Love and Forgiveness
Nov 25, 2018
It's two days past Thanksgiving as I sit here at my desk and type this out and I'm feeling especially grateful for the relationship I have with my father. Now, you might read that and think I'm one of those "daddy's girls" who had that perfect protector, that wonderful man who shows you who a man should be, and sets the bar high for the man who will one day become your husband. In my case though... that sentiment could not be further from the truth.
My father never wanted children but finally relented to my mother's incessant begging. I was the first one born to them. One of the earliest memories I have of my father was waking up in the backseat of the neighbor's car, seeing my dad in the front passenger seat and hearing him tell me that he was taking me away from my mother and that we would go back in a week or so to get my little brother. I was 5 and had just been kidnapped in the middle of the night after my mother had filed for divorce.
There was a very nasty custody battle...
Time Outs & Toilets: What Do They Have in Common?
Oct 15, 2018
Today's #mommomentmonday is a reminder to never trust your child when they are in a time out in their room... Chaos may ensue... ;-)
Real Estate & Wonder Woman
Oct 14, 2018
Do you remember this lady? Of course you do! She's all over the movies lately and she is amazing! She was also my all-time hero when I was 5 years old. I remember running around the living room, aluminum foil wrapped around my wrists, jump rope at my side, hopping onto the sofa, dodging imaginary bullets, and thinking I would save the world. Wonder Woman was my idea of the perfect woman- the ultimate description of what it truly means to be feminine. She was smart, sexy, demure, professional, and then the ultimate bad-ass when trouble started brewing. Of course, what else would you expect from an Amazon Warrior Princess?
Wonder Woman would always have it together! She would never forget where she left the keys to her invisible plane, never go through the drive-through at McDonalds, never skip her work-out because she slept late, and never fail to catch the bad guy because well... frankly it was "that time of the month".
Wonder Woman was always at the top of...
Dress Like A Lady: Does "Sexy" Have A Place in Business Attire?
Oct 14, 2018
Paula McDonald wrote an incredible post on Active Rain about how a Realtor lost a client due to her cleavage. That brings up a seriously interesting topic: How should women dress when they want to be professional and taken seriously yet also feel sexy and feminine? While, as Paula (and many of her commenters) mentioned, many women seem to take sexy to the extreme nowadays and post their cleavage out on display the same as a fisherman would put a worm on a hook to lure and catch his prized fish. Is that truly sexy though? Is there anything about skirts that are too short or too tight, shirts with straining buttons or low cut "shelf" tops that appear attractive or do they simply scream, "LOOK AT ME!!!"?
Ladies, ask any man what he finds sexy about his partner/girlfriend/wife and he will invariably tell you something that does NOT involve how awesome her boobies look when they're hanging out of her top. It's much more likely to be something like the way she looks in the...
Scheduling Your Real Estate Life
Oct 14, 2018
If you're reading this you already know that the "Real Estate Life" is literally a 24/7 operation. Agents live, sleep, eat and breathe real estate. It's a great life though overall and being in real estate allows us flexibility, unlimited income potential, and numerous other rewards. The key is balance. Somehow managing to stay focused on, and not distracted by, the multitude of daily tasks on our plates.
Part of the "Real Estate Life" is incorporating all of your personal tasks with your business ones. Sometimes that means working from home, doing laundry while you input a listing or design a flyer, picking the kids up from school on the way back from a listing appointment, etc. It's just all part of the day. The thing I've noticed with a lot of agents I've coached is that things get overlooked. How many of the following (business and personal) things have you done when the going got tough?
- Neglected your personal marketing or farming
- Stopped at a drive-through...
The Power of Suggestion
Oct 14, 2018
I'm going to make this a short one...but wanted to put this out there just the same.
With all the negativity out in the world today hitting us from every angle, let's face it, it's tough to keep ourselves from feeling anxiety, from being stressed out, from being worn down. Yet in spite of all of this, there are still people out there with big smiles, boundless energy, and they're selling real estate like crazy.
How are they maintaining this glow around them? How are they keeping themselves so incredibly pumped up and excited? On the opposite end of this, there's people out there so unbelievably depressed they are actually shutting down their entire lives one little piece at a time.
So... the question here is this: What is it that makes the happy people happy and the sad people sad? We're all in the same world, dealing with the same issues, hearing the same news reports... why the big difference?
It's all in the power of suggestion....
The Cost of Doing Business
Oct 14, 2018
When I first started out in the industry, I began as an assistant, working for the top agent in Orlando, and managing about 100 transactions at any given time (about half active and half pending). We had multiple closings every week. This was one agent, not a team. The problem I saw was the woman was wearing herself out... literally. She was constantly sick, overworked, exhausted, and not to mention completely out of shape and hadn't eaten a healthy meal in who knows how long. She had a ton of money coming in but absolutely no time or energy to enjoy it or, more importably, to enjoy her family. If she had simply taken some time to balance her life out, she could have done much better. Hiring some buyer's agents and listing agents as a team underneath her would have given her all the time she needed to become rested, healthy, and happy and she also would have been doing even more business because there would have been more people to manage all of it. With a team leader to stay on...
Your Real Estate Career: Time For a Change Or Time to Bail?
Oct 14, 2018
Recently, I was asked a question by an agent: “When do you know if you need a break or it's time for a real change?”. By digging a little deeper, I uncovered that she had been working harder than ever before in her career as an agent but with so few results she was beginning to think it was time to bail and get a steady paycheck kind of job. During the last shift, with the real estate nose dive and accompanying economic conditions, I saw many agents leave the business and even the industry all together, so this is not an issue I haven’t run into before. Yet, during the shift, I knew other agents who had their best year ever, in spite of everything that was happening. So how do you, as an agent, know which decision to make when you're facing the choice of changing things up or bailing out?
Here's my advice...
Ask yourself a few questions like:
- Am I in touch with the latest ways of doing business or am I still plugging away with the...
The Key To Lead Conversion
Oct 14, 2018
How many of you know where all your leads come from? Do you track them? Do you ask people how they heard about you? I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again now... ALWAYS know where your leads come from. That's STEP #1 in lead conversion. If you know where the leads are pouring in from, you know where to funnel your marketing efforts and dollars. Get rid of what doesn't work. Believe me... doing things just to appease your seller is a waste of money and telling them so will earn you their respect.
Picture it like this: You're in the middle of a listing appointment and the seller asks you, "Will you put my home in the newspaper?". You know for a fact that putting their home in the newspaper will not generate a call and has not generated a call for you in the last several years.
You have two options here:
- Tell them that you will definitely put their home in the newspaper, spend the money, post the ad, knowing you'll never get a call from it but...
Shift Your Working Environment
Oct 14, 2018
Now that we have Fall pleasantly looming in front of us, it's the perfect time to take stock of our daily working habits. Today I am writing to you from the comfortable patio of a local cafe. Waking up early and getting to spend the morning outside in the sunshine with a latte and my laptop is an invigorating change of pace. After the hot Summer season in Florida, it's so nice to take advantage of the nicer weather.
So what I'm noticing is that I feel even more productive than usual. My mood is completely uplifted and it's nice to be doing something different. Even though essentially I'm doing the same thing, the location change makes all the difference.
As agents you have so much freedom in your working environment. Nobody is telling you that you have to be in an office with overhead fluorescent lighting or stuck inside your own four walls at home. Something I'm also thinking is that for you agents out there, working from an outdoor cafe or a...
