Is THIS The Year You Grow A Pair And Finally Walk Your Talk?

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

If that title harshed your mellow in any way, you’re the target audience. Does it sound unfair? Make you feel like you’re being picked on? Poor baby. Compared to much of what’s published on these pages, I’m a relative Mr. Rogers. But the dark cloud messin’ up the mostly silver lining that was my 2010, was the talk/walk ratio with which I constantly was forced to deal. Isn’t shame possible any longer? Does nobody know how to blush? Has there been some sorta immunity from embarrassment pill on which I missed out?

I speak from painful experience. Many of the early years in the business my talk/walk ratio was maybe 8:2 or so. Talkin’ big time while walkin’ in clown shoes is something with which I’m no stranger. I know, cuz I’ve watched me do it.

Hey! I has an idear.

Do most of your talkin’ to yourself. Do most of your walkin’ makin’ things happen — quietly. Most of my mentors were lifetime members of Brutal Mentors Я Us. There were countless times I was ‘gang mentored’ in the truest modern sense of the phrase. They weren’t interested in why things couldn’t or didn’t get done. If you can’t walk your talk, maybe Von’s is hiring they’d say. Actually, they said a lotta stuff a whole lot different than that, but those gems won’t be repeated here. 🙂

Ever get tired of hearing your own empty words?

We all have more or less talent than the next agent. Same with experience and knowledge. Experience doesn’t happen a day at a time. It happens a transaction at a time. Every time you sit down and prospect. Each time you follow up. Every belly-to-belly with a potential client. Etc., etc. Knowledge increases cuz we seek it out, not cuz it gives a damn about us.

Whether or not you have more or less talent than the guy a desk over is literally not worth talkin’ about. Who’s working harder? Who’s learnin’ how to work smarter? Who’s grindin’ it out day after day after day? If the title pissed you off, you haven’t done that yet — and you know it.

Ever ask yourself why?

Allow me to quote one of my mentors.

“You’ve never given your best effort for one simple reason: You’re scared shitless you’ll discover you just don’t pack what it takes. That your best just ain’t good enough. Try growin’ a pair and find out once and for all.”

Not long after that knife to the crotch, in fact the same week, I endured this conversation while getting my tax return done at H&R Block — with my new bride sitting right next to me. After going over the income/expenses for my year, the preparer looked with sympathy at my wife and said,

“Mr. Brown, you’d have been much better off if you hadn’t worked this year.”

The ride home was, um, funereal. She was quiet cuz she didn’t know what to say. I was quiet cuz I’d been replaying both quotes in my head, and knew they were both on the mark. I decided then and there to do two things.

1. Grow a pair.

2. Find out if indeed I had what it took to make more in real estate as an agent than the the big rat at Chuck E. Cheese.

When we finally arrived home, a five minute drive that lasted two lifetimes, I was at the same time enraged (at myself), completely humiliated (in front of my brand new bride), and nearly unable to face her. She saved me, saying just the right things at just the right time. In essence, she expected me to show her and the world what I was really made of.

I know as surely as I know the sun’s gonna set in the west today, that there are those reading this who’re wondering how I knew so much about ’em. You may be one. You’ve spouted so much crappola the last few years, that nobody thinks you’re capable of producing anything but what comes outa your piehole. You know in your heart that the next time you walk your talk about work, it’ll be the first time.

Been there. Done that. Feel your pain. Feel your sense of abject failure. Empathize with you big time.

So here’s what ya do.

Decide that once and for all, the world, your family, but especially you, are gonna find out what you can do when you literally put your best effort on the line, and let the chips fall where they may. In sports they call it ‘selling out’. When the game’s over they haven’t anything left to give.

It’s a lot easier shaving or puttin’ on your makeup in the morning when you can look yourself in the mirror and smile at who’s lookin’ back.

Walk your talk — and talk a lot less.

If you’re still readin’ — Happy New Year!