I am not who I was. Neither are you. The database you forgot you had.

The latest iteration of Matt Jones is only about 3 years old. I’m laughing as I picture a ‘man baby’, however, this Matt Jones realised that unless he changed his ways and patterns and thoughts then he was not going to change. Author Brianna Wiest puts this idea more succinctly:

This idea changed my Life, because ideas are what change lives. And that was the first idea that changed mine.

Humans have the unique ability to meta-analyse their thoughts, to imagine something, to consciously create. Think of how humans have changed the way they live over the last few thousand years. Human culture has rapidly developed from living hand to mouth in small hunter gatherer groups, into the complicated, varied and convoluted society that we now inhabit.

To bring this back home, this is the reason why any of us do anything beyond our most basic needs!

This idea about ideas also means fundamentally that people can, do and will change. The Matt Jones of a decade ago (or three years ago… or three months ago) is not the same person as is here before you today. Sure, experience counts for some of this. However I have a feeling that this runs deeper than that.

I’m thinking about my colleagues, clients and friends. How much some of them have changed over the years. I believe that a mistake that we sometimes make is believing that everyone is static, believing that the people who we have not spoken to or seen for some time won’t have changed. However it is likely that they will have. Anyone from your past will understand that you have changed as soon as you open your mouth.

I sometimes cringe at the things I have said, thought and done in the past. A great example is when I look back on some old writings. Facebook memories can certainly be cringeworthy…. This is always an interesting snapshot of who I was then (and the internet does not forget it seems).

So… three takeaway ideas for me from this.

1. So you real estate soldiers who have been around a while… The ‘kids’ who came into the real estate industry a decade ago, fresh faced and in their 20’s are no longer kids. They are the future and they are coming into their own now. They will change the way things are going to be done.
2. The database I was talking about – dig up your old clients, they aren’t the same people that they were, and neither are you. I know you have an email address or a phone number lying about (where depends on how organised you are…) from the earliest days of your career. You spoke to these people as an unsure, uncertain, freshly minted agent. You may be even embarrassed to call them. However, you have likely both changed. Call them and have a chat. These people are likely to have moved on in circumstance, but also in areas of their personality and beliefs. You may well now have something to talk about.
3. Turning this inward, you have changed. Reflect on this for a moment. We tend to live in the now, focussing on what is right in front of us and from our internal perspective we may have not changed much at all. Maybe you have made some changes for the betterment of yourself. Change, dare I say self-improvement, is within reach for all of us.

I like the idea that we are not static. We are a work in progress, and the consciousness and deliberateness that you apply to this will dictate the kind of person that you can evolve in to.

Market Movement

Markets change too – it feels like there is more certainty in the market, as a leader in the industry once told me, real estate agents can make money if the market moves up or down. Keep this in mind as the slowing market firms up. We are past the static market now and expect to see more deals as people start to believe that they have detected a trend.

Welcome to Liam Steel

Liam joins us from Greytown – which is in Liam’s words an hour from anywhere (speaking the lower North Island here), being an hour or so by car from Wellington one way and a similar time to Palmerston North in another. Liam prefers to sell land and sections and the subsequent house and land new builds. He has a wealth of experience in various industries and professions bringing perspective to his real estate practice, along with a positive and proactive attitude to our thus-far most southern outpost.