Kevin Ray Ward (YesMasters Real Estate Success) presents a short motivational coaching video diagnosing why real estate agents get discouraged. Using an anecdote and an email from a coaching member, he locates the problem in mindset and identifies three contributors: (1) frustration when expectations don’t match short-term results, (2) fear of failure and rejection, and (3) the inevitable struggle and pain required for high achievement. He prescribes three responses: push through (persist and assess rather than quit), face fears (act despite them), and embrace the struggle (learn from frequent failures; use the baseball batting average example to normalize failure). The piece closes with encouragement to persist.
Chapters
I overheard somebody just the other day tell me that they said you've got to go see the new movie it that it is the most terrifying horror movie of 2017. Now I'm not into horror movies that much and I'm like okay, but I got to check it out, I got to figure out what is it that all this fascination and why is it such an amazing movie. And so I came home, got on YouTube, looked up it trailer 2017 and Rick realized it was a Stephen. It was a movie based on a novel by the famous horror writer Stephen King. And so I was thinking to myself, where does it, where does Stephen King get all this stuff? Where does he get these sinister, horrifying, terrifying plots? And then I was reading an email from one of my coaching members and I figured it out. He gets it all these terrifying plots. He gets it from real estate agents. Hi, my name is Kevin Ward with yes Masters Real Estate Success Training helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. And today I want to share with you what an email I got from one of my coaching members that helped me to understand what it is and how to overcome it. Because one thing that I know as they tell me about the new movie, it is, it is like ah, it is terrifying, it is horrifying. It's the best horror movie on the planet and here's where it comes from. So I get emails like this regularly. So it's an agent and it's actually one of my coaching members telling me how they've. Things were going well for a while. I started off, things were going very well. I was getting listing appointments almost every week and at one point had two listings until I lost one due to the seller putting it up for rent. Uh oh, the story just turned. It's starting to change. That's the next line of the email. So it started off pretty good but now it is starting to change. Now the moment it starts to change, you know you're in trouble. Well, what happens next? There are times where it is difficult. So now we know something about it. It's difficult to hear when other agents have signed listings and closings coming up. I know I shouldn't compare but it is tough sometimes. Lately I've been getting into door knocking for prospecting which has been great. I'm getting better and better and getting better and so forth. I use a follow up system but sometimes fear takes over and I start making excuses. Not sure if this makes sense, but I'm working to get over it while focusing on my why? Sometimes it takes me five minutes to muster up the courage to call. Other times I set a reminder to call a couple of days in and I just keep pushing it off. And then they talk about a few more things here about circumstances and it just goes, I've been, I know things will take time. However, sometimes it's hard to push through any tips. And that's the email. So I'm reading and I'm going like, that's the problem. That's the problem that every real estate agent on the planet has, is we have it. It is the problem. The question is, how do we overcome it? So what even is it? What is the it that causes us to struggle as real estate agents? Well, before we talk about what is it, I want to first talk about where it is. And this is the good news. Where it is is right here. It is all in your head. It lives in our mindset. It lives in our head. It lives in our head that whenever things are going pretty well, as was happening for this agent, things are going well. And then it started to change. What started to change? The market? The people? No, in reality, maybe some, some outcomes, some results were different over a period of time that things were going good, and then for a week or two things went bad. And so all of a sudden they were like, it's starting to change. Well, now what started to change is a story started being, creating in our mind. So where it is is right here. Now the next thing I want to talk about is what it is. What is it that stops us in real estate? What is it that messes us up in real estate? And there are three things, and I think they all show up right here. There are three things that show up in this email from this agent that describe or define what the it is that causes you to struggle in your real estate. Number one, it is the letdown when our expectations don't measure up with our results. See, everything was going good. She was getting what she was expecting. And then all of a sudden she stopped getting the getting the results that she was expecting to get. So our expectation is I should still be getting appointments, I should be getting listings. And all of a sudden there's a couple of weeks goes by and she's not. And all of a sudden it started getting started, changing. Well, what really changed? Did all of a sudden her talent change? Did her abilities change? No, her abilities. She said, I'm still getting better and better at stuff. Did the market change? Did all of a sudden all the nice, motivated sellers disappeared and they all got replaced with grumpy, non motivated sellers. No, what changed was here it's when our expectations that we have and the results that we're getting for a certain period of time don't measure up. And so the result of that is frustration. We get frustrated now when you just recognize that it is not the world conspiring against you but that it is simply that your expectations and your results are not measuring up. Ah, now I can, now I can, I've identified it, now I can figure out what to do about it. The second, it is simply the fear of failure. The fear of. She said sometimes fear overtakes me and so I have to work to get over it. It's the fear. It's the fear of, oh no, what if this goes bad? What if they yell at me, what if they cuss at me, what if I get rejected? Whatever the it is, it's there and we got to deal with it, right? So it is also the fear that we have to, to deal with. And then the third it that shows up here is. I know sometimes it's, she said two things. It's difficult and then it's hard. Well, look, here's the reality. What is the it? The it here is the struggle and the pain required that are just guaranteed on the path to success and greatness. Just what it is. That's what it is. One, it's the frustration when our expectations and our results don't measure up. When things aren't going the way we're not getting the outcome we expected. Number two, it's the fears that we have that we run into. And number three, it's just the struggle that is guaranteed. If you want to ever accomplish anything in your life that's great and you want to accomplish anything in your life that is demanded for high achievement or success, there's going to be pain, there's going to be struggle, it is going to be hard. So now the question is, now that we've identified where it is and now that we've identified what it is, the question is how do I overcome the it? And so there's three things we got to do to overcome it. Number one is when you face it, which is the expectations not being fulfilled, I'm having, I'm taking action and not getting results. So what I do, number one is I just push, push through. You just push through it. That's what you got to do. You've got to just push through it. You can't stop. Why? Because if you stop, you lose. And there's going to be moments for all of us. There's never been a professional athlete that's had every single time they've swung the bat or they've taken the shot. It never goes through all the time. And sometimes we get into slumps. Sometimes things aren't going the way we want them to go. We're not getting the result we want. What do you do? Well, you evaluate, you look at it and you assess. But you don't quit. You don't get discouraged. Instead you just go like, okay, this is what I got to do. Am I doing the right thing? Yep, I'm doing the right thing. Am I doing it the right way? Check with your coach, check with your mentor. Yep, doing it right. Then I just got to push through. But I'm afraid sometimes fear overtakes me. What do you got to do? Number two? You got to face it. You got to face it. See, here's the challenge. Every fear that is unfaced gets stronger. When you feel fear about something and you don't face it, you don't push through it. You allow that fear to stop you all. All you did was you just made the fear get bigger and badder and scarier. What do you do? You got to push through it. You got to face the fear and take action in spite of it. And then the third thing you got to do, overcome the it to overcome the struggle is very simply, and this is kind of tough, but it's real, is you have to embrace it. You have to embrace the pain, you have to embrace the struggle. You have to embrace the fact that it's not always going to be glamorous and exciting. And it's like, ah, it's not going to be non stop victories. There's going to be misses, the best baseball players in the world. And as I'm recording this video, we're in the World Series. The best major league baseball player in the world this year batted.346. Now what does that mean? Well, that means that 34.6% of the times he got a hit, that means that over 65% of the time, 2/3 of the time that he went up to bat, he didn't get a hit. Not that he didn't score a run, he didn't even get on base, he didn't even hit the ball. Which means. And that by the way, 300. If you bat.346 for an NFL in a major league career, that's hall of Fame territory, my friend. Which means that if you fail two out of three times as a professional baseball player, you're one of the best in the world. Well, guess what? You want to do something great. You want to accomplish anything great in your life, there's going to be probably more failure than there is success. But when you have those failures, embrace the struggle, embrace the failures, embrace the setbacks, and realize that that is the learning. That's part of the process. And through those failures, we learn, we adjust, we get back up, we grow our tenacity, we grow our stamina, we grow strength. You get better. As you get better, your results get better. The most important thing to know is that you can do it, you can master it, you can overcome it. And when you do, you win. Just don't quit.
