This runs in the Dear Abby column on New Year’s Day. I found it inspirational. I just read it in today’s paper.

Just for today, I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far reaching goals or try to overcome all of my problems all at once.  I know I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

Just for today, I will be happy: I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill it with sunshine.

Just for today, I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those things that I can correct and accept those I cannot.

Just for today, I will improve my mind, I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration. I will not be a mental loafer.

Just for today I will make a conscious effort to be agreeable. I will be kind and courteous to those who cross my path, and I'll not speak ill of others. I'll improve my appearance, speak softly and not interrupt when someone else is talking.

Just for today, I'll refrain from improving anybody but myself.

Just for today,  will do something positive to improve my health.  If I'm a smoker I'll quit. If I'm overweight, I'll eat healthy - if only just for today, and not only that, I'll get off the couch and take a brisk walk even if is only around the block.

Just for today, I will gather the courage to do what is right and take responsibility for my own actions.

Let's move forward and have a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2009

 

Sometimes all we see is work and we don't take the time to take care of ouselves. There's no doubt that real estate is in changing times. The most important thing for you to do for your success is to take control of your environment. I'd like to submit a few suggestions that I've picked up over the years that have done me a lot of good.    

As I mentioned...it comes down to controlling your environment. What are your goals? Do you think it makes sense to surround yourself with information, content and people that are consistent with your goals? of course it does! For example, if your goals are positive-minded and growth-oriented, yet you spend an hour a day reading negative-minded media coverage because you want to "stay informed", what effect do you think that has on your goals?

If you think it has no effect, think again. The way we spend out time and the information we feed ourselves is just as important as the way we feed our bodies. If you eat junk, you eventually get sick. Spend your time doing things and interacting with people that are like-minded and drop activities that waste your time or get you off track. At any moment during any day, you should be able to ask yourself "Is what I'm doing right now helping me reach my goals... or is it not"?

Your Car is a Powerful Tool
If you're like me, you spend quite a bit of time in the car. Many of you work differently. I understand, but I have clients follow behind me. Ilisten to cds that are educational. i listen to interviews with brokers in the Star Power network. I listen to interviews with successful real estate investors. Your car can teach you a lot, and it can be a powerful tool in keeping you on track and focused throughout the day.

Stay Educated
Realtors are replete with resources at our disposal. Realtor.org has thousands of fantastic books you can read for free. There are seminars all over the world on every subject you can imagine. And I've personally found the top real estate brokers to be, on the whole, very gracious with their time and amazingly friendly people. Talk to people. Network. If you want to learn how to grow your business in a slow market, try talking to poeple who are doing it. You will be amazed at what you can learn when you ask.

Visualize What You Want
You've heard this before, but do you do it? Do you know what kind of car you're working for? What kind of house you want to buy? What kind of Rolex you want to wear? Do you have pictures of them that you look at often? Do you think it's corny and a waste of time to feed yourself information like this on a constatnt basis...information that you find motivational and inspiring? Don't skip steps. Get pictures.

With the negative, cynical world out there on our doorstep, it's easy to think you don't really have control of your success. It's easy to believe that whatever is wrong is the market's fault. It's not the market's fault. The fact is that success has nothing to do with the market, and failure has nothing to do with the market either. Success and failure come from the integrity and ingenuity of your plan and the intensity with which you pursue your goals.

Buying your home can sometimes involve tricky timing. There are a lot of factors involved sometimes. For this reason, home buying is almost always stressful! This is where your agent earns their commission. For example, you may have found the perfect house and are thinking about making an offer, but you feel pressured to make a decision when all you want to do is go home and think about it. Perhaps your agent tells you that another buyer is expected to make an offer later that day, so you shouldn't hesitate if you really want the house. What should you do? Trust your agent! Your agent can’t tell you what to do, but it’s important to understand in a situation like this what your agent’s role is and what it is not.

It is natural to feel some pressure from even the most easy-going real estate agent--and some misgivings about actually taking that next step and making an offer. If you really like a certain house, there is always the possibility that someone else will feel the same. Whether your local market is active or slow, it is a safe assumption that another offer is likely to come in...the seller, after all, does have a professional agent working full time to procure any and all offers possible. Perhaps you can afford to wait, and “sleeping on it” is an understandable choice, but moving as quickly as possible will minimize the possibility that the house will go to another buyer. Again, your agent cannot tell you what to do in a case like this. You’re the boss. But if we’ve heard another offer is expected, we are obligated to convey this to you.

In a slow market, many buyers understandably feel they can take all the time they want to write an offer and feel justified in writing very low offers with idea that you are the only buyer this seller has to deal with. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. In a slow market that has not yet become educated and adapted pricing appropriately, many deals may close at significantly lower prices than list price. But in a market like ours today, sellers know the market is slow. If they’ve decided to sell, they know what they’re in for, and if they’re serious about selling, they price their home appropriate to the market. In other words, homes sell for what they’re worth.

A slow market in other words does not necessarily equate to a significant discount off the list price, because the list price is in all likelihood pretty close to where it should be anyway. This is where I always come back to saying “trust your agent”. Here’s the thing, if you don’t trust your agent, you need to be working with someone else anyway. If you do trust them, then take them at their word. If they say another offer is expected, it is, and if they say that if you like the home you should probably make an offer right away, you should.

According to NAR…last I read anyway, about 8% of Realtors are actively blogging. I’m confused by this number because my personal experience with Realtors is that they are creative and aggressive in finding new and effective ways to reach new clients, and blogging has been the single most effective and low cost way I’ve found in years of creating new business for my team. However, since this is a blog, and most of you reading this are Realtors, I’d wager it’s a safe bet that most of you reading are within that 8% group…so hopefully me writing about blogging is appropriate and helpful for you.

To date as I say, blogging has been a fantastic source of new business for me and my team, so I wanted to direct you to a few great articles that have been recently published that I feel offer some information that is particularly valuable to anyone running a business blog. Most of us know about blogging, for example, but we don’t all necessarily know some important specifics that we can use to really drive home impressive results. No one wants to spend the time maintaining a blog site without getting traffic and leads. Here’s a few things I have found very helpful:

1. Google wants your pictures!: from Kinetic Blogs, the blog host we use ourselves for our business blog. This is a great tip having to do with adding pictures to your site. There’s a way to do it that will help you get a lot more love from Google, and there’s a way to do it that will have no effect on traffic at all. Good info.

2. Does Having Lots of Web Pages in Google’s Index Equate to Success?: another one from Kinetic. I’m a big fan of these guys. This one was just published yesterday (as of this writing), and it offers some really succinct advice on how to get the most out of you blogging efforts. A lot of people who take their online presence seriously spend a lot of time on things that don’t really help.
 
3. 24 Things to do When Stuck for a Topic to Blog About: this one is a must read in my opinion. One of the biggest time wasters we as Realtors have when it comes to blogging is sitting down and just thinking of something to write about. Our business is real estate. We’re not necessarily writers, and we don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time doing this. We want to get content up and interact with clients. This article is something to print out and keep next to your computer, so you can always have a supply of great article ideas.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share. Again, I’ve found blogging to be a godsend for our business, but it’s always good to streamline and make the most use of your time. Anything that will help you get better results in less time is welcome as far as I can tell! I hope these articles help a bit, and I’d love to hear what you think!

 For your reading list…I got this info from our friends at Realtor.com!

Here are the latest top selling books in business and investing from Amazon.com:

1. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, By Timothy Ferriss

2. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, By David Allen

3. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, By Jim Collins

4. The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition

5. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths, By Tom Rath

6. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

7. The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life, By John Assaraf and Murray Smith

8. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, By Dan Ariely

9. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, By Malcolm Gladwell

10. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Personal props to The Tipping Point. It’s a must read for any Realtor in my opinion. Especially a rainmaker.

 
The Devil’s in the details…

Everyone’s heard of the Law of Accumulation, right? It says that the little things add up over time to produce big results. In other words, the little things matter. Tiny decisions that you make every day actually matter. It's like a snowball rolling down a mountain. It starts very small but eventually builds momentum to the point that it is unstoppable. After you have that momentum going, it’s difficult to change course.

Get Educated...
Knowledge is paramount. No one becomes an expert all at once. This is a prime example of the law of accumulation. Education and expertise gets build brick by brick. Small, daily steps you take toward increasing your knowledge make you a more powerful force in your marketplace…daily. It’s imperceptible at the start…but remember the snowball…after a few years of this you can become unstoppable.
 
In this world of instant gratification, this is a hard sell. But it’s how it’s done. Bottom line, we all know there are no short cuts. The more you know, the more you can grow.


Saving money is another great example of this law. A large fortune starts small, with imperceptible amounts being added, and added, and added…and added. Most millionaires in the US are first generation rich. Did you know that? Trust fund kids, rock stars and lottery winners are the ones we all hear about, but they are by leaps and bounds the extreme rarities of financial success. The vast majority of rich people built their fortunes over the course of one lifetime by using the Law of Accumulation. Save money no matter what. Every time you get paid, pay your savings account before anything else. Perhaps this will, at first, require you to cut some of your expenses. So be it. Read The Richest Man in Babylon.

Get Into Sales...
The third area where the law of accumulation applies is in the area of experience. You'll find when you examine your life critically that everyone is in sales. Perhaps this is a pretty easy point to get across. We’re all sons or daughters, we’re all professionals, we’re all lovers, actors…and we’re all salespeople. We sell ourselves…or FAIL to sell ourselves at our job, to our family and to our friends. Sales is a fact of life. Addressing this phenomenon head on is advisable and will most definitely get you fantastic results. If you apply what you learn over time and become an expert in sales, you will get better results at all your work. Who wouldn’t want that? When I say to get educated, please include sales as part of your education.

It all adds up…
Over time, the decisions we make add up. They bring us to where we are. What we do with our time creates ripples that last our entire lives. The more time you spend watching TV or otherwise killing hours is not entirely useless, but consider it’s impact before you indulge. Just like junk food…there’s nothing wrong with eating a candy bar. But if you eat another one tomorrow, and another one the day after, the effects add up over time to make you an out-of-shape fool. It’s easy to make bad decisions one at a time, but as soon as you start thinking “what effect will this have if I continue to do this each day for the next 5 years?” you can easily start to make better decisions. Small, good decisions over time are what make you rich. There’s no magic to it at all.

Close More Deals by Listening More and Talking Less

Getting the listing is dependent on many factors of course, but this short piece is about the value of listening. I don't imagine this will be a hard sell to anyone reading this. We all know it's important, but do we do it? One of the most dramatic and helpful things you can sometimes (and it's one of my personal favorites) is to simply shut up. A brief pause in communication gives breathing room and get yield very good results.

Shutting your mouth for a bit and letting the conversation breath has many good benefits.

Shut up!
First, you don't want to interrupt your client, and talking constantly kind of puts you in this position by default. Also, fear of silence communicates insecurity; and it often is a fair assessment. We fill up the dead space because we're really not sure where the appointment is headed, so we talk and talk and talk...to make sure we get our points across. A well-rehearsed presentation makes good, effective use of words and leaves plenty of room for the client to talk.

Second, giving your client plenty of time to talk and listening to them carefully communicates that you actually care about what they're saying. If there's anything that a potential client wants it's to be cared for and understood. This takes time.

Additionally, pausing and letting the conversation "breathe" as I call it communicates confidence, AND you will actually be able to better understand your clients needs. Many listings expire and withdraw for the simple reason that they started off poorly to begin with. If expectations are better addressed up front, it makes for a smoother and more beneficial listing experience. Misunderstandings yield resentments down the road. Selling a home is stressful enough, and the client deserves your absolute attention up front and for the entire duration of the listing.

Be inquisitive
My favorite question is "How do you mean?" Real estate coach Howard Brinton has a technique he calls "going three deep". It's invaluable. When a buyer says they want a basement, don't ever just take this piece of information at face value? Follow up with "How do you mean?" "Is your main goal to have the extra storage space, or is it something else?" "If a home otherwise meets everything you need but it doesn't have a basement, do you want me to not bother you with it?" These questions add invaluable information, give you a deep understanding of what your client wants and most importantly...they can really reveal their deepest motivations for why they want to or have to move. Get on board with "going three deep". It makes your client feel like you really care, and it gives you the information you need to really give them impressive service.

During a recent "Business Technology & Information Systems Forum" speakers like Errol Samuelson, President of REALTOR.com were talking about consumers using their home computers less and less. The idea is that everyone is using portable devices more and more to the point that Realtors ought to start considering making their sites mobile compliant. The report is that most consumers are starting to use their mobile device as their primary source of data. Not a pc.

Other speakers included J. Lennox Scott, Chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate in Seattle, WA, and Keith Garner of NAR's Center for Real Estate Technology, who presented a detailed review of mobile technology (WiMax, Mesh networks), including accessibility and speed.

I am somewhat familiar with WiMax already. It looks like a technology that is going to be widespread over the next few years. It's already releasing in DC and one other city I believe this summer. It's basically omnipresent high speed data access for an entire geographic area. It turns an entire city into a "hotspot" in other words. Very cool.

Please tell me what you think...are you using a mobile device as your primary access to the internet? Do you suggest Realtors make any changes to their sites as a result?