YEAR END RECAP-2019

What can I say other than, ‘we made it!’, whether you’re listening to this episode on the last day of 2019 or the first few days or weeks of 2020, you made it through the 20-teens decade and on to a whole new decade. Of course, the end of the one year and beginning of a new one is always a time to reflect. Its when people become the most nostalgic, for some the most depressed, for others the most excited, and for a bunch of people it means a new beginning, a chance to start again and set some new intentions, some new goals, some new plans, maybe a resolution or two, and just generally make another attempt to do, be, and have some of the things they wanted in the prior year but maybe never got around to. Maybe you want to stop doing something you’ve been doing and, of course, more power to you. Maybe its your health you want to focus on, or your business, or more family time. Whatever it may be, I support you in that effort.

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Of course, I have to share with you the sobering statistics of New year’s resolutions but, the way that I’m going to do that is with a second annual year end recap of some of the most important episodes we did in 2019. I started this at the end of last year with the biggest difference between last year and this year being that 2019 was out first full year of episodes almost every week. We rebooted the podcast in the middle of last year, July 27th to be exact, which mean we only had 20 some episodes to recap at the end of last year. With a full year of episodes this year, we have almost 50 episodes, almost all of which were filled to the brim with high quality info! At least we like to think so. So what I’m going to do in this 2019 year end recap is highlight the top 5 episodes that got the most feedback from listeners. If you’ve been a listener of the show since the beginning, you’ll remember that I used to do some episodes based on questions from the listener mail bag. We haven’t done many of those this season because I’ve had so much stuff that I wanted to share with all of you, but we still get lots of feedback on every episode so I’ve sifted through the episode feedback and pulled the top 5 episodes based on your feedback. This is a very difficult thing to do for us because we’ve gotten tons of feedback and trying to narrow 50 some episodes down to the top 5 is tough. I’d love to recap the top 20, or even the top 10, but the episode would simply be too long. So here we go:

The first notable episode from this past year was, of course, the very first episode of 2019 called Don’t Fall Off the Cliff. This was an episode all about New Years resolutions and I introduced you to the CLIFF acronym as a way to help you stay on track with your resolutions and goals. The CLIFF acronym, if you recall that episode, was a simple tool we used in my martial arts business and martial arts coaching business to help parents, members, and school owners begin to recognize when their newly minted resolutions and commitments were in jeopardy. The C stands for the excuse that many people start to make, which is ‘Cant find the time.’ As soon as you hear yourself, or somebody else, making the excuse that they cant find the time for something, the goal is falling apart. By the way, I told you I’d share with you the sobering statistic of New Years resolutions and its that fully 64% of these are done and over before the 30 day mark. Fully 88% are finished by the 60 day mark. You can only imagine where the numbers go from there. My guess is that fully 100% of New Years resolutions are given up on by month 5 or 6 and it usually starts with the words, ‘Cant find the time’. The ‘L’ in the CLIFF acronym stands for ‘lacking a plan.’ Quite simply, people get excited about starting over or starting something new and never take the time to create a plan for its achievement. If you’re going to make a resolution or set some new goals, you absolutely must make a plan of activities that eventually lead to the doing of and completing that goal. The ‘I’ in the CLIFF acronym stands for ‘ignoring your own commitment’. I don’t need to go too deep on this one because it’s the biggest reason people quit. They simply ignore their own commitment to change and they do so with a variety of excuses like, ‘I cant find the time.’ The first ‘F’ in CLIFF stands for ‘frustration’ or getting frustrated with the lack of results. This too is a given since anything worth doing is likely not going to be easy or without roadblocks. Stick with it and adapt as you go. The last in CLIFF stands for ‘forgetting why you started in the first place.’ Let’s face it friends, we tend to get super excited to become a new person at the end of the year, only to lose that excitement within the first 30 days of what turns out to be our old life just in a new year. Remind yourself daily what made you want to resolve to be a new you and you’ll likely have better results than the 88% of people who never make it to day 60.

The next episode that got some of the most feedback was episode 4 and was titled, ‘Speak Like A Pro.’ In that episode, I addressed one of the greatest fears that 99% of humans on the planet have and that is public speaking. Most people would rather die in a fiery crash than have to get up in front of a crowd of people and speak to them, even if by doing so they’d be almost guaranteed more business, more money, more of something as a result of their efforts in that regard. To me, this is an astounding statistic but I get it. It can be very scary to speak in front of people and the fear is rooted in our DNA and the tribal part of our mammalian brain. It’s the part of us that believes anything that may get us booted from the tribe means certain death. Even though this is not a real thing in the civilized world listeners of this podcast live in today, its still there. It’s a deeply rooted belief that embarrassment means less chance of finding a mate, which means a greater chance of living and dying alone. It means a greater chance of being laughed out of the tribe and destined to face the wolves, bears, and scary things in the cold woods all alone. Of course, this is an irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless. My advice for those who are willing to face this fear and speak to others in public boiled down to 4 simple pieces of advice: know your stuff, have a teachable point of view, have a good opener and closing statement, and make your presentations interactive. Sounds simple, right? It is! One of the most basic skills for any kind of success in life is developing a sense of self esteem and confidence. One of the best ways to overcome a fear of speaking to any kind of group you might call the ‘public’ is to become confident that you are the expert in that area. Once you are fairly self assured that you know more than everybody in the crowd in the area you’re speaking or teaching on then the fear begins to subside. It doesn’t have to go away completely for you to be successful, by the way, but the lower the fear goes, the easier it is to manage. Once you’re off and running with your opener and your teachable point of view, before you know it you’re at your closing statement and its time for questions to which you likely have all the answers. Speaking and teaching is one of the best ways to build relationships in a market so overcoming this fear is very important, in my opinion. Developing the ability to demonstrate your value to your market is paramount to developing a strong relationship based business that blows everybody else in your market away.

I’ll share with you that this episode generated some feedback from some listeners who said, in essence, ”Blaine, I don’t really have any interest in developing relationships with my market. I’m happy keeping an arms length between me and my client or me and the homeowner and realtor. I just want to get more direct lender or more private work, and less low fee AMC work.” Listen friends, I hate to burst that big fat bubble, but the reason those people are only able to get AMC work and low fee work is because of what they just said. If you have no interest in developing relationships or demonstrating your value to your market, stick with the AMC and low fee bid work because the highest fee, most profitable, and longest lasting business in almost every industry is rooted in the relationships and the service. If you want to keep an arms length between you and your client, or you and the homeowner and realtor, I say good, stay there. That allows people like me, and the other 1%ers who are willing to develop relationships to have the majority of that market and the majority of the fees and the fun in our markets. If you’re not willing to do the things that are directly related to developing those kinds of clients, the most important of which is developing some kind of relationship with them so you even have a chance at demonstrating your value, you have to be ok with the kind of work that comes with arms length relationships. Developing the ability to speak is one of the most efficient ways to demonstrate your expertise and value to the largest number of people at one time. The number of people you are in front of in any given year is directly related to how many fans you create, and the number of fans you create is directly related to the amount of money you can earn over the longest period of time. Is it the only way? Nope. You can build a machine that just pumps out product super efficiently and at relatively low cost. You can build a company that cranks out widgets with little to no direct relationship with anybody. There is nothing wrong with that business model. You just have to know that the fees and profits tend to be the lowest because of the costs involved in that kind of operation and the fact that its simply a commodity at that point and will attract only those who want the lowest fees and the quickest turn around. Quality doesn’t matter, only price matters at that point. Be careful of the corner you paint yourself in friends. If that’s the type of business you want, cool, build one that has you never, or at least rarely, interacting with other humans. Also know, however, that when you remove the interaction with humans you raise the question, ‘why do we even need humans at all?’ That is the direction the appraisal business is headed and for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is the abhorrent personalities of some of the appraisers in this world. Another is simply because so few appraisers are willing to interact with their market in a positive way and show them why an intelligent human being is needed. You can’t have it both ways my friends. Either you get out in your market and build a bulletproof business built on solid business practices, killer client service, and being the loudest and most professional voice in your market, or you settle for the lowest paid commoditized scraps. Learn to speak like a pro. My friends.

The next popular episode was episode number 13 and is titled, ‘1000 True Fans.’ In that episode, I introduce listeners to Kevin Kelly, the executive editor of Wired magazine, and his article many years ago with the same title. In it, he goes into the concept, and the math, of creating a viable business and living that does not require millions of adoring fans, but instead, just 1000 fans who would be willing to pay you $100 per year for whatever you’re offering. That equals $100,000 per year in income and more than enough for most people to live a nice life. Now, you can debate about the number and lifestyle, but the reality is that the happiness quotient for most people in most regions is somewhere in the mid $60,000 range and the mid $90,000 range for families. This means that, for most people, once they hit the happiness quotient, any amount of work it takes to earn more income beyond that does not add an equal amount of happiness. The happiness scale starts to decline at that point. The 1000 true fans concept can be applied to almost all businesses, even if the numbers are slightly different. The whole idea is to think in terms of becoming the go-to, the expert, the best, the authority, or the greatest performer in your industry and work on serving your fan base instead of always looking for more fans. When you take care of the fans that you do have, they’ll tell others about you and your fan base starts to grow organically from there. Of course, taking from the last episode we just recapped, if you’re out in your market ‘performing’, so to speak, and demonstrating your value to your market constantly, you are inevitably growing that fan base. Each industry has its own numbers and its own metrics, but I introduced you to the concept of future banking in that episode whereby I also introduced you to the numbers we use in our market for future banking on our fan base.  Future banking is quite simple: for every true fan you cultivate, you can count on at least one full fee referral from them sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. That means if you had 1000 true fans and your average fee was $500 then your future bank account would read $500,000 in referrals that haven’t necessarily come yet, but are on the way. Of course, for most, that number is just too big for them to grasp so lets cut it by 90%. If you could develop 100 true fans of you and your business, that means an additional $50,000 in future referral business at some point in the next 12 to 18 months. Would you take it? Would you even want it? And the follow up, yet most important question, would you be willing to do what is required to build a fan base? If not, that’s ok. Honesty is important in life. If you’re not willing to do what it takes to build a base of true fans of you and your business then you have to be ok with what you have now and whatever may or may not flow into your coffers in the coming months and years.

Most appraisers I know would say, right now at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, that they’re ok with what they have because the business is great for them right now. Most appraisers I know are turning down work so any thought of doing anything extra is laughable. If you’re like us, we’re not even taking on new clients and we have a backlog of direct lenders and private clients wanting to send business. However, the difference between our backlog and the business many appraisers are turning down is that our backlog is a backlog of fans who want to do business with us now and in the future. The business most appraisers are turning down at the moment is transactional business. It’s the one offs that come over in an email and the appraiser is cherry picking the best orders because they can right now. The logical question becomes, what happens when that transactional business slows, have you been doing anything to dig your well of future business built on relationships and fan base building or are you always relying on that transactional business? Go back and listen to episode 13 to learn more about the 1000 True Fans idea and the power of pairing it with the future banking concept.

The 4th episode I want to recap is episode 18 called ‘The Heroes Journey.’ In that episode, I introduce you to Joseph Campbell and his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.’  I talk about the very common story arc in many movies that follow this theme where there is an unwitting hero, a girl that often needs to be saved, an epic journey, a battle between good and evil, a helpful guide that gets introduced along the way, the point where the hero becomes the hero, the return to a normal life in Nowheresville, and then maybe a sequel with a similar story arc. The whole point of that episode was to get you to ask some vital questions of you and your business. The main question being, are you trying to be the hero of the story or the helpful guide who eschews recognition and lets the hero bask in the glory. The hero, in this instance, would be the client or the customer. Are you trying to be the most important person in the story or are you making the client and the customer the hero for choosing you. Can you live with being the helpful guide in the story and forgoing any real recognition? I have to share with you that this was one of my favorite episodes to write because I love storytelling and I love seeing certain themes play out in stories and in life. This episode was jam packed with good info, If I do say so myself! We got lots of feedback on this episode and how it helped many of you see things from a different perspective and start to question who and what you’re trying to be in your market. It was the very episode, for some of you, that helped pull you out of trying to be recognized as the hero of the story and, instead, be the very helpful guide that educates and guides the client and the customer to a positive resolution of some kind of problem or conflict. I loved the feedback I got on that episode and I encourage everybody to go back and listen to that one to pull out some nuggets that may be helpful for you.

The last episode I chose for the 2019 year end recap was episode 38 entitled, ‘The Five Most important People.’ In that episode, if you remember it, I introduced the Framingham Heart Study that spanned several generations and was very deep and rich in information. What it revealed was that the myth of the 5 people who you spend the most time with being the most important and influential people is just that, something of a myth. But not in the way you might be thinking. It actually bolsters that statement by showing how the five people you spend the most time with have more influence than you thought because their influence is being influenced by 3 friends deep! This means that even if one of your top five friends doesn’t smoke, if they have a friend who does smoke, you’re 29 percent more likely to smoke than not.  The study found happiness rates affected, health statistics, and even earning potential affected. The bottom line was that you have to be extremely careful who you surround yourself with and that includes social media. If you’re like many people in 2019, you are on social media and you call an extraordinary amount of people friends who, just a short 10 years ago, would not have met your definition of a friend. Now, because of the rewriting of social rules, we are all allowing people who have no business affecting our health and well being do so by virtue of our connection on social media. Be very careful my friends, your life literally depends on who you choose to surround yourself with and that includes the people they surround themselves with. If you ever needed a reason to dump a so called friend because they were a bad influence, or you don’t like who they associate with, episode 38 gave you permission to do so.

There it is my friends, the top 5 episodes of 2019 based on listener feedback. Again, this was extremely difficult to pick only five episodes from almost 50. Some of the episodes mentioned only beat out some of the others by a comment or two in the mail bag. But those episodes got the most feedback, for whatever reason, so they win the recap title! I cant thank you enough for an amazing year my friends! Our listener base has grown tremendously in a short year and a half, which tells me we’re doing something right. We get the most amazing feedback from you and that’s what keeps me writing episodes, which is something I am very passionate about. Without you listening, I’d probably still write episodes because I love doing it, but it sure helps knowing you have people listening and taking valuable information away that adds value to their lives and businesses. Our reason for being is to find, create, and add value whenever and wherever we can and I truly appreciate you for allowing me the awesome opportunity to do that with this show. We have some exciting things coming up in 2020 with more short diamond mining episodes, an interview series, possibly some co-hosted shows, and maybe even a whole new podcast. Of course, I’ll keep you all posted on that as we roll it all out, just know that we have big plans for 2020 and I look forward to talking with more of you.

Those of you who are part of the coaching program, I’d like to thank every single one of you for allowing me the opportunity to get to know you better in 2019, the opportunity to help you with your business, and, more importantly, the opportunity to grow as a person with every one of our interactions. The greatest part of being a personal and business coach is that I get to grow along with all of the people I work with. I asked a question in the last episode, which was a question I asked myself 10 years ago and it goes like this: ‘what would you do for free, even if somebody was willing to pay you for it?’ The answer for me was easy, I’d help people along a path that I may have already walked before. And in fact, I did just that for free for many years. I learned and grew and did personal and business coaching for free for many years. I started charging for it when I realized a few things: 1. that it was very valuable to those receiving it and I was diminishing that value for them by not charging for it, 2. It was taking time away from my own core business to do, and 3. Rarely do people value the information and help they receive when its free. It may sound backwards but its an absolute truth that we simply don’t value what we get for free as much as that which we have to pay for. What I found was that the information, exercises, advice, and guidance I was giving out for free wasn’t heeded in the same way as that very same advice and information when the person was investing in themselves and their business. When you invest money in yourself and your business, you are more apt to look for a return on that investment and are much more likely to implement the information and exercises as a result. In the coaching business, we call that getting compliance. Students and coaching members are much more compliant when it comes to doing homework and making changes when they have their own hard earned money on the line. In fact, it was the one thing that made the most difference for members of the Coaching Academy. When we started to actually charge people for our information, advice, and guidance we started to notice a drastic increase in their income, a reduction in their expenses, their stress levels and anxiety decreased, their personal relationships growing in positive ways, their fan bases growing, we noticed them getting out in their markets giving talks and growing their client base, we noticed an increase in their fee structures, a reduction in time in the office, an increase in time for themselves, and a variety of other metrics that benefited by one simple change: getting people to invest in themselves. The big question going into 2020 is, how are you planning on investing in yourself and being held accountable for that investment? Maybe its not with us yet, and that’s ok, but how and in what area will it be? If you don’t have any answer to that question yet, I strongly suggest you start asking the question because 2020 begins in 2 days. From there, my friends, you’re either going to be one of the 64% who give up on their goals and resolutions within the first 30 days, one of the 88% who give up by day 60, or you’re planning on being a 1%er who makes incremental changes every day in the direction of your wildest dreams. As you know by now, I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

Thanks for being a valued listener of this show my friends, have a safe and Happy New Year’s eve, and I look forward to connecting with more of you in 2020! Until then my friends, I’m out…