LEARN YOUR CRAFT

“Learn your craft well enough to teach it.”  
                                     – Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”

One of the reasons I have written this blog for the past six years is that it forces me to really think about my craft.  There is a difference between “peripheral” knowledge and “actual” knowledge.

Peripheral knowledge is an awareness that the market has improved over the past 12 months.

Actual knowledge says listings are down 35% from one year ago, the ratio of “Active to Under Contract” home has fallen from 2.71 to 1.39 and the absorption rate for homes under $250,000 is just 1.76 months.

Many real estate agents try to skate through life working off peripheral knowledge.  My feeling is that if you are going to invest $200,000… $300,000… or $400,000 in a home, you might want to know what’s going on in a bit more detail.

One of my mentors, the late Jim Rohn, often taught in his seminars that if you were given the opportunity to teach a class, you should take it.  I have acted on that advice repeatedly through the years.  At my old brokerage in California, I taught classes regularly on lead generation, database management and technology skills. 

When I relocated to Colorado, I immediately put together a “Mastermind” group of fellow agents who met weekly to brainstorm and share ideas.  And for several years I’ve been consistently involved with many different networking groups, taking a leadership role and giving presentations wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

If you’re going to get up before a group of people, whether it’s for 10 minutes, 45 minutes or 3 hours, you have to prepare.  And preparation means “knowing your stuff”.

It’s easier just to show up.  It’s easier simply to tell clients that the market is “better”, and hope that your simplistic answer will suffice. 

But I think excellence is found in the details, and that by taking time to force yourself into a place of actual knowledge and competence, you become far more worthy of trust and confidence.