Education bring confidence

Hi, everybody. Cheryl Knowlton coming at you with your Dynamite Tip of the Day, and this is video number three in the segment on what do we need to do as real estate professionals to set ourselves apart? Some of you have heard me share this story when I have taught all-day two-day classes, and that is this: When I started in this industry in 1999, as a mortgage loan professional, this year it’s going to be 20 years, can you believe that? Did mortgage lending on the retail side for three years, then the wholesale side for three years, and then I actually finally intentionally got a real estate license in the state of Utah, in order to actually start selling.

I was afraid of what I didn’t know

And I chickened out. With two classes to go in my pre-licensing school at Stringham Schools, I was headhunted and offered a job as the inside loan officer for a Keller Williams office in Sugar House, Utah, north of here a little bit, and I took it, because I thought, “I don’t have a book of business. I don’t know how to get started as a real estate professional. I know to lending,” so not only did I take that job as a principal lending manager, I did actually finish my license, and I got my real estate license. I started taking continuing education courses, but it was not until I had been a real estate licensee in the state of Utah intentionally for one year that I actually did my first transaction as a real estate professional, because I was so afraid of what I didn’t know, and oddly, I was most afraid of the real estate purchase contract.

So, how do you combat that? Figure out and identify the areas where you feel like you need to start building strength and take as many courses in those subjects as you possibly can. Do not fall into the trap of taking free continuing education for the sake of just getting continuing education, and don’t be limited by the required 18 hours. Yes, you need nine hours of the core. Yes, you need nine hours of elective. It can be 18 hours of the core. Let that be a starting place for you, especially in your first two years. The agents in my office when I was a broker would hit 100 hours. Now granted, I was teaching free continuing education on a weekly basis.

Get as much education as you can

The object of the game: Get as much education as you possibly can, because it will help you to feel more confident, and if you feel more confident, you will have the desire to get on the phone more. You’ll prospect more. You’ll make more calls. You’ll set more appointments. You’ll win more appointments. And that confidence, led by the competence, will lead to more competence and greater confidence because now you’re going to have an experiential component to put behind it. I hope that this will be a perpetual cycle for you, of learning, growing, and then doing, and then lather, rinse, repeat. Do it over again, and over again, and over again throughout your career, and that will really help you to start setting yourself apart as a capable, confident, competent real estate professional.