Welcome back to another edition of Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, coach and speaker for the Mike Ferry organization, and always happy to spend time with anybody that’ll look at us at Mike Ferry TV. So here we are. I’m guessing, and I’m assuming that you have some pretty lofty ideas about increasing your production and your profit. Okay. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re always coming from that mindset of you increasing your production, increasing your profit, making more money, doing more deals. So, if you are and as we come into 2025, we dig into this stuff in a big way. And I’m sure if you’ve got a business plan created, I hope you have. If you’ve taken time to look at the recap of the previous year, I hope you have. It generally will bring to the surface some changes in behavior that need to take place for you to do more deals, right? The whole purpose of discovery to do the recap to look back on the previous year to, you know, make a business plan. All those things is to probably bring to the surface the changes in behavior that you need to make in order to do more deals. Let me remind you, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over and over again but expect a different result. Okay, so if you want to change behavior, oftentimes it’s a little more challenging than we would think it is, right? I wrote down some points today that we are going to consider about what it means to change behavior.

First and foremost, have you come to some decisions on the behavior changes you need to make? Do you need to start going to bed earlier? Do you need to start getting to work earlier? Do you need to just work more? Do you need to create a stronger prospecting routine? Are there skills that you need to learn? Do you need to add new sources of business into your business? Mindset. Changes in behavior, doing things different. Okay. I hope you’ve gotten clear on some behavior changes. I actually believe that changing behavior is more of a skill problem than it even is a mindset problem. I think it’s understanding their skills required to change behavior. So, let’s look at some of these skills and see if they resonate with you as we as we move forward. The first thing I wrote down, the skill of understanding and taking time to break old, unproductive habits. Okay. Habits are what change behaviors. We have habits and there’s a skill involved of taking the time to break habits. What is that single biggest habit that you know you need to break? Do you need to stop drinking ten cups of coffee in the morning? Do you need to create a habit where you go to bed on time? You’re maybe a little more prepared for the day for tomorrow.

Do you need to create the habit of prospecting? Okay, it takes time. You know how often we will see an agent that gets clear on the behavior change. They get clear on the approach, and then they simply stop right before the behavior change takes place. It takes time. Now, we’ve heard these old adage, you know, 21 days to break a habit, something like that. Okay. I’m not always convinced that that’s true. It takes as long as it takes. If there’s a habit that needs to be broken, changed, then we effectively change it. I would ask you to write down what is that one habit that I’m absolutely committed to changing right now? Have you put the time and place to do it? Are you committed enough to take as long as it needs? Look at the second skill. The skill of overcoming the fear of the unknown. You know, a lot of people will face a change in behavior. They get clear that they need to change behavior. And then the whole what if starts to take place. Well, what if I do start coming to the office early and I’m not I don’t have any numbers to call. What if I do start prospecting heavily and I don’t get the results right? What if I make the people in my area mad at me? What if I call somebody and wake them up in the morning and they get angry if I’m prospecting? What if, what if, what if, what if now, if Mike Ferry was with you today, he’d say, why not? Right? Instead of say, you know, why won’t this work? What if it doesn’t work? What if it does? Okay, are you one of those people that generally starts having all the what ifs get in the way when you want to change a behavior? How about putting your head down and just charging forward.

All right. Look at three the skill. This is probably the hardest one of all right here. Number three the skill of not being concerned what other people say and what other people think when you start changing a behavior. All right. We know you work in the real estate industry. There’s a lot of other real estate agents around. You’ve got friends and family, and you set out to change a behavior and naturally, the people around. What are you doing that for, Tony? Why? Why are you starting that prospecting stuff? Why are you trying to get in the office so early? What are you trying to do, big shot? Are you trying to change the world? It’s very natural for the naysayers to step in. Are you concerned about what they think? Okay. In our world, we’ve always asked you to not compare yourself to others but compete against the plan you set for yourself. I would also ask you maybe to even come up with an objection handler, right? You know you’re going to get some resistance.

You know, you’re going to have some people try to challenge you when you’re trying to change, hey, why are you going to the office so early? I’ve made a firm decision to change the production and the profit for income for myself and my family, and that change requires that I get to the office early. Are you okay with it? If you come up with an objection handler and one of your friends or family tries to stump you, handle the objection. Do not be concerned to what they say or what they think. How about this skill? Number four for the skill of developing blind faith. Okay. It’s oftentimes if we’re going to change a behavior, we’re going to set out to do something that we haven’t done before. There’s a little bit of the unknown blind faith. Okay. I’m so glad that some people in our history have had blind faith. If Christopher Columbus didn’t believe he could get to America, we probably wouldn’t be here. Okay. So blind faith. But the truth in MFO is it’s not really blind faith anymore. We’ve been tracking numbers. We’ve been tracking results. We’ve been tracking behavior changes in agents for almost 50 years. And we have proof that when agents change certain behaviors, their results go up. We have proof that if you learn a new skill and you know what to say, your income increases.

We have proof that if you have a really tight morning routine and you get all of your prospecting done early in the day, it’s better than waiting till later in the day. We have proof. If you work multiple sources of business, that you can. You can work all those sources and add them all together for more production. We have so much proof. A question I would ask you is where in your quest to change behaviors are you afraid of the unknown? Okay. What is fear? Fear. Fantasized experiences appearing real. That’s all it is. Most of what we’re afraid of never happens to us. Look at this skill. The skill of developing patience. I mentioned it a few minutes ago. If you’re going to change a behavior, you have to immediately accept that there’s a certain amount of patience required. It probably takes longer than you want. We want everything fast, don’t we? We want to lose 10 pounds. We’d like to lose five of them by tonight. Right. So where do you need to exercise? A little more patience in your quest to change a behavior? You know, it’s also. It’s so interesting to see people progressing. They’re almost there. They’re getting to work on time. They’re starting their prospecting. They’re making their contacts. There’s forward progress. And then all of a sudden, they stop cold. They just didn’t quite do it long enough.

Okay. Patience. Right. How about number six? The skill of controlling your emotions. Okay. The big topic these days is trigger. What triggers you? But when you’re trying to change a behavior on either the positive or the negative side, what sets you off? Do you get frustrated with the lack of results too quick? Do you get too happy and too excited with just a little bit of results? You know you’re changing a behavior of generating more listing opportunities. You go take a great listing and then you stop the behaviors. You get all excited about the one listing you got. Where are your emotions getting in the way of changing a behavior? Do you get frustrated or mad if one bad thing goes wrong and then you just quit the whole thing. You’ve got to learn to control your emotions. Seven. The skill of asking for help. Okay. Um, it’s very common when we want to change a behavior. And if it’s a tough behavior that we need some help, we need some accountability. We need some guidance. We need some answers. We definitely need some support. We at Mike Ferry are good at it. Okay. If you’ll ask your coach if you have one, if you’ll ask us for help, we have the answers. If you’ll ask your broker or manager, if you’ll ask your spouse, your significant other, your kids. If you’ll ask your friends, other real estate agents for help.

People are happy to help. But if we’re too proud, if our ego is too big and we won’t ask for help at all, that might be the reason we’re not able to change the behavior. And then the last one I wrote down today, if you want to change a behavior, is the skill of either creating or accepting the accountability required. Let’s face it, if you want to change a behavior, it requires accountability, right? It requires someone to hold you to it. It requires your ability to be counted on, to be really strong. And so are you willing to set up the accountability that’s necessary if you need to report to somebody when you start the day and report again when you finish the day, so be it. If you need to put a little wager on the line, if you don’t make all of your contacts, so be it. If you need to send a selfie that you got to the office on time every morning to somebody you respect, so be it. Where do you need to be held more accountable? Okay, so it’s pretty simple. Decide the 2 or 3 behaviors you need to change. Look at these 8 or 9 rules and skills of changing behaviors. See where the hangups are and fix it. Okay, you and I both know on the other side of behavior change is more income and more profit. Go after it, would you? Thanks.