Real Estate Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Our quality educational courses can be a quick way to enhance your professional practices, but sometimes important lessons are best earned the hard way. I met with several experienced agents and asked what they had learned from their mistakes, set-backs, and wasted efforts. Here’s what they came up with:

• Learn from your misfortunes, but don’t dwell on them. Get over your bad feelings about them as soon as possible.

• After getting knocked down by adversity, get right back up move ahead, or in another direction.

• Do something positive each day for yourself, and for another person. This will keep your disposition in the right realm.

• Plan ahead by starting a To-Do list. Make this your work-life roadmap.

• Enthusiastically go after new business, even when you are busy. Your current client load will not last forever.

• Look at what is, not what was. Regrets are worthless time-consuming distractions.

• Plan for the future by listing your goals. Without goals, valueless pesky demands can fill your entire day.

• Double-check facts, especially when you are responsible for them.

• Don’t take shortcuts when gathering important information, and verify it with the highest possible authority.

• It’s an old saying, but take time to smell the roses. Appreciating what you have will put you in the right frame of mind to achieve what you want.

• Reward yourself for succeeding; don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.

• Pay yourself a livable salary first, and then invest the rest of your commission in your future.

• Appreciate your mistakes because they are opportunities to improve.

• Don’t spend your commission until the transaction closes.

• The 2nd year in real estate is much easier than the 1st year.

• Choose your clients, and release the bad ones. Decide who you want to help.

• Learn how to stay in touch using a variety of methods: call, email, text, and write notes, depending on the expectations and life-patterns of your client.

• Put everything pertaining to an agreement in writing, and have it signed and dated or initialed.

• Notate conversations with dates regarding volatile transactions, and file your notes until the statute of limitations expires.

• When contemplating something ethically or morally iffy, ask: “What would my action look like as a newspaper headline?”