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As I occasionally do, this episode done monologue style, meaning no guest, just me. Good news is, it's short. Bad news is, it's just me. No cool guest sharing an amazing journey to the world of real estate. I hope you listen anyways.
Show Transcript -
Every now and then, I produce a monologue episode of the Real Estate Sessions. Monologue meaning there is no guest, just me, usually sharing a thought or two. This week is one of those episodes.
At RateMyAgent, we have core company values. We reward employes that excel at a particular value at our monthly company update meetings. A few of these values are “One Team, One Dream” or “Customer Obsessed”. We just instituted a new value, “Be Straight Up”, which encourages us to speak up when necessary to question, challenge or applaud ideas, strategy or workflow.
My favorite company value is “Give a Shit” which means We are passionate about the success of RateMyAgent and will work in the best interests of the business.
I bring this up because I feel the same way about life. I t makes a lot of sense to be passionate about the success of my fill in the blank Family, friends, community, and work in the best interests of my fill in the blank Family, friends, community.
I believe many people feel the same way.
Along those lines, I’d like to share the way I view things on a daily basis. The term Prosocial was introduced in the 1970’s as the opposite of anti-social. My take on prosocial is when the opportunity presents itself to take an action that leads to a positive result, or just as importantly, prevents a negative result for someone, do it.
Here are some examples from a typical day in my life:
If I’m on my daily walk, and I come to a street to cross, if a car is waiting to merge into traffic, I always turn to walk towards the back of the car and cross the street behind it (if clear) so the car doesn’t have to wait for me and possibly losing a opportunity to proceed and wait another 45-60 seconds for the next opportunity.
If I’m leaving a store and walking to my car in the parking lot, if I notice a woman in front of me walking down the same aisle towards her car, and we are the only 2 in that portion of the lot, I will cross over to another aisle and walk away from her so I’m not someone she has to worry about. Going a few extra steps out of my way is no big deal.
When checking out at the grocery store, I always try to rotate barcodes and empty the hand carry basket myself because I know as someone that worked in college at a supermarket, it makes a difference.
When I play in the weekly skins golf game, I anticipate and seek opportunities to make sure I’m not holding up pace of play, and if I notice we are, I double those efforts. Fortunately, I play in a good foursome.
As I said before, I believe many people do some version of the same thing. There is no expectation of reciprocity. There can be a feeling of a higher self worth, but that’s ok.
There are however, people that completely ignore these opportunities. They are so focused on themselves, they fail to see opportunities to create a positive result or prevent a negative result. People that refuse to let a car back out of a parking space on busy Central Ave, that cut in front of pedestrians crossing in a crosswalk with the greenlight, that ignored request durga the pandemic for masks or distancing, that treat servers like second class citizens. You know the type of person I am talking about.
I visualize these people as leaving a wake of negativity behind them with no idea they caused it, and also never looking ahead for opportunities to create positive results or prevent a negative result.
I’ve joked with Cindy that if reincarnation was real, I want to come back as one of those people that only worry about themselves without an ounce of regret about the way they affect others. Ignorance really is bliss!
So, is there a real estate angle to this? Yep. Great agents already know how important identifying these opportunities is to a successful business. Great agents cannot even fathom the idea of not being “ProSocial” in their business.
Sean Carpenter’s BR, SP and HF is a prime example, I’ve seen Sean in the wild, always looking for the opportunities to engage and make someone’s day. And, he’s not looking for anything in return.
On the other side, I remember an agent coming into my office as I was getting ready to sign docs with a first time home buying couple. The agent blurts out “Will my commission check be ready by 5 pm today?”. I was stunned and embarrassed for the agent. Not to mention the young couple left wondering what mattered more. Their first home purchase or the agent’s money?
What I see more today involves social media posts of varying types. In a place where most agents are connected to colleagues, industry partners and most importantly, clients, there are too many agents that love to firmly plant their foot in their mouth.
Posting about the 6 transactions you closed this week will definitely tell people how busy you are. It also shows how insensitive you are to others not as fortunate. IT does not take much time or crazy math skills to take an average sales price of, let’s say, $300,000, apply a 3% commission split and come up with a gross for the week of $54K. Brag much? Why not congratulate each of the families for finding their dream homes, say 1 per day? Why not let the clients share how good you were as their agent? Why brag about your income when others in your sphere may be struggling to come up with this month’s mortgage payment? We need to understand there are a wide range of circumstances in the average social media profile, and take this into account when posting.
The notion that others may be suffering in silence is an important one to consider. Whether it’s financial, health, relationships, or loss of a loved one, to name a few, why not take this into consideration when posting?
A good friend of mine told me years ago that Christmas was an incredibly tough time. His feed was filled with photos and videos of happy families sharing their wonderful holiday. Maybe those can be shared to a custom list of close friends and families, sparing those struggling? Sure, no one is forced to look at their feed, especially when they know what’s coming, but that goes against the premise I mentioned earlier. Are you consciously performing activities that will either lead to a positive interaction or prevent a negative one?
You will never know if your Pro Social decision helped. That’s not the point. You can feel comfortable in the knowledge that you did what you could to help others.
Thank you for listening to this episode and I would love your feedback (be straight up!). I will be back next week with another interview with an industry leader on The Real Estate Sessions. In the meantime, please be kind to one another.
Find | Bill Risser
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