Hi, it’s John Sullivan. Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. It’s Monday 13th of February 2023. And today I’d like to talk about how doing the basics in 2023 can help you not only achieve your goals, but surpass your goals as well, both for transaction and for income, which obviously is very important. So these series of points are very important to me right now because I’m trying to get back to the basics and I feel like I’ve kind of steered away from that a little bit in the last couple of years. So in no particular order, here are a series of points which I think can help you this year achieve your goals.

So the first one is arrive at the office at the same time every single day. This is definitely something I’ve steered away from in the last kind of year or two, you know, especially with the market being so hot, being a little lax, you know, maybe getting to the office at 7:10 AM or 7:20 AM instead of 7:00 AM. But that time is really important. We have to treat this like a real career. Our clients expect us to treat it like a real career and just get into the office every single day, although it’s so simple, is extremely important. So that’s my first point today is get back to the habit of Monday to Friday or whenever days you’re scheduled in your calendar to work, get to the office every day at the same time. And for me, that’s 7:00 AM.

Second point, which is probably my biggest point I took away from the Production Retreat this year at Caesars Palace is to get back to a transactional mindset. I’ve definitely fallen in the last two years. My transactions have come down, but my income has gone up. So one of the things I really need to start thinking about is get back to the transactional mindset. Let’s start helping more people. Let’s start adding more people to our database every single month, every single year. Sometimes we’ve had big paychecks when we’ve really only made that because the market’s gone up. And if we want predictable business over the next 5, 10, 15 or 20 years, for some of the younger agents like myself, we have to get back to that transactional mindset over income mindset. And as you’ll know, if we do the transactions, the income is going to come anyway.

My third point is something which I’ve been struggling with over the last year, is to delegate more and to stop micromanaging my admin and assistant. I feel like as the end of last year, I wasn’t very busy. I started micromanaging my admin. I was following up with them too much. I was diving into their job too much. As Mike always says, one of the reasons we have an assistant is to keep us on our schedule and we should give them the authority to do that as well. So one of the things I’m really trying to work on for 2023, and it’s a really simple point, but can we start delegating more, not micromanaging our staff and admin and get back to what we’re meant to be doing, which is income activity, production activities.

So number four is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last kind of three months, and especially since Production Retreat, and it’s speaking to our current clients. I think when the market was really good, we were all kind of in a position where we didn’t have to speak to our clients. We’d list the house on a Friday. We get 20 offers on the weekends. Come Monday, they’d pick the offer 20 grand over list price. Our clients were delighted. And we never really built that relationship with our clients. So I’m trying to get back in the habit, especially of the listings that are sitting there on the market of talking to my clients at least once and twice a week, not only just to build the rapport during the transaction, but to ask for referrals to build that relationship for the future. You know, our calls to our clients can also be prospecting calls. You know, they know people who are selling and buying. So I’m trying to get into a better habit of talking to my clients once or twice a week just to ease their pressure and obviously for me to build a better business for the future.

Number five is actually something I took from Larry Kozak when I was coaching with him a couple of years ago now. And again, it’s a really simple point and it’s very basic, but it’s very important. And that is start adding 10 to 12 people a month to my database. The whole point of this is to build a database like Lucy Ham. I think she has 7000 people in a database and she can do 200-300 deals a year from that database. It’s an absolute goldmine for her. For me, my database is only about 650 people, so I’ve got to get that to 1000 people as soon as possible. So one of the things I think about is not just adding the clients or adopting buyers who buy my listings to my database, but who am I giving money to? Who can I add into my database? This past week I took a listing from someone I met at a gas station about 18 months ago, so we never know when our next deal is going to come from. We never know who our next best client and referral source is going to be. So for me personally, I’ve got to stop being a secret agent. I need to get back to asking people and adding them to my database. And if I’m giving someone money like a launderette or a car wash person, they need to be going into my database.

Number six is probably my biggest challenge on this list, and it’s eliminating all distractions, especially while prospecting. For some reason, I’ve gotten a habit of having two screens up when I’m prospecting and looking at emails while I’m prospecting or fiddling around. Where I remember two or three years ago, I was really lasered and focused on that one call. Every call was so important. And I think I’ve just had it too easy. And I think a lot of my colleagues at the Mike Ferry Association and Organization, they feel the same way. They feel like it’s been too easy for us. There was people have been calling us saying, “Come list me.” and we forgot what it’s like to really hone down on that prospect and call them and get zoned in. So one of the things I’ve done is I’ve eliminated and made a new prospect in space for 2023. It’s a stand-up area. I have a singular screen and I put my cell phone away. That’s very important. Let’s eliminate the distractions and when we’re on that call, we have to be 100% present, because if we’re not, the client’s going to understand and they’re going to feel that over the phone that we’re not present.

Number seven is something which I did for a number of years when I first joined Mike. And obviously during COVID, all of us kind of struggled with this. But it’s attend three or four Mike Ferry events every year in-person, but actually with Mike speaking. So we could actually do six or seven, you know, some of the great speakers, the Prospecting Clinics, we could go to those. But for me, I want to see Mike speaking in action for two or three days at a time, three or four times a year. We don’t know how long we’ve got left with Mike. Hopefully it’s for another 25 years. He certainly looks strong enough. But the reality is, is we need to drain every little bit of information out of him. And not just go into the events to listen to Mike speak or to speak to Sabrina, which is extremely inspiring. To network with other agents, to see what other people are doing well, to build those referral sources. You know, Mike always says within that room there is a database of agents that we could connect with and build. So I think everyone here in 2023, especially Coaching Clients, we should all commit to seeing Mike speak live at least three to four times, because every time we leave those events, we become a little bit stronger or we hear something a little bit different. And for me, that is extremely important for getting back to the basics and to surround and kind of drown out all that outside noise, talking about technology and videos and social media, that stuff can be important. You can get deals that way. But I think everyone watching this video appreciates that we can get more deals doing it Mike’s way and using the Mike Ferry system.

Number eight for me is to stop comparing myself to other agents. And I think especially after the big Retreats like the Production Retreat, you’re surrounded by agents doing 300, 400, 500 deals a year or make in 5,000,000, 6,000,000, 7,000,000. And sometimes that can make you feel like a little bit of a failure. But the reality is, is we’re just competing against the person in the mirror and we’re just competing against our goals that we set. And last year, I didn’t reach my goal. I was nowhere near it for transaction. So I failed in my goal-setting and I don’t want that to happen again this year. But I think we have to stop thinking about other people’s goals and we have to make our goals and schedule based on what we really want to achieve. So let’s stop comparing ourselves to other people. Let’s be proud of where we’re at and where we’re going, and let’s ensure that whatever we’re doing, we’re just working against our business plan, which, as Mike says, “Is a working document.”

So for me, this is a personal message on number nine is to encourage everyone to join Mornings with Mike, especially Coaching Clients. And if it’s possible, I don’t know Mike’s rules in it, to Think Big calls. I found that sometimes Monday mornings are for me, they’re exciting. But for some people, after a busy weekend with a family or kids or whatever you would like to do. Mondays can be tough, but having those two calls Pacific Time, we have them at 7:00 AM and 7:30 AM to be in the office by 6:45 AM on a Monday morning to hear Mike speak for an hour on those two calls, to hear the other interaction with the other agents across the country. For me, it’s extremely motivating and it sets you up for success that week. So my goal here is to always be in Mornings with Mike, to be on all the calls, to also be in the Think Big group. And the great news is, is they send you the notes and the calls a couple of days later so you can always watch or listen or read the notes throughout the week. And every time you hear just a little bit of a different message.

My point number ten is to start bringing in one to two questions to all of my Coaching Calls. I had a great experience coaching with Mike over the last year and looking back, have a few regrets, and I think one of them is I used to come to my Coaching Call was more prepared. I used to take 15 minutes before to ask my Coach questions about what I should be doing. And when the market got so frantic and everything became a little bit easy. I kind of stopped doing that. It’s very basic, but if we’re going to be in this Coaching program, which we all know is hugely beneficial, why don’t we actually take advantage of our Coaches and how much experience they have? So what I want to really start working on is bringing one to two questions a week to my calls or e-mailing my Coach before our call, saying these are two questions I have, can we talk about this for our call? Because that’s how coaching works best. I know that from my professional sports days in England. It works best when both people are participating. So very, very basic. But let’s get back to bring in some value with the coaching in terms of bringing questions to the table to, instead of just waiting for our Coach to bring them to us.

And my last point is just be more present. You know, we have a wonderful, wonderful opportunity in this business. We’re in an amazing country. You know, I’m not from here, so I know how amazing it is to be in America. And obviously, we have a lot of Canadian clients, too. But we are in such a great position. In the last week, I’ve seen multiple offers on three of my listings. People are excited about the market. January has gone like it wasn’t anything. It flew by. So let’s be excited about the business. Let’s be more present in every conversation we have and let’s really take advantage of the opportunities we have, not just in Real Estate, but also work with Mike and Sabrina, because I know for one, if we didn’t have them by our side guiding us, then this job and this journey would be a lot tougher. So thank you so much for your time today and I hope some of these points will help you through 2023. Thank you.