Running Late

As usual, we were running late this morning. I was in charge of motivating and driving the seventeen year old to school. We were doing okay until I asked him to help me bring down trash and recycles for pickup. I had been at the Inman Conference last week, and had left money for groceries with the 23 year old, and I think all they ate was pizza. I was handing out the stack of empty pizza boxes, not really paying attention. I assumed he would bring them down to the curb, but I came back out, and he was paused there looking at the stack, as if expecting the trash fairy to fly in and bring them down.

Guess what? No trash fairy, no housework fairy, no listings fairy. You can visualize the pizza boxes being down by the curb all you want, you can put a picture on your vision board of the pizza boxes being at the curb, but you have to be prepared to trot them down yourself, if that is the way the solution is given to you.

I do believe in the power of realigning your attitude, which will allow you to see solutions that you couldn’t before. It begins and ends in your mind. Maybe you have seen this basketball video. Try to observe and very carefully count the number of passes between the players in white.

I saw this video twice before I saw the gorilla walk across the floor, as did probably 2/3 of the people in the room with me. I have had gorillas stroll through my life before, but I was amazed that I was that oblivious to this one. So you have to ask yourself- where is the next gorilla coming from?

One big gorilla that not all real estate agents have accepted is the transition from a printed MLS book to information being readily available online. Believe it or not, there are still people who can’t make their way easily around the online MLS system, and who can’t appreciate the ramifications of this. Another gorilla is that the buyers and sellers themselves are so firmly planted online, and this isn’t appreciated by everyone, despite the often tossed-around figure of 85% of buyers starting their home search online.

Gorillas. Surprisingly, someone high up in our office came to me after Inman Connect and REBar Camp- which strongly focused on application of technology by real estate agents (in response to consumer use, no less!)- and said that he had read things about Facebook that implied that it was not worth the effort.  This person gave me the impression that he didn’t want me to be using this tool. Sorry, but I can see the gorilla coming, at least in this case, and personally, I find Twitter and Facebook an easy and pleasant way to make real connections.

So what’s the secret? Look around, be open. If your buyers are coming to you with printed-out MLS listings, you are not the magic portal for information. How can you be of value to them? If your sellers are more savvy about listings that have sold in the neighborhood than you are, what can you give to them? Better- what can you give to them than no one else can?

I may not believe in fairies, but there are gorillas everywhere.

Real estate or social media questions? Find me
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