Outliers | How One Agent Made a 400% GCI Jump – Sarah Combs

Have you ever asked yourself why is it that some people seem to constantly outperform their potential, call them an outlier, while other people with the best of intentions fall dramatically below or just below their expectations? And listen, they're not bad people. They set big goals, but they don't align their behaviors with what it is they want to accomplish. The next seven shows, this quick little series I'm doing where I'm interviewing the outliers, what's the psychology? What's the mindset? What do they do that that cause them to outperform their potential? Enjoy the show. Hey, welcome back to the show where we are unpacking. What is the difference between an outlier, someone that is over performing on their potential versus somebody who is underperforming their potential? They're not bad people. They just have a goal here, but their behaviors are here. So today I've got Sarah Combs with me. Sarah is a classic example of an outlier. So get this. Looking at the data, you ready? She had a goal in 2025 to make $600,000 in commissions. By June, she had already achieved that goal. Her and her coach then reset the goal to go to seven figures, a million bucks, and she hit that by October 15th and finished this year at $1.2 million in GCI, starting with a goal of 600,000 and doubling the goal. Now that is outlier performance. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

So when I say all that, what goes through your head?

Just so much excitement. I've literally. This coaching platform has changed my whole world, my whole perspective in so many ways. All the Tom Ferry events that I have attended, working with my coach, it just literally almost just like it's, it's a full blown experience in itself. And I'm just, I'm very grateful for it.

I love it. Now, for context, for the person listening, she's been in the industry for 23 years. So. So you had 22 years without us.

Correct.

And now you're new with us and yet. So just for the background, I think it's interesting. 10 years in property management, which talk about learning customers problems, solutions fast at a lower cost. Right. Managing the rental side. And then you got into real estate as on the residential side. And quickly, by 2022, bought the Independent brokerage that you were working at. So you went from property management to sales agent. And I imagine you had to be wildly successful as an agent, then you become a broker. That's a whole new set of challenges. Exactly and now here you are operating at this extraordinary level. So that's, that's what we want to unpack today. We'll do the psychology side first because I think that's the. That's the game changer. And then we'll get into some of the tactical things you did that clearly made it happen. So I wrote down a bunch of questions. Let's start here. Why do you coach?

Well, that's a great question. So in 2022, when I purchased the brokerage, I tried to do it for a year myself and realized quickly trying to go into a role of broker owner was not sustainable and I needed clear direction, I needed help. So in 2023, I had a first coaching call and never look back. And it's been a game changer for my business. Every time I think that I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone, my coach is continuously pushing me out of it a little bit more. Hence why I'm here too. So it's very interesting, but it's just been an all around great experience.

So one of the observations we have and one of the insights inside of Revi is the there's a clear delineation between outliers and underperformers. And again, I want to keep stressing an underperformer does not mean they're a bad person, doesn't mean they didn't sell any houses. They had a goal and they underperformed their potential. The clear delineation between the two, the outliers use coaching as a mirror that literally showing up to the session with Joe made. You have to view the adjustments that you need to make versus the underperformers. Saw it more as like therapeutic to sort of talk about things. So when I say that, what goes through your mind?

Well, for one, I actually attended your mastermind event back. I think it was in May, Kathy's home. And that was again, a complete game changer for me all the way around. And when I left there, I knew coming back into 2025, if I really wanted to exceed my goals, I had to get real serious about delegating systems and processes. And that's what my coach and I worked on the rest of the year. And that's truly what I believe we has pushed me to be able to exceed that GCI goal.

Well, to go from six to a million. I mean, we talked about the mastermind, right?

Yes.

It's one of the central themes, which is a system will produce what a system will produce.

Exactly.

Nothing more, nothing less. Don't get mad at yourself, change the system.

Amen.

So I think that should be the thing. Once we get through the psychology side, let's unpack that. Would you be willing to do that?

Absolutely.

Awesome. So the second thing I looked at is we call it goal orientation. So tell me about. Are you a goal setter? Are you not a goal setter? How do you operate when it comes to goals?

100% a goal setter. And I don't stop until I either get there or I exceed them. So I always try to have a very clear direction of where I'm going for the year. And coaching has truly helped me get here. If it wasn't for having that coach and that accountability partner, I don't think I would achieve as much as I do.

I get this. I get my, my, my hallucination is you were going oriented before we met you.

Correct.

So. So where did that come from for you in your life? When did you become more goal oriented?

Well, if we're going way back, I come from a family of welders, four generation of welders. And work ethic has always been very high on our priority list.

Yes.

And ingrained in me ever since I was a very young, young kid. So it's pushing myself to always do and do the right thing and exceed my goals and set goals. That's. That's always been at the back end of, like everything that I do.

Was that a mom thing, a dad thing? Is that a grandparents, like? Because when you said welder, I think some people might, you know, West Virginia.

Right.

Some people might be like, welders don't set goals. They show up and they just work every day.

Yeah.

So what was the discussion around the kitchen table or the time with your pops that you finally were like, I'm in the driver's seat.

Yeah. My dad for sure, but my grandfather, his dad was a huge mentor in my life. Having many conversations about just, again, hard work, what you can do if you set your goals, keep a path forward, do the right thing. We had many conversations all the time. He was also in the wood splitting business. It's just somebody that I looked up to and always. I always keep that in the back of my mind on everything that I do.

I love it. Do you ever get derailed?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Distracted.

Yes.

How do you keep yourself on track?

Meditation and just saying you need a couple deep breaths and try to always be the solution versus, you know, just problem solving instead of, you know, going right down the path of everybody's, you know, trying to just hone in on the problem? No, let's figure out what that solution is and keep a clear minded while we're doing it.

Sarah, everybody gets derailed, right? Everybody gets distracted. When that happens to you, when life keeps coming at you, what do you do to kind of emotionally regulate yourself?

First and foremost would be meditation and just self care. Like step back away from the situation for a few minutes, take a few deep breaths and then just really try to figure out what the solution is to whatever problem is in front of me.

Have you always been like that?

No. Being honest? No.

Yeah, I mean but the more production you do and then buying a brokerage and then you have the insurance business, you, you have a lot of balls in the air. It's more normal, not necessarily for outliers, but it's more normal to pop and explode and get angry and get upset, especially for underperformers. How do you balance it all?

I had to do a lot of work with my coach and just say, you know, hey, these are the challenges that I'm facing and we really had to put a system in place to that I wouldn't pop off or you know, let everything bottle up inside of me. I also have a mindset coach in conjunction with this just to kind of take some of that pressure off as far as hey, what do we got to do on the self care side of things to constantly keep me regulated and where I need to be.

Hey, it's Tom Ferry. Question, what's your favorite social media platform? Are you big on Insta? Do you love to tweet? No matter where you answer, I'd love for you to connect with me there. All you gotta do is just type in omferry and follow and lets you and I connect. I want to be able to deliver the right content, the right ideas, the ways to help you grow your business. Stay fired up, keep moving, be in action and run plays that work and the platform that matters most to you. So subscribe and I'll see you there soon. So I was at a conference in March of this last year and it's called Abundance 360. And it's, it's not a real estate conference. It is about longevity. It's about health and vitality. It's about AI, it's about robotics. It's a, it's a very progressive, very intense, thoughtful, you know, experience of three days. One of the insights was the, to put it simply, the US medical system is predicated mostly on males, not on females. And that there's just so much missed when it Comes to females, hormones, the change of life. And I don't think a lot of people talk about it. And I'm just curious and I don't know your age and I don't know if you experience any of that stuff, but I'm just curious, like, what else do you do to just keep yourself calm? Because there's just so much happening right now, not just in your business, everywhere.

Yeah, I always take time for myself. Matter of fact, when I get back here, I'm going to a retreat that is with this mindset. So it's getting away into a cabin where it's literally, it's journaling, it's sauna, there's salt floats and things of that nature. And just constantly taking that time for myself because I have to do that for myself if I want to be the best for everybody else.

I love it. Do you still pop now and then?

Yes, occasionally, but it's a lot less than it was.

Pattern recognition came up a lot in our research that there's a set of you that seem to kind of like. You ever see the movie the Matrix?

No.

Okay. So in the movie, the fantasy movie where the main character could basically almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, he saw the world through the lens of like, you know, more code, like in a computer. So in the Matrix it's kind of the same thing, but what they were really showing was pattern recognition. So I'm curious for you at your level now, when you enter into a relationship with a client, do you begin to assess, this is going to be a fun one. This is going to be hard. This person's crazy. That's pattern recognition.

Yes.

Where does that come from for you? And is it a thoughtful thing for you or is it just as you enter new opportunities, you start sort of self diagnosing?

Definitely self diagnosing. And I think every client obviously is different and they come from way different walks of life or whatnot. But I will say that I'm starting to realize that, you know, quickly if you don't want to necessarily work with a client or just maybe you're not going to vibe with them or whatnot, and they need to be, you know, hey, this team member in the brokerage or whatnot. But I definitely feel like as the years have gone on, I'm able to really make it click of how quickly I can say this person's gonna be or if I choose to work with them or I don't. So that took me a little bit of time to actually get used to. And Comfortable with, But now I feel like I'm there and so comfortable with it.

What would you say to the person watching that struggles with that, that really struggles? Like, maybe they see the pattern, maybe they don't, but once they're in the bad situation, they don't cut bait.

It's not worth your mental health, truly.

Yeah.

Yeah. Most likely that person, there's a chance that they don't want to work with you either, if they're not gonna be in your culture or whatnot. But at the end of the day, if you can already see some red flags, then it's. It's not worth it for your mental sanity or health.

Right. My dad would always say a million years ago, don't let one crazy client cause you to not sell the next 10 great ones, because they kind of just suck you in, like, and it. I mean, that's. That's every business. Not real estate. That's every business on the planet.

So.

So pattern recognition. Clearly. Random question, but important for what we're doing here. You hop off a session with Joe, your coach. What do you do?

Breathe. Try to really dissect everything he just told me.

Sure.

But then I try to structure and implement. So I sit down and I write down all my notes and everything of what we just discussed and try to get a game plan of what the rest of the week's gonna look like as far as what we discussed and how I'm gonna implement that.

I love it. And if I asked you, how fast do you take action from the session? I mean, taking notes is immediate. You could argue that's action.

I will say this year has been a very speedy process. Probably the last year, it took me a little bit of time, just because there was a lot of distractions and everything. But when I buckled down, I said, you know what? I'm investing myself. Coach is investing in me, and I want to make the best out of it. So there was no looking back at that point. I said, once I take the notes, I want to implement, and I want to take action right away.

Yeah. Would you be shocked to hear the data says that all the outliers take action within 12 hours?

That's interesting.

And they'll go to 36 if it's. I need to build a new system. I need to, you know, I need to engineer something new in the business because I don't want to just throw it together. So 12 to 36, but always action. Always action. Right. Which is interesting.

Very interesting.

So your superpower going back to our time with the Mastermind you. You got one of the big insights, which was a system will produce what a system will produce. Don't get mad at yourself. Right. They. We say in business that, like, the system runs the business, the people run the system, the system runs the business, but the people run the system. So you set a goal to do 600,000, you're there halfway through the year, you reset the goal to a million. You get there by October 15th, you finish the year at a million two, which is just, I mean it personifies outlier. I know you worked hard, I know you focused on. Can you walk us through the 1, 2, 3 most important systems? You either had to redefine, reimagine or start from scratch.

Hiring another assistant was the first and foremost. So I have an admin that does TC work as well. But hiring another system assistant was key. And then really following our CRM to a T as far as our follow up process and just making sure that everything was very Streamlined. So putting SOPs in place, the systems and processes, just making sure that everything was outlined. So it was foolproof. Not only myself, but, you know, the team can come on and there's no questions, there's no gray areas. This is our process and this is how we need to stick to it.

So the first one was getting some leverage. Right. So getting your assistant some time.

Yes.

And how much of an impact did having a second assistant. So the assistant was kind of all in one, everything correct.

The first one.

And then the second one was more of a specialist.

Yeah. So now I brought in the second assistant is also bookkeeper because I was also trying to do that role as well and literally trying to wear too many hats. And it just, it wasn't working, it wasn't sustainable. And I said, I need to be more focused on what I do best in the sales and where I thrive. So bringing her on in addition to the other assistant has really been crucial and I think what also allowed me to be able to hit these goals.

I love it. So the second assistant is leverage and that then unpacks a whole new set of systems and processes. Taking away from one. How did your assistant respond when you were like, hey, you need some help?

She was good with it actually because she could see the struggle along the way. So she was actually very grateful that I said, hey, this is what we're doing. And now we have the two of you that can. Your strong suits are here, yours are here. Let's combine the two and make this, you know.

Love it. Yeah, love it. So the second One, if I hear you correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the fundamental problem you were trying to solve, the sort of first principle thinking was we generate all these leads, sales cycles are taking longer, we're dropping the ball somewhere, which means we're losing transactions, relationships, referrals, money, and everything else. And so the discipline or the new system was to go deeper into your CRM, Correct.

To make sure that those leads were being maintained and taken care of immediately. But also so the first assistant and the admin, she can focus on the sales, the paperwork and things of that nature. The second one was more so, also my personal assistant, but bookkeeper as well. So it's been a huge weight lifted from myself.

So it's interesting someone might be listening like, well, duh, like, yeah, use your CRM. But it's interesting. So I share some of these Revi insights with friends of mine that run CRM companies and website companies. And what they say is, I know the usage rate of the highest performers. I know how often they're in the software. I know how many times they follow up, dah, dah, dah. And I said, the difference is, at Revvy, we actually understand why they do it. We have the psychology behind the action. Why does somebody make the phone call, not make the phone call, phone call? Why does somebody like you decide to build the system and improve the process versus just run the same pattern of frustration over and over again? So. So I'm curious, those two systems, but at a certain point, whether it was in the Mastermind or separately. Did you hit a moment where you just said enough is enough?

I definitely did.

Tell us about that.

I realized I also had to learn to let go of some control because that was a big thing. It was a real big thing for me, me. And once I was able to do that and had the. The system, the CRM in place and both assistants, I mean, we just, we pretty much hit the ground running from that point on. But the big aha moment for me after I left that mastermind was delegate, delegate, delegate. And definitely you've got to learn to give up some of that control.

It's so easy to say, how do you do?

Took a lot of.

If you didn't see her eyes just fluttering like. So I put thank you. Because it's not easy. It's not easy to give up control. But everyone watching the individual right now knows if you want to grow, you have to let go.

You do.

You can't constrain everything and then expect to go from a goal of 600 to a million, too.

Yes.

So how did you work yourself through the process of letting go of some things that only I can do and only I can take a photo of this and only I could write the listing description. How did you let go of that?

Taking it one step at a time. So by, you know, hey, this is your task. And seeing that it came back to me and it was perfectly the way that I would do it. And then let's go to the next one. So it was really just a step by step process of giving them small things and then putting that trust in them because they are truly valuable to me and I know that they can do it. It was just me getting over that initial let it go, Sarah.

So there's no easy answer.

There's no easy answer. I mean, it really isn't. You just kind of have to trust and believe and go for it. Yeah.

I think the thing I would tell everybody, having, having scaled myself multiple times, is when you hit that plateau where you say, I have no more time or why does this keep happening to me? Or God, is this how it's going to be forever when you start saying those things? It is God in her infinite wisdom letting you know it is time for you to scale up. It is time for you to let go. It's time for the, the leaves to fall off the tree so you can rebirth and grow again. Like, you know, if I'm getting woo woo on you, you know what I'm saying? So this has been beautiful. So if somebody wanted to follow you on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook, what's, what's the handle? Where should they reach out to you?

Sarah.coms broker.

Okay. Sarah.coms with a C. Broker.

Correct.

All right. Are you always going to be a broker?

Yes. For now.

Yeah, for now.

For now.

For now. So. So I'm really proud of you.

Thank you.

I just, I'm, you know, coming out of the mastermind. What? Like Joe, when I reach out to you, hey, I'm looking for outliers. I got just a gazillion of like, you know, these, oh, this person, this person, this person. But when I saw that number to that number, I knew we had to have you on the show.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

So very, very proud of you. Any closing thoughts for your friend listening right now?

Tom Ferry. Coaching's the best. Wouldn't be here without it.

I would argue you're the best. We open the doors, outliers run through. So we put it all back on.

You and say thank you.

Well, thank you so much for watching this show. I hope you're getting a ton of insights. Absolutely. Follow Sarah on Instagram. Connect with her the next time you're at a Tom Ferry event. If you're in the community, run up and go girl. Tell me more about this cuz setting a goal of 600,000 what you earned.

The year before, 300,000.

Going from 300,000 to 600,000 is already bananas. But finishing the year at 1.2, that's a 400% improvement. Should celebrate that every day.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for watching. We look forward to seeing you on the next show. Hey, if you're listening to this in a podcast and you're saying to yourself I might be underperforming my potential and I want to become an outlier, go back to the show notes, click that link, schedule a session with one of my teams. Let us help you become the outlier you deserve to be.