I had the opportunity to speak at Agent Reboot in New York City on the topic of “Stop being an employee and start running a business.” You can watch the video of this presentation below. It was a lot of fun and the crowd was beaming with energy.
Many of the points I made were said with the goal of getting agents to stop focusing so much on the market, which they can’t control, and instead to focus their energy on themselves, which they can control.
In short, I covered why most people’s goals don’t ever work, why we actually need negativity in our lives, and how you are better off going to work stoned than to multitask on the job (you will have to watch the video …), among other things.
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Since this event, I have received many emails, Facebook messages and tweets from people asking me why they seem to do everything right and try their best, and yet they still can’t seem to get over the hump or do the things that they know they should do every day, on a consistent basis.
While there are many possible answers to this question, I am going to focus on what I believe the two main reasons are.
I am warning you up front that I am going to get a little psychological on you, and for the purposes of the above question I pretty much have to.
The first reason you can seem to do everything you are supposed to, and want something so bad, and yet still find yourself not getting the results that you want, or not always doing what you know you should do, is “inner conflict.”
photo by Robert Couse-Baker
Inner conflict means that internally you want something different. For example, if you want to be in a great relationship, but you don’t want to be committed to anyone or anything, that is an inner conflict.
How about a real estate example: What I hear from too many people is that they want to be the No. 1 Realtor in their area. This sounds great, but if you want to be No. 1 and you also want to spend a lot of time with yourself, spouse, kids, friends or family — it represents an inner conflict.
You want something but you don’t want to have to sacrifice on the level that it takes to get it. I like to say that everyone wants a best-seller but nobody wants to write the book.
Everyone has inner conflict on some level. What is yours?
The second reason that you can seem to do everything you are supposed to — and yet still find yourself not getting what you want, or doing what you know you should do — can be explained by “neuro associations.” It sounds like a fancy phrase, I know, but all it really means is that we make daily decisions to do stuff or not do stuff based on what we associate with those actions.
In other words, we associate pain or pleasure with just about everything in this world, and whichever we associate will determine whether we do something or not. For example, one person might associate going to the gym with pleasure because they associate having more energy or running into friends while working out, while another person might associate the gym with pain and feeling like they don’t measure up to the others at the gym. The result is that one gets up and works out while the other stays away.
What does this mean to you from a real estate perspective? When you think of prospecting, do you associate it with potentially gaining new clients and growing your business (pleasure) or the odds that you are going to hear people tell you “no” and reject you (pain)?
I mentioned during my presentation that it takes 41 real estate-related conversations to create one transaction. That sounds great, but the real question is, “Do you associate creating new conversations with the possibility of gaining new business and creating new, fulfilling relationships (pleasure), or is it the same old small talk with people whom you really don’t care about (pain)?”
Your answer to these questions and others will tell you once and for all why you don’t do the things that you know you should do.If you want to change this it is as simple as creating new associations with the things that you know you should do.
