The Real Money Is in the Relationship, Not the Transaction

All right, good morning. Here we are, journal number seven, 1997. It's been interesting to watch as we're going through all the things that, all the tools that we were using back in this time and no mention of the Internet, but here it is. This is the first time in all of these journals that we've mentioned the Internet. I talked about it yesterday with talking about autoresponders.

Email was the most reliable thing. Only 17% of people in the United States actually were online. And email was the most perfectly deliverable thing. But when I look at the through lines of what was happening then and my initial thought of transferring that now to the Internet, this is the first time that the words livingin winterhaven.com came into my existence here. And I've recognized now as I've been going back that so many of the things that I've done were a combination of two or three things that I was reading, experiencing the tools that were available and combining them to create, create something.

And my thought was, because I was so immersed in this idea of the one to one future, which I still am, and immersed in this idea of what they refer to as advocacy of having a relationship with one person and helping them navigate their way through all of the different things that are available. What I've realized is my initial thought about the real estate was that there's really only 5% chance, maybe a 7% chance that somebody is going to buy or sell a home this year. So in Winter Haven, most of the people are not going to be your customers this year, but they own homes and they're going to have all kinds of things that they need over the course of that year. So being an advocate means looking at what else is somebody going to be doing because they're a client of yours. And I mentioned the seven categories that every budget in America contains.

Home and auto and food and health and kids and money and me, that's what every budget is made up of. One of the most reliable kind of strategic moves that you can make is to elevate yourself to the leader of a category. We saw this with the, with the wedding guides, with The Outdoor Weddings 101 Great Places to have an outdoor wedding in Toronto as a party rental company that you're one component in this. But if you take it all the way back to the, you know, the core of it, it's one bride and one groom going through an 18 month process that's going to involve many, many people, they're going to need a, they're going to need a venue, they're going to need flowers, they're going to need catering, they're going to need a dress and limo and DJ and entertainment, all of that stuff that goes in it. And so that's what I was thinking about, elevating the relationship as a Realtor to being an advocate for not only the transactional part of buying and selling a home, but for being an advocate for living in Winter Haven.

That's what the real thing is. And if you can get known as someone, it's the relationships that really matter. And I think more than ever, as we're moving into a situation where the role of a real estate agent is increasingly under scrutiny, that people are always saying, well, do we really need the Realtors or is AI, Is everybody going to be, you know, selling their house online with AI? And maybe it's going to be a kind of an easier make. The actual jobs that need to be done individually might be easier, but the collective of being an advocate and being a guide and having discernment and wisdom and piecing all of the details together, that's not going anywhere.

And I think that there's an amazing opportunity for a Realtor to take the role of advocacy into the homeowner category, at least just the homeowner category, and think about how you can build the relationship with people and introduce them to other people who are also philosophically aligned with the way that you serve people.

Wow. Sunday morning at the drag races here and. And encouraging collectively looking to give people the best advantage for being a homeowner in your town. And I think that as it's as a standalone business, even outside of just the transactional part of, of being the Realtor, gathering, having those relationships and being able to direct and guide people to whatever goods or services or improvements or things that they're going to need as a homeowner. I think we're all craving this advocacy, we're craving this that it would be great to have one person on this.

And I, I think about it all the time. Like, I work with a lot of home services companies and I keep saying that the thing that I really want, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is that I want to live in my house like I'm a guest in your house. I just want to live there and I want everything else to be handled. And if somebody steps up to the position of being that one person, almost like estate management for, but managed home ownership for somebody who lives in Winter Haven't, I think that's a tremendous opportunity and it would also increase the number of real estate transactions that you end up doing. So I'm not giving up on this idea.

I think it was true 30 years ago, it's just as true today. And I think it's going to be even more important in the next 30 years. Every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen, onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people onto that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valu action is for you and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business, I'm all for it. So this Friday at 1pm I'm going to do for the first time a 50 minute profit finder workshop.

And you're going to join me live on Zoom. And we're going to go through a 50 minute exercise. Bring your pen, bring a notebook or piece of paper and I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business. And maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there, but I'm going to show you where to look for it. So it's free.

It's for you. It's Friday at 1pm this Friday and just watch. Go to. What did we call the website, Josh?

Just go to 50minuteprofitfinder.com and I'll get you all the details and hopefully you can join us then. Friday 1:00pm.