Boomer’s Blog

Historians may beg to differ on this point, but I’ve found solid evidence that outsourcing can be traced directly back to the Guinness Book of World Records’ vote for the World’s Greatest Salesman: Joe Girard. (I relate these facts with utmost respect for Mr. Ferriss.)

Joe sold 13,001 cars between 1963 and 1978 at a Detroit Chevy dealership. At that time Chevy ruled the automotive industry, and if you’ve ever seen a 1963 Chevy Corvette Stingray, you might think they did a pretty good job of selling themselves. To help put the time frame and scope of Joe’s astounding sales record in perspective, I’ve found an awesome 1963 TV ad for Chevy’s amazing winking automobile:

Embrace Change and Follow Through

Joe’s venture into auto sales, ironically enough, began after a failed real estate venture left him broke and with a family to feed. Joe had no experience in auto sales, but convinced the dealership’s owner to give him a shot — and a tiny space to work while he learned the ropes. He got fired from this gig for being too “aggressive” and didn’t give up. He moved on to the next position he would hold for the rest of his automotive sales career.

Joe still holds the all-time record for car and truck sales in one year: 1,420 vehicles! In one day alone, he once sold 18 vehicles.  According to the Automotive Hall of Fame, at a time when only 5 percent of dealerships in the U.S. sold 1,000 cars per year. Girard was averaging that amount each year by himself!

How Did He Do It?!
As his success grew, Joe began outsourcing his busywork by hiring staff (on his own dime) to handle the busywork, like filling out forms and getting clients qualified for their purchases. He was willing to spend a relative pittance of his own money so he would be free to focus on closing the deals.  Joe’s keen attention to the details that make a difference doesn’t stop there.

Joe also sent practically every person he ever met 13 cards per year: He sent one monthly and another at Christmas because he knew that the competition would most likely to be stewing over their eggnog than following up on leads. (Does this remind you of that stack of yellow real estate postcards you’ve been meaning to get in the mail?)

Real Estate Investors: It’s 11 O’clock, Do You Know Where Your Leads Are?
To learn how to apply these principals to your real estate investing business and make the most of your business by improving your real estate marketing, check out my new article: “10 Reasons Why Your Real Estate Marketing Should Go Postal.”

Since a lot of real estate investors I talk to have a shared gap in salesmanship skills, I wanted to include a little something extra here to get my members on the right track to improving their real estate marketing and sales skills on-the-fly.

Now in his 80s, Joe still lives in Michigan and though he has long since retired from auto sales, his rules of success continue to inspire us all.  I’m re-printing them from Joe’s Web site below in hopes that my fellow real estate investors will get as much out of them as I have:
Joe Girard’s 13 Rules of Success

1. HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE: Hang around with positive people, stay away from crybabies and complainers, because they will pull you down to their level.  If something isn’t going right in your life, keep it to yourself, no one wants to hear your problems, make people believe you are having a wonderful time.
2. ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE: Keep an appointment book so that you don’t have to use the words that sicken me: “I FORGOT.”  At the end of each day, meditate upon what you did or did not do, so you can become stronger for tomorrow.  Plan your work for the next day.  If you know where you are going you will get there.  If you don’t, you are LOST!
3. WORK WHEN YOU WORK: Don’t take long lunch hours, and only eat with people who can help your cause, not with other salespeople.  Do not sneak out of work early, if you do you are a LOSER.
4. OBSERVE GIRARD’S NO-NOs: No smoking or chewing tobacco, no gum, no colognes, no profanity, no dirty jokes, no alcohol breath, and men should not wear earrings at work.  Turn off cell phones - they’re irritating.  The biggest killer of them all is NOT BEING ON TIME.
5. DRESS THE PART: what kind of people are you dealing with.  If you are selling to blue collar workers, don’t wear $500 suits and expensive shoes, jewelry or watches (it’s a big distraction).  Wear it on your own time, not when you’re working - clothes can turn people off.
6. ALWAYS LISTEN:  People can tell if you’re not listening.  The longer you listen, the more obligated people will feel towards you.  The more you listen, the more likely a customer is going to do business with you.  Listening shows that you care.  “The mouth should only be used for eating - keep your mouth shut!”  Silence is Golden.
7. SMILE FREELY:  A smile increases your face value.  If people would smile more, your customers would feel better and want to do business with you, plus it’s great for your health!
8. RETURN ALL PHONE CALLS & EMAILS: Not returning calls or emails are a way to lose customers and friends.  Return your calls and emails as soon as possible.  If you don’t, that’s a good way to burn a bridge!
9. TELL THE TRUTH: If you get caught in a lie even once, you will always be a liar.  Even if you tell the truth for the rest of your life, you won’t be trusted or believed, consider yourself DEAD.
10. DON’T OVERCHARGE: If you do, and the customer compares your deal with somebody else, you have lost him.  Take a little and leave a little; Joe only worked on a small profit, but he was heavy on volume, averaging six retail automobile sales a day.  Word of mouth got around that YOU CAN’T BEAT JOE GIRARD’S PRICE.
11. STAND IN FRONT OF YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICES (not behind them):  The most important thing to do for your customer is SERVICE them, and they will do business with you over and over again. This is what made JOE #1 IN THE WORLD.
12. LOCK UP EVERY SALE: After you have closed the sale, ask your customers why they bought from you - if they tell you why, they are reinforcing their trust in you.  Therefore no more buyers’ remorse, MEANING NO MORE CANCELLATIONS.
13. REWARD YOURSELF: Treat yourself well for all the smart work you have done; YOU DESERVE IT!

Make the Most of Your Resources

Are you interested in making the most out of your real estate investing business without breaking the bank? When you join GaryBoomershine.com you get all the tips and tricks you need to maximize your real estate ROI.  Join us and you’ll be amazed to learn about how the little details that can make all the difference in your real estate business can be simple and cost-effective to implement.

Becoming a member is easy. Please sign in using the yellow fields at the right side of this page or on the main page at GaryBoomershine.com.

Make your real estate investment career meltdown the first day of the rest of you life with a new, optimized lifestyle design (LD) and bestselling author Tim Ferriss’ entrepreneurial manifesto, “The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” (4HWW).

Before taking his now-famous pen to paper, Ferriss, a Princeton University graduate, drove himself — and his business — into the ground with over-work and precious time squandered on tasks that actually kept him from generating wealth and attaining his goals.

Pursue your Dreams and Build Wealth
In this monumental work, Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge us into cubicles and create our dream lifestyles by following his formula for achieving personal freedom and financial wealth.

In 4HWW, readers learn how to make this liberating transition through executing the four steps of LD, Ferriss’ efficiency-optimized approach to maximizing effectiveness in your work and creating more fearless joy in life. Not only is balance between the two possible, Ferriss tells us how to increase our profits while we’re at it.

In 4HWW, Ferriss provides a recipe for LD that revolves around the simple mnemonic: DEAL. Each letter represents a transcendent step to attaining personal freedom and financial wealth:

Ferriss’ Four Steps of Lifestyle Design

1. Definition: Requires you to determine what you want, conquer fears, look past society’s “expectations,” and estimate the costs of your desires. This is about beating the game rather than playing the game and emphasizing your strengths instead of trying to change your weaknesses. Here, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of excitement.
2. Elimination: This section begs readers to forget about time management and embrace the possibility that you can accomplish more by doing less. When you limit tasks and work time, you’re free to effectively focus on completing the most important tasks in less time, Ferriss says. More time economy comes, he adds, by eliminating time wasted by constantly checking email and using personal electronics, When you do this, you’ll defeat procrastination and be free to focus on the minority of tasks that bring the greatest results.
3. Automation: Ferriss defines efficiency and encourages that it be abandoned and replaced with true effectiveness. In this section, he discusses how to maximize overall effectiveness by outsourcing low-end tasks. This can free up valuable time for entrepreneurs to build businesses that provide a sustainable, automatic sources of income. Using the right process models, and effective marketing practices, Ferriss insists that we can maximize income and best manage our businesses through absence.
4. Liberation: When you’ve successfully defined your desires, eliminated unnecessary tasks, automated and outsourced your life, Ferriss says that liberation will manifest itself in many ways and you’ll be ready to join the ranks of the New Rich.

To learn more about how 4HWW and Ferriss’ formula for LD can help you be a better entrepreneur in your real estate investment business, be sure to check out my review, now posted in GaryBoomershine.com’s Resources section.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (4HWW), majored in East Asian studies at Princeton University. Soon after graduation, he found his self-imposed cubicle lifestyle wasn’t giving him room enough to breathe, much less twirl. In 2004, Ferriss was working 80 hours a week to build his company and found himself burning out. So he put three days of clothing into a backpack and bought a one-way ticket to London … and wound up in Argentina as a world-class Tango dance champion.

Ferriss’ manifesto, the 4HWW, captures the wisdom and quixotic joy the author found when he traded his cubicle for the excitement-packed lifestyle of his dreams. Published last year, the book quickly became an international best seller.

Escape Inhibitions and Discover your Life
Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge them into cubicles and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the new rich: time and mobility. This process is an art and a science that Ferriss refers to as lifestyle design (LD), and in 4HWW, he provides a deceptively simple strategy for achieving it.

Design your Lifestyle
For real estate entrepreneurs, 4HWW nails the formula for maximizing effectiveness in your endeavors. Your business may be surviving, but is it thriving? Many of us escape the regular grind only to become totally submerged in busywork that keeps us from accomplishing the more important tasks that fuel our business growth.

To really excel in this business, no true innovation is needed. When you automate and outsource your grunt work and use systems that have been proven effective, you’re well into the metamorphosis from which you will emerge a true real estate entrepreneur.

Automate and Recreate
For most of us in the real estate game, marketing easily can become a central vacuum system that swallows time and energy and rarely pays off. How can you effectively run your business when you’re struggling with lists, copy writing, mailings and postage?

If this is not your strong point, it may be time to follow Ferriss’ advice: Emphasize your strengths by delegating your weaknesses. When you’re using your strengths to build your business rather than being forced to focus on your weaknesses in mindless tasks such as marketing, your business, your income and your self esteem can reach new heights.

Give your Strengths a Workout
When you’re using an effective marketing system, such as SalesTeamLive, you know it’s working because you’re receiving a steady flow of calls from motivated and qualified sellers and buyers every day. And you’ve actually got the time to make the deals you know will take your business to the next level.

In 4HWW, Ferris successfully reminds us that time is short and we only have one chance to live the lifestyle each of us desires. His lifestyle design provides us with the necessary framework to transform our businesses and to embrace opportunity without fear or regret. Bravo, Mr. Ferris.

Look for my full review of 4HWW, coming soon.