Habits what you should know.....

 

 

 

I felt a need to share this great explanation of the most recent book we have read...Stacey and I both love to read inspirational and motivational books.  Today I woke to read her unbelievable review of this wonderful book for all professionals.  I highly recommend you practice the Power of Habits in your real estate business and your Appreciation Marketing Campaigns and win the day, month, year, and a Life that Matters....  ~  Jay

 

Your appearance, income, weight, social status, friendships, and career are all a combined result of one thing, your habits.  Your habits can make you or break you and for most of us they do a little bit of both.  In Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit – Why We do What We Do In Life and Business, he explains how habits are created, why they are sometimes broken, and how savvy businesses are capitalizing on habits to boost profits.  For example, mega-store, Target knows that if a woman happens to make an uncharacteristic purchase of vitamins and lotion in a given purchase, there is a very high likelihood that this buyer is expecting a baby.  Not only that, based on other such purchases, Target can predict the due date of the new arrival.  By capitalizing on this information, Target then drips baby related coupons into the mix of customized shopping coupons members get each month.  Target knows that major life changes, like having a baby, is the perfect time to pounce upon a buyer’s newly forming habits.   Now that you know how Target uses the power of habits to boost profits, how can you do the same?

I’m going to speak from my own experience because I never realized, until I read this book, that the successes in my life were all driven by habits.  I had created powerful habits, using the concepts from Duhigg’s book, long before I ever read it.  Now that I know how I did it, I can replicate the process to achieve my greatest ambitions faster and more efficiently, and so can you.

There are a lot of things in my life that I could improve upon, but if there are two small things I’ve become excellent at they are (1) Recruiting, and (2) Going to the gym.  My customers are the real estate agents that work for my firm, and as such, I’m always trolling the waters trying to find additional good agents to bring on board.  To this end, I make ten recruiting calls a day, five days a week, and I am pretty religious about it.  I have a system in place so I know who I’m calling, what makes that person tick, and I know the last time I called that person.  I am consistent with my ten calls a day, it’s just part of my routine.  I had never realized how unusual my recruiting success was until 2009 when I was contacted by one organization after another, both real estate and non-real estate firms, asking me to come and share my “secrets” on recruiting and consistent business growth.

I don’t like cold-calling.  I don’t even like prospecting for that one hour a day to make my calls.  It is quite often one hour steeped in rejection.  People I have met around the world always say, “You are so lucky that you love to recruit.”  I don’t necessarily love the process, but I do love something else that is totally unrelated to recruiting agents. Shoes.  Yes, I love to buy shoes.  My closet would be bursting at the seems with my shoe collection if it weren’t for my two crazy dogs, Lincoln (a Yellow Lab) and Kennedy (a Black Lab) who weed out my collection when I make a mistake like leaving a shoe on the floor, which they always seem to mistake for a dog chewy.  Anyway, the deal I have made with myself for the past few years is this, when I make my fifty recruiting calls a week, I get to buy a pair of shoes for myself.  I never cheat because it would only be cheating me.  There are certainly weeks that I make thirty or forty calls instead of fifty, and I chalk those weeks up as a loss, and purchase no shoes.  I do not allow myself the luxury of new shoes unless I meet my recruiting goals.  This is the “cue-routine-reward” cycle that Duhigg references in his book.  I created a habit that has allowed me the opportunity to grow an amazing firm now with 300 agents.  It wasn’t because I loved making cold calls.  It was, is, and probably always will be my love of shoes that motivated me.

According to The Power of You, when you establish good habits, those habits trickle into other areas of your life.  For example, statistically, people who go to the gym three times a week are more likely to eat healthier and are more likely to have positive, healthy, relationships with others. Statistically, those who write down their food intake three times a week, are more likely to lose weight than dieters who do not.  Habits trickle through your life, your business, and your relationships.  My recruiting habits have trickled down into other parts of my company, and understanding this concept is key.  What we can learn is that to make major changes in our businesses and lives we need not establish fifty new habits overnight.  In fact, we may only need to change one habit and the positive effects of that one change can have major impact in all areas of life.

Going to the gym is a pretty serious habit for me as well.  Six days a week, I have a habit of completing a 3 mile jog at the gym.  In fact I hold multiple gym memberships because I am so fanatical about getting to the gym, no matter what, every single day.  What’s the reward I get for going to the gym?  Well, for one I feel really good after.  However, more important than that, I love to read.  There’s nothing more enjoyable to me than reading a really good book.  I read an average of six books a month,  just because I love learning new concepts and bringing them to my business and my life.  Before my daughter was born, reading books was easy, time was plentiful.  Now, reading a book at home is an impossibility.  For the past three years, my only reading is for that forty five minutes at the gym each and every day.  Six days a week on the treadmill means 4.5 hours of glorious reading time each week.

What can be learned from all this.  If you are truly serious about reformatting your habits so that you can accomplish all of your wildest dreams, then go buy the book, The Power of Habit.  It will give you a blue print for creating and breaking habits.  Once you know the process for habit formation, well, the world really is your oyster.  It is as simple as combining your new habit with something you really love.  For me, my destiny is built upon great books and killer shoes…what will yours be built on?   ~ Stacey Alcorn

 

 

Jay McHugh,

CRS, CBR, ABR, CDPE, CyberStar

www.myrandomactsofcardness.com

617 699 7442

Jay@JayMcHugh.com