or a singer or actor or actress … so the people were kind of up and around me and there were 500 or 600 people and I made a statement that day to the audience … and I said that … I want you to think about money. Money is the reward you get for the service you offer other people.

Now, it’s not a complicated thought … the money you and I receive is nothing more than the reward for the work we do. So, if you have a salary job, working in a company, and you’re getting paid $1,000 a week, it’s a reward for what you are doing for the employer or for the employer’s company … or for the customers of that company.

If you’re in Real Estate, which you are … then the money you receive is the reward for the service you extend to Buyers and Sellers. So, if you think about it that way … the higher the quality of the service you extend, the more money you get in return.

Why do so many of the Mike Ferry trained clients make so much money? Because the quality of the service they offer is so high.

So, here I am with 500 … 600 great people in Alabama and I said in the first part of the seminar, “We have to think about the fact that we have an opportunity … each of us do … to make substantial money.” Now, I understand a lot of you may not want to make a lot of money, but I also understand that the quality of your life sometimes depends upon the earnings you have. So, let’s get real clear that most of us would like to improve the quality of our life, which takes … in most cases … money. Now, I’m not talking about psychological and spiritual and the love of your family … I’m talking about providing for your family and for yourself those things … those objectives … that you want to accomplish. It takes money to make those happen.

So, here I am talking to this wonderful group of people and I said, “Remember … money is the reward for the service you offer. The higher the quality of the service, the more you get paid.” A lady put up her hand. I said, “Yes, ma’am, what is it?”

And she said in that beautiful Southern drawl, which is such a beautiful language pattern … she said, “I want you to know I did not go into Real Estate to make a lot of money.”

I smiled and said, “Fine. May I ask why you are in Real Estate?

In front of all the people, she said something which I’ve repeated a thousand times … she goes, “I’m in Real Estate because I love people.”

Now, think about that … “I’m in Real Estate because I love people.” I said, “You know, that’s really kind of a sick thought. Most of us are in Real Estate to make money.”

She, of course, did not like my response … but I wasn’t real happy with her trying to dampen my thoughts on helping the audience make more money. And then she said something that we’ve all heard before … she goes, “You have to understand that money is the root of all evil.”

I said, “Where did you hear that?”

She went back to the Bible … “The Bible said the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Ahh … the love of money is the root of all evil. The root of all evil in, really, society, is the fact that most people don’t have enough money and therefore they do things that are not proper, not ethical … sometimes illegal to gain money for themselves.

I mean … I use this example … when’s the last time you saw a person drive a new Rolls Royce down the street … stop and mug a lady for $6? It isn’t going to happen … because they already have money. But then I always joke and say, “But you take a Real Estate person that hasn’t closed a deal in 6 months … hold onto your wallet and your purse.”

I want to address this issue about money. First of all, you have to understand that the majority of all people have hang ups about money … and it’s normal … it’s okay. However, it doesn’t have to remain a hang up regarding money.

Now, where do we get our attitudes about money? Well, from our home life … where we grew up … our parents … from the people we spend our time with … our peers. We get it from our educational system … if the people that have been educating us do not speak highly of earning money, we don’t get programmed to earn money. Often our religious training. Raised in the Catholic Church … I remember talking to a Priest one day and he said, “We have to give all our money to the poor.”

I said, “The best way to help the poor is don’t join them.” Because, see, the truth is … I work too hard. I’m going to give money to the poor … I’m going to give money to charities … I’m going to give money to a lot of people … but I’m also working to provide for myself and my family … to improve the quality of their lives.

So, we really have to think about what our hang ups are regarding money … and as we get older and we have not earned substantial money, those hang ups become a lot deeper and more ingrained in our system.

What I want you to say to yourself is this … “I deserve a good income. I deserve the commission checks that I’m receiving. I have the skillset to earn a lot of money.” Now, what you do with it is up to you … but it’s interesting because … as I said a minute ago … the majority of all people have pretty defined hang ups in relationship to money … and it comes from our background … it comes from our present-day environment … and if you can understand that your background is behind you … BACK … B-A-C-K … it’s not in front of you … it’s not your foreground, it’s your background … and if you understand that the environment you live in is a reflection of the money that you earn.

Earl Nightingale used to say all the time, “If you want to clean the neighborhood, sweep your own doorstep first.” Don’t worry about the neighbors. Well, if you want to make more money … don’t worry about what other people are thinking or doing. Ethically, learn how to do your job at a higher level. Give better service to the people … Buyers and Sellers you’re working with … and the quality of the service will then, in return, bring you the income that you want.

It’s a hard topic to discuss … it’s a hard message to get across. It’s hard to get us to change our thinking about money, but at the same time … Zig Ziglar said, “Money is the only color I know that goes with everything I wear.” So, we think about the fact that you can improve not only the quality of your personal life, the quality of your family’s life, the quality of the service that you’re giving Buyers and Sellers … and of course, the quality of the lifestyle you choose to have … and what you can do within the community that you live in as you earn more money.

If you’re upset and you have hang ups, start thinking about what you’re going to do about this money hang ups and upsets. You deserve it if you’re doing your job the way you should. Think about money as being a positive … think about money as being something that you can do something good with for yourself and your family … and let’s go earn more money starting this week.

See you next 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!