YESTalk-158 - The Biggest Lie Told to Real Estate Agents
19 Sept 2019 · 16 min
Kevin Ward tells new real estate agents the biggest lie they hear: that the job is easy. He breaks down the real costs, low starting salaries, and high failure rates, then outlines four things successful agents actually need: a high-achiever attitude, strong work ethic, willingness to learn, and commitment to mastery.
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Welcome to Kevin Ward's Yes Talk for Realtors. This is Kevin Ward. They're lying to you. Don't believe the lie. Today I want to talk about the biggest lie that is told to new real estate agents. The biggest lie that's told to people who are thinking about starting a career in real estate and going like, is real estate a good career for me to get into? Is it too late to get in real estate? Is it a good time to get in real estate? Can I succeed in real estate? Should I get into real estate or should I go to college? The biggest lie that is told to people who are getting into real estate age into real estate today. And here's the lie. Real simple is a Real estate's easy and anyone can do it. That's the big lie. Yeah, anybody can do real estate. You get into it. That is the number one line. It's told to you by real estate schools, it's told you by real estate brokers, it's told you by real estate trainers that want to get you in because they can make money off of getting you into real estate. And I'm here to tell you that it is not easy and not anyone can do it. Now, technically, we'll say, yes, anyone can do it, but the reality is most people won't. And so most people don't succeed in real estate. And the truth is, the real truth is it's not easy. It's hard. It's really hard. Succeeding in real estate is really, really hard. It's easy to succeed in real estate. No, it's not. You want to succeed in real estate, my friend, it is hard work. When I get into real estate, I don't know what I expected, honestly. Here's what I expected. I expected I was going to get help people, and I expected I could make as much money as I wanted to make. And when I got into real estate, I worked my tail off. I worked harder at real estate than I had ever done anything in my life. I worked harder in real estate than I did in college. I worked harder in real estate than I did in my first two jobs. That and before I got into real estate was hard. And that's the bad news. Now, there's a lot of good news in this. So I want to talk about how do you. What is the truth about how do you start in real estate in a way that will help you to succeed? Because the reality is when you get into real estate, the truth is it's hard because there's no salary. You get no salary. It's 100% commission. You are on your own, you get no guarantees. In most cases, you get no or very little support and you may go months without a single paycheck. It is very much starting your own business and that's really what you're doing. It is great for people with an entrepreneurial mindset, they'll want to start their own business. But the truth is, I believe as someone who has, I have an undergraduate degree and I have a master's degree. So I've been to college, I've worked in regular jobs, I've worked in a corporate job, I've worked in small business. And here's what I believe. I believe that it's harder to succeed in real estate than it is to go to college. Because when you go to college, your life is structured for you. You got a schedule, you got a class schedule, you get homework, you got to go. All you got to do is go to class, take notes, listen, learn, and then you do what they tell you to do. You study, you do homework, you do your assignments and you're told what to do. You're told when to show up, you're told what to study. Everything is structured for you. It's all laid out for you and all you got to do is do it and you succeed. And now the investment's pretty steep. It costs you, it'll cost you anywhere from 40,000 to $250,000 or more to get a four year degree. And usually you're going to come out of that with a lot of debt. In fact, the average college graduate today has $36,000 in debt with over half of all college graduates today owing over $100,000 in college debt. Now the good news, when you get a real estate, you don't have to go into that much debt. In fact, you really don't have to go into debt at all. Alright, so here's the deal. You go to college, college is hard start real estate. Real estate is hard. Either way, you go regular job, it's hard. You pick your hard. That's the truth. The truth is life is not easy. There is no free lunch. There is no magic path. Real estate is not like if you just get the right coach or you just get the right business model or the right strategy, you just find the perfect marketing plan. It is easy. There is no easy path. There is no perfect path. There is no magic bullet. There is none of that. But there is. It is a path that I believe has more opportunity than any regular job path. For example, college and I compare starting a real estate career to going to college. According to Inc. Magazine and this is in August, I think August of 2019, Inc magazine did a survey where they were asking college graduates, how much do you expect to make when you graduate from college? What is your starting salary going to be and what is the actual starting salary of college graduates? And here's what they found. That the average college student expected to make $57,964 right out of college. That was their expectation, was I'm going to make $57,964. The actual starting salary for a college graduate in the United States of with a four year degree is $47,000. $47,000. Now you go to the high end schools like Stanford University as an example. The average starting salary for a college graduate there is $77,000. Now it cost you nearly $200,000 for four years just of tuition, not including fees, not including room and board, not including books, not including anything of that. The average student coming out of there is going to have six figures of debt, not counting that. But the reality is that's what happens. You get out of school, go to get a job, your average starting salary is going to be less than $50,000 a year. And if you want to double that, you can't double it just by going to the boss and saying hey, I want to raise. However, in real estate you can. So in real estate, even though there is no easy, there is massive opportunity. I have coaching members who have been in had their license for less than four years that make more per month than the average college graduate makes in a year. That's the reality. If you do the right stuff, you can make more money a month than the average college graduate makes a year. So here's the good news. The good news is that this sky is the limit in real estate. The good news is you can make a lot of money. The bad news is most agents won't. Over 90% of real estate agents will never make $100,000 in a year. 80% of them are going to quit within two years. They're going to fail. It's a business startup. The average entrepreneur that starts a business, the average business, 70 to 80% of them fail within the first two to five years. Just a reality. Okay, I don't know the exact statistics, but the exact statistics are irrelevant. What matters is that the odds are against you unless you you're willing to follow the right path. So as a person who myself came into real estate, created a seven figure income My second year in real estate as an agent who as a coach who's now coached hundreds of agents to six figure and seven figure incomes. Here's what I have observed. Number one, it's hard. So is going to college. You pick your hard potential to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and over a million dollars a year is very much more realistic in real estate than it is through a regular career path of a college education. So here's what it takes succeeding in real estate requires. I'm going to give you four things that succeeding in real estate takes. Number one is a high achiever attitude. That's the truth. If you don't have a great attitude, the attitude of a high achiever, you are going to suck in real estate. It's going to kill you. What I mean by a high achiever attitude is the attitude of I can do this. Having a strong self image, belief in yourself, commit belief that I can do this and I will succeed in this no matter what. And that you don't get easily discouraged. If you get easily discouraged, if you have a lot of self doubt, your real estate will crush you. Because when you face rejection, you face people not liking you or you get negative feedback, people aren't. You don't please everybody. It's tough. You got to be able to please yourself. You approve of yourself rather than seeking the approval of others. You got to be able to approve yourself and that takes self image. So you got to have a high achiever attitude that says I will win, period, end of story. You got to have a problem solver attitude that I don't go in there and go like what do I do? I don't know what to do. And you can't figure anything out. You got to be the person who figures everything out. You be a problem solver for your own business, you'd be a problem solver for your clients. That's what we're looking for. It's an attitude of a self starter. If you're waiting for somebody else to come along and push you and hold you accountable and tell you what to do, you're going to die in real estate, okay? And you got a high achiever attitude is you got to be able to maintain massive enthusiasm and excitement even in the face of failure and rejection. Just what it takes. You want to make a lot of money in real estate. You got to have a high achiever attitude that, that most people do not have. You got to be able to handle criticism. You got to be able to handle people who are second guessing you and doubting you and making fun of you and telling you you're, you know, how's our real estate working out? You got to be able to handle that and go like, watch. And you got to have that, in some cases you got to have that chip on your shoulder that says, I will prove to everybody, to all my doubters and all my haters that I'm going to do this. And you got to have that determination and grit to, to push through. Number two, you have to have a strong work ethic. You got a strong work ethic that you will work and you'll take care of it, take initiative and you push yourself every single day. It's hard to fail in real estate. If you're willing to do the work. If you're willing to go with a great attitude and a great work ethic, it is hard to fail in real estate. See, the thing about having a strong work ethic is one, when you have a regular job, you have a boss that pushes you. Well, in real estate, you are self employed, which also means if yourself is the employee, who's your boss? Yourself. So you have to be, you're also self bossed. And if you're not willing to push yourself and force yourself to do what you're supposed to do, your employee is not going to be productive. So your employee isn't productive. You're not going to make any money because your employee sucks. Well, your employee sucks because your boss sucks. Wait, that's both you, you, you're the employee, you're the boss. So if you suck as a boss, you're going to suck as an employee. And that means your business is going to suck and you're going to die financially. You're going to go out of business, right? I mean that's just kind of the way it works. So you've got to have a strong work ethic. The third key that I think is required to have massive success in real estate, and I'm not talking about little success here, I'm talking the median real estate agent income in America. Not for new agents, for agents from new to 30, 40 years in the business, the median income is $50,000 a year gross. That's before your business expenses and everything. As a self employed independent contractor, you have a lot of business expenses. Well, $50,000 a month before business expenses is not a lot of coin. It's just not. It doesn't go very far. Right? That's the median. That means only half of the people make over that. Okay. And less than 10% ever, even in a single year, make over $100,000. So you can make. Before you can make, you can make a million dollars a year in real estate guaranteed if you're willing to do the stuff. But you got to have that work ethic, you got to have that attitude. Number the third thing you got to have is a teachable mindset. And that of a teachable mindset is somebody who's willing to come in and learn from somebody who's done it, who can coach you on it, who can mentor you on it, trying to figure it out yourself. That makes no sense. Why would you try to reinvent the will? And yet a lot of agents, ego, kind of like, well, I'm going to go to a class or go to some classes, I'm going to get online, I learned some stuff and then I'm going to go out and do it on my own. And it just doesn't work that way. And then the fourth thing I think it makes to beat the odds and really succeed at a high level in real estate is you got to commit to mastery, commit to be great at what you do. Not just commit just to commit. I'm going to succeed, I'm going to do this, I'm going to succeed. And then you go out and you keep doing mediocre stuff with mediocre skill and mediocre strategies. And you're trying, you're bouncing from one thing to another to another to another. You got to commit to mastery. Like, I'm going to become the best at this, at this, at what I do. I'm going to have the best mindset, I'm going to develop the best, I'm going to learn the best strategies, I'm going to master the skill skills, I'm going to master the systems, I am going to master leadership, I'm going to master all of that to succeed in real estate. And when you put all that together, the truth is you can succeed beyond your wildest imagination, you can exceed beyond your wildest expectations. But it ain't easy. And not everybody's going to do it. And if you want to do it, you got to come in with a die hard commitment that I am going to beat the odds and I am going to win and I'm going to win big. Don't come in to win small, you win small. It's too hard, you'll be too frustrated and you're probably going to get discouraged and you're probably going to flunk out. Now if you think this may be for you, I'm going to give I want to give you a link where you can go and download a free copy of my Agent Success Blueprint. You go to agent powerlaunch.com go to agent powerlaunch.com and there's that. Agent Power Launch is an online training course that I have for new agents. However, I want to give you a free Success blueprint that lays out exactly what is required to succeed and build a six figure business in the first 12 months as a real estate professional. Go to agent powerlaunch.com they click one of the buttons with the button that says get a free the free blueprint. Click on that and tell us where to send it and we'll email it to you. The Agent Success Blueprint. Click on that. If you have any comments or thoughts or or questions, make sure you post them in the comments below. Give the video a thumbs up if you like it. If this is your first time here at my channel, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can do this. Whatever you do, life's not easy. You pick your hard and if you pick real estate and you do it right, you can have massive, massive success. Here's to your success. Can't wait to see it. I'll see you on the next video. Hey there, it's Kevin. Did you like today's podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe to the next one and tell a friend about us. If you want more free training and resources that are the best to help you get more Yeses with no BS, visit me@yesmasters.com until next time. Remember every day to embrace life, engage opportunity and always expect y.