As I find myself in the waning years of my real estate career I am looking back over my 33 years in this business and I see that there were several contributing factors to my longevity.

I am going to list them here for you.  You may find that you may want to emulate some of them or it may be just a few minutes of somewhat interesting reading for you!  Your choice!

1. I had to learn to ask for business!  This may seem terribly basic, but honestly, if I hadn’t learned how to do that I have no idea where I’d be now.  Given that my need to be in control of my life is paramount for me, I’d probably have ended up in some sort of management or entrepreneurial position. But, it wouldn’t have been real estate.
2. I had to look for success clues.  As it turns out, success does leave clues.  Once I figured that out, I actually studied the successful agents in my office, company and marketplace.  What I learned was transformational!
3. I had to be curious.  Early on in my career I decided that in addition to studying successful agents, that getting some additional formal education was important. So I started gathering professional designations.  GRI, CRS, CRB, ePro and SRES were among the ones that I accumulated over the years.  There was something in each of those courses that contributed to both my short term and long term goals.
4. Speaking of goals, once I learned that I had to write them down and refer to them daily, they became reality! Before that my goals were merely wishes.
5. I had to seek out inspiration from sources both inside and outside of real estate.  Mentors like Jim Rohn (My favorite quote from him is “For things to get better for you, you have to get better”), Tommy Hopkins, Mike Ferry, Brian Buffini, and many others.
6. I had to read books on the process of real estate and on sales in general.  As a for instance I just finished “Fanatical Prospecting” by Jeb Blount.  If you are in any kind of sales this is a must read book.
7. I had to become conversant with the technology tools of the day.  This meant that in addition to everything else that I was staying on top of, I had to stay on top of the technology of the day.  There is always going to be something new, so I had to learn how to evaluate the new tech and if I found it to be useful to me I had to learn how to use it and adopt it.
8. I had to learn the inventory.  If you are going to be in this industry, you need to know the inventory.  There is no substitute for actually driving out to see houses.
9. I had to meet and get to know the other agents.  This is a strange business in that we are in competition for business with every other real estate agent in our market place AND we also are in cooperation with them.  We need them to get our listings sold and we need their listings to sell to our buyers.  
10. I needed to learn to be patient and I needed to learn to persevere.  I had to learn to allow things the time it took to produce results.  Along with that I needed to learn to just stick with it.  To not quit.

And to top it all off, I need a sprinkling of luck.  My definition of luck is a bit different than most, so I’ll share it with you:  Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity!

Finally, I’ll add something that I learned in my time as a US Marine: No matter how prepared you are or how lucky you are, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy so you need to be able to improvise, adapt to the changing conditions and work to overcome the adversities that present themselves!

This has been a rewarding career on many levels and I wish the same for you!  Hopefully some of things I have detailed here will be helpful to you!