A Champion Lead Agent realizes there is a price to be paid.  Nothing comes to someone who has climbed to a Champion level that hasn’t been earned or paid for.  The pathway to being a Champion isn’t a downhill path.  You know you are on the path to being a Champion because it’s uphill all the way.

 Once you are a Champion Agent, the opportunities come more frequently and easily, because you have arrived at the Champion level, and everyone (buyers and sellers) wants to work for and work with a Champion Performer.  Generally, in the real estate market, it costs the same to work with a marginal agent as it does a Champion Agent or Champion Team. We all want to be successful.  I have never met anyone in my lifetime that didn’t want success.  The question is what are they willing to do to acquire it.  Success does not care who acquires her.   Success is available to all who are willing to pay the price that she requires.  There are some examples we can all draw from where the price was a little less for some people than others.  I admit my good fortune of being the son of Norm and Becky Zeller who lowered the price for me to achieve success because of the environment, their philosophy, the work ethic they demonstrated, and the education they afforded me.  All of those factors, and others, advanced me up the success ladder faster than others who didn’t have such incredible model parents as me.  Nevertheless, I still had to pay a price for success.  We all must come to grips with the fact that there is a price to pay! The price of being a Champion is in both time and resources.  You must be willing to invest time in larger amounts than other agents in Direct Income Producing Activities (DIPA): prospecting, lead follow-up, buyer interview appointments and listing appointments, showing property, writing and negotiating contracts, and personal development time. The edge for a Champion is created through the investment of personal development time.  A Champion has the passion and invests the time in improving their mindset, skills, and business systems.  They invest their time in reading, seminars, training CDs, coaching, and any other form of personal development.  You will need to establish a culture on your team of personal learning and development. In 1996, when Joan and I completed our vacation home in Bend, my personal development time kicked into another gear.  I had always read and studied success from my first day in real estate sales.  I attended countless seminars and listened to countless tape series in the pursuit of success.  I hit a new level of investment in personal development because I had a new found freedom and location away from the distractions of life and business to immerse myself in personal development time.  There were many evenings spent in the library in that home in front of the fireplace with Joan – both in our leather wingback chairs devouring a good book . . . mine usually on business, sales, leadership, management, or finance. Now, I must admit that, with young children, Wesley and Annabelle, the challenge to carve out enough personal development time to continue to grow and stay ahead of our clients and competition is more challenging than ever.  A Champion is willing to stay up late or get up early when the house is quiet to stay at the top of their game. Because of the competitive nature of business, whatever brought you to the level of success you are at today will not be enough to keep you there.  To maintain your level of success, you must learn, advance, and grow.  Your team and your team members must have the same philosophy.  The competition will always get better.  The marketplace will always be adjusting.  If you don’t have a passion to learn and improve, you’d better get it fast!  If you have to study and learn just to keep pace, imagine what you must do to grow, expand, and get ahead.  To grow, you must spend at least an hour a day on your personal development. Most agents invest too little on their personal development; that causes their team members to be deficient, as well.  Think of the books, CD series, tele-seminars, online seminars, and coaching as buying or investing in new equipment for your company. That new equipment will help you make sales in large quantities, faster and more efficiently than ever before.  The investment in personal development will pay the largest dividend in your business – larger than a new computer, marketing strategy, new website, or anything else.