Real Value Podcast-New Year's Eve Year End Recap

Welcome back to the real value podcast! The podcast about real estate, lending, appraising, success, communication, relationships and well…how it all fits together. Good morning my friends and happy holidays to each and every one of you.  A big fist bump from the Real Value Studios, the Value Syndicate staff and Mastermind, producer Zero, myself and all of the members of the Value Syndicate on a fantastic year we called 2018 and an exciting year ahead we’ll call 2019. I cant thank you all enough for all the support, kind words, interaction, emails, phone calls, great discussions, awesome cards I’ve received over the holidays, and the new friendships cultivated from the Real Value Podcast. What started as a way to bring a little bit of hope, education, and maybe a different way of thinking to a few industries has grown tremendously in 22 short weeks. I’m very excited for 2019 to begin next week and, by the way, as is a habit of mine begun many years ago, I have already started on my 2019 goals and I hope you have too. 

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I learned a long time ago that once the idea or goal hits you, there is no reason to wait to begin it so if you are sitting around waiting for 2019 to get here before tackling some of your resolutions, don’t! Start them today so when the new year begins next Monday at midnight you will already have several days under your belt and increased confidence in their success. I will share with all of you that one of mine was to reduce my caffeine consumption, take some of my fitness goals to the next level, and increase the number of people I meet with each week. As is my ongoing process, I am always reviewing my goals throughout the year to chart where I am in meeting or exceeding them and to see if they need to be revised in any way and then, as the end of the year approaches, I start to think about the next year and what I want to accomplish. I begin writing some of those things in my journal and planner and the list builds over the course of a couple months. Then, usually in December, I make an official list in my journal of those goals and the steps needed to achieve them so that I can begin the process of attracting everything I need for their achievement. This means ideas, people, resources, time, and whatever else I may need to meet or exceed those goals. Quite often I don’t even know what it is I may need but I know that by going through the process of thinking about them, writing them down, chunking them down to actionable steps, and then taking some action, all of the necessary ingredients will make themselves known to me at the right time.  
  
Nevertheless, with a couple of my goals being to cut caffeine consumption and take my fitness goals to the next level I decided there’s no reason to wait until January 1st to start so I began the process of weaning myself off of coffee several weeks ago. I didn’t really think I was a maniac with coffee but I’d have an espresso or two in the morning to get things humming, and then I might have an additional cup or, god forbid, a Coke Zero every now and then while out on inspections. On the weekends my girlfriend and I would typically start out with an espresso but we’d also brew a full pot of coffee to sip while we talk. As is our weekend routine, we’d go have a late breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants and drink a few more cups of coffee and then get a cup to go while we head out shopping. Again, I didn’t think I was a crazy caffeine consumer but when I really sat down and examined my routine I realized that I should probably learn to live without it. I didn’t like the thought that I needed something to wake me up and get me going each morning or even to comfort me, which is what those additional cups typically are. They're comfort cups that keep us rooted in habits. I loved the warmth of the cup and the hot liquid inside and I realized it was just a programmed habit and not anything I needed so away it goes.

The second thing I did was that I invested in a nice spin bike. I’ve mentioned in a previous episode that I have a mountain bike on a fluid trainer in my living room and I would hop on that several times throughout the week and do some high intensity intervals to burn some calories. I realized though that If I was going to reach some of my next fitness goals, one of which is to do another tough mudder or spartan race, this time with my two boys and maybe my girlfriend, that I was going to have to step it up and that meant a bike where I can control the resistance and also stand up on the pedals to mimic going up hills.  
  
I’ve had the bike a week now and and can already see how its going to help me meet and probably exceed some of my initial goals. With the caffeine consumption basically nixed, meaning I’ve completely off of caffeine now, there is the added benefit of increased cardio vascular stamina that I’ll put to good use on the new spin bike and on the hockey ice. The whole point of this introduction is, of course, to get you thinking about implementing some of the things I’ve suggested over the past 20 episodes which is to be thinking more about what you what, write down your goals both personal and professional, keep track of them on a daily, or at least weekly basis, and then occasionally look back and review to see how far you’ve come. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish when you get stuff out of your head, onto paper, and then hold yourself accountable (or have somebody else hold you accountable) to doing what you say you’re going to do.  
  
With that out of the way my friends, this episode is all about what we just talked about. It’s about reviewing what’s been said and done and to take a look backward to help give us some insight about moving forward. I’m not a fan of looking backward too much but there are at least 4 times per year when it’s necessary. I recommend looking backward each quarter to see where you’ve come and what needs to be done to course correct or revamp your goals. If you don’t have any goals, of course, there’s nothing you need to do. You’re off the hook because wherever you end up will be good enough. But for those who do some goal setting, even if just basic writing down of a few things you’d like to accomplish during the year, looking backward every three or four months to see if you’ve been doing the things that will help you realize those goals will at least bring them back to the forefront of your brain each quarter.  
  
Our look back today is simply going to be a brief recap of some of the episodes that I think are the most important ones, the ones that generated the most feedback, and the ones that, if followed by any of you would have generated the most results and I’ll go over some of the key points from each one to remind you. Hopefully you’ve listened to all of them but if you haven’t, I’m about to fill you in on what you may have missed.  
  
Starting with the official second episode called ‘Going Mobile”, I talked about the downsides of sticking with paper and tape measure, double, triple, and sometimes quadruple entry of data, the value of our most valuable currency which is time and life energy, and how you can drastically increase your efficiency, cut your costs, as well as increase your profitability by learning a few new tricks. The first one being adopting the use of a tablet like an iPad of Galaxy tablet to use on observations and the second one being the use of a laser measuring device. If you’re still on the fence about going mobile at the end of 2018, in a day and age when our industry is changing very rapidly and speed is one of the hallmarks of being considered a ‘good’ appraiser, then you owe it to yourself to take a deeper look at what its going to take for you to make the switch. 
  
The next episode was titled “top three ways to give yourself a raise”. This was a deep episode wherein I spent the first part talking about belief systems and how most people are hard wired from an early age to be rooted in lack thinking. As adults we wonder why some people have no problem earning a certain amount of money while others struggle just to pay their bills. And while there are usually a multitude of reasons for each persons situation, ultimately the answer can be traced back to decisions one has made and those decisions were made typically because of the way one thinks. Digging into those belief systems and ferreting out the lack and the limits you may place on yourself is the first step in giving yourself a raise. Of course, we talked about some tactical and practical and the other suggestions were to fire your worst clients as a way to free up your precious time and valuable resources thus allowing new and better clients to enter into your world, and the final one was simply to raise your fees. So many appraisers out there bitching about the fees being paid to them and, of course, we know its because those appraisers are doing primarily AMC work where they don’t control their own fees. Raising your fees is a suggestion not meant to be glib or inconsiderate of all of you who might not having any control over your fees. It’s a suggestion that’s meant to make you think about just how much of your annual income is reliant upon that kind of work. By saying ‘raise your fees’, I was hoping to poke a few of you in the ribs to get you to examine your business.

If you screamed into the podcast machine that you cant raise your fees, well that should’ve been a wake up call to begin changing your business mix to one in which you can raise your fees. The type of clients where you typically can raise your fees are direct lender, credit unions, and non-lender work. If you’re feeling the pinch now when things are slowing down because your AMCs are lowering fees to stay afloat, I feel for you! I don’t feel bad for you, but I feel for you. You are in a tough place but probably one of the best places you could be right now because you are at a crossroad in your life and business. You have some tough decisions to make and, whatever you decide, hopefully you’ll look back years later and say “that was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me because I wouldn’t have changed otherwise”.  
  
After that was an episode called top 3 ways Appraisers can add value to the process. This was an important episode because we again talked about mindset and how you look at your business versus how your clients may look at your business. We talked about how the appraisal is quite often viewed as a commodity which means a race to the bottom in terms of price and quality. We talked about one of my mentors, Jay Abraham, and his strategy of preeminence and how to look outside of the industry for ways to add value within the industry. One of my suggestions was to learn every aspect of the transaction. Learn the realtors side of the transaction and their pain points and then learn the lenders side of the transaction and their pain points. Having some empathy and understanding of what each of the human beings involved in the transaction are going through and what’s important to them makes you more informed. You may not change your appraisal process one bit but when you have empathy for all of the parties involved you change your language a bit, you communicate differently, and you start to view your business differently and the real value you can add for your clients becomes more clear. We also talked about community outreach and getting out into your market to be the go to resource for realtors, lenders, attorneys, and anybody who may need your services in the future. 
  
An important episode after that was called ‘So you wanna be an appraiser’. This one was not just for new appraisers coming into the market, it was also for all of us existing appraisers thinking the same way about the apprenticeship model. We discussed several ways new appraisers should be approaching potential mentors and how potential mentors should or could be viewing the process to get more value and add more value to their business. Lots of good info in that episode and one I suggest passing along to anybody you ever hear about looking for a mentor. Our industry has mentored the same way for decades and there is an inherent mindset amongst trainees that they are to just put in their time under a mentor until its time to leave which is why very few appraisers are willing to mentor today. If trainees and mentors had the right mindset from the start, the relationship would be different and the industry as a whole may not be experiencing some of the pains that it is. 
  
A notable episode after that one was one called ‘will you miss me when I’m gone”. I introduced you to the great Peter Drucker, management guru, and introduced a few questions that are vital to every business. The question of what business are we really in, what business should we be in and what business will we be in are vital questions to be asking yourself all the time. To wrap up that episode I encouraged you to ask yourself the all important question, ‘will my clients miss me when I’m gone’, meaning, have you added so much value to your market and for your clients that without you they’d say, ‘boy, remember when Blaine was our appraiser? He was awesome! He answered our questions, he taught us things we didn’t know, he put on workshops, he was pleasant to talk to, he was always willing to communicate, he came to our events, and he was just the best’.

Now I know what some of you are saying to yourselves and probably said when you listened to the episode, ‘to hell with all that nonsense, I want to be known for the quality of my work and being the best damn appraiser to me means spending 10-12 hours on every report and using everything I learned from the institute and filling my reports with all the important stuff that…’, yeah we get it man! And you can be that appraiser but nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Making the invisible visible is one of the steps to making sure your clients know just how important that stuff is and should be to them. Before that, all they know is what is important to them.  
  
Then came the episode about servant leadership called ‘Carrying the bags of a zen master’. I talked about my role as otomo in Japanese, or the one who takes care of the master and the lessons I learned from my experience of doing so. We posed some questions for each other that force us to look at how we’re treating people in and around our lives and business and we ended the episode with a different question from the previous episode and that was to ask, ‘how can I add value to every person I come across on my path and how can I make them better for having crossed my path?’ I quoted the great Zig Ziglar and modified his quote just a skosh. He said you can have anything in life you want as long as you help enough other people get theirs. I broke Zig’s quote into two quotes to remind you that you really can have anything you want in life, but its up to you to see it, write it, and act on it. And the second quote is simply a command, ‘help enough other people achieve too’. It doesn’t have to be transactional that you wont get what you want unless you help somebody else. This can breed the wrong mindset because its doesn’t fill your heart with gratitude and a deep desire to help others, its simply makes you say, ‘shit! I gotta help somebody today or I wont get what I want’. No, the idea is to just have the attitude that regardless of what you desire, help other people achieve their desires too. 
  
Following that episode, we talked about what to do when the passion for your business fades. We talked in the thanksgiving episode about how cleaning and doing work is an act of thanksgiving and how to carry gratitude into our everyday lives instead of just once or twice per year. We talked in another episode about the Stoics and how seeing obstacles in our path as the signposts and signals that we are on the right path. We chatted after that about digging your well before you’re thirsty meaning doing the things daily that you should be doing to make sure that the slow times are less slow and the busy times are profitable and fun. This means getting out of your cave and building your network long before you may need to call upon it. Appraisers especially, since my realtor and lender students are pretty good at this inherently. Appraisers tend not to want to interact with other human beings and this ends up costing them when business dips a bit or when you lose a client. If you haven’t been digging your well before you’re thirsty, you end up dying of exhaustion trying to dig it when you need it most. 
  
We talked after that about your most valuable currencies of time, health, and of course money. We often take for granted our most valuable currencies of time and health in search of money only to trade our money in an attempt to gain back a bit of our health. Once you begin to place some more importance on your time and your health, you’ll find money takes its proper place and role in your life. And of course, last week’s episode was all about being extremely careful who you choose to follow and who you choose to listen to. This is an important call for everybody in business, but especially for the new agents, lenders, and appraiser trainees or newly licensed appraisers. Who you allow into your ears and direct to your brains will have a profound effect on your daily emotions, your outlook, your habits, and your results. Appraisers especially, there is an inherent negativity bias and a pessimism in many of your DNAs that poisons the more vulnerable of the group and especially those who are looking for ways to think, speak, and act.

Children of abusive parents often grow to become abusers themselves and the new generation in every industry tends to look to the veterans for how to act and view certain things. The buckets of negativity that rain down on the appraisal industry from a select few voices would have me running for the hills if I was a newer appraiser coming into the industry today. Fortunately, I didn’t have access to forums and there was no facebook when I started so I listened to all of the stuff I still listen to today which is stuff rooted in positivity and making a difference in the world. It’s stuff that I can use in my business and help those around me. Do I stay up on industry trends, news, and the economy? You bet I do! But I know how to filter out the bias and I also know that to a very large degree, I control what goes on in my business because I’ve been digging my well for many years now. When you treat others the way you wish to be treated, good things happen. When you look ahead, have written goals, take action daily, weekly, monthly on those goals, nothing stands in your way.  
  
Jim Rohn said, "If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much”. If 2018 wasn’t your year to take that bull by the horns, 2019 should be. Every day is a new day to take one more small step toward who you want to be and what you want to achieve. If you don’t yet know what it is you want to achieve than that is the first step. Take time today to write down just one thing. One thing that you think would be awesome to experience in the next 6 months. Notice I didn’t say achieve. Some of you have hang ups around the world achieve but everybody loves to experience. Just focus on the who, the what, the where, the why, and the when and just live in that for a few moments. Imagine what it would feel like, smell like, taste like, and sound like to have that particular experience and just stay there for a few moments. If you can do that, you’re goal setting. It doesn’t have to be a weekend process where you rent a hotel conference room and hole up in it for 3 days doing strategic planning. I’ve done that before and, while it can be a productive way to focus, its not necessarily the most fun and goal setting should be fun, inspirational and motivational.

The most fun I ever had doing strategic planning was with a good friend and business partner when we rented a condo just outside of Zion National Park in Utah and spent a week hiking, swimming, trekking through the narrows and adventuring through the national park and planning as we did all of that. We would be backpacking waist high through the river in a narrow gap through hundred foot tall carved sandstone and talking about the things we wanted to accomplish. We’d hash out the 5 w’s as we hiked and we would give each other feedback and things to think about with each goal. We masterminded as we adventured and it was by far one of the most productive planning trips I’ve ever taken. When we’d arrive back at our condo after a long day of adventure we’d hit the pool and begin writing down everything we talked about. We’d talk over dinner and micro brews, we’d chat over breakfast, and we’d hash things out while hanging off of a small cliff.  
  
I left that trip with more goals and things I would go on to accomplish than any previous planning sessions and it’s because the environment we were in and created was inspirational, motivational, fun, and the geography was wide and expansive which helped us think bigger than maybe we would have otherwise. The whole point being that as we end a great year and head into the next, what you do with the next hours, days, and weeks may be the most important you’ve ever spent. 2019 holds tremendous promise and excitement for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to create and think big! Are you going to be one of the ones who thinks and dreams big or one who merely gets by. The power is in your hands and in your minds my friends. 
  
I want to thank you for making 2018 such a great year and I hope I’ve done even a little bit to enhance yours. I want to thank the members of the Value Syndicate for your support and for the great conversations and new friendships that were birthed. I have big plans for the 2019 Real Value Podcast which will include an interview series, but not necessarily with the kinds of guests you may expect from a primarily Appraiser focused podcast. No my friends, I eat my own porridge and live by the same advice I share with you and that’s to look outside of the industry for best practices and insights to bring back into it for better results. We already have an exciting line up very successful entrepreneurs in store who are excited to share their thoughts, ideas, and value with all of you. 
  
And of course, I want to thank you for investing your most valuable currency with me this week, and that is your time. I take very seriously your investment of time and will always do my best to give you a solid return on that investment but it is ultimately up to you with what you do with it. Take some time this weekend to do a past year review. Write down what went right, what didn’t, who added value, who took it, and start scribbling about next year and how you want to have more of the things that went right, less of those that didn’t, more people who add value and less of those who merely took it, and then what kind of world you’re going to create for yourself and your family in the next year.  
  
Thank you for being you my friends, a big fist bump from all of us here at the Real Value Studios and the Value Syndicate Compound. We’ll chat again next week, I’m out! 
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