monthly musings meet darryl - realestateunplugged.com

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interview withDarryl DavisDon’t wait

until everything

is just right. It will

never be perfect.

There will always be

challenges, obstacles

and less than perfect

conditions. So whaT.

Get started now.

with each step

you take, you will

grow stronger

and stronger, more

and more skilled, more

and more self-confident

and more and more

SucceSSful.

—Mark Victor Hansen

Michael Krisa, aka The Interview Guy Presents

Meet DarrylStarting his real estate career at the age of 19, Darryl Davis of Darryl Davis Seminars became a top producer in his first year and as an active associate, generated an average of 6 transactions a month. After a successful sales career, Darryl opened a new office that became the #1 listing and selling office in the first six months.

Darryl soon realized that his true joy in life came from coaching others to achieve their goals. He decided to share his ideas with the industry through one-day seminars, workshops and becoming a professional speaker. Realizing these one-day seminars were just a quick fix that didn’t make a lasting impact in an agent’s production; he created The POWER Program®, the only year-long course for real estate agents. Darryl speaks with a commitment to the success of others. Unlike most speakers, he moves beyond simple “tips” and “how-to’s” and coaches sales people to emulate the effective techniques of top producers. As one radio talk show host put it, “Darryl Davis is a ‘Success Coach’ for the salesperson”.

Here are some of the topics we will be covering:

Finding a balance between money, family and yourself.

Learning how to delegate so you can focus on the important things.

Meet Darryl at http://DarrylDavisSeminars.com or e-mail him at [email protected] for listings, services, training, innovative and expert real estate advice.

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Monthly Musings

Michael Krisa, aka That Interview Guy


MICHAEL: Well greetings everyone! It’s Michael Krisa here, That Interview Guy, and with me I have the infamous, the famous – infamous and famous, the same thing. - Darryl Davis. How you doing Darryl?

DARRYL: Great Michael, how you doing?

MICHAEL: I’m doing – Oh, now I’ve got to talk like Darryl. I’m ‘doin’ fine. Thanks for asking Darryl. Let’s go blow up a car and eat some ‘bro-shoot-o’.

DARRYL: Not bad for a Canadian.

MICHAEL: I should have said beaver and hockey, but there you go. So you and I were just talking prior to this call and one of the things that gets me really excited about working with you is you’re a lot of fun. You’re this like Roman candle on stage, and you let all the air out of my balloon by saying, “Let’s talk about something really serious today.”

DARRYL: Yea.

MICHAEL: And so I’ve got my box of tissues here; I’ve got mood music in the background, and I’m just pulling your leg here, but part of it is, you know, you’ve discovered that there’s something happening in the industry right now with realtors, and it has to do with balance.

DARRYL: Well, and that’s, you know because, Michael, there’s no secret that the market is not been what it was and, you know, some people are saying they’re having their best year, but most of the agents are not. Most of the agents are struggling, most of them have concern, and there’s a tremendous amount of stress. There’s more news that came out today on CNBC that the sales have gone down tremendously this quarter compared to the previous quarter, so there’s more and more negative stuff. I’m talking about double digit declines. So anyways, so I wanted to do something with you that is more poignant – that people need more – and that’s how to manage or how to balance their life in an unbalanced market, and I think that there’s three areas that agents really need to master in this market. You know I’m going to say something. I wasn’t going to say this, but you’ve heard that expression that ‘necessity is they mother of invention’, that when you need something it forces you to invent something to fix that problem? Well I think for anybody that’s going through struggles right now, and challenges, the opportunity exists for them to reinvent themselves, and I think the three areas that an agent needs to look at reinventing and getting good at having balance is money, their relationship to money, and how they manage their money. The second is family, the relationship they have with their family, and then the third is the relationship they have with themselves. So that’s what I thought we should talk about today is how to balance between money, family and yourself.

MICHAEL: Well the cool thing too is this is the genesis of a new keynote that you’re going to be doing, so our listeners get first shot at this.

DARRYL: Yes, they’re getting the new raw material! This is probably going to be worth money in the future, because they can sell this recording and say they were part of it! I don’t know, just making this up Michael.

MICHAEL: Yea right and I get sued because they’re selling your ... Yea thanks Darryl, like I need that hanging over my heard. You know? Thank you so much.


It’s interesting. I don’t like to generalize, you know, and say a lot of agents, the majority of agents, whatever, you know, we’ll just take that out of the equation, but I think by and large when things get tough like this there’s a tendency to blame everything. So it’s external. You’re looking out and you’re saying, “Agh, the market’s no good, and this doesn’t work, and my brokers suck...” But we really don’t look in a mirror and focus on ourselves and say, “Well what can I be doing to ...” I don’t want to say react, but “What can I be doing positively to somehow adapt?” I think is better than react. Adapt means you have to think about this, and this is what you’re talking about now, the mother of invention. You’re actually putting some thought and insight into, “What do I have to do to make myself better to get through this?”

DARRYL: Well you know there’s two great quotes in regards to this Michael, and, well actually I’ll say third. One was from my broker, and I’ll start with that one. He would always say that he’d do the mirror test, the mirror test. Now this is before Michael Jackson came out with a song, Man in the Mirror. My broker used to say to me, “You know you need to look in the mirror, and look at yourself, to see where are you responsible in the matter of the results that you have in your business, whether those are good or bad.”

But the other two famous people, one was Zig Ziglar who said, “When you point your finger out as to what’s not working in your life, and if you actually do that you’ll have three fingers pointing back at yourself and the real reason.”

But also, Wally Amos, who created the Famous Amos Cookies, after he had lost his company, because he managed it poorly, and it was taken away from him. I mean even the courts said that the name Amos was a trademark for cookies. He couldn’t even use his own name on any food product. I mean that’s how bad it got for him, and when he was interviewed, and he was still very positive, the interviewer said, “I can’t believe you’re so positive given that you’ve lost your company, you’ve lost the use of your own name in the food industry,” and here’s what Wally Amos said. “I’ll tell you why,” he said, “because I know I created these problems that happened in my life, but that also means I have the power to create the solutions for them.” So that was just really powerful. It’s all about just taking responsibility.

MICHAEL: Is this guy still alive?

DARRYL: Yes.

MICHAEL: Interesting story. So okay, you’ve opened this door, and you know how my brain works.

DARRYL: Yea!

MICHAEL: So was he selling ice creams on a stick?

DARRYL: Actually, well I will tell you as a PS, he came out with a muffin product line and it’s called the Noname Muffin Company, so there you go, Wally Amos.

MICHAEL: Squeeze the lemon and get vodka, okay I see how this works. Well let’s jump into this, so you gave us three categories that we have to focus on, which is basically money, family and themselves, and knowing you, being the greedy bastard that you are, let’s focus on the money side of things first. Perfect segway, tell me all about this. What do you mean by this Darryl?


DARRYL: Well you know we’ve all heard the expression that money doesn’t buy happiness, and I’ll joke in my seminars, but it sure helps. You know I’ve had times in my life when I’ve had a lot of money and times in my life when I was broke, and believe you me Michael, money is better. Even though it doesn’t buy happiness I’ve figured out if you’re depressed and you’ve got a lot of money you can go someplace real nice and be depressed. But what I want to talk about is not so much about making money, because that would be a totally different seminar; that would be a totally different interview about listing and selling. You know what I want people to recognize is that number one, money doesn’t buy happiness. It doesn’t solve problems, but the lack of money creates additional problems, so an agent needs to definitely focus on generating cash.

Regardless of what’s happening in the market and the economy they need to be the cause and not the effect of what’s going on in their business. The second thing I want to say about the whole money aspect is that, going back to ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, that what an agent should be doing right now is looking at how to be more responsible with their money, and I need to say this, because Michael there are probably some people listening to this saying, “Well you know I don’t have any money so there’s nothing for me to manage or look at. Cause you know, that’s just how it is.” And I know some people go in that direction, but if, let’s say that you’re really, really fat, you’re really heavy and you don’t say to yourself, “Well you know because I’m so fat and I know I should be healthy, but because I am so fat I’m just not going to worry about it. I’m just going to keep eating more.” It’s the same thing, if you don’t have money you don’t say, “Well I don’t need to manage it or be responsible or alert about it.” As a matter of fact, probably if you are struggling and don’t have money is more of a reason why now you need to be responsible and look at it, so a couple of suggestions, and that is if somebody is – I don’t like, I’m not going to teach, Michael, or say that an agent needs to get good at budgeting, because I’m truly not great myself at budgeting money, so if somebody has a habit of spending what they probably should do is start having a category. If let’s say spending shopping is one of those things they should have another category of spending which is actually saving, meaning an agent should get in the habit, and I think this is like Money 101 okay? But I know for a fact, Michael, that a lot of people, even half way through their years in their life, have still not done this, and that’s paying yourself first, putting some money away for these rainy days. You and I both know, Michael, if people were saving money when the market was really, really hot, when the market kind of changed they would have less stress, because they would have that nest egg. So I think an agent needs to get into the habit of that. They need to look at what they’re responsibilities are in the future and start planning for it. Like my son, you know, he’s thirteen, and in five years he’s going to be going to college. Of course he wants to go to Notre Dame. I kind of, you know, encourage that because we actually took a trip to Notre Dame and we did a personal tour around the whole campus, and he got very excited about he wants to go to Notre Dame. Well if he were going to Notre Dame this year, for four years I would need a quarter of a million dollars, so we need a plan for the future. Okay? And I will say, by the way, that Fidelity Brokerage online, they have incredible, incredible, incredible tools on how to save and invest. I mean, I don’t want to get into the whole thing, but if you don’t know how to invest, Fidelity, if you just tell them what your goals are they will tell you what to invest in. It’s pretty incredible. Anyway, so that’s it on the money. I feel like I’m talking at you.

MICHAEL: No, I’m listening. I think part of it too Darryl, some people are good with money and some aren’t. Maybe this is where your broker comes in and you have that conversation and say, “Look, from every deal that comes in please take of ‘X’ percent and stick it into an account so I don’t even see it, and I don’t even touch it.”


DARRYL: Absolutely! I think that’s an awesome and incredible idea. I will say too is that, you know, I’ve been talking, Michael, to some other agents about their buyers and stuff who have bad credit scores and FICO scores, which I do believe by the way, as an aside, I do believe the mortgage industry is going to rewrite their standards when it comes to writing loans for people, meaning that there’s so much of the country, more than a third of the United States is under water on their mortgages, on their house and on properties are getting closed on ... If the mortgage industry is going to want to keep writing loans once we’ve kind of hit that bottom, well they’re going to have more people that have filed bankruptcy, that have horrible scores. Whereas the standard used to be that, you know, if you had at least 660, which is kind of what the word is out there, 680, you can get a mortgage. Well they’re probably going to have to adjust that standard if they want to stay in business in the future. So I say that as a positive thing, that because there are so many people that have had financial troubles, the mortgage industry, if they want to stay in the mortgage business, they’re going to most likely reinvent their standards if they want to stay in the business. I’m sorry. What I wanted to say was for any agent that is having their own financial challenges with their credit cards or their payments and all that stuff, they really should look at a credit counselor. And what I’ve learned from talking to other agents is these credit counselors are acting kind of like money coaches if you will. Not only they’re coaching the agent, or coaching their customers to get back on track, but if you’re getting bill collectors calling you and stuff, Michael, it really – it’s such an emotional distraction. If you’re trying to make money and keep getting phone calls from people that say you’re a deadbeat and you owe money, it’s really hard to keep that positive outlook on your career when you keep getting those calls. It’s even worse when you start getting them on your cell phone. So if an agent is finding that they’re in that situation, if they got a credit counselor to fight their battles, to start making the phone calls, negotiating payments, negotiating the balances. Like give it to somebody else. The same concept, if somebody’s in a short sale situation the home owner should give it to an agent, let the agent deal with the bank and the foreclosure and the short sale. So the home owner has to deal with it, same thing with the agent. They should give their money challenges to somebody else. Let them worry for them so they can move on and focus what they need to focus on, and that’s generating cash.

MICHAEL: Well this is kind of like the backbone of any motivational speaker. You know, what you think about you’re going to bring about. So if your focus is on, “Oh man! I owe this much money, and this guy keeps calling, and...,” that’s what you’re focusing on. So that’s the direction that you’re going to move in, and I know this sounds so much easier than it is in practicality to implement, and I guess, Darryl, what you and I should do right now is premise we’re “should-ing” all over people. You know, “You should do this,” “You should do that.” I don’t want to sound like some no-it-all guy. You know, I’ve been through the financial drudlums. You know that old joke, ‘my wife helped make me the millionaire I am today, but I was a billionaire when I was single.’ You know that kind of thing, and so for the people on the call right now, this isn’t about us shoulding all over you. These are suggestions, and I’ve known Darryl for a few years. You and I go back probably about ten years now, and I know that anything you’re sharing right now is coming from the heart, because you touch so many realtors.

DARRYL: Well I appreciate that, yea, because if I wanted to do something that was going to generate money for me I probably wouldn’t have picked this topic with you, because I don’t have any product to sell for agents in this regard, but I felt like it’s perhaps, for some people, this is like really, really important, and I wanted to make sure that we help those people as best as we can, so I appreciate what you said.


MICHAEL: I think the other part to this too Darryl is actually admitting that there is a problem as opposed to saying, “I’ve got all these bills piling up on my desk, magically they’re going to disappear.” Well that ain’t going to happen! Unless you marry rich or you win the lottery, and even the lottery, I mean I call that an idiot’s tax, you know that you willingly give away money for a ticket. That’s not going to make it go away. It’s a matter of making tough decisions right now, to saying, “Okay, here’s where I am. Here’s where I want to go. Do I need help?” And as you mentioned, maybe it is getting financial advice, going to a credit counselor if that’s what it takes to get through this.

DARRYL: You know Michael, you just made me think of something indirectly with what you just said that I think is really, really important, because I’ve been there. I’ve been there where, you know, you take the bills and you put them in the drawers, and that’s how you deal with it and, you know, what I’m encouraging, and I think what you and I are both encouraging people to do, it’s not so much about just dealing with the bills. Like that’s kind of the surface thing. It’s more about getting just financially intelligent and financially responsible. It’s about building a particular character about when it comes to money. So what’s really not even about dealing with the debt that you owe or dealing with creditors, it’s really about you just being responsible financially period. And dealing with those creditors is part of the process.

I don’t know if I’m being clear, so I’m going to say it another way that will crystallize those. Talking to my son, I’ve been working with my son everyday during the summer for the last thirty days on improving his algebra, because he tells me he wants to go to Notre Dame. He’s going to have to get his grades up, so everyday I’ve been working with my son for an hour. I bought these books. I spent like $250 on books from Amazon that have, you know, algebra quizzes, reading and ... And so, you know, there’s so much focus on getting the right answer, and I told my son, “Michael, it’s not about the answer. It’s about you learning the formula behind the answer, and the answer is just telling you that you know the formula, but it’s not about getting the answer. It’s about understanding the formula.”

And that’s what I’m trying to say here, it’s not about the end result, fixing your bills, it’s about you understanding financial responsibility so you grow as a human being and the relationship of money. So that’s it.

MICHAEL: And money has no conscience, money is just an animate object. It’s a thing, and it’s what we do with that. You know, it buys us happiness or it causes grief, so there’s no guilt associated with money, it just is. So maybe part of this, Darryl, is, and again I’m not trying to harp or preach into the choir sort of thing here, but it’s a matter of making frugal decisions, taking out your balance sheet and looking, “Okay, what am I spending my money on? Do I really need to go to Starbucks twice a day? Do I really need to be driving around my car unproductively?” And this goes, and I know you didn’t want to go down this path, but it goes back to, “I have to hone my skills now when I’m talking to prospective buyers/prospective sellers. I’ve got to be dead-on serious about what it is that they’re outcome is. I’ve got to cut through the crap and get right to what’s important as opposed to putting people in my car that I don’t even know are qualified and driving around town.”

DARRYL: Yea. Well if we were going to end this with a specific tip, like to just crystallize it for people that need to hear this, that would be… You know what, they should take their money worries and give it to somebody else so they’re not worrying about it, and they can focus on what they need to focus on, which is generating cash. The second thing an agent should probably do, for those that this applies to, is increase their financial intelligence so they are better at managing money in the future. So as they do make more money, they can manage it and be responsible, better than what they have to this point. I will tell you something, Michael. I wasn’t sure I was


going say it, but I go this term when I read this article from Business Week. This article had, they looked at their top five professions where men were most likely to have an affair, and of course one of those top five professions was real estate agents. They also had, on the woman’s side, what women in what professions, top five professions, were most likely to have an affair, and real estate agents showed up on that list too. But the disturbing part was real estate agents were the only profession that showed up on both the men’s side and the women’s side. When I read this I started to think, ‘You know I’ll bet you, I have a friend of mine who’s a divorce attorney, and he told me, and actually I used him as you know, Michael, I became single this year, at the beginning of this year, so I learned a lot about families breaking up and going through that kind of challenge. And so my attorney, this divorce attorney, I asked him how business was, and what do you think he said? “It’s booming!” He said, and he said something very obvious!

He said, “You know when people are having money problems the family kind of really falls apart, because it adds more stress.” And to me that’s really disturbing because in the time of, you know, you having money problems is when the family probably needs to stick together more so than ever, because if the family is sticking together they can deal with the money problems so much stronger. I know what happens from, not personal experience, but when I was an agent, like I cheated, but personal experience watching other realtors.

It’s like some agents are in real estate because, and again I’m not making this up. I know you don’t like those classifications that everybody is a particular way, so I agree with you. Not everybody is this way, but we know that there are some agents that are in real estate, and what they love about the real estate business is because they can avoid going home. They just don’t like being home, so they can just leave home whenever they want. And so if you’ve got that kind of thing going on at home and then you’re around other agents that are going through similar feelings or challenges, it’s really easy to have that temporary high, if you will, the high of somebody liking you and paying attention to you and the whole dating thing, and it’s very exciting! The only challenge is that going down that path is probably going to create even more stress and more problems down the road.

My encouragement for people is that if you’re finding you’re having money problems and you’re having family problems both at the same time your priorities should be go take care of your family, and that will help you with the money, because if you are trying to make money but yet you’re having these challenges at home it’s going to be, of course, impossible to make money because of that distraction. Then throw an affair into the mix, well then you’re more about the affair and the goo-goo ga-ga and the “Ewe this is exciting,” and you’re still not keeping your eye on the ball and what’s important. So there’s just one thought about the whole. Do I sound like I’m preaching too much here Michael?

MICHAEL: No, I don’t know. This is not our usual conversation, so I think the gloves are off. It’s going to go wherever it’s going to go, and when you throw affairs into the mix, and I’ve seen it too, because when you’re in a real estate office people are close together, and it’s just dynamics or whatever, and to me it’s like going Disney. You know, you go and there’s the bright lights and the glitter and the smell of popcorn, and it’s all great, but at closing time what they don’t see is after you leave the park and they have to clean up the mess that’s there. It’s not such a pretty place after all.

DARRYL: Right! Yea, it’s just an illusion.

MICHAEL: Yea, and I think maybe that’s it. You know if people are down and they are struggling it’s an illusion. It allows them to escape, but I think this goes back Darryl to why did you get into the business in the


first place? And I think for a lot of people the personality type, and this is a generalization, but I think it proves true for realtors, that they want to help people. They generally care and want to help people, but that genuine care and compassion, that starts at home. And so caring about your family, because the whole thing about this job, I mean this is the greatest job in the world, and you can make as much or as little money as you want. You know it’s still kind of like the last frontier of, you know, there’s still that excitement that, “I’m my own business, I’m an entrepreneur. I can get out there and I can do this.” I think at the end of the day it’s not hard listening to people like you. You know, Real Estate Unplugged, listen to what other top professionals are doing.

It’s there. It’s so easy in that respect. The information’s there. It’s a matter of taking it and applying it and then going back to what’s that foundation of what you got into the business for in the first place, and I think by and large it’s not about selling houses. It’s about a lifestyle that allows you the freedom to do what you want to do and then hopefully enjoy that with somebody, and that somebody is hopefully your family.

DARRYL: Yes, absolutely. Well I have some suggestions maybe to help people, even in the most perfect relations maybe some of this stuff will be useful, and so should I share these?

MICHAEL: Yes, fire away! It’s your nickel.

DARRYL: Okay, well first of all is definitely pick your battles. You know sometimes we, and I’ve learned this more with my son too. You know he’s going into his teenage years, and what I’ve learned about with children is that going into the teenage years the type of parenting that you used preteen is ... you have to throw the book out and write a new book. I noticed one time I was arguing with my son about something. I forget what it was, but, and I can almost hear myself, and I was watching how he was reacting, and it was like I was talking to my little boy who was maybe eight or nine years old. You know he’s thirteen now, and he’s starting to become a man, and he wasn’t talking to me, but I could read his facial expressions that my guess was I wasn’t respecting him as a human being, like I was almost talking down to him as if he was a child. So I realized, and I actually had a conversation with him. I said, “You know Michael, I think up until this point in your life I’ve been a pretty good Dad,” if I do say so myself, because I parent him from a pure place of love. So, I think when you love your child any parenting you won’t lose.

Anyway, so I said, “So now that you’re becoming a man I realize that I have to reinvent myself as a parent and do things different than what I’ve been doing, and so do you. You have to reinvent yourself. So as we go through this we’re going to be making some mistakes, and so if I make a mistake with you I’ll just clean it up and we’ll move forward.” Anyway. So um, sorry Michael. I don’t know where I was going with that, but whenever talk about my son I just go off on these little tangents. I guess my point was there is, especially if you have children, but even with our spouse or significant other, you’ve got to pick your battles. Some battles are just not worth fighting for it. It’s not important.

The second thing I’d say is learn quick forgiveness. You know, when there is an upset you need to get off it quickly. You don’t want to go bed mad. You know I wrote a note here in the summer I’m working on. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. When you go to bed with regrets or anger, resentments, you wake up in the morning with that very thing cloud in your day. You know when the sun rises all you see is the cloud dome, and the thing is the sun is there. The sun is just hidden behind the clouds, and I believe we have sunshine in our life all the time we just need to get rid of those clouds. It’s real important to clean things up and not go to bed with that anger.


What else do I have here? Um, well that’s pretty much it.

MICHAEL: Well I guess there’s really two parts to that Darryl, because when you say be forgiving, and I think a lot of people may be quick to forgive, but there’s that other component that you’ve got to forget.

DARRYL: Yea.

MICHAEL: And it’s one thing to say, “Okay I forgive you but, you son-of-a-bitch, I’m going to remember this until the day you die.”

DARRYL: I agree. You know I ah, hmm! The relationship I was in for eighteen years that kind of ended. It wasn’t my choice. It was a tough relationship for eighteen years. Um, we had our challenges, but no relationship’s perfect, and I will tell you that I think what kept us together for eighteen years as opposed to like eight years, was that I was, you know, I always had to ask myself what was I committed to when we would have an argument. Am I committed to win this argument or am I committed to the relationship? And sometimes I had to let go of winning, so I could be in this relationship. And yea, you’ve got to not just forgive, but you’ve got to forget. Let it go and focus on what’s really important. I do have two other suggestions when it comes to family, and that is make a family fun list. This is something that I did, again with my son, and with Erica. It seems like whenever we would have stress, you know, like I’m working too hard and the family’s not spending time together, I created this family fun list, and the idea, Michael, is this. You see most of the time when people feel like I got to spend time with my family they’ll say, “Let’s go to the movie. Let’s go have dinner.” So it’s like those are the two activities that every family leans on, and so what I did is created a list of items we can do that didn’t cost money, or a lot of money, and we can do it quickly. So it wasn’t like go on vacation to Hawaii, it was like go to the movies, go to the park, ride our bikes, have a picnic, whatever. So they were quick and easy things to do, and I wrote these down and hung them up on the refrigerator, and the game was never to repeat an activity until the whole list was done. So every activity would only be done once until the whole list is complete.

Now Michael I think, for me anyway, what was really great about this was it forced me to do creative things with my family and actually create memories. You know, I think, especially when you have children, it’s all about making memories for them, you know the things that we do with them that we don’t think is important, you know, they talk about it when they’re in their thirties and forties, “I remember my parents told me ...” And the last suggestion that I’ve got is create a family fun day, you know, just one day that you are committed to just spending with your family. Like with me and my son, you know my son lives in Mesa, I’m around him all the time, but Sunday is our day. Sunday is the day when he’s not seeing his friends, I’m not working, and we spend time together, so picking that one day a week that you can spend with your family.

MICHAEL: I think that’s really important, because in a business where we try to schedule our time, you’ve got to schedule time for yourself, and I guess we’ll get into that in a minute. You’ve got to make you time where you just sit back and recharge your batteries, and then family time, I think that’s got to be sacred. If you say, I know a lot of people use this expression, ‘date night’, you know with your wife, you’ve got to carve that in stone. And I think, and the agents that I’ve worked with that really truly believe this and hold it dear, they have phenomenal lives and phenomenal relationships, because that’s the thing that they do it all first. I did this interview a little while back with Dr. Cliff Baird. He’s a clinical psychologist. Do you remember that one with Cliff?


A clinical psychologist, and he used to own thirty some odd real estate offices, so the guy knows real estate as well, and we talked about avoidance behavior. You know, what it is that, why people run away from stuff, and as a clinical psychologist he used to with drug addicts and people with addictions, and he said here’s the thing that a realtor will pull up in front of a FSBO or an expired, and in their hearts they’re there for the right reason. You know they’re going to go knock on the door, because they’re there to get the right business, and using the analogy of FSBO, he gets a little piece of paper and will write down the phone number that he or she knows they’re going to lose, because it’s so small. And they’re going to go knock on the door, but thank God for realtor watches because he looks and realizes, ‘Woe I’ve got an appointment. I’ve got to go.’

So instead of actually going up there and doing the thing, start the car, put it in drive, and as soon as he puts the foot on the gas pedal and starts driving away, that’s when the endorphins kick and then psychologically there’s this release, this “Haw!” relaxation. You know, and he said it’s the exact same thing when a drug addict – you know it’s not the drug. It’s that moment in time when they stick the needle into the vein that the anxiety is gone. He says okay then how do you break that pattern?

He says well you’ve got to back to what’s important to you, and he said, in the car what he always recommended is you pull out the picture of that one person in your life that you’re doing it for, because that FSBO, that expired, whatever, and this is his words, “They don’t give a rip about you!” You could drive away right now and be in an accident. They don’t care, and frankly, they don’t want to care. They don’t want that responsibility. If they knew the hell that you were going through sitting in the car trying to go up there and knock on the door, they don’t want that. But that picture, he said, makes it all worthwhile because this is why I am out here, for the smile on that face, and this is going back to what you said about your son, Michael. And I like him already because of his name. This guy is you ball of energy. This is what keeps you moving, and I think all too often we forget about that. What are the prime motivators in our life that make us get up in the morning when we don’t want to? And I think every once in a while you’ve just got to sit back and say, “Hey, this is why I’m doing this.”

DARRYL: Well you know I don’t want to get too woo at all, like sixties and like San Francisco on us, but I think that we all have this hole in our heart, and we try to fill that hole. You know, like what Cliff was saying with the drugs or alcohol or having an affair, and what that whole is, is love. I think that we as human beings, we’re designed. That’s part of like who we are, and if we don’t have love, well we’re not giving love. There’s a void for us, and so we look for these other extra curriculum activities to kind of get that of fill that void, and I’ll tell you I’ve become a stronger human being. Michael I’ve become a stronger human being since I had this challenge with my significant other, Erica, and now I’ve become so much closer with my son that it’s that relationship and that love that’s made me a stronger business person. It’s made me a stronger human being. So yea, it’s an important thing, and what Cliff was saying about what’s important to you. You know, having a picture of that person, when you’re fighting for somebody or something that’s important that you love, and this goes back to the whole family thing, why it’s so important. You know, if you’ve got a solid relationship, and I know from men this is definitely true, and I don’t mean to be sexist, but when we have a family that we’re fighting for – You know that’s true about women, I’m sorry. – We’ll do things, we’ll push past what stops us. If we know we’ve got a family that we need to provide for, and we love them, we want to work hard for them. We want to provide for them. So anyway.

MICHAEL: The main part of it is sometimes you just take it for granted. You know, it’s like when you buy an brand new car, “Woe, I don’t even want to put this thing out in the rain. I don’t water to get on and leave spots on my brand new paint!” and then a year into it you’re driving through ditches and potholes like you’re doing some off road rally.


DARRYL: Now that’s a great analogy, relationships is like buying a brand new car. Like you take care of it, you clean. Oh that is so good Michael! That’s like great! It’s like you get a new care, every day you’re waxing the leather and cleaning the ashtray, and taking the mat out, and then after like a few months maybe you’re like cleaning it once a month, and as time goes on you begin to neglect the heck out of that car. Really funny.

MICHAEL: You know I’d love you dearly Darryl.

DARRYL: I’m going to steal that.

MICHAEL: Yea, and that’s where I was going with this, because I know I’m going to be at some event and you’re going to say this and people, “Oh wow! He’s so smart!”

DARRYL: “Boy Darryl is so smart!” And we’re like, “Yea.”

MICHAEL: If only they knew that you steal ninety-nine percent of your stuff. It’s all those Mike Ferry tapes you’ve got lying around. If only they knew!

DARRYL: Oh my gosh! You know we were on this call so long and I was like, “He’s not going to bring up Mike Ferry name for the first time. So- of-a! You did. All right thank you, I should just end this call now.

MICHAEL: Ah, didn’t want to disappoint you man.

DARRYL: All right, so let’s go over the last thing, which is yourself. You know we need to take care of ourselves. One of the analogies which was actually taught to me by a good friend of mine by the name of Anthony Giordano, he’s an insurance salesman but I’ve known him longer than most people in my life. Anyway, he said to me that when you go on an airline, and you’re on the plane, and they’re explaining all the mechanics about the plane, if there is an emergency, the oxygen masks comes down. They say, you know, if you’re traveling with a child make sure you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, because you can’t save your child if you’re not first taken care of, and that is a great analogy for life in general.

We’re no good for anybody, our clients, our business, our family, our children, if we don’t take care of ourselves, so it’s real important that we take that time and carve it out. So I’ve got a couple of tips.

Number one, we need to find the humor in our life. You know, they say laughter is the best medicine, second to morphine. And Psychology Today wrote this article that said that scientists say that laughter actually lowers your stress levels, reduces your blood sugar, it boosts your immunes cells, reduces depression, so I literally think it’s important that we find the time to actually laugh every day, whether it’s reading a book, watching the comedy channel, whatever it takes when we need that humor.

I’ll read something to you Michael, I thought this was interesting. In India they did the first study, this was three years ago, on the effects of laughter, and there was actually two studies done. One was American and one was done in India, and they found that they examine the affects of laughter. “One study shows there was an improvement in the work effectiveness of more than a hundred percent, and other confirms major stress


reduction or remarkable increase in emotional intelligence skills that are required for career and life success.” And these test results were only within three weeks. So, I mean literally, laughter can help you make more money and become more emotionally intelligent in your life, so I thought that was pretty cool.

The other suggestion I have for your self is get good at completing things. You know, a lot of incomplete items in your life, projects that you start, whether it’s personal, whether it’s business, that stuff will drain you like life suckers. So, you know, we’ve got to make sure that we complete our activities that we start out.

The other suggestion I have is we’ve got to get healthy, and you know me Michael, I am not like the healthiest person in the world. I mean I’m overweight and stuff, but we still need to, and we don’t have to be Olympians, but we definitely have to take care of our self, because if we don’t’ feel good about ourselves – It’s more of a psychological thing than even a health thing. You know if you’re feeling uncomfortable with your body and you don’t feel good about it, you know it impacts your confidence. You can’t have confidence in yourself if you’re not confident in how you look. So do whatever’s necessary, be responsible.

I’m going to tell you something else Michael. I don’t think you know this but I know you know that I ran a couple marathons, and one of them was the New York City Marathon, but I haven’t ran in a couple of years now, and I want to start running! And I’ve been finding a real problem with having the energy to do it, so I went to doctors after doctors to try to find out why is my energy level so low. Well it turns out I have sleep apnea, so I’m not like getting any sleep during the night. So I go to bed tired and I wake up tired, and some people when they see me speak they don’t understand that, because you’ve seen me speak Michael, I don’t look like I’m tired. You know I have a lot of energy on that stage, but this is something I’ve been battling for, I can’t tell you how many years. So anyway, I’m getting that machine. I’m going to look like Darth Vader, which now I know I’m never going to be able to date again once people know and see this machine in my bedroom.

MICHAEL: Alongside with all those other machines that you know you have in your bedroom.

DARRYL: I was joking with somebody about what happens if I go out into a club or a night club and I get lucky. It’s like what am I, do I have to like bring the machine and put it in the trunk of my car? If I go to their place I’ve got to hook it up.

MICHAEL: You’ve got to get out more often I think with adults.

DARRYL: Oh my gosh, I just can’t see, I’m going to look like Darth Vader at night, but I’m going to sleep.

MICHAEL: You opened the door on fitness, and again, that’s lifestyle, it’s discipline, just getting up in the morning and going for a walk. I mean you’ve got to start somewhere. I remember you were speaking, I can’t remember where we crossed. It was San Francisco, it was the last NAR event, wherever that was, and you go this joke, which just cracks me up, and it was about the guy, um…

DARRYL: The jogger, the fat guy.

MICHAEL: The jogger! You should, that will just make this all gel together I think Darryl.

DARRYL: Okay, well if anybody wants to actually see me deliver it they should go to http://YouTube.com/Darrylspeaks. As fate would have it, you know I’ve delivered that joke so many times, but the best time I’ve ever


delivered it in my career was in New Zealand in front of 2000 salespeople, and that’s that video on YouTube. So if anybody wants to see me deliver it the best that was right there, but how this joke goes real quick is: This guy was extremely overweight and he wanted to lose weight, so he goes to his minister and his minister said, “Okay if you’re serious I’m going to tell you what I want you to do. I want you to get ready tomorrow morning by 7:00. Have your jogging sneakers, jogging pants, your jogging jacket.” And the guy said, “Well Minister, I’ve already tried the working out jogging thing.” The Minister said, “Shh, shh, just do what I said,” So the next morning he reluctantly gets up. He puts his jogging sneakers, his jogging pants, jogging jacket. 7:00 his doorbell rings. He goes, he answers the door and there’s a beautiful woman standing there. I mean she’s just knock out legs, everything. Mmm, mmm! And so the woman says to the guy, “The minister said if you can catch me you can have me.” Well this guy obviously had a goal, but he doesn’t catch her because he’s huge. So the next day he wakes up real enthused, puts on the jogging sneakers, jogging pants, jogging jacket, 7:00 ding-dong, “If you can catch me you can have me.”

This goes on day after day, week after week. Well the guy’s not noticing it, but he’s losing weight. As a matter of fact he’s turning into a real handsome dude. He’s looking kind of GQ-ish. He’s getting all toned up, he’s getting his six pack, he’s looking mighty nice! But he’s also getting frustrated, so he decides to go to the gym on the weekend, workout extra, puts weights on his legs, and Monday morning he is excited, because he knows he’s going to catch her now, and he is. So he wakes up Monday morning all ready to go, puts his jogging sneakers, his jogging shorts now, his tank top. He’s all handsome, glistening, doorbell rings, 7:00 ding-dong. He opens the door, there’s a huge woman standing there, and she looks and him and says, “Mmm! The minister said if I can catch you I can have you.” So there you go. So there’s the story.

MICHAEL: Appreciate it Darryl. I mean we’ve been all over the map with this. We’ve talked about business, family, you know, themselves. I was going to ask you if you were going to leave an inspirational message, what would it be, but we’ve been doing that for the past hour.

DARRYL: Well, you know, here’s what I’ll leave it with, and that is we’ve got to embrace our challenges. We are definitely a drive-thru society, but there’s no drive-thru break throughs, so we have to go through whatever it is we’re going through to become stronger.

Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” So whatever challenges people may be going through, whether it’s in their personal life, family life or their finances, if they’re committed to the process and not just the solution, and they commit to mastering all of what they’re going through, it will actually make them a stronger human being and a better person for it.

MICHAEL: That’s awesome. I’m going to leave you with a little crumb Darryl, and it says here, “Nothing is an obstacle unless you say it is.”

DARRYL: Oh that’s good.

MICHAEL: You know who that is?

DARRYL: No.


MICHAEL: That’s your cookie guy, Wally Amos.

DARRYL: Oh, did you look it up while we were talking?

MICHAEL: Yea, I’m sitting looking at his site right now. I mean how powerful is that? “Nothing is an obstacle unless you say it is.”

DARRYL: That’s awesome! Good job Michael! You just impress me. That was good.

MICHAEL: Well I’m going to run now while, you know, leave them laughing. You know, like you always say Darryl. It’s been a pleasure. Hey, if they want to find out more about you Darryl, where do they go?

DARRYL: They can go to http://DarrylDavisSeminars.com.

MICHAEL: And if they go to the sites there’s this wonderful tab there. It says Free Stuff.

DARRYL: Yea, if they click on there, there’s some stuff on there. Um, I think there’s a video there. We’re actually redoing the site so I don’t know if it’s going to have it. I know we’ll have free stuff on there. I just don’t know if it’s going to be a special tab or something, but there is some great stuff in there, and I know we’re going to have a video on there that people always love, that I show. It’s about time and how important it is and stuff like that.

MICHAEL: Darryl Davis, my friend, I know we joke around and kid a lot, but I love you like a brother, and I want to thank you for taking time out to do this my friend.

DARRYL: My pleasure! I hope it helps some people Michael, and thanks for doing what you do. It’s important in the industry and I know people need it and appreciate it, so thank you, thank you!

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