I was just asked by one of our agents if other agents were having a difficult time in our current market. To me the market is a mindset, those who are doing very well right now have adapted to the market and have a mindset to succeed. They are not listening to others who complain about the market or are waiting for the 2005 market to return.
Here are some words of wisdom from my friend and mentor Larry Kendall from The Group in Colorado. For those who have taken the CRS class on Ninja selling you will recognize him as the creator. Have a great week and dance in the rain!

Are You Dancing In the Rain?
“Stop waiting for the storm to end… and start learning to dance in the rain.”

Are you waiting for the market to improve or have you made the shift to the new market? Despite the downturn in home sales and prices, I am seeing many Realtors having their best years ever! What are they doing that the others are not? They have learned to dance in the rain. They are “thriving it out” versus “riding it out.” It starts with your mindset.

Thriving Realtor Mindset:
• The old market isn’t coming back.
• I’m thriving in this market.
• I’m learning to “dance in the rain.”
• I’m making the shift: new mindset, new skills and new actions.
• There is always a market. I just need to find it.

For those who are waiting for the old market to return, forget it! It’s not coming back. This is my 36th year in real estate and I have seen a lot of cycles. Markets come back, but they never come back in the same form as before.

And the cycles are a lot slower than people realize – usually 5 to 10 years or longer. The record is probably the Hawaii market of the 80’s and 90’s when investors overheated that market. The peak to trough to peak for home prices was 13 years!

So, stop asking, “When will the market return?” Get over it and make the shift. It starts with your mindset. Your income will start rising when you adopt this new mindset.

I was visiting recently with Karen Levine, a wonderful Realtor in Denver, Colorado. She told me she just had a fabulous year in 2008, up substantially from 2007. Since the market was much worse in 2008 than 2007, I asked her, “What did you do differently.” She said, “I shifted my mindset to THRIVING versus just surviving and that made all the difference.”

I notice that Realtors who have learned to dance in the rain possess three key ingredients:

• The right mindset
• The new skillset
• The effective actions

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