Summary

Where are you holding on to a story that is holding you back?

We each have our own story. It’s the reality that you tell yourself about the market, a strategy you’ve learned, or about your capabilities (e.g. “I’m too shy, I’m not good with FSBOs.”). 

But whether or not it is based on facts does not matter. What matters is that you BELIEVE it to be true. Because the moment you accept it to be reality, it becomes a fact to you. This is as powerful as if it was a real story.

If your story is not serving you, it’s time to rewrite it into a story that helps you achieve your goals and dreams.

Full Transcript

The problem is… your story’s bullshit, but you think it’s the truth. 

Hey there! It’s your coach, Kevin Ward with your Fire Zone message of the day. A lot of you know that this year, I’m doing a webinar, a free live webinar almost every week throughout the year, about three weeks of the month. We’ve, for the first time now, are bringing in agents that never heard of me before. So, we’re marketing to real estate agents that are not following me on YouTube, and they don’t know who I am. So, they come in, and we’re doing a webinar.

So, last Thursday I was doing a webinar and I was talking about lead generation, and all of your lead generation should be focused on seller lead generation. I was just talking about some examples of how to do it and talking about how I built my business with Expireds, and For Sale By Owners, and so forth. 

In the chat, on the side that we leave open, in the chat, one of the agents typed in the chat from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, said, “There are no For Sale By Owners in Toronto, LOL”, which I don’t know what that means. L-O-L, they’re not…. Of course, when I see it, my immediate reaction, I don’t address it because I’m in the middle of the training and I’m like, I’m not going to get caught up in little side conversations, but that was what she typed in. She’s basically saying, okay, I hear what you’re saying, but that won’t work for me because my market’s different. So, her story is we don’t have For Sale By Owners here. 

Then, almost immediately after that, another agent who was on the webinar from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, he typed into the chat, “I have closed two For Sale By Owners already so far this year.” 

So she, a few minutes later responded, “Wow, that’s incredible, congratulations!”, or good for you, or something like that. She was classy about it. She acknowledged it. She wasn’t mad about it, but here was what was so interesting to me was, if I had just said to her, yes, there are For Sale By Owners in your area, and you can do this, or whatever, just ignore… She would’ve left the webinar with the story in her mind that I can’t make money with For Sale By Owners because there are no For Sale By Owners in my market area.

Now, the reality is that there are For Sale By Owners in the market area. I know it, and the other agent who happened to be from Toronto, he knew it, because he had been out prospecting them, and he’d listed and sold two of them already so far this year. It was not until somebody else basically said, this is what’s happening for me in this market. My story is there are For Sale By Owners in the area and I’ve closed two of them this year. 

Now, here’s the point of all of this.

It did not matter whether her story was true or not. What mattered was that she believed it. What are the odds of her ever taking a FSBO listing this year and selling it when her belief is there are no For Sale By Owners? If she sees one, she’s going to dismiss it. Subconsciously, her brain cannot accept a FSBO.

Here’s the amazing thing about it. When you make your mind up, you decide that something is impossible… “Well, that won’t work for me, Kevin. Okay. Good. You may be a great coach and all that. You’re telling me strategy. It won’t work for me.” The moment she decides that and decides, “Hey, what Kevin’s saying won’t work for me”, her mind is made up. Her mind closes, because her story becomes fact. 

Here’s the fact. There are no For Sale By Owners in my market. Now, another agent happened to know a different fact and he unveiled it to her in a way that was very simple. Very, just… He wasn’t attacking her. He wasn’t trying to prove her wrong. He just is like, nope. There are For Sale By Owners. I know because I’ve sold some of them. All of a sudden, her reality changed and his story became more powerful than her story.

Now, was her story true, or was it not true? Well, in this case it was not true, but to her, it was true. So, the fact that the story was a false story did not matter for her. It is as powerful as if it is a real story. 

So, here’s my question for you today. Where are you holding onto a story that is holding you back? It didn’t matter if the story’s true or not. What matters is the story’s not helping you. It’s holding you back. 

It may be a story about the market. For her, it was a story about the market. “My market doesn’t have For Sale By Owners.” It could be a story about the strategy. “Well, I’ve tried calling For Sale By Owners, it doesn’t work for me. So, the market says there are no For Sale By Owners”. There’s the strategy that says call them and talk to them, or send them a text message, engage with them, and they’re like, well, that doesn’t work for me. So, now my story is that script doesn’t work in my market or something like that.

So, that’s a story about the strategy or about the approach, or it may be a story about me. “I’m not good with For Sale By Owners. I don’t like talking to For Sale By Owners because I am not good with them. I am an introvert. I’m too shy. I’m not good on the phone or whatever.” 

So, the reality is it can be a story about the strategy. It can be a story about the market, or it can be a story about yourself, but the moment you accept that story as true, it becomes your reality. 

The question is, is the story serving you or is it not serving you? If it’s not serving you, rewrite the story into a story that does serve you, that does help you achieve your goals and your dreams. So, what story do you need to rewrite right now that’s holding you back. Rewrite it and I’ll see you tomorrow.