Striving to create a better life for everyone by sustainably solving real estate problems

(512) 807-8777

Tag Archives: Personal Development

New Year, New Mandi? Not Really

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and great start to the new year! It has been a rough couple of days getting back into the groove here. I truly love what I do, and was ready to get back to it. I think being off for as long as I was and getting hit with freezing temperatures stalled out my neurons. I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions. I see everyday as a new start, if you want to change something, but I understand the symbolism of the new year bringing change.

I’m like the first flower of winter, blooming but with much ahead of me.

The only thing I am resolving to do is keep stepping out of my comfort zone. I was really sort of amazed at myself last week. A friend called and asked me questions about buying a house. I am no expert on the process, pretty good with numbers though. The topic was interest, and why you want to pay over your mortgage payment and work on your credit to get the lowest interest rate available. We worked some numbers and found that an owner financed $90,000 house will triple in price just about at 10% over 30 years. These numbers may not be exactly correct, only verified by an online mortgage calculator. I gave her advice on buying and refinancing for lower interest ASAP. I wish I would have realized just how important credit really is when I had my first Mastercard.

Continue reading →

Hermann says please like and share!
12Shares

Speaking of Comfort Zones…

Comfort zones are a good thing to have sometimes. My comfort zone for the purpose of this blog is my desk. It’s making sure that bills are paid on time, talking to people, going to lunch with Sue Ann on Fridays, cleaning, and writing blogs and funny posts for our Facebook pages. Lee says I need a name for my position that better describes what I do here. He thinks that when I say “I cut that checks” that describes more the grunt work of what I do. I may list out what all I do and have our fans think of a name. I am told that “Wonder Woman” is taken already.

I’m just throwing this one in here because I know how everyone misses my meme posts. I also miss doing them.

Now, you may have noticed that I have gotten a couple of blogs out since Thanksgiving, but the Facebook posts have slowed way down. It’s because I have been out of my comfort zone for a few weeks. Most of you probably know that Lee has been out sick since Thanksgiving. It was really bad. Everyone has been terribly worried. I was really worried about him and was prepared to drive out there in an emergency at anytime. Really worried. Thankfully, he is starting to get his feet back under him. But what has happened while he has been gone? Besides me letting the office itself look like it has never met a broom. Well, let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Hermann says please like and share!
26Shares

Comfort Zone? What Comfort Zone?

Starting this Hermit Haus business has meant doing a lot of things that all of us have never done before, even though all us partners have been buying, selling, and renovating houses for years. All this pushing to do new things is one of the reasons I decided to attend a lot of “personal development” sessions at the Real Estate Ignite conference last weekend, known as my Solo Knowledge Trek.

Laugh and be inspired by getting this book!

The speaker the first day was a very energetic person named Jesse Itzler, who as far as I am concerned, is most famous for being the spouse of the woman who founded Spanx. But apparently, he has many other qualifications, such as being a white rapper (briefly), and starting a jet airplane rental service, and marketing coconut water rather successfully. But he is a total hoot, and a very entertaining speaker as well. His book is also rather hilarious (I’m currently reading it, so his sales pitch worked.)

What Did He Do?

He talked a lot about stepping outside of his own comfort zone, physically and mentally, and how it’s paid off for him. Backed up by his intelligence and chutzpah, he has repeatedly gotten himself into situations in life where he has no experience, and has had to learn as he goes. By surrounding himself with the right folks, and being willing to do things he didn’t think he could do, though, he’s succeeded spectacularly.

What Did This Tell Me?

Listening to Jesse tell his stories in his engaging way (he’d be good in stand-up comedy), I was reminded that I’m also fairly smart and have good mentors (coaches, therapists, authors) and educational opportunities (all the conferences and webinars I attend). It reminds me that I can step off those cliffs into the unknown without my previous paralyzing fear.

What Did I Do?

Being willing to step off into the unknown has been working well for me in the past year, and I’m sort of proud of myself. I’ve learned to recognize situations in which the fear of the unknown is trying to stop me. I get a weird feeling, which makes my mind go, “DING! Pay attention! Fear of the Unknown is approaching!”

Rather than retreating to safety, I’m learning to take a deep breath and just move forward. Physically moving helps, even with mental fears. That’s a really useful tidbit.

Apache’s Smoke Signal says, I’m not so scary, even when I walk you into a mesquite tree.

How Did I Get to Be Able to Do It?

Working with my horse has helped a lot (since everything I do on my horse is new to me), and doing things like hosting our business open house solo, attending the conference on my own, etc., have helped me realize I’m way more capable of acquiring new skills and doing new things than I once thought I was.

Jesse’s talk reminded me that I am brave, and as I sat there listening to him I realized that my journey isn’t quite as spectacular as his (I have not been trained by a Navy SEAL like he has), but I am taking my own small steps into the non-comfort zone. It’s not deadly. You can do it, too!

Now, I’m not saying that you should jump off an actual cliff, but you can do things like talking to a potential lender, putting out bandit signs, writing posts for YOUR blog, and negotiating with potential contractors. Really, you can! Whatever it is that you are doing for your non-real estate job has similar challenges. Start out small, but do a thing. You will be surprised to learn that you lived, and if you messed up, you learned something. You won’t melt. Honest!

 

 

Hermann says please like and share!
17Shares

Burning Questions

In the past few weeks, I have been learning some sales and negotiation techniques, and one of the class topics has me thinking about questions. Our work involves asking a lot of questions, whether of colleagues, contractors, potential sellers, or potential buyers. I’ve always known this was a weak area of mine—I had relatives who asked me so many questions every time I saw them that it felt more like an interrogation than a conversation. They always seemed to be looking for me to give their “right” answer before they’d move on. So, in response, I ended up avoiding asking many questions, preferring to figure things out for myself during the course of conversations. I have been question impaired.

Questions within questions. We have to pay attention to answers to succeed, so I say.

No doubt my overly subtle technique works with friends and family. But in the real estate investment business, you often need to know certain things in order to make sound decisions, to figure out someone’s motives, or to simply gain confirmation on an assumption.

One of the classes I took went over a lot of different types of questions that will help you achieve your goals. This means you have to know what your goals ARE before you start. That may have been the most important lesson I learned—to prepare for conversations before you have them. The instructors spent a lot of time going over the advantages of practicing your questions and role-playing in advance. I assure you that’s not my idea of fun, BUT, I do see how it could get you to run on auto-pilot on some of the trickier nuggets of information you want to find out, allowing you to do the other important thing…

…and that is to listen to the answers to your questions. It should come as no surprise that many folks start planning their next sentence the moment it’s their conversational partner’s turn to talk. Well, if you’re using carefully crafted questions to build rapport or inspire a decision that meets your needs, you better be sure you are paying attention to the answer you get.

As I get ready for a lot of in-person practice on all the questioning techniques soon, you can bet that I’ll be paying a lot more attention to my own conversations. I already have been breaking out of my questioning comfort zone, and I have made it one of my goals this week to enrich myself by really listening to the answers to my questions. I can learn something new from everyone I talk to. So can you.

So hey, if you have any questions for us here at Hermit Haus, we are always listening! You can call us at 512-807-8777, add a comment to this or any other blog posts (in English rather than Russian, so we’ll know you are real), or pop us an email at info@hermithaus.com. We have the answers to all your burning questions, to paraphrase Garrison Keillor.

Hermann says please like and share!
7Shares

A Lesson Relearned

Lee and Cris Robinson at the Ignite real estate convention in Las Vegas.

Lee and Chris Robinson at the Ignite real estate convention in Las Vegas.

I know I’ve mentioned it on Facebook but not here. Sue Ann and I are spending our wedding anniversary at a real estate convention in Las Vegas. Some of you who know me are asking, “What are you doing in Las Vegas? You don’t even like to gamble.” Learning.

These big conventions are about changing mindset. My first big change was from a scarcity mindset (I’ve got to be careful not to spend a dime I don’t have to.) to a growth mindset (If I hire someone to do that, I can probably do a few more deals, and the income from those deals will pay for that person’s time.). That shift in thinking is what enabled me to form Hermit Haus. I would rather have half of 50 deals than all of five deals.

Well, I’ve undergone another mindset shift thanks to Chris Robinson of R3 Coaching. He’s an executive coach to one of my mentors, Paul Esajian.

I don’t mention it here a lot, but Suna and I both have advanced degrees. We’re proud of our education and of our background as trainers and instructional designers. Being proud of knowledge, we’re always looking for new data. I can’t count how many times I’ve read or heard a conference presenter drop a fact or a strategy and my reaction was, “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”

In the midst of an very clever and entertaining speech on managing personal development, Chris stopped me in my tracks. “I’m not going to tell you anything new,” he said. I didn’t care; he is one of the best public speakers I’ve ever heard.

“You’re going to say, ‘Yeah. I’ve heard that before.'” No big surprise. I’ve said that a lot in my life. “But when you say, ‘Yeah. I’ve heard that before,’ you’re answering the wrong question.” Now he had my attention. I’ve long believed that the questions are often more important than the answers.

“The question you should be asking,” he said, “is ‘How well do I do that?'”

“How well do I do that?”

That simple question floored me. As a trainer, I’ve known that there is often a big gap between knowing how to do something and being able to do it. Here I was caught in my own trap. It’s know do you know something; it’s can you apply that knowledge.

Near the end of the talk, Chris said, “When you go to a conference or a class or read something, ask yourself, ‘What’s the one thing I can take away from that and put into practice?'”

For me it’s that one simple question. “How well do I do that?”

Hermann says please like and share!
0Shares