By Mike Parker

RISMEDIA, Dec. 9, 2008-”One day, Chicken Little was walking in the woods when-KERPLUNK-an acorn fell on her head. ‘Oh my goodness!’ said Chicken Little. ‘The sky is falling!” Thus begins a timeless tale that seems more relevant each time I read another “authoritative” article positing that the recovery in real estate is years away.

I want to scream: “Your 2009 will be what YOU make it. The sky is not falling and you can be sure that many people will succeed in 2009, just as many continue to succeed, even now.”

We should refuse to buy in to “informed opinion” that predicts three more years of economic morass. It’s time we take responsibility for our own success and make things happen for ourselves.

Once we get through January, I believe we will see the beginnings of recovery. Credit will loosen, people will begin to regain some confidence that Washington has an idea of what they are doing, and opportunities to succeed will abound. Oh, it never will be 2005 again, but who really wants that, anyway? Agents who fail to take strong action to succeed despite conditions will be dropping like acorns in a stiff wind.

Are you Chicken Little? Paralyzed by fear and “informed opinion?” Or, are you a real professional, determined to harvest the opportunity that you know will manifest itself when confidence returns?

During this awful year, this column has attempted to inspire readers by highlighting highly successful agents in all sorts of venues and with all sorts of different targets. We’ve written about Grandmothers in Amarillo with little tech savvy but much sales savvy (www.moreamarillohomes.com) who sell homes online each month; about a three person Team in San Antonio who increased their sales by $10 million this year simply by tapping into online marketing services for realtors (www.allenrealtygroup.com); about a brokerage in a very small county in West Virginia that sells between two and four homes monthly online (www.jphilipkesecker.com) ; about a long-time agent in Florida, who-despite that state’s awful statistics-found 15 relocation sales in her inbox this year (www.sherryarmstrong.com).

We’ve highlighted a team in a market (Antioch, CA and area) where fully 90% of all homes on the market are in foreclosure or are REO who is making lemonade out of lemons (www.tietzhomes.com) and a buyer’s agent in Martha’s Vineyard who must find 90% of their buyers outside their marketplace (www.mvbuyeragents.com) and who continue to do so.

Soon we’ll bring you a story about an agent who continues to succeed online in Pennsylvania’s Poconos (www.bevwaring.com), a successful broker in Cincinnati (www.teamchabris.com) — and many, many more. We can learn something from all of them. People are succeeding all over America selling real estate when they make the Internet their partner. All these successful people could have chosen the Chicken Little approach and run for shelter because-as we read every day and hear continuously-”the sky is falling.” Instead, they chose to be proactive, to try to become an Internet Realtor and to tap into the huge resource where 84% of all residential real estate sales happen: the Internet.

You can bet that those exiting the business will continue to complain about “how bad things are” whenever they get the opportunity. Ignore them. Emulate those who are continuing to succeed in the gloomiest of circumstances. In the final analysis, it isn’t the media, the press or even the government who determine whether you can succeed: it is you.

Get a personal website, make sure buyers can find it and make it welcoming and authoritative. Utilize aggressive lead capture and remember that when you prospect on the Internet, you are prospecting where 880 million searches for homes and all things real estate occur each month-on the major search engines. Today, if you aren’t able to be found on Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL when Internet shoppers search for their dreams online, 84% of the business will pass you by.

The sky is not falling on you, either. Although every agent or broker cited in this article has a different approach to their target market and is in a different part of the country, they all have personal websites, they all utilize aggressive lead capture, and they are all on the first pages of the major search engines. They respond to leads with alacrity. They also share a common subscription: they all subscribe to CompassSearch. Their success online is not coincidence, it is a process; one you can enjoy, too.

Chicken Little eventually made it to see the King and after the King gently assured her that the sky was not falling, she was given an umbrella to protect her from the falling acorns. She and her friends lived happily ever after.

Chicken Little doesn’t sell houses. Proactive professional real estate people who accept that the market has changed, as well as the way people look for and buy homes-they are the ones selling houses today. Good luck in 2009 and don’t forget your umbrella!