Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty!

I say it at the end of the show but I want to just say thank you for taking time out of your busy day to spend a little time with me each week. I really value your time and appreciate you investing some of it with me and I will do my best to add some value to your day, week, and month with something you can use, either in your business, your life, or both. It goes without saying that the responsibility to mine/harvest the value from our time together is ultimately on you and what you do with the information and that will never be more true than with this episode since this episode is all about 5 things you can do in your business right now, today, to add more value to the process as an appraiser and it will be up to you to implement them.

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If you turn off the podcast machine today and go about your day with no implementation whatsoever, even If just one or two of the suggestions, there is nobody else to blame. And the 5 things we’re going to talk about today are easy, easy, easy! In fact, so easy that you may just be tempted to overlook a couple of them and blow them off. I’ve spoken with lots of appraisers, real estate agents, lenders, and other professionals from a variety of industries that give a little huff at some of these suggestions because they’re looking for something more sophisticated and, I dare say, more complicated. But not because they’re sophisticated and complicated people, its because the more sophisticated and complicated the system, the easier it is to not do and then blame it on how complicated it is.  
  
For some reason, some of the easiest marketing and business systems are perceived as simply too easy to be effective and in this high tech era we live in, business people tend to think a system has to be high tech and complicated to be effective. And although, there are some high tech suggestions in todays episode, they are all based on low tech ideas and practices. The high tech era has simply made some of these options much easier to get in front of many more people much easier than before and, for that reason, we use them. 

(Now, as a side note, for me to keep this episode reasonably short, and by short I mean just over an hour, I will talk about 3 of the 5 things in this episode which can be listened to wherever you listen to your podcasts. The last two are being released as bonus content for the Value Syndicate members only. If you’re not a value syndicate member yet, its completely free and you can easily become a member at realvaluecast.com or realvaluegroup.com and you just register for it there. The value syndicate members get the podcast emailed to them as soon as an episode is released and they also receive any bonus content like what this episode has.) I have also included a pdf worksheet with this episode and this will tie in to value add number five in the bonus content so you’re going to want to download that and print it off. Now I know a good many of you listen to the show while driving and I get that. You’re still going to want to download the worksheet and print it off. Don’t just leave it on your computer and look at it. It has valuable questions and places to write your thoughts and ideas and that’s what this episode is all about. I also give specific suggestions about how to use this worksheet in your own business in the bonus episode so be sure to download it and also get the bonus episode to better understand how.) 
  
Before we go into the tactical and practical and talk about some of these ideas, lets first talk about expectations. I’ve found over the years when working with somebody, it doesn’t matter if it’s a new client, a new realtor, a coaching client, mastermind group member, or a new student of some kind, discussing expectations and letting them know how you like to work is extremely important. Its also important to understand how they think, speak, act, and like to work so that the relationship can start off on the right foot. With that said, the expectations I want to set for you in this episode are about marketing in general and what to expect when you start to implement new practices or systems. After teaching sales, marketing, and strategic planning in a handful of different industries, one of the dilemmas we always come across is the belief and attitude that whatever is being taught today needs to put money in my pocket today or maybe tomorrow. People tend to want quick solutions for their immediate problems and this is never truer than when things get slow or somebody is in need of money. And its never been truer in the appraisal business and for appraisers than when they’re struggling to make ends meet, down about the business, mad about the erosion of fees to the AMCs and erosion of the orders to automated valuations and whatever else keeps them frozen in despair and hurting for business instead of taking some kind of action toward more prosperity. 
  
This is, of course, extremely short term thinking. Dare I say, this is one of the huge problems in the appraisal business. Appraisers have been necessary in the financing and collateral valuation process for so long that they’ve never really had to develop the other vital skills that would be required by other professions to gain and maintain new business. Up until 2007/2008, there was at least a little bit of selling going on in that you had to sell yourself to a lender, realtor, attorney, mortgage company, or credit union to start getting some business. You had to actually have some kind of personality to maintain the business because a guy like me could walk into any bank in town and sell them on using me and, if they liked what I was offering, they may drop you and start using me. In fact, that’s exactly how I built my business! Of course, after the creation of AMCs and the wall built between appraiser and client, no personality, no sales skills, no communication skills, no speaking skills, and really no marketing skills required. Now we have a whole new generation of appraisers who have grown up in that model that are withering on the vine because the only business they had was AMC business OR they simply haven't had to really do much to get business.

When business is good and everyone is fat and happy, you can pick and choose who you want to work with, you can turn down asshole clients or business that you don’t want (which, of course, I always recommend) and you feel on top of your world as if its always going to be like this. Those of us who have been in any industry for more than 10 or 20 years can tell you, however, things never stay the same forever. It should be a given, but its always interesting to hear folks complaining when things start to change as if they’re somehow entitled to one stitch of business from anybody and how dare things change! Sorry my friends, but lives, economies, oceans, lawns, planets, everything in the universe moves in cycles and our businesses are no different. If you haven’t been building up your network of business and potential business from day one, nay, before you even got into the business, you might be in trouble. The kind of work we’re going to talk about today takes time. Marketing takes time. 20 years ago, you may have been able to implement some kind of marketing plan  and get an immediate phone call but today, people are looking on the internet long before they need a service and their doing research. If you haven’t positioned yourself to be in the flow of their research when they’re doing it, you potentially miss out.

None of these are quick fix bandaids for shitty business and marketing practices over the last 10 or 20 years. Its never too late, although, if we’re being honest with each other, it may be for some of you because you simply wont implement any of this stuff with enough consistency for it to have any benefit. If you want to build a rock solid business, you have to do things consistently (that’s called habit) and you absolutely must build a network. For all of the newbies listening, this may be the most important bit of information you hear your whole career. Get out of your caves and start meeting people. Start building your network of complimentary businesses and services and start adding value. This will come in handy down the line.  
  
Having had the great fortune to study and learn from some of the greatest minds on this planet, one of them being my Mr. Toyoda, my first real business mentor, I can tell you that many of the things necessary to be successful in life and business can be boiled down to a short list of beliefs and activities that, if followed, will lead to health, wealth, and happiness. Unfortunately, for many today, a belief that technology has changed all the old rules has lead people down a path of over sharing on social media, dabbling in the latest and greatest recommended methods and then quitting when the newest shiniest trinket comes along, and forgetting that behind all of the technology and systems we all use today are living breathing human beings. People using technology and systems to maybe make their lives easier or more efficient, but still human beings looking for the same things in life that you and I are: love, interaction, connection, respect, recognition, and a little bit of light at the end of whatever tunnel they may be walking through at this moment.

Of the multitude of lessons I learned from that Aikido and Zen master so many years ago, one of the greatest lessons was one that is often referred to as digging your well. Being Japanese, he referred to it as cooking your rice before you’re hungry. He’d say, “Brain (he couldn’t say ‘Ls’), you have to cook your rice before you’re hungry, otherwise you’ll just have a handful of dried grains in your pocket and nothing to eat”. What he meant, of course, was that you had to always be planning ahead so that you were prepared for any eventuality before it arose. This wasn’t self defense teachings, this was hardcore business education given to me in a car on the way to a weekend Aikido seminar in Memphis, Tennessee in early 1992.  
  
I was traveling with Mr. Toyoda as otomo (listen to the episode on this, carrying the bags of a zen master) and we had just arrived in Memphis. Being a 21 year old kid at the time, I was just trying to stay awake and do my job correctly. But Mr. Toyoda, being the consummate teacher he was, was always teaching somebody something. It seemed almost ever time he opened his mouth, he was dropping some knowledge and wisdom on whomever was keen enough to recognize it for what it was. He never imposed his teachings on anybody, he just imparted his wisdom and, if you were ready and willing to hear it, even if you didn’t understand it at the time, he’d give it freely. I was one of the lucky ones to have been with him so much and working for him for that time that I got to see and hear all of the nuggets he was dropping on people with every interaction.

The car was being driven by our host who had just picked us up from the airport and we were headed first to lunch before being take to our hotel to rest up a bit before the seminar began that evening. On the way to lunch, our host began to regale us with all of his knowledge of the greater Memphis area. All of the local hotspots, the best places to eat and drink, where to find good music, and so on. I was half in a daze at the time since my only real job, or so I thought, was to carry the bags, take care of Mr. Toyoda, stay silent unless spoken to, and just generally be throwing dummy throughout the weekend. What I was about to learn, however, was greater than any martial arts technique he could show me.  
  
Shortly after our host finished telling us all about Memphis, Mr. Toyoda began to speak. He began talking about the demographics of the different areas around Memphis. He started explaining how highway 69 divided certain parts of Memphis and the demographic makeup of the Central Gardens and Midtown areas of Memphis. How the downtown area had developed over the past 20 years. What the trends were and what South Memphis and Binghamton and how far people typically drove to get to certain conveniences. He knew the average income and media age of people within a 10 mile radius of the school we’d be teaching in that weekend. He knew how much disposable income folks had and how popular certain things were in the area. Mind you, he had never been to Memphis prior to this particular weekend. This was his first time there and teaching for this particular group.

The reason we were there was to sign on yet another group of schools into our organization and so, as I realized later, this was Mr. Toyoda’s way of expressing how much research he had done about the area, the business opportunities, the people, their likes and dislikes, which allowed him, of course, to tailor his offerings to this particular school and what they may need. In addition to being an Aikido and Zen Master, he was a master marketer. The interesting thing was that he was in a unique business where he was very near the top of a small pyramid. He had lived and trained with the founder of aikido, had lived in a zen monastery for several years while attending law school, and was world renowned for his teaching abilities. He could have easily just sat back and waited for people to come to him, which they were, but he never rested when it came to building his business.  
  
After explaining all of these things to our host, It was quite obvious that even he didn’t know all the demographic and psychographic information that my teacher had studied on. Needless to say, he was extremely impressed!  I dare say, the gentleman was sold on going with our organization before Mr. Toyoda even stepped on the mat to teach. He had just received some extremely valuable information from my teacher and quickly recognized how this man was going to do everything he could to add some value to this man’s school and help him grow. Of course, my teacher didn’t rest there. He then proceeded to ask about the man’s son and new baby. He asked about the man’s wife and the health problems she had been having. He asked about the man’s drive from home to work and then to the school to teach. He asked him about the health of the school and what their overall goals were. He asked the man about their struggles and biggest problems were. I learned that day that just being good at a particular thing, in this case teaching martial arts, wasn’t good enough. You had to actually care about the people you were working with and you had to do your homework.  
  
It wasn’t until later in the evening when Mr. Toyoda and I were alone that I asked him about the drive from the airport earlier that day and what I had heard. That’s when he said, “Brain, you have to cook your rice before you’re hungry…” He went on to explain why his research was so important and how he never took anything for granted. He could never get full of his own fame and success because that’s the very moment when it starts to crumble and competitors move in or your customers and clients start looking for something else. He said, “I have to be able to add value beyond just my aikido knowledge, I have to help them live better lives”. Needless to say, I was blown away! I hadn’t yet seen this side of him and was quite happy to. Up until that point, I had gotten the gruff, very Japanese, unemotional, hardcore zen master and businessman whose job it was to break me down and rebuild me into something useful and prepare me for success. No easy task, by the way! 
  
What he was saying about the cooking your rice before you’re hungry is probably better translated in English as digging your well before you’re thirsty. The idea has been around for a long time, obviously, but the phrase was made popular in the late 90’s by popular sales and networking author Harvey Mackay with a book by the same name. The gist of the book, as you can imagine, is about how important networking, research on your clients, and doing the vital work before its needed is to your overall success. You see, there is often a lag time of weeks to years before a sale is ever actually made in any business. In an appraisal business, of course, many appraisers believe the only selling they have to do is to get on a list or a panel and they’re done. Turn on the spigot and let the orders flow. Unfortunately, this has poisoned a lot of appraisers and when things get slow, competition gets hefty, or they realize they don’t like that particular kind of business, they’re left with a big problem: no idea of how to get new and better business.  
  
As you know, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any period of time, I am all about trying to find ways to add value for my clients so that I and my work doesn’t get relegated to the realm of basic commodity, which appraisals often are. What I know, however, is that there is a huge opportunity for appraisers who recognize that the appraisal may be a commodity but the individual and/or their company doesn’t have to be. This means, however, that some creative thinking must be employed on the regular to seek out ways to be of more value to your clients than you think you are currently by just providing them timely and accurate valuations, if you’re even doing that. And while we have a big list of things you can be doing to add value, I’m not going to overload you with all of them just yet. One, because I think a big list of things just becomes a cafeteria menu that people start picking from of the things they like to do. And two, because I believe there is a necessary progression of things that one needs to start doing first before they move on to other things. Meaning, I’ve worked with enough appraisers and business people to know that If I cant get you to start writing thank you notes to your clients first, you’re going to struggle with some of the other things later on. I also know the value of discipline and taking action and if I can get you to do some of the more difficult stuff up front, I can train you to do some of the other things down the line. But I have to see you taking action on the difficult things first before moving on.  
  
And, in fact, the first difficult thing you need to start doing in your business to add value is to begin writing Thank You notes. Yes, you heard that one correctly. Writing, I didn’t say typing and I didn’t say have your assistant write Thank You’s, I said to begin writing Thank You notes. I suggest going into a local printer and having them print up some nice Thank You cards or, if you’re web savvy, go onto Vistaprint or one of the other online printers and have some nice cards made inexpensively. You can upload your logo, pick your colors, pick what it says, and have really nice cards made for next to nothing. We have several thank you cards depending on the client we’re sending them to. We have some that have our colors and logo that say “You Rock” on the front and thank you on the inside. We have some that say “You’re the Shit!” And we have some conservative ones that just say Thank You!. The more important thing is what the cards represent which is a weekly practice of writing down names of people that we feel are in need of a thank you from us. Of course, that would be the obvious people like those who sent us business that week, but the practice is intimately tied to the the practice of gratitude which puts us in an active mode of thinking of people to thank. Once you’ve exhausted the obvious ones, you have to go on a search for more people to send thank you’s to.

What ends up happening is that you write up 2 or 3 for that week because those are the only humans you actually know and can send cards to and then you’re faced with a realization. The realization is that you either have too much of your business rooted in unknown and unreliable people, or you haven’t been digging your well! This realization alone can be the impetus to get you off your ass and out into the market to start building something real. It’s never too late. I get several of these cards every year from people in my network and almost all of them are computer generated. I get birthday cards, Christmas cards, and a cards for other occasions throughout the years from my insurance company, my investment broker, and some other connections but I only receive one handwritten card each year in the mail and that’s from an old school realtor connection that I used to by my first commercial building and he still gets all my referrals in that arena. He’s one of the biggest residential and commercial real estate brokers around, by the way, and he still hand writes all of his birthday and Christmas cards.  
  
Now, why hand written cards from you? Because, I said so! This art and science of business building is not about trickery, its not about fancy techniques, and its not about the hot button of the day to get 50 likes and 20 shares. Some of that stuff can be important but until you get yourself into the habit of recognizing all of the people you have to be grateful for and then taking some physical action to recognize them, you’ll always be a slave to the market and to technique instead of principle. Principle trumps mere technique and principled techniques trump everything else. Make this a daily or weekly habit. I’ll share with you how I do it. I have a 3X5 notecard on my desk that I am adding names to each day during the week. At the end of the week, I set aside time to write out all of my thank you cards to those people. The benefit for me with that method is that it puts me in the gratitude mindset each day as I’m writing names on the notecard and getting excited about what I want to say to that person, and then I get a big blast of gratitude energy at the end of the week as I’m writing my cards.

Remember, this is not a technique that gets you an appraisal order. This is a principled practice that takes you out of technique mode and puts you in the most energetic attraction mode possible, which is gratitude. If you can’t do this one my friends, I’m sorry to say that none of the other things I teach you will have any long lasting benefits for you. I can teach you 20 different ways to get an appraisal order this week or next but if you don’t have the proper mindset of digging your well and digging it deep, you’ll always just be looking for tips and tricks to snag an order. That’s not a sustainable business model, that’s called panhandling. Its only after you’ve begun digging your well and put some key things into place in your process that you can try out some variety of tactics to get people into your virtuous funnel of future business. (Notice I said virtuous, not virtual) 
  
So Thank You cards are number one on the list of adding value for your clients. Let your clients know on a regular basis how much you value them and their business. Send cards to your loan officers, their processors, the office staff, to your realtors, their office staff, to your attorney clients, their staff, the secretaries who take your calls and patch you through, the lady who gives you a ticket in the parking ramp every week when you drive downtown, your mailman or woman, the UPS driver, the FedEx driver, the security guard at the nice high rise condo development who lets you into the elevator on inspections, the waiter or waitress at the diner you visit every week. It doesn’t matter who it is really, this is a principled practice and vital habit necessary for long term growth and success. Can you be successful without writing thank you notes? Sure, I know lots of people who are, at least by some general definition of success. But if you want to have the kind of success that opens doors, creates new opportunities for you, and helps you too become a better person, this is one of those old school practices that all but guarantees it.

By the way, I used to use Earl Nightingale’s definition of success which is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. But after hearing Harvey Mackay’s definition many years ago, I began adapting and grafting that onto Earl Nightingale’s definition to make my own. Harvey Mackay’s goes like this: having a predetermined plan, successfully carrying it out over a long period of time, and having a damn good time doing it. While I like Harvey Mackay’s definition as well, I personally believe that any definition of success absolutely must include helping people. So my personal definition of success is: the progressive realization of a worthy plan and ideal, successfully carried out over a long period of time, and helping as many people as possible along the way.  That’s just mine, I recommend you develop your own definition of success so that it includes more than just a dollar figure reached or a particular status reached.  
  
The next one takes a little more tech savvy, or maybe a little more work but its including everybody in the transaction in a multi email follow up autoresponder or sequencer. What is an autoresponder or sequencer you ask? An autoresponder is simply a service whereby new email signups or people you manually add to your email list receive some kind of pre-written email series that gets sent, or dripped out to them over a predetermined period of time. For example, if you sign up to the Real Value Podcast to be a value syndicate member and receive the podcast via email, you’ll get the podcast emailed to you each week as a broadcast email sent by me whenever the podcast is ready. But as soon as you sign up and opt in you will receiving a pre-written email from me thanking you for joining the Value Syndicate and you’ll get another email with links to the private bonus podcasts that only value syndicate members receive. This is not an advertisement for signing up to the podcast, but instead a way to explain how it works. I only have to write the email or email sequence once and as soon as a new subscriber gets added to the list, it activates the preset schedule of sending out those emails. Its very easy to learn how to do it and there are a variety of services one can use to accomplish this. MailChimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, infusionSoft, and others. MailChimp and Constant Contact are free to use up to a certain number of subscribers so I recommend trying out one of those first to get the hang of it. 

One other way is by using an add on service to your gmail called Gmelius. Gmelius runs about $9 per month for a single user but allows you to set up email sequences and autoresponder and its built right into your gmail so you can pick from the existing contacts that you already have. The reason I suggest checking this one out is that to do what we do and what I’m suggesting you do with this, you will inevitably find yourself dealing with the same listing and buyers agents on purchase transactions and they don’t necessarily need to receive the same 3-5 email sequence on every one of those deals. Maybe on the first few to impress them but after that you can just tell them you’ll leave them off of the email chain since they’ve seen it before. Trust me, they’ll understand.  
 
What I am proposing by suggesting these services is that you can design a series of 3 or 4 emails to be dripped out to everybody in the transaction to tell them where in the process the appraisal is. I recommend sending the first one out as soon as you’ve scheduled the appointment. That way you can ask everybody involved if they’d like to be put on the email update list for this transaction. The big rub for most of you is that its adds a slight bit of time and a new process to your system because you have to contact the buyer, the listing agent, and the selling agent. Once you meet the seller, if it’s a sale, you can add them to the list too. You simply have to ask them if they’d like to receive update emails about the transaction and, if they say yes, you add them to the list. You can create a list or a group in your email autoresponder system for that particular address so only those people receive your updates about that address if you wish.  
  
What I am suggesting however, is that your emails are general emails about the process and not necessarily specifics about the appraisal you’re doing. The 3 or 4 emails you pre-write are emails about what an appraisal is, what happens after the subject property has been visited, who the client is and isn’t, who is entitled to information and who isn’t, frequently asked questions about the process, where in they pipeline the appraisal likely is at this point, and then a final email thanking everybody and wishing them best of luck. You can also include a link in that final email with an opt-in to future emails about something valuable in their market. You have to determine what that could be for you and your business, but for us it’s valuable market information like current interest rates, values in the local market, interesting stories, homeowner tips and tricks, hot news, a local realtor and lender spotlight each month, and interesting things like that.

Understand what you are doing by developing this process. It may take a little extra time out of your day, and by a little extra I mean an extra 5 minutes here and there, but you are accomplishing several very valuable things. You are educating all parties in the transaction about the appraisal process, you are getting out in front of the most commonly asked questions, you’re training them how to react and respond if something should come up like a a lower value than expected, or what a comp is or isn’t, and of course, you are building a list of people to market to for a variety of services in the future. Trust me when I say that list will come in very handy in the future! If you complete 200 to 1000 appraisals per year in your market, that’s 2000 to 10,000 potential names, physical addresses, and email addresses after 10 years. Of course, you’ll have duplicates, you’ll have the same realtors and lenders on the list and you’ll have unsubscribes, but the point is to be thinking about digging your well for when you’re thirsty, not waiting until your mouth and cupboards are dry and empty. 
  
Don’t misunderstand what this is and isn’t. This is not opening up discussions about the specifics of the appraisal. We are not violating any Dodd Frank or Fannie Mae issues with our emails. These are what we jokingly call general specifics, meaning, the emails look like they’re custom for the person receiving them but they're just automated emails that you have pre-written, programmed in 3, 6, 10 email addresses, and started the autoresponder process at a specific time. They are not getting any information about the subject property, the specifics of the deal, of any specifics about your data gathering on that house. They are only getting information that helps to keep them in the loop so that they feel like they’re not in the dark about where everything is and what is going on.

I can tell you from having been in the real estate, mortgage, and appraising businesses, as well as a part of the whole process for 25 years now, you may be the only one keeping some of them in the know during the transaction. How many times during an appraisal do you have a borrower or homeowner calling you and wondering what’s going on with the whole process. Whether you call back or not, and I recommend you do, you have to wonder like I do, “why the hell are these poor people not being informed by the folks making 10 to 100 times what we make on the deal?” In the instance where you are the only one keeping them informed, you win big and just made yourself memorable and remarkable, which means worthy of being remembered and worthy of remark.  
  
I’ll tell you one more huge benefit of doing this kind of follow up and that’s that the lenders and agents will love you! I can tell you from personal experience and from having taught this to real estate agents and lenders as well, they absolutely love it! They love that they don’t have to be the ones answering all the questions about the appraisal and they also love that you have pre-trained them for any issues that may arise in the process and what may occur should that happen. I have a few more tips about these emails in the bonus content that comes with this episode that goes straight to the value syndicate members, but just know, you can start all of this today. You don’t need any special permission and the bonus content just contains some extra tips for making sure the emails get delivered, opened, and read.  
  
So handwritten Thank You notes and building a digital mailing list by keeping all parties to the transaction in the loop. That’s #1 and #2. The third and final value add from this episode is to send a 30 0r 45 day congratulations card to the new homeowners on purchase transactions. Again, this is easy to track but it takes a basic system of reminders to notify you of when and where to send these. Once again, a little bit of your time, a lot of additional value added to the process.  If you want to include something like a fridge magnet or something to remember your company by, that’s bonus material that will always get a huge fist bump from me! The more creative you are in this process, the more value you are adding and the more benefits you’ll likely receive as you build a killer network of raving fans.  
  
Quick recap: hand written thank you notes weekly. Make a list throughout the week, send 5-10 or more per week. Dig deep if you have to but find people to send them to. You’re not asking for anything in return, you’re not asking for business, you’re simply thanking people for a variety of reasons, all your choice. Remember, they don’t just have to be people who have sent you business. It could be a realtor you had a conversation with that you simply say, “thanks for being so helpful the other day and pleasant to work with”. Do you think they’ll be impressed by an appraiser who does that? Do you think you’re making yourself memorable and remarkable? You better believe you are! #2 include everybody in the transaction in the loop and use automated email systems if you can.

But even if you aren’t ready for that yet, you can set up groups in almost all email systems in use today and a group can be the particular address you’re working on. Include the listing agent, the buyers agent, the buyers, and the sellers. The lender is typically already included in the automated system or AMC follow up system but if you know the particular LO and want to include them as well, they love it too. Pre-write 3 or 4 emails that explain where in the process the appraisal is on any given day or week along with some FAQs and then a thank you and good luck email at the end. Simple. Straightforward. Value added! and #3 is a simple congratulations card 30-45 days after a purchase transaction to the buyers. Simple. Straightforward. Value Added! 
  
So you’ve made it this far my friends and I appreciate that you have. I have 2 more on this initial list of five but, for the sake of brevity, which is never my strong suit, I have included them as bonus content for subscribers only. We do that for a couple reasons. One, as I mentioned, to keep the episodes shorter. Two, I want to make sure I am providing valuable information for those who want it. If you want the bonus content, they’re available and absolutely free, you just have to speak up and say you want them. If you don’t like giving people your email address to receive something in return, I get it and totally understand, you just don’t get the additional info. I don’t spam you, I don’t ask for anything, I don’t sell anything, and I send out on average one piece of bonus content per month, that’s it. If you’re interested in it, its at www.realvaluecast.com on the right hand side of the page or here, down at the bottom of the page. Its opt in and you can always opt out or unsubscribe so feel free to opt in to receive the next two value add principled techniques that will help you dig your well hopefully before you’re thirsty.  
  
To end this episode my friends, a few words from my teacher who said to me in Memphis, Tennessee that weekend back in 1992, “everybody you meet along your journey becomes part of your story and you never know which one or how many of them along the way will be of great value to you. Be of great value to them along the way and it wont matter”.  
  
Thank you for being part of the Real Value Podcast and the Value Syndicate, I truly value each and every one of you and sincerely hope that I have been able to add some value to your business and life and have possibly helped you start to dig your well before you’re thirsty and cook your rice before you’re hungry. I take very seriously the investment of your most valuable currency which is your time. I will always do my best to deliver the highest return possible for your trust in me but it is ultimately up to you to do something with the return on that investment. Start digging you well today and I look forward to having a valued and valuable conversation with you again next week. I’m out…