By Maggie FitzRoy, Contributing Writer
The plane that Roberta Ross boarded in Pittsburgh to begin a trip to Jacksonville was delayed two hours due to mechanical issues.
Ten minutes after it finally took off for Atlanta, a female passenger had a medical emergency, forcing a return to the airport.
By the time Ross finally got to Atlanta, she’d missed all connecting flights to Jacksonville and had to spend the night in a hotel.
The next day brought its own challenges.
The earliest flight to Jacksonville was delayed by bad weather elsewhere in the country.
By the time Ross walked into the Blueprint for Agent Success class she was slated to teach at the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors office, it was noon — the exact time the session was scheduled to begin.
But she wasn’t at all flustered. She was pumped and ready to go.
“We were all meant to be here together,” she said, later using her situation as an example of how to remain calm and focused when moving toward a goal.
She told the class she had said a prayer for the ill woman, who she later learned was fine. Ross said she kept her eye on just getting to Jacksonville, while “letting everybody else play out the drama.”
Recalling the angst of a seatmate who was amazed at her serenity, she told her, “That’s how I’ve trained my mind.”
Then she told the class: “Look for the open door and move through the open door, then look for the next one and go through that. It’s what got me here today.”
Ross, who bills herself as “America’s Six Figure Real Estate Coach,” came to the area originally to lead a workshop on Amelia Island for some of the country’s most successful Realtors.
While here, she put on the Blueprint presentation for NEFAR members to give them advice on how to take their business to the next level, financially and psychologically.
The 90-minute presentation featured a three-part blueprint for success, which she promised was more than about making more money.
“Is your business enjoyable?” she asked. “If not, what is the point? There are plenty of other things you can do to make money.”
Ross outlined three “key shifts” that attendees needed to make to become more successful, in whatever way they defined it.
Key Shift No. 1 is “Drop the Rock,” with the rock symbolizing things they might be holding onto they believed were helpful, but were not.
Every accomplishment is first created in the mind, she said, and “new action requires new thoughts.”
Since every action begins as a thought, she warned them to be vigilant about what they “consumed” each day.
She recommended they listen to tapes about success or read uplifting books and material rather than consuming negative messages from the culture.
“News is negative and rarely accurate,” she said. “Why belly up to it, when you can be consuming things that move you forward?”
She recommended they cultivate a “prosperity mindset,” which sees opportunities, as opposed to a “scarcity mindset,” which sees obstacles.
Ross also suggested they “drop the rock” into their business, by learning how to let nonproductive tasks go or delegating them to others.
Key Shift No. 2 is about building relationships.
“You get business from engaging with the right people,” she said. “But prospective clients don’t care about you. It’s 100 percent about what you can do for them, based on what they want and need.”
She encouraged them to engage through multiple mediums and figure out ways to stand out from the competition.
Key Shift No. 3 is about building their business around the “I.C.,” aka their “ideal client.”
Most agents want any kind of business they can get, but that’s a mistake, Ross said.
Her advice: “There are things and people you naturally gravitate toward,” so go there. “Don’t go after everyone. That’s desperation,” she said.
Instead, she said, “put out a strong focused signal by design.”
Patchy marketing, she said, leads to patchy results.
Attendees, who asked questions throughout varied in levels of experience.
Peter King, who had entered real estate one month earlier, said he liked her advice about identifying a market and focusing his efforts on that, rather than being scattered.
Kim Sandberg, with Re/Max Unlimited in Nocatee, is a 10-year veteran who said she found the session helpful when it came to taking it to the next level.
“Sometimes it’s not about the tools and technology, it’s back to business and relationship building to be successful,” she said. “I feel all charged and ready to go.”