The Secret To Getting More Business! The art of getting business by not asking for it...

Welcome back to the real value blog, the blog about real estate appraising, success, life, value and well… how it all fits together, good morning my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen and I am your host for this and every episode of the real value podcast, the podcast about running your business and your life with a strong why. Not a why like the letter Y, but a ‘why’ like why are you doing it. The real value blog is about becoming a 1%er in everything you do and a 1%er is simply somebody committed to becoming a little bit better each and every day in everything they do. The process of Kaizen is becoming a daily mindset for you and you are continuously improving even if just in your thinking. Maybe you haven't started your workout program yet or cleaned your office but you are starting to think about it more and working on plans in your head which is more than you were doing last week or last month. That’s part of the Kaizen process and the process of becoming a 1%er. 

If you'd like to listen to the podcast version of this blog post, just click here...

---

By the way, some of you have asked me if there is a ever a time when you know you’ve become a 1%er. Is there an arrival point where you can definitely say you’ve made it and the answer is a definite yes! You’ve become a 1%er as soon as you make the commitment to continuous growth in body, mind, and spirit. Unlike running a race or competing in some kind of event, you don’t have to wait until you break the tape and cross the finish line to say you’re a 1%er, as soon as you begin and make the commitment to just get a tiny bit better in some way each day, you’re in the club. You don’t have to wait for the t-shirt or your membership certificate to arrive in the mail because whatever t-shirt you have on is the official 1%er club gear and the napkin you wiped ketchup off of your face with is your membership certificate. You’re in! Congratulations my friend, your on the path and there is no arrival point. There is no place you have to be at any certain time and no destination you have to arrive at other than the goals you have set for yourself and your business and broken down into tiny incremental steps that, if followed, will eventually move you in the direction you aspire to be moving.  
  
Alright my friends, today we’re reaching into the Value Syndicate mail bag and answering a question from a member. Actually, this question is a question I get all the time via a variety of communication methods. Some of you have emailed, some have hit me up on facebook, some of you have my phone number and have texted me, and some of you and I have had conversations over the phone on this topic so I thought I’d address it on the show for the benefit of all the listeners and Value Syndicate members. The question is a simple one and I will warn you that often times, the simple questions are the most important ones! That goes for all of you who have undertaken to start giving talks and presentations in your market to become the go-to authority and market leader on value. The simple questions, the ones that seem really simple, maybe even ridiculous to you are often the greatest opportunities to add value for your audience or whomever you may be speaking to. Simple questions are often the hardest for the person to ask because at some level they know that it’s a simple question and they’re often afraid of sounding stupid. Simple questions are an opportunity to build up the person who asks the question, congratulate them for having the courage to ask it, and then you have an opportunity to level up the audience by answering in a way that brings some light to the topic in a way that makes everybody a little bit better.

The simple question, or amalgamation of similar questions, is simply, how do I get started or where do I start or, asked another way, how do I begin getting in front of the kind of business that I want to start getting or at least start adding to my mix. Look, my friends, this is a really simple question and I could boil it down to a simple answer but this question takes guts to ask and deserves some nuance, detail, and color for an answer. The simple answer is just do it. The simple answer is just get out there. The simple answer is go talk to somebody. But those answers are not helpful in any way and give no context or direction to the questioner. The better answer is to ask a few more questions to determine exactly what kind of business the person is looking to add to their mix. Is it more non-lender business from real estate agents, is it legal work like divorce appraisals, tax appeals, and IRS work, is it estate work and appraisals for financial planners building investment portfolios for people, what kind of work do you want to be doing because determining that will go a long way to helping you clarify your message and we can begin developing your approach to that specific group. Believe it or not, the message and language changes with each group because each group has different goals and desires, as well as different needs from the experts they are using. Attorneys care about different things from the divorce appraisal their client gets than the lender cares about a purchase appraisal for lending purposes. An estate planner cares about slightly different things from the appraisal that will establish asset value for their clients portfolio than the divorce attorney cares about. Knowing the differences between the different desires of the specific market you’re going after is important because they all have their own language and things that are important to them. 
  
Now, understand what I am saying and what I am not saying. I am not saying that your appraisal process is vastly different for each of those clients. There may be some parts of the process or language in the report that may change. The forms might be different, but the process of appraising is fundamentally the same. Of course, if all you’ve ever done is lender work and the only form you know is the 1004, then I’d recommend maybe taking a class or expanding your knowledge at least a little bit beyond the form and beyond Fannie Mae guidelines, but what I am essentially talking about is learning how to speak Spanish to a Spanish speaking audience and learning how to speak German to an audience of Germans. Instead of telling those two very different cultures and groups of people that they need to learn how to speak your language, you will get much further in the process of attracting and maintaining that kind of business if you are willing to do the research and learn to speak the language they speak and craft your message in a way that fits their culture, not bend them to fit yours. No, I’m not telling you that you have to learn Spanish or German, that was an example and a metaphor. I’m talking about learning the language of your specific market and learning what is important to them as an industry and what is important to that particular client.

On a side note, It doesn’t hurt to learn a little Latin if you want to do lots of legal work since the language or attorneys is heavily rooted in Latin, but really just learning the terms they speak in and what’s important to them is the key. In fact, the learning what’s important to them is probably the most important aspect to all of this. This is one of the key aspects of rapport building and if you’re not familiar with it, I strongly suggest you do. Building rapport is a fundamental skill and one that most people never learn. They don’t teach it in elementary school, any of the intermediate grades, you might be able to take some kind of rapport building class in college, but it is something that simply isn't taught but should be. Building rapport is all about the other person. Remember in the last episodes where we talked about public speaking and I said that fear and anxiety around public speaking is a very selfish and irrational fear because you’ve made it all about you and its irrational in that you’re not going to die? Well, the inability to build rapport is also rooted in one’s selfish need to be noticed and heard first, always, and last. We’ve all met these people, in fact, we all have friends that are like this, in fact fact, you may be that friend! I have a bunch of them and, honestly, I don’t know why we’re still friends other than the fact that they’re simply good people with horrible communication skills. 
  
These people that I’m talking about though, they’re very difficult to have what I would call a good conversation with because they are interrupters, one uppers, conversation hogs, always talking about themselves, horrible story tellers, slow talkers, they nervously laugh in inappropriate places, they say ‘like’ way too much, they say ‘ya know what I mean?’ as a way to end a sentence even though you don’t know what they mean, and you just know that if you’re going to have a conversation with this person you’d better plan on doing all the listening and its going to be all about them. Maybe, after 47 minutes of listening to their crap will they finally say, ‘so what’s going on with you?’ And lest you be stupid enough to fall for this conversational ruse with these types of people, what they’re really asking for is a little more conversational fodder from you so they can one up you and talk about themselves again. They don’t really care what you have to say, they are only ever listening for an opening with which to wedge themselves into and dominate the conversation. This, my friends, is not rapport building! This is just shitty one sided conversation. Building rapport is all about the other person. Its about active listening and, more importantly, watching for physical cues with which to match and mirror without being obvious about it. Building rapport is about listening to the language the other person uses and how they move their body when they're speaking. Its about matching their breathing patterns, their speech patterns, their verbal pace, and the quality of the words they use in order to be recognized by them subconsciously as one of their own.

If done right and well, they don’t even know you’re doing it. All they know is that they feel comfortable with you and you make them feel important and heard. Doing any kind of business with anybody, and doing it well, requires this vital skill. One of the big problems for appraisers in the last 10 years or so is that many of you were born into, or at least baptized into the AMC world of doing business which is a nameless, faceless, rapportless way of doing business. You are essentially a name and number on a computer rotation that these companies are somewhat randomly throwing business at. There is very little opportunity to build rapport in the AMC appraisal model. Although, I will say, we have had great success over the years practicing and perfecting rapport building with the staff of many of these companies. By that I mean, one of the first things I always teach my own people and the people I’m coaching is to develop some of these rapport building skills for use on the phone. The people calling you for status updates and quotes, and whatever else they may be calling you for, are human beings that are subject to the same laws of rapport as you and I. Building rapport with these people as quickly as you can is one of the quickest ways to bypass their standard system and potentially become their go to appraiser in your area.  
  
We have had great success over the years of building rapport with processors in bank offices, the people calling for updates, and even the underwriters at each one of our clients. Any time you have the opportunity to speak to another human being you have the opportunity to practice rapport building. When somebody on the other end of the phone is used to a dry, monotone, short on personality but long on attitude Appraiser when they call for updates and then they get you, somebody with some personality, somebody who asks about their day, somebody who jokes around with them, somebody who says, “Katie, I don’t feel like my day is complete until I get that daily phone call from you, so good to hear your voice”, or you answer the phone and before you even say hello you say, “Katie, I was on another call but as soon as I saw it was you I just had to switch over. How can I make your day easier today?” It is all but guaranteed that the word will get around their office that you are the go to appraiser when they need a rush and don’t want to call around for best fee and turn time. They’ll just call you and say, ‘whatever Blaine, we know you, just do it and we’ll take care of it for you’. Don’t think it happens? It happens all the time in my office. In fact, its basically how I built my business when I went out on my own 13 or 14 years ago. Of course, that was back in a time when you could call on banks because they weren’t using AMCs for their ordering so it was much easier to bring a catered lunch and give a 15 minute spiel to some loan officers and processors and you were off to the races.

The first client I ever landed once I went on my own was a huge bank and I did it basically by getting in with the processing staff and building rapport. I met one, built rapport with her and she walked me around the processors bull pen and introduced me to all of the processing staff. At each one, I would shake a hand, meet and chat for a minute, build some brief rapport, and then I would always part with, ‘don’t hesitate to call if you have any appraisal related issues, even if they aren’t related to my appraisals’. I wasn’t even getting orders from them yet but I made sure to assumptively end the conversation as if I was already getting business from them and I was their new go to appraiser. Within weeks, they were a $10-$20,000 per month client because the processors controlled the ordering. And do you know what? They are typically treated the worst by the people they’re calling and speaking to. Why? I have no idea but what I do know is that if you treat other human beings like you’d like and expect to be treated, good things happen and rapport building is much easier. Do you know the other great thing about this strategy, if we can even call being a good human being a strategy, is that, like loan officers, processors are nomadic. They move around from bank to bank and from bank to credit union. Once you have some rapport built up and they move, they tend to pass your name along to their new bosses, managers, and loan officers and all of the sudden you have some instant rapport with people you’ve never met yet. You have an endorsement from somebody you have built rapport with and they pass that juice on to their new coworkers and managers.  
  
Understanding rapport and how its built is crucial to answering the question about where to start, what do I do, and how do I even go about getting in front of this new group of people I’d like to be partnered with and doing business with? Without a solid understanding of rapport building and then working on how to become a master of it, you will always struggle getting direct lender and non-lender business. If your only skill up to this point is filling out an online application to be added to an AMC list, you have some work ahead of you and that work involves working on your personality, working on your communication skills, working on your phone skills, and working on your rapport building skills. I’ve been extremely lucky, or at least have made some fortuitous choices in my life, because my past life was heavily rooted in conflict management and conflict resolution. Being a martial arts teacher of a martial art heavily rooted in resolving the conflict with the least amount of damage, and then working for military and law enforcement groups, these kinds of rapport building skills have been crucial to my success since I was often working with very hardened individuals who were very adept at sniffing out frauds and posers. Working with law enforcement and military people is not unlike working with appraisers in that most of them are jaded, guarded, used to being attacked and abused, and accustomed to seeing through the bullshit the person in front of them is spewing. They’re not the easiest to build rapport with but when you learn the skills of matching and mirroring, learn to use the language they speak in, match their verbal, physical, and breathing patterns and make the conversation about them it becomes much easier to break down barriers and get buy in from them on at least listening to you when its your turn. From there, of course, you’d better have some skill and be able to leave some marks on somebody or you’re out. As an appraiser, of course, you do have some skills and you can become their go to expert on value and problem solving if you can just get past, or better, befriend and build rapport with the gatekeepers of each organization you would like to partner with.  
  
Notice I used the words ‘partner with’ and not get business from. I always refer to my clients as strategic partners and I always try to use the phrase ‘doing business with’ or ‘partnered with’ and not get business from. If you walk into any office, bank, or credit union to get business from them, you have already lost. They will smell it on you, your language will give you away, your body language will give you away, and you’ll be selfishly focused all on yourself and what you want. Please remember my fundamental message my friends, we are in the business of helping enough others get what they want from life. We are not in the business of appraising homes, we are in the business of solving value problems and helping people overcome challenges in their worlds. This doesn’t mean always hitting their value, it means always having the mindset of being a problem solver and helping people overcome challenges. We have all had people call with some kind of gripe or complaint regarding an appraisal. How you handle it, in my opinion, tells me what kind of appraiser you are. I don’t care what kind of resume you have, how much alphabet soup you have after your name, how many AI designations you have, or how many years you’ve been appraising homes, if you can’t handle an upset caller and potentially turn them around and have them leave educated and happy about their interaction with you, in my opinion your education was largely wasted time.

It doesn’t matter to me how good you are at extracting adjustments from the market or writing narrative reports, if you cant deal with other human beings on their level and educate them in the process, then you’re simply like every other appraiser with a bunch of letters after their name and an inability to communicate. The difference between those who can survive in any situation, those who will always be ok, those who can be dropped into any atmosphere or culture and barter their way into the Governors mansion, those who can shift with the market and this industry, and those who will be forced to change careers comes down to communication skills and rapport building. And if you cant handle a conversation under stressful circumstances how can you possibly be the best appraisal for them in their business? How can you possibly hope to attract non-lender business if you can’t handle the tough situations that may require you to fully explain the process and why something is appraising for what it is, but in their language. Communication skills and rapport building is right up there with learning how to eat. If you never learned how to eat you would eventually starve to death. In my opinion, developing your communication skills and mastering the art of rapport building is right up there with learning to eat because, without it, you will eventually starve.  Unfortunately, there are too many appraisers out there who simply have not had to communicate on any significant level so their skills are atrophied at best or elementary at worst. If your communication skills are merely atrophied, meaning they’ve just gotten weak and limp, they haven’t been put to use in some time, they can be rebuilt. If you’ve never had them, the good news is that they can be developed.  
  
When an angry realtor calls because your appraisal didn’t hit a sale price you don’t have to automatically assume its your fault like they do, and you certainly don’t have to adopt an attitude of defensiveness. When a realtor or lender calls with questions because the appraisal came in appropriately and they are now faced with the fact that their listing was overpriced or their buyer is potentially overpaying, you have some more work to do, don’t you? You can immediately begin matching and mirroring them on the phone by empathizing and you have an opportunity to educate them on the appraisal process. I wish I had recorded the hundreds of phone calls I’ve received over the years from realtors, lenders, homeowners, and attorneys regarding appraisal issues and challenges. I think I could package it up and sell it for $299 and it would sell like hot cakes because in it would be every conversational tactic and technique you’d ever need for any kind of challenging conversation. It would be responsible for saving marriages, business relationships, and it would make me tons of money because of how they always end. They always end with the person on the other end of the line saying something along the lines of, “listen Blaine, I really appreciate you taking the time to educate me on all of this, I didn’t know much of this stuff before I called. Please accept my apology for those names I called you and how unprofessional I was out of the gate. Thanks also for giving me some strategies and some of the language to use when I have to go back to my buyers, or my sellers, and renegotiate this thing. You’ve really helped give me some perspective I didn’t have before and I appreciate that.” Of course, that’s an amalgamation of many of the calls and the best case scenarios. I’ve had calls end with the person still upset but saying, “listen, I get it and I appreciate all the time you’ve taken to explain all of this to me. I’m still upset but I’ll get over it and you’ve helped me understand it better.” My friends, its all about rapport building but under extreme circumstances. Its about conflict management and conflict resolution and whether you know it or not or want to believe it, we are in the business of conflict resolution. We are solving value problems and questions with every assignment.  
  
Where do I even begin?, the emailer asked, in my opinion you begin by taking an inventory of your communication and rapport building skills. If you’re nervous about going after a different segment of the market it is likely due to your lack of solid rapport building and communication skills. One of the most common questions I got from the episodes I did on public speaking was, “what do I talk about when I’m giving a presentation?” I love the question because hopefully it means you are about to put together your first ever real estate related educational talk or presentation. I have seen a bunch of people posting in the facebook groups about their presentations and I am absolutely thrilled because it shows you’re doing it and its what we call evidence of success for all of the people wondering if its doable. ‘Where do I begin’ is right up there with ‘what do I even talk about’ in terms of great questions. You begin by learning the language of the market you are going to partner with, you research them and find out what their biggest challenges are, and then you write down some notes on how to craft a message that answers some of those questions and solves some of their problems and challenges. Then you practice matching and mirroring every single person you come in contact with. It can be family, coworkers, clients, and the girl at the McDonalds drive through.

Matching and mirroring is just as it sounds. You match the persons volume, tone, speed or pace, and the language style they're speaking in. If they’re standing in front of you, you have an opportunity to practice mirroring their body language and breathing patterns. If they have their arms crossed, you discreetly cross your arms. If they’re standing obliquely, or somewhat sideways, you plane your body similarly. If they say, “ya know what I mean”a lot, you say “yeah, I know what you mean” right along with them. Now, this is getting a little more sophisticated and takes lots of practice active listening but if you can listen to the words a person uses they will give you almost everything you need to know about what’s important to them and how they process things. If they use words like ‘I see’ or ‘see what I mean’, then you can shape your language by asking , ‘can you see what I mean?’. If they use words like ‘I hear ya’, you can mold your language to match theirs by saying, ‘I definitely hear what you’re saying’. Again, a little more advanced but all part of building rapport and breaking through cognitive barriers that, if forced or violated, will have the person you’re speaking with shut the gate and blow you off.  
  
Of course, as you’re doing this matching and mirroring practice, if you get called out by a loved one because your arm crossing is obvious and it looks like you’re mocking the person, your technique needs work. When done right, the person doesn’t even know that you’re matching, mirroring, pacing, and eventually taking the lead. What I mean by taking the lead is that eventually you’ll get so good at rapport building that you when you successfully match, mirror, and pace, at some point in the conversation you’ll take the lead and actually be able to change their physiology because you have entrained so well that they unconsciously begin to follow your movements, your breathing patterns, and your tone and pace. This is why I often use the term ‘leveling up’ your clients or coworkers. Leveling up is when you become so good at what you do that the people around you become better for having been in your presence. You entrain, or incorporate yourself, so well with the people around you that they start to become more like you then you did to first become like them. That’s the essence of rapport building. Making yourself so much like them that they simply cant ignore or deny that there is a connection and an understanding. They don’t know what it is or what to call it, they just say, ‘that guy or that lady gets it!’ 
  
From there my friends, the next step is simply to go out into your market and meet the people you want to partner with. Direct lender business is the easiest, in my opinion, because you can walk into any bank and introduce yourself to somebody. It is a little more difficult to walk into an attorneys office because there is a different decorum and set of rules in that industry. Whether you’d prefer to send out an email or walk into a bank or office, either way, you are always only attempting to get another meeting. I have been through hundreds and hundreds of hours of sales training and there is all kinds of debate in certain industries about one call closes or two call closes and efficiency in your prospecting activities but I can tell you from having done this for a decades now, nobody like to be sold and nobody likes to be closed. If you walk into a lender or attorney’s office with the intention of ‘closing’ them on using you, you’ll fail every time. The professional plays the long game and always goes in to see if: 

A. There is even a problem they can solve and  
B. If they even want that business.  

You walk in to meet, put a name to a face, establish some rapport, and then see if you can bring in a catered lunch, provide some education, and get a business card. Often times you will be met with, “oh yeah, we’re all set on our appraiser panel”. I’ve heard that so many times its ridiculous. Its like when you are walking around a clothing store and the salesperson says, ‘can I help you find anything?’, and you say, ‘nope, just looking, thanks’.  It’s a way of shutting down the eventual sales pitch and guarding ourselves against the prospect of a good salesperson. We don’t like to be sold and we don’t like to be closed on. ‘Nope, just looking’ prevents the chance that a good salesperson will make you take out your credit card and start filling shopping bags with clothes you are probably going to buy anyways. ‘We’re all set on our appraisal panel’ is another way of saying, ‘nope, just looking’. Your response to that should always be, “oh yeah, of course, I’m not here to try to get on your appraiser panel, I just wanted to stop in and introduce myself since I drive by you almost daily. I wouldn’t even want to attempt to add another good client at the moment since I’m swamped as it is and quality and turn time is super important to me. We make sure our reports sail through underwriting with no issues and our clients don’t have problems closing deals because we know how important time and avoiding delays is in the process.’ 
  
From there, you thank them for their time, let them know you’re always happy to help answer questions and appraisal related issues, especially since you aren’t working on any appraisals for them at the moment so you’re not violating any appraiser independence rules, and that he or she can all you any time to ask questions. I’ll tell you why this works so well. This has worked extremely well for us because of the fact that many lenders simply don’t have good rapport with their appraiser panel and the appraisers on their panel aren’t good communicators. If they have a good quality appraiser that is willing to answer questions for them and one they cant get in trouble for calling or accused of colluding on value, you have an in. Of course, I don’t suggest stopping there. You have a business card with a name and a phone number. Every organization likes free food and free education. Almost every manager of every office loves to have free education as a value add for their people. When you get back to the office you’re going to do two things right away: you’re going to send an email thanking them for taking their valuable time to at least let you introduce yourself and then you’re going to send a hand written thank you card to their office. In the thank you card you’re going to reiterate your offer to answer any questions they may have and also offer to come in and teach a free class. Will this work to get you added to their appraiser panel. No! Not likely, and if you go in there thinking that’s all it takes you’ll lose almost every time. I say almost because even a broken clock is right twice a day and you may simply stumble into an angry loan officers office one day who is just steamed with an appraiser on their panel and looking to get rid of him or her. Boom, you’re in and off to the races.

However, you don’t know yet if this is even work you want because you haven't done the rapport building and interview process to see if you have any shared values. You may have just stumbled into the volume shop that just throws shit at the wall to see what sticks. You may regret even walking into that lender after hearing some of the answers and talk from some of the people in there. That’s why you never walk in to get business. You network to interview people and businesses to see if you even want that work. Trust me when I say there are some attorney’s, some banks, some loan officers, and some realtors that you simply don’t want your name and reputation associated with. I know you know this but you may forget this when it comes time to prospect, network, and establish some rapport with a potential new partner and client.  
  
You walk in to interview, my friends. You don’t walk in to get business. You go to introduce yourself and, if the opportunity arises, simply offer to answer questions, become a value added resource, and solve some problems. You then follow up with email, thank you card, and offers for coffee, lunch, lunch for the office, and free education. What do you educate them on, you ask? It doesn’t really matter at this point because what you educate them on is not a problem you have yet! Those of you who are wavering on doing this kind of prospecting and networking because you don’t know what to educate them on, you’re just being lazy and wimpy. You’re using that as an excuse not to go meet people. Get them to say yes to a second meeting, lunch or educational opportunity and then you can worry about what to educate them on. I’m in the process of building a digital information product for you that will teach you the basics of building a PowerPoint presentation, how to edit, add, delete, and modify slides, how to create an outline and then develop a presentation and it will also have a couple pre-made, ready to use presentations for you to use right out of the box with notes and a video walk through of how to give that presentation. It wont be cheap but it will be worth at least $10,000 to you and your business because one well delivered educational presentation will have business coming in for years. Our presentations have netted us multiple six figures every single year and I wouldn’t stop doing it if you paid me to because you cant possibly pay me more than what my presenting and free education brings in to my business.

All of those opportunities that we know have or have created for our company were not created by walking in and asking for business. They were created because I walked in and offered to solve problems, educate them, and feed them all without any expectation of business in return. In fact, some of them have asked, ‘what’s the catch?’ when I offer to bring in lunch and give a 40 minute talk. Do you know what I say? I say, ‘no catch at all. I’m not here to get business from you, I’m here to introduce myself and educate my market on the appraisal process and be a problem solver. If we end up doing business together sometime down the road, it will simply be the natural result of us solving problems together. And if we don’t, we can still be friends and I’m still here offering to educate, answer questions, and solve problems.’ Listeners, Value Syndicate members, friends, colleagues, fellow appraisers, I have friends in the lending business who are not clients of mine. I have attorney friends who don’t use me and I wouldn’t want them to. I have lender friends and former clients who I have fired who are still my friends. When one of my friends at a bank who I’ve fired eventually leaves that bank and goes to a better one, I’m in! I never burn bridges and I have lots of contacts, friends, and people in my network that I get no business from…yet.  
  
Its called digging your well and filtering for quality. You must do the work up front to reap the rewards down the line. In my system of business building its all about adding more value than is expected and having no expectation of return from those you give to. If done right and with the proper attitude and mindset, the business will flow in naturally and in its proper time. I’m not telling you not to prospect and ask for business, I’m simply telling you how to do it the right way and for the long haul. You don’t go out into your market to ask for business, you go into your market to earn it first. Become a value added partner before they ever even need your services and paying you for your services will become a foregone conclusion. But please heed my advice my friends, add the skill of rapport building to your list of 1%er items. Things you’re going to incrementally work on from now until forever because without it you will run into lots of rejection, your morale and inspiration will plummet, and you’ll eventually give up based on the number of no’s you receive in the process. When you go in to establish rapport, add value, and then keep following up respectfully for coffee, lunch, or free education, they have no choice but to eventually let you in. Once you get in, and I mean really in where you’ve established rapport, they like you and now they want to hear what you have to say, now we can focus on what to say, what to teach or lead or educate them on. Get to that point first and don’t worry about the rest. It will fall into place.  
  
I want to thank you all my dear friends for taking time out of your busy lives to come back week after week to listen to this podcast. I appreciate every one of you and I sincerely hope I have added some value for you along the way. You have done the tough work of investing your most valuable currency and that is your time. It is ultimately up to you to get a return on your investment and that comes by taking some action. I encourage you to take some action and get out there in your markets. Show them why you’re the value added provider of solutions in your market. Develop and hone your rapport building skills as they are invaluable in almost every area of your life. Rapport building and communication skills are like the Swiss Army knife of the business world because with them you’ll never be in a situation that you cant find a solution. More importantly, with solid rapport building and communication skills you’ll build the confidence to handle any and every challenge that comes your way, and that includes the erosion of and shifting of markets and a way of doing business that many of you fear losing. With the right set of skills, you can choose your markets, your business, your product, and your clientele and then name your price. Go choose your markets, your clients, and go name your price. Until next week my friends, I’m out… 
 ​