packet. This is your procrastination-elimination-solution.” My what? Okay . . . Rick thought. “Do you remember when your teacher made you write something on the chalkboard over and over when you misbehaved? My teacher made me write phrases like, ‘I will not pull Cindy’s hair’ and ‘I will not chew on my pencil in class’. She made me write those things so that it would be instilled in my mind to do the right thing. I want these wrist bands to instill a sense of urgency in you. If your buyers aren’t buying and your sellers aren’t motivated to sell, perhaps it is YOUR sense of urgency that is lacking, not theirs.”
Rick thought about that for a moment. MY sense of urgency? For all this noise and hype, Jay had cut right to the chase. Rick felt oddly alert in response.
“To conquer procrastination, this band will remind you to DO IT NOW!” Jay continued. “Tap your band right now and say to yourself, ‘Do it now.’”
Everyone tapped his or her band and shouted, “DO IT NOW!” Rick repeated the line along with everyone else. Another thunderous clap followed.
“Again!” Jay implored.
Rick tapped the band on his wrist. “DO IT NOW!” the crowd shouted and then clapped. They did it five more times with each shout and clap getting louder.2
“Affirmations—what a great way to start!” Jay continued. “Please have a seat. Thank you.” The crowd settled in.
“A wise man once said, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’ What’s interesting about the philosophy of the Seven Levels is that the first thing you look at is the end. . . your end. It sounds horrible, but we are all mortals and will someday face our end. We need to make sure our lives AND our businesses are aligned with the legacy we want to leave. To draw a line from point A to point B, we need to know where point B is and what it looks like. Consider these questions: If there were only twelve words written on your tombstone, what would you want them to be? Who would you want at your funeral? What would you want them to say about you?”
Rick shuddered. Who would come to my funeral if I died today? The thought was a terrible one. Rick didn’t want to pursue it further but he couldn’t resist. Did this really have anything to do with his business?
“What you want said about you at your funeral has everything to do with how you do business today,” Jay declared, as if in answer to Rick’s question. “Your business should be a vehicle for helping you live and leave a legacy. Your business should help you fulfill your purpose. The most important conversation you ever have is the one with yourself. Your affirmations are statements of who you are and who you will be. They shape the kind of business you will run and in turn the type of life you will lead.” As Rick pondered this, Jay began telling a story about cold calling, spamming and door-knocking which was getting a lot of chuckles. Rick had never thought of his business as much more than a way to make a living, much less a “legacy.” The thought of his funeral continued to bother him.
“Like most of you, my brokers told me the only way I could succeed in this business was to be a spammer, a solicitor or a criminal!” Jay declared to roars of laughter. “I knew I had to find a better way.”
Well, if you did, I’d love to hear it, Rick thought sarcastically.
“Then I thought about who I had really sold to in the last six months: my mother’s cousin, my college roommate’s brother and another friend of a friend,” Jay continued.
So?
“And the difference hit me: the people I had sold to trusted me. They used me because we had a relationship. I realized that it was my relationships, not my marketing budget that was going to create my future.”
Rick considered his point. Josh had used him because of a mutual friend.
“I stopped chasing leads. I decided not to spend another dime on advertising. I decided to be like a lighthouse that attracts, guides, and directs instead of running all over the place pursuing clients. Guess what happened?”
You burnt out, Rick chuckled to himself.
“I doubled my business. . . every year . . . for four straight years!” The crowd cheered.
Sure, if I had a ton of friends and relatives all over the place, I could make a killing selling to all them too.
Jay went on, “When is a lighthouse most necessary? When there is a storm. We look for a lighthouse when we need guidance and direction, and especially during a storm.”
I see where this is going. He’s trying to say his system will make you shine in “economic” storms. . .
“Look, the press loves the high winds and rough seas. It’s nothing personal, but nobody rushes to buy a magazine or watch a special report on how safe and wonderful everything is. Fear is a powerful motivator and fear sells ads!”
Rick had never really thought of it that way. True, times were tough. But how much of his perception was shaped by the media? He would have to consider that.
“Listen to that quiet voice inside: you know what those news reports are saying doesn’t affect you!”
It doesn’t?
“Look, you can’t control the national or global economy, but you have total control over your personal economy and your attitude. You can lose your car, your job, your home . . . all your stuff. It could happen. But what do you have that no one can take away?”
What do I have?
“Your knowledge, your relationships, your family, your love for others, your health, your faith and your happiness. Those are yours. They don’t depend on economic conditions. They don’t depend on the market. They depend on you.”
Rick thought about that.
“I started to do the math of what a business based on referrals, introductions and connections could look like. I know you were told there would be no math” – the crowd laughed—“but this may be the most important math you’ve ever seen. Let’s say you have 150 people in your database. Raise your hand if you have at least 150 people in your database.”
Rick raised his hand and looked around the room. Nearly every person had his hand up. “Now, every business has a turnover rate. For example, the National Association of REALTORS® estimates that the average person moves one out of every five years. So that means one-fifth or twenty percent of your database—thirty people—moves each year.
“If you did thirty transactions last year, you would be in the top ten percent of all real estate agents nationwide,” Jay continued. “And when you think about it, if those people sold and then bought, that’s sixty transactions a year from a database of only 150 people.” The crowd murmured. Rick hadn’t thought about his database in months. He had started it in some software program and then started collecting business cards and keeping them in a shoebox. I doubt I can get sixty transactions out of that box.
“But where it really gets interesting,” Jay went on, “is with the folks that the people in your database know. The average wedding has about 250 people invited, but we’ll say that everyone you know is connected to 150 other people. So 150 times 150 is 22,500 and that is your Community. If you’re a real estate professional and twenty percent of your Community is moving, then 4500 people in your Community are moving.
