Achieve Massive Results by Shifting Your Identity

What do you do if you're not achieving at the level you want in an area of life that's important to you? So on today's podcast, that is exactly the question I want to dig into. And I can't say that I've figured it out for every area of my life. And I have figured out for definitely in business, definitely in wealth building, definitely, definitely I'm getting better in my marriage, in my physical body. I figured it out in my workouts, not so much in my diet. And so it's this, you know, how do we go about shifting our identity to achieve massive results? You know, the best example of what I mean by this is I decided I was going to run a marathon. You know, so I'm a hard charging, sort of goal driven guy and I want big obstacles and typical, you know, entrepreneurial mindset. Just the crazy, you know, we need a challenge, right? And if we get bored, it's not good because we create these stupid challenges for ourselves. So this was 2015. I decided I was going to run a marathon. And so first thing I did was I went to the Google and I started researching like training plans for marathon. And then pretty quick I figured out it's based on the time you want to achieve, where you start, if you're a runner or not a runner. I wasn't a runner at the time, at all really. I just decided that I was going to do this and I wanted to do it under four hours. And so that's not like super fast, but it's pretty, it's pretty good, it's decent. It's a 9 minute, 9 second average pace for 20, 26.2 miles including any breaks or, you know, water breaks or you know, potty breaks or anything like that. So that was my plan and I think it was probably a, I don't even remember 18 week or 16 week or 22 week. Like it was just like detailed out and it was, it was weeks on the, on the left and then days one through seven on the right. And all you need to do was the thing it said to do like run five miles at this pace or do, you know, intervals, you know, and for a minute on 30 seconds off high knees, run back like long runs on Saturdays. I just did the thing, I checked it off and I did it. Did it, did it, did it, did it, did it. And so we got to race day and I was ready. We started, there was four of us running together and one of the four made the comment we were at mile six and our pace was like 8:12 and six miles in. And he made the comment, he said, you know guys, I think we're going a little too fast. They say the strategy in a marathon, if you have a time that you want to beat like so four hours. So 9:09 was my pace throughout the whole thing that I wanted to hit you. You have to go a little bit slower than that on your first 10 miles and then faster than that on your last 10 miles. And it's really counterintuitive. And you get out there and you're super excited. It's my first marathon, my only marathon. I've never run one again. And we just blew it. On the, on the whole, whole strategy. We. Well, I say we. One of the guys did finish at like 8:30 average, but he's like a gazelle. And so I come in at 4:19. I had nothing, nothing left by the end. Mile 18 or 19. This was a D.C. marines Marine Corps marathon. And at like mile 18 or 19 you hit a bridge that feels like Mount Everest. And I couldn't, I could hardly walk up this thing. It killed me. And so my last six miles, my average was like 13 minute miles and I blew it. Um, so what does this have to do with shifting your identity after that marathon? I don't think I ran like my goal was to. The reason I even signed up for a marathon was that I wanted to, I wanted to get in shape, you know. And so what does an entrepreneurial, weird personality, hard charging, driven guy do when he wants to get in shape? He signs up for a marathon. I didn't run for a year after that marathon and I probably only worked out one to two days a week. For the next year I went from running like six days a week, well, five hard. And then we had an optional cross training and I even worked out on like the one or two off days in this training program. And I was four hour, you know, marathon ready. I just made. My strategy was wrong. The point was that I, my goal was to run a marathon and I did it. I didn't shift my identity to become someone who's fit or to become a runner. This dawned on me this concept of shifting your identity. A book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. I read the book after I trained for the marathon or after I did the marathon. The marathon was October, October 2015. And in the book Atomic Habits, it is a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it. I've read it three times, maybe four times. And when I say I've read it, I've listened to it. I don't read books, I'm not a good reader of books. In the book he talks about, you know, the only way to have like a sustainable result, so a result that continues over time and not a one time result. So in my case, the commitment I should have made or my goal should have been to become a runner. If I were to become a runner, the marathon would have been just a thing that I would have done. It wouldn't have been the ultimate goal. And so it really hit me hard, like, holy cow. You know, I've been doing this in different areas of my business and I see a lot of folks do this that come into real estate B school and maybe they're not. It takes them a little while to make the identity shift from real estate agent to business owner. And it really doesn't matter where you are in your journey in order to build a business that has, you know, it's sustainable, it has its own life, a pulse without you being in it. Right, Right. The only way to do that is for you as the owner to make an identity shift from real estate agent, which traditionally a real estate agent does all the things they do, the 127 things that a real estate agent has to do. A traditional real estate agent does all those things. And as a result, if you're successful and you have that identity and that's all you've been taught, you're going to max out your hours, you're going to work way too many hours in a day and you're never going to make the kind of money that you deserve to make and that you're able to make. And when you start to make the shift, even in your mind, like, I'm a business owner. And what would have to be true about, like, how I show up my identity in this business, what would have to be true for this business to run independent of me? And I know for some of you that's a stretch for you to think about, like, like, how could a real estate agent not show up in their business? And I don't want to stretch you too far so you stop listening to the podcast. And I want to challenge you to think about, like, areas of your life where you're not performing how you'd like or you're not achieving at the level you want. And in those areas, have you made a shift in your identity? So a good example for me is that I have not made this shift, an identity shift in the area of diet. You know, somehow I haven't. I am too attached to Food or the comfort of it or the habits around TV and snacking or whatever, I just haven't made a shift there. It is funny, after the marathon and the year of basically just haphazardly working out, it took me a couple years probably when we moved into this house. So that was the end of 2017. So October probably took me two, two and a half years to really embrace the identity of like an athlete. That's kind of the identity that I've chosen for my physical body. And, you know, how would an athlete work out? Well, I guess I haven't fully embraced athlete because I don't eat like an athlete sometimes and I'm working on that. I still want to keep the athlete identity and continue to challenge myself to identify as an athlete versus somebody that does a 60 day challenge and they work out for 60 days and then they fall off their wagon or they run a marathon, they fall off the wagon. So my challenge and the point of the podcast is to challenge you to think about your identity in your business. How do you view yourself in the business? Do you view yourself like really identify with, you know, agent or owner? And if you identify as an agent, the challenge is that when you achieve traditional success, it's going to be really hard. It's just going to be hard. I know top agents in my market that they claim to sort of love what they do, you know, outwardly and on Facebook, fake book rather, you know, their hashtag, rise and grind. You know, first thing in the morning, getting ready for showings, 10:30 at night, they're posting, working an offer for a client. You know, it's going to be awesome. You know, I wonder if they were to identify as a business owner. Business owners don't work seven days a week. A lot of business owners don't need to show up to their business to earn a return on their investment. You know, so real estate B school, what we focus on is where can we build systems in the business and have people run those systems. So you're working on a different game, you're playing a different game, you're building the systems, that's your investment and you're looking for a return on that investment. So my journey was I did it all my first full year in real estate. So 44 homes in 2008. I had 10 months in 2007, so the market was crashing. I did 10 months, I did 27 homes in 2007, 44 homes in 2008, and I did had a part time assistant that year. I identified as a business owner starting that year. Because I said, there's no way I could do this. I can't sell more homes and still be a good dad and still be a good husband. So I made that mental shift and everything changed. You know, I hired a buyer agent in 2009, a few more in 2010, 2011, we did 118 transactions. I still did about half of them, but I was out of the buyer side, the buyer side of the business at that point. And 2012, we did 240. Well, 2011, 178, then 248 in 2012. I did one transaction that year in 2012. And so 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 5 years for me to go from doing 44 sides, the whole business was me to doing almost nothing in the business. And it's not good, right, good, bad, right or wrong. What I wanted, the point is like, how do you identify with your business? And is that identity going to give you what you want long term in your business? So hopefully that challenges you a little bit to think about your business just a little bit differently. If you're at the point in your journey where, you know, you wish there was a book that would kind of take you through someone's journey that went from, you know, overworked, underpaid, you know, real estate agent to business owner, you know, wouldn't you love a copy of that book? And I tease and I say it that way because I actually wrote a book called Scale or Die. And it really just opens your mind to what's possible in the real estate industry with building a business rather than being a real estate agent. So go to ScaleOrDieBook.com to grab your copy. It's ScaleOrDieBook.com and we'll see you on the next podcast. Thanks for listening to the Business Freedom Podcast. If you're getting value from the podcast, would you please leave us a five star review and share it with others who might benefit from the content I'm sharing. And if you're ready to scale your real estate business sustainably and profitably, there are a couple options for you. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual GCI, our business foundations program is for you. Head over to getbusinessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from from overwhelmed real estate agent to true business owner. If you're doing more than 500,000 in annual Team GCI, there's our graduate program designed for top producers and team leaders who want to grow their team and scale their business. If that's you, go to realestatebschool.com and apply for a free Business Growth Strategy session. No matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tool system, strategy, strategies, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future, so take action now.