Have you ever wondered why we teach Religion to our very young?
I don't remember when I started Sunday School, it had to be sometime before four. Among all those wonderful stories there was always a Moral. Then came Mosses and the Ten Commandments. The only thing I could relate to was Honor thy father and mother.
We learned so much that seemed so irrelevant. There was all that begatting, and the prohibitions. The only thing we knew was that it was something old people did. We never believed we'd ever be that old. It would be another decade before we'd discovered that girls didn't have cooties!
We couldn't relate to this stuff! We didn't even know we had a begatter. Why not teach something more practical? Like when on the farm, if nature calls don't drain your begatter anywhere near the electric fence!
As we aged and various temptations arose, we found that we'd long ago decided how we'd behave. Some where along the line I discovered I been blessed, I grew up surrounded by truly great people, my Parents, my Grandparents, my Great Grandparents, and their friends.
It wasn't until about twenty years ago as I was approaching forty that I even analyses why I was who I was. At the time I had several Loan Originators making some really bad decisions. I couldn't relate to these people.
After much sole searching, I came to some answers. I realized why Sunday Schools, Parents, Grandparents, Great Grandparents, and Friends teach the young so much they can't relate to at the time! My decisions in life were formed well before the questions were ask. All those Great people had influence me. I was making decisions on how I'd behave before I faced temptation! In the Marines we learned our "General Orders" a Marines "General Orders" establish how he behaves when there's no one around to give spasific orders.
It was an embarrassing epiphany! We make our hard dessisions based on the rules we'd we accepted for our self long before facing temptation.
There is no harder decision for real estate people than doing what's right when the money is on the table. Good people who've never faced or considered such dessisions can make mistakes. These were the same good people I had hired, they simply lacked the guidance. They need "General Orders" or Comandements. They needed to decide how they would behave before facing temptation.
The next day I first published what have become known as Bill's Rules.
I. Thou shall protect thy license above all.
II. Thou shall protect thy client above all, but thy license.
III. Thou shall protect thy referral source above all, but thy client and thy license.
IV. Thou shall protect thy commission above all, but thy referral source, thy client, and thy license.
Bill
William J Archambault Jr
The Real Estate Investment Institute
