The 3 Emotional States of Business—And How to Climb to Greatness

So here's the thing, entrepreneurs, leaders, salespeople, we all want to create consistent, repeatable, and scalable ways to grow our business and our income. And we want to do it better, faster, and more seamlessly. Why? So we can actually enjoy our lives, take vacations, and spend the quality time we want with the people that we love. How do we do all this without spending a fortune or running ourselves ragged? That's the big question. And this show is dedicated to the answer. Hey, welcome to the Tom Ferry Podcast Experience. I am so excited to talk with you today. Thank you for being a listener. What I'm going to share with you today, and whether you're listening or you're watching on YouTube or you're seeing part of this on some other social channel, is a message that I've been sharing with every audience I can get my hands on. What I'm trying to do right now is get people, you my friend, to realize that your business, your life, my life, my business, it's all the same for all of us, is only in one of three emotional states. One of three emotional states is the wrong way to describe it, just one of three states. So consider this. If I said to you right now, think about your marketing, think about your mindset, think about your follow-up, think about your presentation skills, think about the way you're managing your escrows or the way that you are launching a listing, all these things that we do in our business, just like looking at our life, our health, our relationships, our fun, you know, our energy level, our overall sort of like outlook on life, they're always in one of three categories. And the worst category at the very bottom, I call dis-ease. Not disease, but dis-ease. Just think about it. Like, is my marketing in a state of dis-ease? Meaning I'm doing some marketing, it's inconsistent, but I'm not getting the results I want. Is my health and vitality in a state of dis-ease? Have I avoided going to the doctor? Do I, have I done my blood work and saw that my blood work was telling me that I've got a lot of deficiencies and I'm actually putting myself in harm's way if I don't make a change? Those would all be examples of dis-ease. Well, what we don't want to have in this short time that we're on this planet is to have any area of our life or our business in a state of dis-ease. How do you elevate up to the next level? That's the question. That's what we want to work on today. From the next level, it goes from dis-ease to what I call wellness. Wellness is like a state of everything is okay. Everything is okay. Like you're in a better place. Like you don't want to be in dis-ease with your blood work. You don't want to be in dis-ease in your marriage. You don't want to be in dis-ease with your finances. You don't want to be in dis-ease with your follow-up. All these examples, you want to at least elevate up to a state of wellness. But what you and I both know, and when people ask me like, Tom, you've been doing this for like 36 years, like over 3 and a half decades, like why do you keep doing what it is you do? I tell people all the time, like, I am just committed to working with clients who are really serious about finding out just how great they can become. Like, how great can you become? That's like, that's what I'm into these days. And that's where I say, from disease to wellness, from wellness, above wellness, it's greatness. Greatness, whatever that means to you. Greatness for me means, you know, like I'm pushing myself to be the best version of myself. I would often talk about it as level 10, right? Like unapologetically operating at my very best level at all times, energetically, smile on my face, energy-wise, relationship-wise. It's just knowing that eventually I'm gonna leave this planet and I just don't wanna leave any ounce of it on the playing field. I want to go full out. So as we start this show, you're either really interested now about what I want to talk about, or you're like, oh, this is a little too heavy, Ferry. I'm not going to get into blood work and your relationships. I'm going to talk about your business today, about where you might be in a place of dis-ease, where we need to get it up to wellness and what that's going to look like. And then from wellness, how do I get you to a place of greatness? So if you're interested in that, you're going to love this sort of impromptu show that I'm doing today. So I would back up and I would start by asking you this question. So this can be fun. You're in your car driving, you're on the treadmill doing whatever you're doing, or maybe you're watching this on YouTube. I don't know. Maybe let me know in the comments if you are, like, where are you watching this right now? If you're watching this on YouTube, the question I would ask is, how long you been in the business? How long have you been in the business? And whether that is, you know, 18 months, 18 days, or 18 years, or, you know, 45 years. I did an event, Brandon, a couple days ago, and there's a guy in the room, 52 years in real estate. And what a blessing, sat in the front row, took more notes than anybody else, was looking for the edge, right? Realizes that he's got some dis-ease and he wants to get to wellness and greatness. But I asked that question because I really wanna say to you this. How many real estate cycles have you worked through? The gentleman that was 52 years in the business, my goodness, like he remembers when interest rates were at 18, right? He remembers, you know, the oil crisis and the, you know, all the inflation that we experienced back in the '70s. I, you know, I was born in 1970. I didn't experience that. But I ask you, how many cycles have you been through? And again, if you're in a place where you can comment, you know, 9/11 was a cycle. The global financial crisis was a cycle. In 1988, when the stock market crashed and it finally hit the US in terms of real estate around 1990, and kind of the game back then was like survive until '95. That was a cycle. Certainly the global financial Pandemic in the very beginning, the pandemic was a cycle. In September of 2022, when the rates went from like low to like 8, that was the beginning of a cycle. So how many cycles have you been through in your career? I ask you how long in the business and how many cycles. And the reason why is what, what experience tells us is every drought ends in recovery. Every cycle ends in a boom. The challenge that I see as I travel the country and travel the world on Zoom and doing meetings is there's just a lot of people right now that are in this mindset of like wait versus generate. Like waiting for something to happen, waiting for the rates to get better, waiting for their buyers to finally jump off the fence, waiting for something to happen versus generating and going out and doing the work. 'Cause that's how you move from dis-ease to wellness. Action solves everything. So I said this recently, I was down in Cabo doing an event and like a keynote. And I asked the audience like, are you a boomer or a doomer? Like, are you a boomer or a doomer? I know, like, I'm not the best. Like, I'm not Jason Pantano when it comes to how he's able to, you know, have all these little fun word phrases. But like, it's just a simple question. Like, do you believe that right now is a great time to be in the real estate business? As a loan officer, as a title exec, as a tech provider for real estate agents, as an agent, as a team leader, as a broker. Like, do you believe it's a great time? I was chatting with a group yesterday from Vancouver, And, you know, prices are off by, depending upon what you're looking at, 5 to 6%. Transaction count, I want to say there's 13,000 active listings at the time, and there's only been like 2,700 closings. But there's like, I don't know, 4 million real estate agents in Vancouver. I bet the vast majority of them are kind of dooming on the Vancouver real estate market. Like, what's your general vibe? What's your general belief? Are you a boomer? Like, are you excited about this time? Do you understand that In a marketplace like this, this is separation season. I can go out and do certain activities that push me ahead of the curve. And then when the market really begins to improve, then I'm way ahead of everybody else. Or are you in like that doom and gloom mode? Like you're already trying to figure out like what your next thing is. Again, it's just a mindset. I just want to know where you're at. Maybe leave it in the comments. So again, I mentioned earlier, what I know to be true is in my own life and in my own business and all the things that I do, I'm constantly looking for where might I be experiencing dis-ease, and then how fast can I get to a state of wellness, which is just taking some actions, being aware of it, making the little changes that have a big positive ripple effect, you know, immediately or in the future. But ultimately what I'm committed to is greatness. Greatness. I want greatness in every area of my life. And am I perfect? Heck no. Are you perfect? Heck no, right? But life's about like striving for something. It's about the journey of like, how good can I become? Now, with that said, the phrase again, I just keep saying it over again, I'm committed to working with clients that are serious about finding out just how great they can become. How great can you become? That's the question I'm asking you, my friend, as I'm doing this show directly talking to you. Now, here's what I know. If you are open-minded, if you're willing to take a chance to find out how great you could be, there is some things that we're gonna have to do, some steps that we can take. You probably don't have to do it all, but some of the key ones you're absolutely gonna have to take action on if you really wanna challenge yourself to see how great you can be. So the first question, again, I would ask is, why are you in the business? And I acknowledge like there is a lot of people in real estate, in mortgage, in title, in escrow, in tech, in home warranty, you know, real estate adjacent businesses that they're in it for a myriad of different reasons. But I would say this to you. If you are— if you're a real estate agent, you own your business. You might say, I don't own the brokerage. I know, but you own your LLC under their brokerage. You are an independent contractor. It is your business. In my experience, there's only a few reasons why you want to own a business. Number one reason is to earn the money that you desire to put yourself and your family in the best possible position. right? Like that, that's why you're in business. That's why you, you took the risk of going through, you know, the 1st and the 15th, getting a paycheck to now starting your own company. The number 2 reason in my mind is you wanted more agency. Agency to me is like freedom and control, right? Like that means if I win, I win because I did the work. And it means if I lose, it is 100% on me. I get to call the shots, right? That to me is agency. Number 3 is it's a way to create wealth, right? It's better taxation. There's a myriad of reasons why obviously owning a business can put you in a much better position financially over the long haul. And then the one that nobody likes to address, and it's the thing I talk about all the time, like the reason I'm in business is I love solving problems. Like I like the tension and the stress and what goes through even my mind with like, oh my God, is it really happening? Like, how are we gonna fix this? Like, I love it. I love the tension that it creates. I love the stress and eustress that it creates. But if you don't love solving problems, if you don't like having lots of listings that are sitting on the shelf and they're stale, like you chose a weird business to get into. If you don't like being in the mortgage business and having rates go to 8 and really having to get scrappy and figure out how you're going to, you know, lower your OpEx and your cost to make sure that you're making a profit or at least not losing your shorts. Right, like if you're not into that stuff, boy, I tell ya, I don't know if owning a business is right for you. So maybe you're gonna turn this off now and say, you're right, like, that's not me. But I don't think so. I think you're listening to me because you and I are aligned on this journey of like wellness to greatness. So the question I ask people is like, why are you spending a third of your life doing this if you're not passionate about it? If you're not clear on what it is you're trying to accomplish, whether that is Putting yourself in the best possible position financially, or you just wanted agency. So that means if you wanna play golf on Tuesday, you play golf on Tuesday. But it also means you need to work your face off on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever it may be, right? Why are you doing this? The great Jim Rohn. Brandon, you know that Jim Rohn lived literally down the street? No. His office was in Santa Ana, California. Jim Rohn, fun fact, Tony Robbins was a salesperson for Jim Rohn. Brian Tracy was a salesperson for Jim Rohn. Greg Hobbs, no, Don Hobbs and Greg Herter that started a great marketing agency way back in the day in real estate, Hobbs and Herter. Scott Lang. Like, I know all these extraordinary people that all worked for Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn, and I kind of manipulated his quote here, famously said, being in business is a personal development journey. Like, that's really what it is. And the way he described it was, and money and time are the scoreboard. So like, if you have a lot of money, but you have no time, are you winning? Do you have wellness? Do you have disease? Or do you have greatness? If you have no money and nothing but time? Well, we already know where you stand, my friend, you are not winning. If you got the money and you got the time, I think what he was saying was like, that's the game. Like, that's, that's the scorecard. So again, you're like, Ferry, you told me you're gonna tell me what to do. I know, but I'm just, I'm having this conversation with you. Right? You're in your car, you're on the treadmill, you're watching this on YouTube. Like, I want you to be in alignment with me before I say, okay, this is what I want you to do. So here's another question. Will achieving greatness require more focus on your part? More focus. 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 got to do is just type in @TomFerry and follow, and let's 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 in the platform that matters most to you. So subscribe, and I'll see you there soon. I think we both know the answer is yes. If you are really paying attention to me right now, I'm really talking about the separation between the rich, the wealthiest people in our space and the rest and what I know to be true. So you ready for some tactics? Here's what I know to be true. The rich loan officers, title execs, escrow sale, home warranty, real estate team leaders, real estate brokers, recruiters, our industry, the rich all work from a checklist over memory. A checklist over memory. Now, you might say, Tom, I work from a checklist. Let me, let me clarify. When I say they work from a checklist, I don't mean they wake up in the morning and say, what are the reactions of my horrible night of sleep that I know I now need to focus on today? Okay, I got to call Sally about this. I got to make sure that escrow closes. Oh my God, I forgot I got to pick up my, you know, this for my daughter and I got that I got to do. I don't mean that checklist. I mean the things you do every single day in your business that create the flywheel of success. The things you do every single day that create the flywheel of success. I mean that checklist. The things you do every single day that make the business work before you have the, I gotta follow up on Sally on this and I gotta make sure I pick that up for my daughter and I gotta, you know, get this flight thing organized. All that stuff is after the most important activities that you know will take your business from dis-ease to wellness, wellness to greatness. Now, if you're watching the screen and if you're listening, I just have this funny little slide up and I say, this is what most people's business look like. They have this intention to work and then they tiptoe into work and then they spend all their time checking email, looking at social media. Then they start doing some research or like looking for properties. Then they tiptoe back into work. Maybe like they text somebody and say, I found a property for you. Then they rearrange their to-do list and then they're done with the day and they go home and they say to their spouse and the spouse says, how was your day? And they're like, Oh, I'm exhausted. When the truth is, you spent very little time on the activities that actually drive success, that actually take you from disease to wellness to greatness. So here's what I know to be true. There are 2 checklists. I know there's lots of checklists, but there's 2 that if you and I were working together one-on-one, this is where we would start. So I'm looking at right now on the screen for my friend that's listening in your car on a podcast. I'll just read them out to you, and all my friends watching on YouTube, you're with me. I call this the top agent ideal daily checklist. Ideal daily checklist. Starts with a powerful morning routine. Check, did you do it or not? Whatever that means to you. Number 2, market intelligence. Daily hot sheets, interest rates, like new listings, new sales, what's going on, what's selling, what's not selling. Gotta know the market every day, check. Number 3, some form of a role play so you're not warming up on customers, but instead, even if it's just, you and Revy, our tool, or ChatGPT, and you say, act like a seller that doesn't wanna reduce their price. Let's just say this out loud together. Let's role play, right? I'm blown away by how many people don't practice. Like, are your sales skills at dis-ease, wellness, or greatness? Do you know? You don't know unless you actually practice. 'Cause whether it's a ChatGPT or Grok or our tool, Revy, Revy will actually give you feedback at the end and say, I would, rate that an 8 out of 10 as an example, 8.2 out of 10. And what would've made it a 10 would've been this and this and this and this. That's how you get better. That's how you go from wellness to greatness. Number 4 on the list is in your CRM and you complete your hours of power every single day that you're working. In your CRM, your hours of power, right? That's 5 conversations with your past clients and sphere. It's 5 new conversations. It's 4 follow-up conversations every day. Next one on the list is all follow-ups completed. That could be your tasks as an example inside of your CRM. So you're working from your CRM and you're doing the things that drive success. You're gonna do 2 social posts across all channels every day. That's before stories. You're gonna check in with your TC or your assistant to review all your under contracts every day, every day, every day. How we doing? How we doing? How we doing? You're gonna do some afternoon follow-ups, right? And you're gonna go on appointments every day. Now I think that's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 things on the list. Let me ask you a question. If you did that 200 days out of the year, and 156 days you can do whatever you want, right? But 200 days out of the year, you did everything on that list. Tell me in the notes, tell me in the comments below, you do that for 200 days in a year. What does your business look like a year later? What does your self-esteem look like a year later? What does your confidence in yourself look like a year later, especially when you did the work on the days you didn't feel like it? Like, how much transformation from wellness to greatness could be created just by doing this for 200 days out of the next 365? I don't care when you're listening to this, just go from today forward, 365 days, 200 days. I'm doing this rain or shine. Doesn't matter if I have a cold or— none of that matters. 200 days out of the year, what happens? Now what's funny is if we were sitting one-on-one, someone would always say to me, but Tom, I just feel like, and I'm like, I don't care how you feel. Like I care, but I don't care how you feel. I care about your experience, right? Don't tell me about what your beliefs are about something that you haven't attempted to do 200 days. Do it for 200 days. Remember the funny video, Brandon, the F around and find out, right? If you know the video I'm referring to, you know, it's kind of the guy at the whiteboard. And he's like, okay, if you want to learn, like, if you want to learn like what is real and true, let's say you go to number 7 on the learn side and then you go across the axis and you come all the way down to the F around sign. And then the audience always laughs. And then he says, but if you really want to learn, you go to 10 and you go all the way out for 200 days to find out how good you could be, how great you could be. And then it goes all the way down to the F around sign. Like he's saying, you got to F around. And he said, if you never F around, you never learn. And then you just have this bias, this belief that it doesn't work or you can't, or I don't understand your situation, or I'm not being empathetic to what's going on in your life. Okay, just give yourself the gift of 200 days and watch what happens. Now, a weekly checklist, different from your daily action checklist, your weekly checklist would include things like batch filming, studying the competition, reviewing all your numbers, like the heartbeat of your business, a coaching session, weekly marketing, emails, texts, blogs, et cetera, 3 coffee meetings a week, review your do, doing, and done board, that's all your projects, right? Sending X number of CMAs to your customers unsolicited, all seller follow-up, book number of appointments, list some homes, sell some homes, close some deals, preview property for clients, and do some open houses. Like, there's your weekly checklist. Now again, if you're listening to me, or you're watching on YouTube, you see that I've got a cool photo of, I think, one of the greatest movies of all time, Forrest Gump, right? There's been a lot of wonderful films, but this, this film in particular, every time I walk into my house and if it's on, I'll stop and I'll watch for a minute because it's just so remarkable. And if you're listening, this cute little photo of Forrest at the end when he's got the box of chocolates and he's going to see, you know, the woman he loves. The note that I have for you is, could you imagine If Forrest Gump was a real estate agent and I was his coach and I said, okay, Forrest, this is what I want you to do. And he'd go, okay. And I'd be like, okay, Forrest, I want you to follow the check— okay, Lieutenant Tom. Right? And he would just follow the checklist. And I think he'd sell 1,100 homes in his first year. Because what Forrest would understand is if I follow the checklist, everything works out. If I follow the checklist, the business is going to grow regardless of how I feel. Does that make sense? Now, I'm challenging you as a way to go from maybe some dis-ease in your business to some wellness in your business, to some greatness in your business by actually following the checklist for 200 out of the next 365 days. And I don't know who said it. We should maybe get this in the comments, but like, we are what we repeatedly do. I think it was Thoreau who said, do the thing. Have the power. Do the thing, have the power. Do the thing, have the power. But then he also said, do not the thing, have not the power. I don't know about you, but I'm in business. I want agency. I want control, perceived or not. Like, I want freedom. The only way I get the money and the time is I got to do the things that give me the power. Right now, again, I know you're resonating with this. That's why you're listening. Let me give you another one. What the rich and the rest have figured out is the only way to actually get organized and become consistent is to have anchor meetings throughout the week. Anchor meetings throughout the week that all of a sudden now like, okay, it's Monday, we check in on these things. It's Tuesday, we do all of our marketing for the next 30, 60, 90 days. And that's what actually creates the momentum. I always think about it like when my boys were young, we bought them like Hot Wheels sets. Everyone can remember a Hot Wheels set. And you know, my boys are 27 and 25 now. So, you know, the technology when they were like 4, 5, 6, 8, they had that little machine that when the Hot Wheel got through that little machine, it was like an engine that rocket shipped them. So the car would do some loop-de-loops and then it would race all the way around. Then it would start to slow down again as it was coming towards the little machine and then it would take off again. That's what I want for you. I want that engine to be the 4 to 5 most important meetings you need to have in your business to keep the momentum going, to keep pushing from dis-ease to wellness to greatness. So here's the list. Again, if you're listening, weekly dashboard review, which is managing the health of your business. Right now, I'll go through the example of that in a second. Weekly marketing meeting. What are we doing in the next 30, 60, 90 days? And every 30 days, you're now on whatever you were talking about, in the 60-day plan, right? That becomes the new 30-day plan because I'm constantly looking at what am I doing every 30, 60, 90 days? What are the emails? What are the campaigns? Are we doing events? How many coffee meetings? How many open houses are we going to do? What are the blog posts we want to do? What's the content we're going to create? I don't want to wake up ever and say to myself, what do I need to do today? Like, that's, that's the kiss of death, right? Gary Keller, right? Founder of Keller Williams, famously said, you're losing so slowly you actually think you're winning. You're losing so slowly, you actually think you're winning. And the telltale sign is that you wake up in the morning and you're not sure what you should be doing from a marketing and lead generation standpoint. So we've gotta have that anchor meeting. Number 3, you gotta have a weekly lead pipeline review. You gotta have, you gotta look every week at like, okay, in September of 2022, the rates went to like 8%. So that probably means a lot of people that were on the fence that I was talking to about buying a house, potentially paused, right? And a lot of people paused at that time and deals were falling apart at scale at that time because they were thinking a rate in 6, which was already high, then it went 7 and 8 and people backed out. Well, all those buyers can buy a house now, probably with an even better rate. So, so are you looking back at all the leads in your pipeline from a couple of years ago to today? And are you looking at every lead that's been generated in the last 30, 60, 90 days that didn't convert? That, you know, I need to love on. I need to say to myself, okay, I gotta be honest about my CRM. Like, am I really following up? Am I really sending texts, doing emails, DMing them on Instagram or Facebook? Like, am I really going out of my way to nurture this relationship or not? And a weekly lead pipeline review will help you do that. The fourth one, weekly skill improvement, should be pretty obvious. If you're not practicing, it shows. I had a friend of mine say to me recently, Tom, do you wanna know why the vast majority of people in the real estate space don't have sales skills. Now I'm not knocking you, I'm not saying you, I'm just telling a friend. He said to me, the reason why is consumers want a house so bad, they will deal with someone that doesn't have skills. Think about what I just said there. Like there are people that have unbelievable salesmanship. They understand the art and science of rapport. They understand the art and science of pre-qualifying to understand what the customer's needs are, who are the decision makers. Like they love this stuff. When they get to objection handling, it's like, what the? Right, they get all excited because they're like, oh, like gee, you've got a friend in the business? Like, that's a new one. Hey, you wanna wait? Hey, you wanna think it over? Hey, you need to pray about it? Like, hey, you wanna wait till the rates drop? Like, all these things that have been said since the beginning of time, they get excited because they know what to say. Knowledge equals confidence. Knowledge equals confidence. And ignorance creates fear, anxiety, nervousness, anxiousness, poor sales skills. So you gotta have weekly skill improvement. And then the last one is obviously I'm a coach, so you gotta have a solution performance-based coaching session. So, Of those 5 meetings, how many of those do you currently have in your calendar? Of those 5 meetings, how many do you currently have in your calendar? Now, if I were to say to you what should be inside that weekly dashboard review, and I know I'm going deep with you here, and again, if you go on YouTube, everything is there. It is everything from revenue and profits to closed sales and pending and all that stuff, right? Then you can create a dashboard. You can create a dashboard inside ChatGPT. You can create a dashboard inside Claude, you know, Excel, where now I'm looking at all the numbers. And this is what I'm gonna be doing when I'm doing that weekly dashboard review. Now, I wanna close with a couple things. First, if this stuff isn't in your schedule, it doesn't exist and never gets done. If it's not in your schedule, it doesn't exist and it never gets done. I started this conversation by saying to you, every single human being, myself included, every entrepreneur, you and me together, in our life, we have dis-ease and we have wellness and we have greatness. And I told you that I'm committed, I'm committed to working with people like you that are curious about how great they can actually become. And what I know to be true is the greats, the greats of all time, you know what they do? Greatness is doing the mundane, boring tasks every single day for a year, for a decade. And then they wake up one day and they've won all the championships. They wake up one day and they've got all the money. They wake up one day and they realize You know what? Everything is hard. Following a checklist is hard. The results of not following a checklist is hard. Everything you do is hard, my friend. The question is, which hard are you going to choose? It's hard to have your business always be in a state of dis-ease. It's hard to always have your finances or your number of closings every year be in a state of dis-ease. It's hard. And it's also hard to take massive action and follow a checklist and be like Forrest Gump, that's also hard. So you got to decide. All right. I can't wait to read your comments. Thank you for allowing me just to have this conversation with you today. I hope you got some value out of it. Again, I want to remind you, greatness means doing the boring, mundane work that works. That's what this whole thing is about. So let me know, will you take on a 200-day challenge? Will you take on a 200-day challenge? I want to see it in the comments. Yes or no. Okay. God bless you. Have an awesome day. Go do the work. If you want more information about this episode, including my show notes, mentions, links, and everything else, make sure you visit tomferry.com/podcast. That's tomferry.com/podcast. Thanks again, and talk to you soon.