Ep043: 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional (Part One)

Chris McAllister: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Connect, Practice, Track and Grow podcast. I’m Chris McAlister with ROOST Real Estate Company, and it’s my job to create and coach business opportunities and strategies that support and add value to the lives of real estate professionals. I’m here today with my co-host, Laci LeBlanc.

Good morning, Laci. 

Laci LeBlanc: Good morning, Chris 

Chris McAllister: Today we’re kicking off a six-episode series based on my next book called 59 Rules for Becoming a 1% Real Estate Professional. But before we jump into rule number one, I sort of wanna set the context for why this book even exists.

So obviously, if it wasn’t for the 99% of us, there wouldn’t be a 1%, but most professionals obviously don’t make the top 1%. And it’s, uh, most of them don’t make the top 10 or the top 20, quite frankly. But it’s not because they necessarily lack talent, drive, or ambition. It’s because they spend their careers following outdated advice, chasing unproductive leads, and [00:01:00] focusing on the wrong priorities.

And the truth is, becoming a top 1% real estate professional isn’t about working harder. It is about working smarter, and I know that sounds like a cliche, but it’s true. It’s about aligning your career with your strengths and making strategic decisions and mastering the skills that truly matter. But the key point to that sentence is it’s aligning your career with your strengths.

So this book, the 59 Rules, it is a blueprint, and every rule stands on its own, but together they form a system. And in this series, we’re gonna go through how to use these rules as anchors for six conversations that Laci and I are gonna have over the, the course of the next six episodes. So nothing about this is just theory.

Nothing about it is fluff. It’s all practical. Excuse me. It’s all battle-tested lessons, and yes, they’re lessons that I’ve [00:02:00] learned over the past 25 years. So episode one today, it’s grounded in part one of the book, and part one is called Your Why and Mindset. And I start the book off with your why and, and mindset because honestly, i-i-if you’re confused about why you’re in this business, everything else i-is, is just gonna, it’s just gonna be noise.

You’re just gonna struggle and, and you’re never gonna feel like you get traction. So Laci, I know that’s a mouthful, but how does that sound this morning? 

Laci LeBlanc: It sounds great. I think the alternative title for this book could be 59 Rules to Becoming a Top 1%, like, Human Being. Um, because I think we’re gonna find that you could probably

They’re gonna be very real estate specific, obviously, but you could probably apply these rules to other areas of life. Uh, so I’m really excited to go through it. I’m really excited for folks to hear it. Uh, and you actually, you partially answered my first question, but what- I wanna know first off, why [00:03:00] do you start the whole book with your why and mindset?

I think people are probably, when you read this title, 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional, you’re thinking, “Okay, you’re gonna talk about lead generation. You’re gonna talk about strategies. You’re gonna talk about how to grow my business.” Why do you start with your why and mindset?

Chris McAllister: First of all, leads generation, you know, th- that’s a tactic. And quite frankly most agents are chasing tactics without a compass, and a lot of times those tactics are really nothing more than shiny objects. So most agents are, you know, they’re doing things. Sometimes agents are doing a lot of things, but they don’t have an internal operating system.

They don’t have a purpose for their practice or a vision for quite frankly, who they want to be within the business. And y- you know, we’re all surrounded by conventional wisdom and, you know, we all got our real estate license. We all heard, you know, so many, so many things to go out and do. Make 100 coi- cold calls.

You know, go [00:04:00] join some committees. Go to Zillow and pay for some leads, you know? You know, 25 years ago it was go walk the mall and hand out 10 business cards today, right? So, yeah, uh, get designations, right? There’s a million things that, you know, conventional wisdom says that you do, you know, as soon as you get that real estate license.

And I’m not saying people haven’t had success with those tactics, and some people, you know, have built careers that way But what I’m saying is it’s, it’s not those tried and true, if you can call them that, tactics that, uh, you know, separates the top 1% from the rest of us, and it’s definitely not what creates a career that, uh, that feels worth owning.

So part one, you know, of, of this series e- exists to help you build a business that aligns with who you are and not someone else’s formula or not somebody else’s idea of, of who you [00:05:00] ought to be or how you should approach the business. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, ’cause let’s be honest, if those things don’t align with who you are as a person, I mean, Chris, I can’t see you, and I think you would because I think you’re motivated and determined, but man, would it be hard for you to motivate yourself to go to the mall and hand out 10 business cards to random strangers.

I, on the other hand, you know, yeah, sure. All day, every day, that’s for me. But if you’re, if the way that you’re, you’re doing business doesn’t align with who you are as a person and who you want to be, then I think it’s unsustainable at best. Maybe you will do the tasks for a certain amount of time, but, um, I don’t know that you can sustain that long term.

Chris McAllister: Well, well, I can tell you, I never went out and walked the mall and passed out business cards. I did get out of my car and walk the neighborhood for a half an hour and, and where I was supposed to be, quote, door knocking, and I did stick some things in people’s mailboxes for a few minutes one afternoon, but it was so wrong.

Laci LeBlanc: Your heart was beating the whole time. Yes. You just th- [00:06:00] turned and ran. I- Did you turn and run at the end? 

Chris McAllister: I gave it up pretty quick, yeah. 

Laci LeBlanc: Let’s start with rule number one. Um, it’s a, it’s a strong one. It’s actually one of my favorite ones. It’s called burn your bridges. I just, I love the structured conflict here.

What do you mean by burn your bridges? 

Chris McAllister: Rule number one is burn your bridges, and why full commitment is your only option in real estate. And you could argue full commit- c- commitment is your only option in life, but let’s, we’re gonna try to stick to real estate today. So this rule came up because so many people enter the real estate business thinking, uh, that it’s a job, or I think wanting it to be a job, but they think it’s a job with a bit more freedom, right?

You know, y- y- it’s they think it’s a job or a bridge between a job and being in business for yourself. But, you know, you’re still 1099 independent contractor, so there’s that freedom thing. But a lot of times real estate seems to be a bridge for folks who don’t wanna have a job or don’t feel like they’re employable to something that’s a bit more [00:07:00] entrepreneurial.

So, real estate is not a, a, a job, right? The, and the other thing it’s not is- Is a side hustle, right? It, it, it, y- you know, either one of those things. Either a job means that somebody else is taking responsibility for your future, or a side hustle means that there’s something else more important in your life.

The people who treat it like a job or a side hustle usually fail because they need someone else to create structure for them. They need somebody else to set expectations for them. They need somebody else to hand them work. And in real estate, nobody in the top 1% i- is, uh, did that, and there’s nobody in real estate that’s gonna do that for you, right?

Nobody is going to hand you anything. So burning your bridges doesn’t mean being reckless, it means deciding that there is no plan B. This is the thing, right? Yes, you can build a runway. Yes, you can make a schedule. You need to remove your distractions, and you need to commit to doing this in public, right?

If you have a plan B, you’re gonna hesitate, right? You’re not [00:08:00] gonna invest in the skills you need to hit that top 1% mark or even the top 20% mark, right? I- if you don’t, i- if you don’t invest in the relationships 100%, if you don’t have the commitment early on to persevere and push through the hard parts, you’re never gonna make the top 1%, and quite frankly, in this day and age, you’re never gonna make the top 20%.

So burn your bridges, full commitment. There is no other option. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, the word that comes to my mind is accountability, right? If you’re not accountable to yourself, if you’re not accountable to anybody else, then you’re really just playing at it more than anything. But there is another side to that coin, right?

The risk is people hear you gotta go all in, and then they go all in and they burn out. So how do you find the balance? 

Chris McAllister: Well, that’s exactly why the second thing in this chapter is about identity and why commitment must be aligned with the person you actually are, and that’s where rule number two comes in, and rule number two is be you, right?

Authenticity is your [00:09:00] brand. If you go all in on the wrong version of yourself, or worse yet, you grow, you go all in on someone else’s version of success, you can and likely will burn out, right? You can only go against the grain for so long. So rule number one is commit, burn your bridges. Rule number two is commit, burn your bridges, but commit to the right thing, your true personal strengths, values, and voice that is unique to you.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I’m a, a huge fan of authenticity. I love it when we, uh, when we laugh, when we flub, when we get into things that are off script, because I think that does truly show who you are. And as a marketer, I s- I preach authenticity all the time, but why do you think authenticity is so important in real estate specifically?

Chris McAllister: So many people think that real es- realtors or real estate professionals are interchangeable, one is just like the other, right? So copying the tried and true, or copying what somebody [00:10:00] else tells you to do, or copy what’s worked in the past is the fastest way to disappear in the crowd. Real estate is crowded with just another agent.

They all have the same headshot. They all have the same bio. They all use the same buzzwords. So, you know, rule two is a, is a warning, don’t become a knockoff. We want you to study other agents, sure, but you need to filter everything through your own voice, right? I’m not saying that you don’t wanna learn from everybody, and we can all learn something from everybody.

But whatever you take away from those conversations, those relationships, you need to filter them through what you are all about. Filter them through your own voice. And being you isn’t just about personality, it’s about the value you bring to a relationship. It’s asking, “What can I do for this client that no other agent, uh, won’t even think to do,” right?

We, how, what’s in it for them? How are you going to add unique value? And that kind of thought process, [00:11:00] that kind of approach to the business, that is really hard to… In fact, it’s impossible for somebody else to replicate. So being you isn’t an option, it’s, it’s the second rule of becoming a 1%. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think that’s especially important as we start to see AI kind of take hold in our society.

So from websites to, um, you know, sources that people use for information, um, I think this is becoming more and more important, and it flows into rule number three, which is find your niche. So why does finding a space within real estate where you can kind of excel matter this early? 

Chris McAllister: Finding your niche allows you, or niche, niche allows you to focus, right?

Focus beats everything. Focus beats being any, everything to everyone, right? So th- th- that’s what rule number three is about. Generalists get compared to one another. Specialists get chosen, right? And a niche helps you develop deeper expertise, [00:12:00] better systems, and a clear message, and it helps you attract the right clients, and the right clients are a huge part of being in this game for the long term.

You know, working with the right people who get you, people who value you, trust you, wanna write you checks, right? That’s a massive part of sustainability. You know, and your niche might be investors, right? It might be first time buyers. It might be people downsizing, relocations, whatever, right?

Th- the point is you wanna plant a flag in, in a space that resonates with you. You wanna plant a flag with an audience that you want to work with, right? You, you, you wanna sort of find your tribe, so to speak. And the irony is the more focused you become, the more opportunity finds you. And I, I speak from experience, you know.

I ended up going down the road that investors were, were my audience. They were my people. And, you know, I, I built a [00:13:00] great business and, and a, a career from that. But whatever works for you, works for you. Some people build niches out of, out of, uh, you know, friends, family, and, and the groups they belong to, church groups, et cetera.

You know, whatever that niche is, however way you can, you know, define yourself, become an expert in it, add value to it. Find that niche early on in your career and, and stick to it. I guarantee you it will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in dividends 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. So how did you find investors? This is a little off script, but I, you know, it- you wanna find it early, but it seems to me like you don’t just wanna, like, pick it out of a list of things that other people say might be a good niche for you, whether it’s geography or a specific type of, um, you know, buyer or seller.

How did you find investors, and what, h- how did you know that that was your, your niche? 

Chris McAllister: Well, just like I knew that I wasn’t gonna be good at door knocking [00:14:00] or, you know, introducing myself to strangers or walking the mall and passing out business cards, I’ve always been rather analytical. I’ve always, you know, been a, I, I guess a strategic thinker, a deep thinker.

Um, a- and early on, and I think I’ve told this story before, but, you know, early on when I got my license, I was, I was like, it was like being shot out of a cannon, right? You know, my last job, I was running stores at Target. I had two kids at home. They were, you know, still in grade school and, and, you know, I needed to have income.

So, you know, I did everything anybody told me, anything I could think of to create income those first couple of years. But one of the things I was lucky enough, and this was within the first three months, is the office I was in, this was back in 2001, 2002, used to get fax mach- faxes, right? Remember faxes?

They’d get faxes all the time from banks and asset management companies with these rundown, derelict houses that they needed to offload from their books, and nobody in my office wanted any part of them. The, these, these, [00:15:00] uh, these bank-owned properties, it was beneath them, right? They, they didn’t, they didn’t wanna deal with it.

They didn’t wanna deal with the banks. They didn’t wanna put the signs in. They, they just didn’t want any part of it. I took every one of those that I could get, and I, I took them from the s- soon as they were offered and I built relationships with those asset managers, and by the time 2007, ‘8, ‘9, ’10, ’11 rolled around and we went through the Great Recession, I had built a massive business from, uh, working with, with banks and bank-owned properties.

I think that our best year, we closed over 400 list sides that year, myself and my REO team. So from that, I started working with, um, a t- bunch of attorneys and I, I found that I understood attorneys and attorneys understood me and, you know, that led to working with other investors and doing, you know, um, estate appraisals and, and before you know it, people I had sold a lot of my REO listings to, you know, said, “Well, we know you’ve got some properties that you manage.

Why don’t you manage for [00:16:00] us?” So, it’s, it, y- there’s no one story as to how you identify what your niche is or what you’re great at or, or, or, or, you know, anything like that, but you’ve got to see the opportunities as they come your way, and you’ve gotta be willing to seize them and see if they take you anywhere.

But for me, you know, being an investor was, was part of the reason I got a real estate license. It’s something I wanted to pursue, and it turned out that that just flat out became my niche. Yours may be something completely different. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think there’s, there’s a lot of value in things that you don’t hate, right?

Yeah. Things that you’re interested in, and things that potentially even bring you joy. Um, so maybe- Yeah … one, one good way is to see what you’re drawn to. Um, or, you know, in your case, see what, see what faxes everybody else is just throwing in the trash when they come through. But, um, all right, let’s move on.

Rules number four and five. So these are what I think of as, like, the permission rules. Um, one is there are no rules, and the other is [00:17:00] it’s all made up. So you literally wrote a book called 59 Rules, and then almost right away you tell us there are no rules and everything’s made up. So can you square that up for us?

Chris McAllister: Well, these two rules, and actually the next rule, too, these were, um, inspired by Dan Sullivan, who, um, he, he, he wrote a book about this, and his thesis of the book was, one of his quarterly books is, “There are no rules, it’s all made up, and nobody’s in charge.” And, and that has always stayed with me because, you know, most agents get trapped inside, I’m gonna say, unexamined defaults, right?

They get stuck inside a way of, of being, a way of doing business that that worked for somebody else, and they don’t necessarily have confidence that it’s going to work for them. And the message that’s really behind rule number four is there are no rules. You know, be the glitch in the matrix, it, the, the only guardrails are legal and ethical, right?

So you get to decide how you’re gonna operate. You don’t have to follow everybody else. You don’t have to [00:18:00] follow the, the herd, right? I want you to, to be very conscious of you’re gonna make the rules that are gonna support the business that is going to support you. So be the glitch in the matrix, be the one that’s always asking why, you know, why, why not, whatever.

Um, and, and be prepared to… You know, it’s your game, right? Make your own rules. And rule number five is, you know, it’s all made up, and this is where innovation comes in, and innovation is always the advantage. It, it’s the other side of that coin. If most of this is made up, you’re free to make it better, right?

And that’s what innovation and advantage is about. If you start going deep on an opportunity, and you make that opportunity to your own, and you, your own, and you think about all the ways that, that you can leverage that opportunity and add unique value to that opportunity, that’s where it’s all made up comes in.

So there’s no rules, it’s all made up. You know, listing presentations don’t have to [00:19:00] be identical, right? Follow-ups don’t have to be like everybody else’s. Your business card doesn’t have to. Your Facebook posts, oh my God, if you flip through Facebook and you see all your fellow real estate professionals, not, every one of them, uh, you know, is basically the same.

You, you’ve got to find your own way. You’ve got to find your own message. You’ve got to, you’ve got to, uh- Find your own path. You know, your, your, y- how you approach, you know, your unique client experience doesn’t have to be inherited from anybody else from any point in time. So i- if a tradition, right, if the standard way of doing things doesn’t create clarity, confest- confidence, or results, I just want you to kick it to the curb.

Find something that will. Make your own rules 

Laci LeBlanc: So there are no rules, it’s all made up, and then the third part of that is nobody’s in charge. So talk to me about the nobody’s in charge part, that’s rule number six or part of it, and how personal respon- responsibility shows up in this part of the book.

Chris McAllister: Well, nobody’s in [00:20:00] charge. Take ownership for your career. The only person in charge is you if you choose to be in charge, right? So, y- you know, this is the moment that agents either grow up in the business or they stay dependent on somebody else, or they’re dependent on their broker, on Zillow, on realtor.com, whatever the board of realtor says.

The fact is nobody’s in charge. There’s no boss to set your, your personal growth targets. There’s no boss to guard your calendar. There’s no boss to tell you what time to get up this morning and get this and this and that done. There’s nobody that’s gonna magically make a sales pipeline, you know, appear in your inbox.

So ownership means that you have to stop outsourcing responsibility either to the market, to your broker, your CRM, to Zillow, or how you feel that morning, right? You know? You own your own business, it doesn’t matter how you feel that morning. You’ve got things to do. You’ve got things on your calendar.

You’ve got things on your schedule. You’re gonna push through. You’re gonna get it done, because guess what? You’re in charge. Nobody else is gonna make you do it. Nobody else is gonna do it for you, but more importantly, nobody [00:21:00] else is going to make you do it. You’re gonna create a sales pipeline on purpose.

You’re gonna track, you know, indicators. You’re gonna build some sort of s- uh, you know, personal accountability architecture, and there’s a million coaches out there that’ll help you do that. Hell, we’ll help you do that, right? Bruce. But, you know, you, you’ve gotta build some structure, whether it’s weekly reviews, you know, monthly P&L reviews, you know, your personal business standards, your weekly metrics for calls, notes, and pop-bys.

You know, for normal realtors, right? It’s a scary thing to be in charge and have to be accountable for everything that happens in your building, uh, business. But for the top 1% of the people in this business, it is absolute pure joy and pure freedom. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, so what about folks who haven’t quite gotten there yet?

I think this is, we’re through rule number six, and this- Mm-hmm … is the point where we’re like, “Okay, Chris, this sounds fantastic, but I’m getting a little overwhelmed.” Um, this is the spin out portion. This is the, “Well, I’m gonna put this book down and take a break and think through, you know, the first [00:22:00] six rules, but then maybe, um, I’m never gonna come back to it because it overwhelms me.”

What do you say to those folks? 

Chris McAllister: Well, I do think when you, you know, get done listening to this and you go back and you just read the rules, you don’t even have to get into, you know, anything in the book that elaborates on those rules or my take on those rules, but read the rules. They’re, they’re pretty darn simple So if you’re getting overwhelmed, I want you to think about what do you want out of the business?

What’s your unique value proposition, right? What’s in it for them? How are you gonna hold yourself accountable? Again, people can spin out over that, but if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur, a business owner, a real estate professional with your own practice, you’re gonna have to find a way to stop spinning.

But one of the things that may help you at this point in, in, in the part one is rule seven, and rule seven is JOMO is the way to… You must protect your focus and your energy, and JOMO is the joy of missing out. Most [00:23:00] agents are scattered, right? They say yes to everything, every event, every platform, every new lead, every gimmick, every shiny object, and they wonder why they’re exhausted, and that’s because they’ve got FOMO.

They’re afraid of, uh, you know, they’ve got the fear of missing out, right? If I don’t try this, if I don’t buy that, if I don’t read this, if I don’t follow them, you know, I’m gonna miss something that’s gonna completely derail my career. I want you to be confident in the fact that if you’re building a business that supports you your way, that’s authentic to you, your secret weapon is JOMO, the joy of missing out.

And it is a discipline. It’s something that you have to cultivate, right? But it’s, it– JOMO is the discipline to say no to the wrong things. It’s the discipline to focus on just tho- identify and focus as quickly as you can on only those things, those, uh, those opportunities, tactics that are gonna help you achieve your goals, right?

So anyway, JOMO is the discipline to say no to the wrong thing, so you can say [00:24:00] yes to what actually moves the needle. You know, deep work, real relationships, skill building, the stuff that’s gonna matter for, you know, a lifetime, you know, for as long as you’re in this business, which could be, for many of us, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 plus years.

JOMO is the way 

Laci LeBlanc: I’ve, I’ve used it so many times since we first started talking about it. The only FOMO I have is, um, what my husband calls FOMUB, which is fear of missing out on birds. The rest of it has all become JOMO for me. And it really is life-changing. Um, but one of the things that you think folks should say no to is, um, we talk about it in rule number eight, which is social media.

Rule number eight is stay off social media. Now, I know people are gonna probably have a strong reaction to this one. What are you gonna tell them? 

Chris McAllister: I don’t care if they have a strong reaction to it or not. I think just social media derails more entrepreneurs, derails more realtors than any other thing out there in the world, right?

So, if people wanna take issue to this that’s fine with me. But, you know, rule- This is 

Laci LeBlanc: another one of those lessons I think [00:25:00] that can be applied to life as well. Yeah. As real estate. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. Rule number eight is not never use social media. Really, it’s don’t let it use you. Social media can be a useful tool, a great marketing tool, but it is a terrible habit.

You know, if you’re doom scrolling, comparing, chasing likes, arguing, it just creates mental clutter, and mental clutter dej- destroys focus and it also feeds the fear of missing out. It feeds FOMO. You know, the challenge is delete those apps for a week, you know? If you’re gonna… If you need to check social media, if you need to see how the marketing’s working, how your ads are doing, that’s fine.

Schedule it once or twice a week and use your desktop, right? Go to your computer and sit down and intentionally bring up those apps and see what’s going on. But do the best you can to stay away from them, at least from your phone, right? And use that reclaimed time to, you know, do some real work.

Maybe instead of, you know, s- doing some doom scrolling for 20 minutes, [00:26:00] make a phone call, write a personal note, walk around the block. I don’t care what you do. But the best way to cultivate a mindset of, of, of JOMO and the joy of missing out is to just stay the hell off social media 

Laci LeBlanc: Unless you’re on YouTube looking at this great video series-

we just put up called 59 Rules to Become a Top 1% Real Estate Professional, um, you know, that’s totally acceptable, but on your desktop, please, not on, not on your phone. Um, well, you kind of go even harder with rule number nine. It’s, you know, that was a hot take, if you will, but rule number nine is about the board of realtor’s trap, so this is gonna be another, um, probably highly opinionated response.

What are you, what are you really trying to say here? 

Chris McAllister: Beware the board of realtor’s trap. You wanna stay focused on what matters. I’m not saying that the board of realtors can’t be useful. I mean, it is useful. There’s a tremendous amount of training, the contracts, and there is an opportunity to meet other people who are successful in the business.

But for many [00:27:00] agents, it becomes a time-consuming social club that feels productive, but does nothing but grow the business. Let’s face it, if you’re spending, you know, even an hour every week or, even a month to do nothing but rub shoulders with people who are in the same boat you are and not, you know, rubbing shoulders with potential clients or people who are top 1%, um, it, it, it, it’s a waste of time, right?

You know, I have never met a buyer or a seller that could care less if I was the treasurer of the board of realtors or could care less if I was on the RPAC committee or could care less if I was, you know, the one that, uh, handed out the million dollar sales club rewards, right? It’s, I, I, you know, again, there’s a lot of value in what the local boards do, but there’s also the trap that it becomes almost a way of life.

It becomes a family, a social circle, and, you know, we pay a huge amount of money every year and every [00:28:00] month to be part of that club. And I, I, I think for many of us, the board of realtors makes us feel like we’re doing something, but in reality, it’s not getting any closer to our business goals. So, you know, the real message here is you wanna question everything, including the board of realtors, but the top 1%, they evaluate everything with a results first mindset.

Will this help me serve clients better or grow my business? If that’s a class of the board of realtors, take it, but if it’s anything else, my rule is pass, right? And it’s not because you’re too good for it. It’s be- it’s because you respect your time, and you respect your personal goals and, again, your unique approach to building a business that’s gonna work for you and not the other way around.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, at Reece we talk a lot about will this make business better? And so it’s not simply focused on the bottom line, it’s not simply focused on, you know, will you enjoy your career more, will you enjoy your day-to-day more. It’s really kind of, it could be [00:29:00] any combination of those factors. But I almost think of it like a shortcut.

If you can ask will this make business better, how will this make business better, and really answer that, then that’s a nice little way to determine is this worth my time and my energy? Is this going to, to move me in the direction I wanna go? Um, if you’re listening and you, you need a good way to start before you’ve memorized all these rules, then I think that’s a good one to start with.

But if you had to summarize kind of this part of the book and what we’re really trying to tell people, how we’re trying to impact people, how would you do that? 

Chris McAllister: I think part one of the book is, is about trying to help you build a business on purpose. So rule number one is about commitment. Rule number two is about committing to being yourself.

Three is about focus. Four and five gives you permission to stop inheriting somebody else’s idea of what success is. In other words, stop inheriting defaults. Rule number six, nobody’s in charge, so you have to be in charge. And everything that we’ve talked about when it comes to the [00:30:00] board of realtors or, or the joy of missing out or getting off social media, you know, those rules seven, eight and nine, those are about protecting your focus from noise and subs- and distraction.

So if you get through part one and, and you can get this part right, the essence of these nine rules, I could tell you everything that we’re gonna talk about in the next five episodes, it’s just gonna become that much easier because you’re building from alignment with who you are instead of, of building from imitating what somebody else is or worse yet, what somebody else thinks you should be or be building 

Laci LeBlanc: And if you’ve made it this far, what’s the next step for those people listening?

Chris McAllister: I want you to go through part one in the book and go through it slowly. I don’t want you to go through it to agree with me, but I, I want you to go through to decide what applies to you. You know, something in there is probably gonna ring true and, and make you stop and, and think for a [00:31:00] minute. So I urge you to take a few minutes, read through part one, find those nuggets that appeal to you, and go deep.

Most agents never do this, right? They follow the crowd, they chase the shiny object, and they wonder why their business is inconsistent at best. But if you’re willing to challenge the status quo, simplify your entire being, quite frankly, with the goal of building something that’s going to last this is where it starts.

These first nine rules, part one of, of this book, this is where it starts. So I want you to stay tuned next time. So we’re gonna do episode two the next time we get together to record of 59 Rules for Becoming a Top 1% Real Estate Professional. And during that episode, we’re gonna talk about connecting, right?

Building relationships in a business. And yes, it’s no accident that the episodes two, three, four, and five sort of correspond to connect, practice, track, and grow. Can you believe that, Leighiec? 

Laci LeBlanc: I can. And, uh, you know, I can’t wait for the [00:32:00] next episode of Lessons in Life and Real Estate with Chris McAlister.

Chris McAllister: And Leighiec 

Laci LeBlanc: LeBlanc. That’s right. We’re gonna go apply these to, to our whole lives, and we hope you guys will do the same. 

Chris McAllister: Yep. All right, everybody, thanks for listening, and we hope you, uh, are here for episode two. 

Laci LeBlanc: See you next time.