Yeah, But … Shut Up

Tell a Friend

Look who’s back … back again … Dalton’s back … tell a friend …

And he even brought his self-conversation device back with him. (Which will teach people not to tell me that they enjoyed it … my business card reads “beating literary devices to death since 1988.”)

Wow

There was an article on RE/MAX’s Main Street a couple of days ago profiling an agent who sells $30-odd million of real estate annually without advertising, instead “wowing her clients” and living on referrals.

It took little time for the first naysayer to appear. I can’t find the exact quote but it was something along the lines of “yeah, but she works in Toronto and the market’s better there and the houses are more expensive and somebody stole my binky … waaaaaaaaaaaaah”

How often have you listened to a speaker at your franchise’s convention or listened to a speaker or even gazed askew at one of your office’s top sellers and thought, “yeah, they’re doing well but … (insert excuse for their incredible success compared to yours here.)”

I’ve done it. And you know what? It was both pointless and silly.

Yeah, But..

So’s the photograph of Tobey, dude. Couldn’t you find a photo of someone with a pacifier.

Yeah, but … shut up.

Just stop. It’s often easier to tear down those more successful than we are than to try and figure out how to translate what they do into our business. It takes far more innovation to invent something new than to pick apart how it never will succeed. (And where’s the analysis when we’re proven wrong?)

Oh No, I’m Not

When I’ve spoken in my offices past and present about websites and blogging, the inevitable reaction is “yeah, but you’re a tech guy.” Actually, I’m not. Yes, I tried with minimal success to write programs on my Texas Instruments computer in 1985 – you know the one, with the 16K memory and the external cassette drive and the voice modulator. Yeah, baby.

Yeah, I can take care of some basic stuff in my WordPress themes and on my website (a talent borne out of the desire not to have to pay someone else to do it for me.)

But a full-on tech guy? Not really …

Playing with Bionicles

Give it up, dude. You’re one step away from playing with Bionicles.

The point is, you don’t need to be a tech guy to build a web presence. If you can’t do it yourself, spend a little bit of money … but the key is to spend it wisely. In other words, don’t drop $30 a month on some templated website that’s identical to three dozen other sites in town. Find a niche and offer value to the person stopping by. That’s what creates stickiness and keeps them around.

Jay Thompson, Candace Robinson and I were at the Arizona Regional MLS Tech Fair last week on an invite from the folks at Diverse Solutions. It was a never-ending train of “yeah, but …” every time we started to explain how the Internet can be leveraged.

Yippee, You Get It!

At least, until we ran into someone who got it. Who wasn’t a tech person, per se. Who had a rough idea of what they wanted from their site and was willing to invest 15 minutes to learn how they can leverage the available technologies to create a site that perfectly serves a certain niche.

All at a fairly minimal cost. All at a relatively low monetary investment, at least compared to what many agents spend in the fruitless pursuit of business.

What did this person do? They shut up before they got to yeah, but. And “yeah, but” became “oh yeah.”

Oh yeah as in “oh yeah, I can do this.”

It’s Universal

It doesn’t need to be for technology only. It can be any aspect of your business.

Forget the reasons why you can’t do what others do to succeed. Find the ways in which you can take pieces of their success and make them work for you.

And no, the picture doesn’t have anything to do with the post. Just in case you were wondering.