Would you like to hear a phrase that has killed more progress, dreams and ideas than most others?
“But I don’t want to do this forever…”
Months ago, I had a real estate professional reach out to me because he heard me on a podcast talking about the numerous benefits of creating a membership as well as an online community. He has been intrigued by the idea for a few years and something about that podcast got him to reach out to me.
We got on a call, and as I like to do, I asked lots of questions. I rarely ask the obvious questions first. I like to learn some background first before I get into the “why do you want to do this” type of questions.
In the first fifteen minutes, I got a good sense of his knowledge, history and expertise in the real estate world. It was obvious that he had seen and done a lot in that space that would make him an expert. And like many who look to make the shift to earn more online, recurring revenue, the idea he was thinking of was to create a specific community helping other real estate agents.
At first, he wanted to know if I believed it was viable. I smile at that question now. After all the obscure, micro-niched memberships I’ve learned about in the past few years, you would be hard-pressed to show me a niched idea that isn’t viable. We have close to a half dozen members inside of Membership Freedom creating communities in the real estate space, and each one is niched and unique enough that they see each other as collaborators as opposed to competition.
But then he got a little more open. When he saw that it was possible, he let his guard down a bit in terms of what had been slowing him down.
“I love real estate, and I have a ton of experience in it…” he said, followed by a pause. “But I don’t know if I want to do this forever,”
And, bam! There it was again. That frustrating, dream-killing phrase. So I asked a partially sarcastic, partially real question.
“Who said that you have to do this forever?”
“Well,” he thought. “Nobody, I guess. I just figured that if I put all of this time and effort into it, it’s something that I should plan to do forever.”
He had no idea that he had set himself up for the response that would make him not only laugh out loud, but that also caused him to realize how detrimental that phrase can be.
“You have been in the real estate world for a while. Tell me- how would you respond to a first-time homebuyer – let’s say they are 25 years old – who is stressing out, procrastinating and delaying-on buying their first home because they want to buy their “forever home,” I asked.
“Oh Vincent,” he signed, “that drives me insane! I hear that much more than you might realize.”
“I figured,” I responded. “So what do you say to them?”
“I tell them that they shouldn’t worry about a forever home at their age and experience. It’s their first home. They don’t even know what their family life will be like in ten years. They don’t know about their work situation down the road. They need to discover what they like about owning a home and what they don’t like. The idea of shopping for a forever home is not a good idea,” he stated.
“That’s interesting,” I said, and let the silence fill the air.
“So you know that a first time home buyer shouldn’t buy a house based on it being a place that they would like to live in forever. So with that knowledge, why would you think that starting a community in a certain niche is something that you also would need to do forever?”
“You got me!” he exclaimed after he let out a giant laugh from the irony. I then gave him a brief history lesson of our experiences, and the different memberships that we have created. Of course, it would be great to find the thing that you’d like to do for the rest of your life. But the truth is that pivoting, changing and adjusting is a healthy part of growth. We started memberships that lasted a few years. We learned tons from them. And they made the next one we started that much stronger. We’ve re-branded and niched others down as well. That was what we did last year by morphing Total Life Freedom into Membership Freedom.
Change is not a bad thing. It just means that you know more than you used to, and you have created something even better because of it.
So, with each new pivot, we get to restart with more understanding, more experience and a greater network and trust. It makes each new pivot easier.
Yet, one of the things that would have killed our progress would have been stopping ourselves, because we worried about if this was something we wanted to do forever. We would have missed out on the absolute hardest part of the membership journey – starting.
Once you start, you are forced to leave those fears and questions behind.
Why?
Because there is real work to do. Yes, you will make mistakes. Yes. Your members won’t be ideal in the beginning. Yes, it will be harder than you thought.
But in three years, when it becomes much easier than you could have ever imagined, you get to ask yourself that question again.
Do I want to do this forever?
Your answer then will be a much more informed, knowledgeable and wise response.
Have an AMAZING week!
Vincent
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