new outlook on being successful

Books are incredible! In November, Gary Keller was speaking at a large National Mortgage conference. His message was great. He was giving the Lender community some great information on how to survive this market. Following the event I asked him if he had any information I could use to send to some of my coaching clients. He suggested I read the book "Outlier" by Malcolm Gladwell. It basically talks about the study of extremely successful people. The star sports players, top orchestra players, etc.

I just got into the book and there is a whole new perspective on why some are more successful than others. The piece that really blew me away was regarding the study of time practicing. We have all heard the saying "Practice makes Perfect" and in the book they found that some of the most successful people in their field just practice more than those that are just good. In fact, Mozart was playing music for 20 years before his masterpiece was created.

The study of violin players really helped me look at success in a new light. They did a study of Violin players. They put them in 3 groups. The most successful in one group, the semi-successful in another and the violinist that were not good at all and should be moving on to something else. What they found is the most successful violinist practiced quite a bit more than the middle group and the middle group practiced quite a bit more than the lower group. To summarize...the best players in the study had practiced over 10,000 hours compared to the next closest group that only practiced 8,000 hours and the lowest group had around 4,000 hours of practice.

Bobby Fischer became a Chessmaster only with over 10,000 hours of playing (practicing) chess. Very interesting. If you think about successful agents vs agents that don't make it, and look at their lead generation methods. The most successful agents lead generate almost 3 hours every day. If you apply the 10,000 hour rule to that, and you lead generate 3 hours every day, 5 days a week it will take you 12 years to get 10,000 hours of lead generation in. Can you imagine what your business would look like if you did 3 hours of lead generation for 12 years? Which also lends itself to people who are struggling just to put in 1 hour of lead generation every day. If you take that path it will take you 38 years. Now just understand that I am talking about doing real estate at the Bobby Fischer or Mozart level of success.

Sure puts a different perspective on how important it is to focus on the right things.....EVERY day! practice, practice, practice.

Is NOW a good time to sell?

Many clients ask if they should wait till April (or so) to put their home on the market. Actually, my advice is quite different. No matter what market you are in, the Fall and Spring months are one of the BEST times to be on the market.

Real Estate is everything they taught us in High School Economics....it is "supply" and "demand". The reason people think they should wait is because they heard a lot of homes sell in the summer. Well, that is true. In fact, 50% of home sales in the US sell in the summer months. However, during the summer months there is more competition for those buyers.

What I suggest is to get your home on the market right away. Jan-Mar will be the months you will have the leasst amount of competition for the rest of the year. Many sellers sign 6 month contracts when they list their home. If they list in June and expire around Thanksgiving...the majority of sellers go ahead and take their home off the market. Those are the months that you have the least amount of sellers trying to take YOUR buyer.

Another way to look at it is this, in the summer there are a lot more buyers....but also a lot more homes for sale. In the beginning of the year there are fewer buyers....but they are typically more serious buyers (especially if there is snow and bad weather). Those buyers HAVE to move. So, even though you may get fewer lookers, the lookers out in the weather ar serious buyers. In fact, those serious buyers have fewer homes to chose from, so I would argue that sellers typically get a little more equity during the first months of the year.

If you would like further explanation on this, feel free to contact us at brad@kornteam.com