In this episode of The Primer, Kris is joined by Todd Sevier, a 20-year veteran of the mortgage industry with Tabor Mortgage, and we discuss the current market and ways agents can get the most out of their relationship with their loan partners.
The Primer
The Primer: Process and Alignment
In this session of The Primer we discuss ways to build processes within both the professional and personal aspects of your life in order to bring you closer to alignment with your goals.
Productivity and Time Management for Real Estate Agents
The initial appeal of a real estate career is often about time. The freedom of flexibility, being present for all the family events, and no one telling you where to be and when…that sounds pretty fantastic! The reality, as we all know, is anything but the above and, over time, even the best of us can develop habits that rob us of our freedom and most valuable asset: time.
Here are some ways we can reset the clock on some of those bad habits and get back to where we are truly enjoying our careers instead of feeling burdened by the feeling of never having enough time in the day.
Set boundaries with your clients – and yourself!
These are important to put into place at the outset of the relationship with your clients to set their expectations, and even more important that you stand firm on those boundaries. Decide which hours you respond to emails, texts, and phone calls and which you do not. You may be their only agent, but they are not your only client so communications at 9 PM (or later!) is not something that is going to set you up for success in the morning to have a productive day.
Make small, incremental changes
Don’t attempt a full overhaul of your schedule or business, that’s going to halt your progress. Make one small change a day and monitor what is working or not over time to help you decide which new habits to keep and which aren’t effective for you.
Have a business plan
One of the biggest time-wasters is not knowing exactly where you’re going. Even if you’re a single agent, you need to have a business plan: How many houses are you going to sell this year? How many contracts do you need to write to do that? How many clients do you need in order to write that many contracts? How many people do you need to connect with to get that many clients? What prospecting and marketing efforts do you need to make in order to connect with new people?
Knowing these metrics will give you a well-lit path to walk and you can break that down into the actions and efforts you need to take each day and week. If you’re staring at your yearly goal with no smaller plan, you will inevitably waste time on the wrong actions to get there and likely miss the goal at the end of the year.
Do Not Disturb
Whether it’s a sign on your door, a timer, or a setting on your phone, setting aside time for uninterrupted work is going to add hours back to your week. It’s easy to look up at the end of the day and realize that the entire day has gone by without you completing the things you needed. Being very intentional with your work time is going to make a big difference for you and leave you feeling fulfilled instead of drained at the end of the day. On average, it takes over twenty minutes for someone to get back into their workflow after being interrupted. Multiply that by several times per day and you’ve got a lot of lost time on your hands. This is a great way to practice holding the boundaries firm that we talked about earlier: it can wait an hour until you’re done with this important work, I promise.
Prioritize the work that is going to yield you the most results
What are the activities you do that truly move the needle forward for your business? For most of us, it’s prospecting for new clients and following up with existing contacts. Schedule this non-negotiable time into your day and honor it every single day you can. One day missed is no big deal, but finding yourself “busy” will easily lead to weeks or even months with no prospecting if you don’t set the time aside to create new business.
Audit your time and make the necessary changes
If you have a mobile device, you will have some type of tracker to educate you on where you are spending your time online. If you’re looking for more time, you can likely find it in the social media section of your phone. Take the five hours you spent on Instagram yesterday and try to knock it down to just one. You’ll still get your fix, and you’ll have FOUR hours back in your day to do the things that you actually need to do.
Utilize cloud storage and digital resources
Don’t get me wrong, I love a paper notebook. It’s satisfying to write in and to turn those pages, but if I’m at a showing and someone calls needing a file that I’ve left on my desk across town that’s a BIG time waster. Organize your files into a digital storage system that you can access from anywhere. Utilize a single digital calendar instead of the hand-written one you’re always struggling to keep updated. The things you use often or are necessary for your transactions should be just a click away to save time AND deals!
Model your behavior after someone who is achieving the level of success you are striving for
Find someone who seems to be nailing their work and ask if you can talk to them about how they structure their day, manage their time, and handle multiple transactions successfully. Ask them about their habits and processes around these and adopt what they are proving to be as successful time and business management strategies.
Organize your email
Do you have hundreds or thousands of emails sitting in your inbox? Disorganized communication leads to loss of time and potentially losing crucial information to hold a transaction together for your clients. Use tags, filters, and folders to put things into the right places. Unsubscribe from the emails you never read. Turn off notifications that are redundant and leave on only the most important ones.
Keep your meetings on topic and short
We’ve all seen the look of our clients or agents’ eyes glazing over. The meeting has gone on too long and we’ve lost their attention. After an hour, our ability to retain information and connect in a meaningful way decreases significantly. Keep your meetings on topic with an agenda, and share with those you are meeting with what time the meeting begins and ends and honor it. Having a plan will make these more effective in a shorter amount of time.
Utilize all of your CRM’s tools and automate everything you can
Whether it is Follow Up Boss or another CRM, you’re going to have tons of tools at your disposal to organize your work. Put everything into your CRM having to do with that client or transaction so it’s easy to find. Sync your calendar and your email so you don’t have to look in multiple places. Automate everything you can ahead of time so that you don’t have reminders popping up for birthdays and house-a-versaries. Get to know all of the tools that they offer as they are designed to save you time and effort to accomplish more.
Ditch the multitasking
Yes, you can walk your dog and talk on the phone at the same time, but prospecting while you answer emails and check social media? Not a good idea. Focus on one item at a time and turn off your distractions. If I was checking my email or Slack messages while writing this for you, it would take me all day! I’ve set a timer, turned off everything aside from this and my gif search and I’m going to knock this out and whatever else I can before that buzzer rings. Giving something your undivided attention will not only improve the quality of your work, but your clients and potential clients will be able to feel that you are giving them your all, which makes you more desirable to work with.
Use your calendar for everything
By putting everything on your calendar, you are making micro-commitments. I commit to prospecting at this time on these days. I commit to meeting this client at this time. I commit to going to my daughter’s soccer game.
This will help you block off the non-negotiables, see where you have redundancies, and can save time, and overall work more efficiently because you have a plan for your day. I share my work calendar with my personal one so that I can see everything in one place, which is also a time saver.
Schedule time for self-care and rest
You’re never going to have it all done. You’re never going to be finished. At some point during the day, you’re going to need to call it and go enjoy yourself – enjoy your life! If you are running yourself ragged for days and weeks on end your entire productivity level is going to drop and, soon enough, you won’t be able to help anyone because you’ll be so burnt out. Take care of yourself first, it’s not selfish, and leave some reserves in the tank every day. You’re still doing great work, you’re still taking fantastic care of your clients, you are just ensuring that you can continue to care for them longer because you’re putting yourself first.
What Got You to This Point, Isn’t Going to Take You to the Next Level
Adults, on average, gain one to two pounds per year as they age. This means if you’re a runner, or insert your particular flavor of exercise there, that in order to maintain your weight year over year, you will need to increase the time and intensity with which you run – and that’s to maintain the same weight as the year before. By the same principle, you would need to do significantly more yearly to lose weight.
The same effort-to-outcome equation applies to us in the current real estate market: The efforts and activities that found you success over the last few years are not going to yield you the same results if performed now.
But Kris, I can’t POSSIBLY work harder. I’m already pushing it to my limit!
If you are already truly giving your business 40 hours a week then you’re right, you don’t need to put in more hours, you need to take an honest inventory of the work that you’re doing to ensure that you aren’t unknowingly behaving as though you are still in the previous market conditions.
We are creatures of habit and the groove you got into and found success with a year or two ago is likely not yielding you the same results. So let’s pop the hood and look at how we are spending our time and make the changes necessary to get some real traction.
Self-Check: Are you putting in the work where it counts, or are you waiting for something to fall into your lap?
If real estate is your full-time career, are you truly putting in 40 hours a week?
- If the answer to this is no, then get to bed earlier and add the hours you need to! If you’re treating this like a hobby, it will pay you like one.
- If you are hitting the office full-time, are you working the entire time you’re there…or are you playing office? Perform the money-making activities and ditch the rest! If you were your own boss, would you be considering yourself for a promotion or would you need to be fired? Don’t be your own worst employee!
Is there an activity you’re still doing that isn’t gaining you results?
- Just because you started doing something a few years ago doesn’t mean that you have to continue to do it forever. Perhaps it’s second nature now and you can kick the reminder or chart to save yourself some time. Perhaps it worked during a super hot market and it’s not being fruitful now.
- It’s okay to stop doing things that don’t serve you anymore. The market is different, you are more experienced and have more information. Drop the things that aren’t gaining you more clients, exposure, and transactions, and replace them with more fruitful activities.
Do you have time set aside every day to prospect for new clients?
- Put this on your calendar every. single. day. and honor the time. Schedule around it wherever possible. If you miss a day or two here or there, that’s fine – it happens! But don’t let it slip to a week or worse, a month. The work you do now will pay you 90-120 days from now so it can become easy to fall out of the habit of prospecting when you don’t see immediate results.
- Every single top producer I know prospects every single day that they can. If they miss a day, they hop right back on the next and don’t let it get to day three.
- If this is a challenge for you, figure out how to make it easier. Do you need it on your calendar with reminders set? Do you need an accountability buddy to hold you to it? Can you turn it into a game with rewards? Make the time for this and you’ll be thanking yourself in short order.
How are you staying in front of existing contacts and clients?
- Kill the call to check in, call to show them your value, and give them something they can use or think about each and every time you reach out. If you’re struggling with what to say or share with them, that means you should increase the amount of research you’re doing about the market to give you material and ideas!
- Stay in front of them so you are top-of-mind. This is crucial to connecting with more clients and increasing your number of transactions. If someone says they are a year out, that means you need to be reaching out for updates and sending them information at least once a week – in addition to their home search. Life situations change so quickly, the last thing you want to hear after a month of silence is that they got that promotion and went under contract with someone else because your follow-up wasn’t frequent enough.
- Are your buyers still pre-approved? Interest rates are on the rise and that pre-approval your buyers received 90 days ago may not mean the same thing for them as it did when they first received it. Their price point or other search criteria may have changed. Discussing changing interest rates and encouraging getting RE-approved is a fantastic reason to reach out to buyer clients who are on the fence.
Are you the expert you say you are on your market and its current conditions?
- Hustling alone will not set you apart from other agents within the market. You need to be informed so that you can be an information broker. There is a ton of misinformation and seemingly scary news floating out there, position yourself as a beacon of truth, accuracy, and helpful information to your community.
- Read, subscribe to newsletters, watch videos, attend trainings that are offered to you, and listen to podcasts to the point where you can confidently educate someone on what it takes to get a home under contract and close it in your current market.
- Be ready to answer the question: “How’s the real estate market?” at social gatherings with a really strong answer.
- Know how to share this information about your market during a conversation without having to look it up:
- Current inventory levels
- Average days on market
- Current interest rates and how it affects buying power
- Highlight the most recent market reports
- Make educating your community, customers, and clients a priority.
Review the above items and make whatever changes are necessary to streamline your work and gain better results from your efforts. This market is demanding more from us, but if you perform your work with more intention and focus, it doesn’t have to mean more hours.
You can do it, I know you can!
Strategies for Handling Objections
Objections are the biggest driver of an agent being reluctant to prospect or pick up the phone. And why wouldn’t it be? If everyone we called, texted, and emailed responded with “I’ll be there in 30 minutes and I’m ready to buy a house,” then we wouldn’t even be talking about this, much less have the need for scripting coaches and seminars on how to prospect and what to say on calls.
You can learn lots of specific things to say in response to common real estate objections, but the way to drive the needle forward on real progress is to re-frame the way you think about objections altogether.
Change your mindset about objections
If you can wrap your mind around how to embrace the objection and look forward to it, rather than viewing it as a negative event, you will WANT them to spit out their objection because you’re going to be SO ready for them.
The path to embracing the objection is to ensure that you re-frame the fear surrounding it. Are they really objecting to what you have to say, or are they merely asking for more information in an unusual way since you are strangers and they feel a teensy bit defensive as a natural human response to a sales call?
For instance, if a future client says, “I’m not willing to sell right now because I have no idea where I will go. There’s nothing on the market that I’m interested in. I don’t want to put my family in a position to be homeless or moving multiple times.”
Woof. Although they clarified that they will be buying AND selling with you, they just told you that they’ve been looking, haven’t seen anything they like, and gave you a really understandable reason as to why they are a firm STOP on the process.
They are expecting this to be the end of the conversation, as that’s likely where it ended with the last five agents who rang them up. When someone hits you with a doozy, smile and say, “I am SO glad you said that! Let me share with you what I have been doing for other clients that will make this less of a challenge.”
This wasn’t an objection to what you were saying, it was an opportunity to show this person your value, to teach them what you have done for others in their exact situation (social proof, anyone?), and give them specific guidance on how you can confidently guide them to the top of their real estate transaction Everest.
Most of us feel that friction and negative energy through the phone and we get defensive and nervous, leading us to end the conversation early without even a chance to connect. By practicing viewing an objection as an exciting thing, you can smooth the conversation over and move forward easily. You knew it was going to happen, and you were ready for it because you are well-educated about your market and you have experience and solutions to share.
Remember, if they didn’t want to talk to you and hear what you have to say…they would have hung up already.
Facts vs Feelings
For many people, buying a home is a huge, scary thing to wrap their minds around. AND most people aren’t emotionally aware and mature enough to say, “I don’t know where to start with this and I’m scared, can you help me learn?” to the agent on the other end of the phone, trying desperately to help them.
You ask them if they are considering buying or selling and those gut feelings arise and, as a result, they say the worst things they can think of about it to move on with their day, doing the comfortable things they prefer: “I can’t do that! I’ll be homeless! I’ll lose money! I’ll get stuck with a house I don’t like! I’ll pay too much, the prices are inflated!”
New view: They aren’t objecting, they are asking for more information. This is your time to shine. Educate them on why they won’t be homeless. Why they won’t lose money. Why they won’t pay too much for a house, and what you have done for people JUST LIKE THEM in similar situations.
They are operating very much in their feelings and that often isn’t based in reality. Hear them first (NEVER skip this step!) and then educate them on the facts to move them out of that mental space.
Be proactive about the objections you are hearing
As an agent, you are really in tune with what people are concerned about in your market right now. Having this information will allow you to build your toolkit around these potential challenges for your client and allow you to really address the objection head-on in a kind, stress-free manner that will disarm any friction.
Lead the conversation by asking if they are worried that this isn’t a good time to sell or buy and then listening to all of their perceived knowledge about the market. This will assist them in feeling understood, and lower their guard a bit. After you hear about their concerns, you can then offer them facts to support why now is actually a perfect time to buy or sell and how you can help them.
Remember though, THEY think that what they heard from their neighbor or read in their favorite opinion news source is 100% true. Don’t approach this with an air of “I know best so I won’t listen to you.” Listen, acknowledge THEIR truth, and then share your truth along with your very reliable, factual sources.
Don’t offer them this energy:
Listen to truly understand, not impatiently waiting for your turn to speak
This is incredibly important and the best way to get good at this is to role-play, y’all. Get comfortable with talking about these challenging topics so you aren’t clinging to your script.
The more comfortable you are talking about these subjects, the more you can listen to what the lead is actually saying and respond thoughtfully instead of being on your heels and just waiting for your turn to talk and shout out the next thing you’re SUPPOSED to say to move the conversation along.
Scripts are important to get you started, but the more you can have a natural conversation about real estate, the higher your conversion rate will be!
Listen and ask open-ended questions so you can help them work out what the root of their objection is. Is it time? Is it money? Is it needing more information?
Once you have a direction, provide them with information and resources to sort out how to make a decision.
If you can’t resolve it right then, tell them you’ll get back to them with answers soon…and then do it!
They want to feel heard and understood by you. If they don’t think you are truly listening and helping them meet their needs, they will find someone who will fit that role for them!
P.S. Did y’all know that Steve Harvey has a courtroom tv show? I had no idea until I was putting this together for you.
The Art of Consistency
Regardless of what industry you work in, you’ll find advice and articles that say, “The Number One Killer of a ______ Career is Inconsistency.” That, in my experience, is true for any career, relationship, hobby, exercise, or sport you are making a go of. This newsletter is about real estate, so I will keep it in that vein, however, increasing your consistency across all areas of your life will serve you well.
The most successful real estate agents have built their careers on years of effort and work. Putting in a few weeks or months of effort will not make you a wild success. Give yourself time to grow and accept this uncomfortable truth about success so that you don’t give up or become frustrated. Know that it is going to take you a while, figure out how to enjoy the process, and keep going.
Falling in love with the process will allow you to spend time thinking about and building processes around your work, learn from your mistakes and be consistent with your efforts. Growth comes from making small tweaks to improve what you’re already doing. You need a strong foundation to build upon and you cannot do that if you are scrapping everything and starting over brand new every time you run into challenges.
So if we want to build our consistency, where should we start that will have the most impact on our business? I would start with your prospecting and follow up. This is one of the most important aspects of building a business and something we can all improve upon, whether we are a newer agent or a seasoned one.
Prospecting and follow up is one of the first things to fall by the wayside when we get busy, and it should be the one thing we never stop doing.
Staying consistent with these means you have to push yourself. Humans, by nature, crave comfort, stability, and safety. By pushing yourself you naturally will become uncomfortable, making it that much more likely that you’ll stop, especially if you are unsure of the outcome: What happens on the other side of this uncomfortableness? What if I fail? What if I SUCCEED? If you aren’t pushing beyond what you typically do, you stay safe. You can control and anticipate the outcome because it’s what you’ve always done and, therefore, what you’ve always achieved.
But we aren’t here to do what we’ve always done and to get what we’ve always gotten. We are here because we want more for ourselves and our families and, to push yourself, means that you have to be willing to do the things you don’t want to do, to get uncomfortable to gain the rewards that no one else is willing to work for.
So how do we build increase the consistency of our prospecting and follow up??
Make time.
Schedule this on your calendar as a recurring event and honor that time. Yes, something will come up and you will inevitably need to move it sometimes, but if you nail it three to four days a week instead of one…or none! – you’ll be in significantly better shape than you were previously.
If you’re finding that your day gets away from you and you lack energy at the end of the day, schedule the time block for the morning. If your mornings are always a mess, schedule it for the afternoon. Choose the time that sets you up for success.
Make sure you’re speaking their language.
Do they prefer to email? Like to text instead of talk on the phone? Or do they want to have a call for every step of the process? Meet them where they are instead of how you like to communicate.
Provide value at every interaction.
No more “Just checking in!” Send them something that educates them, a tool they can use, or even just something to think about that will help them prepare for their move. Taking the time to offer them intentional, constructive information every single time you follow up will set you apart from your competition in the area and solidify your position as the local real estate expert. There’s a ton of information available, even if it’s just reading articles or watching videos about real estate and sharing with them what you’re learning.
Find a way to help them, even if it’s to pass them on to someone else.
Are they just looking for a rental? You’ve got someone. Do they need to repair their credit before they can do anything? You’ve got a great connection. Yes, you need to make this a quick transaction with someone who isn’t ready or willing to buy in the near future, but offering the tools and connections you have available will make them remember you and the conversations easier when you follow up down the road, vs if you had just blown them off.
Give your new and uncontacted leads a fair shot to connect.
So many times I see one to three attempts from someone to a new person in the database and the agent moves on…forever. These folks are at the beginning of their journey, this isn’t like buying a pair of sunglasses off an Instagram ad, they are going to need some time between when they first start learning and exploring and when they want to execute. Keep bringing them value, be patient, and meet them where they are.
Keep going. Know, without a shred of a doubt, that you are headed in the right direction and it’s going to work out.
You’re doing it. You’re already successful even if you haven’t hit it big yet. Keep going even when it’s hard, even if you’ve had a bad day or a bad week. Deep breaths and one foot in front of the other. You can do it, I know you can.
The Mindset of a Successful Agent
Where do you start when making a weekly resource for agents and team leaders? I’ve been wrestling with this all week and the answer is, just like everything else, is to simply put one foot in front of the other and go.
You don’t have to have everything figured out first. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to begin. There’s no finish line, simply get started, do the best with what you’ve got, and improve your system and process as you go.
A mentor of mine says regularly, “You’re never going to be finished, it always gets better, and keep going – continuity is the secret to success.” And he’s absolutely right. So let’s get started, shall we? Take a read and then I’ll see you next week…and the week after that…and we will get better together!
Kris
The Makeup of a Successful Agent
Barbara Corcoran says, “Handling rejection is 90% of what sales is all about, and the better you are at getting up quickly, and not spending too much time feeling sorry for yourself, THAT’S what determines who are the superstars.”
What she’s talking about is resilience: the ability to bounce back after a failure and come back even stronger than you were before.
Like most things, resilience isn’t something that you were born with, it’s a learned behavior or skill. If you bring your focus to this and actively work on it, your resilience can grow and strengthen like any other activity that you practice often.
So what do we do to work on our resilience so that we can become very successful, not only in real estate but in our lives as a whole?
Understand yourself and your unique personality. This isn’t about being someone that you’re not. This is about understanding who you are and figuring out how to get THAT person to be as successful as possible.
To have the ability to truly be yourself is a form of freedom and, unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that are unable to do that. If you can actively practice being authentic, genuine, and cultivating who YOU are it will put other people at ease and allow them to feel like they can be their true selves when they are interacting with you. This is going to naturally attract more people – and clients! – to you.
Recognize cognitive distortions and confront them head-on.
A cognitive distortion is a story that we tell ourselves that isn’t reality. Our emotions are created by language so the distorted things that we tell ourselves on a regular basis actually become true. This can be really exciting…or terrifying depending on the types of stories that you’re telling yourself.
Our brains have no way to differentiate these stories that we tell ourselves from reality. So if you’re saying to yourself, “I can’t do anything right!” then that becomes true. Your brain believes this and it will “help” you by collect evidence to support this belief of yours.
Instead, why not tell yourself, “I am really good at this. Opportunities are always coming my way. I am a confident, successful person.” Then your brain will collect evidence to support THAT reality instead.
Have you ever had someone not call or text you back and then you make up some crazy story about why? And then you get yourself wound up and then they finally respond and all of that stress and worry was for no reason? THAT was a cognitive distortion.
For example: “This agent isn’t calling me back because they have bad news…or they hate me…or I did something wrong! They are going to reject this offer which means I advised my clients wrong and I’m a bad agent…”
STOP. STOP. STOP. STOP.
Stop telling yourselves things that aren’t true and that you have no evidence for. Who told you that? No one.
Now, we all do this to some degree, and if it’s something that you struggle with, unfortunately, there’s not one magic thing that I can say to get you to change the way you speak to yourself or about yourself to others. It’s going to take some inner exploration, some work, and YOU have to be the one to do it.
You have to do the work to get it to stop, and that may mean sitting with some pretty uncomfortable feelings until you figure it out. You cannot ignore negative thinking and it goes away. You have to dig deep: Why is it that I am telling myself these things?
Giving yourself some grace and some gray area to operate in is one step towards edging this out. It’s not: I’m either perfect or I am a failure. Give yourself some middle ground. Give yourself a break – less than perfect can still be pretty damn good.
When you find yourself having one of these cognitive distortions or, said another way, spiraling negative thoughts here are some easy ways to quickly get out of that frame of mind.
1. Recognize that you’re doing it. The more you practice this, the faster you can recognize the path you’re about to go down and you can turn things around faster and faster.
2. Take three to ten deeeeeeeep breaths, depending on how upset you are. This will reset your amygdala, which is the fear center of your brain.
3. Acknowledge how you are feeling. Name it, think directly about it. I am feeling _______. Write it down on a scrap of paper and get it out of your head and body.
4. Ask yourself, “Is this true? Is there evidence for this? Or is this a narrative that I have created?”
5. Throw that piece of paper away and go do something that serves your best interest.
Another way to strengthen your resiliency is to learn how to re-frame setbacks to your advantage.
Things aren’t happening TO you, they are happening FOR you.
Often we can look back on something seemingly negative that turned out to be the best possible thing that could have happened once some time has passed and we are looking at it through a more clear lens.
With practice, you will be able to see events through that clear lens in the moment, so you don’t have to wait years to see the positive in events that are happening.
Tony Robbins suggests considering: What is funny about this situation? Is it going to matter in a week? Is this going to matter to me in five years?
Think clearly about why you think this is “bad” in the first place. What is it that you think will happen? Is there something to uncover there that you need to explore or work on?
Great questions to ask yourself as you build a practice of this: Is there a way that this could turn out to be a positive event someday? What can I do to make this positive scenario happen? How do I turn this into a good thing so that I can celebrate this one day?
Once you’re out of your head, move back to your checklist of priorities that you’ve made for your day. Having a plan for your day or a prioritized list will give you a place to return to if you find yourself off-track, allowing you to bounce back faster.
Don’t laugh when I say this, but a healthy prospecting habit will also help you build resiliency.
It’s easier to bounce back from a client looking to go in a different direction when your pipeline is full and there are others to channel your energy towards.
Build a healthy prospecting practice so that you always have plenty of potential clients to reach out to and existing clients to love on and you will view your work from a place of abundance instead of scarcity and you won’t take it so hard, or personally, that someone decided to move on or that a deal fell through.
Find motivation for your work outside of money.
Having a driver for your work that isn’t money will also help you be resilient during tough times. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What pushes you to operate in this chaotic, stressful, ever-changing industry?
A friend of mine views his work as Helper First, Realtor Second. He has it in his email signature, he says it regularly…and this motivating core belief pushes him and also seeps through into everything that he does. It’s there in the way he talks to his clients, the way he handles his transactions, the way he writes about his work on social media…everything.
Having a good handle on your motivator will help keep you going and, if that driver is strong enough, the money will happen as you put in the work!
The last suggestion I have for you to build resiliency could be the most important.
Take care of yourself.
It’s hard to be resilient when you don’t feel well. Are you getting a good night’s sleep? Are you drinking enough water? Are you eating real food, or are you eating food-like products? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you stepping away from your work and devices to take breaks and live your life? Be honest with yourself and start adjusting where you need it the most.
Don’t try to implement all of this at once. Pick one or two strategies that speak to you and just. get. started. Then, keep going. Continuity is the secret to success.
Don’t be Fooled by the Overnight Success
Don’t be fooled by the “Overnight Success”
I remember this conversation clearly: I was watching the 2004 Grammy Awards and Outkast won Best Rap Album for their 2003 release of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below – and also delivered the shortest acceptance speech ever with a simple, “Thank you,” throwing up a peace sign, and leaving the stage.
“They really came out of nowhere!” says my friend.
Now, being a longtime fan of the group, I was shocked to hear them say this. In my world, Outkast had been cranking out fantastic music since 1992 and was FINALLY getting some major recognition over a decade later. But my pal, having different musical tastes and experiences, was new to the wonder that is Outkast and felt as though they were some fast-tracked overnight success.
This isn’t something exclusive to the music industry, seeming overnight successes are everywhere. The excruciatingly long time it takes to find your niche, build a trusted brand, create and fine-tune your processes and systems, and find and develop relationships with customers and clients is not something that’s done in the spotlight, and probably for good reason. It’s done late at night and on weekends after you work your primary job. It’s failure and struggles and mistakes…who wants to put those on Instagram? And then, once you firm up your foundation and can stand confidently upon it to build, it’s at that time folks start to take notice, blissfully unaware of the years it took you to sort that foundation out.
If you’re beginning your real estate journey I’m sure you’re going to read this and think, “Kris, I don’t HAVE years and years…I need to make this work NOW.” And with that, you’re absolutely right, you’ve made the leap and you don’t need to make it work, you HAVE to make it work for a lot of really important reasons. That’s why it’s so important for you to meet yourself where you’re at instead of making assumptions about what others are up to.
Comparison is a natural human trait. Even as young children we look for likenesses and differences in one another so that we can classify where other people fit into our lives. But comparison (that thief of joy!) is not your friend when you are building a real estate business. Whether you are a single agent or a budding team or brokerage, looking at what someone else is doing can create some negative feelings if framed incorrectly.
Of course, look to others for inspiration and ideas that you can implement in your own business, but intentionally fight the urge to think that you’re doing something wrong because you aren’t seeing the same action they are.
You are on the right track, you just began at different times. Every single step you take, and every potential client you speak to is leading you toward your goal. You’re gaining experience, learning what works and, more importantly, what does not work, and you are getting farther down the path to success with each and every day that you put in the effort. If you get farther down the path, decide to turn right or left, and even if it turns out to be in the wrong direction you are still miles ahead of where you were when you started.
If you are going to find success in real estate, in your relationships, or in any arena of your life, you have to keep going despite the obstacles and what you see others doing.
Here are some tips on how to keep going when the going gets tough:
- Make the best decisions with the information you have, and trust your future self to handle any challenges that come your way. You have made it through all of your worst days, you can handle those unknowns too!
- Accept the fact that it is going to take some time to build momentum and don’t be resistant to it. You’re going to make it!
- Fall in love with the process and do the items every day that move the needle forward. Whenever the market shifts everyone does this big push to “Get back to basics!” What would happen if you never stopped doing the basics?
- Actively work on finding and celebrating wins, even if they are small. In real estate, the highs are really high and brief and the lows can be really low and long. Finding things to celebrate everyday will keep you running longer.
- Know, to the core of your being, even if you’ve had a bad day or week, that this is working, you are a successful agent, and you’re headed in the right direction.
Now that we’ve had our worldview lens cleaned, let’s get up and go take action, and keep going – continuity is the secret to success.
