Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is not a drill.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: This is the age of mine podcast.
Welcome back to the show, the Agent Mind Podcast. Frank Warren's joining me for this season. Season number three. I'm, I'm really excited that when, when Frank and I were talking about, you know, how to, how to kind of share the, the conversations that we've been having with the, the masses with, with all the agents out there that, that we can, this was the natural, a natural way to do it is just to get, just to do the season three of the podcast and just talk about it. So today is going to be a great show. We're going to talk about what are the things that separate the agents who last from the agents who don't. So if you want to be, you know, in this for, for a few years, this is your career. This is absolutely the show you want to listen to. We're going to give you all the tools and tricks and you're just gonna, you're gonna have it all. All you need is this episode and we'll go from there. So, Frank, man, welcome. How you doing?
[00:01:01] Speaker A: I'm doing well, no pressure. Telling everybody we're gonna provide all the tips and tricks.
One 20 minute episode. That's. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta work for us. We gotta roll up our sleeves and get at it then.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: That's right. So that's that. I mean, that's a funny way of saying one of the things that I did early on is, is just chase shiny objects. So that's my little plug there. So it's a. Everything works, but if you try to do everything, nothing works. Yep, yep.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: There's a statistic out there NAR produces and it basically shows how many agents are still in the business at the five year point.
And that's roughly about 15%. So that means the failure rate is pushing towards 85% in this industry. So we see a lot of people come and, and we see a lot of people go, tj, how long have you been selling real estate?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: It will be eight years, a couple days here actually on the money.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Eleven for me. So we've at least made it through that first five year period and it's been kind of interesting. I've seen a lot of people build very successful careers in this industry and the pathway they took to getting there is not the same. It's almost like you can carve out your own unique journey, so to speak, and that will help you get to where you want to go. So I'm excited about today's episode. We're going to Talk about things that we have learned along the way about how to be successful in this business.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's so important to really build a foundation, you know, whether you're, whether you're new or stuck. A mentor of mine, I think he's a mentor of yours a little bit too. Neil Mathmig always talks about you have to have the foundation and you have to be consistent with a few things in order to build on. And you can kind of add in almost like your Internet browser. You have like plugins you can add on to your, to your business. But it has to start with a foundation. If you try to build on sand, it's not gonna, it's just not gonna, it's not gonna last.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So in my mind with the. The title for today's episode is what separates the Successful Agents.
I think the first thing we need to really explore is how do we define success? What does that look like? Obviously that can vary quite a bit based on the individual. But tj, how do you think we should look at the term success?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Gosh, you know, it's so individual and so it's really a personal, a personal question.
I don't mean personal like, you know, behind closed doors personal, but it's unique to each agent. I think it's like what my, what my success looked like is different from what your success looked like. But ultimately you have to make the decision and you have to really think about what does the success look like for you. It could be that you are, maybe you have a full time job and you do real estate for a hobby, kind of. Then maybe your, your closings are going to be two a year. Perfectly fine. If that's what success looks like for you in the business.
Two a year sounds good. Maybe you just have, maybe you're, you work with investing and you do a couple of your own personal deals a year.
Great. Another person's success might be, I need to close 100 deals in a year and that's. And I won't be successful unless that happens.
So in essence, and I think, I think I know where you're going. Like, it ultimately depends on whether you're driving your business or the business is driving you. There's a very fine line. There's a tipping point where it looks like success on the outside, but you're scrambling and just holding it together and stressed and burnout's gonna happen soon kind of thing.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: That's a good way of kind of leading us into it. I would argue the very first metric to look at in terms of being successful is you're not broke.
If you've been in this business for a number of years and you were able to generate enough income off of it to live, that's the first metric. Because if you can't sustain your standard of living, then you obviously cannot continue in this business.
But there has to be more to success than simple money and production. I've seen a lot of very successful agents who've made a lot of money, and they created this business that they are now a prisoner to. They can't get away. They can't do the things they value most in life because they're constantly having to pour into their business. There's always something else to do. So I don't think success is an entirely sufficient definition based upon production or generating revenue. The way I like to look at it is you live your life by design. You set out and determine how you want to live, what goals you want to accomplish, and then you start to live your life as if you're moving towards that. So what TJ said earlier that we all have our own variation of success.
If you are able to set a plan in terms of the life you want to lead and real estate is the pathway to help you get there, I would argue that is successful.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I agree. It's it.
And like I said before, it's unique to everybody. So there. I'd love to have like a one, one size fits all answer of, like, this is success.
Yeah, but I mean, that's just not singular to our industry. That's just. That's. I think in life in general, it's like what is, you know, what. What you want, what your passions are completely different from someone else's, which makes, you know, makes us human, which is a fantastic journey that we. That we kind of travel on for sure.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So if you were to accept my definition of being a successful real estate agent, the next question that should rise is if you want to live your life by design, what are the habits you need to engage in that will help you accomplish your goals and live that life by design?
Tj, you have any thoughts on that?
[00:07:22] Speaker B: I do, but the first one that pops in is kind of a.
Take a slight side sidetrack, but we'll come back.
So this is not only for the. If you're new or if you're stuck like these are, that you alluded to, there's agents out there that are, you know, just holding it together, barely, but they're making a ton of money or they're. They're there. Their success has been defined by somebody else and they're achieving it, but it's just not. It doesn't quite fit. It doesn't quite feel right.
So I think that's, I think that's an important, important aspect of it. And you know what? I'm. I've got off track. What exactly was the question?
That's what happens when I take sidebars.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: If we're going to define success as living your life by design, what is the habit or habits you need to engage in that will help you accomplish your goals?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah, good point.
Well, I'll tell you, I. One thing that, that helps me, and I think it's a critical step in. I'll just kind of generalize it at first and then I'll kind of go talk about what I do.
I think you need. You have to have a plan.
You have to have a plan. You have to stick to a plan, and you have to. I hear all the time. I talk to a lot of agents and they say, I just don't have time to sit down and write, you know, make a plan or write down my schedule or write down this stuff.
And my answer is it's kind of cliche, but I say you don't have time to not do it. You don't have time. You, it saves so much time by just a. You dump out, dump things out of your brain onto a piece of paper and it's like magic happen. Like all this clarity comes just, just by doing that, then you take it a little step further.
I like to journal. Every day involves gratitude.
Gratitude wins.
Things that I might want to work on that, you know, maybe I fell short the day before, not beat myself up or, or kick myself or, you know, a pity party. It's like, you know what? I could have. I could have. I didn't, I didn't. I missed spending time with my kid, you know, that I said I was going to. So today I'm going to make sure we, you know, we make that up.
So it's just kind of a self assessment each morning. And then I, I still like to write down my schedule, even though I have it in on my computer, on my phone, all that stuff. I write down the, the most important gist of things, like if I have appointments, like block time blocks, basically, which is a whole kind of another discussion. And then at the end of the day, it's a little more gratitude wins for the day, and then, you know, my expected wins for tomorrow. So that's very good. I stole that One from Dan Sullivan. Like writing down your expected wins for tomorrow. Because you're just right before you go to bed, you're telling your brain like, hey, this, this is what, these are the wins we're going to get tomorrow. And then you go to sleep and to kind of manifest it. That's my goal anyway.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: So you mentioned plan and I think that's very important.
How I would phrase it is there's three, three steps towards developing habits that are going to lead to you being successful. First is a vision. It's kind of hard to know where you want to go if you don't have an idea on what that looks like and what you want to accomplish and where you want to be in the future.
So you've got to have a vision. And that's really the focus point. The foundation of this life by design idea is what is my life going to look like in five years?
For me, we're about to become empty nesters. So I'm trying to think through what this next chapter is going to look like. My wife and I are having a lot of discussions about what we want to do over this next five to ten year period of our lives.
So we're crafting a vision on a personal level. Well, for me, real estate is going to be the tool I use to help accomplish that vision.
And then tj, you mentioned plan and obviously that's very important. So you now have a goal of where you want to be and what you want to accomplish. Let's figure out how you get from where you are to where you want to go.
And then the third step is developing activities that will implement that plan.
And that's where I think we see a lot of people fall short. They have an idea of what their life could look like.
They maybe go to seminars or read books and that helps them to formulate and craft a plan.
But then the activities of executing on that plan is where a lot of people fall short.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I agree. It's.
They always say, I forget who said this. I'm horrible with like remembering who said quotes, but I loved it. I love quotes. I apologize whoever said this out there, but I'm going to quote it anyway.
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: A goal without a plan is just a wish.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: That's right. Is just a wish. Which is I've, I've fallen into that. Like I've, I've said to myself many times, like I'm going to do X or I want to be X and then I don't.
There's no thought process into, like, what does it actually mean? What are the things I have to give up and what are the things I have to do to get to that point?
You know, weight loss is always a. Is always a very easy analogy.
But, yeah, I can say. I could say I want to lose a few pounds, but if I don't make a plan to eat right and exercise and whatever other healthy habits, then that's just. It's just a wish at that point.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And I would argue, as you're kind of trying to formulate what a successful career looks like, the key variable to it is confidence.
So if you develop. You have a vision, you develop a plan, you start to put together a list of activities that are going to help you accomplish those things.
Do you believe those activities are going to get you to where you want to go?
And if you doubt that, that's when you're probably going to come up short and actually executing on those activities.
I feel like I saw somebody speak at a conference a couple years ago, and like tj, I have a hard time remembering names, but he was talking about door knocking, and he literally knocked on 125,000 doors.
Who?
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Stephen Ross.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Steven Ross. Thank you, TJ. We want to make sure we.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: For Stephen Ross, he wrote a great book called Doors Open when youn Knock. And it is about consistency and making a plan.
So it's pretty good. Yeah, I recommend that book.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: And I'm assuming that when he started that process of knocking on doors, he didn't know what he was getting into. There was a lot of uncertainty in what the outcome would be. But as he went through that, he started to be able to track his activities and determine how many doors he needed to knock on which would generate an appointment, how many appointments did he need which would generate a contract, and how many contracts did he need to generate a closing. So he had pretty much a formula in place saying, if I knock on X number of doors, I'm going to get Y number of closings. And once you have that level of knowledge, it generates confidence, and it's going to help you to go out and execute on those activities that are going to help you implement your plan.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I know Steven Ross, um, personally. He's. I consider him a really great friend. He's such a great person.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: But I can tell you that it's. Maybe you didn't even realize this, but you gave us a perfect example of exactly what we're talking about here. What, what the difference is between being Successful and falling short.
Then the thing that, that, this when Stephen Ross first started out, and I'm, he's not here, so I'm going to put words in his mouth, but he would attest to this. I believe.
He, he just knew that he had to take action and he picked something and he just committed to, to doing it. Pushing through that, that moment of the valley of like, this isn't working, you push through that, build confidence the more conversations you have.
And that's just, that was the one thing that he, he picked as the, the thing he was going to be consistent with. So it's like being, being consistent in taking action is a great lesson from Steven Ross, for sure.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: So it sounds like we're in agreement that ultimately confidence is the key to being successful.
If you're not confident in what you're doing, you're not going to continue to do that consistently. But if you do have a belief that this is going to help you accomplish your goals and live that life by design, it will help you push through the difficult times, the setbacks that you're going to encounter.
TJ I'm kind of curious. Is there something that you do that helps reinforce your activities and gives you a sense of believing that you're going to be successful?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Well, here's, here's what I can tell you. Just confidence in self, confidence in myself.
And I know this works for others too.
If you do the things you say you're going to do but consistently, and that builds, I think, in my opinion, that builds more confidence in life than any other thing can because you're, and truly it's important to do the things that you tell yourself you're going to do, like be. When you, when you make a commitment to yourself, keep it to your don't keep it to yourself, but you keep that commitment that you made to yourself. And the confidence that you get from that is a building block where then, if you, then if you're consistently taking action in your business, like the more reps you get in on a phone call, the more. I'm not saying that you have to cold call. Like that's a whole nother conversation. We talk about door knocking. We're not saying you have to door knock. We just have to pick something and be consistent with it. And the more, the more wins you stack up.
Well, let's put it this way. The more consistent you are, the more chances you are giving yourself to stack up wins.
And once you stack up those wins, then you're like, you just build on that confidence and build on that confidence. And the more conversations you have, the more people you help.
It just builds and builds and builds. And it's just, you get to the point where you're like, well, I can't even believe a couple years ago I was afraid to call a lead that came in online or whatever.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: So you mentioned something earlier about journaling. And journaling is a form of tracking activities.
I think that is very important in generating confidence.
If you don't know the results of your previous actions, it's easy to lose confidence as you move forward or begin to question whether what you're doing is going to work. But if you've got actual results recorded somewhere, it's going to be immensely helpful in developing confidence in your activities. Or what it could do is tell you what you're engaging in is not the best form of your time.
Best use of your time and talent and treasure and maybe you need to reevaluate. So I would echo what TJ shared earlier, that journaling or tracking is a key way to develop confidence so you can engage in those activities to implement your plan and achieve the vision you have for your life.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Keeping score.
It's a. The. The gentleman who wrote the 12 week year, another great book. If you haven't read that or read the 12 week year, they talk about keeping score. And essentially, if you think about everybody's been doing.
I'd like to hope that everybody's been to at least one sporting event in their life.
And if you think back to that sporting event that you attended or watched on television, if the, if the teams didn't keep score, how exciting would that thing? It would be completely boring and no one will watch.
So keeping score definitely is a way for you to write, to keep track of what you're doing, what's doing, what's working in your business, what's not working in your business, and then being able to adjust and take action, to kind of adjust and fix it. Because that's okay too. If you commit to something and you really give it a good try. And you, you know, realize down the road that I'm kind of wasting time here now that I have more information because I've been tracking and I've learned more, I might be wasting time, you know, messing around with my website every day because that's. Because people aren't coming through my website. I should be spending that time maybe having coffee with my sphere or something like that.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Well, tj, this has been a good conversation. I appreciate you bringing this up in terms of how do we develop a system so that we can become successful in our business.
Yeah.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: And I think and stick around for that for future episodes. We're just kind of laying the groundwork of we're going to start the more episodes in we get. We're going to start really talking about specific tactics that you can use to do all these things. Like we spoke in in general generalities today about taking action.
Taking action consistently builds confidence.
It's just a, we're just laying the groundwork for what's to come. We're gonna, we're gonna give you some ideas of what that action could be.
We're gonna give you tools and, and, and helpful things to hopefully would help you in your business at least the concepts that will definitely help you in your business.
So get ahead of the game. If you're out there listening, if you're watching this on YouTube, it'll be in the show notes but go to there agent hive.com get on the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter. We don't spam. It's going to be once a week when we put that stuff out and we're everything we talk about on the show here, we're going to push that out the following day through the newsletter. So make sure you sign up for that. That's just the easiest way to communicate with the community.
So we are the, the Agent mind is a production of the Hive for real estate agents, which is just a community of agents that, you know, collaborating, working together, sharing ideas.
Collaboration over competition always wins.
So check that out. The reagent Hive.com and Frank man, thanks so much. I always love talking to you. I think you, you got a great, you got, I, I, we didn't talk about this time. We talked about in the first episode of you've, you've been a teacher. You've been in public office. You've been, you know, you've done, you've done quite a bit to help your community and I'm just glad that you're part of the Hive and here and on the podcast helping us out.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: This was fun. I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the future episodes. As TJ just alluded to. We've got some really interesting ideas that we're discuss and I can't wait. So we'll see you next time.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Definitely.
