Discipline is the most powerful work for business success. Reduce the breadth of what you do and increase the depth of what you do. The secret to long-term success is to master what you do. And it all starts with vision.
You’ll never chase a vision you don’t see.
It’s up to you to set the vision. You are in charge. Define who you are and what you do. Reduce uncertainty, anxiety and procrastination by having a real purpose for what you do.
Mad De Pree’s great question, ’Who do we intend to be?’, is one of the greatest. You can define it by character, like being a larrikin; you can define it by numbers, by the number of sales and the number of customers you serve; or you can define it by ego, the pursuit to be number one. Whatever you do, get clear on what you want.
Everything you want in life is just outside your comfort zone. If you’re writing $300,000 per annum, and I ask you to double it to $600,000, you’ll try to tweak your way to greatness. You’ll add in a Saturday, dial up a few more call sessions and fall short. Everything breaks if I ask you to ten times your performance, to $3m in fees. Now you have to reimagine - markets, team, number of opens, sales process, reducing days on the market, etc. The bigger the dream, the better the systems and the people must be.
Some will tell you they’re hungry, but it’s not until you commit that you stretch yourself. Add another $1m to the mortgage, and you’ll find a way to add the $6,000 after tax to your bank account for the monthly mortgage commitment. There’s a big difference between being interested, and truly committing to your craft and a much bigger future.
If the future is unclear, every distraction will look like an opportunity.
The new world demands your time. From screen-sucking devices to addictive content. Your ability to finely tune in to what you want and what serves you well is the difference in moving beyond mediocre performance to high performance in everything you do.
1. First, you set the goal.
2. Then you realise the fears.
3. Then, you build the capabilities.
4. And finally, that develops your confidence.
Without failure, there is no success.
Calendar and going all in.
If it matters, it’s on the calendar. Set your priorities - health, family, work. Put them in the calendar that way. Your health items include workouts, sleep time and nutrition. The critical there is to physical performance. Basics like waking up and going to sleep, and breakfast, lunch and dinner times allow for renewal, so you can recharge to be back to your best.
Next, schedule relationship time. All relationships take work. Nurture the ones that matter. Stretch and grow. If it’s important, make sure it’s on the calendar. Learn the power of presence, of really being in the room.
Finally, add the work commitments. Short, purposeful meetings change your perspective and allow you to do more of the work that matters. Start time, first call time, daily agendas, meeting rhythms and a real desire to drive your hourly rate will set you apart.
Being organised changes everything. What you do when things are quiet makes a massive difference to when things get busy. Your calendar is a pure reflection of what’s important to you.
The digital choice is email and Instagram on desktop only.
What’s stealing your time? Playing with your emotions? Driving your insecurities? It’s most likely addiction to your device. Are you brave enough to enter a new world where email and Instagram are only available on our desktop devices? Imagine removing them from your phone. What would you use your phone for? Calls, lots of calls, and connecting with people that matter.
We follow thousands of people. Sometimes they drive our ambition, but most of the time they drive our insecurities. Do you need it to become a better person, or are you addicted to filling in every microsecond with something else?
If the goal is that important, you’ll find a way to have a healthy relationship with your devices. The new world demands that you make firmer decisions. Having email only on the desktop could be your new way to get back the time you desperately need for yourself, for your family, and for living.
Will this get you to where you want to go?
A simple and powerful question. How much of what you’re doing is going to get you to where you want to go? Every distraction will seem like a great opportunity if you don’t know where you’re going. Great work - purposeful work - changes everything. One well-placed call session, one great appointment, and one great intention can change a day, a week, a month and a career. It’s time to get hungry again.
Quality of Life
Quality is not quantity. The greatest skill is to want what you already have. The rewards wouldn’t be as sweet if life didn’t have risk. The secret is to define the moments that matter to you and build more of those.
Power of Mentors
Mentors provide great clarity. They force you to talk your way to success by challenging your beliefs and actions. In each area of your life, find the best person in the world at that one thing. Learn from them, watch them, and be mentored by them. If you want to be fit, follow the fittest person you know. If you want to be exceptional in business, find the best business role model. If you want the best relationship, follow those you know with incredible relationships.
When you go in search of the pearls of wisdom, only then can you bring the best bits back to nurture your environment.
Only take advice from people who are more successful than you.
There are plenty of advice givers, but only a few who’ve become true masters at what they do. They may mean well, but the advice can be counterintuitive if they don’t know where you’re going and they’ve never been there before.
Customer experience = Brand = Pricing power.
If you want to win more listings more often, you must commit. An open home callback isn’t something you rush through on a Monday so you can complete your vendor reports. They’re a chance to build great customer relationships and learn more about the customer so you can serve them in new and better ways. A market appraisal is not about giving the seller a price; it’s about uncovering the needs, desires, fears, frustrations, roadblocks and next steps with the customer. When you build rapport, you can rapidly speed them to market. Understand the customer and you’ll build a pipeline that produces. Just give prices and you’ll have a career based on hoping you get lucky. Luck is not a formula.
The three reasons 'Why You'.
Don’t wait for the customer to figure it out. Don’t lace your presentation subtly, hoping the customer will figure it out. Tell them, tell them again, and tell them again. Over and over. Make it specific, make it clear, make it connect. If the customer can’t see the difference, they won’t pay the difference.
Don’t make it up, either. Ask every vendor within 36 hours of signing the agency agreement why they made the decision to use me. What would it be if you had to put it down to one thing? Was there anything we said that made the difference as to why you chose us?
Take the answers to those questions and formulate your recipe for success. Customers love my energy, the way I think, and the systems I provide — a clear pathway to success. When you know what makes you great in the eyes of the customer, you can scale your success. You just do more of that; it’s that simple.
Speed to market.
When you’re disciplined, you follow systems that guarantee success. The greatest challenge is a dirty database. Clean databases, with a real strategy on capturing your leads and categorising your customers and the content you send them, change the momentum in bringing customers to market. Here are a few short meetings that change the game:
Monday - Review your buyer hitlist. Buyers are the biggest category in your database. Look for the trigger events. I think just sold, need to buy by a certain date, purchased a pest and building inspection, made an offer or bid at auction. Every time a trigger event happens, move the buyer from the buyer category to the buyer hitlist. Review that list every Monday for 15 minutes. Great buyers, with real intent and urgency, drive better prices for sellers.
Tuesday - Review potential sellers/market appraisals. Every market appraisal you do is a chance to build rapport, learn more about the customer, and define the next steps. Those next steps free the customer from their self-imposed limitations, objections and challenges. Simple, straightforward advice, from getting a property ready, finding something for a buyer, connecting them with a supplier - whatever it is, is about giving people reasons to do it now so they can justify buying and selling, regardless of the market conditions of the day.
Wednesday - Review existing listings. No property sells by luck. All great sales are by strategy. Get clear on your intent and what you do at each campaign stage to ensure you keep the sale on track. Think about the indicators of interest at each stage of the campaign. Enquiries, inspections, second appointments, pest and building inspection purchasers, contract requests, offers, auction registrations and bidding at auction. All are great indicators of progress. No offer = no decision. No, what to do next? Manage campaigns logically and call it, so your emotions don’t take over and leave sellers unsold due to poor strategic advice.
40:40
Every time you list a four-bedroom home, commit to the discipline of calling 20 three-bedroom homeowners to encourage them to upgrade. Perfect buyer-seller work. Then call 20 four-bedroom home owners to let them know of the new listing. It allows them to come to market and benefit from the new buyer pool.
Do it again when the property sells. Simple work and big results are all produced by being disciplined in your approach.
Be purposeful in your actions.
Life is a series of choices. No sooner have you made a choice, and another one turns up. Having a rock-solid vision, a burning desire to be better, a vision that inspires, one that drives you every day, is the secret to long-term performance.
A few small disciplines done daily lead to the compound effect. You run 1000km a year by running 3km per day. Do it daily.
'I get to' over 'I have to'.
The most powerful mindset of all. Bring focus to your discipline: I get to do this. I get to make calls. I get to book appointments.
People can tell when you love what you do.
Now’s the time to commit to what’s important, have discipline in your approach, and go on performing at the highest level.
