Don't Think You're Qualified? Time to Write Your W.I.L.!

Welcome back to the real value podcast, the podcast about business, life, success; about finding value in anything and everything, and about creating absolutely as much of it as you can with the time we have. Good morning my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen and I am your host for this, and every episode of the Real Value Podcast and, as always, very excited to back in the recently renamed RVCA studios. We just recently moved the Real Value Podcast studios to a new, nicer location that gives me considerably more space, some better acoustics, and more creative space to develop content for my appraisal company, educational content for my appraisers and students, as well as our valued and valuable strategic partners like our Realtor, Lender, Attorney, and Financial Planning partners who send us lots of regular business. We believe in giving back and also in educating our partners with lots of free information and having a beautiful space to, not only come up with content, but record it with stellar audio and video production quality is a real blessing.

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​This space is also the space where we conduct most of our coaching calls and training and we’re adding some technology to allow us to do that even better now so we’ve renamed the space the RVCA, or Real Value Coaching Academy studio since we don’t just record the podcast here anymore but, instead, run almost everything except my appraisal business from here. I still run my appraisal business from a different space within the compound which allows me to have some separation physically, as well as mentally from those two businesses. This is one of the principles that is very important to me when it comes having balance, and I’m not always so good at it, but its in having different spaces for different mental states and activities, and the discipline to be able to step out of our offices and into nature, into some kind of physical activity, into some kind of completely different physical, mental, and spiritual place so as to decompress from work, distress from truly unimportant things in the overall grand scheme of a life well lived and a place to cultivate other sides of ourselves as human beings. I did a podcast episode called You’re not an appraiser which touched on this whole idea that being an appraiser, a realtor, a lender, a roofer, or whatever it is that you do to pay the bills, is just something we do but its not who we are. Recognizing this point will allow you to step away from the business at a reasonable time every day, put things in their proper perspective, and cultivate the other sides of yourself that make you a healthy, wealthy, and happy human being who just happens to do appraisals as one of your income producing activities.
 
I’ll tell you one of the other benefits of this way of thinking, just as an aside, and its that when you can start to think of yourself as something other than just an appraiser, or whatever title you’ve given yourself at this point, you give yourself considerably more options for seeing and taking advantage of opportunities in your life. What I mean by this is that, when you call yourself an appraiser, or a realtor, or a brick layer, you are giving yourself a label that you come to identify with as who you are as a person. You start to think like an appraiser, or a realtor, or a brick layer, and you become more narrowly focused mentally on that thing which means you will have a difficult time imagining yourself as anything else. You wrap yourself in the proverbial garb of that profession and become less flexible in your ability to see yourself wearing any other industry’s uniform.  I hear people saying all the time, “I cant imagine doing anything else”, and they’re not saying it because they necessarily love what they do, they’re saying because they aren’t trained for anything else and its too big of a mental hurdle to imagine learning something else and, thus, becoming someone else. Did you hear what I just said? I didn’t say they cant imagine doing something else, that’s what THEY say. I said that its really that they cant imagine BEING someone else because when you identify so deeply with what it is you do for a living, you wrap yourself in the language and identity of one who does that thing and you then have the mental hurdle of trying to imagine yourself as someone else should you ever want to make a change and look for other opportunities. For most people, doing something else for a living doesn’t just entail doing something else, it entails becoming a completely different identity, which is a level of flexibility most have not cultivated. I wont say it’s a level of flexibility most don’t have, just that it’s a mindset that most have not cultivated. The great thing about flexibility is that, regardless of how stiff you are today, with some mental stretching, you can expand and become flexible in the way you think, feel, act, and in what you believe is possible. If you’ve ever been a fan of James Bond movies, or even just studied some of the great real leaders of the past, there is a certain quality to the character of some of them, real or portrayed, that speaks to their flexibility to take on any role, wear a variety of different work uniforms, and do a variety of things because they see themselves as professionals, regardless of the profession, leaders, regardless of their position, and capable of transforming themselves into whatever the role or profession requires of them so as to deliver their best performance in that role. What this quality also allows them to do is to shift mentally into doing or being something or someone else because they aren’t so trapped by their thinking to believe that what they do is also who they are. This is called mental flexibility and its one of the most underrated qualities, in my opinion.
 
Don’t worry, this isn’t the main topic of this episode and I’ve done prior episodes on identity, mindsets and belief systems but I like to open the show sometimes based on something I’ve seen or read recently, and sometimes I open the show based on a listener question, comment or suggestion. In this case, it’s a bit based on a little reminiscing about my own life coupled with some of the stories I’ve read in several of the forums over the years about people who have had a variety of different careers in their lifetime. While an HR manager at a big corporation may see that as job jumping and an inability to focus or be committed, I see it as developing a wide range of skill sets and tools in one’s proverbial tool chest with which to draw on as they move through life. And also a set of skills and tools with which they may NEED to draw on as they move through life. We have an exercise we use sometimes in the coaching academy called the ‘Personal Skills Inventory’ which is, quite simply, an exercise whereby you take some time to think through all of the past jobs and experiences you’ve had and what you learned from those jobs and experiences, and then what skills you gained as a result. What we find when we go through an exercise like this is that people often have a tremendous wealth of skills, insights, and tools that they never realized they had because we tend to leave some of those old traits in our mental attic when we move into a new field. The main reason I bring it up, again, is simply because I see and hear appraisers sometimes talk about not knowing what they’d do if this gig doesn’t work out on the one hand, and another group of appraisers that is constantly complaining about the state of the industry, the state of their own business, the state of their state, how terrible things are, and so on. You know these groups of individuals and they’re in almost every industry. Nevertheless, one of the things I suggest to these people is to sit down and take a personal skills inventory and see what kinds of skills and past experiences you have in your mental and physical attic with which to draw on and potentially make use of in the near future. I say this not because I want to help you save your miserable career in this, as they tend to say, miserable industry, but instead because I’d love to hasten your exit and help you move on into something a little less miserable and, by doing so, I’ll be doing my little part in helping this industry be filled with positive and uplifting people doing what they love. It never ceases to amaze me when I read or hear about somebody unhappy in the appraisal business because it’s a completely voluntary business. The appraisal business is not a government mandated compulsory service, although it probably should be. It’s a complete and 100% choice for every single person who is in the industry. Maybe you feel you made a bad choice and are looking for your exit and taking a personal inventory of your past work experiences and the skills you gained as a result is one way to help you realize just what you might be suited to moving forward.
 
So, I’ll give you some examples from my own past and how this little personal inventory exercise helps me in life. I do this exercise several times per year, by the way, because things will bubble up over time that I had forgotten about, or skills that I hadn’t recognized as such will all of the sudden make themselves known to me. So in my personal inventory I go back to my childhood and I just started writing down everything I can remember from schools, to sports, to camps, to specialized trainings and classes that I may have taken, all the way up to today. For me the personal inventory looks like this; attended school with a Vietnamese refugee education center so I had a very culturally diverse upbringing, ended up being attracted to martial arts, studied Asian culture, lived in a zen monastery, studied Aikido full time for several years, traveled the world teaching aikido for almost 20 years, built a big school offering a variety of cultural and martial arts, played soccer at an early age, went to soccer camp each summer for 5 or 6 years, coached my kids soccer teams for several years as they grew, learned to play the snare drum in second grade, became a drummer later in life, played in a band for a few years, learned to cook in a 4th grade home ec class, love to cook today, teaching my own kids how to cook as they grow, got interested in investing and real estate watching Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) on an old show called Family Ties, started investing at an early age, bought my first duplex at age 18, been investing in residential and commercial real estate ever since, worked at my family’s ghetto grocery store starting at age 15 or 16, learned how to communicate with and relate to an extremely wide demographic, learned retail, learned some business and selling principles, learned how to fight and survive in tough situations, learned how to project confidence, learned how to manage people, learned how to motivate to some degree, learned about different economic classes and their individual struggles, learned some of the causes of economic struggles and how to avoid them, lived in Chicago and learned once again about communication with a wide demographic, worked at a high end hotel, learned about high end client and guest service, learned about selling and providing services to higher a higher end demographic, learned leadership, aikido, zen meditation, Japanese language, Japanese flower arranging, bodywork, office management, sales, marketing, advertising, organizational management and leadership, using the vast train and bus network in a big city, networking, how to be safe on the streets of Chicago, taught defensive tactics to military and police groups, learned what works and what doesn’t, learned how to communicate with another demographic, learned how to communicate LIKE that demographic, learned what kinds of things they deal with on a daily basis, learned some new tactical skills, got to train with some extremely advanced tacticians, worked the door at a Chicago bar, learned about the bar industry, further developed my communication skills, learned some new tactical scenarios and how to deal with them, expanded my awareness skills, worked as a bartender at a busy bar, learned how to mix drinks, further developed my communication skills, learned time management, enhanced my sales skills, learned multi tasking and memory development, tended bar at an exclusive and private country club, developed my mixing skills, learned to communicate with yet another demographic, learned to communicate LIKE that demographic, enhanced my client and guest service skill set, worked in the HVAC industry, learned a whole new set of skills and a whole new language, learned to communicate with a new demographic, learned how to communicate LIKE that demographic, learned how to install furnaces and air conditioners, learned how to service both, learned how to cut, shape, and cross break sheet metal, learned how to do a heat and cooling load on a home, learned how to bid out new construction jobs, enhanced my client service skills, enhanced my selling skills, enhanced my technical understanding, learned features and benefits language, enhanced my people management skills, learned warehouse and equipment management skills, enhanced my accounting and business management skills, created a three day sales course for mechanical contractors, enhanced my marketing and promotion skills, enhanced my teaching skills, enhanced my personal development skills, sold real estate, learned the mortgage industry, and so on, and on, and on…
 
Now, I didn’t go on like that to boost my own ego and tell you how much experience I have in those areas. I did it to explain the benefits of taking a real personal skills inventory, I call it writing your W.I.L., which stands for your Wealth Inventory List, and I encourage it because many of you have a very wide variety of experiences, skill sets, specialized training, and relationships that tend to get left in the attic as we move on to careers in industries where we don’t think certain skills are needed, or are being utilized. When you sit down and write out what experiences you’ve had and then connect them to other things you’ve done throughout life, or write out what you learned and what skills you’ve developed along the way, more than a few things start to happen: one, you start to see patterns develop that you may have previously been unaware of. These can be old patterns that you can take advantage of, or they might be negative or destructive patterns that have held you back somewhat in life. Two, you start to develop a different sense of confidence in your abilities to take on and manage a lot more than you realized you could because of all the skills you didn’t think you had. Three, you start to develop a greater sense of calm and less stress about the future because you start to realize that you have a toolbox filled with skills that can be applicable in a wide variety of industries and jobs. As I go through my skills inventory, I realize that I can be a teacher of a variety of things if I needed to, I can sell, install, and service a multitude of HVAC systems if I needed something to fall back on, I can tend bar and mix drinks if I needed to, I can teach martial arts for extra money if I needed to, I can teach and consult to any one of those industries, I can sell real estate, I can write mortgages, I can consult to any one of those industries, etc. You take your personal inventory and start to realize you are nowhere near as limited as you once thought you may have been. Every single one of you has a set of skills that can be utilized in some unique way that you’ve probably never thought of before, either because you forgot you had that skill, or because you never took the time to sit down and realize that skill is actually an asset to you. For the more creative of the listeners, after taking an inventory of your skills and realizing you are a man or woman of the world with a wide range of past experience, skills, and relationships you will start to look for ways to utilize, maximize, and capitalize on your skill sets. We haven't talked yet about your relationships, but I’ll go over that in a minute. In the age of the internet, there is vast opportunity to teach, train, sell, blog, podcast, cultivate a market for, and develop content and products for almost any interest and industry. The only limitation is your own ignorance and lack of creativity. And as I have said many times on this show, if there is something you don’t know about today, in 2019, which is the year this is being recorded, it is only due to your lack of interest in that topic, your own willful ignorance, and something called learned helplessness. We live in the age of Google where anything you could possibly want to know is literally available at your fingertips with a quick Google search. There is a at least one, more likely 100 or 1000 videos on YouTube about your search topic, there are tutorials, forums, Facebook groups, teachers, bloggers, content creators, and whole businesses around whatever topic you are interested in. The next time you hear yourself say, ‘I don’t know what I’d do”, or ‘where would I even find information about that?’, think through what you’re saying, close the Facebook, instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat window you’re on, feed your cows on FarmVille, crush the candy to get to the next level, and then start Googling for information to get to the next level in your life.
 
How many of you have ever been in a conversation on some kind of forum or facebook group and somebody is talking about something you have no clue about when someone jumps in and writes, ‘what is this thing you’re talking about, explain it to me!’ Listen, we live in the Information Age folks! Whatever you want to know you can know within 17 seconds on your phone. Don’t ask somebody to explain it to you, Google it and learn for yourself. You can become the equivalent of Harvard educated within a year by Googling stuff. Everything you could want to know about starting a business, writing a business plan, making a product, developing content, starting a blog, starting a facebook group, how to become an appraiser, the atomic weight of cobalt, whatever it is, its out there and available to you. When it comes to you and your own personal history, your unique set of skills, experiences and relationships, you are Google! You can do the equivalent of Googling a question to yourself about yourself and the answer will pop up. ‘what skills do I have that I have forgotten about?’, ‘what specialized training do I have that I can use today?’,  ‘how can my past experiences and skills be utilized to their fullest today?’
 
So here’s the exercise I’ll give to you and, again, we call it writing your W.I.L., your Wealth Inventory List. Many people have a last will and testament written up to let the world know where  and how they want their assets divided when they pass so I refer to that will as you wealth inventory last list (w.i.l.l.), this is your one ‘L’ wealth inventory list of personal skills, specialized training, and relationships. It’s a 3 part list and it starts with your past jobs, then your list of all your knowledge, education, and life experiences, and finally all of your relationships. Let me explain. The first list is like the one that I went through on myself earlier, although I combined them all into one to show you how to do stream of consciousness writing. After you do that kind of mental dumping you start to categorize. You first write down every job and past work experience that you’ve ever had. Start with the general and move to the specific. Write down everything you have ever done, even if you didn’t get paid for it. If it was an unpaid internship, write it down. Lawn mowing when you were 13, write it down. Helping mom or dad in the bakery as a kid, write it down. These are all things that have made you who you are today and contain a wealth of life experience and treasure that you likely don’t even realize. Write down all of your past work experience up to your current gig. The next list you make is your knowledge list. This is all of your education from pre-school up through today. Do not discount anything that relates to education. If you went to a 3 hour class called how to make bird feeders out of 2 liter coke bottles, write it down. The idea is to mine the depths of your brain and memory for every single educational experience you have ever had. This exercise is about mining your mental treasure chest for just how powerful and experienced you really are that you likely never give yourself credit for today. Do you know how to teach? Of course you do! You’ve been taught, haven’t you? Have you not sat in a classroom for at least 13 years of your life if not more? We were all raised being taught something which means, we in turn inherently know how to teach because we grew up having others teach us. Do you have specialized knowledge about human beings, human nature, and the human mind? Absolutely! Especially as appraisers, we deal with a wide variety of individuals thinking different things all the time. We deal with agents, lenders, homeowners, sellers, buyers, their animals, we see how people live, the silly things that will do, the unique and varied ways people live, and we are storing all of those memories each and every day. Appraisers have unique insights into human nature. The problem is that nobody ever told you that it’s a valuable skill that crosses almost every employment and business boundary. The other problem is that most of you complain about all those things you see in others that you don’t like and cant control and when you complain about something, you are putting the thing you’re complaining about into a special prison in your brain where you can not access it for your own benefit because then you’d somehow be like the thing you’re complaining about. Stop complaining about all of the things you see that you don’t like and just note them. Once you can start to observe without judging something you become free to learn from and use it for your own benefit.
 
The secret trick to capitalizing on all of your past experiences and knowledge is to learn how to move from the abstract to the specific. What that means is that, when you learn how to take something that, at first, seems to be mundane, useless, and maybe worthless information or experience, and then parse it down to the specific value that information or experience has for you, you have just utilized the abstract to specific process. You take your past experience coaching your kid’s soccer team and say, ‘what did I learn about coaching children?, how does that relate to adults?, what did I learn about time management?, what did I learn about public speaking?, what did I learn about getting people’s attention and keeping it?, what did I learn about developing skills drills and exercises?, what did I learn about motivation?, what did I learn about teamwork?, what did I learn about politics?, what did I learn about physical activity?, what did I learn about dealing with parents?, what did I learn about coaching my own kids?, and the list can go on and on and on. You ask the question and then write all of the answers that bubble up. When you learn to master this exercise you have learned several things. One, how to mine every last drop of value from every one of your life experiences. Two, just how much value you actually have and bring to the world. Three, you start to recognize just how skilled you are in a variety of areas beyond your current job. The idea is to be creative and, again, move from the abstract to the specific with everything you have ever done, experienced, and been paid for. Do you have some kind of skill programming computers? Can you do desktop publishing? Are you a good writer? Are you a talented reviewer of things? Are you an uplifter of people? Maybe you’re a good connector and matchmaker of people. Just think of all the analytical skills that being a good appraiser requires. What are all of those skills and talents and how might they be valuable in another setting or to another group of people? The idea is to leave no stone unturned and nothing out. List out everything and recognize it as a valuable wealth building skill that you have. When you do this exercise you should be wowed by just how talented and skilled you really are and just how valuable you are in the world and to the market. These are your assets my friends! We talk in our coaching sessions and mastermind groups lots about real assets and building wealth and I can assure you that your real wealth lies within the 4, 5, or 6 feet of skin, bones, blood and brains that makes up you!
 
So you now have a long list of jobs and work experience, a long list of knowledge experiences, and now you write your third, and last, list which is your relationship list. Your relationship list is simply a long list of all your past relationships going back to as early as you can remember. You write down all of the people you know. Be as thorough with all of these lists, but be especially through on this list! When we start to list out all of the people we know, we start to recognize the vast resource and potential mastermind group we can pull together based on the people we know. The first part of your relationship list should be those closest to you on a daily basis so work colleagues, customers and clients, vendors, contractors, anybody who works for you, with you, or you work for. Then you list out all of the people you’ve worked for in your past. It doesn’t matter how far back you have to go. Write down people you’ve worked with, for, those vendors and customers, and anybody else you can think of that may be connected with that past work experience. At this point you might be asking, ‘Blaine, why am I writing all of these unimportant and insignificant people’s names down?, I don’t deal with them anymore, some of them I don’t like, some wont even talk to time anymore.’ Just write them all down! You lose nothing by writing them all down but may gain something extremely valuable. Let me forewarn some of you, just thinking about them and not writing them down does not count! That’s how you do everything and it doesn’t work. You think about your goals without writing them down and then you forget. You think about opening an IRA and investing, and then life gets busy and you forget. You think about making some change in your business but never write it down and then forget about it. 2 years later something reminds you that you were going to make that change and never did, likely because you never wrote it down! Write all the names down! There’s magic in the list my friends, stop being obstinate and just trust me on this one! After these people, write down all of your family members, immediate and not so immediate. After this write down all of your friends regardless of whether or not you’re close, not so close anymore, whether or not they live next door or 4 countries away. Go back as far as you can possibly remember and write down their names. After your friends list you write out all of the people who have influenced you over your lifetime. These are teachers, mentors, inspirers, motivators, you name it. Write them all down. After this list you’re going to wrote down everyone you do business with. Don’t just stop at immediate clients of your appraisal business. This list is the long list of people that you transact with on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis in your normal life. The checker at the grocery store, the pharmacist, your doctors and lawyers, the dry cleaner. Write down the names of everybody you transact with each month. Understand what we are doing is unloading all of this locked up wealth from the farthest reaches of your mind in all of these categories and harvesting the vast knowledge and experience bank that you are but likely haven’t recognized a such. You are way more powerful, knowledgeable, and skilled than you give yourselves credit for my friends, but probably not for the reasons YOU think you are. Your vast wealth and future potential is likely not just in your appraisal business, although for some of you, it certainly is with the right tweaking and uncorking of it. For many of you, however, its time to unlock all of the hidden talents, skills, experiences, and knowledge that you have within you that you simply haven't given yourself credit for, nor tapped for creativity and opportunity.
 
After going through this kind of exercise you will start to see yourself in a whole different light! You will hopefully start to see yourself with 10 times the dimension that you did before. Not only are you packed with skills, talents and experiences you hadn’t really realized, you are immensely connected to a vast resource of almost any skill, talent or experience you may need or want to learn in the future. That’s just one of the benefits of making the relationships list. No, you’re not going to tap each and every one of them for money or ask them who they might know or for referrals, although you certainly could. The idea behind taking a wealth inventory is to bring to the surface just how powerful and connected you are. There is magic in the list my friends! You could, if you wanted or needed to, reach out to any one of the people on your list who has a particular skill or experience in a particular area and ask them to teach you that skill or share that experience. Remember earlier when I said you could Google and learn whatever you needed to? Well, you likely have within your network of friends, family, and relationships some expert in almost every field you can imagine. And if you don’t, somebody in your network certainly does! By this way, I didn’t include this exercise in the Digging Your Well Before You’re Thirsty episode because it would’ve made that episode to long and too daunting. But this wealth inventory list exercise is also part of digging your well. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, just search out that episode on at RealValueCast.com and listen to it. Its packed with usable information on how to build a network and business that will take care of you before you need it to. Part of digging your well is also including last weeks episode on wealth building and paying yourself first. Hopefully you are seeing a pattern my friends! Its what we coach on every single week both on this podcast and in with our coaching clients. Digging your well so deep and so vast in the Seven main areas of business and life that you’ll never be in need of anything down the line. In a future episode I’ll teach you the million dollar skill of being an expert connector, but for now, just write down all of your 3 lists: your skills and jobs list, your knowledge list, and your relationship list. Once you have the initial lists written up, you will find yourself adding to them over time as new ideas and past memories bubble up. This is one of the huge benefits of writing stuff down. We all suffer from information overload and memory fatigue. That means we spend so much time trying to remember things we’re supposed to be doing, building, saving, calling, texting, completing that we forget so much other stuff. When you write stuff down, you’re relieving your brain of the duty to remember and you’re clearing it out of your mental storage facility. This frees up space for other important data and information to be readily available when you need it.
 
I know what you’re asking now: ‘Blaine, what do I do with these lists once I have them written?’, and the answer is nothing! You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to! If you take the time to write out all of your past work experience, your skills, you past and current friends, family, mentors, relationships, special skills, knowledge, and connections and don’t feel motivated, inspired, more valued and valuable, more skilled and powerful, more ready to create some new opportunities, more capable of making changes, making your own rules, starting a new business or chasing a new opportunity, and just overall supercharged with this revelation of just how valuable you are at this point, there’s probably nothing I could ever do to help you at this point and therapy is a very viable choice. If you go through the work of developing your expansive wealth inventory list and don’t have even one ‘aha’ moment, you may be too jaded, tired, and worn out to really help. I hate to be negative after walking you through such a positive and powerful exercise, but I know that there are people out there for whom no amount of help or encouragement will do. But, for those of you who want to grow, expand your life and business, and tap into your vast wellspring of untapped potential, writing out your wealth inventory list is absolutely mandatory! Become a master of going from the abstract to the specific and learning how to make connections where none seem to exist. I’m not just talking about connections between people. I’m referring to connections between what you’ve done in the past and then making a connection to what you learned, how it shaped you, how it directed you, what skill you learned from that experience, what skill or skills you still use today from that experience, and how it can be adapted or modified to create an opportunity. Doing it with one past job or experience may not reveal much initially, but doing it with 5, 10, 25 past jobs, experiences, skills, and relationships will, guaranteed! Collecting shopping carts from the grocery store parking lot when you were 15 seems like a job that can be left in the mental vault. But don’t! Mine it for every last drop of value that job taught you. Did it teach you work ethic, time management, efficiency, how to deal with bosses, maybe how not to deal with bosses, some leadership lessons, how to stay motivated in the rain, sleet, and snow, how to communicate with customers? The list of lessons can only be limited by your imagination and effort on an exercise like this my friends and I strongly encourage you to give it a try.
 
I want to thank you for investing your most valuable currency with me a again this week, and that is your time! You have invested much of your life energy up to this point engaged in a variety of jobs, experiences, relationships, and endeavors that make up who you are at your core. Its time to mine the depths of all those jobs, experiences, knowledge, relationships, and endeavors for the vast treasures they contain. You are powerful beyond measure my friends and can do, have, and be whatever you can imagine and take action on, so please go do it today because tomorrow is not guaranteed! Before we sign off, just a reminder that the new semester of the Real Value Coaching Academy begins in late October and the class is filling fast. If you have any interest whatsoever in jumping into this extremely powerful and accountability packed coaching program, or maybe you aren’t sure if its even for you, just reach out to me and lets have a chat. If you’re not to the point where it makes sense for you, I’ll tell you. If it is, I’ll give you some recommendations and steps to take. And as I’ve said before and will continue to say, I don’t care what kind of coaching, mentorship, or additional business and life training you undertake as long as you are undertaking some kind of additional coaching and mentorship. The value far exceeds the investment when you find the right one for you. Is everyone coachable? Nope. Is every coach or mentor for you? Nope! Can everyone benefit from additional mentorship? More than likely. The appraisal industry specifically has some big changes and challenges ahead, this is a given. We don’t know what will happen in the next year or 10, but what I am very confident of is there are massive opportunities ahead for appraisers with the right mindset, the right discipline, and the right set of skills. There are more than enough prognosticators out there calling for the demise of the industry. I’m not one of them. Where one screams ‘the end!’, I see new beginning and new opportunity. We’ve built several very profitable appraisal businesses and serve a pretty vast and vibrant private market which will be around for a long time. Its one of the areas we specialize in coaching other appraisers in, along with teaching people how to become masters of their own financial fate. Find a mastermind group in your area, start one if you have to. Find a business group you can join in your area, create one if you have to. Find a Dan Kennedy magnetic marketing group in your area, reach out to Dan if you have to start one. Join a group of Realtors, lenders, attorneys, or financial planners meeting every month to build their businesses and ask to join. Start one if you have to (hint, hint, one technique we teach in the coaching program). Reach out to Dustin Harris, the Appraiser Coach, join one of his coaching and mastermind programs today! The money you invest will come back multiplied if you are willing to become a good implementer. Join Roy Meyers coaching program, your investment will come back multiplied if you are willing to apply what he teaches to your business. One of my mentors in the mechanical contracting industry, a great man named Barry Burnett, said to me, “if you want to be the best at what you do Blaine, take everything we teach and then become the best implementer out there. Learn to apply and implement all of the techniques and ideas because most wont implement”, and he was right! Most don’t implement. Unfortunately, we lost Barry suddenly in November of last year at age 67, but I’m still implementing today Barry, and will continue to be a good implementer of the lessons I learn. Give us a call, shoot us an email, or reach out by Facebook messenger if you think our program might be right for you. I’ll tell you if it is or not and, if its not, I’ll gladly give you some guidance on what will work best for what you’re looking for. Like Dustin, Roy, Dan Kennedy, Tom Ferry, you name the business mentor or coach and I can tell you that none of us started mentoring and coaching because its what we always wanted to do, we started doing it because we were coached and mentored and experienced the immense value and opportunity that comes from doing so and want to give that to others. Learning is never over my friends! From all of us here at the Real Value Podcast and Coaching compound, until next week, I’m out…