Smashing the I Can't Do It Feeling

Smashing the I Can’t Do it Feeling

We’re all human and we all get in a place where our shoulders drop and the feeling of defeat rolls across us as we resign ourselves to never getting it all done. Naturally, this is an incredibly distractive thought pattern. In this article, I will show you the techniques I use to perch the negativity and replace it with a plan to consume the elephant — one bite at a time.

It happens to all of us, that feeling of being completely and utterly overwhelmed, not feeling like we can get it all done, and not knowing where to even start. I often hear people ask, “Just where do I begin, Pete?”

You wake up on a Monday morning and think, “Oh my god, not again. Not again. I’ve got to do this all over again. Oh my god. I can’t believe I have to do this all over again.” It’s a little bit like Ground Hog Day. I speak to people and agents that become immobilized by the insecurity of what to do next — because there’s so much to do.

We have so many facets to our business that sometimes, even I wake up in the morning and I think, “Oh my god. I’ve just got like 10,000 things I want to do.” I’d like to share some things that have been enormously helpful to me over the years when I’ve been facing a mountain. The phrase that I want to use is this: how do you consume an elephant? One bite at a time.

I get a lot of resistance when I talked about success not being linked to money. Success, in my opinion, is not linked to money. Success is linked to us hitting our goal. All we are in control of is what we can do. We’re not in control of the world and how many people are going to buy and sell with us. What we are in control of is how many people can we be of service to in a day. How many people can we try and contribute something to in order to improve their lives? Not just in real estate, but in the grand scheme of things. Prospecting is a massive part of this.

I prospect with the end user in mind. I’m prospecting, obviously, to try and get business, but before I call someone and ask, “Hey, have you thought about buying or selling your house today?” (which is a line I’ve never used anyway), I think about them, I think about their situation, and I think about how I can improve their life or even just give them some advice. It’s not just what can I extract out of the relationship. It’s what I can put in.

The Peter Lorimer Technique

I’d like to introduce (and I learned this from my lovely wife) the Peter Lorimer technique.

If it doesn’t involve speaking to people — for instance, emails — I put on headphones. I put on some really loud electronic music and shut out all the noise and voices. In my case, it can shut out the self-doubt, and it can shut out being overwhelmed. This allows me to focus on the window of time in front of me. For example, if my goal is, from 10:00–11:00, to bang out 25 emails, then that is my only goal in my life at that moment. It doesn’t mean my big goals get erased; they just get pushed the side.

Then, when I get to 11:00, I’m going to write down another goal for myself. Maybe it’s to send out listings to 10 clients from 11:00–12:00. I hit that goal and then lunch — I give myself a break. Go out. Have a little bit of something to eat. Don’t worry about the rest of the day. 1:00 to 2:00, maybe I’m designing some marketing. I’m not worried about the time slots after this. 

This breaks your day into digestible junks, so that at the end of the day we go, “Holy shit. I actually did a real load of stuff.” “I made a dent,” as my mother would say. This has been a technique I have used for a long time. This is a great technique for emails. We all have that feeling when we get home. You’ve got 50 emails in your inbox, and you know you’ve got to respond to them. What do we do? 

We go like this, “I’m just going to have a little break. I’m going to have a snack, and I’m going to get to my emails.” No. What I do is I put on my headphones. I don’t worry about the other 49 emails, and I just hit email number one, respond. I put email number two in front of me, respond. Email number three, respond. I don’t worry about all of the other stuff that I don’t have control of. Of course, there are exceptions to that because there are going to be some emails that are emergencies. But when we break our day into digestible chunks like this, guess what happens? It turns into a productive day where we’re hitting our goals.

What does that do? 

It means when we put our head on the pillow at night, we go, “Wow. I feel really good about what I did today.” And the next morning? You bounce out of bed and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Keep your head out of the results and keep your mind in action and the rest will follow. Here is what normally happens. I speak to agents saying, “Well, you know, I’m kind of doing this. I’m kind of hitting five contacts every other day. It’s not really working.” Well, of course, it’s not bloody working because we’re not devoting enough time. 

Hard Work Beats Talent

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. When I was a new agent, I had no talent in real estate. None. Didn’t know anything. Didn’t really know anybody. Didn’t know any agents. Didn’t really have a clue. But, what I decided to do was work off my rear end. I just worked and worked and worked and worked. I showed a tool shed on the one-on-one. I showed a freaking crappy old apartment for lease. I showed a dumpy house that I wouldn’t keep a prisoner in. I showed anything and everything that I could get my hands on because I knew that I was learning my craft. 

In the words of my good old lovely father, God rest his soul, “Immerse yourself in your industry completely and then you will receive the education you want.” My father was a university professor. Immerse yourself in your industry completely, and only then will you receive the education you want.

Service > Mediocrity

I want to talk about mediocrity. Mediocrity is ugly, and it’s pervasive in real estate. What do I mean by that? I see so many people in our industry (not in my company), that strive to do the least to receive the most.

My ethos is completely the reverse of that. How can I be of service first and then keep my head out of expectation? If I earn money from it, great. Especially if I’m new, if I earn money from it, fantastic. If I don’t earn money from it, well, I’m thankful that I got a little piece of education in my new career. Mediocrity just permeates our industry completely. I’ve seen new guys come into this industry with absolutely no chops, no skills, but they had a killer attitude and they’ve worked their asses off and they’re now making bank. They’re making money, and they didn’t focus on getting a client to convert quickly.

They focused on service. Service is the cornerstone of everything that we do, especially in sales.

Give it Everything

I’d like to leave you with an experiment: run as hard as you can at your real estate career or whatever career you’re in. Run as hard as you can, as fast as you can, and work as much as you can for 12 months exploring every lead, every person, every way that you can be of service.

Then, and only then, after 12 months can you make an educated and aggregate decision on how far you have come. I hear people bouncing around in the middle, thinking, “I don’t know. It’s kind of good. It’s kind of not good.” Run hard because you might fail. I would much rather fail quickly than live a slow death of mediocrity for the rest of my life. If I’m going to be shit at something, I want to find that out now. I don’t want it to take 25 years. I want to work hard for 24 months, a year to 24 months, and then go, “Well, I suck at that. I’m going to sell espresso on the beach in Vietnam at my surf shop.”

Life is too short. Go big or go home.