I’m the nuts and bolts guy here. I don’t have the grace of Greg, the congeniality of Brian or the panache of Geno. What I will do with out a big damn brain this year is grind out a great living in an imploding economy. No laws, nothing will stop that. And with each successive “anti greed act,” it’s gonna get harder. 2009 is war. WAR. There are major forces corralling those of us that wanna be independent, and obligating our future efforts in the name of bailouts.
More independent people will go crawling back, hat in hand, to the behemoth employers, the beneficiaries of the laws passed to shackle us into slavery. And I have a hard time believing that this isn’t at least in part an aim of all of the bailoutorama.
But that doesn’t have to happen to anyone–the form the chaos will take is unpredictable, but the fact that there will be chaos is a certainty.
We can out hustle, out think, out work, and out-do all of the scumbags that are stealing from us (supposably at our behest). And we can make what’s left of 2009 the very best and most profitable year. The new economy is placing a premium on survivors that don’t panic, can deal with the OODA loop, and can nimbly maneuver through are market. So here’s a list of killer questions:
First things first: Questions about your own business/finances.
- How much cash, per day, do I burn through? (Add EVERY single expense)
- What can I eliminate or reduce? What can’t I?
- Is my car payment more or less than my health care payment?
- Am I saving 1/2 a month’s expenses every month? Or am I spending money?
- How much cash do I need to earn to cover all of my expenses AND have enough to pay taxes?
- How much cash do I need, per day that I intend to work, to cover cash need, peak experiences AND pay taxes?
- How many deals/loans/widgets do I need to sell/put together per year to make this happen?
- What peak experiences do I want (disney, losing weight, etc) and how much do they cost?
- How many new people will I have to contact? How many existing customers?
- How many days can I go without a deal?
- How much do I have in savings?
Some people Questions:
- How big is my database?
- How am I leveraging some tools to market to my database automatically (so that the marginal cost of another contact approaches zero).?
- How many people contact me per day and seek me out?
- What do people know me as?
- Are there any major character flaws that keep me from winning?
- Is my ego (-tism, not -ism,) sabotaging me?
- If my top 5 customers fired me, would I survive?
- Have I built a good network of people with a variety of skills?
- How do I serve my network and how can I be counted on?
- Am I attractive and compelling?
- Is my weight or fashion sense keeping people from relating to and connecting with me?
Some strategy questions:
- How are the rules changing?
- What have I heard top agents/mortgage people starting to do?
- What are the rules outside of the industry?
- How am I delivering value today? Is the service I deliver really worth the premium paid?
- What do people really need in this present economy?
- How can I use what I already know and do to help others in a big way?
- How can I do everything twice as well as other people?
- How can I do everything faster?
- What parts of the process don’t matter to the people I serve? How can I eliminate ’em from where I expend my efforts?
- How can I streamline the process so I am communicating expectations?
Some Survival Questions:
- If the dollar amount paid per transactions are cut in half, what happens then?
- If the work per transaction doubles again, what is my solution?
- How can I create systems that lower the marginal cost of each deal to nearly zero?
- Will I be the first or last to know if my entire industry goes the way of the buggy whip?
- Is my wife/spouse 100% supportive of the direction?
- What can I do to make my business bullet proof ?
- How am I getting information on my local market? From what Vendors tell us? From other agents? From winners or losers?
- Can I get off a plane and survive anywhere?
- Can a consumer do my job with minimal training and experience?
Maybe there are more. What questions do you think we need to always-have-an-answer for?
