Police Officer Strategy That Has Made Me Millions

Today I'm sharing with you the strategy that I used to become an award-winning law enforcement officer many years in a row. My numbers at the time were literally triple that of the next closest guy many of those years. And I use that same strategy now in real estate and have made millions with it!

When I started in policing, I remember being asked at the time by my field training officer, "So 'Rook' (short for rookie), what kind of cop are you going to be?" And I said, "What do you mean?" And he told me, "Well, some guys like to write speeding tickets. Other guys like to specialize in other things... what is it you want to do?" And I replied, "Well, I want to go after DUIs and drugs."

Truth be told, I had no interest in writing speeding tickets.  DUIs and drug busts seemed far more interesting to me.  My training officer said, "Oh, okay. Well, they give away awards for things like that." Being hyper competitive, my ears perked up: "Oh, they do?!"  He said, "Yeah, they give away awards for things like that."

I was curious, "Well, how many like DUIs did the award winner have last year?" And he said, he thought it was around 18 or 20. Shocked, I said, "18 or 20?! That's it?" He laughed and he asked, "Well, how many were you going to do?" And I said, "50." And he laughed at me thinking I was unlikely to hit that mark.

Well, every year after that I had no less than 50. And here's how I did it. It was a very simple, straightforward strategy.

I worked midnights, from 5 PM to 5 AM and I knew that just statistically at the time, between the hours of midnight and 3 AM, one out of every three drivers was either drunk or high at the wheel - one in three drivers! (Sorta scary, right?) And so I thought to myself, so that means if I just make contact with 10 drivers through traffic stops between the hours of midnight and 3 AM, statistically, I have come into contact with three drivers that are either drunk or high.

In my mind, I'm thinking that I don't even need to be perfect or even great at this job!  All I need to do is be 1/3 good - I only needed to succesfully identify ONE of those three that were drunk or high that night - and I found a willing participant for free room & board in jail every single night I worked.

That was literally the strategy I used. And my colleauges couldn't understand how I made so many arrests and my numbers were so high. (For the record, I had over a 99% conviction rate, so these weren't bogus arrests or anything!). And that's how I did it: I just worked it backwards.

And guess what we do in business? We work it backwards.

If you know you want to sell, for instance, 10 houses a year, we know that in our industry as a brand new new agent, oftentimes the ratio is 80:1. You have to have 80 conversations for every 1 home you sell. So if you want to sell 10 homes as a brand new agent, you know you have to have 800 conversations that year. Then you just work it backwards: How many conversations is that per month ... per week ... per day?

If you hit your number each day, then you're going to ultimately end up hitting your goal of selling 10 houses a year. Businesses like that, it doesn't matter which business you're in, if you're selling homes or mortgages or title insurance or whatever; there's a number for your industry.

Again, brand new agents in real estate, that number's oftentimes 80:1. More seasoned agents, it's 40:1, and some of the top performers are even less than that. Once you know your number, it becomes very predictable and you can create your own business, whatever you want it to look like, simply based on what you know your numbers are.

When I was a cop, I tracked my stats militaristically. I tracked the arrests that I had, how many traffic stops I made, what was the outcome of the arrests I had in court, was it a plea deal vs. a jury trial ... I mean, I had tons of statistics for my stuff and I knew for every X number of traffic stops I made on average, I had Y number of arrests. That was just what my numbers were over time. The statistics and numbers didn't lie.

The same holds true in business. If you go at it with that mindset that you can create a predictable business. That doesn't mean it's not without work, but you can create a predictable business based on whatever the numbers for your industry are. Your job then is to find out what are the numbers on average and then what are your numbers operationally within that business. If your numbers are higher or maybe worse than what the average is, you know you've gotta hone in on better scripts, better dialogues, better objection handlers. You've got some work to do. But as you see that number fall, and it's not 80 conversations to a sale, it's now 50 and then it's 40 and then it's 30 ... you're seeing your skillset get better and better and you know you're onto something. That becomes a skill that you can transfer to other folks, teammates and things like that.  I know, right now, my number's about 17.5: we've got this pretty finely tuned!

It worked for me as a cop and it works for me in business. If you need help finding your number, please reach out. I'd be happy to help. It's something I love doing is creating new business, helping new folks get started in theirs and I'd love to help you!