Jared James
By Jared James
We have come to that time of the year again, when you need to focus on your B.U.T. Not your butt – I am talking about your B.U.T., or Best Use of Time. It is amazing to me how many people will track their marketing dollars from the previous 12 months to see what actually worked and what didn’t, but won’t invest the energy to track their most invaluable resource of all… their time.
Time is your most valuable resource because it is the only thing that you can’t get back. If I lose money, I can gain it back. If I lose time, it is gone forever. We only get a certain amount of it within the totality of our lives. Think about that for a second – but not too long because you don’t want to waste any time.
Your best use of time has been the activities that you have done that have brought you the greatest return. Not just from a profit standpoint, but also from the perspective of what has brought you the most joy and peace in the last twelve months. I think we all can agree that we operate more often at our peak potential when everything seems to be in order in our personal lives as well. That is why it is important to understand that just like our cars need to stop and fill up on gas and have the occasional tune up, we need the same kind of maintenance if we expect to get the most out of ourselves. That may mean more time with your children or spouse, a renewed commitment to exercise, or just time alone to read or pray on a regular basis. For each person it may be different.
Having said this, I recommend that you write down your top four B.U.T.s for the last year. And instead of trying to implement 10 new strategies or tools into your business, just get better at what you already do well and scale those!
Last week, I wrote an article on my site about how your sphere of influence doesn’t make you money. It is actually all of the things that you did or continue to do to build your sphere of influence that make you money. The key is not to reinvent the wheel or completely change your business model. The key is to figure out what you are already doing well, what your top four B.U.T.s are, and increase your efforts in those areas in the coming year – and at least one of your B.U.T.s should have nothing to do with your profits in business at all!
Jared James is the CEO and founder of Jared James Enterprises (JJE) and travels around North America speaking to and coaching REALTORS®. Connect with Jared at www.jaredjamestoday.com, on facebook.com/jaredjamestoday, or follow him on Twitter @jaredjamestoday.
Jared James
By Jared James
At almost every event where I speak, I try to include the topic of environment whenever possible. Some would probably question why I would do that when I am primarily talking to REALTORS®, salespeople, and entrepreneurs, but I always wonder why it is not discussed more.
A few years ago, a study was conducted to try and find common denominators among the top 100 salespeople in the world. They were expecting to get results like customer service, systems, or drive. Those are definitely important, but do you know what the No. 1 was commonality among the top 100 salespeople in the world? It was something called “the ability to manage or ability to control one’s state of mind.”
For any of you who have attended an event I have spoken at live, you know that I could talk about “state of mind” all day long, but that is not the specific point of this article. The common denominator found among the top 100 salespeople is interesting though. When was the last time that you saw a breakout session or keynote dedicated to this topic at your company or state convention? (Cue the cricket sounds in the background.)
So how do you do this? Let’s get practical about it.
Scenario No. 1 – Let’s say you went to a closing where you were representing the seller. At the closing, your seller decides that he/she is going to back out of the deal because they don’t like what the buyer is wearing that day. I would imagine that you would be pretty ticked off about this. While you are in this ticked off state, imagine that you receive a phone call from another one of your clients…
Scenario No. 2 – You are now at a closing where you represent the seller and the seller decides at the closing that you have done such an amazing job that they are doubling your commission. You leave that closing in a jubilant state and receive the exact same phone call as scenario No. 1, only this time you are overjoyed and happy.
Here is the question… Continue reading »
Jared James
By Jared James
I am going to keep this brief. I’m writing this article sitting in the West Virginia airport on my way home after speaking at the West Virginia Association of REALTORS®. I am right in the middle of what I call “convention season,” which consists of the months of September and October. During this time I will keynote more than 20 events for state associations and companies, requiring me to hit the road pretty hard.
In the last month I have spent a collective one week at home, which can be difficult with two adorable boys at home, ages 5 and 3. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I had just finished up speaking at the Texas Association of REALTORS® Convention and Xplode Conference and had to speak in Wyoming the next day. It seems like an easy flight from Texas to Wyoming, but instead I decided to fly back across the country, land in New York, drive home and spend 2 ½ hours with my kids and put them to bed, just to go back to the airport and fly back across the country to Wyoming to do my event. For the parents out there, you know that this was a small price to pay to be able to tuck my kids in at night instead of the usual Skype call before they went to bed.
While these two months are not the usual for me and my family, they are still a reality. While my job requires a lot of travel, it is also true that most events are not held on weekends so I am almost always home and able to coach my kids’ teams on Saturdays and Sundays – with exception of this last weekend when I had to miss my 5-year-old’s soccer game because I had to catch a flight.
I don’t write this so you will feel sorry for me. I have a great life and I’m able to inspire and have an affect on a lot of people, which is an amazing feeling and a great calling. I am more so writing this because my life is not normal, I admit, but I have the honor of working with a lot of REALTORS® and salespeople and the one thing I always hear them tell me is that their family comes first. While, for some, this may be true, actions speak louder than words. Continue reading »
Jared James
By Jared James
I am a firm believer that you can only do so many things great. I guess you could say that I fall in line with the phrase, “jack of all trades, master of none.” Now, I do believe that some people can excel at more things than other people, but as a general rule you can only be great at so many things.
I bring this up because I fear that we are becoming a people who are being told we have to be good at everything.
A day doesn’t go by where I don’t get questions from people on Facebook, Twitter, and in e-mails asking me about how to use Pinterest, what are the best database, how they should use social media for business, what’s the best online lead generator, what apps I recommend, what’s the best way to work in the “cloud,” and on and on…
At some point I have to just say, ENOUGH ALREADY!!
Please do not get me wrong, every question I listed above is a good one, and they are questions that we, as professionals, should know the answer to. But I worry that we are becoming a people who are so obsessed with mastering everything that in the end we will end up mastering nothing. You see, I would rather be great at working my database or leveraging Facebook page than be good at everything there is to know about creating or managing a business. Being good doesn’t separate you, and separation is what it takes to stand out and actually see a real return on investment (ROI).
I can’t tell you how often I hear about people who are using social media and get no return on it. At the same time, I know of many people making a living off of it. So which opinion is right? The one that thinks social media is a waste of time? Or the one that thinks it is amazing?
One thing that I have learned as a speaker/trainer is that most of the time it is not the tool or strategy that is the problem in people’s lives — the problem is the implementation of the tool. And when you are a master of none, it is difficult to get the results that you see someone else getting without giving their same level of dedication. Continue reading »
Jared James
By Jared James
I was thinking about our culture recently in this time of voicemails, emails, and social media, and it appears that everyone has a greater desire to communicate, but a lesser desire to actually have conversation.Believe it or not, communication and conversation are two completely different things. The actual definition of the word “communicate” is the activity of conveying information, while the definition of the word “conversation” is the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings; talk. The key difference between the two is the word “exchange,” which occurs during communication. Communication is a one way street, while conversation runs both ways.
We have gotten to a point where we love to communicate through emails, text messages, and social media, as long as we don’t have to actually hold a conversation with someone because that may actually require us to invest a little bit of our time in the present and not in the future at a time when we deem possible to respond. This infatuation with communication over conversation has reached such levels even on our cell phones — a device which was solely created with mobile conversation in mind— that we actually have an app called slydial that allows us to go straight to people’s voicemails…because God forbid they pick up the phone and respond to what we have to say. That would be way too inconvenient.
Now let me say that if there were a line for the guilty in this battle of communication vs. conversation, I would be at the front of the line. Shoot. I would be the spokesperson. But I also understand that almost every good thing can be a double-edged sword. Continue reading »
Jared James
By Jared James
As many of you know, I make my living as a speaker/trainer and have had the opportunity to speak to tens of thousands of REALTORS® and entrepreneurs over the last 12 months. My job is not just to communicate effectively, but to entertain and make the audience feel something. As Maya Angelo put it, “People will not remember what you do or say, but they will remember how you made them feel.”
About six months ago, I had the opportunity to keynote a large event in Texas, and it was one of those times when you feel completely connected with the audience and everything was going well. At the end of the event I had a younger guy come up to me and tell me how he loved my speech so much that he was ready to run through a brick wall. (Not a practice I recommend or condone.) He said that he loved everything I had to say, but there was just no business in his area. He said it didn’t matter what he did, there just weren’t any transactions.
I don’t usually have the time to do this, but on this day I did, so asked him to grab his computer and pull up for me every transaction that had happened over the last 30 days in his area according to his MLS. He did this and it turned out that there were 337 transactions! So much for NO transactions…
I looked him dead in the eye and I said that it seems that the problem was not a lack of transactions, the problem was that his name is not on those transactions! *friendly smile*
I am not mentioning this agent by name because he is not the point of the story. I bring up this point because I think this mindset is running rampant among many REALTORS® today. Continue reading »
By Jared James
Jared James is the CEO and founder of Jared James Enterprises (JJE) and travels around North America speaking to and coaching REALTORS®. Connect with Jared at www.jaredjamestoday.com, on facebook.com/jaredjamestoday, or follow him on Twitter @jaredjamestoday.
Jared James
By Jared James
In my last post I spoke about goal setting, and what we actually have to focus on in order to never set goals that we don’t meet again. I have received responses from many of you who feel that you have everything in order, and yet you still don’t seem to be getting what you want out of your business or life. Many times this is because we still have “inner conflicts” that have yet to be resolved. Watch the video below to see what I mean.
Jared James is the CEO and founder of Jared James Enterprises (JJE) and travels around North America speaking to and coaching REALTORS®. Connect with Jared at www.jaredjamestoday.com, on facebook.com/jaredjamestoday, or follow him on Twitter @jaredjamestoday.
Jared James
By Jared James
Hi Ypn’ers! If you are like most people, you are planning to do one of two things for the New Year:
1.) Get motivated and try once again to set a new goal for the New Year, or…
2.) Don’t even attempt it because you have been there, done that, and are tired of setting goals every year only to disappoint yourself by not achieving them.
There are many things that I am not very good at. For example, I have good form but swim at the speed of a sloth in the water. I am also probably the most directionally dysfunctional person you will ever meet. Don’t challenge me on this. I have come to terms with this fact and I accept it. But one thing I have always been very good at is to understand WHY people do what they do, or don’t do what they do. In every circumstance there are specific reasons why we are successful or not, shy or outgoing, look up or look down, speak high or low and so on.
In an effort to not bore you with the psychology of it all, I will just say this: There are very specific reasons why you have or have not hit your goals in the past or why you will or will not going forward. I have the fortune of keynoting conventions for groups all over North America and recently I covered this very topic. If you want to figure out how to set your goals for 2012 and actually achieve them… then enjoy this short clip!
Jared James is the CEO and founder of Jared James Enterprises (JJE) and travels around North America speaking to and coaching REALTORS®. Connect with Jared at www.jaredjamestoday.com, on facebook.com/jaredjamestoday, or follow him on Twitter @jaredjamestoday.
By Jared James
Jared James is the CEO and founder of Jared James Enterprises (JJE) and travels around North America speaking to and coaching REALTORS®. Connect with Jared at www.jaredjamestoday.com, on facebook.com/jaredjamestoday, or follow him on Twitter @jaredjamestoday.
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