His credit cards are maxed out. He isn’t bringing in any money. He’s done everything he knows - and yet nothing is working.  He simply doesn’t know what to do anymore. He would go find a job if he could - but it’s not as if there are ample job opportunities out there.  I was at a loss. I wanted to say the perfect - something! -  to help him turn it around - but, frankly, I didn’t know what to say.

So, I have been giving the conversation a lot of thought.

The past 60-90 days my business has started to finally rebound. And I am excited AND RELIEVED! But to what do I attribute the turn around? I look around me - and it seems as if I am the only one that I know that can say I’m really busy. Not only busy - but actually productive! As in closing deals and making money. So, what changed?

Now, it’s certainly true that I have been working my ass off - but who hasn’t been? So that’s not the answer.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that:

Getting clear on the niche I wanted to serve and marketing to that niche has turned my business around 180 degrees! 

I have done over $3mm dollars in transactions just in the past 90 days!

That and keeping my head down - not being distracted by the million different rabbit holes that I COULD run down. I see this so often - agents trying just EVERYTHING - but not really executing on ANY ONE THING. It’s like watching a dog chase its tail.

The problem - even moreso now than ever - is that as real estate agents, we are very loathe to “niche” ourselves. We want to be open and available to whatever business comes our way. Particularly now! The problem with that approach is that the people we work with - the consumer, our clients and our customers - don’t know how we’re any different than any other real estate agent they meet. They like us, find us trustworthy and competent. But all these are intangible qualities that are difficult for them to articulate. They don’t refer us because WE haven’t given them any way to think about us that they can articulate to their friends and colleagues. And that’s 100% our fault.

Here’s the amazing thing: once I made a commitment to select a niche and let the world know that I had chosen to work that niche, past clients began calling me to work with me or to refer me. And here’s the truly amazing part - they were not just sending me referrals for the niche I had selected - they were sending me whatever business they had to send me!

By choosing a niche, I gave the consumer a way to think about me - and they began thinking about me!

So - if you are at your wits end and desperate to turn your business around, take 24 - 48 hours off. Shut off the phones, cancel all your appointments. Get crystal clear about who your ideal prospect is and who you most enjoy working with. Define your niche - and then begin to systematically market to that niche. Do not allow yourself to get distracted - keep your head down for 90 days and execute fully and well on just that one strategy.

Then call me in 90 days and tell me what happened.

“All Things With Exuberance!”
mary!

And even though Dirk proclaims himself a lucky dog, I know better. He doesn’t fool me for one New York minute. He has stuck to his vision, never giving up on it - through the best of times and the worst of times. I know full well that he creates his own “luck” - day in and day out working harder than many 35 year olds that I know. ”Yet Brutus says he is lucky.”  It could be that Dirk knows something that I do not. I will even allow that Dirk may actually know quite a lot that I do not.

Still, I think I know this: the secret to his “luck”. No, it’s not about working hard at all. That is such a typically American attitude: “Just work hard and you will be successful.”  You must trust me in this: that’s not it at all. Being a die-hard workaholic myself, even I know that is complete and utter BS.

The secret to this lucky dog’s success is that he  isn’t working at all. He is simply pursuing what it is he loves to do - his “purpose” , the thing that gets him out of bed in the morning and keeps him going until late at night - through all the aches and pains that must, of necessity, accompany approaching 80. Even though I am loathe to dismiss the power of the mind over the body and I have no doubt that loving your life and loving what you do goes a long ways towards alleviating any aches and pains that may annoyingly arise.

Now, if you were to ask Dirk point blank, “Dirk, what is your purpose in life?” I’m not sure he would have an answer. But I saw a quote from Deepak Chopra today: “The heart has reasons that reason does not know” And therein lies the real secret.  Our purpose lies within our heart - not in our mind. Oh, we struggle mightily with our minds to grab onto it and understand it - and we think we don’t really “know” unless we can’t wrap our mind around it. But the heart already… just… knows…

I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that I don’t really believe in luck. I believe in taking responsibility for your results - you know, “the numbers don’t lie” - and all that. Taking responsibility for your results is not so popular these days. We want to be bailed out, provided for, given a fair shake, blah blah blah. But the hard, cold truth is that the numbers DON’T lie - and sooner or later you take responsibility for your results or you end up wondering, “What happened? How did it all go so wrong? Where did I go wrong?”

Yet, even so, I, too, am a lucky dog. I have been so richly blessed - beyond any measure of “deserving”. I most assuredly have enjoyed the immense good fortune of a happy life. [Though I doubt that "deserving" has one iota of anything to do with anything.] And I doubt that these two positions can ever be reconciled in any way that makes any kind of sense. But, then again, the heart has reasons that reason does not know. The heart already…just…knows…

“All Things With Exuberance!”
mary!

We submitted an offer on the property. However, we ran into a bit of snag on his financing and the whole thing has now given him pause. Of course he’s been talking to friends. My experience is that friends and family will often discourage any positive decision to do something - because they can never be wrong if they tell you NOT to do something.  And if things don’t work out quite as expected (and when do they ever?), they can say, “See! I TOLD you so!”

Now, I am not saying he SHOULD buy the house. But I am surprised that this young man is willing to give up so easily on his dream. It makes me wonder - what else has he given up on too easily? To stand up for your dream and fight for it takes the courage of your convictions and commitment to see it through.

I sometimes wonder about the younger generation. Are we aging Baby Boomers just overgrown spoiled brats insisting on getting things our way? We grew up in an era that questioned the status quo -  that refused to ”settle”. We realized that there ARE some things worth fighting for - and that fighting for them took courage and commitment - but that Viet Nam was not one of them. And is Iran? You gotta ask…

Or am I just letting my ex-hippy attitudes take over?

“All Things With Exuberance!”
mary!

My husband and I just spent 48 hours on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. We are exploring this area as a possible future vacation/get-away spot. It has the advantage of  being closer to Chicago than Door County.  And since the market downturn caused us to give up all our acquisitions in Door County, we are feeling the need to recreate that experience. We spent a fair amount of time discussing and exploring possible candidate areas for future ownership.

And yet, from a financial standpoint, owning a vacation home makes no sense at all. For the money we spent on our cottage in Door, we could have taken some pretty fabulous vacations. And how many times did we go to Door and really vacation? How many times was going just one more thing added to an already over-crowded “to do” list?

And yet there is that emotional sense of belonging: belonging to a community, of belonging to a place, of being invested in what goes on and what happens, of putting down roots. Belonging to a place that just the mere thought of brings happy memories of good times - the proverbial “Blue Bayou”. You don’t get these emotional deposits by merely vacationing - staying a night or two, taking in the local treasures - and then moving on. These things only come with acquisition and ownership.

What I’m really describing, of course, is “Home”. Being raised a Navy kid, the idea of Home is something that has always eluded me. Interesting, isn’t it? That someone who has never truly experienced “Home” should make a living selling them. But that’s a story for another day…

And why is it that I have never truly invested where I am living with that interest and sense of belonging? Because I have to live here. I have to come home day after day after day to a place of sanctuary. If I invest TOO much emotional currency into it, and things don’t go the way I want them to, then I’ve lost my sanctuary. This is, after all, life in the city. And if we lose our sanctuary, we will not be able to continue to live here. At the end of the day, this is what forced us to leave our condo in East Ravenswood.

Perhaps it is about commitment - not wanting to make so much of a commitment to a locale that it holds me back. Holds me back from what?

I have a client that I sold a home to 4-5 years ago that jumped in with both feet right away. She knows all her neighbors, eats dinner with them on a regular basis, is involved in the local library, the parks, etc etc etc. I emailed her recently. I asked her if she had ever thought about running for public office. She has that investment, that commitment to her community.

Perhaps the reason owning a 2nd home is so important is that it provides that sense of belonging without requiring too much commitment. It’s like living together vs. getting married. We want to be in a relationship  - but getting married is just too scary. Crazy, huh?

“All Things With Exuberance!”
mary!

Whether or not you realize it, as a licensed real estate agent, YOU are an entrepreneur. An excellent resource for entrepreneurs is Inc. Magazine. My latest copy just arrived in my mailbox.

The cover article is an interview of Jim Collins – author of Good To Great and Built To Last. What’s fascinating is that he is passionate about entrepreneurs and views those two books as being about entrepreneurship – even though the subject matter is huge, publicly traded companies.

The interview outlines some key evolutions through which entrepreneurship has progressed since 1979 – the year of Inc. Magazine’s first issue:

Entrepreneurship can learned:

Once perceived as a trait that one is born with, now it is understood that entrepreneurs can be taught, groomed and cultivated. Courses in business schools as well as an abundance of other resources – books, magazines, videos, mentor programs – attest to the truth that entrepreneurs are made, not born.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just for mavericks anymore:

The attitude in 1979 was that entrepreneurship was for mavericks. Entrepreneurs were crazy, creative people that weren’t quite normal. Today, not only are entrepreneurs socially acceptable, they are practically viewed as heroic!

Building a business used to be about building a better mousetrap:

Nowadays, entrepreneurship is about developing a better process. There are lots of better mousetraps and companies with a great process no longer focus on just one mousetrap – but keep adding more and more mousetraps as they come along. It is much more important today to create a better process that will produce MANY mousetraps over time.

Web 2.0 has created the phenomena of companies becoming movements:

According to Jim Collins, there are 3 stages to every business:

1.      Have a great idea.

2.      Build a business to implement that idea.

3.      Build a great company that can implement MANY great ideas.

However, some companies become something even bigger than themselves – they become a movement.

We all know it when we see it – customers that are raving product fans and tell all their friends about it. That is when a company becomes a movement.

So how do you go about creating “raving fans” for YOUR business?

1.      Your business is much bigger than you – and it is more than about “just making money”. You must think from your customer’s viewpoint – how can you best serve them? What do they need? How can you be of help?

2.      Determine who benefits most from what you are offering and identify a niche.

3.      You want to talk to your ideal prospect in THEIR language by creating an organic Unique Selling Proposition from the bottom up.

4.      Provide your ideal prospect with the valuable information they are looking for. This can be done quickly and for free if you utilize social media.

5.      Using social media tools such as Facebook or perhaps a blog, create a community. Create “excuses” for the members of your community to contact you directly.

6.      Once they “raise their hand” by communicating with you, move them to your private database. Continue strengthening your relationship with them by communicating to them as an “Insider”. Once your ideal prospect feels confident that you or the service you provide are “for real”, they will begin “spreading the word” for you and become your sales force!

Real estate has always been about the relationships. With focus and intention, today’s technological tools allows for faster community building. Be true to your vision to serve to the best of your professional ability; communicate that vision often. As sure as day follows night, you will find yourself at the center of a robust, business generating community of raving fans. 

For 3 quick tips on how to make YOUR business go viral, go to www.NewMarketLeaders.com and watch a free video now.

One of the first things we learn as a REALTOR is how to use the MLS, no? And I’m sure you will agree it is a huge resource for us. The challenge is that, even though it gives us all sorts of great information about sellers and their properties, it doesn’t give us a lot of direct information about buyers. And in today’s market, we need to know about buyers more than ever!

So what is a “super ninja” tool we can use to reserach what buyers are doing and what buyers want? Previously, when the market was hot, attracting buyers was as easy as putting a sign in the yard or an ad in the paper. But what can we do to attract them to us in this environment?

Just as we have the MLS to give us information about sellers and their properties, there is another tool that we can use to tell us about buyers. You won’t believe it, but it is a billion dollar research tool - and it’s available to us absolutely free! Not only that - but it has been sitting right under our noses for the past 8 years. But until the market shifted, we didn’t need the help we do now.

You will be surprised when I tell you what it is because it’s a tool that you probably use almost every day - just like the MLS. You just didn’t know everything it is capable of doing.

It’s called Google.

And not just Google - but specifically Google Adwords. Some crazy number like 95% of all buyers start their search for real estate on the Internet, right? Well, Google Adwords lets us figure out exactly what words they are using to start that search!

But wait - it gets even better! Unlike our MLS, you can learn to use Google Adwords in minutes. All you do is enter the key phrases you are interested in researching and Google will tell you how many people are searching using that word or phrase every single month. And Google is very smart - because it will also give you suggestions of other words and phrases that may be better to use.

So, let’s look at an example: Let’s say you sell resort homes in Door County Wisconsin. You enter “reseort homes” and “Door County” in the keyword tool. It will then tell us how many people are searching every month for resort homes in Door County.

I just went to Google Adwords and entered those exact key phrases: “resort homes” and “door county”. This is what came up:
Door County resorts: 2400        Door County WI:  22,200
Door County resort:  2900         Door County Wisconsin: 22,200
Door County rentals: 3600        Door County lodging: 4,400

When I scroll further down, it will suggest other phrases:

Door County: 201,00 - Now we’re talking some volume!
Sister Bay: 33,100 - SURPRISE!
Vacation Homes: 301,000

What’s even cooler is that alongside each key word or phrase, Adwords will have a graph showing the trend of how many people are searching that phrase. As you would no doubt suspect in this market, all the words are trending downward just now. (Though Door County Weddings is not! Wonder what I can do with THAT information?)

Now that you are armed with this information, what do you do with it?

Well, you have several options:
    1) You can advertise on Google itself using “Pay Per Click” advertising.
    2) You can optimize your website using exactly these keywords. (In our example, you would type Door County Resort” vs. “Door County Resorts” because more people are search the singular vs. the plural version.)

OR - you can use free social media strategies and sprinkle these keywords liberally throughout your content so that hot prospects will find you, call you and take action! How awesome would THAT be to have a hot prospect looking exactly for your service calling YOU?

For more “hot tips” on how to find your prospects and restore your 6 figure income, go to http://NewMarketLeaders.com and download our FREE teleseminar now.

Put Social Media to work for you NOW. Ramona S., a Chicago REALTOR, noticed a significant buzz around the homebuyer tax credit. She decided to post a short comment on her Facebook wall about the tax credit inviting any questions be sent her way. She was shocked when, in less than 15 minutes she received 10 requests for more information and 3 leads. One was from someone she didn’t even know who was out-of-area and which resulted in a referral

“I can’t remember the last time I got 3 leads in one day - let alone 15 minutes!” Ramona said.

The number one rule in marketing today is to provide information that the consumer is seeking:
There is so much information and things are moving so quickly that homeowners are confused and need help navigating the rules. Who are they most likely to turn to for help? Someone who positions themself as knowledgable and with whom they have developed a relationship - regardless of how remote.

Social media is about social proof:
What you know is important - but how many people you know is even more important. The old adage “It’s not what you know - it’s WHO you know” no longer applies. Using tools like twitter and Facebook, you can exponentially grow the number of people that know about you and about what you do.

Internet 2.0 - i.e. social media - will NOT tolerate “selling”:
Social media is like a cocktail party. Your friends don’t want to be hustled, sold, pressured or pitched. They DO want to talk about what interests them and what’s important to them. Everyone wants to be well informed and on top of what’s going on.

The point of Ramona’s Facebook post was not to give tax advice. It was simply to let her Facebook friends know that she is paying attention to what is happening in the real estate market. She wanted to start a real estate conversation with people she was not otherwise engaged with professionally. It served to demonstrate her knowledge of the market place and her commitment to keeping her clients informed. It also served to remind her Facebook friends about what she does for a living.

Looking for similar results? Do what Ramona did - attend a New Market Leaders teleseminar. Go to http://NewMarketLeaders.com and download a *FREE* class now.

Despite his unimpressive stature, strength and speed, hockey hall of fame great Wayne Gretzky was unrivaled in his execution of the game. He was most famously known for consistently being able to anticipate where the puck was going.  As a result, he was able to execute the right move at the right time. 

Similarly, today’s top achievers do five things to “skate” to where the market is going. 

1)      Top Achievers adjust who their “ideal prospect” is:

Much of the traditional real estate market segment  - the move up or move down buyer - is not active in today’s market. The profile of today’s active consumer is

1. Pre-foreclosure homeowners
2. The banks
3. Investors
4. First-time homebuyers

In order to “skate” to where the deals are, Top Achievers learn the skills necessary to work with today’s active consumer - whether it’s learning how to do short sales, BPO’s, or analyzing NOI on investment property. 

2)      Top Achievers have a Unique Selling Proposition for Each Market Segment: 

Rather than limiting themselves to a generic “one size fits all” slogan, Top Achievers adjust and adopt their message specifically to each of the market segments they are marketing to. (See “Pull Clients To You Like Magic” for specific information on how to create a USP.) 

3)      Top Achievers are in front of market trends and use absorption rate pricing:  

Top Achievers intelligently analyze the market and counsel their clients to execute appropriately based on where the market is going. Top Achievers are professional consultants whose key responsibility is to give their clients the accurate data necessary to make the best decision in light of their personal situation.

4)      Top Achievers use Social Media to communicate instantly and for *FREE*:  

By familiarizing themselves with free Social Media tools, Top Achievers share information while it’s still news. Using direct mail is costly and time consuming. A phone campaign can be more immediate but is extremely time intensive. One post on Facebook or Twitter spreads the news while it’s still “hot”. (See “5 Things You Will Love About Social Media”) 

5)      Top Achievers Manage Their Attitude: 

By honing skills or learning new ones, listening to CD’s, reading self-improvement books, Top Achievers never stop learning and growing. They inoculate themselves against the sea of negativity swirling around them. 

Take a tip from Wayne Gretzky. To stay on top of YOUR game,

• Learn to analyze the market and where it’s going.
• Define your most likely prospect.
• Craft a unique message to attract that prospect.
• Use social media to communicate with them instantly and for free.
• Finally, do not succumb to the fear and panic all around. Immunize yourself against a ‘sea of misfortunes’ and skate to the top of your field! 

Download a *FREE* teleseminar on  “The Unwritten Rules of Social Media Marketing To Restore Six-Figure Incomes”. Go to http://NewMarketLeaders.com now.