As you wish

If you have been a realtor for a while, you know that every real estate transaction is fraught with obstacles. Even the "simplest" deals have hiccups. The more experienced you are, the better you are at communicating and navigating your clients through the transaction. Then those hiccups are easier to deal with.

A real estate transaction kind of reminds me of a scene from the movie The Princess Bride. Westley is taking Princess Buttercup through the fire swamp to escape the princess's fiancé. In the movie, Buttercup says that no one has ever survived the fire swamp. Unfazed, Westley grabs Buttercup's hand, and off they go through the swamp.

As Westley navigates the terrors of the swamp, he remains totally nonplussed. He takes every obstacle as matter of fact, deals with it, and moves on. He never loses his cool, he never gets stressed out, and he's not sitting there worried about it. He simply keeps moving along until they safely reach the other side. And he does this all in a whimsical way.

Look, I know this is a movie. But one could say that every real estate transaction is just like navigating the fire swamp. The more you can be at ease, the more you can be okay with what comes at you, and the better you get at guiding the princess (eg. Your client) through the swamp, the easier it gets.

You have to not only be competent, but you have to believe in your competence. If you are stressed out, worried, nervous, scared and/or shying away from the things that need to get dealt with...that's a problem! Conversely, if you are covering up your nervousness or weakness with bullying - also a problem! Side note: hopefully you are not a bully, and you know what it is like to be in a transaction with bullies - they're jerks! Sure, they get their way for themselves (and sometimes their clients), but it makes the process miserable for everyone else. In the end, those transactions are lose-lose.

But I digress...

What I am trying to get at is if you are a professional, you can navigate a transaction with ease and grace. If you can do that, you absolutely should be paid a full fee. Professionals get paid. Professionals are not afraid to walk away from clients who don't value what they do and are willing to pay for that service.

This is probably going to sound really, really harsh. Consider that if you can't walk away/turn down a piece of business then you are:

• An amateur
• Operating with a scarcity mindset
• Are beholden to your clients and their whims
• You do not have true freedom

Being able to walk away from any piece of business is the ultimate power move.

To do any of this, you must be competent and you must believe in your competence. But before all that the one thing you must be doing: talking to people. If you aren't talking to people and developing and nurturing relationships then it doesn't matter how competent you are. 

This business really is so simple. Agents love to argue that it's hard. They tell me how complicated things are, how many things they need to deal with, etc. If you want it to be hard, then as Westley says to Buttercup "as you wish..." 

So as you begin this week...is business hard or easy? How do you approach each transaction - with stress and worry? Or ease and grace?  However it goes, it's as you wish.