Whew, I am so glad my class is done. That said, I am only giving myself a brief respite, bc I am totally paranoid about losing the momentum. I keep telling myself that success never comes easy; don’t lose steam!

In terms of moving ahead, I already knew this but somehow doing the various lead generation activities really opened my eyes to just how much quality trumps quantity. Looking at the stats, all those efforts reaching out to strangers (“un-mets” as we call them in the biz) show super low conversion. Cold calls, door knocking, flyering… To get one warm lead, you gotta hit hundreds of people. So I’m going to zone back in on a more targeted approach.

So I’m brainstorming a few ideas:

1. Tabling with the banks for loan days. These people at least already have an account at the bank and they are physically present for a possible pre-approval session with my partner lender.
2. Tabling at workplaces during lunch for an “Ask the Realtor” or “The Realtor is in” session. Another version of this might be a lunch and learn session.
3. A regular schedule for homebuying classes.
4. Calls to For Sale by Owners and Expired Listings.
5. Calls to more lenders and experienced agents who have open houses I can host.

I also need to fill all of my lunches and dinner with meetings. Yeah, as the coach reminded: 100 contacts/week is NOT something to be celebrated. That is the bare minimum. Yikes. There’s a new baseline now.

Fortunately, I am FINALLY starting to see some traction. I know, I can’t believe it! One of the lenders with whom I did the loan days in April called while I was in Nashville. She has two clients who were getting pre-approved with her and they are NOT working with an agent. One dude already set up an appointment with the other agent she recommended. The second guy, I’m hoping to hear from. It’s one of those things though where the buyers want my info but they don’t want the lender to pass their info to me… Yup, people are hypersensitive these days about their privacy. So I’m waiting.

From my homebuying class, as I mentioned, none of the attendees were people I reached from canvassing; that said, turnout was solid. Two parties were former colleagues at the university, and two other parties were notified via my neighbors. I’m so grateful for the support of others. It makes such a big difference. I have 3-4 warm leads from my class… people who are considering buying in the next 12 months.

There is also an agent up in Burlingame whom I met many months ago through my volunteer group, Linkages. He’s been so generous with his time and advice. His aunt is selling her house next month in Milpitas (closer to me), so I’ve been checking in with him weekly, following up on the schedule, and I’m planning to help him with canvassing and flyering for the upcoming open house. He’s been so so good to me, and I have to say, with him being Chinese-American, there’s so much commonality that I would not have anticipated. Like even talking about the condition– the upkeep and maintenance of the aunt’s house. The way Chinese people live in their spaces… it is so different. And all the activities in BOLD. His mom, who is also a Realtor, was so uncomfortable with the prospecting, not to mention the Money Magnet exercise. Anyway, it was so helpful to hear his perspective and be reminded that these are all tools we need to assess for ourselves and then select the ones that work for us.

I will say that I struggle with parts of life that require selectivity. On one hand, I’m pretty curious and I like to learn, so I attend all kinds of classes and events and trainings. There is some part of me that wants to believe if I just follow the prescription of the experts, I will make it. The concept of a blueprint for success appeals to the side of my brain that likes things to be black and white and just very clear. And my idolization of specialists also drives me to believe in their secrets and in their tactics. Like that show, Married at First Sight. Despite the craziness of the premise, there is some part of me that believes or wants to believe the experts with all their knowledge, wisdom, and tests will be able to run their matchmaking algorithm and come up with the right fit! Never mind that in four seasons with three couples each, only 1/12 have worked out! Still, when the Bold trainer says not to take the class a la carte, I like that bc it’s less mental strain: I can focus on the techniques and not think about the details of what to apply when and where.

The problem with this mentality is that despite my affinity for simple and straightforward, I also have a very independent, judging, and defiant mind. So in my head, both sides are constantly at war with one another. Even as I had resolved from the beginning to “not do this a la carte,” I was thinking and evaluating at every single stage! I mean, while I consider myself more of a generalist than a specialist, this ain’t my first rodeo in life, you know? I have some amount of life experience and wisdom to bring to the table, and why should my opinions or thoughts be dismissed? Like the language, the word choice, the delivery, etc. I’ve worked in communications for a very long time. 

So here’s my dilemma: In my DISC personality profile, my D (dominance) is super high, meaning I’m driven towards execution and getting things done. But there is a detail part of my brain that likes to know how things work and to check the numbers. For example, when I held that swanky open house for the top producing agent, I was the one who noticed her flyers in her display box were inaccurate: The address was correct, but the pictures in the flyer were wrong, as was the website URL. Also, when my lender prepped his slides for my homebuying class last week, I found an error in his financing scenario. When my coach sent out market data stats to his students, I caught errors in his calculations and graphic (I was maintaining my own separate spreadsheet to track the market changes). I mean, mistakes happen. I’m not saying that I’m infallible, but I’m just saying that I do look at the details. So as I went through the training, I gave thought to what we were instructed to say… and I didn’t always agree with the technique. But you see my issue: my mind has internal conflict and flip flops.

The one thing that I really liked about Bold– My team captain really proved to me that you can deliver the scripts in a natural and compelling manner. I mean, he didn’t follow them verbatim, but he understood their intention and used them as talking points. Honestly, he modeled the conversations even better than the coaches. So my conclusion is that it can be done. I don’t believe in winging anything, so I’m going to study/practice/internalize the main points of the scripts and then aim to deliver them convincingly. With practice will come confidence and effectiveness. That’s right: time to Elizabeth Dole this shit.