Real Estate – Commission only? Retainer or no?

I was asked recently by a great and motivated student why on my Massive Success in Real Estate CD (click to check it out, it’s still cheap, but only til the end of the year) why I recommended getting on to ‘Commission Only’ as soon as possible.

This is the only way to earn the really big bucks for several reasons.

– The other options are where the business owner is taking a risk on you, so in order to make that risk worthwhile, often your % rate is significantly less than if you take a punt on yourself, like any self employed business person does.

– If you are on a wage PLUS commission (even worse than a debit credit system), then I’ve found most deals are better for the beginner than the super 6 figure earner. eg someone making no sales is way better off on a $52,000 salary plus bonuses. But someone making a sale a week is going to be paid over $350,000 in commission where they’d be lucky to make half that on a wage plus bonus system.

– This takes us to the mindset of Commission only. Just having that safety net of $500 per week, in my opinion, severely limits the chance you will ever make $300,000 per year. The very fact you have in your head $500 a week, means your subconscious is still thinking like a $500 per week employee. I know this doesn’t make sense to your conscious mind, your intellect, your logic, but then hey, not much that the subconscious does think makes any logical sense, it just is. We need to, as soon as possible, get as far away from this ‘exchange a week’s work for a week’s pay’ mentality. That is NOT the business we are in. You no longer exchange your hour for $22.67 or whatever your hourly rate to date has been. If there is a safety net on your wage, then there is a ceiling opn your earnings, even if that ceiling is a psychological one. It’s like the flea and the elephant training. A flea can easily jump out of a jar, but put one in a jar with a piece of cling wrap on top for a period of time, it gets conditioned to not be able to, and eventually it can’t. Same as when a baby elephant is tied by a stake and can’t pull the stake out of the ground. When fully grown that elephant has taken it as a given that when staked it is stuck, even though by this stage the elephant could easily pull the stake out of the ground with it’s massive strength, it just forgot about it.

I say all this and mean it with all my heart, but I want to add something. If your family responsibility requires a $500 a week certainty at this stage in your life and you are risking your family and your financial well being on your real estate career, I am not recommending you go to ‘Commission only’ straight away. If the worst case scenario is not acceptable to you, then don’t do it. Find someone who will pay you a retainer while you grow your mindset to know that you don’t need it anymore. Use it like training wheels. Yes, I believe that you will not succeed as quickly if you start with the training wheels, but at least the fall won’t be the end of your marriage, kids, whatever.

So in my Massive Success in Real Estate program, that is what I mean. Get onto commission only as soon as you can responsibly do so. And if you get that program, implement even a quarter of the strategies in it,  I promise you with a money back guarantee, you’ll be one step closer to doing just that.