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Posted almost 10 years ago

Gears

I was riding my bike recently on a nice warm day in Atlanta. I thought to myself while I was going up a hill ‘isn't it amazing how the mind can know when to shift gears based on the amount of effort involved as you go up?’ My roadbike has 20 gears to pick from so I have lots of choices. I can make going up this hill as difficult as I can and stand up and try to be Mr. Power Pedaler. Or I could put it down into "granny gear" and while that would probably be the least resistance, I will likely waste more effort than necessary because it might be too low a gear. So, the search for the perfect gear begins and as I go up this hill I may need to shift again in the middle of it depending on the grade changes that may occur in the middle of the hill! I may shift multiple times on one hill!

As I thought about this I realized, how often does this happen in a real estate business? We get into a mode where we think that things really should go a specific way. You put a contract together there's an inspection, people look at it, there's a negotiation and then you close. Easy right? And sometimes we have the blessed privilege of having a transaction go just like that. However, there is a lot of transactions that don't go quite like that…where you have to shift gears in the middle of the transactions. I am always amazed of how much of a surprise this is to people, including agents which surprises me but really shouldn’t. Taking this one step further, perhaps its not just transaction but just a way of how you conduct business in general. Or maybe how you run your office or maybe its how you work with your assistants?

We love processes as they make life easier but we need to make sure that processes are flexible because sometimes they do need to bend. Human beings are people and some don’t adapt well to process I have learned and sometime that person is the very one you need to complete the transaction! I myself am guilty of this and I am sure many others are as well. It reminds me of the bike where I am just in the wrong gear. If I just change to the right gear in business, just like on a bike, the process will become much, much easier especially when going uphill, no matter how large or small. Being able to change gears as flexibly as when riding a bike is incredibly important in business. Its takes little effort when the human body says u need to shift to make this climb easier. There is little debate. Why do we make it harder in business than it has to be? What if we adapted our business as easily as it is to change gears on a bike? It’s not as hard as one may seem. We as people are immeasurably good at convincing ourselves it is harder than it is. The speed of implementation comes to mind and implementing change quickly to get a desired result in the bests interests of everyone is not something you should have to think long and hard about!

As a result I came home, looked at what was going in business and found new improvements to be made. Who would have thought biking would be the factor to get me to embrace changes needed today? If you ever want to ride, let’s hook up!



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