How can you help your agents create a better future? In my best-selling book (the business start-up plan for the new agent), Up and Running in 30 Days, now in its 5th edition, I tackle lots of motivational, inspirational, and attitude challenges. I want to help you help your agents master the real estate business! Here’s an excerpt from the 5th edition, just out:
{Click here to see the updates in my fifth edition of Up and Running in 30 Days.}
Creating the Future You Really Want
You have been in the business three weeks. {This excerpt is from week 3 of the 4-week quick start plan). Is your image of yourself different from the one you had when you started in this business? Successful performers have learned to create a completed picture of themselves as great performersa��long before they are terrific performers. This helps them to predict the outcome of their efforts. If you dona��t know where youa��re going, you cana��t get there!
Seeing Yourself in the Future as You Want to Envision YOU
Lou Tice, the founder of Pacific Institute, calls this skill self-efficacy. It is the ability to create yourself as a finished product in your head and hold that image, even though no one in the outside world has a clue that you are going to end up that way. What a skill! This technique is practiced in karate. When our son, Chris, took karate lessons he first watched great performersa��black beltsa��performing the katas (fighting moves in a format) and kumite (actual fighting). Then he envisioned himself performing each part of these movesa��just like they did. Finally, he performed the moves for his coach, very slowly, practicing perfectly.
How Coaching Supports that Future Vision
Chris’s karate coach watched carefully to ensure that he was practicing perfectly. After he perfected each move in context, he practiced performing faster. This method of creating perfect performance paid off. He won many medals in national and international competitiona��even while experiencing great growth spurts. His developed skill of self-efficacy ensured that his mind would hold the picture of his perfect performance. This skill has proved to be invaluable throughout his life.
* Big Idea: To become a master of whatever you want, hold your future picture of yourself more strongly than your present reality.
Develop the Professional a�?Youa�?
Take a few minutes in a quiet place by yourself. Imagine yourself as the successful real estate agent you intend to be.
What will you do?
What kind of recognition and power will you gain?
What affiliations will you make that reflect your ideal of yourself as a pro?
Create a movie with you as the star, complete with the movement, color, dialogue, tastes, and smells. Make it fun, exciting, and rewardinga��in color. Play it over and over in your head 20 times a day for a month. Doing this will counteract your a�?growth spurtsa�?a��objections, barriers, negative self-talk, lost leadsa��as you start your career. You must develop some mental ammunition.
Remember, people treat you as they see you.
They cana��t see the new movie you have created until you start acting it out. Even then, they will try to put you back into your a�?old movie.a�? Ita��s human nature. Unwittingly, we help our friends fail by not becoming supporting players in their new picture. You must have a strong movie to move yourself in the direction you want to go so that others can get caught up in the new action and let go of the old.
* Big Idea: Develop an ideal future a�?moviea�? of yourself, with color, sound, and feeling.
Managers and coaches: What skills do you have to help your agent become that agent you know he/she could be?
A�Are You Using the Best Start-Up Plan for your New Agents?
Does your plan have the detailed, prioritized checklists needed to assure a great start? Does it have built-in inspiration and motivation? Does it have dozens of tips to control the attitude? If not, you need Up and Running in 30 Days. Just out in its 5th edition, it’s the most successful book for new real estate agents ever!
Click here to see the updates in my fifth edition of Up and Running in 30 Days.