Neil Schwartz: I wanted to start with … Write this down. Listings are the name of the game. Anybody ever hear that before? Listings are the name of the game. He or she that takes the most listings wins in this marketplace. It is the twelfth of January. At the end of today, there will only be fifty more Mondays left in your year. Time is starting to run out, which means what?
Audience: Christmas is coming!
Neil Schwartz: Christmas is coming. It’s on its way. I wrote down here, what changes do I have to make in the activities that I’m doing right now to go on at least one listing appointment per week. Now, think about this, okay? I know that some of you are not going on one listing appointment a week yet. Yet the truth is that it shouldn’t be that way if you’re talking to 175 to 225 people on every given week. Why shouldn’t you be going on at least one listing appointment a week?
I believe the reason you don’t is because you don’t think you can. More than anything else, because you don’t think you can. I wrote down here, the key to taking listings is self-confidence and the key to self-confidence is knowledge. Write that down. The key to self-confidence is knowledge.
Knowledge of the scripts, what to say and how to say it. Knowledge of the client’s motivation, learning the scripts and using the pre-qualifying script and asking all of the questions to determine what the motivation of the client is. Also product knowledge, which means what?
Audience: Preview property.
Neil Schwartz: Preview property. Woo! We have one winner over here. Preview property. Previewing all the properties in the area. Those are some of the things, some of the activities that we need to be working on over the next few weeks to really fulfill a great first quarter.
Think about this. If you set two appointments a week for forty weeks, that would be eighty appointments for the next forty weeks, right? Because no one works fifty-two weeks, correct?
Audience: Correct.
Neil Schwartz: We’re only going to plan on working the next forty work weeks, okay, because we’re going to take a vacation. We’re going to do some professional education. We’re going to take some time off. There’s going to be some Holidays in there. We’re going to work forty work weeks.
If you go on eighty appointments, that should yield you how many listings? At poor or average efficiencies, it should give you at least eighty listings. If you go on eighty listings with average efficiencies, you should end up with forty of those properties. If you had forty of those properties and half of those sell, you’d have twenty transactions. If you had twenty transactions at ten thousand dollars a transaction, you’d end up earning about two hundred thousand dollars in the next forty weeks.
Now, would that be good or bad? Hello?
Audience: Good.
Neil Schwartz: Good. Yeah, but wait a minute Neil, I can’t do that. The drunk monkey gets on our back. It stops us. It pushes us away. There’s no way. I mean, hey, Neil, I talked to two hundred people in the last three weeks and I didn’t set two appointments, so therefore the system must not…… what?
Audience: Work.
Neil Schwartz: Work. The key to this system is overtime. Write that down. The key to this system is overtime. The second key to this system is your desire. I can teach you the skills. The system can teach you what to say and how to say it. But we cannot teach you the desire.
What I want you to do is in the goal setting process. Draw a line on a sheet of paper. This is what you’re going to work on: Where am I today? We need a baseline. Describe where you live physically. Describe the relationship that you’re in. Are you married? Are you single? Do you have kids?
What’s the relationship you have with your family? Is it good and loving and do you like going home at night or not? I wrote down here: what’s the money in the bank? Be honest with this. What do you actually have? When you start looking it up and you start writing it down on paper and you get a real accounting of where you are, both in your family and your finances, you start getting to understand what needs to be done. You create this baseline.
Money in the bank, your investments, what debt you have. Write down what kind of car you drive. Write down what kind of income you’re projecting for 2015. Do you go to church, mosque or a synagogue? Do you do it on a regular basis?
How many books have you read this year? How many books did you read last year? What’s your goal with the books that you want to read this year? Remember I said last week, the difference in your life 5 years from now is going to be due to the books you’ve read and the people you hang out with. Do you guys get me on that?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: That’s in the next five years. The books you’ve read or will read and the people you hang out with. Then in terms of contribution, the donation of time, giving back to your church or synagogue or mosque, and the donation of money. It’s not enough just to give of your time. You need to give money. It’s not enough to give money. You need to give some of your time. All right.
Then what I want you to do is I want you to turn the page on that and I’d like you to write down the list of your goals. I’d like you to write down the things you would like to have. Write down five things you would like to have. Maybe a new gold Rolex watch. Maybe a new BMW. I happen to like that new Porsche Panamera. It’s a cool car. All right. I struck a chord out there.
Write down five things you would like to have. Take the time. This is your business plan. This is your plan. I know we’ve talked about this year in and year out. We’ve been doing business plans with you for years. Some of you do a great job of lining these things out and some of you just write nothing down or you just put a word down.
Take some time. Think about it because this is the desire for you to go to the next level. Remember, I can teach a skill but I can’t teach a desire. Why do you want to go to the next level? When you know your why, the how is easy.
Take some time and write this down. I wrote down here, the next category is five things I’d like to do. Maybe you want to go on a trip. Maybe you want to take your family on a trip. Maybe you want to send your mom and dad on a trip. Maybe you want to send your spouse or significant other away on a trip. I don’t know. Maybe you want to send your kids away on a trip and you stay home.
Maybe you want to send your kids to the school of their choice. Their college is expensive. When I was educated, you had to have a high school diploma. That was really important. Very few of my friends went on to college. Today, I think the equivalent to that is a college education. I don’t think having a high school diploma is enough. I think the kids today, just to be at the baseline, have to have some kind of college education.
Well going to a JC isn’t that expensive. Going to a state school is getting more and more expensive every year. Going to an ivy league school is going to cost you 65 to 70 thousand dollars a year for four years after taxes. If you say to your kids, you can go to Stanford, you can go to Brown, you can go to Harvard, you can go to Yale, and the kids get into those schools, wouldn’t that be great?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Wouldn’t that be awesome if your kids got their SATs, they did their courses, they took all the different things that needed to be done, and they got into that school, and they ran home and they said, “Hey, mom. Hey, dad. Here I am. I got into this school. I need a check for 60 thousand dollars.” How would you feel if you didn’t have it and you had promised it? Pretty bad, huh? Sometimes that’s just the motivation enough that we need.
The next thing I wrote down here is places I’d like to go because maybe you have all the things you want, maybe you’re doing all the things that you want to do but there’s places you want to go. Maybe you want to fly first class to a World Cup soccer game. Maybe you want to take your family on a Disney cruise.
By the way, if you take your family on a Disney cruise, you can only go if you sign up for the concierge level, okay? Just write that down. Don’t ask, okay? Because there’s the Disney cruise with the concierge level and then there’s everything else. Just know that. They have these gorgeous one-bedroom suites that are connecting so you can actually set it up where you can have three one-bedroom suites and your own veranda. I’m telling you, ladies and gentlemen, make that a goal. Take the kids out on a Disney cruise, but only the concierge level.
I wrote down here, maybe you want to go to New York City first class for a week. If you want to go, go. If you’re going to do this, go when they have the series, okay? You fly in to New York during the summer and you find out when the Mets are playing the Yankees or the Yankees are playing the Mets, and you stay someplace in Manhattan at some great hotel. You fly in business class. You stay at this great hotel. You go to these phenomenal restaurants.
You get on the subway and you go with all the other New Yorkers in the world, and some are wearing Mets caps and some are wearing Yankees caps. I’m telling you, it’s an amazing day. It’s an amazing day. No fights. Everybody’s nice. Try that. It’s exciting.
Then I wrote down five things I would like to do to changing my life. I wrote down five things. Stop smoking. Stop procrastinating. Lose fifteen pounds. In my case, lose twenty-five pounds. Most of you think this was just one big taco. It’s not true. These were many little tacos over time.
What do you want to change? What do you want to change about yourself this year, 2015, that would be a positive change that you could tackle? Pick one thing and change it. Change it for the positive. Then on the next page, you need to write down as part of this business plan, what are the top five things you learned in 2014?
It doesn’t have to be business. It can be personal. I wrote down: what accomplishments are you most proud of in 2014? What are the things that you’re the most proud of? Because what we’re going to do is we’re going to go back and review this. You’re going to complete these forms. You’re going to send them in to your coach.
We’re going to review these with you and we’re going to remind you of the things that you’re proud of and the things that you want to change and the things that you want to do to grow your business, not just from a business perspective but also from a financial perspective, from a personal perspective. We want to do it in all the different areas.
I wrote down here: what action did you take or fail to take that you’re the least proudest of? Write it down. Sometimes we learn the most by our failures, the things we either did and were a mistake or didn’t do and was a mistake that we didn’t do it.
I wrote down here: what are your biggest challenges? What were your biggest challenges in 2014? What do you believe is going to be your biggest challenge in 2015? Then the last question here is: what do you not want to repeat in 2015 from 2014? What’s the thing that “Oh, oh, oh, oh. No way, no way, no way. I’m not doing that again.”? Okay. What’s the one thing that you want to make sure that you don’t repeat there?
Then the next two, I’ll just have you do on your own. What were my distractions and rank them in order, and then the last page is what corrective actions do I need to take to be more focused?
I wrote down here: whatever you believe with conviction starts to become your reality. Write that down. Whatever you absolutely believe with conviction becomes your reality, whether it’s true or not.
Now, I wrote down here also: also beliefs are learned. All beliefs are learned. Now, why do I know that? Because you were not born coming out of the womb thinking that for sale by owners were bad people. I guarantee you, you didn’t think that going to a for sale by owner, when you were coming out of the womb, but you were convinced that for sale by owners somehow, you shouldn’t stop there because they were going to hurt you.
Therefore, all beliefs what?
Audience: Learned.
Neil Schwartz: Learned. We learn these things. We learn that calling on the phone is scary. But out of the womb, we didn’t know calling on the phone is scary. We only learned that along the way. Do you guys get this?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Do you get what’s going on? If you think in terms of where you came from, if all the things that we believe are things that we learned from our moms and dads and aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and siblings and strangers along the way, they’re all learned.
I wrote down here: the most harmful beliefs are self-limiting beliefs. The most harmful beliefs that we can have are self-limiting beliefs. These are the beliefs about you and your potential, you and what’s possible for you and that’s what’s holding you back. You know what the interesting part is? Most of those beliefs aren’t true, are they?
Because I’m a girl, I can’t succeed. Because I’m a young man, I can’t succeed. Because I’m old, I can’t succeed. Because I come from this ethnic background, I can’t succeed. Because I came from that ethnic background, I can’t succeed. Because my English isn’t so good, I can’t succeed.
Here’s my personal one which I overcame: because I can’t spell, I don’t even care. Someone told me … This bothered me a long time ago that I can’t spell. I never took the time. It’s not that I can’t spell. I never took the time to figure it out. Someone told me a long time ago that you can hire people that can spell. Don’t worry about it.
But you get the things that hold us back. They can hold us back in communication. Because I can’t spell, here’s what’s an interesting thing for me, is that because I can’t spell some words, I choose another word when I’m communicating that I can spell. A word that kind of means the same thing. But I can speak at a pretty high level, but I can’t spell at a high level, so when I write, I write at a low level. Do you guys get that?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: If I was concerned about that, I would be working at a pretty low level because you need to communicate both verbally and you need to communicate from a written level. That’s a self-limiting belief that I had at some point along the way that got turned around, corrected and erased. It’s not even an issue. Do you guys get that?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Most of our beliefs are not true. I wrote down here: the only reason you don’t reach your potential is the story you’re telling yourself as to why you can’t reach it. We all tell ourselves a story. “I’m not that good on the phones.” “I don’t know my scripts and dialogues.” “I can’t pronounce the name.”
I’ll give you guys a little secret. Don’t tell anybody. When you’re prospecting and you come across a name that you have difficulty pronouncing, a last name you have difficulty pronouncing, most of us skip over the name, right? Hello? Come on, tell the truth. Most of us skip over the name.
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Do you want to increase your business right now, today, the rest of the day? Call everyone whose name you can’t pronounce on that sheet of paper because no one’s talking to them. Do you get it?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: No one’s calling them. Go out, find yourself a list of people with very difficult Polish last names and start calling all those people because no one is calling them. Here’s a hint for today. All right. You will all get a listing and a sale this week because of that idea.
The only reason we don’t reach our potential is the story you’re telling yourself as to why you can’t reach it. I wrote down here: change your story, change the activities, change your life. Change your story, change the activities, change your life.
Bob and Diane and Bill and myself, this is our definition. A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear. Sound like me? Hello?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, and has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can become the person you’ve always known you can become. That’s our job. Every week, what’s my job? Tell you what you don’t want to hear. 5-5-10, do it now! Go, go, go, go, go! You don’t want to hear that anymore, do you? Hello?
Audience: Yes, we do.
Neil Schwartz: Yes, you do. You must see and hear what you don’t want to see and hear so you can become the person you know you can become. Write this down: I have too many options.
Many of us went to real estate school to be our own boss, right? Say yes.
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Okay. Well, here’s my suggestion. You went to real estate school so you could be your own boss. My suggestion is that you be one. Be your own boss. If you’re not doing your job … What’s your job? Come to the office one day a week, be involved in one of the blitzes one day a week, and the other four days be on the streets doing a 5-5-10 every single day. Work on your scripts, work on your dialogues, preview property, go see expireds, do it again tomorrow, right?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Is that your job?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: If you’re not doing your job, you should fire yourself. Get it? You’re the boss. You’re not doing your job. There’s the job. What should you do?
Audience: Fire ourselves.
Neil Schwartz: But no, what you do is you want us to be tougher on you. Here’s what happens. We get tough on you and say “Go do your job.” Then what do you do? You say, “I’m not doing that. What are you, nuts?” Yeah, but you said, you wanted to be better. Your reply, “I don’t care what I said. I’m not doing that.”
Question for 2015: How coachable am I? How coachable can I become? Wherever I am right now, okay, that’s where I am. How coachable can I become? I wrote down here: finally, in 2015, surrender to the job. This is our job.
I’ve said this many times before. Think about this. If your goal is to earn a hundred thousand dollars a year, that means you need to be earning 8300 dollars a month, okay? If your goal is to make two hundred thousand dollars a year, you need to be earning 16,600 dollars a month. Are you guys with me?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Now, let me ask you a question. You’re the boss. Many of us have had jobs before real estate, real jobs that paid a real paycheck. They gave us two thousand a month, three thousand a month, five thousand a month, right? Six thousand dollars a month, whatever you had. If that employer gave you six thousand dollars a month, how hard would they expect you to work?
Audience: Very hard.
Neil Schwartz: Pretty hard, right? Okay. If your goal is a hundred thousand dollars and they’re paying you 8300 dollars a month, they’re going to expect you to work pretty hard. I would assume they would expect you to show up on time. Fair enough?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Okay. I would expect that they have a job description. They would expect you to do the job on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, especially if they’re writing you a check every month for 8300 dollars. Are you guys with me?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Okay. Question 1 is: are you doing the job that your employer who was paying you three, four, five thousand dollars a month for? Are you doing the job at 8300 a month that that employer would continue to pay you for in the real estate business? Don’t answer yet. Think about it.
Now, let’s go one step further, because most of us don’t want a hundred thousand dollars. We want at least what? Two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand dollars means we’re going to get a paycheck of 16,600 dollars. If you paid somebody 16,600, would you expect them to do their job on a daily basis? Yes or no?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Would they have to show up on time? Yes or no?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: You would never let them go home.
Audience: That’s true.
Neil Schwartz: You’d never let them out the door if you were writing a 16,000 a month check. You would expect everything, and yet we have these two hundred thousand dollar goals and we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing that would earn us, should earn us, 16,000 dollars a month.
Then we’re mad at ourselves and you’re mad at me and you’re mad at your coach because you’re not earning two hundred thousand dollars a year, and it’s our fault. Well, ask yourselves this question before you do that, as you’re writing your goals down. Is what you do every day commensurate to the monthly goal that you have, whether it’s 16,000, whether it’s 8300?
How much is it a month if your goal is three hundred thousand? Thirty closed transactions at ten thousand dollars per closed transaction is three hundred thousand dollars. That means you’d be getting paid 25,000 dollars a month.
Are you doing the activities on a daily, weekly, monthly basis equivalent to an employee who would be earning 25,000 dollars a month? Would you pay you 25,000 a month for the work that you put out? Yes or no?
Audience: Yes.
Neil Schwartz: Yes. I have three people. Good job. I wrote down here: surrender to this job. Surrender to what you want to do. Be coachable. Do the activities that you’ve lined out. Be focused and be committed. I wrote down here: today matters. If I did what I was supposed to do on a daily, weekly basis, would that affect my financial life positively or negatively?
Audience: Positively.
Neil Schwartz: Positively, if I did what I was supposed to be doing today, so therefore today matters.
