The Bucket List For Realtors

My wife and I watched a movie last night that was heart warming and certainly thought provoking. It was the movie the “Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I can’t believe I had not watched this sooner. It was great and I highly recommend it. After spending the evening with my wife, my thoughts this morning turn to business and the movie made me wonder if enough people maintained a Bucket List about their business.

With the tough times many are facing in real estate it would make sense to have such a list. If you knew you were going to be out of business in 6 months or less, what would you do to save it?

Well I know the movie was a heck of a lot more serious and we’re not talking life or death…I hope…but we are talking about your livelihood and economic survival.

With so many looking to the government to assist with some form of financial experimentation, what would you do if you knew the end was rapidly approaching on your business?

In the movie writing a Bucket List was easy, it was making the decision to actually follow through that took some effort. So if you are facing the end and don’t want to go down without a fight, why not take a moment and write down all those things you could do before your go?

Let’s assume you have already run the gamut of most of the five stages, but it appears that that one called denial is turning out to be a mother#$^#@ for all too many. Yes, you may be out of the real estate business very soon. Yes, your economic future is in peril. So what are you going to do about it? Die off or make something happen?

Here’s what I imagine a Realtor’s bucket list should look like. Feel free to comment and add your own items. Hopefully someone somewhere will read this and realize that there are some things they can do…BEFORE it’s too late.

A Bucket List For Realtors:

1. Build a blog and work hard at creating a vision of where you want it to go and who you want reading and responding to it. If you do this one step you will be ahead of over 85% of the other agents in your market. (Oh and don’t use an ActiveRain blog…do your own THINK WHO YOUR AUDIENCE NEEDS TO BE!)

2. Seek out a niche and work it hard. Don’t try to sell everything to everyone. We choose to focus solely on distressed properties. Huge market, very few agents know how to work it, going to be ongoing…all indications forecast continued profitability. Ever wonder why some doctors are cardiologists or podiatrists? Or why some attorneys are criminal defense attorneys while others work the probate niche? It’s called specialization. there’s a reason why defense attorneys don’t litigate divorces. Do you know who you should be targeting?

3. Learn Google Adwords. ‘Nuff said! Do it now and separate yourself from other agents who won’t be here in 5 or 6 months. I’m not talking about just opening an account and spending money with nothing in return. LEARN Google Adwords. Learn from EXPERTS (that means you have to see out an expert and when in doubt…like I said above..don’t seek advice from those on Active Rain)

4. Stop Taking Or Seeking Listings! If you are not well versed with the knowledge of the immutable laws of supply and demand economics then learn this as well. Simply put there is enough inventory in most markets to last for what seems like forever. besides you only get paid when you SELL something. Sure some agents can afford to sit on a listing for 4-6 months hoping it will eventually sell.

But if you are preparing your own Bucket List then you are terminable. You need an infusion NOW! Not 5 months from now. If you were starving would you want to plant and grow some wheat or would you rather go to the store and get some bread? If you need to make money NOW then you have to do those things that will get you paid the fastest.

5. Go On A Buyer Safari. Seek out the big game. Trust me they are out there and they are out there in numbers. They just aren’t calling YOU! Why not, see 1-3 above and you’ll understand that they don’t know you’re out there! This isn’t a Sadie Hawkins dance. If you’re sitting around waiting for the pretty girls to ask you to dance you’re in for a lot of lonely nights. You have to take the dance to them.

Buyers don’t jump into the boat but if you know how to lure them, you’ll be overloaded soon enough. (sorry about all the analogies but I gotta do something to make some of you realize that you need to DO SOMETHING)

6. Always Remember Einstein! One of Einstein’s famous quotes (or at least it was attributed to him) was…”The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. How insane do you think most agents are if measured by Einstein’s quantifying statement? It’s time to change what you have been doing. I didn’t vote for Obama, and I really don’t like his politics.

However I agreed with one of his messages completely. It’s Time For Change. Remember this is a bucket List. What more motivation do you need to change something if you only have a short time left?

7. Move Some Eggs Into Other Baskets. Diversify, Diversify. Diversify! Say it like a Sunday morning hymnal. Preach it and take it to heart. Your stock portfolio’s are tanking. Your real estate holdings are underwater. Your commission level is abyssmal. Do you really want to leave yourself with no options?

We told you yesterday how we are diversifying. We are making GREAT money from our various sources of revenue. Most agents don’t have one. we have several. My wife’s Fort Lauderdale Real Estate business is flourishing, our real estate investing is steady as always, and now our online stores that we are opening weekly are taking off to the point of bring in $1,500 – $3,500 PER DAY and as we add more stores it can only go up.

I never imagined that we would be selling Train Horns or Nascar Scanner or Samurai Swords or half a dozen other products online.  Our Samurai Swords and Nascar sites are still under development and we already get calls for pre-orders. What other sources of revenue do you presently have?

8. Hey Dawg…You Are Never Too Old To Learn New Tricks.  I had a frat brother in college who was absolutely brilliant. The guy was a double major in Civil Engineering and Molecular Biology. When I say brilliant I mean he would hardly ever study and then when it was time to take a test he would sit down for an hour or two the day before and be absolutely ready.

This was in the ancient BC days (before computers). In the first semester of his senior year, he met one of our incoming pledges who was pretty good at the guitar. So enthused that he just din’t learn how to play, but added a THIRD major of Music to his already full schedule and to this day is the only person I have ever met with 3 college degrees.

I asked him one day what in the world made him add music to his workload and he told me with a straight face that “he was in love with learning new things”. 5 years later I saw him at homecoming…with his band.

This was a long item on our Bucket List but it’s maybe one of the most important. Do you feel that you can’t learn something new? Are you afraid that short sales don’t work? Do you think that short sales are too hard? Have you been listening to too many naysayers who don’t have two nickels to rub together? Stop!

I hate being bound by the chains of conventional wisdom. i was always that wiseass that questioned authority. Man am I glad that I did. You’re going to be dead to the business in 6 months. Isn’t it time you maybe changed what you are doing and take up the guitar? Learn how to proficiently execute short sales.

Learn how you can actually make a very good living. You still have time and God knows there is TREMENDOUS opportunity. And let’s underscore this again with the fact that by being proficient you will separate from the pack.

9.  Are You Still Hanging Out With Eddie Haskell? Remember Eddie Haskell from Leave It To Beaver (man I’m getting old)?  Eddie was that really rotten kid who kept getting Wally and the Beav into trouble and then was a kiss ass to Ward and June. It’s seriously time to cut bait with the Eddie Haskell’s in your life.

I mean seriously…if those around you can not add positively to your remaining days then why have them in your life? I am tired of hearing people whine and bitch and lament about how tough the market is then do nothing about it.

Here’s a few questions that I want you to begin asking the Eddie’s in your life.

a.  Hey Eddie, what specifically did you do today to generate income?
b. Hey Eddie, how long have you been doing that with no results?
c. Hey Eddie, then why are you still doing it that way?
d. Hey Eddie, when is your next closing?
e. hey Eddie, ever close a short sale?
f. Hey Eddie, what’s the URL of your blog?
g. Hey Eddie, do you have another job?

When you are asking these questions make sure to ask them just like the Beav would in that really RCA dog, head-tilting manner. It will be funny when they get flustered becasue they realize the answers to those questions make them seem like morons. Is this who you want to be spending your last days with? wouldn’t you want to surround yourself with people who can help you and bring you joy?

10. This one is my absolute favorite…Have Some Fun!! It’s 10:30 in the morning and I am literally sitting in my underwear writing this (now keep that picture in your head all day and tell me it won’t make you laugh). As I sit here I know quite a few things.

a. Over 3,000 people will read this today and only a few will act upon anything … but it is those few that will benefit that brings me joy.
b. The love of my life is showing a $2Million dollar waterfront property to a buyer who flew in becasue of one of her blog posts
c. We have already had $2,200.00 in sales from our various online stores today.
d. We received 2 contracts for short sales we were selling that will enable us to reap about $50k in profit in about 14 days
e. I just made reservations for a really romantic Valentine’s day dinner at the most exclusive French restaurant in town
f. I know that I am loved and Blessed
g. I know that I have enough time to come from behind and win the Madden NFL game I am playing on my Playstation
h. I know I am going to grind some serious Pad Thai for lunch today
i. and I know I’m taking the rest of the day off becasue we only work 10-15 hours per week anymore.
j. And I know if you stop taking the cards that have been dealt to you by a so-called bad economy and take action on your own Bucket List…you’ll have a lot of fun as well!

It’s up to you. Are you going to be another Realtor who bites the dust in a few months or are you actually going to DO SOMETHING? The choice, as it has been, is yours.

We here at Real Estate Radio USA are about making money and having fun. That’s it. You may have noticed that is pretty much all we write about anymore. We stopped doing radio except for specific interviews becasue if an activity isn’t making us money..then we simply ain’t doing it.

I don’t care about the BS surrounding the real estate industry anymore. Let someone else talk about Lawrence Yun and the NAR and have opinions on the market and the mortgage meltodowns and the sub-prime crisis and the federal bailouts.

We’re about getting paid and having fun! I’d love for you to joins us. You will find that burying conventional wisdom is absolutely freeing!

Make your own Bucket List and find the joy in your life. DO IT TODAY!!

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