Welcome back, good morning to Mike Ferry TV the week of December 21st, big holidays in front of us. We hope that you’re safe and healthy and you have a good time and it’s enjoyable for you and your family. What I want to do today is I want to share two thoughts. First thought is the fact that I, I get emails on a somewhat regular basis, you know, once or twice a month from individuals. And I think many times it’s simply my competition sending the emails saying that what I teach needs to be updated because it’s too old fashioned. And I always reply to those by saying interesting words in quotes, “Old fashioned”. I will have to admit to you that I am old. That’s part of the life process. But I’ve also said time and again that what I do is very fashionable, meaning that anybody that uses the skills and techniques we teach is going to have a very fashionable or very productive business. The hardest part about Real Estate is trying to convince good people like yourselves that there is a foundation to anything that you do that has to be strengthened. The foundation or Real Estate are the skills that you use, the thoughts that you carry, the thoughts that you articulate every day in your business, not only to yourself, but to your clients. So what I want to say to all of my wonderful friends out there, the think I’m old fashioned. First of all, I’m still working every day doing the job I have to do.

Are you doing the same? Are you working every day doing the job? You’re supposed to do it because if you’re doing the job you’re supposed to do, it’s never going to be old fashioned. What I want to do today is go through a series of thoughts. It’s going to be probably a little longer than our normal 12 to 13 minutes series of thoughts that I think if you take and apply them as random as they may sound, they’re going to help you build your business in the calendar year; 2021. The first thought I’ve been talking about it virtually for forty five years, so thought #1 is this: Start every day when the New Year begins for you at zero. Meaning when you wake up in the morning each day in 2021, I want you to have the belief that first you can accomplish the goals that you’ve set, which you can do. But second, I want you to not live on past performances from calendar year twenty twenty for, most agents. Twenty twenty was a strong, productive and a very strong income producing year. Now if you’re one of the agents that did not have a good year, this is a good time to start. And how do you start? You erase the past. You started at zero every day. When you get up in the morning, you have to say to yourself, I have no prospects, I have no leads, I have no listings, I have no sales, I have no skills, have none pending.

I have no money in the bank. And in some cases that is going to be quite easy because all of those apply to some agents. So the hardest part about Real Estate is looking at the fact that if you list a home that sells, if you make a buyer controlled sales, you’re going to make five, seven, twelve-fifteen thousand dollars for each sale that you make. Well, that’s a lot of money and it’s hard many times to not be complacent when you get two or three paychecks in the course of a month, for example; the work you do now is going to pay you in January and February. So let’s say that you have a couple of your listings. So they’re going to close around January 15th, average commission check, eight thousand dollars per transaction. You’re going to get sixteen thousand. Sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated and to stay enthused. Well, that’s where you get into the mindset that you start every day at zero to get your level of energy and enthusiasm up to where it belongs so you can go out and do your job. The second thought I wrote down for us to make sure the next year is a great year, and to keep your goals and the rewards of those goals in front of you at all times. There’s nothing better than visualization. There’s nothing better than affirmations.

There’s nothing better than a strong business plan with specific goals you’ve set for yourself and for what you want to accomplish and what you want to do. But you’ve got to keep that plan in front of you. You’ve got to keep that plan on your desk and your briefcase. Keep it handy, because as you’ve heard me say, a business plan is a working document, something that you’re going to be writing on, adjusting, changing, upgrading, and in some cases… downgrading. But if you keep the goals in front of you – per Earl Nightingale, it’s great message. The odds of you accomplishing something great are dramatically enhanced. The third thought I wrote down, I want to read it to you. Raise your level of enthusiasm to a minimum of eight on a scale from one to ten every day. You know, it’s so interesting to me that so many people in Real Estate say that enthusiasm is not necessary. Well, enthusiasm is what attracts people to you. Enthusiasm is what glues people to what you’re trying to accomplish. Think about this. You’re sitting in your home with your spouse and you’re talking to an agent who is very drab… I guess that is the best word. Unenthusiastic, very boring. The message may be good, but the delivery is really almost awful. Well, then you think about a second agent comes in who’s excited about the opportunity, enthusiastic. They can’t wait to tell their story, even if their story is not as good as the first agent.

The enthusiasm of an Agent Display’s is often the difference maker between getting a contract signed and not getting a contract signed. Now, I know that some of you by nature are very enthusiastic. It’s just who you are. But some of you have to pretend a little bit. You know, you have to say to yourself, listen, when I walk into that house, I’m excited about the opportunity. I’m excited about the people I’m going to talk to. I’m excited about the property. And I want to demonstrate that – it’s called raising your levels of enthusiasm. The fourth point, I mentioned this earlier, but I want to really emphasize that to you: If you really want to make 2021 a great year, you’ve got to completely forget your past, unless it was very positive and very strong, because it limits how you think as the year starts to progress. You know, we can’t live on past performances. What we’ve done has been done. The awards that you’ve received are awards that you received and that means it’s finished and done. The checks that you received have been deposited and in most cases probably already spent so many times. We want to sit back and reminisce… And reminiscing is fun. It’s enjoyable, especially when it’s positive. But in Real Estate, the path in front of you is the path that you have to stay on and you have to keep progressing through. So if you forget your past, you can stay on the path you’re after.

If you’re focusing on the past, you’re not moving forward. So I’m going to say that no matter what kind of a year you had in 2020, I don’t care if it was the best year of your life or the worst. Let’s erase that board and let’s create the future of our business, which starts tomorrow and then again picks up on January 4th. The next thought I wrote down: Remind yourself daily that the market conditions have no effect on you and what you do. You’ve heard me say that time and again over the last couple of years. It’s interesting how many people live based on market conditions. And the truth is, we can’t control the market. We can control what we do. We can control what we think. We can control where we go. But we can’t control that invisible thing called a real estate market. Now, what we do know for a fact is that in calendar year 2021, there’s going to probably be five million plus real estate transactions taking place. Well, there’s two sides to each transaction. That’s ten million commission checks that will be distributed to great people like yourself. How many of those would you like to have and see if you focus on interest rates changing a little bit or a deal falling apart… Or maybe in your community the market has slowed down or there’s not enough inventory. If you focus on that, you really miss the big picture that you’re trying to accomplish and do.

I wrote the next thought: During 2021, allow yourself the luxury of doing more business in one month than you’ve ever done before. So let’s think about that. OK, what’s the most listings you’ve ever taken in one month? What is the most listings sold in buyer-controlled sales you’ve ever had? One month. OK, what don’t you think about is the fact that you want to surpass those numbers – sometime in the first six months of 2021. January, February, and March, April…May? June? When do you want to have the best and most productive month of your entire career that you ever thought was possible? See, it’s being done every day by somebody. There’s agents every day sending us notes and emails and texts. I’ve had a record setting month, to which we say congratulations. But my question for you is this: why do you sit back and think that can only happen to somebody else and it cant happen to you? It can happen to you. There’s no question about it. Next thought I wrote down: Take the best month of the last twelve. So let’s take here we are in December of 2020. Let’s go back to December of 2019 and think about how much our world has changed starting in March of this this year? I mean, it’s a whole different world we’re playing in today. We’ll take the best month of of the last 12, probably wasn’t in March or April for most agents, but June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

The market’s been really phenomenal in most of North America. So take your best month of the last 12 and make that your minimum standard for all of 2021. So let’s say that in June of this past year, you took four listings, you had four listings sell and two buyer controlled sales, which would be a great month from any standard. Well, let’s make that the minimum standard. What do we have to do schedule-wise? What numbers do we have to understand? What skills do we have to improve to make June of 2020, the minimum standard going forward through 2021. Think about the amount of production you could do if you create a minimum standard that is higher than what you’ve had in the past. See, this business is a roller coaster ride for almost every agent. You’ve heard me say in the past that Real Estate does not have cash flow like other businesses might have. Real Estate has cash spurts. You go flat for 30, 60 days, no commission checks. Bang, you have three closings in one month. You’re rich and famous and then you have to recreate those. Well, let’s create a higher standard for you to operate from so you can enjoy the experience that much more. I wrote down next, and this is probably one of the hardest ones as you enter 2021: exercise blind faith in everything you do, exercise blind faith that you’re going to achieve the goals you’ve set because you’re going to achieve the goals you’ve set.

Exercise blind faith that you can take the number of listings that you want to take, exercise blind faith that the things you’re learning and applying through The Mike Ferry Organization work because they do work, you know, it’s like anything else. If you have to go through the unfortunate experience of having a surgery done, Blind Faith says, you’re going to say to yourself as you fall asleep on the table, you’re going to wake up a healthier, better person than you were before; you get on a commercial plane. You have blind faith that the pilot wants to land at the airport just like you want to land at the airport. And I always kid about the fact that when you hear a flight attendant say in case of a water landing and I go, wait a minute, let’s land at the airport, not the lake. Well, Blind Faith says we’re going to assume everything is going to work the way we had planned it. Then I wrote down next, if you don’t have three or four strong accountability partners, start looking for them and let’s get that system set up and created before January. The Fourth Accountability Partner could be your spouse. It could be your broker manager. It could be agents in the office. It could be agents that, you know, through the Mike Ferry system that you’ve been involved in. But you’ve got to find people to hold you accountable because accountability is the difference maker between, yes, I’m having a good year and yes, I’m going to have the best year of my life.

Accountability in Real Estate is very rare, but it’s also critically important to each of us to have more accountability. And then I wrote this: Once a month, and this is a fun one.. this one really came to me. There’s a big group of agents down in South Florida and they get together every Monday and they have what they call money Monday. And Susan Heller is a great client of ours and a great agent. And she’s been part of this for years. And they really do think about how do they maximize their production through prospecting. So she’s the one that gave me the idea years and years ago that once a month have one Expired listing blitz, they spend the whole day calling every Expired, every three month old Expired, six month Expired. Many of them may have already listed and sold. Who cares? Call as many Expireds as you can just to one day a month. Then I put down one day a month, have a For Sale By Owner day, and you might want to stretch your territory a little beyond what your original territory is to find the business and call. You know, you want you want to obviously work with companies like Falcon Seven to get access to the Expireds and For Sale By Owner once a month. If you have listings, do a price reduction day in the market we’re in today.

If your listings are not selling, it is going to be ninety eight percent price, about two percent location and condition. So if you have three or four listings and they’re not selling as fast as you want. One day a month work on price reduction, then one day a month have what we call an ultimate prospecting day where you virtually put your headset on, you stand up, you have your computer on. And whether you’re doing Just Listed, Just Sold past client Center of Influence, you’re just going to make as many calls as you can possibly make. And one day, if you do this kind of thinking, you’re going to have an explosion of business take place in your life. It’s going to happen. You can’t stop it from happening. Next on the list, and this is such a fun one. Accept this fact during the next 12 months, 2021, you’ll be doing a lot of things that will make you very uncomfortable, but that will make you much more productive because being uncomfortable is part of the process of learning, being uncomfortable is part of the process of growing. Being uncomfortable is part of the process of getting from where you are today to the goals you’ve set for calendar year 2021. The next point, and this is very basic and fundamental: Work every day on mastering and perfecting your basic business skills. Now the basic business skills and Real Estate are efficient prospecting.

That’s the most basic skill, efficient prospecting, quality and quantity, not just quantity. The quality of who you call OK, for example, calling your database is better quality than knocking on a closed door. Contacting people around your listings and sales is better quality than just cold calling through a neighborhood. So talk to a lot of people, but do it with the highest level of quality, including what you say, how you say it because that represents quality. But the second thing and in terms of basics is mastering effective lead follow-up. Folks, you’ve got lead cards. They’re not any good to you unless you’re talking to them all the time. Call all of your leads. Third is to work on becoming a better presenter, whether it be Listing Presentation, which is critically important, of course, or showing property to a buyer. Folks, people buy not only because of what is said, but they buy by because of how you say it. So you have to work on the skill of presenting. Hi, do you want to sell your home or… Hi, when do you plan on moving? So the words you use, the energy you have, the enthusiasm, the display… Creates a better response. And then the fourth skill is the negotiation of contracts, because that’s when you take and you bring two parties together. So prospecting, lead follow-up., presenting and of course negotiating are vitally important in 2021 to improve your business. And then of course I wrote this one, which is always a fun thing to bring up to improve my business.

In 2021, I must remove my ego and use the scripts that are offered every day. Quit winging it. Quit thinking that maybe if you just change the script a little bit you’ll get a better response. The scripts are proven. They’ve been around for forty five years. I used them for years prior to bringing them out to all the public in my seminars and workshops. So they’ve been around for what, almost fifty years now. The scripts, certain fundamentals always work and there’s so much fun to have agents call me all the time. Mike, I’ve made a few adjustments to your Listing Presentation. I wanted you to know. OK, why did you feel the need to tell me that you’re making adjustments to the presentation? Well, I wanted you to know. OK, great. How are they working? Well, I’m getting four out of every ten, which you like to get seven out of every ten contract signed and to follow the scripts we give you. But then I always ask this question when they tell me they have new scripts that are better than mine. Are a lot of people downloading your scripts from the Internet every month? I didn’t think so. Follow the scripts. OK, I wrote down next: I must know and understand and use my numbers to build my business. See, the business revolves around numbers that you can’t deny. The selling is a numbers game.

You can’t deny the selling. Real Estate is a numbers game. But Mike, I prospected for two hours last week one day and I didn’t get any leads. OK, how many people did you talk to? I talked to about fifteen people and not one of them want to sell their home. How do you know number sixteen, which you didn’t call, could have been the one that wants to sell. How do you know it couldn’t be number eighteen? See, I’m a great believer in numbers. If you talk to enough people somebody is going to say yes. I love this expression that I was taught when I was probably 19 years old – The only NO that counts in selling is the last one before you quit. And then that word no becomes a very big part of your life and your business. Play the game of numbers. How many people are you talking to? How many presentations are you making? Are you talking to enough people to make enough presentations to achieve the goals you’ve set? We’re here to help in 2021. Let us know how we can help. We’ll be talking to you again on January. I believe it’s January 5th. So we’re going to have a little break in these messages. Enjoy your holiday. Be safe. Be healthy, have fun and make sure that you keep working on the days you’re supposed to be working. We’ll see you the first part of January. Thanks for today.