Principles of Flight and Real Estate — Getting Off the Ground

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I’ve seen in the real estate business the rough equivalent of what my grandma saw in her lifetime with flight. Born in 1909 she saw in real time the embryonic stage of flight. The first successful flight was only six years before her birth. 60 short years later she watched, on a ‘machine’ not in existence until she’d been married and had four children (three on her front porch), American men land on the moon and come back safely.

Think of where real estate brokerage was 40 years ago. I’d compare it to the planes used in World War I. The MLS existed, but was in book/magazine form delivered by truck, supplemented thrice weekly on paper held together by staples. The establishment of farms for Heaven’s sake, was a huge break through! Knock on the same doors every month? Why would anyone do that on purpose?

There were no teams, not even the biggest thinkers created teams, even in the ’70’s. (at least that I can recall) The team itself was another development thought by most as staggeringly forward thinking. My father didn’t use for sale signs and he was thought of as a maverick. 🙂 We’ve seen the rise of franchises which came like a herd of buffaloes in the ’70’s. Some still exist, most don’t, but the franchise has remained as a significant player.

The first time i heard of an agent being paid a 70% commission split by their broker I thought it was a joke. It was real. It was the beginning of what we see today. 100% commission offices with ‘desk’ fees. In-house service companies — title, lenders, escrow, etc. The shift from the broker/owner being the god of all things to the producing agent should have been predictable. The tail wagging the dog is at least in part why we’re here today. Most high producing agents would fall flat on their faces if they’d been forced to open their own companies. But that’s another post altogether.

Where exactly is here?

It’s business models we’d of laughed at 40 years ago. Marketing not hinted at on TV shows predicting crazy future developments. We now see super-teams. Teams so large and productive they suck the air out of many areas with their lion’s share of production. That’s not a knock, it’s a fact of life. The Russell Shaws and Kris/Steve Bergs of the world have arrived at the top of the hill through the age old combination of brains and hard work, making use of streamlined systems. More power to them. They are also the ones with the cajones, pardon the expression.

There’s one thing that hasn’t changed since my dad first received his agent’s license back in 1959.

When expertise and results matter to the client, nothing else will do.

Said more plainly — nothing, not effort, not will, not technology, will ever replace results.

With all the talk about where to market, how to market, and to whom we should be marketing, the reason for all the chatter remains what it was 40 years ago.

Getting ourselves in a room with a prospect in need of what we have to offer is what makes one a success if done consistently. This fact of life seems to get lost in all the mumbo jumbo of website this, and blogging that, and the myriad choices there are now in marketing. Please don’t misread me. I have a website and a blog. Those aren’t what matters though.

What matters most is what you’re doing to get your fanny in a room with a prospect’s fanny. The extent you’re successful in making that happen on a regular basis, predicts whether you’ll have a good year, regardless of the times. (everything being relative of course)

I was taught as a teenager the more folks I talked to, the more appointments I’d get. The more appointments I got, the more listings and sales I’d have. So on my first day ever, I arrived at the office. It was a sunny October San Diego morning, and I began calling FSBOs out of the paper. That night I proudly announced I’d obtained my first ever lisitng. It took six hours to get my first (albeit worthless) listing.

Roughly 15 calls resulted in three appointments, and one listing. Go figure.

What’s missing in the real estate world today? In my opinion it’s hard work doing what produces results. I’m not saying all the agents failing today aren’t working hard. I think most of them worked real hard — at avoiding what would’ve produced results.

There’s obviously dozens of ways to skin the cat. And if you’ll pause to ponder a bit, you’ll realize nobody every asks you how you skinned the cat until they find out if you skinned it in the first place. Those leaving the business, and those about to, haven’t been skinning many cats lately.

It’s my belief that an agent using 1985 technology would kick the ass of 90% of today’s worthless pieces of crap out there today. Harsh? No doubt. (Don’t ask Russell Shaw his opinion of that statement if you don’t want his answer.) But you’re already nodding your head in agreement. Ask agents who’ve managed to survive in both ages. They’ll tell you I’m correct. The million dollar question of course is why?

And here’s the million dollar answer.

Because they refuse to work hard at the things they don’t like doing. Agents don’t like failure. And a large dose of failure is what you’re in for with prospecting. It can be done the 21st century way, or the dinosaur way. It matters not. When it’s avoided like the plague, income becomes a figment of the agent’s imagination. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

Real estate is some of the highest paid hard work and some of the lowest paid easy work in the business world today. It’s always been so.

Agents waste time fiddling with various forms of hi-tech. Their predecessors fiddled with 3 X 5 cards. In other words, they both avoided doing what had to be done to succeed. Meanwhile, an 18 year old kid, 90 days out of high school, listed a property in the first six hours spent as a licensee. Back then I had a hard time spelling real estate if you spotted me all the vowels. Still, the principles worked.

Pick a method of prospecting — any method. Hi-tech, low-tech, no-tech. Do it all day every day until you find yourself in a room with a prospect in need of what you have to offer. Keep doing it until you have too many prospects to allow all day prospecting.

This isn’t rocket science.

Making $2,000 a month or $200,000 a month doesn’t matter. What matters is what the latter is doing that the former won’t — work very hard doing what needs doing — talking to suspects and prospects until you’ve converted your share into paying clients. The amount of income is directly proportionate to not only your method and efficiency, but how hard you actually work.

I contend when agents stop painting their planes, and topping off the tanks, their incomes will take off. The average agent reading this knows they’ve been doing anything else but what will produce results. They continue to search in vain for the magic formula that will bring folks waltzing into their office asking where to sign.

Flight went from the Wright brothers to the Apollo Program in six short decades. Everything changed except for the principles that made flight possible in the first place. Lift overcoming weight and thrust defeating drag are what makes flight possible.

Talking to the most prospects possible is what makes one agent successful while the so called hard working agent down the street starves. Most hard working agents work hard at avoiding the work that matters. They’d rather fail at real estate than face somebody who might tell them to go away.

Marketing surely matters, but it won’t make a hill of beans difference for those who haven’t figured out what makes the damn plane fly.