Are You Looking for Your Blind Spots?

What's up business freedom podcast listeners? Another edition of the podcast. And today we're going to talk about blind spots. Are you diligently looking for blind spots in your business and your life? And here's what I mean by blind spots. We, as business builders, as entrepreneurs, as, as real estate team leaders, we have a tendency to live in the clouds. And a lot of that, it serves us really, really well in terms of our visionary tendencies. I personally have a tendency to see something and this is something I'm really good at. There's a lot I'm really not good at. This is something I'm really good at. I see the way I want something to be in the future and I'm good about connecting the dots to get there. So we have a process that we go through with members in our pilot program before they even commit to real estate B school, where you take them through a three year vision or one year plan and then chunk it down into the first 90 days. What to focus on, how do you get clear on what you want three years from now, breaking it down into an actionable one year plan and then get to work in your first 90 days. And you know, as I've kind of spent time in the clouds, I'm good at playing in the dirt too. Guys. That and I use guys. As men and women business owners, entrepreneurs, we tend to not see how our actions affect others. And a good example is a real estate team leader that goes to a conference and they come back and they have, they just shift something or they add a lead source or they change their website or, you know, we just do these things flippantly without following a plan sometimes. Most of the time most team leaders don't have a plan and your team is like, what? What is going on? Like what? Like, I just. Most people need to have a process for how they carry out their job. It's rare that you're going to find somebody that can hang with somebody that's just all over the place all the time and you're not keeping yourself in check. And so that's what I mean by blind spots. The things that you don't see that others see. This came to light for me, I guess a couple times for some reason I came up with the idea and I forget, honestly, I forget what caused me to do this. I sent an email to my wife and I said, hey, give me a list of 10 things that I do that you'd prefer I wouldn't do, things I can start doing and things that I should stop doing. Just to love you better and to support you better. And that was eye opening for me. Five of them I could have, like, made sense to me. And then five of them were just blind spots, things that were really heavy on my wife's heart that I just didn't know and I didn't slow down to ever ask the question. So that was the first and I've done it since then. That was probably like six years ago. And then a couple years ago I said, give me five things, I don't want 10, just give me five things. And I printed out both of those responses back and I've saved them. And it's a check on those blind spots in my marriage. The second time where this really came to life for me is I'm involved in a local group here in Charlotte called C12, C12 Greater Charlotte. It's a Christian business owners group. The intent, the mission of the group is to help you as a business owner, use your business as ministry. So not all capitalistic, like cutthroat, like just focused on achievement and growth and accumulation. It's like, no, how can we slow this thing down and be a blessing to our team members, to our clients? And how can we use the business as a ministry to glorify God? One of the things this group does is that once a year you get to present your business to, to the group. But before you present the business to the group, a couple weeks before, a handful of members from the group, they come in and they interview your team. Like four or five people from your team and your spouse. Yes, and your spouse. And they've got sort of a script they follow. Other than the spouse interview, all of the other interviews are anonymous. So the person from your team can speak openly about blind spots that you have and how, you know, some things you're doing in the business might not be working. You know, how's the culture of the business? You know, what's one thing you would tell the team owner if you had the chance that he may not see or he or she may not see? If you were the owner of the business, what would you change right away? What are the opportunities you think you're missing? Those sorts of questions with the spouse, you know, how can you, how can your spouse love you better? Um, how, you know, is there trying to think of the other questions with the spouse? Because I've done probably over a dozen of these interviews where I've been the one interviewing other people's spouses and their team members. It's, it's a lot of start doing, stop doing stuff with the spouse. What's one thing that you really wish your spouse would do to take better care of themselves? Questions like that. So I had this done, I guess it was two and a half years ago for the first time where the first thing I want to say is that perception is reality. You know, how you show up in your business, it doesn't matter what you think, how you think you're leading, it matters how you're being perceived in the business. So stop and think about, you know, are you following like a cadence, a structure in the business? You have regular meetings that you hold to. Do you have the tools and resources for your team members to help them be successful? Are you following a three year, a clear three year vision for your business and for your life and then breaking that down into plans and by quarter and by week and you're holding your folks accountable, they're making agreements to be held accountable. If you're not doing all of that, chances are you're just shooting from the hip and you're not really running the business on any kind of structure, cadence systems, you know, at all. And chances are your team is feeling it. And if you're showing up that way in your business, chances are you're not. You're probably not showing up at home with a level of service where you're giving a hundred percent, 100% of the time. That's one thing I learned early in my marriage is that when I went the 50, 50 route, you know, I'm just going to meet, I'm going to meet my wife Julie, 50, 50, you know, on the 50 yard line, right. Like I'm going to charge down the field all the time. And I'm every time I'm available because I do travel sometimes where I'm giving 0%. When I'm home, I'm engaged, I am not checking out, you know, I'm not working at home. I'm intending to give 100%, 100% of the time. So perception is reality. If your spouse sees you on your phone or you're working on the weekends or evenings and you think you're doing it for the family, their perception, they don't give a crap. And your kids don't give a crap if you sell another home. Their perception is that you don't care about them and you care more about your business than you do them. And we see lots of real estate team leaders on the best case is that they're stressed, that they're overweight and they're miserable Emotionally, the worst case is they're losing marriages, they're losing their health, they're hurting themselves in different ways. So perception is reality. Second thing here that I've learned is that vulnerability wins your team. And this is something that I didn't know when I started a team, you know, so I would say probably the first five or six years, maybe even more than that. So I'm. I guess this is my 12th year of being a business owner. I own a couple businesses now and, you know, it's probably only in the last two to three years that I've really figured this part out, and I wish I knew it earlier on. You want to have everyone believe that you know everything and you really don't. And you. The more vulnerable you are with your team, the more they're going to step up and help you. So an example of this is in real estate B school, is me just being open with the team and apologizing for the way that I've been treating them, you know, where I'm just so focused on growth and future and like dragging people along with me and it's not sustainable. And so just apologizing for them and just telling them I'm going to do better and I truly do care about them. And then having my actions follow those words and just different things we do on the team and we slow down and we honor our team members and we care for them. We've helped financially with a couple team members unsolicited, you know, just gave them financial blessing to help them through a tough spot. And the more vulnerable you are and the more you realize that your, your mission here in your business is to impact the lives you touch, whether it's clients or whether it's team members. We do that through our Compassion program. In our real estate team, we anonymously serve needs in the community and we do it through our clients and our team members. So the person who's being blessed, blessed through our Compassion program doesn't know that it's us blessing them, but we get the blessing to hear the story of how we bless them and bringing that vulnerability into our team meetings every week and reading those stories and just sharing our hearts as owners around those stories. And the last point, and I mentioned it here, is that God didn't build me, and chances are he didn't build you to know it all. And we can't possibly know it all. And once you start to realize that you can't do all the jobs of a real estate agent and really honor that, that there's Somebody out there that can do the job better than you can and will could get paid a whole lot less than you ultimately want to get paid. The job of real estate agent can be done on the low end runner type jobs. $12 an hour in my market, up to our best listing agent makes a little under $100 an hour. I want to make $1,000 an hour. So I can't do anything any of the real estate jobs. All I can do is be a business owner to make the kind of money that I want to make. And that's why real estate B school exists. I want to let y' all go with the thought that if you are struggling with this concept of scaling something, scaling a business that doesn't rely on you yet it provides a better service than you could provide. A loan is so far from the way real estate is traditionally taught and I totally get that. And we're seven years into real estate B school and I've proven over the last 12 years in building a real estate team that divides a value to clients that is unparalleled in our industry. So we've done it. If that's you, go to realestatebschool.com, hit on apply now. Our pilot program is 100% free where we'll help you do a deep dive on your business. What's working, what's not working? We'll build a three year vision, a one year plan and set up your first 90 day world. And then if you love what we do, we'll talk about a relationship with real estate B school. So go to rebspilotprogram.com that's rebspilotprogram.com and we'll see you over there. Bye bye.