Clichés, Full House, and me

This is going to be a post about business. And, you know, I've read enough motivational sales stuff to know how difficult it is to write on this topic without falling into tired old clichés.

But no clichés for me--nope, I'm going to think outside the box. Hopefully I'll succeed, but if not--well, I always reach for the moon, because even if I miss, I'll land among stars. Failure is not in my vocabulary. Double the "c", double the "s", and you'll always have "success."

Okay, that last one wasn't a cliche, it was a line from the old sitcom Full House. And now that I've lost all your respect by actually quoting a line from that cheesiest of TV shows, let's talk about business.

I've had my real estate license for almost seven years. For the first few years, I was a full-time agent. I worked hard, and I loved it. Since Chickie was born, I've kept my license active and have occasionally represented clients. I truly love self employment and the freedom that comes with it.

A couple of years ago, a new idea entered my mind, and I presented it to my broker. I suggested that I'd like to help him recruit agents into the company. Then I'd like to mentor them. He wanted to grow the company; I wanted a way to help new agents without the time-consuming responsibilities of owning my own brokerage. I'd say it was a win-win idea, if that wasn't a cliché. We worked out a plan and a compensation structure.

Yesterday morning I had my first mentoring appointment with someone who is intelligent, driven, and excited to be entering the real estate industry. And he's not the only one who's excited--I'm psyched to be starting my first real estate mentoring relationship.

But wait--two paragraphs back, I started with "a couple of years ago," and I'm just now finding success. Why did it take so long?

Well, getting that first new agent was hard. We didn't have immediate success; then I took off a year or so to have Zoodle and focus on him. During that time I wrote an agent handbook, hoping some day I'd use it. Finally we started the recruiting effort again, and we communicated with a lot of people before one of them ended up being a good fit. Hopefully it won't be too long before we find a few more agents for me to mentor when they join our company.

Clichés aside, what have I learned from this? Sometimes when you try something new it doesn't just "click" immediately. It takes time, and failure, and frustration. But if it's a good, doable idea, it's worth it to press on. (Doable isn't always the same as easy.)

I sure am glad that, in the words of a brilliant television theme song, "...a little voice inside you whispers, 'Kid, don't sell your dreams so soon!" I guess I really didn't ever need any sales training--Full House taught me all I needed to know about business, and about life. ("You got it, dude!"*)

*Bonus points if you know what character loved to say "You got it, dude!" Cheating allowed.