Love Letters From The Grave

I want to say thank you for being here again with me today, I love it when we can get together like this each week and talk like we’re old friends. I learn from you, you learn from me, we grow and expand together and that’s what this whole thing is about. For my appraiser brothers and sisters listening, I want to encourage you to figure out your ‘why’, as in ‘why do I do this’ as this is one of the most important questions to answer in life and if you want to be creating and adding value wherever and whenever you can. Of course, I would encourage anybody in any field of work to be asking this ‘why’ question if you care to receive an answer to it, lest you simply amble through your days doing your work like a drone. Those who create value on a regular basis do so only after answering that all important question of ‘why’ they do it and can then move on to the ‘how’ of actually adding value. ​​

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I say this because of what is going on in the world today, what is happening in many real estate markets today, and what is going on in many appraisal, real estate, and lending businesses today. Things have slowed for a great many of you in the real estate sales, refinance, real estate lending, and appraisal businesses around the country. Many of you are facing some very real struggles, some challenges, and are faced with the question many should have probably asked several years ago and that’s ‘why?’ As in, “why do I do it?” “Why do I choose this market?”, “Why do I work with these particular clients?”, “why do I run my office this way”, “why haven’t I gone mobile yet”, “why haven't I built up my non-lender clientele before now”, and the list goes on. And although I never recommend anybody focus on the negative in their lives and businesses, I do recommend asking the ‘why’ questions often. It is from these ‘why’ questions that we start to get some answers, quite often answers we don’t like to hear. However, that is usually the first step toward doing something about it. After digging deep and getting some honest answers to your ‘why’ questions, you can then start asking some serious ‘how’ questions. These are the ones that you frame in the positive as in, “how can I move from where I am to where I’d like to be?” Or “how can I begin setting some goals to track and measure in my business?” Or “how can I start changing my business mix so that I’m not in this position a few years from now?”.  
  
And although we’re not going to go deep in this episode on asking those questions, I just wanted to plant those seeds and encourage everybody listening to start or continue asking those questions and that its ok. It’s part of being an adult and facing the hard truths about our existence, our limited time on this planet, our limited time to create our own legacy and have some agency over what we leave the world whenever its our time, and, in essence, take control of our lives and businesses before its too late. I’m sure everybody listening to this episode knows somebody, a friend, brother, sister, parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, loved one who was diagnosed with some horrible terminal illness, or who’s life ended too quickly, and now the living are left with all of the questions. The goal is to have lots of those questions answered before its our time to go so that those we leave behind aren’t left with the questions. It’s one of the reasons I asked you to do the ‘write your own eulogy’ exercise so that you could begin to put yourself in the mindset of somebody attending your funeral and hear what people had to say about you. It’s an exercise to get you thinking about something nobody likes to think about and that’s the state of non-existence in this world. What kind of legacy will I have left to the world, to my friends, and my family when I go.  
  
I’m going to encourage you a little later in this episode to take this exercise a bit further with what we call “legacy letters from loved ones’, which is an exercise to help you think forward and place yourself in the minds of several different groups of people in your life and hear what they would say about if you if everything went the way you wanted it to from this day forward. Now, I know the reality of compliance in any training program. I’ve been training, teaching, coaching, and mentoring people for a long time and I know that getting compliance from people on exercises is very low. The vast majority of people love to listen to podcasts, watch videos, read books, some may even take a few notes as they listen, but an extremely small and select group will go the extra steps and actually do the work. These are the elite that want to grow, expand, get better and understand the necessary steps to doing so and that every great plan requires several things. One of the major keys to success with any plan is the action part. I’ve said it many, many times in these episodes that you have to spend time thinking, dreaming, imagining, and then writing, planning, goal setting, and then taking action. The whole process falls apart when there is no action. So I am going to ask those of you who listen but don’t do anything, I’m going to ask you the question I just encouraged you to ask yourself. I’ll do part of the work for you by asking you the question you should be asking yourself, “why?”, why do I listen to this podcast? Why do I tune in each week? Do I just like Blaine’s voice, do I just like his attitude, do I like the message? If that’s the case, of course I thank you and I’m glad I am still adding value in that way for you.  
  
But I am going to encourage you to move yourself from one group to the more elite group which is the group that actually makes and takes some time to do some of these exercises. I guarantee you that you’ll get something from the time spent on them and that you’ll come away better than when you started. In fact, if you were paying for this podcast I would give you a money back guarantee and say that if you do the work and don’t feel you’ve gotten enough value from the exercise, it’s absolutely free for you. Of course, the podcast is free, other than your valuable time, so there is nothing to give back to you except the hour you spend each week listening which is why I encourage you to do the work. In fact, I know one of the reasons most people don’t do the work is because the information is free and so they don’t value it as much as if they were paying for it. To which I’d say, people are paying for the information, in fact, they pay a lot of money for it and are required to do these exercises or they’re out of the group. I’m giving the exercises to you in the hopes that you’ll do them. What I cant do is hold you accountable like I do the coaching and mastermind members so it is up to you to squeeze the value out of these exercises on your own.  
  
There is a lot of talk and discussion in the appraiser forums and groups specifically about going after more non-lender business given the direction, the changes, the future, and the limited supply of lender work for many of you and I can tell you that the non-lender side of the business requires a different skill set than the lender side. Not necessarily when it comes to the appraisal process, but most certainly when it comes to the marketing, relationships, speaking, engaging, communication, follow up, language, narrative, and overall outlook for your business because you’re not necessarily filling out FannieMae forms anymore and not just checking boxes. You’re dealing with real people who have the ability to send you business regularly, if you’re adding value to their lives and businesses, and you’re also dealing with a different set of clientele with their own language. I can assure you that attorneys speak a different language than the AMC’s that many of you are used to dealing with and they have a different set of demands and requirements for the work they request. They have a different set of parameters required to maintain that business and follow up with it and if you haven’t been building the skill sets required to handle the demands of that type of work, I hate to say it, but you will struggle with it and probably not enjoy it.  
  
That kind of work requires a whole different level of prospecting (which can be a naughty word in the appraisal biz), a whole different level of service, a different level of marketing, and a different level of service to maintain that type of clientele and keep the business coming in. The appraisal process may be more or less the same but the overall skill set is different. You have to actually talk to people, you have to be able communicate your conclusions in way and in a language that particular group speaks without being condescending to them and you have to stay on top of that business as a whole if you want to keep it coming in. You have to actually have an elevator pitch, marketing materials, know how to overcome pricing objections, and look for ways to add value above and beyond your appraisal work since you’re competing with other appraisers for that same work.

Unfortunately, for many appraisers who have come up in the industry doing lender only work, and especially those who have come up in the AMC world and way of doing business, I’m simply going to encourage you to start thinking about a mindset shift, a skill set shift, learning some of the skills required to get and maintain that kind of business and possibly step outside of your comfort zone a bit because that is where success lives. Success rarely occupies the space where you’re comfortable, its beyond that, out in the zone where you know its going to be cold, uncomfortable, stressful, and difficult for a while. However, without venturing out there, you stay stuck at the same level you’ve been at maybe for some time now. You can do it, just know that anything worthwhile is not easy. 
  
Alright, last week we talked about beginning with the end in mind and the four steps required to create some milestones and goals that you want to achieve. I’ll recap them briefly but I’d encourage you to listen to that episode a few times to really get it. These are the same four steps I use with my own goal setting process, which is going on all the time, by the way. And the same 4 steps I teach others and walk them through in some of our workshops and mastermind groups. The first step is to simply focus on your all important milestone, your AIM. What is that thing? Not, what are the 10 things I want to accomplish over the next 90 days, what is the most important thing? You have to get really good at eliminating all of the other shit you’re focusing on that’s not getting you anywhere if you want to accomplish anything. It’s one of the big problems most people have. When I start asking questions and reviewing their goal sheets, the biggest problems are lack of clarity and too many non-essential things on the list.  
  
We have an exercise that we do with coaching clients and in our masterminds to help illustrate this point. In fact, I just went through this same exercise in a leadership meeting being lead by another coaching group out of Colorado. The exercise goes like this: I give you a special set of values cards. These are 50 cards, like playing cards, and each card has a specific personal value on it, like financial freedom, or growth, helpfulness, mindfulness, and so on. Each card has a value and then a definition of what that value means so that you can start to identify what is important to you. Then I give you three identifier cards and each card says a different thing. One card says ‘not important to me’, the next card says, ‘important to me’, and the last card says, ‘super, duper important to me’. You lay each identifier card in front of you from left to right, least important to super duper important. Then I give you 3 minutes to go through your stack of values card and separate them into those three groups. So you sift through the cards and you start narrowing down what is important to you as a value, what’s not really important to you and then what’s super duper important to you. Once that has been accomplished, I have you get rid of all the ‘not important to me’ stack. Get it out of the way, out of sight, and out of mind. Then I ask you to take your stack of “super duper important’ values and whittle that group down to your top 10 values you simply cant live without. This is where the exercise gets a little difficult and a little nerve wracking because you have to start making value choices.  
  
Here’s what typically happens. One of the cards is labeled ‘Family’, as in your family is one of your most important values. One of the cards is labeled ‘health’, as in having a healthy mind and body is an important value. Most people put family and health in their pile of super duper important. I mean, why not? If there are no rules, why not throw everything into that pile that looks and feels like it should be important. Once I start making you pare down the group to your top 10, and I’ll skip the suspense, I then have you pare those 10 down to your top 5, we see people start to waffle over whether or not to keep family and health in the really important to me category over the values of achievement, financial freedom, and autonomy. Seriously, you can see the gears start turning in their heads when the timer starts which, by the way, is now down to 1 minute to pick your top 5 values.

You can see them holding up two cards and analyzing them and almost hear them saying, “well, I mean I love my husband and kids, but…..”, and they end up tossing the family card in favor of the achievement or self growth card. It’s kind of funny to watch because, in the moment, they feel like they’re making a statement to the world that family is not important and that after this exercise they’re going to have to ask them to move out! No, that’s not the case my friends. The point of the exercise is clarity. And we do the same exercise with your goals and aspirations. The point is to get you to whittle down in your mind what your very top, super duper important values and goals are so that you can get very clear on their achievement and how achieving those goals will also express the most important values you said were important to you. No, you don’t have to get rid of your family or your health. Those can still be important values to you but you have to get clear on what your absolute top 3 or 5 values are so that you can be absolutely clear on how you are going to express those in your life and business. And then you have to do that with your goals and aspirations. You absolutely have to whittle down your stated goals into your top 3, maybe 5 if you’re really focused, all important milestones. These are the things that you simply cant live without achieving and, if you are able to, would make your life that much more fulfilled and on track. 
  
Focus is one of the primary keys my friends, and if you’re focused on too many things, you give yourself an excuse to switch between goals and that means that the one that was important last week gets pushed to the back burner this week and next week. You’ll tell yourself that its ok because this other goal is really important this week and you’ll get back to that other one when you feel inspired. Sorry friends, it never works that way. We rarely wake up inspired to do much of anything. No, the more realistic process is to set your goal, start working, and then keep working on it until you’ve achieved it. Inspiration comes and goes. In fact, sometimes it never arrives. Sometimes we have goals that are not back by inspiration at all. Like cleaning out the garage. Or remodeling the bathroom. Two things very few get inspired by or to do. But if they are on your goal list and one of your top 3, then there’s just one thing to do and that’s to set some tracking and measuring metrics to make sure you stay on track and can identify that you’re moving forward and then set up some kind of scoreboard.

Those were the first 3 steps we discussed last week and the final step was to create some kind of accountability council or partners. Develop a person or people that will hold you accountable to those top 3 goals. And by the way, I get this question a lot, your accountability partners can be different people for each one of your goals. Your husband or wife can be your accountability partner for getting the bathroom remodeled, your best friend can be your accountability partner for your health goal and a business partner or colleague can be your accountability partner for a business or financial goal. They don’t have to be the same people for all of your goals, although its really nice when they are the same people. 
  
So that’s the recap from last week’s exercise and I’m hoping you took advantage of the education and actually sat down to do it. I know a bunch of you have because I received a lot of emails, texts, Facebook messages and a few phone calls with questions. Great questions by the way and I’m honored so many of you took me up on my offer of help. I’m also very excited and inspired that so many of you are actually taking the steps toward growth and setting some audacious goals. I know a good handful of people that are going to be tearing it up in their markets and in their lives given some of the goals that were shared with me. It was lots of fun helping some of you narrow some things down and get clarity on what was really important to you.  
  
As I promised you last week, we are going to add a bit to one of the exercises we did several episodes ago which was the ‘write your own eulogy’ exercise. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, please go back and listen to the ‘Don’t fall off the cliff’ episode. If you had the guts to sit down and write out your own eulogy, congrats my friend, you are separating yourself from the herd. You are starting to get some serious clarity about life and what is important, which is one of the vital steps in this process of achievement. So many people have goals and aspirations in their minds, things they say they want to do someday. But your mind is for creating, not storing your thoughts and ideas. It is absolutely vital that you write down your thoughts, ideas, and goals as soon as they arise in your mind. I’m sure you can relate with me on just how many thoughts and ideas we all have each day that we intend to remember when we get back to the office or get out of the car. We have something on the order or 70-100,000 thoughts per day my friends. There is simply no way you are going to remember all of the things you’ve thought up each day. Usher your ideas and goals from the ether into the real world by writing them down. They’re begging for you to take them by the hand and walk them into reality by stating them on paper, or at least keyboard and tablet or computer. If you’ve listened to me for any period of time you know that I strongly urge you to write with your hands because you activate a different section of your brain when you do that over typing or voice notes. Nevertheless, something is better than nothing so if you’re memorializing your thoughts and ideas in some form or fashion. Good on ya! 
  
This next exercise is simple but not easy. They’re called legacy letters and they are imaginary letters that are being read by your most important and valued relationships at your funeral. Remember, we did the ‘write your own eulogy’ exercise and I asked you to really pout yourself into the scene imagining you’re sitting in the pews as a guest at your own funeral and to hear what people are saying about you. Now I want you to craft a series of Legacy Letters which are letters that were written by you before your untimely passing and are being read by each of the people that you’ve written them to. So, as part of this exercise, you have to think about your key relationships and then write them down. The obvious ones can come first like your spouse or significant other, your children, your parents, your colleagues, your friends and other family members, maybe those you’ve mentored or taught along your journey, and then anybody else in your support community like a church, synagogue, the local shelter you volunteer at, and any other important relationships. Your legacy letter is a letter that you wrote as if you knew your time was near and you’re stating how you want to be remembered by these particular people.  
  
These are love letters of sorts so be sure to write in them. These are one to three word sentences like “good, smart, good looking”. No, these are letters written to specific people and should start out something like: “Dear Nancy, I want you to know that you were always my best friend, confidant and love of my life. I want you to remember just how important you were to me and how there was nothing we couldn’t talk about. I want you to remember how our senses of humor were so perfectly matched and we could find the funny in almost anything. I want you to remember the long walks we took on the beach every summer and how important your input was to me always. I want you to remember how attracted we were to each other and just how in love we were.” If it’s a colleague you’re writing the letter to it might sound like this: “hey Bob, I want you to remember how well we worked together and just how much I valued our friendship at the office and outside of it. I want you to remember me as someone who was always willing to help or take the lead on a project. I want you to remember me as somebody who valued honesty and integrity over profit and always strove to do what was right for my colleagues and for the company every day”. If its your children reading the letter you wrote to each of them, what do you want to be remembered for by them? Do you want to be remembered for how much money you made, what you gave them, how much valuable time you spent with them, what you taught them, what they taught you? Write it all down. Take some time to really think through this exercise. I’ve seen more than a few really emotional breakthroughs and life changing moments coaching people through these exercises as they realized, maybe for the first time, what was truly important to them.  
  
Do this for each and every key relationship you have on your list and, as you’re writing them, imagine that person reading your legacy letter for the first time at your funeral. What is the point of an exercise like this? This is a simple but extremely powerful exercise to help you get even more clarity on what is important to you, what your values and goals should be, who you imagine being involved, and then realizing that you’re still here and have some agency over creating the legacy you want to leave. If what you write in the Legacy Letters is what you want them to actually think and say about you, then you still have some time create that kind of relationship, develop those values and goals, and become the person that those people would really think and say those kinds of things about. If you want to be remembered the way you wrote the letter then its time to have some deliberate control and intention to becoming that person.  
  
That is your homework for the coming week my friends, I hope you’re up for the challenge! I’d like to thank you for investing your most valuable currency with me this week my friends and that is your time. You can never get back the hour we just spent together but hopefully I’ve added some value for your investment and, more importantly, I trust you will use your investment wisely and double, treble, or 10X your investment by taking some action and making some strides on your goals. Don’t worry my friends, we’re almost done with January, the month of New Years resolutions and goal setting but I promised I would spend this month trying to give you as many tools as possible to help you be more successful than the 64% of people who give up before January ends, and the 89% who give up shortly after that. With some of the tools and insights in these episodes, I’m confident you can beat the odds but you’ve got to do the work. There is always one group of people who love the info but never even crack the binding on a new educational book or 3 ring binder, and then there’s the group that soaks it all up and goes out into the world and makes shit happen. Make no mistake, I am speaking to both groups but surrounding myself with the latter group. You get to decide which one you want to be part of on any given day and I hope you choose the same.  
  
Could I ask a huge favor of you and all meet back here next week to see how far each of us has come? I promise to make it worth your time my friends. Before we go, I’d like to give a big shout out to the Appraiser Coach, Mr. Dustin Harris. As most of you know, Dustin Harris has one of the premier podcasts and appraiser coaching programs around. From the very beginning of this podcast, Dustin has been nothing but supportive and gracious and, in fact, invited me to be on his podcast within the first few months of rebooting the Real Value podcast. He didn’t have to do that, by any means, but he did and I was extremely honored and grateful for Dustin being so open to doing that. Shortly after that, Dustin reached out to me again on another important appraiser topic which is appraiser safety and we did yet another episode together on that very topic. As I have moved through life learning valuable leadership lessons and figuring out who’s real and who’s posing, I think I have developed a decent sense of what a real leader is and I have to say that Dustin Harris is a real leader in our industry. He doesn’t have to have other podcasters on his show and he doesn’t have to promote others but the fact that he has and does on a regular basis shows what kind of person Dustin is and for that I want to thank him. If you have not listened to the Appraiser Coach podcast, you are missing out and I encourage you to go there now and do nothing with the rest of your day but listen and learn. He doesn’t do anything but drop value in every show and blog post and that’s exactly what this industry needs so Dustin, thanks again my friend!  
 
One last, but not unimportant request, If you listen to the podcast on ITunes, it would be very much appreciated if we could get some love over there by way of reviews. I hate to have to ask but I know that you all would do it at the drop of a hat and I thank you for that. The more love we get over there with positive reviews, the more the podcast gets served up to more appraisers who could get some value from it and that is one of my goals with the podcast, to serve as many people as humanly possible with the information and inspiration in these episodes. So please write some reviews, and of course, all feedback and input is not only appreciated but welcomed! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and share your thoughts. Please also remember to subscribe if you want the podcast delivered first to your email each week when the episode drops and that also entitles you to the free bonus episodes that I occasionally produce. If you don’t subscribe, you don’t get the bonus episodes, which are free, and you have to wait for the episode to hit ITunes, Stitcher, or whatever service you use to consume this kind of content.  
  
With that my friends, I will see you on the other side and we’ll meet back here again next week, your turn to bring the beverages! I’m out…