Lenn - sweet leapin Jeezus - I misspelled Lenn's name. My most abject apologies. I hate when that happens - especially when quoting somebody who is a guidepost for me. Sorry.

Mirela - thanks for all. By the way, I love your Mirela's of the world on Facebook. That's pretty cool. And is it just my imagination or are they all pretty fine looking? Could be thesis material there for some enterprising lout.

Bryant - Didn't need to see that. Oh well - I suppose it's preferable to au natural, eh?

Steve - I hear ya. Just try calling some of these agents on a weekend or something and see how many days it takes to get a response. No wonder no business. Go to work ya schmendrakes.

Mirela - that reminds me of another saying whoich I barely remember from a guy who used to call himself the 'King of the Cold Calls'. Don't remember his name but the drift of it was - don't worry about helping yourself or making yourself first all the time. If you focus outward on helping others you'll come out ahead of the pack every time plus a dfamn nice living will rub off on you in the meantime. Too many people worried about #1 and not taking care of biz.

Roger - sometimes just showing up is all it takes since nobody else even bothers.

Kelly - Hey I'm from Colorado originally and 'fixin to' isn't a bad thing because everything requires a little prep work. Sounds like you get past the 'fixin to' part to the 'doin' part OK.

Teri - you see them everyday. Mistaking busy work for real work and then they can't figure out why nothing's coming their way. It's kind of sad actually but this truly isn't everybody's cup of tea.

I was fixin to answer a bunch of ya back but it's too late. I'll do it in the morning. Naw, it's Sunday, you'll all be doing something else - maybe in the afternoon, unless it's sunny tomorrow, then I'll be outside doing a Bar B Q. Probably Monday then, except I've got a meeting in the morning. Well, I'll get back to you all soon. Thanks for stopping by. I first heard Zig probably 25 or 30 years ago - still got some of those old books and tapes and he's as relevant today as he was then - if not more-so.

First off - I grew up in Southern Colorado and now live in Southern California. That's as much Southern as I've got in me.  Though I speak relatively unaccented English, I can slip into some version of the old south pretty easily. I remember reading a book back about 30+ years ago about the myth of the slow Southerner. Easterners, and especially New Yorkers, tend to take you much less seriously if you speak with a Southern Accent. So while they're busy chuckling about how dumb you are, you can outflank them and hand them their head while they're still laughing. It does work.

Krisit - another old favorite saying - maybe Zig too, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Shirley - you can't read or hear a Zig story without picking up some accent just by osmosis. Talking about gettin cooked in the squat just doesn't have the same affect when spoken in a high-falutin English accent.

Christianne - while our statewide agent count has dropped about 15%, locally we are addding more than we drop. We do a new Realtor orientation every 2 months and we consistently have 150 - 200 new mouth breathers in attendance. We budgeted for a 15% drop last year and ended up maintaining our count. We budgeted for another 15% drop this year and are already running ahead of that. Of course our region also posted record sales last year. Our prices are off 50+% but our sales were 3 times what they were in 2007 and higher than any of the previous 5 years.

Bruce & Mary - always gotta take a little time for yourselves. If you don't relax and recharge the batteries every so often you can't keep up the pace or the focus. Reminds me of the old woodcutter story - but I'll save that for another time.

JB - multi-tasking is vital. We've all seen the agent who gets ONE place in escrow and life grinds to a halt until that one closes - no prospecting , no letters, no nothing. The it closes and they have to start all over again on the next one. Keep a couple balls in the air at all times. The more the merrier.

Kelly - keep it up. Once it starts to fall into place you'll be busier than a one armed paper hanger.

Dale - thanks for the clarification. From your photo you don't look like what I'd expect from New Hampshire or Vermont - but there's a little of the South in all of us I think. It's a good thing.

Dee - you got it. Some days he's the nicest guy oin the world - other days he's a cranky ole SOB. Gotta love him though.

Tim - those biys are some of the hardest workers around and they're still at the mercy of nature. They can work 20 hours a day and if the weather don't cooperate it's all for naught. At least if we work 20 hours a day we can expect some decent results - hopefully.

J. I dpon't know who said that but he was right on the money.

Good luck. There may be more effective ways to prospect than cold calling but if you just keep putting one foot in front of the next - it works. It's just a numbers game. A friend of mine was building his business years ago and was a Mike Ferry fanatic so cold calling was a major part of his day. He figured out how much he wanted to make, how many deals it took to make it, how many appointments to get a deal and how many calls to get an appointment. Thereafter, every call became worth XX amount of money and every NO brought him closer to the money call so he could face rejection with a smile on his face (and in his voice) because he had the numerology down cold. He eventually drove off the Long Beach pier but... No that's not true. Today he owns his own ERA brokerage and has been very successful for years. charicuela