Ep047: 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional (Part Five)

Chris McAllister: Welcome to the Connect, Practice, Track, and Grow podcast. I’m Chris McAllister with ROOST Real Estate Company, and it’s my job to create and coach business opportunities and strategies to support and add value to the lives of real estate professionals. Today, I’m here, as always, with my co-host, Laci LeBlanc.

Good morning, Laci. 

Laci LeBlanc: Good morning, Chris. 

Chris McAllister: And today, we’re continuing our six-episode series based on my new book, 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional. And this episode is grounded in part five of six, and it’s called Leveling Up, Mastery, and Growth. And this is where people either mature into their business or they start to plateau, and then they sort of recycle the same year of experience over and over again.

I think probably, if you think about it, you’ve probably met those people. So this whole episode, part five, is about personal and professional development. It’s about continuous learning, resilience, and leveling up your career. And I don’t want people to think of this as some sort of motivational poster, but I do want you to think of it as both a mindset, but maybe even more so as a discipline.

And I say that because top 1% careers, they’re not just built on talent or motivation alone. They’re built on intentional and deliberate growth. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I love that word, intentional. I think that’s the key probably behind most things in this life. But let’s get right into it. You open up this section with rule number 42, get a coach.

Why is coaching so central to leveling up your career? 

Chris McAllister: the fact is I’ve never met anybody who’s successful in this business who really did it alone or didn’t grow alone, right? And I remember, and I’ve been, reciting this ad nauseam since the first time I heard it probably 25 years ago, but, even Michael Jordan had a coach, right?

Even the best of the best in all walks of life, sports or what have you, everybody has had a coach and that’s rule number 42, right? I don’t care if you’re an athlete, I don’t care if you’re a musician, I don’t care if you’re a CEO. Real estate agents often act like they’re the exception, but that’s why most real estate agents, tend to be average and stay average at best.

So coaching isn’t really just about training. Training gives information, but coaching forces application, right? The beauty of coaching is it forces us to apply what we’ve learned. Maybe force is a strong word, but you know, having a coach who’s an accountability partner, they don’t just give you feedback, but they, let’s say force, right?

They’re there. You pay them to make you do the work the way you know the work should be done. So th- that whole thing with accountability partner, I think that’s the beauty of coaching. It also exposes blind spots and, somebody who’s honest with you about, where you’re falling behind or where you’re being stubborn about adopting something that clearly is gonna work for you.

Again, coaching cle- keeps you accountable, and it keeps you accountable when your feelings aren’t cooperating, right? When it’s your feelings that are, allowing you to procrastinate. So anytime you’re serious about, leveling up you’ve really gotta find somebody who’s gonna tell you the truth and keep you in motion.

And honestly You know I think I’ve told this story many times, but I think I first met Brian Buffini at Buffini and Company in 2003 or 2004, 2003, I think, when I was when I had RE/MAX franchises. And, it wasn’t too long after meeting him through RE/MAX that, I became a Buffini and Company client.

And I’ve had a Buffini and Company coach I think two different times in my career as an agent. And I can tell you that tactical discipline, th- that knowing that I paid somebody, 500 bucks a month, 600 bucks a month, whatever it was, to be there and help make me do the work, I did it.

And most of the reason I did it was because I paid for it, right? And I wasn’t gonna let that money go to waste. So there is something to be said that, having a coach that you pay for is a huge difference than just having a, a mentor or a buddy that you talk to and have coffee with from time to time.

The other piece is I’ve had– I’ve been a client of a company called Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan’s company, Strategic Coach, I think since 2004. So of the last 22 years, I think I’ve been an active coach client at least 18 of those years. I took a couple of years off in 2024 and 2025, and I went back to Strategic Coach this year.

And that’s not a small check. But I can tell you that what happens when I get to go see my coach every quarter and meet all the other people in my group it’s worth the price of admission hands down. So I’m living proof that, having a coach, getting a coach, paying for a coach really is the difference between the top 1% and the rest of the 99% of us.

So, I’m preaching a little bit, Laci, but f- so forgive me, but this is something that I’m passionate about because I know how it’s affected my life and career very positively, and I’ve seen how it’s affected, a lot of our agents’ careers very positively. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think anybody will argue you get a, a positive ROI on your investment in a coach, but I do think that there are folks out there who maybe are not there yet.

So what if someone says, “I can’t afford to pay a coach yet”? 

Chris McAllister: I’m gonna say that even if you feel like you can’t afford to pay a coach yet, I think you need to at least start running your business as if you are writing that check. Did that make sense? So if one-on-one coaching these days, and I don’t know exactly what the number is, let’s say it’s 600 bucks a month, then I would really encourage you to start setting aside that 600 bucks a month as if you’re writing that check.

Get into the habit of it. Start cutting expenses elsewhere. It’s the whole profit first mentality. That’s an expense that, I truly don’t think if you’re serious about your career that you wanna just pass by. I think that’s a, an expense worth incurring. So at least pretend even if it’s not safe to send the check out every month yet.

Having said that I still don’t want you to grow a loan. You’ve gotta start where you are. So maybe it doesn’t require writing a check on day one, but being coachable is a skill that you can start cultivating today, and that requires humility. It requires, as we said, intent. So at least, find a mentor.

Jo- join a mastermind group. Bu- get, get a group of other agents that you’re comfortable with and set up a, a monthly luncheon. Call it a, an accountability luncheon. Make friends with somebody who’s a few steps ahead of where you are and ask them the hard questions, and ask them how they did it, and ask them how they…

what struggles they had and how they got through those struggles. But don’t buy the lie that you’re going to level up purely by self-study. I’ve gotta tell you, if that worked, everybody would be in the top 1%. So whether you can afford it or not, I want you to figure out how to afford it, but if you can’t afford it yet…

And having said that too, there’s so much stuff on YouTube and, I always, go with Buffini and company ’cause, that’s how I was brought up, but there are other coaching companies out there. My only advice is pick one and stick with it, right? There’s no point in jumping around from coach to coach.

So, which, whichever expert out there that you want to work with or be a client for, whatever you wanna say it, just stick with one because I guarantee you even there’s a little difference in their approach, at the end of the day, it’s gonna get you where you want to be 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, and shameless plug here, if you join a brokerage that is aligned with your, self-improvement goals, then th- they might potentially offer a program like Buffini and Company-

to you as part 

Chris McAllister: of the package. Well, I’m a, I am a Buffini and Company certified trainer, so, so is Priscilla. And, we, at ROOST Real Estate Company, it’s not optional. Everybody who comes on with us, whether they’ve been in the business for a while or if they’re new to the business, it’s a requirement that they go through the 100 Days to Greatness training class, the Buffini and Company class, and either Priscilla or I one, facilitate that.

We also are certified trainers for the mastery classes at Buffini and Company, so we’ve made Buffini a part of agent life here at ROOST. I’m sure there’s other brokerages out there that do that. A- and that’s a way, that you can step into sort of the whole coaching world, at a one-time price of, 500 or 600, whatever it costs for 100 Days to Greatness, without having to commit to that price every single month.

I think a lot of us started with 100 Days to Greatness, maybe did a mastery class, and then we went into personal coaching. But there’s all kinds of resources out there in the world and you gotta spend some time, you gotta find what resonates with you. But again, what is your…

wh- whoever you decide to go with or whatever company you decide to go with, this isn’t something you jump around from coach to coach. You find one coach, you stick to it, and that’s the way you get the benefit from it. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. So let’s change gears just a little bit. Rule number 43 is a little unexpected, I’m not gonna lie.

It’s study humanities. So literature, history in a real estate book seems a little odd. Why is this rule number 43? 

Chris McAllister: real estate, i- it’s a human business. We try to, many of us try to make it a contract business. We try to make it a transactional business, but it’s a human business, right?

You’re dealing with, buyers and sellers, which is a lot of emotion, a lot of different motivations. You’re dealing with other agents who all have their own, issues and hangups and so forth. It’s all people. And I this, this rule exists, rule 43, because agents who only consume real estate news, real estate content, business content and so forth, they tend to become wonder- one-dimensional, and it’s really hard for one-dimensional people to connect deeply with another person.

I don’t, does 

Laci LeBlanc: that make sense? Yeah, you need that context. I feel like you need the context of what’s going on in the world around you and the other things people are feeling and doing and worried about and what’s important to them, right? 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. And I, the whole i- when you study humanities, It tends to make you a more well-rounded or a more rounded individual.

I mean, quite frankly, somebody who understands art and history, in addition to sports and music and all the other things, all that stuff makes you a more interesting human being. But honestly, it makes you a more attractive human being, and I mean attractive in the sense that, people naturally gravitate towards you.

So study humanities, I guess it is a little bit designed to get your attention, what the hell is this? But I gotta tell you, arts and literature, it, it helps you build empathy. It helps you understand how people think, feel, communicate. It sharpens your communication. It expands perspective, and again, an expanded perspective is what helps you understand, where your clients are coming from, especially if you’ve got clients that, are with you for years and years, right? Y- understanding what life transitions feel like, whether you’ve gone through them or not, gives you a huge benefit, right?

The things that you go through in your first home, a divorce, a relocation, downsizing, all the reasons people have to buy and sell houses, there is something there’s huge value, and I agree, Laci, it’s very hard to quantify this, but there is value in, in having some, as you say, context, some perspective on what people are going through at the time in your life that you’re working one-on-one with them to help them buy or sell a house.

So study humanities. Read. Fiction’s wonderful. I- it just helps you give you a bigger perspective on life. And at the end of the day, two agents, they can get to the same comparative market analysis. They can get to the same number, but I could tell you the one that has a better understanding of people and how people think and feel, they’re the ones that win and become the top 1% every time 

Laci LeBlanc: I agree.

And not only that, for somebody who despises small talk, it really makes small talk a lot… small talk is a necessity, right? You’ve gotta small talk- Yeah … when you meet a person for the first time, as much as I hate it. But knowing a little bit about a lot of things and knowing what people are interested in, what’s going on in the world, which sports team just won the big championship, my husband can talk to anybody because he saw they had on a Knicks shirt, or they had on, they, they had on a, a bracelet that had the Avengers.

Like, it doesn’t matter. If you can find a way to connect with people, then that makes that small talk portion- Yeah … so much less of a struggle. Yeah. And it really starts you out on the right, right foot. So if nothing else, then, being worldly or a little bit more well-rounded could get you through those first conversations not quite so awkwardly.

Chris McAllister: Yeah. And that’s something I have to be very thoughtful about because, it’s easy for me to just be tunnel vision, I’m gonna build this business, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, and, I have to be forced, to take time off, and it’s just not something I’ve ever been good at and I probably never will be good at it, but that’s why I have a coach, so…

Laci LeBlanc: To keep you accountable even when you’re feeling- 

Chris McAllister: Help me become- … aren’t cooperating … a better-rounded, more interesting human being,

Laci LeBlanc: for anybody out there who meets Christopher the first time, he really likes music. So If you wanna maybe start with music or books, that’s a g- a good place to start.

Chris McAllister: I do read and listen to a lot of books. That’s absolutely 

Laci LeBlanc: true. Well, rule number 44 is a little less straightforward. It’s make invisible opportunities visible. What does that mean? And more importantly, what does that mean in practice in the real world? 

Chris McAllister: here in part five of the book, we’re really we’re talking about leveling up.

We’re talking about, growth. We’re talking about what is that sort of secret sauce that separates the top 1% from the rest of us, right? So making visible opportunities visible it really means that the top producers in this business, or any business for that matter, they see things that other people miss, and they’ve trained themselves to see what other people miss, right?

It they make it a, a personal capability. So rule 44, making visible opportunities visible, is about developing, I guess you could call it situation awareness, right? When you’re out and about, say you meet that that person at the grocery store and you recognize them and you have a conversation with them.

We always talk about, anybody who has 150 people in their database that they could meet, recognize, have a conversation one-on-one at the grocery store, that’s a real fantastic person in your database who’s probably going to at some point send you ref- send referrals your way. But let’s say you’re at the grocery store and you hear somebody say, “Well, someday I’m gonna make that move,” or, “I’ve been thinking about doing this,” or, “My husband’s thinking about a job.”

There’s just clues that pop up, in everyday conversation. And I can tell you, the very best of us, they recognize those as, as the beginning of a lead, right? Say, say you’re opening up the MLS every morning and you’re looking at your hot sheet and you see a, an expired listing for somebody that is a friend of a friend, or maybe it’s an expired listing that you were a little bit upset with yourself that you didn’t get the listing in the first place, but suddenly you see that listing has expired.

That’s an opportunity, right? You see things, you’re aware of things, you look for things. You hear things from vendors. You hear things from, people in the community. You… The best of the best, the- they know when somebody’s about to make a move before any of their fellow realtors do, and they certainly know about it long before it ends up in the MLS.

So- Most agents just quite frankly they miss the whole mindset or attitude of invisible opportunities because they’re distracted and they’re reactive, right? So one of the other ways that helps with that is being able to be present, to be able to listen, to be open to what other people are doing.

This is, it’s getting a little bit mushy here, a little bit fuzzy here, Laci, and I apologize for that. But maybe the other way to think about making invisible opportunities visible is I will tell you that the one thing That the top 1% does is they understand that it is their responsibility, that they’re the only ones that can make invisible opportunities visible for themselves.

Nobody else can do it for them. They have to do it for themselves. Now, somebody else may give them a clue, right? “Hey, did you hear so-and-so was this?” Or, whatever that is. But it’s a personal responsibility. It’s a thing that can’t be delegated. It just becomes part of how they live, work, and move in the world.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think I’m on a volleyball team for adults, right? An adult volleyball league, which sounds as silly as it is. But we have some folks on that volleyball … We have a real estate agent on, in the volleyball, on the volleyball team. We have a travel agent. She does a fantastic job. Yeah. Right? So she has never been salesy.

We all know she’s a travel agent, ’cause we had this conversation about, “Oh, what do you do for a living?” But you can tell, like, when we mention something, when we’re thinking about something, she’ll throw in a, “Oh, I’m doing a guided trip to Amsterdam next year. We’ve still got some spots if you’re interested in that.”

And it’s never pushy, and it’s never you never feel sold on anything. But she absolutely is slow, if you say slow down, listen, and keep an opportunity log, she’s listening. She hears. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. 

Laci LeBlanc: And it doesn’t take the place of any sort of, like, volleyball relationship or, like, friendship or … But you can tell that she’s very actively, she’s not reacting.

She’s being proactive- Yeah … in kind of knowing what’s going on in our lives and where she might be able to help us. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. And it’s interesting that you said that at the volleyball game. I always encourage, our agents, let’s say they’ve got kids, and the kids are in sports.

I want that agent to sponsor that kid’s sports team, right? I want him to be on the T-shirt. I want him to be on the on the fence in the back with a banner. It’s not because- Bring the 

Laci LeBlanc: snacks. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah, bring the snacks. And it’s not because you’re ever gonna sell a house to anybody because, you paid some money to get on the kid’s T-shirt.

The getting on the kid’s T-shirt is sort of a a great gesture. To some degree it’s a, a cost of doing business. But the people who fail and ultimately realize they’re wasting their money are the people who don’t follow up on the potential for the relationships that can be developed By being there at the kids’ sports events, right?

It, you don’t even have to be a coach or whatever, right? Y- if you’re a coach, that’s great, too. You’re gonna meet all the parents, and you’re gonna have opportunities to hear things that are happening in the parents’ lives, and who knows? Maybe there’s real estate involved, right? But it’s being involved in those kids’ lives because you want to be there around the parents, right?

There’s nothing wrong with, doing good and having it help your business, right? At Target, we used to call that cause marketing, right? You had a good cause. You put money towards it. You put time toward it. But in the end, the only reason we spent all that money when I was at Target years ago was because when you spent that money on kids and families showed up, and they spent money at the Target store.

So making invisible opportunities visible, it’s sort of the next step thing. When you get a chance to sponsor the kids’ sports team or whatever, be involved in the kids’ sports team, make the parents and so forth. That’s just one tip on how to make invisible opportunities visible. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I love it. This is one of my favorite tips, favorite rules in the whole thing because anybody can do it, and it does not…

it actually requires the opposite of a sales pitch. It requires the opposite of, you know, making people feel uncomfortable. This is just a natural kind of way of doing business that you don’t have to worry about selling yourself. And I think that people shy away from that for good reason.

And so I think this is just something everybody can do everybody can apply no matter where they are in their career, no matter where they are geographically, no matter where they are in their life. Let’s move on, though, to rule number 45, which is buy the best equipment you can afford. Some people are gonna call shiny objects.

Some people are gonna say, “Oh, that’s a superficial rule.” Somebody’s gonna… Some people are gonna say, like I get by fine with what I’ve got.” T- talk to me about why you should buy the best equipment you can afford. 

Chris McAllister: Well, again, this is about leveling up, right? Personally and professionally. And having the best equipment that you can afford, it’s not superfec- superficial.

It’s being professional, right? Tools, the right tools, good tools shape your performance, right? I want you to have the best laptop that y- you can afford that is designed to support your business, right? I don’t want you to go out and buy the biggest, shiniest, most expensive laptop out there. I want you to spend a little time and find the laptop that’s actually gonna support how you work, right?

If your laptop is slow or it doesn’t connect to the internet reliably, it doesn’t… it, you’re not saving money. You’re not being virtuous by trying to keep that 20-year laptop growing. You’re coming across as somebody who’s not very professional, not very good at their job, and either can’t afford to buy the basics or just cheap, right?

It’s the same with your phone. Nobody has to get the new iPhone every single year. But if your phone is more than three or four years old, there’s probably thi- it’s probably time to take a look at upgrading that phone. I tell you another this is… Maybe this is just me, but, I see people out there that You know are trying to, they’re one-on-one with a person, they’re trying to talk to them about a listing or something, and they wanna look at something on their cell phone, and their cell phone screen is broken, right?

They can’t get the information that they wanna get to, talk to that client about because they don’t have, the right cell- they don’t have the e- the right equipment. Presentation materials. A lot of people don’t even bother with doing presentation, especially when it’s people th- with- that they know.

I don’t care… it’s, it goes back to the whole conversation about friends and family sign twice. I don’t care if you’ve already sold 30 houses to this person, you put your presentation together whether they ever look at it or not, and you make sure it’s a professional presentation, and you consistently update it.

If your presentation materials look cheap, it looks like you’re cheap, right? If you’re not presenting in the best way that you possibly can, you’re making your job harder, and it doesn’t have to be harder, right? There’s just no virtue in equipment that doesn’t work. You wear glasses, I wear glasses.

I hate the fact that I have to wear glasses, but I make damn sure that I’ve always updated my prescription. I want them to be comfortable. I have to wear them, whatever it is, 12, 15, 16 hours a day. There’s no point in cutting corners there. And there’s just lots of places in life where that kinda thing makes sense.

Now, I’m not saying you have to go out and buy a Mercedes, but I do want your Honda or your Kia or your Hyundai, whatever it is, to be reliable, to start when you need it to start, right? And just work. So it’s not about spending money you don’t have to make an impression. It’s about spending money that’s going to truly make you better at your jobs.

I mean, you can even extend it. Get the best mattress you can get, right? If you’re not getting a good night’s sleep, because you’ve got a, a lousy mattress, then you wanna look at investing in a mattress. Well, these things that I’m talking about, the best equipment you can afford that, that support you personally, helping you be the best person you can be, helping your business.

It’s not about luxury, it’s about reliability, it’s about efficiency, and it’s about confidence. I guarantee you a surgeon doesn’t brag about having the cheapest scalpels. They don’t have to brag about anything because they always have the very best tools. And I don’t want… and I don’t want anybody who’s listening to this to think that they’re somehow being virtuous by having, any sort of tool that, that isn’t as good as it possibly can be.

So where it makes sense to level up and it’s gonna help you do your job better, easier, faster, more efficiently, I really want you to think about leveling up 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think that some of it is you don’t want anybody to ha- to be doing business with you in spite of something, right? Yeah. In spite of the fact that they, oh yeah, their, their laptop is u- unreliable and they can consistently never send me the things they say they’re gonna send me because they have to get back to their- Ugh

other computer at the office or in spite of the fact that their presentation is p- pretty, pretty weird or pretty, rookie level or whatever the case may be. You just never want anybody to be doing business with you and having to overlook something negative in order to do that. Yeah.

So take away all of these really easy, like low level barriers that might cause somebody to wrongly accuse you or wrongly judge you in some way, and then that all goes away. I feel like the right tools are almost, like ignorable. They’re almost invisible, right? Like, the- your laptop should never, your car, none of that should even be a factor.

But 

Chris McAllister: the lack of the right tools- 

… 

Chris McAllister: Th- they make people question your professionalism. Exactly. 

Laci LeBlanc: Right? 

Chris McAllister: The right tools, the good tools, the tools that work, they may not think, “Wow, that guy’s a professional. Look at that new phone,” but they- it removes the question, right? If somebody,

Laci LeBlanc: I’d rather them just not notice what type of phone I have- Right

because there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t want them to notice what type of car I drive necessarily. That’s exactly 

Chris McAllister: what we’re going for. 

Laci LeBlanc: I don’t want them to notice that the, my flyers that I’ve left out are, discolored or, have blurry photos on. I just don’t want them 

Chris McAllister: to notice that stuff.

Right, or the magenta toner was low on your printer, so. 

Laci LeBlanc: These are printed at home, you know what I mean? Yes, exactly. It should just, they should just, the tools that you use should absolutely impact your business, but they should have virtually no noticeable impact for your client- They should be invisible

I feel like. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That’s it. All right, so rule number 46 is manage the strain. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I hear when I read that in my mind is success brings pressure 

Chris McAllister: Success makes more work. There’s no question. Success does bring pressure. So, rule 46 exists because most agents fantasize about being busy, and then they get busy and they fall apart.

More clients, more opportunity means more moving parts. It means more unpredictability. It means more emotional load. It means more responsibility. That’s basically what it means to turn pro. The top 1% among us, they don’t avoid pressure. They know, the, the the d- the duties, the responsibilities, and so forth that come with the job, but they prepare for it and they build systems around their business to support it when times get busy.

They delegate, wisely. And then just as importantly, right, they protect their health and they plan for these kind of cycles, right? There’s a whole long blog post, and we resurrect this every once in a while, but it’s… I can’t even remember what I titled it. But it’s sort of like the calendar for the year for an agent.

The arc of a business year. And- 

Laci LeBlanc: The seasons. I thought it was something about the seasons, right? 

Chris McAllister: Yeah, the seasons of the business, right. So, there’s times in the winter where, you’re sort of focused on what your goals are gonna be for the next year, what comes next and preparing for the busy season.

And, in broad strokes, the busy season is basically, March, April, all the way through really the end of July, right? If you don’t make your year between March 1st and July 31st you’re gonna have… you’re not gonna enjoy the second half basically. So we know there’s times when you have to be in the business, right?

There’s times that you have… that you can be on the business and plan and get ready and so forth and study whatever, and there’s times that you’ve gotta be in the season, in the business and you’ve gotta be playing. And it’s funny, we’re coming up now, this is July 28th, and, even though it’s been a, kind of a tough year, our agents have been much, much busier the last six, eight, 10 weeks than they had during the beginning of the year.

And the thing that always happens as we… A- and they’re feeling some pressure, right? They’re strained because more people raised their hands in the past six, eight weeks than had raised their hands for the entire early part of the year. So they’re doing stuff, they, they- their priority has to be being in the business and responding and taking care of these clients.

And then as you get into August and people start thinking about back to school and all of that stuff The pressure shifts, it changes, right? So instead of having, 10 houses to show today, it’s more about I’ve gotta use that same amount of time to make sure that all the business that I got under contract the past four to six weeks actually closes in August, right?

And then the, i- and that’s a whole different skill set, but it’s still a different k- it’s pressure, but it’s a different type of pressure. Every single year for the 22 years I’ve been tracking th- this business, whether it was me personally the first couple of years or through RE/MAX, through ROOST, August Every single year is the biggest month of the year for getting paid.

It’s when our agents actually bank the most money because of all the things they put under contract in spring and early summer. It’s there’s not the same pressure for being out in the field because people have other things on their mind, but it’s getting the stuff closed and being the professional and getting paid for the stuff that you worked so hard to get under contract.

And then the rest of the year is sort of a a mixture of some, some time to be able to, be working on the business, making plans to finish out the year. You get sort of like October, early November, when we get a little spark. And then, we move into what I call the gratitude season, where, you know, basically the holidays, people clearly have other things on their mind, but it’s a perfect time for you to be one of those people that’s on their mind.

So it’s a time to do, have a gratitude focus, calls, notes, pop-bys, et cetera. So I didn’t mean to dig deeply into that, but strain is a fact of life. And if what you do works and you feel, and you achieve some success, you’re going to feel busier maybe than you expected to be or maybe than you want to be.

And the only way you get comfortable with managing that is by being conscious of it and working through it every single time and getting better every single time. Does that make sense? I feel like I’m really- 

Laci LeBlanc: It does. Yeah … 

Chris McAllister: rambling today. And it… 

Laci LeBlanc: No, I think that makes perfect sense. I think that, it’s all about anticipating, right?

Yeah. What’s gonna happen next, as opposed to, like, we all wanna live in the moment, but there is value to anticipating what’s coming. I think that really plays into the next rule as well, which is rule number 47, turn setbacks into advances. Pretending everything is fine, whether- Yeah … you’re dealing with strain or you’re dealing with a significant setback is not the answer, right?

That’s not what top agents do. 

Yeah. How do top agents process it? It’s, I think these answers are very similar, actually. 

Chris McAllister: Let’s so, there’s times that we feel a little bit overwhelmed because we do the right things and we get busy, and that’s, you’ve gotta work through that.

Sometimes it feels like it’s gonna go on forever and, you wake up the following Monday morning and everything’s okay again. But setbacks into advances, I can tell you, A, a great real estate agent, a great business person in general, they never just pretend that everything’s okay when things go wrong, right?

That’s magical thinking. If they’re, if they, if things aren’t working out if there’s a bad trend, if business isn’t coming in, they don’t pretend that everything’s fine and everything’ll come out okay in the end. They just look at the situation and they process it differently. If you have something fall out of contract, that’s a setback.

If you don’t get as many listing leads as you wanted to get as you did last year or whatever, that’s a setback. But what I just wanna say is that setbacks, they are inevitable. Things do go south, deals don’t close, clients ghost us markets shift on a dime. I feel like this summer, this week gas is over $4 a gallon, then it drops for a few days, and then everybody starts to feel optimistic.

It is just goes back and forth. A- average agents see these setbacks as a personal assault on their being, or they see it as a personal failure, right? They either internalize it and think it’s their fault or they externalize it and think it’s somebody else’s fault. Top agents treat setbacks as feedback, right?

Neither good nor bad. It’s a data point. It’s something to learn from. So again, they set … they get quiet, they pause, they reflect, they capture the lesson, they write it down, they journal it, and they figure, “Okay, what could I have done differently? How can I improve this situation the next time it comes around, because if I’m honest with myself, it will happen again?”

And they find ways to tweak what they do, whether it’s their habits, their approach, their communication, whatever it is, and they apply it immediately. They make improvements in what they do on a day-to-day basis immediately. So a setback becomes the basis for a, a new checklist a, a script improvement a, a presentation tweak.

Maybe it becomes a opportunity for a new personal boundary, right? Maybe, getting so busy that you lose control is a temporary setback, so you think, “Okay, I need a new boundary,” right? “I gotta get some personal time, so I am always gonna take Wednesday afternoon off, in the summertime,” or whatever it is to protect themselves.

They need a new boundary. They need a better process. I guess you could s- to some degree, this sounds a little extreme, but you can say it’s about failing forward, right? It just means that you convert- Pain, hopefully short-term pain, into progress and hopefully long-term progress. So turn setbacks- Yeah

into advances. That’s rule 47. 

Laci LeBlanc: And then rule 48 is get back up, which feels like- Get 

Chris McAllister: back up … 

Laci LeBlanc: the very next step. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. It’s all about resilience, right? Get back up, and it’s probably the most important thing that we talk about today. Real estate will knock you down, it’ll kick your ass, and, even when you do everything right, things go wrong.

The top 1% aren’t people who never fail, they’re just people who refuse to stay down when, things don’t go their way. They control what they can, right? They control their daily disciplines, they control their outreach, their calls, notes, pop-bys, their personal business standards, their follow-up, how they conduct their business, what kind of training, coaching, everything they get, but they control what they can control, and they have the ability to sort of zoom out and look at the bigger picture, right? One bad week isn’t a career, and the best of us know that, and they keep going, right? Every day is a new day. So resilience is the real superpower in this business.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, and I think that, the next rule number 49, is soar with your strengths. And I think that honestly there’s some resilience in that as well. I love the zooming out and one bad week is a bad career. Because I think a lot of people focus on improving their weaknesses. Like, “Well, I’m not great at this.

I just don’t naturally have that skill set, so I need to improve on this.” And they kind of miss the soar with your strengths aspe- aspect of things. So how do you reconcile those two things? 

Chris McAllister: You don’t get really great at th- this business by being great at everything. You build it, you become great in this business by being exceptional at a few key things, and that gets us back into the whole discussion about unique ability.

What are you great at? What are you better at than anybody else? And how can you continuously improve that capability or soar with that strength? So rule 49, soar with your strengths, exists because most people waste years, right, trying to fix a weakness until they become just average, right, at more things.

It is … Almost never happens that somebody addresses a weakness and it becomes a strength. At best, you spend a lot of time, years even, trying to address a weakness and you become average at best. You’re much, much better off figuring out what are you really great at, what are the things that give you joy in this business, what do you, where do you add value that nobody else does, and building on those.

The top agents, they identify their strengths and then they double down on them. Then they design the support systems around those weaknesses, right? So they get somebody else to do the things that they’re not great at or they just flat out hate to do. Th- and that’s when they start to hire help. That’s when they start to partner with another agent who, with, with strengths that complement theirs, or they start to find ways to automate certain parts of the business, or they find a, they get their first assistant, that first part-time person that they can delegate some things to.

Yeah, so if you’re I guess to make it, in simplest terms, if you’re just the best there is at a client meeting, but you absolutely hate the paperwork that comes after the client meeting, stop pretending that you should be great at the paperwork and the execution that comes after. Build a system.

Find a transaction coordinator. You may have one in your office, right? Protect your energy for the things that you do best that nobody else can do, and that’s how you level up in this business without ending up hating life in general. So that’s the message behind Soar With Your Strengths.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I also think that as AI kind of creeps into every aspect of life and business, it’s really important to, to have the mindset of soaring with your strengths so you don’t try to replace yourself in- Yeah … your best parts, right? AI can do anything these days or automation can… You can delegate to any- anything to anybody, right?

But keep the things that you enjoy doing, keep the things that you’re really good at on your plate as opposed to just because there is a tool for this that can automate it, if you’re great at it and if it does make a difference in your business don’t give that away, right? Yeah. Do something, do something else to take a little bit more off your plate in another area.

And I think that’s important to remember as, all of these, these new tools and shiny objects come into our purview. 

Chris McAllister: Well, we’ve got a podcast coming up in the next two or three weeks basically built around my AI manifesto that we’ll be publishing. And, I guess the core message of that kind of goes with what you’re saying is I want everybody to use AI to figure out how to automate the things that they don’t like or they aren’t good at, right?

But the whole purpose of doing that is to make more time for the things that you’re great at, for that personal interaction, for the one-on-one, for the being the best negotiator in the free world, right? The whole, the, in a nutshell, the message on AI is figure out how to use it to take care of the backstage stuff, figure out how to use it to help get the stuff done that you really don’t like doing.

But i- at the end, use that tool, because that’s what it is. It’s a tool like any other. It’s just a really cool tool and a very powerful tool. But the most successful of us are already using it to free up more time for that one-on-one interaction. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And now when it, when AI can actually cook the dinner, like right now it can plan the dinner- Yeah

so I don’t have to make the decisions, it can tell me exactly what I need to do. When it can actually cook the dinner, then I’m all in. 

Chris McAllister: Then you’re 

Laci LeBlanc: all for it. That’s right because that’s the time I want freed up, Chris. All right, rule number 50. This is the last one for this part, and I think it’s one of the strongest.

It definitely has the strongest title maybe in the whole book, but the title is The Skills that Got You Out of Egypt Won’t Get You to the Promised Land. Explain that one to anybody who, didn’t attend church every Sunday as a child. 

Chris McAllister: we’re at rule 50 out of 59, right? And this rule exists because people tend to cling to the skills that got them started in the business, that they had success with early.

And then, sometimes it’s a couple of years, sometimes it takes longer, they hit a ceiling. And instead of going back and really assessing and reassessing and addressing their skillset, they tend to start blaming the market, right? The market changed, so it’s not my fault the hustle that gets you your first clients is not something that’s gonna sustain a mature business, right?

We all got started because we just passed out our business cards to anybody who would look at us. We talked to everybody. We knocked on doors. We just did what we had to do, right? We hustled, but you can’t hustle your way, to a a long-term career. Early career skills tend to be about survival.

Mid-career skills all revolve along the lines of systems and gaining leverage, right? Advanced stages, advanced career skills, the, the ones that the top 1% share, they always involve revolve around strategy and leadership. So if you don’t evolve, if you don’t continuously get better throughout your career, you plateau, and then you start repeating yourself, and then you start having the same problems, the same stress, the same, volatility in your income.

It kinda goes back to at the beginning of this episode when we talked about there’s a difference between somebody who’s 20 years in the business and they learned from those 20 years and their knowledge and their skills and their wisdom compounded over and over for 20 years. And those other poor folks that, they basically have the same thing happen to them every year, but they don’t see it, they don’t realize it, or they don’t take the trouble to, to look at it, assess it, figure it out, make a plan to get better.

And that’s why there’s just such a difference between 20 years of experience that’s compounding wisdom and 20 years of experience that’s just like Groundhog Day. So that’s really in a nutshell. The skills that got you out of Egypt won’t get you to the promised land. So you either evolve, you either get better, you get comfortable with change, or you get stuck, and in the extreme case, you basically give up your license and leave the business 

Laci LeBlanc: Which is not the goal here.

Which is not the goal. That’s not a top 1% goal. All right, so this is my favorite part. If you had to sum up part five in one sentence, what would that be? 

Chris McAllister: Top 1% careers are built. They’re built intentionally. They’re not found. They don’t just get tossed into somebody’s lap. They are built from scratch, from the ground up around the unique abilities of that practitioner.

You level up through coaching, you level up through learning, being aware, resilience, engagement, and deliberate thought and evolution. You don’t level up through hype. You don’t just wait around, hoping magically things are gonna get better for you. There is no such thing as, as, as luck. It’s really about that you have to…

a- again, we mentioned this at the very beginning of the episode, the very best of us are absolutely intentional about what they do in every area of their life to improve their business year after year, and in turn, improve their life. It’s a business worth owning and a life worth living 

Laci LeBlanc: So now that we all agree that one viral TikTok on your your social media is not gonna sustain your business for the next 40 years or however long you’re in it, what is the next step for someone who’s listening to this podcast?

Chris McAllister: Well, get the book. We’ll have the link in the show notes. But r- go to chapter five, part five, and I want you to read it carefully and slowly. There’s a whole bunch more practical information in the book than what we’re able to go through here in a quick hour on a podcast. But, read the book, read part five slowly and then pick one thing that you’re going to do differently.

And once you do that, I want you to think about, get a coach or a mentor, start an opportunity log. Upgrade one piece of equipment that’s slowing you down. Look for some habit that you can do to help you build resiliency. What challenge can you impose on yourself that forces you to get better and better?

And identify at least one strength that you’re willing to double down on, and then one weakness that you’re not gonna try to get better at anymore, but you’re gonna figure out how to delegate it or set it up in a system. Growth isn’t a feeling it’s a decision, and it’s a decision that’s made manifest by action.

So- 

Laci LeBlanc: Perfect … 

Chris McAllister: thanks for doing this with me, Laci. I feel like I’ve gone kind of rambled on this one, but I needed to get some things off my chest. 

Laci LeBlanc: You know the rambling ones are always my favorite ones. They’re the most authentic and they’re the most real, and those are, I think those are probably the ones that people identify with the most.

So ramble away, Chris, anytime. 

Chris McAllister: All right. Well, thanks for listening everybody, and stay tuned next time for episode six the final episode of the 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional. And that’ll be our discussion about playing the long game, about choosing wealth, longevity, and happiness.

So, thank you Laci, and thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll see you next time. 

Laci LeBlanc: See you next time.