My career path has been a very twisty one, with many turns and detours along the way that has taken me through many roles and industries. One of the things that I have notice about Real Estate that differs from many other professions is the seemingly endless number of coaches, gurus and motivational speaker events that focus on our industry.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit, I am not a big fan of real estate coaches and motivational events. I am not saying they are not helpful to some agents, but for me, my greatest motivation and accountability comes from within. In fact, for some agents, I have seen them come back from an event, newly invigorated and ready to revitalize their business. This week, though, I witnessed something different.
An agent who is a friend of mine attended an event where several top producing agents spoke. This agent went looking for insight and ideas and instead came back with excuses. I would not have predicted that this was a possible outcome, but there it was.
“I will never be successful in this business because in order to be successful you have to have an assistant and I cannot afford to hire one.”
“I can’t possibly be successful because the amount that I would need to spend on marketing to compete with top producing agents would be cost prohibitive.”
I sat and talked with this agent for what seemed to be an hour and I was getting nowhere. Hearing the stories of top producing agents had completely unmotivated what had been a productive agent before going to the event which was supposed to help him.
I explained that there were ways to work around budgetary constraints and that even the agents who were top producers did not always have a full time assistant or team of agents working with them… they had to build up to that over time. I think by the time we were done talking he was STARTING to snap out of his real estate driven funk and depression. We are working on a new business plan for him though… one that targets revised goals and objectives to help him become the top producer he aspires to be…. but until he’s closer to that goal, no more motivational events, we’ll focus on accountability!
Has this ever happened to you?
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