Rates………. Who gives a damn?

Rates……….?Who gives a damn? Rates, rates, RATES, rates. Who gives a Damn! I’ll tell you who. The people who don’t know anything other than going to their office every day by about 10 am, getting their coffee, maybe they bought it on the way (Starbucks of course) looking at a few files, usually very few, go to lunch, drink more coffee, waste more time doing something useless and go home to watch some stupid game on TV. GROW up. Become an adult, and I don’t care how old you are. You piss me off when you act that way.

In a video I did the other day, I noted that when I was watching a Darren Hardy video, he mentioned that he had not watched TV since 1980. I was stupefied, flabbergasted, and then unbelievably impressed. This is a guy who has a house on the west coast of the US in San Diego and a condo in S. Florida and he’s 47 years old—bought the condo in one of the luxury buildings in South Beach. Do you know why? Because he works his ass off every day. He has a plan for every day and follows it.

You have a choice every day, every hour, every minute, and second to do something worthwhile or wasteful. And as I’ve been watching, even my friends keep writing about stupid rates.

Your excuse is one thing or another. Right now, it’s rates. While the real reason is you’re one lazy SOB.

You really don’t want to work, you want the world to give you business. Guess what, it doesn’t work that way. Think, make goals, create a plan, and get your ass out of the freaking office and go see people who do business. They all can refer business to you, but you need to go see them.

I’m sick and tired of being nice in my approach to what I do. I was told by one of my partners the other day that I need to tone down my recent rants, and that I can’t call people stupid or dumb. So, I asked myself this question. If you, whoever you are, do something stupid or dumb what am I supposed to do??Oh, be nice, motivate them, help them, and don’t point out their faults, you might hurt their feelings.

I was just reading a couple of pages from Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why”. I’ve mentioned in the past that almost every day I read a couple of pages, so I’ve read the book about 4 times now. Brilliant stuff. Today I read that if you know your Why and your gut tells you it is the right thing then go with your gut, no matter what anyone says. Look, I’m a nice guy when you meet me, but if you are doing the wrong thing, don’t you want me to tell you?

One of my clients called me the other day to ask me if he should join a BNI group. He’s a builder/remodeler and really wants to be just a builder. I suggested that it might be good for business, but did he have the time to find leads for others while he was looking for people to refer business to him? Was it the right use of his time? He concluded I think rightly so, that his time finding a building lot would be better than sitting in a BNI group. On the other hand, when refi’s were flowing like the water that flows over?Niagara Falls, being in a BNI group was a smart, in fact, very smart move.

As to the knowledge of what it takes to overcome this RATE thing, I have a couple of points of view that might not be so popular with the Starbucks crowd. Everybody has the same rates. And if you think that’s the reason you’re not doing business it’s definitely because you didn’t THINK. You might not remember, but when IBM started they had a motto that they built into every computer screen. It said THINK!

You didn’t think. You didn’t put yourself into a position that would allow you to do business regardless of rates. Rates don’t mean anything, and I repeat: because everybody has the same rates. Now you’re going to tell me that because people are smarter than ever before, they shop rates more than ever before. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I never dealt in that market? I dealt In a market that was 17% and did more business than anyone else. Do you know why? Because I had the loyalty of my brokers. Because I went to see them three maybe four times a week. I worked my very small butt off. But I wouldn’t stop, when the brokers told me they were doing business with someone else, I just told them I’d be back again. I wore them down. I charmed them to death. I brought them ideas that they were not getting from anyone else. I could not be beaten. I knew that they were saying the same thing to every other MLO and that those people would turn tail and slink away. I refused to be beaten.

You need to get out there and use the Ideas I have in my book to get people to do business with you.

Now let’s talk about technology. Are you ready for “AI” technology? Do you have any idea what it is? Do you have even a small smattering of what it is going to do to change the market? You better find out. You better be reading and talking to your IT people, because it will improve your ability to do business.

The MBA convention was 80-90 percent about technology. If you are not keeping up with the changes coming, but just waiting for someone to spoon-feed you the information, as usual, you’re being lazy. Maybe you should find some other business to be in.

I don’t care if you’re a MLO at a Banker or Broker shop, all that matters in the long run is that you have developed a trusting relationship with your RE people, see them all the time, and regularly try to help them do what they can’t do for themselves.

I have a list of 80 ideas that will help Realtors do more business. Have you seen it? Did you read it? Maybe you should just go get another cup of coffee.