Shortcuts to Success (and Failure)
Thu, Apr 4, 2013
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” -- Beverly Sills
“Traditional science is all about finding shortcuts.” -- Rudy Rucker
When Red Riding Hood took a shortcut through the woods to get to Grandma’s house, it was both good and bad. Good because it got her there faster. Bad because it led her straight to the big bad wolf. Bad because horrific disaster ensued. Good because it all ended well thanks to the loyal and fearless woodcutter. So I guess you could say that shortcuts are both good and bad, which isn’t all that helpful, really, when you’re trying to run your business the most efficient way possible. How are you supposed to know whether things will end up one way or the other when it seems to be based largely on luck? If the big bad wolf had slept in that day, Red’s shortcut wouldn’t have presented any trouble at all and we’d conclude shortcuts were good. If, on the other hand, it was the woodcutter who had slept in, that tale would have ended in gory disaster and we’d have to reach a very different conclusion about shortcuts. To help you out here, the key to figuring out this apparent conundrum has to do with the second word in the second quote above: “science”. If Red had applied the discipline of science to her journey, she would have known the odds of meeting the wolf and taken a different shortcut, or gone the long way around. Without the foresight that a scientific approach would have given her, she was effectively rolling the dice … and was pretty lucky that the woodcutter was around. In our business, I’m a big proponent of scientifically tested shortcuts – it’s what my real estate coaching is all about. Let me give you an example. Think about the classified ads I train you to run for your listings. You’ll recall that I counsel you to NOT describe your listings with who-cares/eliminating “features” (such as 2-bedroom, new closet organizers), but instead to infuse your ads with emotional benefits that help your buyers imagine themselves living in this home … i.e. words like “fireplace”, “trees”, “private yard”, “quiet, family neighbourhood”. The reason these words are so powerful is that they are already full of emotional meaning. Since you don’t have the big bucks that Coke and Nike do, it’s impossible for you to spend enough money to brand yourself or the homes that you’re trying to sell. Even if you’re a top agent, the money you spend in your marketplace is like spitting in the ocean. So since you don’t have enough money to make words mean something, you have to “borrow” that power by leveraging words that already have the meaning you want to convey. When you say “fireplace”, you are saying far more than “the part of a chimney that opens into a room and in which fuel is burned” (which is the literal dictionary definition of the word). Instead, you’re saying the deeper, psychological meaning: warmth, family, cozy, community, relax, safe … all these great images that you’re able to evoke because the word “fireplace” is a powerful “shortcut” to all these good things. I have scientifically selected these shortcut words by testing and re-testing them in the laboratory of my own real estate business that I operated for over twenty years. Use them, because they will get you to Grandma’s house safely and happily. However, there’s a bad kind of shortcut that is responsible for failed businesses, failed marriages, unhappy people and lost fortunes in our business that you must be aware of. These shortcuts are based largely on the fatal premise of “assumption”. Well, assumption is part of it. The other part is laziness. Perhaps “laziness” is too harsh. I think the real problem is the fact that “you don’t know what you don’t know”, and that agents make the same, foolish, dead-ending mistakes in their careers because they just don’t know any better. They don’t know any better and they don’t really believe that a better way exists. They stop “thinking” and just keep “doing” because they don’t know how to do anything else. Here’s an example of that. How many times have you been on a listing presentation and found yourself up against a seller who simply would not give you the listing unless you agreed to discount your commission. Why did you agree to that when you knew you were worth more? Well, you did it because you didn’t know a way around the situation. What you felt was that if you didn’t discount yourself, you wouldn’t get the listing. After all, every business has “sales” sometimes. That’s the way retailers push through product, right? Stores are always advertising that they have the lowest price in order to get people to come buy from them. Well, here’s the mistake you’ve made: you took a shortcut. You decided (because you didn’t know any better) that you needed to base your business model on a discount retail store, borrowing their strategies and following their rules. Instead of trying to come up with a better strategy that would allow you to list at full commission and to always get paid well for your services, you took a shortcut and settled for this lowest of comparisons. Well, let me tell you some important things: 1) price is only an issue in the absence of value; 2) you are not a dollar store; 3) you made this decision NOT because it was the best or only decision, but because you didn’t know any better or you didn’t really believe there was a different way. There is a better way. It’s time you understood that what you don’t know CAN hurt you … IS hurting you every single day. The shortcuts you’re taking in your understanding of the way your business works are responsible for stealing your real chance of success, and as your real estate coach, I can show you how to do MUCH better. I have three more SuperConferences coming up this year (see below). I have a lot of incredibly valuable and scientifically proven shortcuts to success I can teach you, and my 3-day SuperConference is hands down the best way to deliver these to you. Nathan Clark of Rhode Island invested in finding that better way and it really paid out for him as he explains here: “Before learning from Craig, we were doing about $250k to $300k in commissions. Last year we were at just about $700k and have jumped to $1.2 million this year in commissions, and we continue to grow. Because of the market in the last four years, the average sale price now is about $150,000 but our share on commissions has gone up 200%. We are able to take 7% commissions and charge $500 up front where most agents out there are just lowering their prices to earn the business. We’re doubling what we’re making on the properties. That’s really what Craig’s system teaches us — how to offer so many systems that by the time we’re meeting with the customer, they’re already presold on us and they’re willing to pay us more than anybody else.” P.S. You can test drive my ideas and systems absolutely free by signing up for Free Weekly Training which includes live weekly webinars, a monthly newsletter and priority invitations to free half day training events. This Free Weekly training will expose you to inexpensive and highly effective methods of lead generation (with no cold calling) -- what I call “Reverse Prospecting”, where qualified prospects actually hunt you down rather than the other way around, and then how to follow these leads through to maximum GCI via proprietary lead conversion and prospect presentation systems. This is the easiest way for you to find out with no risk or obligation what my system is all about and how it can help you profitably grow your real estate business and vastly improve your quality of life. JOIN MY FREE WEEKLY TRAINING PROGRAM HERE