That's Billion with a B...

One point six billion dollars or $1,600,000,000 is A LOT of money. It's fun to dream and chat with others about what to do with that kind of money. Sure, plenty of the conversations went the direction of Chris Janson's recent hit "Buy Me A Boat" but a lot of people were saying things like "buy a house," "pay off student loans," "help charities," "take a vacation," etc. These are all attainable goals without winning a jackpot with tons of zeros at the end of it as long as you have the right mindset. The 1,741 billionaires that exist in the world (according to Forbes) probably didn't make that list by winning the lottery.

So unless you bought the winning ticket for last night's Powerball in California, Tennessee or Florida it's back to reality, right? And what does the lottery have to do with real estate anyway?

Money. Specifically, the focus on money.

All too often we focus on the wrong thing, or at least the wrong first thing. A realistic and reasonable goal like buying or selling a house quickly becomes "I need money to buy that house" or "I need to net this much money from my sale" and we are now focused on the money rather than the goal of buying or selling and getting to where we need to be. Similarly, as Realtors, we can sometimes focus so much on the commission that we forget that we are there to help our clients reach their goals, not collect checks. This pushes us towards the go-getter mindset and we try to figure out every possible way to get more. Finances are important but let's not lose sight of the real goal. After all, we learned growing up "give and you shall receive," so why not focus on giving instead of getting?

No book does a better job explaining this than The Go-Giver. If you have not been lucky enough to read this book yet (and the odds of being lucky here are not 1 in 292 million) I highly recommend picking up a copy. You can read a description and see a short video about the book by clicking here.

Next time you are being interviewed by a potential client, ask yourself this question; "Am I presenting myself as a go-getter or a Go-Giver?"