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Determining Your Own Destiny in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

By Jim Gillespie | July 8, 2009

Despite so many brokers telling me how difficult it is to close transactions these days, there’s really a simple way to help determine your own destiny in this business. Sometimes destiny arrives on your doorstep, and sometimes you have to go out and make it arrive yourself. And clearly, this economy is one of those times when you have to go out and make it arrive.

And while we’re on the subject of destiny, let me tell you a story about how it once impacted my own family…

My parents were both born in a small town in Scotland. They never knew each other when they were children, and when my mother was six years old she and her family all moved to the United States, and settled near Detroit. But it was sixteen years later, when she was 22 years old back in 1938, that her family finally decided to go back to Scotland and spend some time there with their relatives.

And while this was going on, there’s no way my mother could’ve recognized that in stepping onto that ship back in 1938 and journeying back to her homeland, she was about to change her destiny once and forever. Because it was on that voyage, when she returned to the same small town she was born in, that she’d meet my father…the man she’d be married to for more than 51 years.

As my aunt, my father’s sister, likes to tell the story, “Your mother was working in a store in our neighborhood, and I was stunned at just how beautiful she really was. And she had these gorgeous patent leather shoes that I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of! So I went home and told your father about this beautiful woman who was working in our neighborhood, and the rest, as they say, is history!”

But success in your business right now probably isn’t going to come that easily to you. And it probably won’t even involve you getting onto a ship! But what’s important here is to recognize what you need to get done in order to be successful, and to not object to it. Because I’m hearing right now a lot of brokers objecting to what they know they need to get done to improve their businesses, instead of just getting it done. And if they just got this stuff done their lives would be so much easier, and they’d definitely be making more money.

So let me ask you…are you getting all of the prospecting done that you know you should be? And if you answer “No” to this question, are you still willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the success that you want to in our industry?

Because if you’re willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the success that you want, then ask “If I prospected 10-12 hours every week for the next year, what kind of results would I produce in my own business?” And if you like the answer to that question, just get your prospecting done…with no excuses.

My mother didn’t know that in stepping onto that ship back in 1938, she’d be changing the destiny of her life. But in some way, at some level, I think she knew that something important was going to happen to her.

I have a photo of her stepping onto that ship, and there’s always been something about this photo that’s called out to me and said, “She knew, on some level, that something important was about to happen to her.”

And as you can see from the photo, from the moment he laid eyes on her, my father didn’t have much of a chance of not falling in love with her…:)

Click here to see the photo.


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