For many years, when the calendar rolled along to December I wrote my annual holiday letter to place in Christmas cards. It was a way of letting those close to me, yet far away, know what had happened in my life the previous year. The year I divorced, I stopped. I let people know what happened and have not penned a letter since. Why? Good question. I didn’t even realize it until I purchased the cards to send this year. At the time, I am sure I thought I had nothing good to share. In hindsight, the year I divorced was one of the most profitable in my business. I both traveled to Japan for a friend’s wedding and to Kenya for a three week safari. We opened a stand alone office for our real estate team in a trendy neighborhood. In many ways it was a great year. Yet my context for that year was I had failed. Failed at one of the biggest endeavors of my life. I was unable to see what was good.

This is my challenge to you. Go back through 2011, month by month, and write down what went right. It doesn’t have to be huge. It could be you took your niece or nephew to the zoo and spent an entire day playing with them. It could be you bought the ingredients and made Thai basil rolls better than your favorite restaurant. It could be that you still have an active real estate license! I have had more than one agent share with me the struggle of 2011. I get it. Yet, you are still here.

No need to share this in a holiday card, unless you want to. This is your gift to yourself. Have some compassion for your year. If some nasty junk comes up, just push it to the side. We will deal with putting that in the past next week. Now it is just goodness and love. What did you like about 2011? What went well? What was great?

I’d love to hear what you discovered! Remember, it’s your business, it’s your life. You get to choose how it goes! (And the story you tell about it!)

August 2011? What? That cannot be right. Where is May and June? Did some of my posts get lost in cyberspace? Or have I been away that long?

Where have “I” been?

I have to admit I love Fairy Tales. I guess I am just a sucker for a happy ending and a handsome prince. Sitting here right now I feel like a combination of Sleeping Beauty and the evil Fairy Queen Malificent. I have awoken exuberant and ready to take on the world. I have also been asleep for a very long time. I have to be straight with myself. It wasn’t an evil Queen that put a curse on me. It was me.

   There aren’t many jobs in a real estate office. Most people are agents and act as independent contractors. For nearly the past three years I had one of the jobs. I still believe the best job there. On the front lines, making a difference in the agents businesses. Then the demands on the job began to change. I zigged when it zagged. My crazy entrepreneurial self was reporting to not one boss, but three. I worked harder. I got sick. I found myself suffocating and slowly falling into a scarcity conversation. I cursed myself and then I was downsized. (My husband likes to lovingly say sh*t-canned.)

Amazing how the Universe provides whatever you ask of it.

Of course I couldn’t see that at first. I was in too deep a sleep. I refused to acknowledge anything. All I knew was that I was not going to make a decision until my head was clear. That took a month and a half, an amazing weekend at the Partnership Explorations course in LA, a week in Mexico at a 5 Star resort with two of my gay boyfriends, more sleep than I have had since I graduated college and me admitting I was burned out.

I love to look good, and not being authentic has done very little to serve me. I was burned out. I have been working my ass off since college (which for me is a BA at age 20). Did I mention I had a day planner in High School? Overachiever, south of Buffalo work ethic. Faster is not fast enough, burned out and that is OK. The Universe let me sleep and then kissed me. It whispered wake up and remember who you are for the world.

Did you miss me?

I’m back. Stronger, centered, and vital. At the start of 2011 I picked three words to live into, instead of making a New Year’s resolution. They are taped to my laptop and I must admit that many times I looked at them and thought “yeah right.” Now I read them and think “hell yeah, that’s right!” They say- 2011 is Vibrant, Restorative and Effortless. It is.

If you are stuck, start by getting straight with yourself. Ask what you really want, even if you are afraid to have it. Then give yourself a break (possibly even physically.) Forgive yourself and then move forward. I recently watched the movie Limitless and this quote has stuck with me.

“I don’t have visions of grandeur, I have a recipe for grandeur.” -Eddie Morra

Yum! No pills required. Care to eat with me?

I read a good bit. Usually 2-3 business books a month, with some supernatural fiction thrown in for fun. I was looking in particular for a book by some Landmark Education graduates called the Three Laws of Performance. They did not have it in stock. So I continued to wander around the business section. I walked out with two titles. Getting Things Done by David Allen and Cash in Flash (fast money in slow times) by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. I am always looking for books that can help my clients and myself move business forward. I started to devour Cash in a Flash first and from there the idea for this blog post sprung.

There are many different names for that voice in our head. In Keller Williams BOLD program it is the drunk monkey. In some of the Landmark seminars it is referred to as sewage, morass, or noise. No matter what you name it, it is always there. (If you just heard “there is no voice inside my head”, that is the voice.) In Cash in a Flash, it is referred to as the Inner Whiner. OK, so that revelation is nothing new. What I did find so interesting in this particular book, are the exercises to deal with it. Up to this point, all the advice I had heard was to just notice it. Notice it as access to creating something else. Notice it, tell it thanks for sharing and go on with empowering your life. Notice it and then counteract it with a positive affirmation. So basically Notice it.

In Cash in a Flash, they suggest I play with it. So I have been all week. I was already clear that the voice is not “me”. Now I am really clear and also I have control over it. I can turn the volume up so it is screaming. I can turn it down so low I can barely hear it. My favorite is making it sound like different people or characters, like Mickey Mouse, Scarlett O’Hara or the chiwawa from the old Taco Bell commercials. I already have the practice of when the voice tells me something disempowering about money, that I counteract it with the affirmation -  money comes to me easily and frequently.  Now I am also laughing. Hearing the chiwawa say “you better not plan that trip to the beach, how will you pay your HOA dues? What if the market falls even more?” is ridiculous. It is ridiculous! We make our own market.

Another aha for me from Cash in a Flash is that there is another voice. This voice they refer to as my Inner Winner. This voice comes from my heart. The intuition, the cheerleader, or the guidance beacon. It tends to be quieter, so turning down the Inner Whiner is a must to hear it. We say that a benefit of the Wisdom Course is that it quiets the noise so you can hear your heart sing. I am clear that my heart not only sings, it speaks just as much as the Whiner. What is your heart saying? Which voice are you listening to? I challenge you to play with the voices and see what happens. I’d love it if you would share in the comments below. I wish you a lifetime of prosperity. It is your business, remember you get to say how it goes! ( Or else one of the voices will! LOL)

Did any of these thoughts pop into your head? She is more educated, he is younger/older, she is better looking, he has more training, she is smarter, he has family connections, etc. Consider for a moment that none of these things have anything to do with how productive this person is.

Now, if you were to take on this person’s work habits, how would you appear? What work habits? Let us take a look at how to define work habits. When you start your day, are there certain habits you have before beginning to really work? Do you need a cup of coffee? Do you need to read your e-mail? Do you worry about the day ahead and play out scenarios that may never come to pass? Do you need to read the news? These are all work habits. Do you schedule or time block your day? Do you follow your own schedule. or do you let circumstances pull you out? Let’s go back to the previous question. If you were to take on this highly productive person’s work habits, how would you appear? Yes, like them. This may seem overly simple, but it is the whole idea behind shadowing and models.

In real estate we often hear there is no need to reinvent the wheel. In Gary Keller’s book  The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, he tells us that people have come before us. Take what they have already proved works. At Keller Williams Intown Atlanta, the #1 individual agent for 2010 is Anna Kilinski. It would be very easy to say that Anna is successful because she is young and attractive and her father is the Regional Director. That would also be unfair. Anna is successful, in part, because of her work habits. She recently shared with our Real Estate Rescue group that she works Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. The key word here is WORKS. She does not do personal things during the day. No picking up the dry cleaning, no grocery shopping, no anything that does not directly have to do with real estate. That is a work habit.

Work habits are just a piece of the Productivity puzzle and I challenge you to look at yours this week. What could be tweaked? What is missing that if it were there would make a difference in your income? I wish you a very productive month. Remember, this is your business, you get to say how it goes.

We are currently in the perfect storm of affordability. If you are not into economics, you may have never heard of the Affordability Index. This particular metric measures how affordable it is to buy a home. It takes the median price of a home in the United States and then takes the percentage of the mean family income it would take to make a mortgage payment. The average over the past 40 years is 21.9%. The highest, which translates into the least affordable, was back in 1981 at 36%. At the end of  2010 we were at 14%.

The above chart is courtesy of NAR via Gary Keller’s 2011 Vision Speech at KW Family Reunion.

What this means for both you and your clients is BUY NOW. If they have the ability, it is time to not only help them get off the fence, but give them a big shove. Times like these are fleeting and in my humble opinion, this is the time we will be referring back to in the future as the time we should have bought. Don’t should all over yourself! What about you? What is your wealth building plan? As your business increases, what better way to stand behind your product than to be the customer! The tightening up of the rental market means cash flow for landlords. You build equity as someone else pays your mortgage. Buy low and sell high. I don’t mean sell immediately, even though there are Flip opportunities, I mean buy low now and hold. Prices will not stay low forever and in the future they will be higher. (The future when your renters have paid a big chunk of your mortgage.)

So the next time someone asks you “How’s the market?” Tell them the truth: it has never been a better time to buy a home in the last 40 years. It is also a great time to be a Realtor. Remember, it is your life and your business; you get to say how it goes! Wishing you continued prosperity.

We are living in the digital age. Things are changing so quickly it is hard to keep up. When you hear computer lead generation wizards like Ben Kinney speak, it is easy to feel lost in space. I consider myself pretty “with it”, yet one trip to Family Reunion has left my head spinning. Is my Facebook page properly placed? Do I really need to start using Twitter? What are track-back and ping-backs? Is my blog out of date, because it is not video? If I go to video, I need to lose some weight! (Which leads to a whole other set of concerns) Now we have all these new amazing systems- E-edge, Listingbook, Voicepad, RealValuator, Fusion and the list goes on. Yet, at the mastermind I heard that agent say she has gone back to selling real estate the way her grandmother did. Granny did not drop Twitter bombs.

This has me thinking about 1950 and internet lead generation. What exactly are we trying to do with SEO optimization, Facebook marketing and YouTube videos of the neighborhoods we work in? The same thing Granny did to sell real estate- build relationships. Behind every Lead on our Eedge account, there is a living, breathing human who registered on our site. Sometimes that human does not even realize there is another human (you) on the other end who wants to help. It is our job to connect. How did Granny connect? She walked the neighborhood and introduced herself. She became involved in community events. She mailed out her prized banana bread recipe. Guess what? That still works. For you this may mean getting an internet lead and “friending” them on Facebook, sponsoring your daughters soccer team, and mailing a recipe for a killer margarita for Cinco de Mayo. No matter what year it is, 1950 or 2011, there is nothing more effective than in person. So walk the neighborhood and introduce yourself! When you are as recognizable as the US Postal Service, you will own your farm area.

Technology is here to enhance our life and our business. If it is not your strength, then leverage it out. I am sure there is a high school kid that would love to update your Fan Page on Facebook for you, for pennies on the dollar. That will free you up to knock on some doors, shake some hands and kiss some babies! Remember when it was said the internet would take the place of Realtors? Wrong! People still sell houses to people, not computers! Get out there and meet people. After that, let me know how your business has exploded! On Facebook (Michelle Mechem) or better yet over a cup of coffee- in person! It’s your business, you get to choose how it goes!

It’s hard to believe I am about to make my eighth trip to Family Reunion. Every year I leave amazed at how much KW has to offer. It can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you are new to the real estate convention game. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years that have made a huge difference.

Tip one: Find out who from your office is going . Have a meeting before and make a mobile phone/text contact list. Download the course list and see who planning on going to what. There is no way you will be able to go to every class you want to go to, so share the wealth by tag teaming. Plan a meeting for the week after and have a debriefing.

Tip two:  Make an action plan list. The most important part of any education is implementing the great ideas when you get home. A few years ago I started doing this and it works like a charm. After registration, take the Family Reunion 2011 book and flip to the back. (Bring a notebook, in case they have gone completely green/digital this year.) At the top of the last three Notes pages, write Action Plan or Golden Nuggets. Each breakout session will have either a section for notes or a handout. These back pages are only for the best ideas. You may take several pages of notes, but the few things that are most important go on these back pages too. When you get home you will have a summary of only the best ideas and plans, vs fighting through the book trying to find them.

Tip Three: Talk to strangers. The days you are at Family Reunion are unique. Make sure an agent that is not coming is at home watching over your business. This week, other agents are your clients. Meet as many as you can. When you spill out into the vast dining hall for lunch, don’t sit with more than one person you know. Your agent referral business is built here. I purchased a KW denim jacket at reunion back in 2004. The left pockets are for my business cards and the right for ones given to me. The top pocket has a pen to jot down a quick reminder of what we spoke of. If the woman next to you says she has a Great Dane, then the back of her card should say Great Dane. When you get home these cards go into your Referral Agent 33 touch. The first touch is a personal note saying how much you enjoyed meeting her and hearing about her Great Dane, and by the way, keeps you in mind for any clients she has moving to Atlanta. You will also make friends. There are still agents that I get together with at both Mega Camp and Reunion every year that I met at previous events.

Tip four: Have some fish tacos with that Napa Chardonnay. There is nothing worse than being too hung over to go to the class that would have made the biggest difference in your career. Gary Keller loves to talk bright and early, because he know those are the people who are really there to expand their business. Also, take precautions to stay well. This has been a crazy bad flu season. I take Airborne every morning and night. Wash your hands, squirt sanitizer, do what ever keeps the bugs at bay. You will be shaking hands and hugging on people from all over North America and you don’t need to take that strain of the black plague back with you.

Tip five: Check out the location. Leave yourself some time to explore Anaheim. See what a real California Contemporary looks like, (you do like houses, don’t you? I hear Mickey Mouse lives next door.)  Have a good meal, soak in the history, go to the beach and touch the Pacific.  Enjoy! Isn’t that what it’s really all about?

It’s not too late to register. Join me and make a difference in your business!

10- Overhaul your database. Is everyone in there categorized as A, B, or C? If so, are there any B’s that graduated to A in 2010 or A’s who have fallen off the referral wagon and need a down grade? Are all the contacts clean? Clean is defined as you have their name, address, phone number and e-mail address. If there is something missing, it’s time for another call or e-mail.

9- Call other agents and personally invite them to an event or class. (Seize the Market, Cocktails & Listings, Business Planning)

8- Get your tax information together. What would 2011 be like if you didn’t file an extension for once?

7- Upgrade your social network. So you are the Facebook King or Queen, but what about your sphere that doesn’t do Facebook? Many people find LinkedIn more business focused. This is a great time to make sure you are not missing anyone that may be hiding there.

6- Finish your Growth Plan. Make sure you have at least one thing for each month of the year that will help you grow professionally and personally. Is there a designation you want to gain? Are there books you want to read?

5- Write a blog and link it to your website. (One of my personal favorites!)

4- Go into Agent Mountain and download a few Gary Keller interviews. Then you’ll have something to listen to on your I-Pod as you attempt to run off all the French Toast you ate this week.

3- Nail down your 33 touch plan and pop-by’s for the year. Do your “A” Clients get Valentine Candy, Flags on the 4th of July and a Pumpkin Carving kit in October, or something else?

2- Watch a top agent’s listing presentation on KW Connect. There are a ton of presentations between the KWU Mastery classes and the Agents in Action series.

1- Be Grateful. You are warm and safe. Be grateful you are still an active Realtor that is making their own market- no matter what the media says. Be grateful Spring is right around the corner!

Make the best of whatever situation you are in. It’s your business. You get to choose how it goes!

The gift is actually for the New Year. Something to live into. It is called a Creation Exercise. I have to give kudos to my friends at Landmark Education, for the beginning of this. I know I picked a version of it up in a seminar there. The first time we did it in “public” was at a Keller Williams Holiday party about four years ago and the results were amazing.

You will need two pieces of paper. On the first piece of paper, write down something you really want in 2011. It could be for business or personal. Examples could be: I want to make $150,000, I want to meet the person who will be my partner in life, I want to lose 50 lbs. It can be anything, and it must be something you really want.

On the second piece of paper, I want you to write down the chatter in your head about the thing you really want. Usually it will be all the reasons why you can’t have it or it won’t work. Write down everything. For example, if you picked losing 50 lbs, your reasons may be 1-I’d have to stop drinking beer and I love beer. 2-I have to exercise and I can’t spend money on a gym membership and it’s too cold to walk outside. 3-I’ve lost weight before and I always gain it back, so why bother. 4- Diet food tastes bad, so I won’t stick with it. 5-I don’t have time for all the food preparation and exercise anyway. etc….

Here is the fun part. Take the second list with all of the Reasons why you can’t have it and burn it. That’s right, throw it in the fireplace, burn it over the Weber grill, light it up with a Christmas candle, whatever it takes turn it into ash and be Un-Reasonable in 2011. Look at the paper with what you want on it. Close your eyes and feel what it will be like when you have it and say ” I am unreasonable and the 50 lbs are gone” or “I am unreasonable and my partner in life is here” or “I am unreasonable and I earned $150,000.”  You fill in the blank.

When we did this Creation Exercise at the KW Holiday party, things began to happen within weeks. One agent bought her first investment property, another met the man of her dreams, another got pregnant and started a family. These were all things on their Want list that moved to the Have list.

Give yourself the gift of being Un-Reasonable and have the business and the life you want. I wish you unbridled prosperity in the coming year. I wish you health, wealth, love and joy. It is your life. Remember, you get to say how it goes! Happy New Year!

You too are the CEO of your business. So are you acting like one? When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself ‘what a CEO would do today?’ If you don’t know the answer, look at the reference book. I am referring to The Millionaire Real Estate agent. One of the most amazing things in the book is almost at the end. The Millionaire Energy Plan. On page 308 there is a little 5 Step list of what you should  do before 11AM every day.

1. Meditate and Pray–Spiritual Energy. This could look any way you like. You may have a religious practice. For me it means reading one page out of The Secret, one page out of Notes From the Universe, one meditation out of Three Magic Words. I also write in a Gratitude journal.

2. Exercise and Eat- Physical Energy. I know agents that run 5 miles with their dog every morning. For me it is a walk or even stretching. Breakfast does not have to be elaborate and you DO have time to eat something along with that Starbuck’s.

3. Hug, Kiss and Laugh- Emotional Energy. If you don’t have a partner or kids to love on, get an animal. I still hug and kiss my cat Flip Flop every morning, even after my recent marriage. Laughter is a great benefit of working in real estate. If you can’t find the humor in daily life, you need to come to Keller Williams!

4. Plan and Calendar- Mental Energy. Looking at your day gives you a road map into your future.

5. Lead Generate- Oh no! Not that! Yes. If you do this, you will have appointments to calendar in step 4.

If you do all of the above by 11AM the rest of your day will take care of itself.

The second insight Jill had during our appointment was momentum. She just had a closing and is meeting a buyer today. The buyer is coming from out of state, has cash and wants to be out of the snowy Michigan by New Year’s Eve.  We talked about how energy feeds energy. This momentum is like a snow ball. Right now it may seem small, but if she stays in action, more happens. The ball rolls down hill and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The best time to write a contract is right after you have written another one or had a closing. I am not saying you should not celebrate your victories, but what better way to celebrate than to have more victories!

If you find your potential clients can not meet during the holidays, no problem. Schedule them in January now. The script can be as easy as : Great, I too am busy this time of year. Why don’t we get together the first week of January. Would the 6th or 7th work better for you? Schedule out your January and the rest of the year will take care of itself. Form that ball and start rolling! It’s your business, CEO, and you get to choose how it goes! Wishing you a year of prosperity.