As an adult immigrant, I have been driven to prove to myself that I can remain free and independent in this country of my childhood dreams.
For nearly a decade, David and I have invested in real estate the conventional way; i.e., the wrong way, for the most part, as it turns out.
In December 2012, David and I signed up for a six-month coaching program – with the Wolff Couple – through Ron LeGrand’s office. We knew we needed a coach to straighten us out. This valuable coaching program comes to an end this month. In fact, today, I am submitting the final weekly report to Lynette Wolff, who has been our primary contact. We’ll have our last coaching call tomorrow. We have become so accustomed to our weekly call and hearing Lynette’s cheerful voice that it’s hard to believe this will all stop after this week. This has been an intense 26 weeks. Time kept ticking away very fast every single week.
By now, I expected us to have closed on at least one deal. But it has not yet happened. I can honestly say, however, that this is NOT due to lack of guidance by our coach – far from it. In fact, Ron has produced so many known successful students that, if I fail, I know I have no one else to blame but myself. As much as it hurts to admit it, I would have to conclude that this disappointing result rests squarely on my shoulders. Here is my post-mortem analysis on what I did wrong.
For the first five out of the six months, I kept myself busy implementing just about everything including, of course, preparing our weekly report. Knowing that, within our household, I have always been the driver behind investing outside of Wall Street, one of the few things I expected David to get done for me was to talk to people when good leads came in from our virtual assistants. I thought I was providing him with the cushiest task – to ease my heavy workload. We were equipped with all of the well-thought-out scripts that the Wolff Couple had prepared for their students. And, yes, we practiced them repeatedly. All David had to do was simply follow the scripts for each possible scenario and set up an appointment for us to meet with the homeowner.
Because he has always done just about anything and everything to make me happy all these years that we’ve been together (over 41 years), it never occurred to me that he would not cherish the idea of talking to these strangers. After all, unlike for me, English is his first language.
So why did I not get on the phone myself? From today’s vantage point, whatever explanation I write sounds like an excuse but here it goes. First, I decided that the marketing campaign should go out in David’s name. Why? Because David is a common name in this country; Reiko is not. I figured people can relate to David better than someone with an unusual name like mine. Because it went out in David’s name, I thought people would naturally want to talk to David. So my logic was that he should be the one to talk. I now know that I was not being fair to him.
As the month of May rolled in and I was becoming increasingly frustrated without a single deal closed, I had to look at myself in the mirror. I finally realized that if I wanted a deal to close, then I needed to be the one on the phone consistently, day after day. With this realization, I changed our marketing campaign to include both of our names as follows: David and Reiko (Ray-ko) – with how to pronounce my name inside parentheses. Today, as the leads come in, I can’t wait to make these calls and help solve the problems that these homeowners are facing. Come to think of it, I have come a long way since 41 years ago when I used to refuse to talk to anyone on the phone in this country for fear of not being able to understand them fully.
Thanks to Lynette’s patient coaching, I am convinced that it is a matter of time before we will indeed close on our first deal. I can almost taste it.
