Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, Vice President of The Mike Ferry Organization and thrilled, as always, to come back for another Mike Ferry TV. So, listen, I have something that it’s time here we are approaching the middle of the year 2021. And it’s time to bring back something that many of you have heard before. But I’m going to put a little a little closer look at it in a little different way that you might see it a little differently. But any of you that have spent any time around Mike Ferry at all, have you ever heard him say you have to learn to start at zero? I heard him say that if you’ve spent any time with this is all you know that Mike Ferry at some point, somehow some way is going to remind you that you have to start at zero. OK, and what does that mean? What does it mean? For a long time in my career, I don’t know that I really understood it. OK, but in the last seven, eight, nine, ten years, I really come to understand the value of starting at zero every day. What does that mean as a real estate agent, that selling real estate? Can you get yourself in the mindset that you have no listings, you have no pending’s, you have no closed escrows, you have no cash in the bank.

You have really you’re basically looking for work today. OK, and sometimes in our career, for those of you who’ve been around a while or you’re just getting started in Real Estate, you understand that starting at zero is a pretty easy thing to think about because maybe you don’t have any listings don’t have any pending’s. Right. Which is a very interesting thing in the first part of your career. Or sometimes you just find yourself back with no listing’s and no pending’s. Sometimes the world will force you back to zero. Right. But you have to consider why. Why would it be so important for Mike to have you train yourself to start every day at zero? Why would it be that way? And what we know is that there’s really two things that happen. And not starting at zero tends to affect Real Estate agents in two different ways. The first way is hanging on to failures way too long. So one way to not start at zero is you have a horrible day yesterday. You have an escrow fall out. You have a sure thing listing that you just knew you were going to take that listing. And and they called and said they sold it themselves. Right. And then you hang on to that and you go around and you talk about that failure and you tell your friends and your family at home and you’re in this space where you’re going, oh, what a horrible day.

And not starting at zero causes you to turn a bad day into four or five or six days. You know, we’ve actually seen agents that at times they’ve been in a bad place for six months and they’re in a bad place and they can’t even remember how and when it started. But they got themselves in a horrible slump and they’re stuck there. Well, they didn’t know how to start back at zero, maybe off of some bad situation, a bad day or just a normal bad turn of events, which is going to happen in Real Estate. And then the other side of it is when you tend to celebrate your victories or you’re constantly looking at the successes. Right. You know, I put two deals together yesterday. I’ve got I’ve got twelve thousand five hundred that I just put in spending today. I’ve got thirty thousand in pending commissions or forty thousand in pending commissions. And you literally lock on to a business that has basically already been done. It just hasn’t been closed yet. Right. You know, you had your best, biggest commission check ever. You were paid and Yes you celebrate that too long and then that can go on for several weeks. Right. You know, in golf, we call it the back nine syndrome. The back nine syndrome is where for any of you that play golf, if you start out on the front nine and you’re having this phenomenal round of golf, everything you hit is just perfect going in.

You’re hitting it and you’re having your best score ever on the first half of the round of golf. And then you celebrate that you lose focus. You go on the back nine and have your worst set of nine holes ever. Any of you that play golf, you can appreciate what that means. Right. But you have to understand, if you want to succeed at a high level in the real estate industry, Mike has always ask us to to figure out how to start at zero each and every day. And I know it’s it’s harder sometimes than it sounds pretty easy to say and harder to do. But in part of that training, I made a little a little list and I made a little list of some thoughts about what you can do to start at zero every day. So think about some of these thoughts, OK? Could you completely clean all of the junk, clutter and trash out of your office? This is one way to bring yourself back to starting at zero, if you just, like, do a thorough cleaning, when’s the last time you completely clean house on all of your office, got rid of the files and the paperwork and the junk and the trash that it helps bring you back to zero because it’s a fresh, clean environment.

How about cleaning all of those leads that have piled up in your computer or on your desk or you go through and you just you take all this stuff that’s piled up. You know how stuff piles up nowadays with the computer systems you can put in lead after lead that aren’t really leads. Next thing you know, you’ve got the stack of stuff that isn’t isn’t producing listing’s. Clean all that stuff out of there that’ll get you back to zero. I’ve seen Mike Ferry ask agents to do it live. Why don’t you throw all those leads that are not converting away and then you’ll be fired up. You go get you’ll go get a listing today. Right. How about avoiding hanging out with people that are just relentlessly stuck in the past? I don’t know if you have someone that you hang around at the office that just loves to talk about yesteryear and they just are stuck in the old days, maybe not spend so much time around people that are stuck in the past, that might help. How about each morning learning how to set aggressive goals for the day? How about starting your day setting aggressive goals just for today, and then how about at the end of the day doing an honest critique on how you did with those goals, if you can bookend your day, set some aggressive goals today and then a critique at the end with a goal of when you’re finished letting it go.

Right. Here’s what I did right. Here’s what I did wrong. Here’s what I want to improve on tomorrow. Here’s what I’m really looking to do better tomorrow and then letting it go, good or bad. That process helps you start at zero. I wrote down get involved in a lot of short term contests. Boy, if you want to start at zero, there’s nothing more fun than getting involved with some agents and have a little listing contest or have a prospecting contest. Play little games that keep you engaged and fresh and excited about what you’re doing. When’s the last time you were in a really solid listing or prospecting contest? Those kind of things help you start at zero because you’re trying to win in a different way. I wrote down how about reporting your numbers every day? For those of you that are in the Mike Ferry system and you have the numbers analyzer for everyone, you should be tracking your numbers anyway. But one way to start at zero is actually to report the numbers. How many contacts did I make? How many hours of prospecting did I perform? Did I go on a listing appointment today? Most often if you track your numbers every day, they quickly point you to a place that you have to do better tomorrow.

Right. You know, it’s not that hard. Tracking your numbers, I wrote down a study, the current market stats. If you study the market stats a lot more often, it helps you start at zero. You start seeing the sales that are happening or maybe the market shifting a little bit in one way or another. And it starts to light in that little fire under the you have to take more advantage of what’s going on. OK, next, how about meet new people every day instead of hanging out with the old ones? If you if you want to learn to start at zero, go and meet new people every single day instead of just hanging out with the new ones. It’s one of the things Mike has just famous for. He is always meeting new people. He has no problem with it. A new a new meeting of a new person, a new relationship, a new encounter with somebody you don’t know. It definitely encourages you to keep moving forward. Right. I wrote down, how about make decisions much faster? Do you know that so many people have decisions that need to be made that they prolong for several days and that keeps you from starting at zero in a weird kind of way, doesn’t it? So if you can learn to make decisions really fast, then it forces you to start over, you know? Well, I’ve got three or four decisions that I still need to make from last month.

That’s the past. Make decisions and move along. OK, how about take fifteen minutes each day with a blank paper and just brainstorm ideas if you will take fifteen minutes in a blank scratch pad and just brainstorm ideas how to grow your company that keeps you moving forward and starting at zero doesn’t it. How about making a specific financial plan that accommodates all of the money you plan on making this year? If you want to stay out of the past or the future too much, look at a financial plan. It keeps you really fresh and sharp and engaged. Here’s a fun one. How about taking the first commission check of each month and putting it in a savings account? But if you want to not hold on to past successes, to train yourself to the first check that comes in, if it comes in on the second of the month that goes to your retirement, if it doesn’t come in until the fifth of the month that comes in your well, what if it doesn’t come in at all? But can you start investing in your future first, which takes that commission? You know, hey, I got three commissions coming in this month. Right? What if that will get you going? Use your I put it down like this.

Use your business plan as a working document, not a glorified document. Right. If you’ll actually use your business plan as a working document, your writing on it, you’re checking it, you’re reading it, you’re adjusting it. If you use it as a working document instead of a document that is cleanly put under glass that is here for the year and I don’t dare touch it, but I don’t dare do anything with it either. Right. That doesn’t keep you at zero. What can I do? What adjustments need to be made? Do you have any adjustments you need to make in your business plan right now? You should consider it. Here’s one that I put down. Critique each listing appointment right after the appointment and then let it go. It’s OK when you go on a listing appointment, you did a great job. A so, so job and average job are a horrible job. But if you critique each appointment, write when you’re finished, you know, you get back to the office. How do they do? Hopefully you’re following the Mike Ferry five step listing process. If you are, you can critique against that, which gives you a grading process if. Well, right now, in alignment with that, what if you went out door knocking right after each appointment, so you have a listing appointment at five o’clock, you go to that listing appointment, you don’t get the listing for some reason, you don’t get the listing.

What if you went knocking on doors around that listing right on the spot? Would that put you right back to work? Pretty quick. You’d go right back to work. What if you do get the listing, go knock some of the neighborhood and announce the new listing you took. It basically trained you to go right back to work instead of relishing on what did or didn’t happen. Does it make sense? And then the last one I wrote down is if you want to really look at starting at zero set new accountabilities with new accountability partners often. So right now, where do you stand with the accountability’s you have what are you trying to be held accountable to? Who are your accountability partners? You get some new accountability with new accountability partners, and you’re fired up. It’s a new relationship. It’s a little scarier because you have to perform new new set rules with a new person. If you continually change those up, then you stay in that mode of zero. So what if what if you could learn to start at zero every day like Mike asked you to do? Would you make more money? I know you would. I hope this helps you figure out the value of it. Let’s get back to starting at zero every day, starting today.