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...

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?

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....

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...

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? 

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. 

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...

We've all heard how important first impressions are but did you know you're making that first impression before you even open your mouth? This is the same with anyone you meet, not just buyers and sellers.

Next time you're meeting someone for the first time or even just seeing someone you've never seen before, take special notice of how you start forming opinions of them (albeit unconsciously) as soon as they catch your eye. The first few things you notice are appearance, motion, and energy. You'll notice how they're dressed, how their hair is styled, how they move through the room and if that's graceful, clumsy, or just average, whether or not they talk with their hands, the expression on their face, whether they seem happy, sad, ambivalent, angry, whether they're alone or mingling, etc. If you're at a networking event, you'll notice people before you meet them, and this opinion you form can make you decide whether or not you approach this person and introduce yourself.