The dog looked friendly enough as I walked past him on my way up to the door of my new listing. His name was Buster. Buster was a beefy, big-headed dog, with long hair, and ears that stood straight on end. He wagged his tail as I walked by and I petted his thick brown fur which he seemed to enjoy. The owner had proudly told me that Buster was half Rottweiler, and half German Shepherd.

Today the owners were gone. We had met the night before and they had given me permission to come back and take photos since it had been dark by the time we had finished the listing paperwork. The home was a large custom log home, nestled in a grove of towering Douglas fir trees somewhat secluded from the neighbors. As I finished taking some inside photos, I came back out on the deck and that's when it happened.

Buster launched himself up on the wood railing and advanced on me like a police dog on the trail of a serial killer. He snarled, and barked in a deep baritone that would have made Bigfoot run for cover. I reached defensively for a shield and found a flimsy plastic deck chair. We circled each other. Buster ears were no longer up they were straight back, the hair on his neck stood on end, and he now proudly displayed a full set of skin piercing teeth. It was a standoff.

Three hours later, the kids came home from school and I was rescued. When I arrived back at my office I told the harrowing story to the rest of the staff, who thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard. Except that is for a brand new agent who had just joined the crew, she looked somewhat terrified.

Noticing her in the background one of my fellow agents said "Hey, don't worry you know how to avoid that in the future? Just always carry a few dog bones in your briefcase."

Huh? Now why hadn't anyone told me that I wondered, so I asked: "Hey, why didn't you tell me that when I first started?"

"Because you didn't ask!" That brought a fresh round of laughs.

To really learn a lesson well, some would tell you, you must get your nose bloody (or in my case just your pride). In other words to really get an education in the real estate business the best course of action is to jump down in the trenches briefcase in hand, and gut it out. After all the best business school in the world is the school of hard knocks, right?

Wrong! Actually the school of hard knocks is the most expensive business school on earth, and although those few that do survive its brutal initiation may find success, unfortunately the vast majority finds failure. Real Estate is no exception, in many markets 80 percent of new real estate agents fail in the first five years, with over a third leaving the business in the first year alone.

The new agent who learned by my example is really the one who benefited most from my experience. In fact she benefited far more than even me the person that lived through the experience. Why? Because now she is armed with information that can help her in a difficult situation, and best of all she didn't have to make a massive investment of time, energy, or money to get the information. I on the other hand had to live through wasting three hours of my time, being humiliated when the kids came home, being laughed at by my coworkers (it's was ok because I laughed to), and then having to explain to my sellers what had happened (they couldn't help laughing either).

But we have missed a crucial point. The new agent must do something with this new-found information in order for her to become empowered by it. In her case, she must go to the store buy some dog bones and put them in her briefcase. If she fails to take action on this new information, she is just wasting time, energy, and effort by listening to my sad story.

One key to reducing your earning curve is to find and use powerful information. Some people might call that just good old fashioned R & D. Research and development? No - rip off and duplication! To become a wise agent we must understand the definition of true wisdom. Highlight this – Wisdom is applied accurate knowledge.

Did you notice the key word in that definition? It is the word – applied – we must not only acquire good information we have to do something with that information we have to use it! The application is what makes you wise!

Have you ever had a veteran agent say something like this to you? "I've been in the real estate business 20 years!" Have they really? Or instead have they been in the real estate business one year times twenty? You see in sales were not measured by our experience we are measured by our performance. As real estate professionals our business should be growing every year. If our business has stalled or worse gone in reverse this may be a good sign that we are either not applying the knowledge that we have or we need to find some new information.

So to work smarter we must:

1. Find good information
2. Invest in the information
3. Use the information

Any new agent or veteran agent can instantly move to the top of their earning curve by simply applying high quality information. Working smarter not harder!

Here is an excellent example of this kind of thinking. I call it the new agent phenomenon. For many years it has been a passion of mine to find, coach, and mentor new real estate agents. My real estate company often holds career seminars where we invite people who are considering a real estate career to a two hour program about the real estate business.

Inevitably we are able to recruit folks who, after attending our real estate school, end up becoming real estate professionals. To help ensure that these new agents will be able to compete in the hyper-competitive real estate market our company provides a thirty day, fast start training program.

This training is designed to help new agents get their business up and running quickly, and this is where it gets interesting. Almost without exception those agents that commit to the program begin to instantly make appointments, take listings, and create new sales. Surprisingly in many cases these fresh new recruits, green as grass, can out produce twenty year veterans within just weeks of entering the real estate business.

How is this possible? Because they don't know what's impossible. These new agents believe and trust that what their trainer tells them as an absolute fact of life. They believe that they can take ten new listings in a month if they work hard; they believe if they are organized that they can work with three buyers in one day; they believe they can close every listing they interview for if they come prepared.

The secret to their success is that these agents have not yet been poisoned by veterans telling them that it takes six months to close their first commission check, or that For Sale By Owners are actually aliens dressed up like humans, or that expired listings are all overpriced dogs. Instead they are armed with high quality information, and the motivation to put that information to use.

The new agent phenomenon should demonstrate something incredible simple, yet incredibly powerful. If we can find good high quality information, believe in that information completely, and then most importantly take action we can achieve incredible results very quickly.

Published: July 13, 2004

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Jim Remley is a speaker, author, and consultant. He is also an active real estate broker in Southern Oregon where he owns a network of six offices. Jim won the Rookie Instructor of the Year award in 2001 from Realty-U, the largest network of real estate educators in the nation. He was the winner of the 2002 Pacesetter Award, and nominated for the Real Estate Instructor of the Year Award during the first quarter of 2003. To learn more about Jim, please visit ProPerformer.com or e-mail him at .