Real Estate Information

The earlier you start making changes the more the compound effect works in your favor. Your life is a result of your moment to moment choices. Small choices over time will get you off the track that you are desiring. If the nose of a plane is pointed just one percent off course when it leaves LA for New York, it will end up in Delaware once it gets to the east coast.

Design the life you want first and the business you want second. Many people choose a career before even thinking about what kind of life they want to build. Constantly write down your most important goals and keep evaluating them. While setting a goal figure out your why. The most motivating choices are ones that align with your “why” and your purpose. You need a deep why to achieve anything. 

What are you willing to tolerate? If you tolerate earning less than what you’re worth, that’s what you’ll earn. Become conscious of the choice you make and what you surround yourself with. Aim to spend more time around people and places that lift you up; the people you admire. You are the average of the 5 closest people around you. Create your future by raising the environment you are in. Pay attention to what you are feeding yourself. Where you put your attention creates your reality.

Take one step at a time to slowly gain momentum. With momentum, you can continue succeeding with less work. It’s easy to keep things running once it is already moving. Start your day off strong and finish strong making consistent choices to get to your goal. Develop a habit for 21 days, then focus on the 90-day stretch. After that hang with it for 3 years, it takes about 3 years to get good at about anything. It takes about 7 years to gain mastery and focused study. Don’t expect it to happen overnight. Make moment to moment positive choices to get you where you want. Start tracking tiny wins all throughout the day to turn things around.

Where you’re short on talent and skill, you can make up for with purposeful practice. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Success is a combination of your God-given gifts and the time you take to learn every day. Studying a topic means you are invested in it and try it out. What you need is to study, to practice, and to take action on the knowledge you have.

Look back 5 years ago. Are you where you thought you would be by this point? If not, why? Stay consistent with good choices and habits to put the compound effect to work for you. Identify your triggers for your bad habits: the who, what, where, and when that prompts you to start your bad habits. Focus on what you are gaining from removing the bad habits and get back on track to whatever you want in life. 

Is your life full of significance? Start giving to others. Too many people focus on achievement without fulfillment. If you want to fill more positive, try to help someone else feel encouraged. If you want more success, celebrate the success of others. Always go a little bit beyond what people expect.

The second section of The Compound Effect our team pulled out the key principles of gratitude and money. Darren Hardy is a self-made millionaire that shared the secrets of his success. His daily disciplines compounded over time got him to where his is today. 

Last week we talked about how making small choices can greatly affect the outcome over a long period of time. Being grateful is another one of the small, daily choices that can make a tremendous difference. Expressing gratitude daily will keep you focused on the positive aspects of your life. Gratitude is acknowledging the people and things you have in your life that you couldn’t do for yourself. Another principle is to bookend your days both in the morning and the evening with gratitude. Start and end your day with greatness. 

“What you appreciate, appreciates.”

Challenge: Create a daily thanksgiving journal for your spouse. Focus on one thing he/she did each day that you appreciate and write it down. Give them the book as a gift one year later. 

You are 100% responsible for everything. By what you do, what you don’t do, and how you RESPOND to what happens to you. When you change how you look at a situation, the situation changes. To be successful you need to be willing to give 100% without the exception to get anything back.

Awareness is the key to all our choices, behavior, habits, and situations. It also is the key to how we spend and handle money. Start taking your progress and steps to make sure you are in line with your long-term goals. Making every choice a conscious action is when you can begin to change the outcome. You must be aware. 

You can be in control of your finances, but you must be conscious of when, where, and how much you are spending. Think about how much time you buy a cup of coffee for just $5 a day, after a week you have spent $35, one month $150. After one year you would have spent $1,825 dollars. Be conscious in your financial behaviors. 

Dave Ramsey, known for personal finance and getting out of debt, says that 80% of finance is all behavior. Start with small steps to make the behaviors into a habit. The earlier you start making changes the more the compound effect will work. 

Every choice ignited the compound effect. They are subtle at the time but will adjust where you will end up. Stay the path. Are your choices going to be positive or negative? 

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy is one of those books that falls into the same category of what it is trying to teach. It is easy to understand and most all will agree the principles would be easy to apply, yet it becomes too easy that we just don’t do it. Darren Hardy has been a business leader in the personal development industry for 20+ years. He shares the strategy and steps to creating the success you have been longing for. 

In the first section of this book, Hardy helps explain the compound effect of combining the core principles that we learned from The Talent Code, practice, ignite, and coach, to begin to master success. There are huge rewards from small choices made consistently. Every choice leads to a habit, which beings to shape our future. Success doesn’t happen overnight and this book explains the basic fundamentals it takes. Don’t stop doing the little things that have made you successful. 

“Here’s the bottom line: You already know all that you need to succeed. You don’t need to learn anything more. If all we needed was more information, everyone with an Internet connection would live in a mansion, have abs of steel, and be blissfully happy. New or more information is not what you need—a new plan of action is.”

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference 

Even though most have heard and been taught this principle it is still a huge takeaway. The smallest of choices have an effect on the trajectory our lives take. The slightest degree of change over time makes a radical difference in the long run.

Our choices are every day, not just a New Year's resolution, or the start of summer goal but something we constantly need to be AWARE of. With that, it’s not an easy task to do but if we can be aware of just a few good and bad choices made each week/month that can make a significant change in the direction of our lives and happiness. 

As humans, it's easy to fall into the routine and just coast through the days, weeks, months, years of our lives. The more we can be awake and aware of what is motivating us or what our big crazy goals are the more likely we will be able to make the small choices to get us what we really want.

The Talent Code is full of stories and examples of success. These illustrations help prove the science behind building talent. It is a full circle, the more knowledgeable you are about something and the more understanding you have the more passion you will naturally have towards it. In the same way, you need to have an initial spark of interest to even get started in the deep practice. Finishing up the book, James shared how his life and career followed this structure without him even recognizing it. 

Reading this book got me thinking a lot about my career in real estate and how it has evolved over the past 12 years. It referenced taking 10,000 hours or 10 years to master a skill. This is because myelin is developed through repetition of firing those circuits in your brain. The more you do it the more myelin is developed and the easy that skill becomes. There are three phases to mastery of a certain skill 1. Deep Practice 2. Ignition 3. Master Coaching

Through the first 7 years of my real estate career, I spent a lot of time in deep practice. I was developing my skills to be a business owner and serve clients. I had some successes here and there that kept me going but I didn't hit the ignition phase until I got to RE/MAX and surrounded myself with many of the top producing agents in AZ. This opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities for my business, how to better serve my client's needs and enjoy it. Seeing other agents running successful businesses ignited a desire for me to follow their lead. This cycled me back into deep practice, but this time it had more meaning and purpose. I began to grow exponentially. Over the past couple years, I've begun working in the master coaching phase which has further sharpened my skills. Teaching your skills to others forces you to simply what you do in order for others to understand. This is a reminder of how important it is to stay focused on the fundamentals. 

After reading the talent code I look at my daily activities differently now. I understand that I need to make mistakes to develop new skills. I understand it will take some time to develop new skills and something along the way will ignite my desire to further improve. And finally, I understand the value in coaching others through this development process as it is a critical piece of my own mastery.

Feel free to share with us your story and how you see your life line up with these three phases. Next week we will kick off a brand new book. 

Master Coaching

 
This section was all about the people that have the ability to combine both deep practice and ignition for growth to develop talent in others. The coaches highlighted in this section were quiet and attentive. They gave targeted corrections and specialized their coaching to each person. Master coaches are farmers who put in the discipline to make each seed grow as tall as possible. 

John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach, is one of the best coaches of all time. In a study, they found that his words were short and full of information. They consisted of 7 percent compliments, 7 percent displeasure but 75 percent pure information. It was consistent and constant learning. He would also teach the entire picture then break it down. Demonstrations he would model the correct form, then incorrect, then display how it should be done correctly again. Master coaches also help ignite passion in their students to make it rewarding.

4 Virtues of Master Coaches:

Matrix: It’s the years of task-specific knowledge that lets teachers respond to student effort. It allows them to make specific connections with each student to take them to where they want to go. 

Perceptiveness: Coaches understand each student is different and listen. They take the time to get to know each player to know the best plan to make the most out of them.

GPS Reflex: Speaking directly. Master coaches instruct like a GPS; do this, now that. They push them to the next level.

Theatrical Honesty: Sometimes overreacting to make a point and gain empathy. Master coaches are always searching for ways to make a connection to pull out greatness.

Everyone needs a mentor who is going to consistently push them. There is no blueprint or one way of coaching and forming the deep practice to turn into a talent hotbed. It takes the passion of studying and customizing the style for each individual. Pay attention to what they show interest in and praise them for effort. Your brain grows with practice. It is a talent to find the better understanding to push them to the next level. 

IGNITION

This is the second major section of The Talent Code. Deep practice is the first step but ignition is needed to get that deep practice going. It is the energy, motivation, and passion behind the practice. A lot of principles and practices from The Miracle Morning. Throughout these chapters came different practices in developing a talent hotbed and having an environment of success.

The multiple stories and studies in this section all point us to similar characteristics of success and talent. Greatness was grown and practiced. One of the first similarities recognized was the passion of learning. Passion came from the environment, from the outside and changed the attitude within. There was a study of practices with students who had different end goals. They were all asked ‘how long do you think you will play…?’. They were divided up to three different options: Short-term commitment, medium-term commitment, and long-term commitment. Those who had the mentality that this was a long-term commitment outperformed everyone and progressed the fastest. They grew even more than the students who practiced longer with a short-term commitment. They had a vision of their ideal future selves succeeding past the practice. They were doing the deep practice because they knew it would affect their future.

Isn't it interesting when you are running a race, if someone is in front of you, you automatically run faster compared to when you are the leader you push yourself just enough to get first place. These talent hotbeds have success surrounding them pushing them to reach the next level. There were several different examples of triggers that fueled the skill. It was the ignition of the deep practice.

There are multiple if/then responses and it is suggested that they should all have the same then answer… “Better get busy”  There was also the study that listed all the successful individuals who were orphans at young age. This gave the phrase “You are not safe.” The fastest runners tend to be the youngest kids in a family. The phrase, “You are behind - keep up!” All these signals, aware or not, ignite us to be motivated and to push forward.

Another illustration used was the Curacao baseball team and little leagues. Their ignition was sparked by the success of their own in the Yankee’s World Series. They were able to relate and had a connection which sparked them and kept them motivated. “Hey that could be you”  The little kids had someone to look up to and a role model that they strived to be.

Alongside vision was motivational language. There was a study of students, half praised for intelligence, while the other half were praised for their effort. The students praised for their effort stretched themselves and kept trying which ultimately made them grow and succeed greatly. The students who were praised for intelligence made the choice of an easier path, afraid to make mistakes, which cause them to question their intelligence, resulting in their scores going down.

Affirming the struggle and challenges along the way cause greater success. You don’t automatically learn how to walk, babies fall down and struggle for months. The same would be true in your business. You are not automatically going to become successful. It will take time and there might be a lot of struggles along the way. Trails can be a good sign. It means we are pushing the limits to improve. It’s about motivational language to keep fighting and struggling to learn and develop the skill. It is about pushing above the ceiling, not capping your ability. Effort-based language speaks to the experience of learning to improve.

The last chapter of the Ignition section shared the story of KIPP schooling. This school, although extreme, have great principles to succeed. Their entire slogan is “Work Hard - Be Nice” The students from a young age learn that everything is earned and that every single detail matters. Self-discipline was more accurate than IQ in predicting a student’s GPA. Attention to detail and focusing on the end goal were pillars of the school. They needed to see the vision to get there and motivation to keep the dream alive. The disciple was what held the students accountable.

What is your ignition for deep practice? What is your vision of your future and are you okay with struggling to get there? Reward effect and commit to the long-term dreams. Stay focused on the details, affirm the struggles, and keep the fuel to earn your end goal. Work hard and be nice. Better get busy.

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle is the book our team is reading for the month of November. This book dives into growing and developing yourself to create talent. From the beginning, he speaks about the science of talent by growing more myelin. The book is divided into three different elements of the talent code: deep practice, ignition, and master coaching. The principles can get lost in the neurological and scientific talk but the more you understand the process and the reasons for practice the principles become easier to apply.

Deep Practice

This is one of the first steps of the talent code. Practice needs to be effective and efficient. To develop and grow you have to take action. You need to think of building skills just like building muscles, it takes a time to develop. Practicing skills need to be highly targeted and error-focused to adjust and correct the skill fast instead of going through the motions. Practices without thinking or building are just a practice wasting time. Another great reminder is that you have to stretch yourself making mistakes and failing to reach the next level. You don't get better by just coasting through the process. You get better by failing and quickly correcting what you can.

Cycle:

1. Pick a target

2. Reach for it

3. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach

4. Return to step one.

“Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals.” The myelin wraps around nerve fibers and increases the strength, speed, and accuracy to make the skill process smoother. The argument and conclusion are practice make myelin, myelin makes perfect. The myelin is strengthen based on what you do and continues to wrap and build on one another. It is hard to teach an old dog a new trick, same is true with humans. Hitting around age fifty the myelin starts to peak and the ability to build more myelin is difficult. This is why most experts start at a younger age. It has been estimated that it takes about 10,000 hours or 10 years of deep practice to master a skill. You are training your brain to build skills.  

Rule One: CHUNK IT UP

Absorb the Whole Thing - Break it into Chunks - Slow it Down

Rule Two: REPEAT IT

Rule Three: LEARN TO FEEL IT

“To get good, it’s helpful to be willing or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.”

The Miracle Morning has impacted our team and starts our daily routine. The purpose of this book is to transform your life to reach your ‘Level 10’ life. It starts with setting goals and creating habits to get there. Below are the areas of life broken up it create specific areas to create goals and habits.

GOALS/HABITS:

Friends & Family - Is it calling one person a day?

Personal Growth & Development - How about listening to podcasts while driving?

Health & Fitness - Go on a daily run? No fast food?

Finances - Start saving 10%?

Career/Business - What habits can you establish today?

Personal Environment - Redecorating?

Fun & Recreation - Favorite hobbies?

Significant Other/Romance - How can you attract or create your ‘Level 10’ relationship?

Contribution/Giving - Share volunteering?

Spirituality - Attend church consistently?

Our team is creating achievable goals to take it to the next level in 2017. What will some of your goals be? In conclusion of reading The Miracle Morning, our team has shared our takeaways and difference of what can happen when we apply it to our lives:

"TMM has been a game changer for me. My stress level and anxiety has greatly diminished. I find the meditation to be very effective. I do it M-F every week. Filling my mind w/ positive thoughts and activities is essential to do before opening my email or checking social media. When I follow this routine I feel I'm operating at a position of power the rest of the day... when I don't I go into reactive mode all day which leads to stress and anxiety." -James

"My take away from the Miracle Morning is that it doesn't take big changes to make a big impact on the quality of areas of my life that are so important to me." -Amy

"The Miracle Morning can look different for everyone. You have to better yourself and be refreshed if you want to even think about serving anyone else and achieving your dreams." -Kaylee

"It's amazing how you can create a positive habit after doing it for 30 days.  I have experience by reading Miracle Morning and repeating the Life S.A.V.E.R.S, that you can truly change your mornings and start your day feeling better and more positive and see the positive outcome it has on your life on a daily basis." -Janice

We are rewinding a bit this week to remember the suggestions of how to actually get up to complete the Miracle Morning lifesavers. Getting up early is not for everyone and can be difficult from time to time. These tips help you become motivated to actually get out of bed to create the life you want!

Snooze Proof Morning

*Set your attentions before bed. The first thought you have in the morning is normally the last thought you had before going to bed.
*Move your alarm clock across the room. Force yourself to physically get up to turn it off. Movement creates energy.
*Brush your teeth right away and splash water on your face.
*Drink a full glass of water.
*Get dressed right away or jump in the shower.  

Extra tips:

*Set a timer for your bedroom lights.

*Set a timer for your bedroom heater.

*Alarm clock motivational messages.

The whole idea of the Miracle Morning is to fill your mind with 100% positive thoughts and activities before you start your day of checking emails and social media. We want to encourage you to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It takes 30 days to form a habit. The first 10 days will be the most difficult. The next ten, 11-20 days will be easier as you establish a rhythm. Days 21-30 is when the habit is formed and when it will become more enjoyable. You have to be willing to take on challenges that are outside of your comfort zone.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

This week, we will leave you with a challenge of sending an email that could change your life. This won’t be easy to receive. The challenge our team is taking and we would like you to take as well is to email 5-30 people that know you well. This could be anyone you work with, friends, family members, etc. In this email ask for honest feedback on your weaknesses and areas where you could improve. Next challenge is to not comment back in defense but to take what they say and learn how to better improve yourself. Different areas of your life might showcase strengths and weaknesses differently. Everyone’s perception is their reality.

EMAIL

Subject: This Means A Lot

Will you please give me HONEST feedback on my weaknesses. In your opinion, what are 3 areas you think I could improve in?

Please don’t hold back. I promise I will not take anything personal. My hope is to improve those areas and my relationship with you and with others. I want to become the best person I can be.

SEND

Let us know how this email and the responses have affected your self-development and what you are now focusing on improving! We would also love to hear if you have applied any principles of the Miracle Morning into your life and the difference you have seen. Next week we will conclude this book and give personal reflections or applications from this book from all of our team members as well as announce which book we will read next.