Understanding Reciprocity Part 1

I believe in a concept I call reciprocity.  This concept is called by different names in different walks of life.  Each version of this concept sheds new light on what the underlying principle means, but essentially they all mean the same thing.  You could state the concept as simply as “what goes around, comes around” or “you get what you give”.  Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Physics states “To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction”.  In Hinduism and Buddhism the concept of karma is defined as “the total effect of a person’s actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person’s existence, regarded as determining the person’s destiny”.  The popular movie The Secret called it The Law Of Attraction.

The basic idea of all of these things is that YOU are the prime mover in all your engagements with all other people.  You are the one who (through your thoughts and feelings and consequent actions) determines how the other person will respond to you.  In doing something (or not doing something) you actually create a like response in the other person.  So you actually have far more control over how your relationships develop than you ever thought possible.  Perhaps even TOTAL control!

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 5

The idea of sacrifice or living lean for a time doesn’t even occur to them until they’ve gone months without a sale and they’re forced to tighten their purse strings by an erratic income and waning savings.  Above all, their focus is on helping themselves, not on helping others.  So it’s no wonder most of these types of people are destined to fail in real estate.

Who we’re essentially focused on is really the acid test of any successful entrepreneur.  Those who are focused on learning about and helping others are usually successful.  Those who are always focused on helping themselves and their own interests usually live shallow, mediocre lives.

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 4

Kubrick was well known for his perfectionism in directing his movies.  He read 500 books on Napoleon for a movie on the French Emperor he never actually got to make.  Most famously, Kubrick often demanded dozens of retakes of scenes from his actors.  In particular, Kubrick’s movie The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomaniac perfectionist.  Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of re-takes of scenes.  In The Shining Kubrick had Jack Nicholson do 100 retakes of one scene.  Another scene from the movie took nearly a year to complete.  In Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick had Tom Cruise do so many scene re-takes and made the experience so stressful for the actor that Cruise developed an ulcer.

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 3

Is there a full timer alive who doesn’t encourage and welcome business from friends and family?  Getting business from a referral is not much different than friends and family because referrals are also based on people who know us.  We all know referrals are the lifeblood of a great many real estate professionals, especially the veteran ones who don’t have a consistent advertising plan and haven’t embraced technology for their business.  

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 2

It’s relatively easy to wake up in the morning, go to a job where your day is mostly planned out for you, then go home, and collect a pay check every two weeks.  It’s not so easy when you have to create your own plan for every day, face rejection on a regular basis from prospects, friends and family, not necessarily get paid anything for all of it at the end of the week, and still have the gumption to press on the next week.

Therefore, I think the ideal way for people to start in real estate who lack a substantial financial “safety net” is starting part-time.  Working part-time allows someone to take as much time as necessary to test the real estate waters, learn how to swim and find out if it’s really for them. 

Succeed By Starting Your Real Estate Career Part-Time Part 1

The debate about whether people should be allowed to be real estate professionals on a part time basis rages on. What interests me about this issue isn’t so much who’s right and who’s wrong but what motivates the points of view from either side.  I believe when we look closely at the people arguing against part-timers we find they’re usually motivated by self-interest borne out of their own waning competitive edge in this business.  They mask their elitist, anti-competitive views in essentially hollow rhetoric.

The Importance Of Great Mentors For Your Real Estate Business Part 7

This is how it should be with your real estate business.  Your first big new step forward should be making it e-commerce based.  Yes, the first step can often be the biggest, and there are plenty of your peers who have hesitated in taking truly taking a bold, decisive first step toward this.  Consequently, like the hesitators with the arrow exercise, they’ve made the experience difficult or unfruitful for themselves.

But there are also plenty of other people who haven’t hesitated, who realized how much people nowadays are using the internet for buying or selling their homes.  These people looked around and saw successful models of other real estate professionals who are building very successful e-commerce based real estate businesses, and wanted to follow their lead.  So they went out and found the necessary instruction to make it happen and are implementing this instruction on a regular basis to make it happen.  

The Importance Of Great Mentors For Your Real Estate Business Part 6

I will never forget what happened next.  We then got down to the last person in our group to try this exercise.  She was probably in her early-mid 30’s and her husband was her partner.  Everyone in the group had been able to do this exercise within 30-90 seconds total – even those who had hesitated a lot didn’t take very long to do it.  But this woman just couldn’t bring herself to step forward.  She endlessly kept readjusting the arrow’s position, it’s height, and her stance, but she just wouldn’t take the step forward.  This hesitating went on for about 10 minutes.  It was remarkable that anyone could have this much hesitation, even after seeing 11 other people (including her husband) do the exercise quickly and successfully without getting hurt.

The Importance Of Great Mentors For Your Real Estate Business Part 5

The partner with the arrow tip at their throat then assumed a stance where they were to take one big step forward.  While they were making this step they were to keep looking at their partner’s eyes.  As they stepped forward they were to break the arrow’s shaft into pieces with their throat and then embrace their partner.  They could only use their throat to do this.  They weren’t allowed to grip the arrow with their hand or hold onto their partner before fully stepping forward.

The Importance Of Great Mentors For Your Real Estate Business Part 4

So what we need is to find a proven step by step process for achieving something and then follow that system to the letter.  If we have the humility to do that (and few do), and other people have succeed doing this exact thing, then why won’t we succeed as well?

As with the mountain biking fellow and his see-saw challenge, often our fear of trying something is far more than the thing itself.  In other words, our fear of trying something is way more than the anxiety we have from actually doing it.  If we just do it, or have someone show us how, we almost always realize how little we had to fear.

I’ll give a great example of people overcoming fear from an event I attended called the Millionaire Mind weekend.  One of the exercises at this weekend was intended to help people overcome fear, especially irrational fears.