Fried chicken

I don’t really like chicken, and  I never order it when I go out to dinner (I do love chicken wings, though).

The other night, my wife and I went out to dinner at a restaurant called Ad Hoc. Its menu features classic American dishes like fried chicken, pot roast and barbeque. One other unique feature of the menu is that it contains one choice, which is what they are serving that day! That’s not entirely true, yes, you get what they are serving, but you can add an option or two. One option is adding caviar; the other option on this particular evening was adding buttermilk fried chicken.

My wife’s immediate response: “Yes, please!” I was indifferent...until the chicken came. Wow - incredible. We didn’t finish the chicken and took the leftovers for the fridge, eating it two days later. It was still delicious.

On the restaurant’s website, it explained the name was derived from the words’ literal definition, “for this purpose.” As I sat there eating a simple, one-choice meal that was absolutely fantastic, it reminded me of my favorite Charlie Munger quote that I have repeated many times, “Take a simple idea, and take it seriously.”

That was this chicken, and that was this restaurant. Running a restaurant is not simple, nor easy. But here is a perfect example of keeping it simple.

Real estate is simple, not easy. Our job is to connect to people, create trusted relationships, and then guide them through the real estate process. Simple. Why does everyone want to make it so complicated?

Here are this week’s reasons why real estate is not simple:

• I need to set up my systems
• I need to create better marketing
• I can knock on doors once I have a flyer
• I can’t do a flyer until I have a logo
• I can’t do my logo until I figure out my mission statement
• I have no one to talk to
• My database has 3,500 people in it, but I don’t talk to any of them
• Why should I call people?
• No one wants to talk to me
• Calling people is inauthentic

Fine. I could come up with 50 more ways agents make real estate complicated and keep making excuses why their business isn’t at their desired production level. 

Simply talk to people every week and create authentic, trusted relationships.

On Wednesday, I was in a real estate office to do a workshop. As I was getting my stuff set up, I was talking to a 50-year veteran agent named Lew. Yes, 50 years. Know what the secret to 50 years of selling real estate is? You guessed it, relationships!

By the way, if you think Lew was some old guy who does no business and was just hanging around with nothing better to do...you would be incorrect. One of the other veteran agents told me after, “Lew has done more business than everyone in that room combined, times 10.” 

Think about it - Lew was doing business before Zillow, before the internet, before colored photos, before computers. Plus, all the other technologies that have come and gone (anyone still send faxes?). The same, simple principle applies: build trusted relationships.

This next week, I invite you not to make things complicated. Simply talk to people. Then go do whatever complicated, convoluted, confusing things you want to do. Or have some fried chicken.