100 Years Of Disney & Real Estate

Wade Webb on October 26, 2022

100 years of disney and real estateWhat does 100 years of Disney and Real Estate have in common?

I came across an article about the upcoming 100 Anniversary next year for Disney and I thought to myself what could we do in real estate to be more like Disney? How many of us still remember the first time they visited a Disney theme park? They proudly proclaim it is the “happiest place on earth.” You enter the magical kingdom, and the show runs all day and night like clockwork.

I will never forget the time I stayed on a Disney property in Florida and asked for a wakeup call. This was like no other wake up call. I answer the phone out of a dead sleep and on the other end I hear. .. “Good morning Mr. Webb this is your 6 am wake up call. Today’s date is ……… and the forecast for today in Florida is partly cloudy and 76F and we hope you have a magical day!”… I kind of chuckle, smile and reply… “you have a magical day too, thank you.” Disney’s success comes from so many different angles but 2 things that really resonate with me are…

They are so good at what they do and they clearly know, what it is they do. Disney is in the “show business”. Their staff are not employees they are “Cast members” of the show and we are not customers but “guests” in their show and more importantly they still remember to treat it all as a business.

Like Disney are you a real estate agent that is good at what you do and are you clear about what it is you do? We are in the “service business” and serve people with their single largest asset in life, buying and selling a home. How many of us treat what we do like a business? A multi-million-dollar service business? I love some of the philosophies Disney has like “the guest is not always right but we allow them to be wrong with respect.”

Are we allowing our real estate clients to be wrong with respect? They believe the greatest gift any of their guests can give the organization is “Feedback.” They know sometimes things can’t always go magically. I find it amazing how little feedback their is in real estate. How do you grow, get better and improve? How do you take a negative experience and turn it into a positive one? Disney, if you notice, always places their feedback customer service offices at the front of every one of their parks to encourage the guests to share with them.

My question for real estate agents is… “where’s is yours”? Do you take the time to ask for that important feedback? Disney shares that all their success begins with creativity. They have a belief in their organization that everyone in the company is creative. They know everyone’s ideas are what separate our identity. Walt said “you just never know where our best idea will come from next.”

Disney believes that creativity is all about risks. Innovative risks…Are you taking innovative risks in your real estate business or just playing it safe? Are you looking for people to share new ideas for you and your business? Disney’s creativity comes from what they call the “Imagineering process”.

They have 1,000 imagineers working for them in 140 different disciplines all producing new and innovative ideas. One of the simple exercises you can do in your real estate business (like Disney) is a blue sky brainstorm exercise they call “yes, and…. game.” Prior to any meeting in their company for the first 10 minutes the word “NO” cannot be said. Anything goes. Share any ideas of what they can do better to WOW and AWE their guests. That could doing this exercise once in a while do for you and your real estate business this year? I know myself, how difficult it is to take the time in my business to just sit and be creative. To take the time to collect ideas of making my business and the real estate service experience better. Disney believes this comes from 5 things in their business.

5 Disney Fundamentals to Increase Creativity in Your Real Estate Business.

1.) Passion for their Purpose. They love to make magical memories for others. Do you?

2.) Core values and sharing their values with their guests. What are your core values? Do your clients know them?

3.) Communication flows freely. There can never be enough communication. When things are slow are you still communicating to your real estate clients?

4.) Trust. The #1 reason they leave is they can’t trust you. Are you actively building trust with your clients?

5.) Variety of perspectives. Consider and welcome all ideas, don’t shut them down.

The key to Disney success is the continuous improvement in the small little things, constant small tweaks of making what they do already, just a little better. All it is for them is just filling in the gaps. Their mantra is “if it’s not broke then just make it better.” I encourage you to take the time to work on the small things and create an even more magical real estate experience than you already do. If it can work for Disney, then it can work for you.

Strength and courage,
Wade

How To Increase Capacity To Take More Action

Wade Webb on January 26, 2022

realtors increase capacity take more action“I wish I could do more.” I hear that statement a lot from agents. The demands on their time, their skills, and their presence are always escalating, always making it seem like there’s never enough of them to go around. Usually, the emphasis is on the more in that sentence: I wish I could do more. More listings, more sales, more marketing, more emails and calls. The escalation is in outputs, checked-off boxes that make those around us feel better. We end up scheduling ourselves to the nth degree, increasing our activity while not necessarily increasing our accomplishment.

The more that we’re chasing isn’t wrong. It’s part of our journey as we grow, we expand our capacity, and with expanded capacity comes increased output. But increasing our output doesn’t correlate with increasing our impact—sometimes, to do more, we need to do different. There are three steps you must take to expand your capacity to act:

1. STOP Doing Only Those Things You’ve Done Before and START Doing Only Those Things You Could and Should Do – The first step toward success is becoming good at what you know how to do, but once you’ve mastered what you know, you begin to discover other things you could do. Doing what you’ve done before increases your efficiency, but it doesn’t do much for your capacity. Doing new things leads to innovation and new discoveries, which yields new things that you should be doing—things that likely replace those things you’ve done before.

2. STOP Doing What is Expected and START Doing What is Unexpected – Let me go ahead and clear this up: what most people never expect is to have their expectations exceeded. What others define as a ceiling, you define as a floor, and then seek to go up from there. Being an agent who gives in to the inertia of the daily routine, the same old same old, may allow you to be efficient but it will never allow you to be effective. You must push past the minimum and seek to do something beyond what’s expected. Show up early. Stay late. Listen well. Praise more. Reward faithfully. Share willingly.

3. STOP Doing Important Things Occasionally and START Doing Important Things Daily – If it’s important, it’s worth doing. That’s the leader’s mindset. Yet so often we surrender our time to the urgent or the pressing or the “needed” instead of to what’s important. To do what’s not important each day yields nothing for you or your leadership; it merely uses up your time. And to do what’s important only occasionally doesn’t lead to the consistency that compounds into results. You must do what is important daily if you want to achieve expansion in your capacity.

Have you been feeling the pressure to do more as an agent? If so, let me encourage you to intentionally invest time in expanding your capacity to act. Doing the things you should be doing, doing them beyond anyone’s expectations, and doing it daily is the key to expanding your capacity in ways you can’t yet imagine. The world is not made better by our intentions; it is made better by our intentional actions. As business owners, we must do more, but we must do more of what makes us better. We must increase our capacity for helpful and productive action.

 

Strength and courage,
Wade