I do not believe people are good at “cutting back” in a poor economy, I do believe that people expect their money to do more. They are working harder to make it, they expect us to do the same! As the housing market improves, the realtors who realize this are the ones who are surpassing the client’s expectations and giving them more value for the dollar. Exceeding a client’s expectation is completely voluntary, there is no formula, or book, or class it is just a decision one needs to make. The important thing to remember is not to stop. Today’s excellence is tomorrow’s norm. 

Gareth Beale is the Marketing Director for Choice Title LLC, you can respond here, or contact him directly Gareth@choicetitle.com

 http://twitter.com/gareth_beale

 His weekly Blog can be found here.

One of them was, “No matter how you feel, smile, it’ll work its way in.” . The strange thing is, she was absolutely right. Attitude is everything, not just a big part or an important part, EVERYTHING.

You can work long hours, read more books and get more designations, but if your attitude is negative, well, it rubs off on folks. Your attitude can have an impact on life in ways you may not have even considered. Adjusting your attitude may sound simple, but it’s not necessarily easy.

You may think that you’re being “realistic”, but are you just letting doubt cloud your goals? Sometimes it can even push you into being such a pessimist, even other pessimists will avoid you! Perhaps you are “over cautious” (read fearful) and don’t want to make mistakes, but if you don’t make any mistakes are you really doing anything? Have you really put yourself out there?

Which brings us to indecision….. If you can’t decide where to start or what direction to head in, aren’t you really just letting yourself follow someone else’s decisions, good or bad? Try polishing your decision making skills with deciding quickly what you’ll order for lunch. Then when you go shopping, just get it, without going to ten stores to compare prices and get on with your day. Keep practicing and you’ll get more comfortable and confident, even with the big decisions.

Worrying and complaining tend to be a by-product of attitude in need of adjustment. Worry only about those things that you can do something about. Some things are out of your hands and just need to run their course. Complaining often sounds like whining, but if you simply are honest about your feelings and thoughts there is often a solution at hand. Especially if you come to the conversation with one in mind, focus on the solution not the problem. It can make the world a better place.

Indifference is probably the harshest and most insidious of all attitude killers. Many times we have all heard someone utter “Who cares?” or “Whatever!”, that not only dismisses our feelings or needs, but sometimes our very existence. This causes you to disengage from life itself, nothing to contribute, no solutions or progress. To quote Edmond Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

So put a smile on your face and go conquer the world….it awaits you with wonderful possibility!

Want to be Successful in 2011, DON’T SET GOALS

The dreaded Goal Setting Blog and assignment, My marketing reps hate it. They hate trying to be specific, they hate justifying time spent in the office, when they could be out drumming up business, they hate giving themselves rewards for meeting goals, they hate sitting still to be honest. Come to think of it, I’m not fond of it either. I always feel like setting a goal is like selling myself short, what if I can do more. If I write down, “go out and get 10 contracts by Friday”, I could get it done, but what if there were 15 out there and I just left 5 on the table, who’d I help there? I see articles where Goals should be attainable, “Who says?” is there a real negative to not reaching every goal? Don’t tell me to reach for the sky when there are foot steps on the moon, the sky isn’t enough for me (I totally stole that from someone else). The other problem is Goals seem to Fade, looking at last years goals January, and February were strong, in March we waned a little, by April Goals got replaced with mere suggestions and by May we were flying by the seat of our pants. Is it any wonder that by the end of the year we are all just reacting to what is happing around us? If Goals for an entire year are going to work we have to shorten the year to 6 months instead of 12, but I don’t even know who to talk to about that.

I think part of the problem is we have complicated Goal Setting, Heck there is an entire goal setting industry out there, if you google “Goal Setting 2011” the first 3 pages are companies who want to charge you to set your own goals. What if one of your goals was to save money, the first thing you would have to do is fire you newly hired official goal setter, and now you’re back to square one. I had an employee a few years back who had to set a goal AND reward for everything. He would write it down the day before for the next day, “January 3, 2011 Goal # 1 – Get out of bed; Reward – say nice things to yourself in the mirror “, Geesh, I can only imagine the look on my Grandfather’s face if you even suggested something like that.

A quick search through the World Wide Web shows that to reach your Goals you need to be S.M.A.R.T (Because goals should be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Something that starts with R, and Trackable) also you need a M.A.P. to reach your goals (I couldn’t find what MAP stands for, It cost $299). It would seem to me that in today’s feel good, P.C. , need to be Fluffy and Happy Right Now society, goals are as individual as each of us, just like lovely little snow flakes, unique, special and wonderful. Blah Blah, gag me. Look, it takes work, it takes planning, and to be successful at anything you need be able to say, “Get up stupid, you picked the wrong Lotto numbers again, let’s make something happen… today”. Unless of course you picked the right lotto numbers, then stay in bed, and think about what color your Maserati is going to be. And remember I saved you $299, I am partial to Red.

So we figured out Goals don’t work, they’re too complicated and even if we write them down, in 4 months we will have covered them in bills, and Calvin and Hobbs Comic strips about setting goals. On the other hand, we can’t just do nothing, and wait for NBC to announce that everyone gets to be successful this year. So what DOES work? What if we break down Goals? What if we allow them to change throughout the year? What if we don’t focus on getting to an end result but focus on the stops it takes to get there?

Consider Objectives

                Don’t take this the wrong way I do know people who make goals, write them down, and reach them, but for the most part these people are already driven, already organized and have experienced success with Goal Setting in the past. So if it works, by all means continue, this Blog is for the rest of us. The ones who dream more than execute. The ones who think a pile of papers on the corner of the desk is organized as long as it is stacked in according to the color of the paper. You know, NORMAL PEOPLE.

            For the most part I feel Goals tend to 1: Limit, 2: Set people up for failure, 3: They tend to be what a person thinks they want, not what they want to be. Let’s take for an example the most obtuse goal possible. “GOAL: To be a good person” alright now how do you do that? Well good people do good things so in theory you would set yourself an attainable amount of goodness and a  measurable amount of time to do it. So this week I will do 7 good things (one per day on average, don’t want to reach too high) and will schedule a time each day (3 hours should be plenty) to find people in need of a good person. That seems like an awful lot of work to be good, why not “JUST BE” a good person. Someone needs help, help them (without expecting something in return).  Even worse, what if you don’t find 7 people who need a dose of your Goodness, you just failed your first goal of 2011, and you’re not even a good person. How depressing is that? Hang it up fella, how long before 2012?

            Let’s not use the term Goal, besides if we go back to the road map they wanted $299 for, isn’t a map just a series of stops and intersections that form a route and get you (in theory) from where you are to where you think you want to be. So let’s break each route down into stops or objectives.  Objectives are easily changed, If your Goal is head to Best Buy to get that 50” Samsumg LED HD TV for $1099 that you didn’t get on Christmas day, but on the way the radio says that same TV is at Cohn’s for $999, I would think you would make a U-turn and save the $100, but in turn would be failing your goal. (Just an example, I’m not sure how much the TV is at either store). Or another one, and more specific, “ I want to lose 22 pounds by February 2, 2011 so I can be skinny in Cozumel”, Is this a SMART Goal?(Ignore the health issues of attempting to shed the equivalent of a 18 month old in 37 days) It seems to be specific enough, it is measureable, some might think it is attainable, I am sure it is whatever the R stands for in SMART, and tracking comes to .5945945 pounds lost each day which is 4.1621215 pounds in a week. Well what if I only lose 3 pounds this week, and then only 3 pounds next week, well at that point I only have 2 weeks left and still far from my goal weight loss. Forget it, give me a Quarter Pound hamburger with ice cream on top, and a Budweiser. How about my Objective for January is to stop drinking soft drinks, or to walk the neighborhood 4 time a week, or to actually imitate Tony Horton on the P90X dvd’s and not just using them as coasters. I have no idea if I will lose 20 pounds, but I will be healthier, I won’t have failed my goal and I may even be third of the way to “That EXTREME body I always wanted” (according to Tony Horton anyway).

            It is important to remember that Objectives should turn into a way of life, if an objective is to always end the week by clearing off my desk on Fridays, after some time it will just be habit to clean off the desk, and no longer an Objective. Also I believe Objectives should be quarterly, that way you are forced to update them, by definition Objectives are short term anyway. And while a list of 15 Annual Goals will look daunting, 15 small objectives will be much easier to accomplish and you will be surprised at the positive effects of just changing a few small objectives. There is even an app for it (crazy right), for the droid and Iphone. Search Objective Tapper and put it into play.

Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize

            I am the biggest proponent of priorities (Now a lot of times, what is important to me is not important to anyone else). But because you can’t fail an Objective they don’t expire either. So if something important comes up. Move it to the top of the list. I have a day planner that I carry wherever I go. And it is completely empty, not a stitch of wording in the entire thing. Not even a doodle, what is in it is a sticky pad. And whenever I have something to do I write it on a sticky and stick it to the inside cover. Then at various times I re-evaluate the importance of the sticky. Some get tossed because they are done, some get moved to the top of the stack. I am looking at the bottom one now, apparently get references for daycare wasn’t that important because my kids have been in that daycare for over a year. The Top Sticky now says write Blog and clean out day planner.

Gareth Beale is the Marketing Director for Choice Title LLC, you can respond here, or contact him directly Gareth@choicetitle.com

 http://twitter.com/gareth_beale

 His weekly Blog can be found here.

            Between 2007 and 2008 LAR membership showed a 10% reduction in membership, between 2008 and 2009 a 7% reduction in membership was recorded, and as of October LAR membership has seen a 2% loss in it’s rank and file*. So what does that mean, well if you’re a realtor who is just waiting around for the market “To Turn”, absolutely nothing. But if you’re a Professional Expert Realtor who is willing to take the time to gain knowledge, who isn’t afraid to get back to basics while still looking toward new ways to give better service, than you must be feeling pretty good about 2011, because there is less competition and more opportunity this year than in the last few years. For Lenders the challenge is different, how to stay competitive with unknown changes come April (or maybe not),  and for the rest of us in the real estate industry the goal looks like doing more with less. The good news is Louisiana is showing growth (gradual, but growth still the same) in employment, consumer confidence is increasing and if I was one of those people who tried to forecast where to work in the real estate industry, Louisiana would be one of those places that showed the most promise.

            So you ask, “If I work in the real estate industry, how do I take advantage of 2011?”, Well over the next few weeks we will outline what to do, where to go, who to know and how to make it all work together to make 2011 a successful year for all of us. Welcome to the second decade of the new Millennium, one thing is for sure it will be different than the last. 

*Sourced from National Association of Realtors

Gareth Beale is the Marketing Director for Choice Title LLC, you can respond here, or contact him directly Gareth@choicetitle.com

 http://twitter.com/gareth_beale

 His weekly Blog can be found here.

Don’t Let Negative Attitude Block You from Your Success

Originally Written By Ryan Lowe 02/02/2010

Blatantly Stolen By Gareth Beale 03/25/2010 (with permission)                                                 

The other night I was reminded by a close friend of mine why I decided to write the book “Get Off Your Attitude.”  She had mentioned that she thinks that most people let their negative attitudes block them from their successes in life. It could be any type of success; it could be in friendships, marriage or their career. We discussed several possible reasons for this, and the ones that really hit home to me are your past, your current situation and the influence of your circle of friends. The reason why these hit home to me is because they are areas in which I have personally struggled. Please note that I am writing these blogs and the book because I have know how it feels it how these areas can drain you and keep your from your success.  Our past is something that always reminds us of where we have been, and too often we let it dictate our present and our future. This is a habit that I think we have all struggled with at some point in our lives, and some of us have never learned how to let go of the parts of our past that haunt us. We simply must learn to let it go.  No one on this earth can change it, rewrite it or relive it. We must accept that it is over. The one thing you can’t do is forget the lesson.  There is beauty in every lesson of our past, and is the most important aspect of our past. Have you ever noticed that when we first choose not to see the lesson, that it just keeps coming back at us until we do?

Your Past

I firmly believe that one of the most powerful things we can do to discover these lessons in life is to journal.  I write in my journal every day. I write down the good, bad, and the ugly. I write it down and move on. This is one way that can help you know that you are moving on and that you are a student of life. Whether your current situation is good or bad, always remember that it will change. We all seem to think that the current situation is forever, but it is important to realize that it is only for a season. This is true whether you are in a bad relationship, a bad job, or in a bad financial situation.

Your Current Situation

One of the things you can do to get into a better current situation — it doesn’t matter what it is, how bad it seems, or how long you’ve been in it — is to have a game plan to make it better. You also must have goals. Your goals and game plan will keep you on track to a better situation. One the things I have learned is that you can’t change this overnight, but you can work on it a little bit daily and take it one day at a time. This will put you in control and it will definitely help you to develop a better attitude. The people you are surrounding yourself with will dictate your future. I remember growing up and my mom and dad always saying things like, “birds of a feather flock together,” or my favorite is: “You lay down with dogs and you will get fleas.” I never really understood it until I was older and I must admit I didn’t listen to them. I thought I could hang out with anyone and I could keep on moving towards my goals in life. Take it from me, it does not work that way. You must surround yourself with people that are on the same playing field you are on. If you are looking to live a great life and you are looking to better yourself, you must.  I remember going to one of my first motivational seminars at a young age and the speaker said, “If there is someone in your life that consistently stresses you out, get rid of them.” I did exactly what he said and it worked. I focused on others that could lift me during tough time. Remember also that you don’t want to be the person that they want to get rid of, and so make sure you bring value to your relationship to them. The way you can do that is to be positive with them and be truthful when it comes to helping each other.

 Your Friends

One of things you can do is write down the top five people you surround yourself with.  Ask yourself, are they bringing a positive effect and bringing joy to your life and are you doing the same for them? Also, you must ask yourself, “Are these individuals people that you can trust and are they people you wan to help achieve success their own lives?” This will be one of the most important things you do to help yourself achieve and maintain positive attitude.

Keep in mind that these three areas are only a few that I decided to write about in this blog. There are more that I will discuss in future blogs and in the book.  I strongly welcome your feedback and I ask you to please let me know if this has helped you and if you have any suggestions on how to work on these areas and make them better. I love to hear how people have gotten of their attitude. Also, please feel free to share this blog with any of your friends who you think will benefit from its message. I truly want help others reach their dreams and goals in life with a positive attitude.