I just finished up our first call with our new virtual coaching platform and probably the one thing that drew more interest than anything else I covered on the call was when I covered the topic of the three questions to ask yourself every single morning. By simple asking these three questions you will find that you can be more productive and have direction for your day.

Here are the three questions:

What- The first question to ask yourself every day is, “what do I want to accomplish today?” It is such a direct question that forces you to focus on a specific direction for the day. Most of us wake up most mornings and do whatever shows up on our desk or in our inbox. Please remember this though – not all movement is progress and it is important not to confuse the difference between activity and achievement. One gets you something in the end while the other just keeps you busy and tired. What do you want to accomplish today?

How- Now that you know what you want to accomplish, the real question is how do you plan to accomplish it? We do not get to wherever we are by accident. If I want to go to my friends house, no matter how close it may be to where I currently am, if I don’t follow the exact directions to get there I will never find myself at his place. The same is true with your business. You can want to create more transactions or sell more products but if you don’t have a plan on how to do it, you will unfortunately, find yourself in the place of activity and not achievement.

Who- It is crucial to be aware of who you choose to be surrounded by each and every day. Your environment has everything to do with your success and your environment is not only controlled by what you do to have an effect on your own state, but also by the mood that those around you bring to the table. We all know people that make us feel good when they are around us and we all also know people that make us want to jump off of a bridge because, to them, everything is always miserable, the glass is always half empty and they are not happy unless you are not happy with them. Remember that there is a transfer made between you and everyone that you come in contact with. You need to be ok with what the people you are choosing to be surrounded with on a daily basis are going to transfer to you. Do they help or hurt your cause for the day?

By asking yourself these three very simple questions you should find that you are more productive and have a purpose for each day. Success doesn’t happen by accident. I believe it was Anthony Robbins that I heard once say that “success leaves clues”. Have a great day!

It’s become a huge debate in the real estate industry – what is the return on investment or ROI of social media? Can it really work to bring you new business and help to cultivate your current relationships in a way that can ultimately translate into transactions?

I hear these questions and many others on a regular basis and have decided to do a very practical Webinar on this very topic.

If you haven’t had your head buried in the sand you have probably heard someone say when referring to facebook, “What do I care what (insert name) is having for dinner right now” or “why do I have to know what (insert name)’s every move is throughout the day”?

The truth is that you only care about what someone has for dinner or where someone is hanging out when there is context between you and that person. You may not care about the average child getting on the school bus for their first day… until you feel connected to his or her parents and now there is context. Now it is not just anybody’s child - it is your “friends” child. The truth is that there is no such thing as relevant content without context. We will discuss this on the Webinar…

I have also noticed that many of those agents that are using facebook could be using it a lot more efficiently. Is anyone else tired of having eleven notifications and nine of them are requests for a crop on Farmville or an invitation to use Mybirthdays?

Unfortunately, useless notifications and a constant barrage of event invites from what seems to be the same person are negatively affecting our facebook experience and productiveness – but it doesn’t have to be that way.

It is for that reason that I have decided to do a very quick and simple Webinar called “How to Make Facebook Work for You”. I am doing this because, as much as I love writing articles to help people, sometimes you have to actually demonstrate what you are teaching and allow people to see firsthand what it is that you are talking about - this is one of those times. On this Webinar I am going to screen share and walk you through how to stop getting notifications you don’t want to get and how to leverage this amazing tool to connect with the people you need to be connecting with and create more business.

You can join me on Friday, December 28^th, at 12 noon EASTERN, 9am Pacific by going to https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/212106738 and registering. I am asking you to please not wait though as there are only 1,000 lines open for this very informative and 100% free training.

I look forward to having you on the call and helping you learn more about a platform that over 1 billion potential buyers and sellers are hanging out on every day.

I was speaking at a conference recently and I heard a fellow speaker, Jim Marks, make this comment from the stage. He said that you don’t make money on your sphere of influence. At first, like many of you, I was caught off guard and wondered what kind of blasphemy he was spreading from the stage. I thought to myself about how I was going to have to get up after him and fix this ridiculous notion in the minds of the attendees.

I started to think about how I had delivered literally hundreds of keynotes in the last two years using stats such as – “In 2011 39% of real estate transactions came from personal referrals, 22% came from buyers and sellersusing the agent that they used the last time they were involve in real estate… and so on…”

Just those two stats alone accounted for 61% of all the transactions completed in all of last year. How could this guy be saying such nonsense?

And then it clicked…

You didn’t make money off of your sphere of influence – you made and continue to make money off of the things that you did to grow your sphere of influence. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a baby born, get circumcised, be cleaned off by the nurses and then handed a “sphere of influence”. It doesn’t happen that way. We had to build our sphere.

But that is where the problem begins. This is why many sales agents make $50,000 their first year, $85,000 their second year, $125,000 their third year, $125,000 their fourth year, $125,000 their fifth year… You get the point?

At some point you bought into the lie that your sphere of influence made you money, so once you had one you got comfortable and relied on that precious gold mine that would magically grow your business year after year, and yet, for some reason it hasn’t and won’t happen.

If you want to make more money next year than you did this year it’s pretty simple. Yes, you have to focus on your sphere and stay in touch with them - but simple systems can do that. If you want to make more money next year it won’t be because you have a sphere of influence – it will be because you continued to do the things that gave you a sphere of influence in the first place.