Are you feeling confused in today’s marketplace? Do you find yourself in any of these patterns?
• Procrastinating
• Feeling scattered
• Avoiding picking up the phone?
• Doing just “busy work”?
If you answered yes to any of the above, chances are you are feeling “stuck” and your business is suffering.
Here are some tips to get your business back on track and double your income:
1. Let go of the “need to please”
A recent study on marketing revealed that it’s not important that your client likes you, it’s more important that the client perceives that you like them. Then your client will feel secure and confident you will take good care of their needs. That does not mean that you have to bend over backwards for them, but rather build a relationship based on mutual respect.
When working with sellers, be honest with them about the value of their home, instead of just saying what you think will make them happy. When working with buyers, don’t waste time showing them homes without an exclusive agreement. Don’t cancel your plans just because a client wants to see you.
When you respect yourself, others will do the same. As one of my clients put it, the “disease to please” will only drain you with little benefit to your business.
2. Clear up your relationship with money
Do any of these thoughts float around in your head?
• Money is always flowing away from me
• I am not deserving of wealth
• Other people can have nice things but not me
Can you understand how difficult it would be to attract money to yourself with these self limiting beliefs pushing money away on a subconscious level? Remember, your beliefs create your reality. If you tell the universe that you are not deserving of money, then the universe will send you exactly what you believe and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s important that you become aware of what these beliefs are, release them, and then install empowered beliefs that magnetize money to you.
• I am a money magnet
• Money flows to me easily and effortlessly
• I attract abundance by working smarter not harder
Please note that these Empowered Beliefs will not feel natural to you at the beginning, but they are like planting seeds in a garden and they will sprout if you nurture them. You can think of them as setting intentions.
3. Reprogram your self-limiting beliefs about “success”
If you believe that success is hard, or that you will have to sacrifice your personal life or that to be successful you have to be selfish and aggressive, then that is what you will create. The results of holding onto these anti-success beliefs is obvious; you just keep pushing it away after day month after month and year after year. Success always seems out of reach. If you do manage to achieve it, you’ll push it away.
But here’s the good news: it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve had a belief, the power to change that belief is always in the present moment. That’s why it’s so important to identify the belief and bring it to the surface. That’s why working with an outside coach can save you years of struggle and sacrifice. With some outside support you can easily see the beliefs that have been blocking you and once you have that awareness, it’s relatively easy to reprogram that belief out of your mind.
Success is based on helping people achieve their goals and working smarter, not harder. Guess what an amazing reality this belief creates?
4. Release self doubt
The only thing standing in the way of you feeling that you can do it all is your self-limiting beliefs. Most of them are hidden under the surface, telling you that you can’t. Even if you don’t currently believe in yourself, you can be taught to retrain your brain so that you have “unwavering faith” in your ability to succeed. Every moment you have a choice to be in “fear” or “faith.”
Fear sounds like: “I can’t do this” or “I’m too old”
Faith sounds like: “I don’t know how, but I know I’m going to make it” or “I have a valuable service to offer, and people are happy to hear from me”
5. Stop criticizing yourself
Self-criticism is a common pattern that stops people from being successful. This pattern is somewhat insidious; it operates below the surface and you may not even know it is happening. If you’re busy beating yourself up, you are destroying your self-esteem and that leaves you feeling very empty. Then you begin to crave validation. Since you’re not giving it to yourself, you crave it from others; friends, family, clients and prospective clients. As a result you give up your power and put in the hands of others. This puts you in a vulnerable position in every interaction.
I recommend using the “stop” technique whenever you suspect that your inner critic has taken over.
Step one: Say “stop”
Step two: Take a deep breath
Step three: Think a positive new thought, such as:
• I love and approve of myself
• I am committed to building myself up instead of tearing myself down
• I always focus on my strengths
Watch your energy and motivation increase as you implement this technique, sometimes several hundred times a day.
6. Start appreciating yourself
The interesting thing about your inner critic is that it probably has good intentions for you. It probably thinks that it can “whip you into shape,” so you’ll be more successful. But that is actually the opposite of the truth. The truth is that when you are putting yourself down, you are weakening yourself and lowering your energy.
The antidote to this is to begin to learn to appreciate and validate yourself. When is the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and appreciated what you saw?
Learning to validate yourself can be as simple as learning “positive self talk.” This would sound like “I’m really proud of you,” or “good job.” Take time to stop and appreciate all the good things you do.
This helps you to be more successful in several ways:
1. You’re sending out a positive vibration to the universe, and attracting that in return
2. It raises your energy
3. It makes you magnetic for your ideal clients
7. Work with high end clients
To double your income and make more money with less effort, you must begin working with high-end clients. Everyone I’ve ever coached has expressed desire to work with high-end clients but along with that desire come many self-limiting beliefs that stop them. Perhaps you could recognize some of these as your own self-limiting beliefs.
• I feel intimidated by higher end clients
• I don’t have an education so I’m not as good as…
• We don’t run around in the same circles
• We can’t connect because…
• Higher end clients are more sophisticated and will ask me questions that I can’t answer
High-end clients become the name for the unknown and most people want to stay with the familiar. They want to stay with the status quo and they want to avoid the unknown. So you end up avoiding the unknown and then wonder why you’re working so many hours.
The truth is that high-end clients are no different than anyone else. The truth also is that they don’t necessarily care about your education or even your sophistication; what they care about is whether you are the answer to their real estate needs.
How are they going to know whether you are? This is determined by the confidence that you project. What determines your confidence level? Your beliefs. If your beliefs are mostly self-limiting beliefs that lower your self-esteem, then you will not feel empowered enough to market to high-end clients.
If on the other hand, you go through a reprogramming process, then you can release those self-limiting beliefs, install empowered beliefs and watch your income double.
Dr. Maya Bailey, Multiple 6 Figure Income Business Coach for Real Estate Professionals, integrates her 20 years of experience as a psychologist with 15 years of expertise in marketing.
For more information, visit www.90daystomoreclients.com.
