Written by: Fouad (Fobby) Naghmi, EVP

Written by: The Vision Staff Writer

Have you ever wondered what it takes to launch a series of live webinar courses? Over the past several months, coaching students of 20/20 Vision for Success Coaching have been both participants and observers in such an event. A dozen live symposium-style courses launched successfully in the month of September to critical acclaim from attendees and organizers alike.

There is a perception of coaching as being only a singular relationship between the coach and the recipient of the coaching. And while it is certainly a true description of one coaching model, coaching services are broader and made richer by the availability of a range of delivery methods. Certainly courses, education, and training are considered invaluable tools by the coaches as well as those benefiting from the coaching. Ray Befus and Bill Foss, two of the coaches creating and delivering coaching services under the 20/20 VSC umbrella, spoke to our editorial staff about the symposiums they each created, the thinking behind this unusual structure, and their reasons for choosing to deliver coaching services in this format.

Coach Bill Foss is presenting a course titled: Introduction to Creating Your Business to Serve Your Life, Your Way. In it he uses worksheets, questionnaires, and other material to help attendees align their businesses with who they really are, placing them beyond competition, self-limitation, and the effects of outside influences.

“I am excited about the symposiums,” Bill Foss shared. “The coaches that Christine and the team have assembled have varied, vast reservoirs of experience and expertise. The symposium framework allows each of us, as coaches, the opportunity to go deeper with the members of 2020 Vision for Success Coaching.”

Symposium courses are scheduled and run in one-hour Zoom sessions. Each session is a deeper dive into the course topic, creating a symposium running over the course of four sessions: one session per month for four months. This format allows for engagement as well as implementation and progress based on activity taken and lessons learned.

“From my 40 plus years of coaching and leading real estate salespeople and brokerage owners,” Bill Foss continues, “I see many fall for education disguised as entertainment, especially in the video delivery world we are in now. I see many take course after course, attend program and program but never go deep enough or adapt and implement the content to align with who they really are. There is a hope that simply imitating the success of others will be some kind of an ‘Easy Button’ to personal success. I can assure you it is not!  Imitation may be flattering for the imitated but can be devastating to the imitator!”

Coach Ray Befus is delivering two separate symposiums. One is titled, Management Foundations for Maximum Team Engagement, and provides management tools and processes for those who have been given the position but not the training to build and manage teams.

“National studies suggest that up to 60 percent of managers have received no explicit training for their position,” Ray Befus shares. “They often feel like they’ve been thrown into the deep end of the pool and left to learn to swim. The result is that managers and team members are often frustrated with each other. This symposium is providing managers with foundational tools to lift their teams to a new level of engagement and alignment.”

In his second symposium titled, Your Organizational Heartbeat, Ray puts a stethoscope to a successful business demonstrating examples and exploring the founder’s vision, values, and priorities leading to business and personal success. He explains, “Your business has a heartbeat and, everyone—team members and customers—senses it even if they cannot explain it. And some organizations have serious heart conditions! The problem isn’t their business intelligence; it’s their business health.

Taking this a step further, he points to the reality of people problems being less about the people and more about management weaknesses, saying, “Across our industry, many leaders and managers have grown their organizations without explicit training in foundational management tools and processes. As a result, their enterprises tend to be personality-driven, not built around a shared vision, values, and effective management tools and processes. Both of these symposiums explore the energy that powers a world-class enterprise, helps reduce chaos, raises employee engagement, and increases alignment across an organization.”

While coming at the topic from different directions, Bill Foss and Ray Befus are aligned in their reasons for providing these symposiums. “True growth and change take effort,” Bill Foss says. “I believe great content, no matter how powerful, needs to be modeled and adapted to who you really are to be effective. Coaching helps guide one to a deeper understanding of how-to concepts, adapt them to suit THEM, to then take action and get results rather than learning for learning’s sake.  The symposium format is a step in the right direction because it enables our membership to engage fully in what is being offered. It also will expose our coaches to the membership and foster deeper relationships on both sides. 20/20 coaching members can gain a better sense of how a particular coach will resonate with them and meet them where they are on the way to where they want to go.”

Here is Bill in a short video message extending an invitation to join his symposium.

Written by: CaZ

Leadership is the capacity a person has to influence behavior toward the achievement of a goal and to do things they would not otherwise have the skills or motivation to achieve. Being in a position of power and influence does not automatically make you a leader.

Leadership matters more today than ever before. Aside from contextual factors such as economic conditions, industry factors, and a company’s overall health, leadership factors have a highly predictive impact on company performance. In a recent study, the quality of those in management positions accounted for at least 70% of employee engagement. Exceptional leaders have been found to contribute 48% higher profit than average managers. Deciding who to appoint to positions of authority is important.

A leader is an agent for change in most companies. It requires mastery of one’s self and the complexity of relationships with other people. While there is a belief some are born to lead, the fact is the skills and beliefs required to lead others can be practiced and perfected by anyone with the sincere desire to do so.

Do you know if you are a leader? Oddly enough, many who lead, and are readily followed by others, do not understand or recognize their inherent ability to lead. To know if you are a leader or whether you have the qualities to become one, managers need to honestly answer the following questions about themselves.

How do you deal with yourself and your environment?

Are you future-focused? What aspects of your environment do you tend to focus on? Do you constantly keep your eyes on the horizon and insatiably crave new knowledge? Are you concerned more with what’s next than maintaining the status quo?

Great leaders must have a forward thinking mindset. The heart and mind of a leader is focused on understanding tomorrow’s problems, opportunities and making the changes needed to capitalize on it. Instead of tinkering with existing processes, leaders are those who can completely reimagine today’s business models. Leaders innovate while managers administer. It is fair to say many corporations across the globe are overmanaged and underled.

Do you fear change? Often, the higher managers are promoted, the greater they seek safety and fear losing personal control. Leaders fear something even greater—the loss coming from doing nothing as the world inevitably changes around them. Great leaders drive change before circumstances force their hand. From time to time, a business must seek to become what makes them obsolete, because it will surely eliminate competitors that aren’t prepared for it.

People resist change for a number of reasons. We are creatures of habit, so when routines become automatic, change can be uncomfortable. This is especially true when the need for change has not yet become obvious. Leaders who continue to play it safe when the need for change has become obvious risk losing the respect, trust, and loyalty of others in the organization.

Do you view risk as opportunity? Risk must be a leader’s best friend. There is great risk in making important decisions without all available facts. Making wrong decisions means bearing much of the blame. It is because of their strength in the face of the unknown and in the face of resistance that we admire successful leaders. Leaders are opportunists and optimists. Leaders see opportunity in every difficulty while a pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.

While there is a strong link between successful entrepreneurs and optimism, it is important to also remember that blind optimism can have consequences as well. Optimism that is not tempered by realism can cause people to overestimate their abilities and underestimate their challenges.

Leaders do not fear failure because they understand the road to success is paved with setbacks and they the agility to learn from past experience. All business leaders must be able to handle failure, recover by actively seeking feedback, then seek new challenges where they can apply their experience and not repeat past mistakes.

Do you have clarity of purpose? Whatever your reason, conviction and an unwavering personal identity will keep you going despite inevitable resistance. Great leaders have strong self-awareness and are passionate visionaries. This increases their odds of success through perseverance and draws others toward their compelling vision. While it’s possible to build a brand in the short-term without such passion, it’s also impossible to sustain it in the long run. Do you understand what is important to you? Do you have faith in your purpose? Are you able to communicate your purpose, your faith, your vision, and your passion?

Clarity of purpose is a necessity for great communication. Leaders must be able to consistently articulate their values for the organization. When leaders are unclear about their goals, they look unprepared, confused and disorganized. Inconsistency in communication will dilute important messages. Strong leaders often emerge from crisis. People need a clear sense of direction and will rally behind those with a story and strategic vision for the company. Consistency is even more important for flat organizations as the more decentralized work becomes, the more everyone needs to remain focused on the vision and forging ahead to achieve the same key issues.

Purpose should be clear and inspirational. From a branding perspective, companies must promote a goal that is higher than succeeding in the competitive landscape around them. Such passion can lead to infectious enthusiasm among employees and, ideally, improve the experience for customers as well. True belief in these ideals means that leaders will walk-the-walk, not just talk-the-talk. People quickly abandon a leader who does not embody the principles they are trying to impart on others, just as consumers abandon a brand that does not live up to its promise.

There is a difference between clarity of purpose and clarity of strategy. Because the world can change quickly, operational strategies must remain fluid. Like a compass that can always be trusted to point north, this sense of direction will always ensure the company remains consistent with its overall direction, no matter how much strategic change is needed. Employees will be accepting of tactics that change as long as they are consistent the same vision, but if the vision keeps changing, employees will begin to tune out.

Are you a great manager? Leaders must also have a strong foundation in management skills of planning, measurement and strategy. A leader that seems disconnected from the practical aspects of changing a complex organization will not rally people behind them. Leaders need to possess both capabilities. Developing a vision of the distant future requires an understanding of what type of jobs are going to be needed do it and delegating responsibility to the right areas of the organization.

How do you deal with other people around you?

The true definition of leadership is whether you are followed. The following skills will dictate your success. Leadership requires exceptional interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence. No matter how forward looking, self-actualized, or visionary you might be as a leader you still must master interactions with people above and below in the hierarchy.

Are you versatile? In a world where everyone is unique, there is no one-size-fits-all leadership strategy. Great leaders must have the ability to align and coalesce diverse groups of people, personalities, ages and cultures around a common vision for things to run smoothly. To ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction, leaders must have the adaptability to treat everyone a little bit differently.

Versatility begins with empathy and understanding. It is easy for us to project our own worldview onto other people but, to lead, we have to understand each person’s unique perspective and the experiences that have shaped their perspective. Stereotyping is always dangerous. Each person’s life experiences are fundamentally different.

The best leaders manage individuals the way that they want to be managed, rather than the way they prefer to manage. In the end, it isn’t the style of leadership that counts, it is the effectiveness. Versatility allows for effectiveness. The best leadership style is not to have a style at all – but a process.

Do you empower others? Leadership from the top alone cannot succeed. While management is about control, leadership is about empowerment – the ability to motivate others to overcome obstacles on their own. Managers tell people what to do while leaders spur their initiative and creativity – often giving them more autonomy than they might deserve in order to develop their skills.

Empowerment gives people a sense of accomplishment, making their daily tasks intrinsically motivating. Empowerment also multiplies leadership, creating other leaders throughout the organization – the greatest achievement of all. When a manager creates a team that can operate without them, it means they can focus on adding value elsewhere. Although it sounds counterintuitive, the ultimate goal of a leader should be to make their role redundant.

Are you selfless? To empower others, managers need to exercise a great deal of restraint in order to do what’s best for the group. Too many people think leadership is about control. Rather, leadership is about inspiration, guidance and support. Are you willing to let others have the spotlight and courageous enough relinquish the control you have on them?

Leaders have to resist taking over. Rather than instinctively answering difficult questions themselves, leaders guide their people through the process required to solve them. If telling someone a solution is worth one point, getting them to find the solution themselves is worth 10 points. A leader’s job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room, but to fill the room with smart, creative, capable people, give them the right tools, develop their skills and get out of their way.

Are you a leader?

Even though all of the above attributes seem obvious as leadership qualities, they remain the exception rather than the rule. Research has found that companies fail to choose the right candidate for such important roles 82% of the time.

While some people are born with a few innate leadership qualities, the rest are self-taught from experience under the right set of circumstances or are the product of coaching. Therefore, understanding the essence of leadership is vital for companies to find and develop their future leaders. In every organization there is an employee with high leadership potential waiting to be discovered. It is even believed that one in ten people possess the necessary traits of a modern leader.

Do you embrace and accept change as inevitable? Are you driven to solve tomorrow’s problems and challenge the status quo? Are you steadfast in your beliefs? Can you adapt yourself to each person you interact? Do you sincerely desire the best for other people? Do you have the courage to step aside and let others lead? To inspire and empower, your influence as a leader must be built upon trust, respect, rapport, energy, a compelling vision and the desire to fulfil the basic human needs of others – not yourself.

Would you like to dig a little deeper, personally, into your qualities as a leader? Consider this set of self-assessment questions designed to help you assess your ability to understand and learn your strengths and weaknesses. There are no right or wrong answers and this survey is not necessarily meant to be shared. These questions help you identify your potential to lead and become a good leader.

1. On a scale from 0-6, with 6 being outstanding, how would you rate yourself as a leader?
2. Do you like setting up goals and targets?
3. What is your response to someone who questions your decision-making abilities?
4. In your opinion do you respond fairly to the issues in the team?
5. Are you open to suggestions from employees and co-workers?
6. Are you willing to take responsibility when a team member fails to deliver against expectations?
7. Do you feel employees should only take orders without asking any questions?
8. Do you personally think that a leader should be reasonable?
9. A leader must not hold any grudges or biases against anyone in the team. Do you agree with the statement?
10. Do you feel being correct is more important than being right?
11. Do you feel providing guidance without any pressure is a trait of a good leader?
12. Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

As in any self-assessment, review of the responses is important. The questions prompt thought and deep consideration of emotional and logical responses to various scenarios a leader might encounter. Be sure that you put aside your answers then return to them after a short while to truly review and think about the meaning of your answers in terms of your current situation a leader.

Written by: Ruth Lee, CMB

The art of the 1:1 meeting is under scrutiny in our remote hybrid working landscape. Let’s face it, being on camera in Zoom meetings all day is exhausting. We all have a ton of meetings. As convenient as a zoom call is to set up and experience with a group and as tempting as it is to reduce the number of meetings by adding more and more people, don’t count out the value of a 1:1 connection, whether virtual or in person.

A 1:1 meeting is a scheduled, bi-directional touch base between a manager and an employee. It provides an opportunity to discuss progress, obstacles, resolve issues, ask questions, and focus on growing each other’s roles. The 1:1 meeting is a critical component of a successful feedback model, which, in a remote world can be shuttered at a mouse click. Employees and managers who hide behind a group, a lens, or a door are equally disadvantaged, and a disorganized, poorly planned 1:1 can be confusing, emotional, and counterproductive.

Today I want to share important tips for organizing, executing, and reviewing the critical 1:1 meeting. Research shows the 1:1 meeting is the number one communication strategy between management and their employees, beating out email, people dropping by unannounced, and all-company meetings for efficacy and efficiency. With a little strategy and planning, you can turn the meeting into an engine of growth, employee satisfaction, and overall productivity. So, let’s talk about the four elements to a strong 1:1 meeting: goals, impediments, opportunities, and actions.

Goals: If you aren’t setting goals with your employees, you are missing one of the most fundamental ways of communicating with your team. If you don’t know where they are going, then who does? At every meeting, you should be discussing what your employee and or their team is working to achieve: receiving a status update, readjusting goals, and proposing new ones. Make sure to set clear milestones which are both concrete and measurable. And agree on deadlines, because a vague someday is much harder to achieve than September 20^th.

Impediments: After discussing goals, it is an easy segue into talking about what is holding them back and what obstacles are in the way of their success. You want to know. Then it’s a simple matter of brainstorming solutions or offering them the benefit of your experience. Challenges come in many shapes, from employees to training to technology. Build a plan to address their obstacles and let them know not all solutions work. The message is: We are in this together and you can rely on this partnership to make it through challenges.

Opportunities: Always spend a few minutes discussing additional opportunities, either for improving their processes or engaging their teams to taking on new training or projects. This is also a great time to discuss prioritization and consider what needs to happen first and what can wait. In a truly open relationship between manager and employee, the sky is the limit on opportunities to improve and achieve their deeply held goals.

Actions: Every meeting has an end, but does it peter off into silence or does it conclude with a bang. Always spend a few minutes to recap both of your next steps. Say them out loud. These will ensure you are both accountable to each other for what happens next. This allows each of you to have a great starting point for your next meeting.

Finally, there are a few administrative tips for your consideration:

• Plan your meetings. Spend ten minutes a few days before your meeting to sketch out a loose agenda and share it with the employee. This allows them an opportunity to think and prepare rather than react.
• Be specific. Stating, “I heard you came in late last week” is worthless. However, saying, “I heard you were late on Tuesday and your team was looking for you” starts a discussion. Likewise, stating, “You don’t communicate clearly” is not the same thing as “I struggled to understand the flow of your presentation on compliance.” You are looking to offer specific feedback, rather than a judgment that will be resented.
• Be honest. Being honest is NOT being mean. Honesty is not cruelty. Honesty is a gift you give someone when saying something is uncomfortable. Practice saying those uncomfortable things, like “Your team relies on you to be on time.” Leave the conclusions and assumptions you’ve heard or built up in your own mind to the said. Let them explain themselves, and often it will be a challenge you address together.
• Be present. Set the expectation upfront: no phones, no emails, no distractions. This is a requirement for both of you. You are both in the meeting to discuss an important issue, change, or challenge, and staying on task fosters productivity which in turn can lead to a valuable yet brief discussion. If you don’t treat it as such, then it really isn’t.

Written by: Megan Anderson

With today’s competitive homebuying landscape, bidding wars are common and many homes are selling above asking price. During these times where people really want or need a new home, competitive spirits may cause them to make emotional decisions about placing an offer on a home rather than analyzing if bidding over asking price really makes sense for them.

In this article, we will discuss how you can best advise homebuyers whether bidding over asking price is the right choice for their unique situation. We’ll specifically address how you can help buyers:

• Overcome a market with tight inventory and multiple offers on homes
• Evaluate how much they should bid above asking price based on forecasted appreciation
• Compete against cash buyers with a creative way to offer more, without needing additional cash

We’ll also show you how MBS Highway’s Bid Over Asking Price tool can help with this analysis.

Is Now Even a Good Time To Buy a Home?

With home prices appreciating at record levels, you probably already have many clients asking you if now is a good time to purchase a home, let alone whether they should bid over asking price. You can answer this question in multiple ways.

It’s still a great time to buy a home because:

• Home loan rates remain near historic lows.
• The hot housing market will not remain idle and your clients could miss out on appreciation gains if they decide to delay their purchase. Plus, there’s the additional benefit of amortization that they’d lose by waiting.
• In addition, the record low inventory of homes that has helped prices appreciate likely won’t be changing anytime soon.

Quite simply, there are fewer homes available for sale because inventory has declined. According to the National Association of Realtors, the total housing inventory of existing homes at the end of July was down 12.0 percent from July of last year.

However, the demand for homes is very strong and should continue to be strong because of favorable birthrate demographics. Millennials are taking over the housing market and there should be even higher numbers of them looking to purchase a home in the coming years due to birthrates. This has made it even more challenging to buy a home because there are more people looking to buy and fewer homes available.

Plus, it’s even harder for builders to complete homes right now due to constraints on the supply chain. Take for example the chip shortage making it harder for appliances to be  delivered and delaying the completion of new homes.

All of these factors come into play when we consider what’s going on in the housing market. The high demand and tight supply should continue to be supportive of home price appreciation, plus with rates historically low, there’s still a big reward for people ready to purchase a home.

But What About All the Talk in the Media About a Housing Bubble?

Home prices have risen 41 percent since 2006 per Case-Shiller’s Home Price Index for June. This has prompted another round of media fearmongering implying a housing bubble is imminent. As you know, the media has been talking about a housing bubble for the past several years, only to see home prices continue to be well supported.

Comparing today’s housing market to the market in 2006 requires us to understand some key differences to help us see the full picture. Let’s break it down.

The majority of individuals who buy homes do so based on the monthly payment. Therefore, we must consider differences in mortgage interest rates, as well as differences in household income between the market in 2006 and today.

Mortgage rates in 2006 ran about 3 percent higher than the interest rates available today. This helps make the monthly payment today much lower, even in some cases where the amount borrowed is higher.

Meanwhile, average hourly earnings have increased by 55 percent from 2006 to today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of the rise in income, as well as the decline in interest rates, the cost to purchase a home today appears to be significantly more affordable than it was in 2006.

Additionally, as mentioned above, today’s appreciation is due to record low home inventory levels and strong demographic demand, which wasn’t the case in 2006. Share this data with your clients and don’t let the media scare them out of all the wonderful benefits of homeownership.

Should I Bid Over Asking Price?

To help your clients answer this question, there are two important things to determine. First, how long will it take for the value of the home to come back up to the price they’re paying for it? In other words, how long will they be upside down?

Second, will your clients have enough resources to bid over ask if the appraisal puts them in the position where they might need mortgage insurance? Also, what if they don’t have enough cash to meet the difference between the mortgage amount they qualify for due to the appraisal and what they’re paying for that home?

MBS Highway’s Bid Over Asking Price tool was created to help you answer these questions for your clients for any property in the country using the address or NMLS number.

Let’s look at a sample property in Tampa, Florida, which is on the market for $499,000. It has multiple bids, so in order to win the deal, a buyer may need to bid $20,000 over asking price at $519,000.

Next, you can also pull up data on what the home is currently approximately worth, and right now it’s worth about $502,000. This would make the offer about $17,000 more than what the home is worth.

So, the question for your clients becomes:  How long do we have to wait for the home’s value to be $519,000?

Based on the forecasted appreciation for this market (4.13 percent average/year), it’s going to take just four months. Considering it may take two months to actually close the home, this would only leave two months after your clients own the home for the value to equal what they paid for it.

In addition, the Bid Over Asking Price tool also analyzes forecasted appreciation over the next five years based upon the average annual rate of forecasted appreciation in that particular zip code. In this case, the five-year forecasted appreciation is $111,800.

While bidding over asking price can feel risky on the surface, breaking the numbers down like this can help your clients evaluate if the choice makes good financial sense to them. And in this case, if your clients are planning to stay in the home for at least five years, the $20,000 bid over asking price sounds much more appealing than it may have without this data regarding the five-year forecasted appreciation of $111,800 presented to them.

How Do I Compete Against Cash Buyers?

Now, what happens if buyers are prepared to bid over asking price, but they don’t have the resources to do so?

Continuing the above scenario, if your clients were to take a $400,000 loan with a 30-year fixed 3 percent rate, their payment would be $1,686.

But what if instead of a 3 percent rate, the buyers use a rate of 3.375 percent, which would give them a buyer credit of $6,000 they can use towards the purchase of the home to make the higher offer. While this higher rate would raise your client’s monthly payment to $1,768 (or $82 per month higher), it could also help them fulfill their dreams of purchasing this home and take advantage of the opportunity to gain $111,800 in appreciation over the next five years.

Being able to help your clients navigate the dynamics of today’s housing market with tight supply and high demand is crucial to becoming an advisor they trust to help them make the right home buying or refinance decision for their family.

With an MBS Highway membership, you’ll have access to tools like our Bid Over Asking Price analysis, Buy vs. Rent Comparison, Loan Comparison tool, daily coaching videos, lock alerts, and more; everything you need to turn prospective homebuyers into clients and build referral relationships.

Try all of these tools and more for free with a 14-day trial and see for yourself how an MBS Highway membership gives you the market insights and tools you need to build trust and increase conversion with your customers and referral partners.