Happy Sunday Everyone:
Its December 2nd. It’s the end of the year. It’s the Holidays, a time of year that I love.
Many of us have taken our foot off the gas as what happens every single year. We talk ourselves into it. “Everyone else is working less”, “I have all these Holiday Parties”, “I need to do Holiday Shopping”, “people don’t want to talk about real estate or loans in December”. Tacky as it may be, or predictable might be a better word, I feel like this Sunday Thoughts is the equivalent of sending one out on January 1st about New Year Resolutions….predictable but necessary.
For me, this year, at this point in the year, and heading into 2019, feels different. There are more distractions without question. There are macro/micro distractions across our industry. Real estate companies are getting purchased, mortgage banks are merging and being acquired, rates are going up, technology is developing at light speed, people are leaving companies for what appears better next door, both in real estate and lending, markets are getting smaller, retail banks/mortgage banks all have had layoffs and continue to do so…..bottom line is, it’s not easy right now. It’s not easy to do our jobs, and it’s not easy to stay focused. Throw how we typically treat December in a normal market, with everything I listed above, and we could be waking up January 1st wishing we had stayed a little more focused on our jobs today. Without question, there will be some angst come January 1st based on the decisions you make today and throughout the end of the year.
I am committed to staying focused the next 30 days. In order for me to stay focused, I need to understand what I’m staying focused on. For me, it’s my clients, my business partners, my team, and my company. I’m going to only do things that help my clients, my business partners, my team, and my company. If my activity isn’t having a positive impact in one of those 4 areas, I will stop it. Last week I was having an amazing day, business planning, scheduling meetings w/ business partners, etc….I answered one call about a rumor, which had little to no merit, , 5 hours later I resurfaced back to doing activities that are good for me, my clients, my business partners, and my company. What’s my point-I wasted 5 hours dealing with crap. I always love the exercise of understanding your hourly rate. If you can train your brain to lay your hourly rate out there as you decide to go down some drama rabbit hole, you’ll typically make a better decision saying “no”, and you’ll make the decision faster. I was talking to Oleg early in the morning about our morning routines, Oleg (who has closed 80 loans in a single month), has an emersion table. He sits on the emersion table for 10 minutes and he visualizes his day. He basically watches himself walk into the office, says hi to his team, run his team meeting, make calls, etc….and then anything that actually happens during the day that is not in alignment with what he envisioned, he stops it. Sounds crazy perhaps, but if I told you his earnings, you’d run out and buy an emersion table. I don’t have an emersion table (yet) but I’m absolutely going to start spending 10 minutes watching myself create my day.
A few bullets to think about:
· Be focused on making you and those around you successful. That is what leaders do.
· understand what your priorities are for the rest of the year and going into 2019 and question if your actions are in alignment with your priorities.
· lay out your calendar for the next 30 days. It needs to be tight and it needs to be in alignment with your focus points.
· stay out of drama that you can’t control and serves you very little purpose. Unless you’re acting to be a part of a solution to a situation, do not go down the rabbit hole. Help others stay accountable to do the same by choosing not to engage in this type of behavior.
· January 2nd is going to feel good or bad depending on your next 30 days.
Have a great week ahead.