Ep009: Eight Success Mindsets of The New Real Estate Professional

Transcript

Welcome to the Connect Practice Track & Grow podcast. Habits, routines, motivations, and mindsets from some of the most successful real estate professionals among us. Check out the show notes at ConnectPracticeTrackGrow.com. This show is brought to you by the Strategic Resource for Real Estate Professionals, creating and coaching business opportunities and strategies that support and add value to the lives of real estate professionals at the StrategicResource.com. And by ROOST Real Estate Company. Today’s real estate agent doesn’t follow old rules. She makes new ones. Learn more at careerwithroost.com. Hello fellow real estate professionals, Chris McAllister here. This is a very exciting podcast for me because it’s about my brand new book that we just made available for download last week called Eight Success Mindsets of the New Real Estate Professional.

This podcast is an interview I did with Kristi Linebaugh of 90-Minute Books about each of the eight success mindsets, the very best real estate professionals among us share, and how these shared mindsets influence how they approach the business of helping people buy and sell homes. If you’re looking for ideas for how to create decades of career satisfaction and consistently greater income year after year, while still enjoying a life with great friends, family relationships, good health and happiness, then spend the next hour or so with this. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording this. Good morning. I’m speaking with author Chris McAllister about his new book, Eight Success Mindsets of the New Real Estate Professional.

How the best realtors among us craft careers worth pursuing and life’s worth living. How are you doing today, Chris? I’m doing well, thank you. Fantastic. I just wanted to start off by reading a little bit out of your preface on introduction because I think it’s such great insight. So you say, my goal for this book is to share the wisdom I have accumulated working with some of the happiest and most successful real estate professionals in the business today. I want to raise awareness for what is possible. I want to eliminate a way forward in this industry, but it’s not the norm for most of us and what we’ve experienced.

If you are happy with your life and business, this book may make you uncomfortable. I think that’s so great. And if you’re unhappy with the state of your business and career path, my hope is this book will spur you to act and find a better, more sustainable and healthier way forward. And I think usually the analogy that would come to mind is typically when people are coming into the real estate industry, it’s the old fashioned way of teaching people how to swim. They just throw them in the deep end. Right? And in this book, we’re going to be talking about the eight success mindsets that the best real estate professionals among us employ to create consistently greater income year after year.

And that these really, and I like the way that you look at this too, because these eight mindsets are really, they’re either growing or slowing your real estate business right now. And you may not even be aware of them. Let’s jump in with what those eight success mindsets of the new real estate professional are. Yeah. So the eight mindsets are purpose, relationship, value creation, unique ability, elaboration, opportunity, lifelong improvement, and finally professionalism. And I like the way that you break those down because you put four stages within those mindset. And I’m ready to dive in. I think this is going to be a really great conversation.

Okay. Let’s go. Let’s go. All right. Mindset number one purpose. You find great joy and satisfaction in helping people you care about and who care about you achieve their home ownership goals. And within that, really, that mindset, you have stage one. You are always on the lookout for shortcuts to success that will put money in your pocket right now. Real estate is not your calling. Tell me a little bit how that feels and kind of what that looks like. Well, I think sometimes people get into real estate and they don’t necessarily realize that it’s truly an entrepreneurial business. And it’s some people look at it even, I guess, as a hybrid, but it’s certainly not a job.

So, you know, 99.9% of the time when you associate your real estate license with a broker, you know, 1099 independent contractor in the eyes of the IRS. And, you know, legally and financially, you know, you truly are on your own and nobody is responsible for, you know, your success, but yourself. And I’m not sure that everybody is clear on that. I think some people may think that what they’re going to do is a lot more like a job, know that it really is, you know, some people, you know, believe that it’s the best of all worlds, you know, I’ve sort of got a job, I’ve got somebody to report to.

And at the same time, I get to, you know, make my own schedule, you know, set my own hours, make as much money as I want to, etc. But the reality is very few people go in with an entrepreneurial mindset that says, you know, this is my chosen profession. And this is how I’m going to make a living. I’m responsible for that and I’m responsible for my own success. So the message that, you know, I really want to send people when it comes to purposes, first and foremost, that real estate is a profession. And it’s really no different than any other profession, whether it’s a doctor or lawyer, accountant, etc.

And if anything, it’s more entrepreneurial, whereas, you know, attorneys, accountants, even doctors often are employed by a bigger company, be it a hospital and accounting firm, law firm, etc. And that is almost never the case in real estate. So it’s actually more entrepreneurial than other professions. I like that too, because what a huge difference between an employee mindset and an entrepreneurial mindset. How many times employees, what can the company do for me? What can I get out of it? And making that switch that entrepreneurial mindset of how can I help my clients and be a best service? Such a difference in that mindset. And that really kind of…

I don’t think we find… I’m sorry, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Well, one of the things we find, you know, for people who score themselves in stage one, that this mindset is that they confuse adding value, which is really helping other people achieve their goals versus just getting the deal closed. You know, for the people in stage one, getting paid is a paramount concern. And I’m all for getting paid. Don’t get me wrong, professionals get paid for what they do. That’s by definition. But they look at it as, you know, doing a job and picking up a paycheck. And for a lot of folks in stage one, it really doesn’t matter how they get a paycheck.

It’s not… They fell into real estate maybe for no good reason. Definitely because… Maybe not because they had a passion for it, but because it was just something that came up, right? Again, for a lot of these folks, it’s not about real estate. It’s not even necessarily about helping others. It’s truly about making a living and almost exclusively getting paid. So the rewards that motivate them are almost entirely extrinsic. They’re from outside themselves. They’re material. And when they start to kind of make that… I maybe climb the step or make that ascension to the… Or the step over into stage two, you’ve got into real estate because you were an entrepreneur at heart and you want more out of your life than a W-2 job allows.

And the reality has not lived up to the promise. And people can go from stage one to stage two, right? But there’s probably a lot of frustration that kind of starts to set in because they have that heart of helping. They don’t quite know all the promises and all the gold sparkling has not really turned out to be gold. What’s that kind of look like in action? Well, in stage two, we find folks that really want to be successful and they want to make real estate their profession, but they’re struggling. They’re stuck in neutral. And real estate promises a lot of things to people, right?

It’s freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, freedom of purpose. And that’s fantastic, but for most people, especially those in stage two, it’s just out of reach. It’s just not real for them. And for some in stage two, maybe they lack a little discipline for others. Maybe they lack somebody to model the way, to show them how to go forward successfully in the long term in this business. But the blessing and the curse in stage two is that you truly are free. So you’re free to do the right thing or you’re free not to do the right thing. And I characterize people in stage two as the disillusion group in this book as they really haven’t settled on a clear purpose.

They haven’t really figured out how to make their way forward in this business. And when you don’t have that, it’s saps your energy. It’s saps your passion. It creates fear and anxiety. And it’s just a lot of unhappy people in stage two. But I will say the one thing about stage two in every mindset is these folks have yet to lose hope. So they are still motivated to find a way forward. They’re just in a transitional situation that they know they have to get out of. But they’re just not sure where to go yet. And I like that. Didn’t you wrote something here that I’d like to share also? It says, The successful entrepreneur has to impose a schedule on themselves now, right? Because they’re not with an employer anymore. So they have the freedom of time is the freedom to spend and invest time at your discretion is not just the freedom to waste time. I think that is such a crucial distinction that, you know, so many people have that mindset, well, when I’m my own boss, I can go to the beach.

Well, you know, when you are your own boss, you can go to the beach. But if you go to the beach, when you should be focused on, you know, your business, then you’re probably making a mistake. And part of the discipline of being a professional is, you know, knowing, you know, when it’s time to go to the beach and, you know, rejuvenate and rest and celebrate whatever, you know, whatever it is you want to do in your free time. That’s critical to being a professional. But that has to be balanced with, you know, doing what has to be done to remove your business forward. And a lot of people never get that.

I was going to say, would you say that’s kind of a red flag too, because when you have that disillusionment and overwhelm because you have the desire, but you don’t know how it’s easy to kind of slip into the not controlling your time because you’re almost wanting to escape because you’re so frustrated. Yes, I’ve seen that happen also. And that’s why Stage 2 is a, you know, pretty rough place to be, right? And we all want to go and get out of that as quickly as possible and get to Stage 3. You’ve paid your dues and worked like crazy to get to where you are today.

You’re good at what you do and look forward to the day you have enough money to retire and move on. So this is kind of the feeling of successful but exhausted. I think that’s an excellent way to characterize Stage 3. You know, it takes a tremendous amount of work and commitment to succeed in this business. And for a lot of us, you know, we get there because we can outwork everybody else, right? Now working in the competition really does work, but it works until it doesn’t. So, you know, I think everybody at some point in their real estate career, you know, they start to realize that they just can’t work any harder any longer than they already are. And they realize that they have to figure out a different way forward in order to, you know, continue for years to come. And for a lot of people, and, you know, it’s not a bad thing in Stage 3. If you’ve been so successful that you’ve, you know, socked away enough money, you know, that you can completely quit real estate, you know, turn in your license and go off to retirement. Congratulations to you. You’ve accomplished a great thing. I, on the other hand, I want to be able to practice and do what I want to do for as long as I want to do it. I just want, I’m very careful these days about not putting myself in a situation where I am going to burn myself out or I’m not going to take care of myself or I’m unbalanced. I’ve been there before in my career and I’ve made a pledge to myself that I’m never going to let that happen again. I just can’t work any harder. But I hope for the rest of my career I can continue to find ways to work smarter.

And what would be a step that the reader, if they found themselves in Stage 3 and they’re really wanting to get to Stage 4, what would be a step that they could take? Well, I don’t know that it’s a step so much, but I think that you have to come to the realization that, you know, everybody comes to a crossroads. There’s a fork in the road, you know, in your career and there, everybody gets tired from time to time. There’s no question about it. But I think when you come to the realization that the skills and techniques and the working hard that got you where you are today, those things aren’t going to get you, you know, where you want to be tomorrow. And worse yet, when those things stop working, they’re not going to keep you where you are today. So knowing that, you know, even when you’ve hit that imaginary goal, that place of success that, you know, you’ve been working for your entire career, you always have to get better in response to an ever-changing market. There’s always a challenge to take better care of yourself, work harder, you know, adapt to whatever the buyers and sellers are looking for these days. And the thing I would also say to people is, you know, core values and purpose, you know, those things tend to remain constant, you know, year after year. But the tactics and the different capabilities that you have to learn and use to adapt to different market realities, that’s really how you make it for the long term. And if you don’t embrace the fact that the business is always changing and that you have to change with it, I think people find that, you know, it just gets harder and harder.

And in that situation, retirement just looks more and more attractive. Yeah, you can only row the boat so hard for so long until you realize you need to put a motor on there. That’s exactly right. And that’s why I affectionately refer to these wonderfully successful professionals in Stage 3 as the die-hards, right? Because they did whatever they needed to do to be successful. They continue to do that to this day. My worry for them is that they’re going to burn themselves out and they’re going to lose, you know, that joyful purpose. They’re going to lose the feeling of satisfaction. They’re just not going to enjoy the business anymore.

And I’ve seen that happen too many times. And I just want to caution people that success is a wonderful thing. Stage 3 is an incredible place to be. But what got you there may not keep you there and it more than likely will not get you to where you want to be in the future. I was going to say in Stage 4, that’s really where I’d say I like to be, is you find great joy and satisfaction in helping people you care about and who care about you achieve their home ownership goals. And that’s really kind of the promise land of mindset number one, would you say?

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, you want to work with people that appreciate what you bring, right? You want to work with people that are going to refer you, that understand you, that all those things. It’s a wonderful feeling. But the truly successful, the people in Stage 4, their motivation is well beyond the paycheck. It’s well beyond the transaction. It’s well beyond the outcome, right? The people in Stage 4 find joy in the daily practice of their profession. Not about status, it’s not even about money and lifestyle. Those things come as a natural byproduct of helping others. But those things are never the end of itself.

They find satisfaction in doing the work. It may not be sexy to a lot of people doing the work. But it comes back to joyful purpose and being a professional. And again, the thing I want to make clear is you may not be motivated by the next transaction or how many transactions you’re going to do. But the true professionals among us, they absolutely expect to be compensated appropriately for the value they bring. That’s tremendous. I love that too, the way you kind of broken that down in that mindset number one. Let’s jump into mindset number two, relationship. You know that relationships are infinitely more valuable than any series of transactions.

Relationship is the currency that fuels your business. And really, if you’re scoring yourself in Stage 1, though, you’re not interested in making friends. You’re interested in getting deals done. That’s what you get paid for. And unfortunately, I think we’ve all come across people like that. Yeah, I call these folks in Stage 1 the deal makers, right? They write contracts, they go to the closing table, they collect checks, but they don’t prioritize relationships with their clients. And they don’t prioritize staying in touch. They don’t prioritize earning referrals. They don’t prioritize after-sales service and connection. It truly is for the deal makers in Stage 1 about getting to the closing table and getting paid.

And for a lot of these folks, it’s a conscious decision to maintain an emotional client. And to them, their prize, the price that they keep an eye on is that commission check. Now, having said that, I’m not saying that you need to go out and become best friends with everybody you work with. That’s not healthy either. You have to be objective. You have to be able to provide feedback. You have to be quite frankly, we see a lot of people who struggle in Stage 2, the disillusioned, simply as in other times it’s just a weird, unhealthy dynamic. And obviously what we all want are healthy, productive, professional relationships.

We want to be focused on what’s in it for the client, how do we make their dreams come true? Can we do what they want us to do? And can we do it well and leave great experience in their mind? And if we do that and we’re intentional about staying in touch after the sale, then we’re going to get referrals from that past client in the future. They’re going to be thrilled to be able to refer a true professional to their friends, family, co-workers, et cetera. The other thing about the Stage 1 folks is they often don’t take the time to listen to their clients.

And many times they just simply believe that they know what’s best for their clients. So instead of asking questions and trying to understand their motivations or aspirations, they… They often pay lip service to what the client wants or says they want and they forge ahead with their own plans and priorities and that’s not conducive to earning repeat business or referrals either. As I was saying, that hands-off feeling of the visualization I just got was they’re almost like the checkout person at the grocery store. They’ve got all their clients on the conveyor belt and they’re just running them across the scanner and bagging them up as quick as they can.

The homeowner or the home buyer picks up on that as well. Yeah, I think that’s a great characterization. It does happen a lot with these Stage 1 books. As we go into Stage 2, this is an uncomfortable place to be, I would imagine, too. You’re sick and tired of working with people. You don’t like to impress people. You don’t care about and you know there’s got to be a better way. It’s kind of like you’ve had the lights turned on all of a sudden and you realize, wow, I don’t like the spot I’m in. But you still have a little glimmer of hope mixed into that.

Exactly. The disillusioned in Stage 2 has yet to lose hope. They want to go forward. They want to continue to try. They just quite haven’t found their way forward yet. It’s been said that we become the average of the people we hang out with the most and I believe this is true. I think if you work with, if we’re forced to work with people who don’t appreciate or value what we bring to the table, we start to devalue ourselves in the work we do. Conversely, if we work with people who do value and appreciate us, we gain confidence and motivation to get better and better.

It is critical that you surround yourself with clients or you seek clients out that you want to work with that you want to help and want to work with you. And yes, I understand we’ve all had to work with people that we weren’t too crazy about because we still have a mortgage payment to make, et cetera. And I’m not being unrealistic. Those things happen and they’ll happen your entire career. But you have to keep that idea in mind that there is, there are half of clients that you’ve adored working with that you just got massive satisfaction out of helping them and doing the job. And you want to duplicate those clients.

And I think that has to be the goal for everybody. And I like the way that you, you go ahead. I was just, I like to because you and I’ll read something here you wrote in stage two. And these are really some great questions for our readers to ask themselves to kind of see where they’re at in the process. And I think probably a lot of people have never even thought of these questions. So you suggest to the reader to ask themselves and our listeners as well, who do you want to be a hero to? Who are your favorite clients and why? And how did you meet them?

And how can you meet more clients just like them? Because really chances are they’re going to have people that you’d love to work with as well. That’s so important. Yeah, it is. And like I said, I’m not unrealistic to think that we, you know, we have to, we do have to, we all have to work with people that, you know, maybe it wasn’t the best experience and so forth because we are professionals and we do have obligations and so forth. But I think just being conscious of the people who really, we really enjoy working with and think about how to find more people like them is a valid exercise.

You know, this real estate career really like any sales career. It’s one relationship at a time. You know, so my advice is start with your favorite people, stay in touch, earn their referrals, provide the best service you can, and continue to try to get better and better at what you do over time. And that’s kind of the rocket fuel or the magic pixie dust, right? To kind of get you into stage three of those relationships because stage three, you’re fortunate not to have to worry about looking for business anymore. Customers come to you and now at this point you have all the work that you need.

And it almost feels like it’s the perfect world at that point, right? I think it is the perfect world and, you know, it goes back to the die-hard and stage three have just worked themselves, you know, done fantastic work, worked incredibly hard over the years to get there. And the only caution I have for folks who find themselves in stage three is just do whatever you need to do to avoid becoming complacent. You know, easy and this business is moving fast and the world is moving fast and, you know, celebrate, enjoy it, but continue to look ahead. You know, in good times and lean times, you know, we have to be connecting with current and future clients.

I mean, that’s got to be the primary, you know, activity that we engage in. And just as importantly is in good times and lean times, we have to continue to refine our skills and abilities and get better at what we do because what people expect continues to be more and more year after year. And we’ve got to keep up. And I think that’s so good too, because when you think about your professional, you’ve got kind of systems at this point to get the people coming into you. I mean, it’s easy to kind of focus on the receiving end. It’s almost like you’re at the end of a river and all the water is flowing toward you.

It’s easy to just focus on getting more and more cups, but you really need to go back up the river every once in a while and look to make sure there hasn’t been an avalanche and rocks starting to cut off your stream, you know, still kind of being, you know, a surveyor of all your incoming flow. Yeah, one thing to get to stage three is another thing to get there. Yeah, right? It’s just stay there. One thing to get there is another thing to stay there, that’s right. Exactly. And so as we go into stage four, and I like how you saw this, can you congratulate yourself if you’re at stage four?

You know that relationships are infinitely more valuable than any series of transactions. Relationship is the currency that fuels your business. Well, how’s that feel? Like, what’s that look like in a day in the life of a stage four? Well, I, the people who continue to refer friends, family, co-workers and so forth, you know, to a stage four, what I call a new professional agent, they do so because they know the value that the real estate professional brings. And they can describe exactly what their friend, co-worker, family, whoever they’re referring can expect from that professional should they choose to work with them. You know, one of the really magical things that makes the stage four agent look like they’re, you know, it’s effortless for them is they’ve created advocates for their business who can describe what they do better than they can describe for themselves.

So that testimony or what you want to recall it, that description, they really set people up for success. And when the stage four agent gets, you know, calls on that client that’s been referred to them, you know, they’re pre-sold. There is no selling. It’s about performing and getting them where they want to be. It’s just a beautiful thing. But the other big thing that I want to mention about relationships is, you know, the new professional, you know, just as they are very discerning about who they’re going to spend time with helping them, you know, buy and sell a house, they are just as picky, for lack of a better term, about the people they choose to be on their team, right?

They have a team or an assistant, you know, their relationships with those people are just as important, you know, to their long-term success and overall happiness as their client relationships are. So who you surround yourself with matters, you know, as a professional. So, you know, the new professional surrounds herself with people who share her values and her commitment to her clients. And those relationships, those people on her team, you know, they could be their sales administrative assistants, but she also keeps, you know, her lender, her title professional, you know, keeps them close as well as she relies on them to take care of her clients.

And probably the most important real has is with the brokerage she chooses to associate with. The professional is super successful among us. She probably is the most important because if they know that if they’re not aligned, you know, with the company they choose to associate with, there’s going to be friction. There’s going to be that it’s not going to be a pleasant experience. So, you know, you’ve got to surround yourself with a team that gets you, that shares your values, but the most important. Great, too, because you’re starting to kind of bring in all the moving parts. And I think that’s something that a lot of people overlook entrepreneurs and people coming from the employee to the employer or the entrepreneur mindset is all those moving parts kind of have to work together.

And mindset number three, we really talk about value creation. And you hear that band-aid around a lot, but really, I don’t know that anyone really knows kind of a set guideline of how that should what that should kind of entail. And I like that because in mindset number three with value creation, you’re consistently look for ways to differentiate yourself in the market by adding greater value to your client relationships year after year. And in stage one, if you are scoring yourself in stage one, you do your job and you do it well, making your numbers is all. What’s in it for me? I think you see a lot of that in Stage 1, but the true professional asks what’s in it for them.

The professional begins with the end in mind. They’re clear of what’s important to the client, and they work backwards from there. Everything they do is in service to the client. They want to exceed their expectations. They want to make their dreams come true. That’s how they see the job. That’s how they see their practice and profession. But for the deal-maker in Stage 1, the closing always comes first. That’s the job. And a lot of them do it really well. They take any opportunity that comes their way. They do whatever is necessarily to get to the closing table. It’s not really a concern who they work with, because for them, getting paid is the objective.

And I understand that I make it sound bad. It’s not bad. It’s a choice. The thing about the deal-makers is, my gosh, they tend to be really good at their numbers. They set really clear financial goals for themselves, and they tend to meet them. They understand that what gets measured improves. And they are the best of all the groups of all these stages that are tracking their numbers and their success. For them, they are their success metrics, which is really the number of closings and how much those closings are worth. They track their business better than any other realtors I know. And honestly, I wish every realtor I work with got better at the tracking piece.

And I like, too, the way that you point out, every stage, there’s no bad stage. You can make a decision that’s where you want to be. There’s just many opportunities that if you want to go to a different stage, there is the ability to do that. I like that. Some people stay in stage one their whole lives, and then they start getting a little bit older. Some people make a lot of money in stage one. They make a lot of money. A lot of them. And more power to them. But it’s my book, My Rules. There you go. It’s my job to highlight what I believe is a much better way forward.

Absolutely. And I think stage two, and it may not be, and I hope it’s not this way for every time, because I think sometimes people don’t want to move until they’re so exhausted they can no longer do what they’ve been doing. This is kind of like the great book of, hey, you don’t have to go to where you can’t get up another day before you start looking for something different. I like the way that you kind of lay that out. Because stage two, you believe there’s more to this business than being a million-dollar producer and the next awards banquet. Now you’re kind of looking at that stage of, wait a minute, there’s got to be more to this than just the next sale and the next grind.

Yeah, so many offices are populated with real estate agents that really enjoy the recognition that they get from other real tours in terms of realtor sales awards and being the top salespeople. And these tend to be the hyper-competitive realtures that, I guess the term cutthroat comes to mind, that will run over as many realtors as it takes to get that listing, whatever you want to call it for them. It’s just hugely competitive and they thrive on that recognition that sales awards. And that’s not all of us. I’d say it’s probably not 80, maybe even 90% of it. And if you’re in an office with a culture like that and you don’t fit, it’s going to slow you down eventually.

If your whole goal in life is to find a way to create greater and greater value, but you’re continuously surrounded by people in a culture that are motivated by the, not just the next check, but the next sales award and being the top dog or whatever, then that’s probably a bad fit that really is slowing your business down, if you’re honest with yourself. And there are alternatives out there in the world and you owe it to yourself to seek them out. And yeah, talk about making yourself miserable and not even knowing that could be the reason why. Because it seems to be a positive thing.

Oh, we all make these sales, but you know, inside you’re miserable. Yeah, exactly. Because it’s contrary to focusing on relationships and making the relationship your priority. It’s everything about making transaction your priority. And if your relationship focused in a transaction shop, there’s going to be friction. If not now, tomorrow. Because you’re getting up the tire track off of your legs and getting run over some of these things. And definitely going to stage three, you’ve been trading on your reputation as a hard worker for years. You know your business better than anyone else. Your clients are lucky to have you. That would feel, I would feel like that would kind of come across to the client as well, you know, having that type of mindset.

Well, you know, the folks in stage three, they tend to have been out this business for quite some time and they know the business. And they know how to, you know, get people to the closing table. They, and it’s not just that they know how to work with people. They know how to take care of people. They wouldn’t have lasted this long and that didn’t have basic, you know, people skills. You know, they’ve got established personal policies, procedures, habits, disciplines that they never wavered from. And quite frankly, a lot of us envy, right? They’ve been at it long enough and they’ve been focused enough that they’ve got it all figured out.

But again, there’s a danger here. You know, value creation is a moving target. You know, what buyers and sellers considered great service or valuable, you know, even three or four years ago is taken for granted now. And then the complicate things, you know, what a generation Z buyer or seller went from their realtor day to day isn’t even close to what… you know, millennials wanted, you know, a year or two or even today. And what either of those folks, the Gen Zs or the millennials, you know, their approach to life in real estate, it looks nothing like their, you know, baby boomer parents or grandparents expectations.

So, you know, the message in stage three is you have to continue to be conscious of meeting your clients where they are. You know, if you’re not focused on meeting them where they are, then you’re going to be perceived as inauthentic. And there’s nothing worse than being perceived as inauthentic by, you know, Gen Z and the millennials. So you have to make a conscious and considered effort to understand the needs and desires and motivations of what your clients want. And then of course, you have to deliver. And if you don’t do that, you know, your reputation as a professional in your business will eventually suffer.

And with all of the ways that people can leave reviews, they can suffer much faster than it used to. Oh, absolutely. Whether it’s Facebook or Yelp or, you know, Google, that’s true. That’s exactly right. Bad news still travels much faster than good news. Yeah. Isn’t that the truth? And as we move into stage four, this is really, I was like, that’s kind of the promise land. You’re consistently looking for ways to differentiate yourself in the market by adding greater value to your client relationships year after year. This is like, feels completely different. So totally 100% client focused. Well, the thing I want to say here, I go back to Joe Polish.

He’s the founder of Genius Network and he just published a new book that’s called What’s in it for them, which is just a great title. But Joe divides the world into two camps, right? In Joe’s world, and I agree with him, there are givers and there are takers. And professionals, the new professionals in particular are natural givers. They give freely of their time, their wisdom and their expertise to their clients. And they give the same, you know, freely to their fellow agents who, you know, have a desire to improve their own client experiences and enhance the value of their relationships over time. That’s how these new professionals become leaders amongst their peers because they’re not afraid to share what works for them.

So for them, you know, it’s not about competition. It’s really about collaboration. And at the heart of the matter is, you know, professionals, they add value before the sale, during the sale, and after the transaction is done. You know, professionals stay in contact. You know, they’re not, they don’t make nuisances of themselves, but they stay in contact. They make the occasional call. Send the text message. Remember a birthday. Send a note. You know, interact with social media. Send items of value. They do whatever they need to do to stay top of mind without being a nuisance. And by doing that, they let that client know that when they’re ready, they’ll be there and they’ll be ready.

Right. So, you know, adding value, you add value as being the expert, the counselor, the coach. You also add value by the people you bring with you to the experience of people on your team. So again, it goes back to having those trusted team members, whether it’s the lender, the title person, the inspection person, and so forth. All of that adds value to the experience. And most importantly, the new professional in stage four is just referrable. It’s just the basics we learned in kindergarten, right? You show up on time. You do what you say you’re going to do. You finish what you start and you say please and thank you.

And it is a sad state of the world to say that those fears are special, but they are special. And quite frankly, those are differentiating behaviors among realtor’s states. So, I guess… That’s so great. Yeah. A lot of people don’t even miss it because it’s so rarely given that when they do find it, it blows them out of the water. Yeah. Who would have thought that the best business plan in the world is, you know, first be a good human being? Exactly. That’s fantastic. And as we go into mindset number four, unique ability. You know that your mix of skill, talent, experience, ambition, motivation, and capability is special.

You leverage that without apology. Now, if you score yourself in stage one, you are outstanding at negotiating transactions and getting customers to the closing table. And after that, it’s on to the next deal. What are a couple of things that’s going to be kind of feeling like or looking like in stage one? Well, the folks in stage one, they are really good at everything it takes to get to the closing table. So they are great at negotiating. They’re great at pricing listings. They’re great at crafting purchase offers that get accepted. They’re great at navigating, you know, the inspection process, working with lenders, you know, title professionals, getting to the closing table.

Right? They are really good at that stuff. But you know what? Everybody at every stage has to be good at those things if they expect to make a living. And the problem with the folks in stage one is they get really good at these things and then they never learn anything more because it doesn’t contribute to getting to the next deal. And the point that I really want to make here is we all have to be skilled at those basic expectations. We all have to be trained and retrained and do our continuing ed and be curious and always be looking to get better because, and again, this is just my personal opinion.

If you’re not skilled in those basic areas, you know, negotiating pricing, etc., I know this sounds harsh, Kristi, but I don’t know that you deserve to have a real estate life. Who are you being of value to really at that point? Right. Yeah, I don’t care what a great person you are, or even if you’re the best connecting relationship person in the world, if you can’t follow it up with the basic skills that every realtor has to have or not. So applause to the deal makers in stage one. They’ve got those things going on almost every single time. I was going to say that’s really important to stage two, right?

Because moving into that stage two, I remember I had someone who worked for me and he was the most amazing person, super sweet, could tell amazing stories and at the very end would never ask for the sale and the people would say, good visiting with you and leave and well, he no longer works with me. You got to get to that point of making the sale. When we get into stage two, you sense that you’re fighting the same losing battle as everyone else. Everyone’s playing the same game, but you won a new game and there’s that kind of inkling of hope again, right? Where we’re looking for more.

What’s that look like? Well, a lot of realtors, you know, they, in stage two, they find themselves in a, you know, obviously a tough situation, but they also find themselves caught in a game that can’t win. They’re playing somebody else’s game, somebody else’s rules and so forth. And one of the privileges and the joys of being an entrepreneur is being able to create your own game with your own rules and a game that you are going to win, right? It takes a lot to, to set that game up and decide on the rules and what it’s going to take for you to win. You know, so what does winning look like?

Well, the most successful folks among us, you know, they win by every single day connecting with people, whether it’s past clients, current clients who, you know, who will become future clients. They always, they’re always looking for ways to connect because the first step that I did in all of this is that you have to have somebody to work with, right? And, you know, and then a lot of people in stage two, they get confused with, you know, what is, what’s the habit? What’s the activity, you know, versus the outcome, right? So again, a lot of people get focused on the transaction, on the closing. Other people focus on what it takes to get to a closing and, you know, relationships.

So I like to coach my agents on something that I like to call a personal connection standard. So I asked my agents to pick a number to decide how many contacts that they are going to make with current and future clients over a given period of time. So those contacts, you know, they might include a phone call. It might be a personal note. It might be a text, a social media message, a stop by, a personal appearance with a gift and probably the most important element of a metric for a commercial personal connection standard is how many additions are you going to make, whatever it is.

So a personal connection standard might be, okay, I’m going to make five calls a week. I’m going to write three personal notes. I’m going to do two stop buys and I’m going to add two people to my database every single week. Seems really doable. But can you imagine if you do that every week? And let me tell you the very best among us do something like that every week. So what does winning the week mean? Winning the week means that you actually made five calls for three notes, made two stop buys and added two people to your database. And if you do that, and if that’s how you win, if that’s the rule you set up for your outcome is going to be that you are going to get a steady incoming stream of referral to connect and how are you going to hold yourself.

So great too, because really now it’s we’re starting to move into the framework of the dual ability of it all, you know, versus that. Well, it might work if and trying to recreate the wheel every time you have processes and systems in place that are already working. That’s one of the things I love your systems that you set up for the realtors as well. They already work. We don’t have to hope they work. Yes, we try not to invent a wheel. We try to focus on what works. That’s just absolutely right. I love it. And stage three, you believe realtors are basically all the same.

So the only way to stand out is to outwork and out hustle the competition. So we’re back to the rowboat of, oh my God, we got to get in there and work like crazy. And, you know, the younger agents coming in, they’re probably going to eventually be able to outwork you. Yeah, it’s that you have nothing unique to offer that the only thing you have is to try to find a way to work harder than, you know, you’ve already lost, you know, you’re going to become a commodity. And when you become a commodity, if you don’t have anything of value to add, the only thing that you can do is charge less for what you’re providing, right?

So worse. Yeah. Be, you know, cutting their commissions and, you know, taking on financial responsibility for things that a buyer and seller should pay for in the interest of getting a deal closed. Nobody wants to be there. That is a horrible place to be. And yes, in stage three, you know, again, I don’t want to take anything away from them because they’re doing fine. But in every one of these mindsets, the dangerous stage three is becoming complacent and you always have to, you always have to be bring, be equipped to bring more to the table over year after year. And you have to find what’s unique about yourself and your approach to the business and the experience that you provide your clients.

And before we go to stage four or two, I just had this thought of, you know, the race to the bottom, it takes a lot of work. If you’ve ever slam in the ocean to get to the bottom and it takes a whole lot of work to stay at the bottom. There’s a lot of stuff you’re going to have to fight off to stay at the bottom. Yeah, I don’t want to, I don’t want to run that race to see who can cost the lowest commission dollar. I’ll tell you, because there’s no joy in that. Absolutely. And as we get to stage four, you know that your mix of skill, talent, experience, ambition, motivation and capability is special.

And you leverage that without apology. This just feels better. You know, as we get into stage four, tell me a little bit about this too. And I know you really have a great insight from Dan Falvin as well. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, Dan Falvin is the founder of Strategic Coach and I’ve been a Strategic Coach client for, my gosh, I think it’s going on almost 20 years now. But Dan teaches that every one of us has a unique ability. It’s something that we are just better at than anybody else. And. It’s the essence of what we love to do and what we do best.

It’s natural talents, it’s passion, and it’s what fuels us to continue to contribute. So the professional, the new professional here in Stage 4, they recognize their unique ability, they celebrate their unique ability, and they invest in their unique ability. Sort of a winner’s have to win situation. Even just as importantly, the professional knows that when she or he combines her unique abilities with the unique abilities of every other member of her team, she creates an experience for her clients that is just far bigger than the sum of its parts. And the true professional knows that she’s going to bring on team members, whether administrative team members or sales team members, that the goal always is to bring people whose skills and abilities complement her own.

Right? You don’t create something bigger. You know, 1 plus 1 doesn’t equal 3 unless you’re bringing in a team member who is great at things that you’re not great at. So that’s just that whole concept of unique ability and unique ability team and collaboration is really what sends these new professionals, you know, over the top. And then if you want to, you know, add the icing on the cake for these folks enduring success that, you know, just goes on and on, it’s achieved when they find a broker who understands how to collaborate with their agent. Right? Finding a broker who understands the mindsets of the new professional is key.

And, you know, it’s the broker’s job as a member of the agent’s unique ability team to promote that agent’s connection activities, to enhance that agent’s practice, support their business and their unique niches in the market and to hopefully coach that agent to, you know, greater and greater professional growth. You know, that is the ultimate combination of unique abilities in my book. And I think too, so many times we spend trying to improve what we’re not good at, right? And that keeps us in the rowboat. And then it’s like we bring on somebody who is good at that thing or not. Now we’ve moved to a motorboat, but really when you’re in your unique abilities and bringing in team members that are in their unique abilities, now we’ve moved to a speedboat.

Yeah, my philosophy is always leverage your strength, right? Don’t try to, don’t try to, you know, want to say, don’t try to improve where you feel you’ve come up short, but that really is what I’m saying, you know, focus on that, focus on what you’re better at than anybody else. Celebrate that, leverage that, move on from the rest. Surround yourself with people who are good at the things that you’re not in. You will go far in life. It’s that simple. That’s really, and that’s kind of the power of mindset number five, kind of bringing this all together. Mindset number five is collaboration. So you make your own rules and set your own standards for success.

You’re actively surround yourself with people you support and who support you in return. And if you find yourself scoring at stage one, you became an independent contractor for the independence. You love going it alone. You little tolerance for other people because they just slow you down. These are the field makers, rugged individualists. Yeah, yeah, it’s very romantic, you know, but it’s also lonely. At least for most of us, right? But, you know, the rugged individualists in stage one, they’re independent in the extreme. They don’t take partners, you know, they don’t. Form strategic, you know, relationships. They’re opportunistic about, you know, anything a service provider can, you know, provide in terms of a lead and so forth.

It just comes back to the fact that stage one, you know, you score yourself here, you’re just naturally more transactional than you are a relationship. Orient and it’s no secret. Very few deal makers are team players, right? They tend not to have assistance. They’re not great referral partners and they have little use for the brokerages that hold their licenses. And, you know, that’s fine because there are great brokerages for the deal makers in this business. And again, I know I sound like I’m passing judgment and, you know, I guess I am because again, I wrote the book, but there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a different way that’s not for everybody.

And in terms of collaboration, you know, the deal makers, they never see themselves working with their fellow agents. They’re always in competition with their fellow agents. They tend to come to the business from a mindset of scarcity. You know, they someplace deep down, they believe there’s only so much business to go around and they’ve got to do whatever they can to get their share. We spoke like we talked about a couple of minutes ago. Sales rewards are important to them because it’s how they keep score in an environment where there’s not enough business. And basically collaboration is just on a mindset that deal makers in stage one pay much attention to.

I was going to say too, and it may all of a sudden have a light bulb for our listeners too, that they may be trying to partner with somebody who’s a deal maker and that’s why it’s not been working. Well, and I would say this as well, you know, we’re recording this. It’s November 29th, 2022. And we’re already seeing that the market is slowing down a bit now that interest rates have started to go up. And, you know, one of the biggest frustrations I think is that I’m hearing about from our agents is the agents they’re co-operating with on the other side of the table, a lot of them are scared.

You know, they’re not doing well and they’re, they see their business suffering and they don’t really have a strategy to do a whole lot about it. And, you know, that comes across in maybe some rude behavior or, you know, I think what it comes down to is it’s fear, right? It’s fear that there’s not going to be enough business to make ends meet next year. And that makes it hard on the people who are focused on relationships who will have, you know, a great year next year. So the people you work with, you just have to be aware of where they’re coming from and to a huge degree that you’ve got to show a little grace.

I like that. If you score yourself in stage two, you love being in business for yourself and having control over your own destiny. It’s the loneliness of being in business by yourself that really brings you down. Would you say that is really prevalent in people not only just coming into the business, but that have been there for quite a while? Yeah. I think at any time you’re an entrepreneur in business for yourself and responsible for your own destiny, that can be a lonely place to be. I don’t know if ever going to go away. I think it comes in waves, right? There’s times when you feel it.

There’s times when you don’t feel it. There’s times when you’re in the flow and there’s times when you’re out of the flow. You know, and again, it goes back to being a real tour is not like having a real job. There is no security. There’s no safety net. And for a lot of us, you know, that’s just too much to bear. And those folks tend to get out of the business. Others learn to work through that. They learn to see opportunities where others don’t and they find a way to thrive. And, you know, that’s really our mission at my company is to help all of our agents find a way to thrive, you know, regardless of the current work.

You know, the phrase we always use is, you know, you want to be in business for yourself, just not by yourself. The approach that, you know. And that’s a huge difference because I think so many times if you’re having the competition among the agents and the scarcity and the fear, you are definitely by yourself. So I love that you take a completely different look at that and approach. When we get to stage three, you have been successful on your own, your entire career and are frankly happier when people just stay out of your way. I think we’ve all worked with people like that. What does this look like in relationship?

Well, the thing I want to say is it all ties into, you know, working as hard as you can for as long as you can and so forth. And at some point that stops working. But the reason Realtors max out on stage three or goes stale is because they just can’t embrace help. And let’s face it, most great salespeople are not natural managers or administrators. And, you know, the folks who recognize that and surround themselves or collaborate with people who are, you know, good administrators and so forth, they tend to thrive. And again, that goes back to unique ability, celebrating and leveraging what you do best and surrounding yourself with people who are really great and love to do the things that you don’t love to do.

You know, one of the things that I guess this is something that I just want to touch on in this recording that is sort of a thing that just bugs the crap out of me these days. But there’s this trend in our industry for agents to form teams, you know, and I think it’s a marketing gimmick, right? So you’ve got these folks out there who really don’t know how to work within a team, but they’re performing these teams because I think they feel it looks good on a website or a sales sign, right? It’s like they think the title of team leader gives them an air of credibility, right, as it dances their reputation.

And I’m seeing brand new agents that don’t have a book of business at all, marketing themselves as team leaders. And I think it’s, I think it’s disingenuous. I think it’s, I think it’s crazy. You know, why would a real estate agent with more than enough time and capacity to handle the workload? I think some of it is the status thing, the marketing thing. I think for other people though, it’s probably more along the lines of, well hey, if I can invite these people to come on my quote team, you know, when they go out and make something happen and have a closing, you know, I can get some of their money, right?

So I think for some people, sadly, you know, that’s just it is the motivation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for teams when the team leader has more work to do than they can handle on their own, right? You know, the good team leader is a rainmaker, a good team leader, essentially, drumming up more and more business. And the reason they surround themselves with people to help them is because they have a following, they have a reputation, they have a practice that they need to expand. And at a certain level of that incoming, a certain level of productivity, the only way to maintain a service level, right, is to bring on team members and learn to delegate the tasks that fall outside of what you’re great at.

And that’s when it makes great to bring on a team and that’s when it makes sense to really learn how to collaborate with other people. But again, I’m sorry to run off on that tangent, but it’s just a crazy thing we’re seeing out there right now. It’s sad because people who really need to form a team because they have something to offer and they have more business than they can handle tend to resist doing it. And the people who have no business forming a team go out there and advertise that they’ve done that with nothing to offer. So I will stop. I’ll get off my show box and congregation may be seated.

I love that. Well, and too, I think we just had an eye opening experience or that aha moment. Many of our listeners who may realize they are on that team or they’re just expected to share part of what they made versus sitting under a rainmaker. That would be a eye opening or the eye popping moment of, wait a minute, maybe I need to change the situation. So when we get to stage four, you make your own rules and set your own standards for success. You’re actively surround yourself with people you support and who support you in return. And what a nice place to be at this point, not only financially, but almost kind of psychically or spiritually, if you want to say it, just kind of a peaceful time, I would say.

Well, I think we could all use a little more peace these days. You know, stage four kind of sums it up. So I guess allow me to do that. So the new professional in stage four, you know, she doesn’t conform to anybody’s expectations about her home. Again, she’s making her own rules. It’s not here to win a sales award. You know, this isn’t a popularity contest. This isn’t about fame. You know, the work the new professional does is never about the agent. Everything that they do is in service to the wishes of their clients. You know, she doesn’t compete with anybody. The only thing she competes with is her past performance and, you know, how close she gets to the, you know, the goals that she sets for herself.

Right? And the other cool thing about these folks is they’re happy to share their experiences and principles with their fellow agents, you know, when they do it in the office and outside the office. But what those other realtors do with that wisdom, she could care less. Right? You know, she’s always, you know, the new professional, she’s always open to learn from other people. She’s always open to share, but she just has no interest in trying to copy somebody else’s business plan or, you know, how they go about doing their work. So the successful professionals, I’m sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, you’re good. I like where you’re going with that.

Keep going. Well, the successful among us, you know, they interact with their fellow realtors from the mindset of collaboration. That’s really what it comes down to. And in so doing, they become, you know, the local leaders in our industry by default. They know better than anybody else that we’re talking about that that real success means that we see we succeed together. None of us succeed when it’s at the expense of each other. And that plays so beautifully into the very next mindset of opportunity because being open to new ideas, being open to learn from other people, not trying to copy what other people and works for them, but really being open to collaboration really does create opportunity.

And so it’s such a seamless flow into mindset number six, opportunity. You don’t wait for the opportunity to be handed to you. You actively look for opportunity in everything you do. You’re grateful for every advantage you have and always have one eye on your bigger future. And that’s so great because it’s really bringing in every opportunity from every area and kind of looking at who’s around you, who can be around you, who maybe doesn’t need to be around you. So you get into stage one. If you’re scoring yourself there, you can’t fight the market. When times get tough, the best thing you can is hunker down and fight for your share.

It’s just business. That kind of feels like the whole digging yourself into a hole and waiting for everything to blow over kind of dealing. Yeah, I, you know, my experience with the folks in stage one, you know, for all their salesperson bluster, you know, for lack of a better word, they are not great at intentionally creating opportunities for themselves or their clients. You know, they’re not natural market makers. They don’t have those natural relationship skills that they need to bring two people together to make a market, right? To put something together that’s, you know, maybe even outside of the MLS. So they don’t, it’s almost like they, it doesn’t occur to them, but they don’t even have time because they’re so busy reacting to what is or is, but not right in front of them.

So they tend to be really stuck in whatever the, you know, the current market conditions are, right? You know, if the market is good, they get their share. If the market goes soft, they get their share, but that’s on a smaller pie. So, you know, they’re getting lost, right? And I don’t want to say that they’re okay with that, but they kind of tend to accept it because opportunity is something that kind of comes to them. They don’t see opportunity as something that they can create. Right? I don’t know if I’m exactly explaining that, right? But I think the best of us, we create our own opportunity.

You know, with so many deal makers or maybe that’s not fair. Maybe with so many people who score themselves in stage one, you also hear this a lot. If business is bad, it’s somebody else’s fault, right? And I get it, you know, it’s like those people, those cranky people scared to death on the other side of the closing table. It’s much easier to blame, you know, interest rates inflation or their broker on, you know, their business being bad than it is to take, you know, personal responsibility for their own situation. And, you know, again, from the perspective of those folks on the other side of the table, a lot of times the folks in stage one, they can, you know, they can be insufferably arrogant when times are good, but they can be downright miserable to be around when times are tough.

So, you know, again, it’s a bad place to be. I think all of us have to learn to show each other again a little bit of grace because we just don’t know where other people are coming from. But again, you have to be prepared to create your own opportunity and you just can’t wait for things to, you know, turn around and go your way. And I was just saying, and when we’re talking about kind of that dichotomy, that just that little bit of shift that it can take to move to stage two really is your mindset of the lack going from the lack and the, oh my God, am I going to survive to the, oh, wait a minute, there is hope.

Stage two, really, you love the business that hate that it’s consuming your life. You know you need to get some boundaries, but are afraid to turn down anything that may turn into a sale. So the kind of that shift a little bit of now you’re, you know, there are opportunities out there. You’re kind of opening them up, but you’re still a little bit dissatisfied with what’s happening in your life, even though maybe you’re looking at things a little bit differently. Tell me a little bit about how that feels or kind of how that looks in that shift. Well, you know, for me personally, I got my license in 2001 and prior to that, I was a retail district manager for Target Store.

So I always had a real job and a steady paycheck. And I decided to make a huge change and became a real estate agent. And for me, you know, it was like being shot out of a cannon. I was, I was going to take anything and everything that came my way. I was going to make the most of it. I was going to work as crazy. It didn’t matter. Whatever it took, I was going to make this work. I was going to, you know, successful one, one way or the other. Right. And one of the things that fall away when you take that approach are boundaries.

Right. And the successful folks in stage two have a boundary problem. Because they don’t know when to stop. But the unsuccessful in stage two have a boundary problem because they don’t know when to start. Mmm. Excellent. But, you know, again, we can go on about boundaries for a long time, but there’s a couple of points I want to make. You know, for me personally, I did feel like I was being shot out. I was scared to death. It had to work. Unfortunately, it did work. But I will tell you that I made a decision early on that I wasn’t going to work on Friday evenings that we would have family dinner. I would be thrilled to have an opportunity to work on Saturday mornings, but I always took Saturday afternoons and evenings off with my wife, and I would work all day Sunday on open houses, anyone I could get. So I at least had some time for myself and my family to look forward to on the weekend. And the handful of times that I broke those rules, it was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn’t a good contact, it wasn’t a good appointment. So again, even starting out, you know, to know that you were going to have some free time coming up at the end of the week, you know, that’s super helpful, super motivational. The other thing is, you know, don’t do what I did.

I understand why I did it, but honestly, I did it too long. You know, I started to burn out a bit, but boundaries around yourself are the key because when you’re the entrepreneur or the independent contractor, you are the breadwinner, right? You are the prize, race who are the goose that lays golden eggs. And if you don’t schedule time and breaks for rejuvenation and recreation, and to take care of themselves before you need them, it’s going to catch up with you. And one of the hardest things for me to learn was that time off was not a reward. Time off was something that I had to schedule and take and learn to enjoy before I physically or mentally couldn’t do any more work. So the message here for the folks on stage two that are struggling is, start with boundaries, protect yourself, take care of yourself, and if not, you’re going to regret it later on. And my dad would always say, you know, we all struggle with terminal uniqueness. We always say, nope, not going to happen to me, but really, at this point, you have done this. You already, what do they say if it won’t kill you? I like to end it with, it’ll make a great story later, you know? You’re already going through it.

Yeah, I can’t go do as I say, not as I did. There you go. Exactly. That’s like what I meant. Oh, yeah, experience, yeah, let other people pay for the experience. You don’t have to keep doing it yourself. As we get into stage three, you make a good living and enjoy a comfortable life. You’ve had all the opportunities you will ever need and are focused on holding on to what you’ve got. That’s a little bit of the fear kind of mixed in with that. How does that look as we’re going into stage three? I think it’s best characterized as, you know, you tend to subtly, slowly shift over time from playing the win to playing not to lose. Playing the win is, you know, you’ve got goals in front of you. You’re pushing to succeed. You’re making things happen. And then there comes a point where you’ve done it and you’ve accumulated stuff, whether it’s physical possessions or status or whatever. And then you’re focused just to not losing the stuff that you’ve accumulated. It’s a subtle difference, but you do find people in stage three who have, you know, stopped playing to win and they are completely focused on whether they’re conscious of it or not on playing not to lose. And I’ll offer a little bit of defense here and there, but I think that to continue to be happy, healthy, successful, you know, into the future of this profession that you always have to be looking ahead to new goals, new possibilities, and, you know, a bigger future, a future that’s bigger than your past, quite frankly.

And as I say, as we move to stage four when somebody has graded them at stage four, congratulations, because you don’t want to wait for opportunity to be handed to you. You actively look for opportunity in everything you do. You are grateful for every advantage you have and always have one eye on your bigger future. That’s just like a happy place, right? Happy to be there. Yeah. And let me just, I want to just touch for a second on that, like a practical opportunity. And it’s something that I think a lot of realtors struggle with. But one of the, as we mentioned before, one of the things that sets the super successful among us, the part are their ability to be market makers, right? So one of the great skills of a market maker is that they’re able to bring buyers and sellers that are already in their database together to create their own opportunities or make their own market. So many times, you know, the best among us have at least one and sometimes more than one prospective buyer for every listing they take. So they don’t just rely on the multiple listening service to surface a buyer. They take matters into their own hands, right? And they become market makers.

And they, when they’re able to do that, it’s a win, right? It’s a win for the sellers, it’s a win for buyers. It’s a win for their agent. They’ve got, you know, two future referral sources, two raving fans. It’s a wonderful thing. A lot of people though, I think resist becoming, you know, a market maker because they’re afraid of quote double dipping, right? You know, double dipping is when you have the buyer and the seller and you get paid both sides of the commission. Well, a lot of the deal makers among us are thrilled to get both sides of the commission, but it’s more about them, right? It’s about them winning more so I’m afraid many times than it is their clients winning. But being a market maker is not just about double dipping a listing for the sake of the extra commission check. It’s not about what’s in it for the agent. This is about doing the job that listening client hired us to do. And at the same time, having the unique chance to give a buyer what they want. And I think this goes a long way towards explaining, you know, why the professionals make it look easy. But again, they’re doing it from a service orientation, not from I’m going to get paid twice on this situation, because at some point, you know, if you get in trouble, karma is a tough thing. And then I want to say about opportunity is the catalyst for motivation. Opportunity breeds excitement and passion.

Opportunity is the basis of a business for having and a life worth living. It’s opportunity that allows us to continue to see and believe and know that our futures are going to be bigger than our past have been. To me, you know, I have opportunity as the sixth mindset. It could have easily been the eighth mindset. Opportunity is kind of the thing that drives everything else we’re talking about in this conversation. So it’s kind of like the win equals happy, everybody. Absolutely. And as we go into mindset number seven, life long improvement, your continued ability to achieve more and more over time is accelerated by coaching and education. You are always curious and never stop learning. And if you’re scoring yourself or finding yourself in stage one, you stay current on all of your required continuing education and know everything there about contracts, dot loop and the Internet, you get all the training you need. And that’s really going back to your deal maker, right? It’s kind of consume, consume, get the deal done. What does that look like in an everyday price? Just like we talked about the best among us in any stage, but almost exclusively in stage one because it’s sort of all they have is their ability to negotiate price of house, get to the closing table, etc. Are you still there? Yep.

Okay, I lost it for a second. Okay. Yeah, so they are so good at all those realtor basics, again, they’re negotiating and getting to the closing table and navigating the inspection period and all of those things. So they by nature are always almost always technically proficient, right? So they know how to get the most out of the tools that they need to do those basics and those tools are, you know, how to fill out a contract, how to use dot loop, how to navigate the MLS and so forth. So they in stage one are some of the most technically proficient realtors in the business and their continuing education focus is almost always on that technical proficiency. That and the deal makers almost always focused on the present and what is directly in in front of them. So they’re not looking for, you know, training or new opportunities to forge new connections or to build a team and all of those other things. They are simply focused on what it’s going to take to get better at closing deals and more deals and closing imposter. The other thing and this has sort of been a side, but the other thing I find when it comes to continuing education and so forth is that these folks are really fluid in realtor rules and a lot of these folks and again it comes from their mindset of scarcity, you know, they’re intimately familiar with the realtor code of ethics, especially the sections that specify how we as realtors treat each other. And, you know, I found that often the deal makers and even the most successful deal makers amongst us are often the quickest, you know, to file complaints with the local border realtors when they feel slighted or wronged by, you know, a client that was represented by another realtor. You know, we all have had the horrible feeling of losing a client for one reason or another, but the best of us learned from it and move on. Some of us As I said, that would be a sad and kind of a miserable place to be because your focus is me and what has happened to you and kind of missing those opportunities to provide help or to really even to become an influencer in your area and have people look up to you because you’re so busy.

Or they say, naval gazing. And you’re not going to see that in stage one, I’m afraid. No. If you’re going for an opportunity to grow and expand your capabilities, you are burned out and tired of running in place. And this is the kind of the exhaustion and the frustration of it all, would you say? Yeah, this allusion is stage two. They basically have three choices, right? The first choice is to put their heads down, keep trying, do what they’ve been doing and hope that things get better. So that’s strategy number one. Second strategy is to turn in their license, get out of the profession entirely and go try something new.

The third way, possibility is to look for a brokerage and a brokerage to collaborate with that’ll help them get to where they want to be on their terms. Sometimes lifelong improvement isn’t just about self-help or another continuing education class. Sometimes it’s about realigning your capabilities and your strengths with the needs of the market. It’s about being open and receptive to new ideas, partnerships and collaborations that align with where your head’s at today and what your vision is for your future. And maybe it is time to consider other brokerage opportunities. Because if the goals of you and your broker are aligned, you’re probably going to be fine.

But if you realize after reading this book that the goals of you and your broker are not aligned, you’re probably going to continue to experience a lot of… And sometimes we’re willing to put up with a lot of that friction when the market’s hot. There’s more business than we can handle, but that friction becomes unbearable when the market eventually cools. There’s no incoming opportunity to… The number one reason real to stay in a bad brokerage situation is because the cost of switching is just too much. In most states, if you have a listing, that listing belongs to the broker, not the agent. And the broker, in most states, has the opportunity to hold on to that listing and keep any resulting commission after the agent leads.

That in and of itself is a different center for a lot of people to make a move. For other folks, they’re so invested and their personal reputations are so closely associated with their current firm that they really can’t conceive of starting fresh even if they know it’s the right thing to do. And what’s really interesting, I really… I kind of… I understand where these folks are coming from, but what’s super interesting is when given the opportunity, those folks that we talked to that would like to join us but just can’t pull the trigger, they’re the ones, Kristi, that always refer us, refer new agents to us.

Oh, wow. These folks are another company that are the referring new agent candidates to us instead of the firm that they’re with. So, there’s a lot of different things that go on and on that… Depending on the situation folks are in, that, yes, some people get stuck in these brokerage situations for various reasons that they choose not to lead those. But anyway, if you’ve found some broker that you think you’ve hit it off with, that you want to go down with them and kick off, scary thing, right? Because you’re talking to another person about your future while you’re licensed to still with somebody else. And you’re asking this future collaborator to take some risks and make it some investment of their personal time so forth in your future before you actually made the move.

So, it is a leap of faith on both parties’ parts, but one of the best ways to make the most of a move is to make a splash in the market the day you remove your license. And the way to do that is to find fun, exciting, comprehensive way to reintroduce yourself to the market into your past client. That’s excellent. And as we’re moving into step three, if you have aligned yourself with stage three or if you scored yourself there, you have put in your time and enjoyed great status and respect in the community. You are doing fine. Just fine. Thank you very much. Tell me a little bit about that one.

We’re all motivated to some degree by status and respect, whether we want to admit it or not, right? Regardless of your motivation, if you don’t continuously enhance the skills and abilities that got you here in the first place, you’re not going to be able to move forward productively or profitably. I look at status and respect just like I look at closing some commission checks. Those are outcomes, right? They’re the natural result of a personal commitment to lifelong improvement. So regardless of what motivates you to succeed, without that continuous improvement, your value to your community and your clients will eventually fade. So if you scored yourself in stage three, you may be doing just fine right now.

Thank you very much. But again, and I know I’ve said this several times today, I urge you to guard against complacency. I say the bread is delicious, but there is an expiration date on stage three. That’s very good. Stage four, congratulations. If you’re finding yourself scoring here, your continued ability to achieve more and more over time is accelerated by coaching and education. You are always curious and never stop learning. And that is an exciting stage, right? Because there’s always something new and wonderful. And being coached really is kind of a way to put jet fuel in your rocket at that point or your plane to take off from everyone else’s experiences.

Tell me a little bit about stage four. Well, that mindset certainly keeps the business entertaining. No question about it. So the professional, the new professional never stops learning, right? They never stop looking for ways to expand their capabilities and improve their business practices. And you know, these folks, they build on what they’ve learned and experienced their entire career. Their years of experience are cumulative, right? It’s like compound interest in an investment account, right? Experience compounds and value over time. And the less successful realtors among us never seem to learn from their past experiences or their past successes. You know, they may have 20 years in the business, big number of years as a diehard, but it’s essentially the same experience for year after year.

It’s almost like Groundhog Bay. It’s a classic definition of insanity. They just keep doing the same thing over and over every year and hopes of getting a different outcome. And the truly successful, they’re always looking ahead. They’re always learning from what they’ve been and moving forward from that. The other thing that tends to happen to folks is realtors, you know, we’re classical. I mean, we get distracted easily, you know? And I call it the shiny object syndrome. A lot of times realtors push-stop track because some get rich scheme or, you know, some realtor fat or something shows up in their email inbox and they can’t help but click on it and get distracted or spend money they shouldn’t spend or try something that they shouldn’t try when, you know, if they just had a commitment to the basics and to their purpose, you know, they’d be doing just fine.

But you have to guard against that no matter where you are, you know, as far as your experience level in the business. But at the end of the day, shiny objects aside, the most successful among us invest in their selves first, right? They have a commitment, a personal and professional development that extends far beyond whatever continuing education requirement they have. And they budget and spend money to get, you know, our very best agents in our company, every one of them has a personal coach. Every one of them pays a significant portion of their income to get better and improve and stay ahead the year after year.

And I just can’t say enough how critical it is to have that mindset of lifelong improvement and get to the point in stage four where you’re actually committing, you know, a portion of your income to continuous lifelong improvement. Put it in the budget, make it happen. And I guarantee you, you will get a return on that investment. That’s kind of like the gift that can do, it’s a gift you give yourself. And you’re going to be able to share with everybody else. Well, you know, winners have to win, right? And even the best of us are always getting better. And I go back to that classic, you know, why cliche, I guess, that Michael Jordan had a coach.

And, you know, that, if there is a secret to all of this, you know, how the very best among us do it, I can guarantee you, they’ve got at least one, if not more than one personal coach that they pay for. That’s excellent. Yeah, and we’re never too experienced, too young, or too old. Have a coach. Exactly right. No question about it. And as we go into mindset number eight, professionalism. You stay the course when others panic and falter. Tactics and market conditions may change, but your commitment to your clients and your profession never wavers. And if you are finding yourself in stage one, that is such a different, such a total end of the spectrum.

Your clients trust the internet and HGTV more than they trust you. Buyers or liars and sellers are worse. Sums up the business for you. That would be not a fun place to be. I would imagine if you’re finding yourself there at that point, you’re definitely looking for something. I tell you, I’ll never forget the first time I heard that praise by, is liars and sellers are worse. So, you know, I was just a few months in as a realtor and the top dog in the office just came up to me. I don’t know if he was feeling threatened or saw that I was having a little orderly success or what, but he sort of found this unsolicited truth in my face.

And it just freaked me out because all I could think of, how could he have such disrespect? And I guess I perceived it as contempt for the people that, you know, he was supposed to be helping with their largest financial transaction for their lives. I just, I hate that praise. Like I said, I don’t know why he felt the need to share it with me. Like I said, I think maybe because he saw I was having a little bit of success in the somehow threatened by it, whether he just wanted to remind me that, you know, he was the alpha dog in the office. But to me, that is the lowest stage on the professionalism continuum to have that complete lack of respect and contempt for the people that you work with.

I just see that as just being utterly unprofessional. I say, and I think we have all had people that we have had to unfortunately work with that are like that and it makes everybody else misery loves company type of situation. Everybody, all the miserable people tend to attract. Yeah, it’s the kind of feeds on itself to get all the people on that side of the ship kind of sink at stage two. You are always willing to go the extra mile but are not really sure what buyers and sellers expect today. The only thing you know for sure is you can’t work any harder than you already are.

That reminds me of a good friend of my parents. They were driving down the road and the wife says, Jidge to her husband’s name was Jidge. She said, we’re going the wrong way. He goes, I know, but we’re sure making good time. So kind of going the extra mile, but you’re not really sure. Tell me a little bit of how that feels. Well, I think that this illusion in stage two, you know, there are a lot of most of them are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. The problem is they just don’t know what to do. They have to come up with a path forward.

And my advice is always the same. You know, it’s everything we’ve been talking about. Prioritized relationships over transaction. Focus on making connections, enhancing your practice, track your business, you know, grow your capabilities. If you do those things, I can absolutely guarantee that your outcomes will take care of themselves. You know, the benefit of prioritizing relationships over transactions is that you get to know your clients. The most successful among us, you know, they know exactly what their buyers and sellers expect to experience when they work with them and they make sure they deliver. But they deliver because they take the time to get to know their clients’ goals and motivations.

They just don’t take anything for granted. And they work very hard to make sure that they’re absolutely clear on what the expectations are. And if we look at, we’ve scored ourselves in stage three. Professionalism means being available 24-7, getting the jump on a new lead before anyone else is a secret to your success. And your family understands that your business comes first. Again, that’s the row you vote, that panic feeling of so many people, would you say, are really kind of stuck in that stage? Yeah, this goes back to a lack of boundaries, right? You know, you, I understand it. You do whatever you can to take the business that comes your way and make the absolute most of it.

That’s a natural, you know, entrepreneurial response. But I don’t believe that being available 24-7 is a badge of honor. You know, you don’t get to show up at your doctor’s office anytime you want without an appointment, right? Right. I think availability, open availability, I think is a mark of unprofessionalism, I think quite frankly. You know, you’re, I want to say this to all the realtors listening, and this is something that I think a lot of us miss. I feel that an agent’s availability to customers, people that they haven’t met yet, should be different than their availability to clients and members of their database, right? So I define customers here as people you don’t know or have not been referred to you.

You know, those are customers, right? And my advice is to try to start setting boundaries is let them contact you, you know, via your advertised office telephone line or via email. But your clients, the people that have gotten you where you are today, the people that actively refer you, the people that you’re currently working with, they should get preferred access. They get your cell phone number. They should be treated special. And if you always prioritize your clients over your customers, you cannot lose. Now, that’s not to say you ignore your customers completely, but I think that there are ways to manage that incoming. And at a certain level of productivity, if all of your calls come into your cell phone, you can’t help but end up neglecting inadvertently your very best people because you’ve got so many other people coming into that cell phone.

So my advice always is separate those two, separate them early on. You know, even if early on you just forward your office number to your cell phone, at least you can always switch that back when the time comes. Always being busy and always being on the phone is not the mark of success that I think a lot of people think it is. We’ve had help over 20 years now. It’s not cool anymore to be on your cell phone constantly. And I think the greatest skill of professionals these days is the ability to be present in the moment, face to face with another human being. Put the phone away when you’re with somebody.

You know, it’s a superpower and that one thing will differentiate you from 99.9% of the competition. And just one little follow-up on that. I recently heard a story from a successful entrepreneur that was so devoted to being present that she tells her clients right up front and it’s in her voicemail that if, and this is anybody, clients and customers, but she is so devoted to being in the moment, she tells folks right up front that if they leave her a message on her voicemail, she will not call them back today, but she will call them back tomorrow. And that’s a gutsy move in my book, right?

And what it does is it keeps her absolutely free to be present in the moment with the people that she’s scheduled with today. And of course she backs it up by being absolutely phenomenal at what she does. But again, there’s a lot of different places that we can talk about boundaries. But this is one that I think is absolutely critically important. Set those boundaries around yourself so that you’re never disturbed when you’re face to face with the client. I would say that goes so far too, to have somebody’s undivided attention is like a gift nowadays too. It is. It’s something that we can all give.

It’s just to have it that we have to cultivate and learn to get back into. That’s excellent. And if you score yourself at stage four, congratulations. You stay the course when others panic and falter. Taxic tactics and market conditions may change, but your commitment to your clients and your profession never waivers. That’s the promised land right there. Yeah, I think that sums up the whole book quite frankly. You know, the new professionals in stage four, they don’t concern themselves with how business will change in the next 25 years. They think about how the business is going to stay the same. And what’s going to stay the same comes back to that they have to know, they know that their ability to connect, to educate, to motivate, coach and adapt to changing market conditions will always be valuable and in demand.

Going to be that way for the next 25 years. It’s going to be that way forever. Technology on the other hand, continue to streamline and even automate a lot of the stuff that we do, especially the administrative tasks, that it will never ever displace the contributions of the true real estate professional. So that’s the gist of stage four there is focus on what’s going to stay the same, what behaviors are going to carry you well, well, well into the future and let technology do what it’s going to do. I love that. Thank you so much, Chris for taking a deep dive with us on the call today and really kind of explaining that there is hope, there is a plan.

You don’t have to recreate the wheel every single time we can really follow the trail that the professionals have already blazed for us. No reason to go out there and cut new trails through the forest. And thank you for your passion. It always comes And there we have it. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, go to www.connectpractisttrackgrow.org. Connect Practice Track Grow.com. We have additional information about the podcast, archived episodes, and an option you can select to be a guest on the show. We’d love to hear from you. So that’s it. We’ll be back next time with another episode of the Connect Practice Track & Grow podcast.