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The Art Of Appreciation. No gift Necessary

Happy Sunday Everyone:

Sitting here in my home office and I know exactly what my points are this week, just not sure how to get them out there…so hopefully as I type it will come around.

This past week I had my quarterly team meeting at my house, my Realtor appreciation party, and a bunch of other stuff going on. Like all quarterly meetings we did both business and personal goal setting. We talked about areas in our lives we want to improve upon, all related to money, work, self, friends, love life, spiritual, and family. Takes some serious vulnerability to sit in a room and discuss where you’re struggling, what you’re going to improve on it, and how any of us can help, and be authentic about it. I respect everyone on my team for opening up, getting down and dirty with some life stuff, and everyone else respecting and caring about the info being shared.

Fast forward to the appreciation party. No gifts were necessary what so ever but a few people brought them. More than the gifts were the notes….and this is where I struggle because I don’t want it to come off as arrogant, but the notes written by some of my business partners blew me away. Suggestions of me helping their business go to the next level, my support of them personally, my personal desire to help them grow, their appreciation for all of it (their words, not mine)…Why am I telling you this? I promise I’m not telling you this to make myself feel good, I feel lame actually. I tell you this because of the disconnect between what’s in my head and what’s in theirs. In my head I’m thinking, I don’t want to put these people out to drive in the rain to my party, will they have fun, do they actually want to be there, do they like working with me enough to show? I’m all for humility, but my thought process is borderline stupidity. I don’t think these people are blowing smoke, their words were too kind and too authentic for that, so for me to waste time on insecure thoughts and playing tricks in my brain is just dumb. So the messages I’m trying to relay from my team meeting and my client party are as follows:

1. Get out of your own way. Not sure if you all struggle with this as much as I do but it’s stupid. I’m actually tired of talking about it as it relates to me….which is to say STOP IT to myself, forever.

2. You get out of relationships what you put into them. If you treat your clients and referral partners like a transaction, that’s exactly what you are to them. If you don’t give them any other reason to work with you, it’s on you. DO NOT ASSUME PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU.

3. The power of hand written, authentic note of gratitude and appreciation goes 10X further than any gift you can give. I shared these letters with my family and my team, and I will never forget who gave them to me.

4. Have the humility to know you don’t have all the answers to solves every problem someone has but have the confidence to know a lot people could use your help, and they usually want it. #1 way to help is to simply listen.

Still not sure I got my point across like a I wanted to. One last shot; most people are interested in having big relationships, those that are not, let them go, but don’t miss out on others because of your head. On the team stuff-when we have the opportunity and privilege to lead people, we need to assume most people want to grow and it’s our responsibility to help them by keeping them accountable for growth (in all aspects). If you believe that’s not your role as a leader, you are a C level boss and will attract C level players.

Have a great week, and thanks for reading.

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