Weekly News Letter for January 31, 2009

2008: prices declined 10.6 percent

National home prices declined 10.6 percent and foreclosure filings topped 3.4 million in 2008, according to a report by First American CoreLogic and LoanPerformance Home Price Index Analytics. Based on November and early December home price data, First American CoreLogic reports: * National housing prices fell 10.6 percent for the full year 2008: the largest decline in more than 30 years. * U.S. home prices peaked in 2006, since then they have declined 18.5 percent on a cumulative basis and are currently back to Spring 2004 levels.

FREE Andy Andrews Seven Decisions Perpetual Calendar. Andy Andrews is one of my favorite authors and presenters. This is a 14 page Perpetual Calendar to help you achieve whatever you desire to achieve. http://www.andyandrews.com/downloads/pdf/Andrews_Perpetual_Calendar.pdf

2009 State Legislative Outreaches...

Louisiana REALTORS State Legislative Outreaches provide a great opportunity for REALTORS to receive informative updates on key legislation prior to each year’s Regular Legislative Session and to discuss pertinent issues with state lawmakers. Nine Outreaches will be conducted by LR around the state in late winter/early spring 2009. For more information contact Louisiana REALTORS at 800-266-8538.

NOMAR, Friday 3/13/2009, 9:30 CE, 11:30 Outreach, Association Office Metairie
NABOR, Wednesday 3/13/2009, 9:30 CE, 11:30 Outreach, Beau Chene Country Club, Mandeville

Sell or Rent interesting and useful article was posted on www.SlidellCalendar.com under Documents and Listing Forms, Sell or Rent. If you give this to your customers, recommend that they seek legal tax advice before they make a decision.

David Knox is one of the best trainers in real estate! He conducts a First Tuesday Training Video and they have been outstanding. The First Tuesday Training for February, released on February 3 will be on Negotiating Low Offers, how timely is that? Here is a link you can access to view the most recent videos (all less than 10 minutes each), you will not regret spending time on this site!
https://www.davidknox.com/knox_sales_meetings/


Thousands of Full-Text and FREE Books, http://www.fullbooks.com/. This is a really cool site if you like to read. You only get the titles and author so you either have to know about the book or simply open it and look it over to see if you want to read it. This is a tremendous resource.

Oh Woe Is Me, How Can I Stay Up In A Down Market? This is a report that appeared on www.ActiveRain.com which is a real estate specific site where people post articles. This one is from a Keller Williams agent and is short and very good. http://activerain.com/blogsview/896405/Oh-Woe-is-Me-How-Can-I-Stay-Up-in-a-Down-Market.

2015 – The Real Estate Agent of the Future. A short prediction of what the future real estate agent will look like or require to know. Can’t say I disagree with the prediction.
http://www.inman.com/opinion/guest-perspective/2009/01/26/2015-real-estate-agent-future

The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace D. Wattles, written in 1910. It is outstanding and must have been used to create the book and movie “The Secret”. Really good stuff and is a free download. www.TheScienceofGettingRich.com.

www.Pandora.com. This is my favorite web site of all (if you like music). You can enter a specific song or artist and the site will find that song or artist and similar songs and/or artists and create a radio station you can listen to whenever you are on line. You can have more than one radio station and it is FREE. Fantastic site!

GPS - PERSONAL SAFETY ALERT

A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football match.

Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard. When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote controll to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean up the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.

MOBILE PHONE - PERSONAL SAFETY ALERT

I never thought of this.......

This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet...etc... was stolen. 20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him what had happened, hubby says 'I received your text asking about our Pin number and I replied a little while ago.'

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn.

The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text 'hubby' in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Moral of the lesson:
Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list. Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc.... And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts, CONFIRM by calling back. Also, when you're being text by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don't reach them, be very careful about going places to meet 'family and friends' who text you.

*** I never thought about THAT! As of now, I no longer have 'home' listed on my cell phone.

Nugget For The Noggin
$10.00 to $12,000
by Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, January 25, 2009

What will $10.00 a month buy for you?

One Ferdie Po Boy at Bears without drink or tip
Two paperback novels
One-half a hard cover book
5 to 6 gallons of gas
2, maybe 3 packs of cigarettes
1.5 alcoholic drinks
4 beers
2.2 high quality golf balls (the devil made me include this one)
9.4 candy bars
13.3 cans of soda
2/3 of a CD
1/2 of a DVD

You get the idea.

Let me offer you another alternative because I “ran the numbers” so to speak (or write). Let’s say we have 100 associates in our Market Center (we do), and let’s say that each one of the 100 members gave up 1.5 alcoholic drinks, or 9.4 candy bars or one less Ferdie Po Boy at Bears, each month. Instead, let’s also say that instead of spending the $10.00 per month that same $10.00 was donated to Keller Cares. What would happen?

Each one of us would have $120 a year identified as an additional tax deduction on our income tax so it would be like our “Uncle Sam” was actually donating the $10.00 a month ($120 a year for those of us like me brought up in our public schools).

Each one of us would have a “good feeling” in the gut of our stomachs that we did something good for someone else. And, if the truth be known, we may actually be donating to our own well being should we ever experience another Katrina-like event.

Each one of us would rest in the knowledge that should an earthquake hit California, floods hit Iowa, hurricanes hit New England, the Virginia/North Carolina/South Coasts, hurricanes hit Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and/or Texas coasts, snow storms disable the Midwest, (you get the idea) we would be helping our fellow teammates wherever they may be located.

Each one of us would be contributing to a whopping $12,000 a year being donated to the charitable Keller Cares fund – in case you missed that, $12,000 a year and it would cost each one of us only $10.00 a month.

Because I graduated from our public school system, my math skills tell me that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 equals PRICELESS!

As a reminder of how “things can hit home”, one only needs to remember Hurricane Katrina. Two days following Katrina, Mo Anderson announced to the world that Keller Williams Realty was going to take care of “their own” by insuring that each one of the over 720 affected Keller Williams associates in the Louisiana/Mississippi affected areas would receive CASH, directly deposited to their accounts – no questions asked! That commitment meant that Keller Williams Cares would dispense over $5,000,000 (that’s 5 MILLION for us public school grads) from a fund that did not have 5 Million in its account. Keller Williams associates from across the globe stepped to the plate and made personal donations, organized fund raisers, donated items and showed up at door steps with food, clothing and supplies. That is living the Keller Williams culture – Integrity – do the right thing!

What a lot of people did not fully grasp was that Mo Anderson put her reputation as well as the reputation of the entire Keller Williams Realty family on the line. The fund did not have 5 Million when the commitment was made. But as stated, teammates from across the country stepped to plate and have been stepping to the plate ever since. Yes this makes me feel very proud of our company and its associates but I am more proud of our own Market Center teammates who this past year donated over $7,000 to Keller Cares, this from one of the “affected Market Centers” from Katrina. Everyone deserves a sincere pat on the back.

The advantage of making small monthly deposits to the fund is that future responses will be made from a position of strength rather than an after-the-fact gigantic fund raising effort. Can you imagine if every Market Center in the system did likewise?

PRICELESS!

Weekly News Letter January 26, 2009

Check the left side to review a list of highly recommended books to read.

Scroll down for a list of highly recommended web sites to review.

GREAT LINKS TO CURRENT ARTICLES

Jon Gordon, The Energy Addict has a report on the Staying Positive in a Negative World. Short and valuable. http://www.jongordon.com/article-stayingpositiveinanegativeeconomy.html

Jeffrey Gitomer, Are You A Sales Rock Start Or Just A Member of the Band? As usual, Gitomer nails it. http://www.gitomer.com/articles/ViewPublicArticle.html?key=ajcdMibak3PwgftK7sjbiA%3D%3D

SalesDog.com. 5 Secrets of Winning Emails. Short article but contains really valuable info. http://www.salesdog.com/newsletter/2009/nl0410.asp#email

NUGGET FOR THE NOGGIN
Past Nuggets can also be viewed at http://www.nuggetsforthenoggin.com/)

The Pause
Article by: Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, January 13, 2009

The “Pause”, life’s lesson number 8,548. I don’t remember what the other 8,547 lessons were only that there had to be at least that many in my lifetime thus far. If only I were aware of the pause years long ago, things would be different.

It has been said that we are where we are because of the people we have met, the books we have read, and the training we have taken. I am going to suggest that as important as these things are, what we say, how we say it and when we say it may have more to do with our success, or not, than anything else we may have done or will ever do.

I have always known that words can make us or break us. It took me 63 years to figure out that the “timing” of what we say can also make or break us. It is natural to REACT to the things we experience whether they are the spoken word, physical actions or situations we find ourselves in – we simply react without thinking. Driving a car may be the best example of a reaction, conscious or otherwise. What we say and when we say it should require “thinking” BEORE we say what may be considered a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t want to sound scientific but think of it as a formula

STIMULUS + REACTION = RESULT

What would happen if we modified this formula to?

STIMULUS + PAUSE + RESPONSE = BETTER RESULT

What a difference a pause can make in the results you get!

Example: I find that the older I get the less I really have to say in general conversations. I seem to focus on what needs to be said rather than idle chatter. A lot of people around me are not on that same page. They talk, they have things going on in their minds like everyone does and when other people speak, some of the words may be heard. Other words are not and in between a lot of what was said is misunderstood, the words transposed, the meaning changed and/or the words are just lost in the grey matter of the mind. I have lately found myself saying to my wife, “You never listen to what I say!” From that point the conversation usually goes down hill rapidly.

It was because of a similar conversation this past week I observed the power of the pause. Here is the way it worked (in the past):

My wife would say something to me.I would respond
My wife would not hear or listen or understand what I said and come up with a different response than I had intended
My reaction would be, “You never listen to what I say!”

Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t; it is not important. What IS important is that my message was not received as I intended it to be. So whose fault is that? My wife’s – of course! Just kidding. At least that was until this past week when I discovered the power of the pause. Same situation:

My wife would say something to me.
I would respond
My wife would not hear or listen or understand what I had said and say something completely opposite of what I had intended.
My NEW reaction is to PAUSE for just a second or two and then to THINK about WHAT I am going to say next. Will it be the tried and failed reaction of the past or a new measured response? In that few seconds, I think not so much of what I had just said that was misunderstood but rather maybe HOW I said it as much as WHAT I said and what my BODY LANGUAGE also said at that very instant. Instead of placing the blame on the other person, my wife, for not understanding, I now accept the blame for not saying it correctly in the first place and/or not making sure I had my wife’s undivided attention. We all multi-task. If you are engaged in multi-tasking, can you possibly give someone your undivided attention? So instead of, “You never listen to what I say”, I now say…

“You know, (hate that phrase but somehow it seems appropriate in this case), I must not have said what I meant to say. What I meant to say was . . .”

I have found that by inserting a couple of seconds of pause in my conversations instead of having a knee jerk reaction, I have much better results. Sounds so simple and simple things are usually that – so simple we fail to see them.

Question: Have you ever taken a course in listening? Not only have I not taken one, I have never seen one – at least until I started teaching one – I call it “Listening For A Change.” That could mean that maybe for the first time you actually listen or you in fact listen to affect some form of change in your life or situation. Zig Ziglar said, “We are born with two ears and one mouth therefore we should listen twice as much as we talk.” The problem as I see it is that when someone else is talking, most of us, certainly not you, are already formulating in our minds what we are going to say next. Oftentimes we do not even wait for the other person to finish what they are saying before we jump on the end of their sentence with what we have to say. And as we all know, what we have to say is far more important than what anyone else has to say.

Action Steps

1. Try using the pause in your next conversation. Let the other person talk and BEFORE you respond, don’t say anything for at least two seconds; not a very long period of time but the first time you try it the silence will be deafening. I believe that the other person will notice your silence and consciously or unconsciously think that you are actively thinking about what they had said. How would you feel if the next person you talk to did not immediately respond to what you had just said and seemed to be thinking? Don’t know about you, I would think I may have struck a nerve (good or bad) and that the person is really thinking about what I had just said. I also believe that is a good thing, wouldn’t you?

2. If you are like me and find yourself saying things like, “You never listen to what I say.” To a friend or spouse, give them $5.00 the next time and every future time you say it and I guarantee you, you won’t be saying it for long.