How you think matters. How you think in the beginning really matters. Having learned this early in my career when I faced an uncertain future brought on by the late 1980s shift in the real estate market, I vowed to make thinking my first action step. And I was immensely rewarded. One small example of how thinking first changed my actions was in how I started answering my telephone. I had the ambition of building a large real estate business but had only two local real estate offices and no immediate prospects for more. Nonetheless, I began answering my phone with the line “national office.” I know this may have sounded brazen, but it was amazing how this simple act created incredible positive momentum, enthusiasm, and credibility for my long-term goals. There is no question that it contributed to our success. At about the same time, by thinking first, we also saw the future need for and created right up front some basic operating infrastructures that could handle not hundreds, but tens of thousands of agents. In fact, many of those systems are still in place today! Because we could envision a big future for our company and took the appropriate measures on the front end, our vision was like a twentylane highway enabling the business to leap forward at a rapid pace with no need for massive restructuring or major reinventing. Thinking first can have these kinds of effects in your life and your business. It is that powerful.
Let’s go back for just a second to our mountain-climbing analogy. If becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Agent is like climbing Mount Everest, then let’s consider the first stage, Think a Million, as Base Camp. I can’t emphasize enough that the quality of the preparations you make here will largely determine how high you will be able to climb. How well you prepare can also save you from some unwanted and unintended consequences that could lead to real setbacks. Many top sales producers report that they did not really begin to think strategically until they were already well on their way. The mistakes they made had consequences and, in some cases, really held them back for a time. An agent I consulted with several years ago can attest to the dangers of starting your climb without first pausing to think big. Early in her career, she had created a compensation plan for her assistant in which the bonuses.
increased dramatically as production grew. Eventually, the agent found herself in a cul-de-sac where her sales volume kept increasing, as well as her cost of sales, but her net profits had unreasonably plateaued. In the end, she admitted that she had never imagined she would reach a place where her approach to a scaled compensation concept would become a liability. As a result, she was faced with an unpleasant “take-back” situation, in which she had to reduce compensation and risk losing a valued staff member. There is no doubt: To put ourselves in the best possible growth position, we must Think a Million from the start!
Think a Million is an attempt to help you capture not only the mind-set and attitude of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but also the focus. Through experience top agents have learned to differentiate between what is truly important, what can be delegated, and what can simply be ignored. One of the biggest challenges we have (and I continually face this, too) is overcoming the incredible urge to leapfrog the Work to Learn phase and go straight to the Work to Earn phase. But resist we must. Have you ever thought about how many years medical students must work as interns and residents before being allowed to practice their trade independently? Besides laboring through four years of undergraduate studies and another four of medical school, doctors must typically practice as an intern for a year and then serve a minimum of two years as a resident. It is staggering to think about, but the Work to Learn process for an average surgeon can last as long as twelve years. Medical students invest a lot of money and time before they Work to Earn. The real estate agent on the other hand . . . Well, we tend to pay for our training on a credit card and expect to start earning income immediately.