Are You "Hard To Start"?

I grew up on a farm in Eastern Wake County…where my father had about 100 acres on which we raised Polled Hereford Cattle… and we harvested the corn, hay, and soy beans to feed them.

We had many motorized farm implements, but one tractor I recall was especially ornery about cranking… a 1960’s Allis Chalmers … “The Beast”, as we called her, was painted a beautiful red and white and could pull a five blade bottom plow through damp red clay soil and not even grunt.  I loved to drive her …once you got her started! 

To crank The Beast we always had to remove the air filter and spray starter fluid into the intake… she would resist by belching smoke and snorting while her starter whined like a 3 year old at bedtime… but eventually she would give in and settle into a low rumbling tone only a 70+ horse diesel engine can create. Once “awake” she was more than willing to pull, plow, mow, or disc anything you could throw at… or drag behind her.

Are you as hard to start as “The Beast”?

My past experiences have shown how most people have great intentions… but like our big red tractor …they belch, snort, and whine all the way to the Starting Line. This statement can be confirmed by merely looking under most any desk in a real estate office…What you will most likely find will be boxes of unused marketing materials, purchased with a promise to start prospecting more consistently.

There will be more than a few unopened motivational CD’s purchased from some infamous real estate guru’s seminar where you said, “That’s really good advice…I need to get back to doing those basic activities”…

Or what about the software program you purchased to organize your database… which now is only used to print labels for your Christmas cards? Is any of this starting to sound familiar? If you are being honest, you probably are guilty of at least one or more of these “hard to start” career stallers.

Let’s look at three things you will need to discover before you can get started…and stay started!

1.     Goals: Once you crank your engine, where are you headed? Written goals are accomplished 50-90% more often than those left unwritten. The problem is most of us don’t set any goals… (written or unwritten)… and those individuals who set NO goals… ended up reaching them with remarkable proficiency! Would you leave home driving from Raleigh to Los Angeles without a road map? Or a GPS?  I would hope not.

2.     Motivational Check: What are your motivations…but more important… are you motivated to do the actions necessary to reach your goals? In your written business plan schedule rewards along the way. Make the trip worth your efforts… no one wants to work for nothing. Schedule several milestones to celebrate your achievements. Work harder - Play harder!

3.     Determination: How resolute are you… once you have made the decision to start… to also keep going?  There will be potholes along the way…mornings where you would rather stay home and not make those calls, or send those hand written notes…but you have to be determined not to give up… which is what happens to 80% of us. We usually have great intentions, we get pumped up and motivated… but somewhere down the road we give out of gas and then we just quit…we give up because it is too hard… we begin to doubt ourselves and our abilities. So we just stop! We don’t turn around and go back to where we started, we just run into the ditch, turn off the engine, and stop.

This doesn’t have to happen…

Coaching can be your “starter fluid”…your “GPS system”… and your “tow truck” for when you hit a ditch.

A one-on-one coaching program designed specifically for your business plans, goals, and lifestyle will get you kick started… and more importantly, keep you going in the right direction. Oh but don’t relax… there will still be the same potholes and the same ditches… but with a coach riding shotgun, the warnings will be loud and clear and most of these obstacles can and will be avoided.

Why do only 20% of real estate professions make a real living in our business? Because these highly motivated elite professionals found a way to become self-accountable and consistently complete the necessary activities to be successful. They either have the talent and personality to do it themselves or they hired an experienced production coach to help them. Which one are you?  

Eddie Brown ©2013

For more information on how one-on-one coaching can help you… visit ICU-Coaching.com