"You have too many options, you need kill your options if you want to succeed",Thats what Mike Ferry told me back in 1999, when I first saw him at the Action workshop in Washington DC.
At that time I was very confused because my focus was too wide, I had to narrow it down if I wanted to hit my main target (otherwise quitting was an option).
Many times we believe that having options is a good thing, but the reality is, having options actually leave room for failure. Its when we tell ourselves: "It's ok, if this doesn't work I can still do _______________".
Success has no tolerance for failure. Failure is simply not on the options list. Subsequently, if we have many options, naturally we make room for failure. I had to kill some of my options in order to reach my real goals. Many times the issue is, we don't really know what we want, what is driving us for real, what is our Why. And until we understand our why, we aren't really going anywhere. The Why has the power to lead us to success, and if its not a strong why, it will easily lead us to failure.
After the action workshop, I am driving back to NJ from DC, contemplating my options and what Mike told me to do. Thinking revealed that many of my options were not even achievable at the time. I needed a lot more money for many of these "options". These were aspirations and things I wanted to experience in the future. The problem with being young (I was 25 at that time) is having too many things we wish to experience (eating the cake and having it too). That was my challenge. So I had to kill some options, and I did. I decided to make some solid commitments and focus on one area, one purpose, one mission in mind. 12 months later I tripled my production. That simple focused activity made me the #1 producer in my office and top 3 in my county at the time.
In real estate, unfortunately, most salespeople fail. Actually the ratio is 75% of all new licensees quit the business in their first 6 months. For the last 10 years I have been trying to understand why the failure ratio is so high and I realized that those individuals who naturally poses high tolerance for rejection, will become top producers, while most people who fail, simply don't have the capacity to take rejection in a positive way.
In recent days, I actually see these ratios are getting worse, with the Millennial generation now entering our industry, many of them (not all, but the majority for sure) don't have much tolerance, they quit with the first sign of adversity and their tolerance for rejection is slim to non. I trained many Millennials in the last few years. From 100 students attending a workshop or bootcamp, about 80 will never take any action, from the 20 left, around 10 will try for a few months and then quit, and around 8-10 will stay the course and finally about 4-5 will become producers (15+ transactions a year).
By the way, this has nothing to do with real estate in particular or any other specific industry. It is something we must do in all walks of life. When we get engaged, when we get married, when we open a business, when we decide to start a career, a particular sport, having a child, adopting a pet, etc. Making a commitment means many times, setting aside other aspirations.
For the new licensees I will make the following recommendation:
If what you do today has no real meaning for you, if you are not on purpose, if you are not driven by a strong why, you will never be able to reach your full potential and will always find yourself hitting a wall, and quitting or searching other "options". Real estate sales is not easy for most people. Taking rejection in a positive way is a huge part of reaching high levels of production. If your tolerance level for rejection is low, the odds are working against you and unfortunately most of you will not make it (unless you learn to overcome rejection, even if its painful at the beginning).
So how can someone find their purpose, their why? How can someone be able to accept rejection and keep on going?
The answer is, your desire to achieve a specific goal, a purpose, a mission, MUST be stronger than the pain of rejection. There are many techniques, books, seminars, courses, etc that you can try. The truth is, some people never get to find their true purpose in life, and sometimes it takes a long time to find it. But don't worry, you don't have to find your "life purpose" in order to have a purpose.
What you can do is simply learn how to set some meaningful goals, things you wish to do, have or become. Try following this simple formula:
Write a list of 5-10 things you wish to have, do, or be.
Break the list into top 3
Narrow it down even more and make a decision on the 1, most important goal you wish to achieve.
Write down why you want to achieve it. (Understanding why it is important to you, is important).
Write a simple action plan (things to do) that will get you there.
Get in action starting immediately.
Find someone (outside of yourself or your immediate family) to hold you accountable and make sure you actually do your plan).
Good luck :)