How to be Efficient and Effective w/ Chris Heller

What's up? Real estate business builders. This is going to be awesome. I think Chris has been on the podcast at least one time before, but not with the message he's going to share with us today. And before we hit record, we're talking about, man, I don't know why this. He's written a book and all of his experience to date is sort of in this book at the right time. With this sort of pending, you know, we're in a shift and it's going to get worse, I think most people believe. So Chris, start out a little bit. Just give us the couple minutes on your journey in business for those. And I can't imagine there's many. And that's not a statement to prop your ego up. But tell, tell us a little bit, a minute or two, who you are, kind of your experience set. And then I want to get into talking about like what do you think is going on, the market, the economy. And then we'll get into like this book, Dominant Thoughts, why you're excited about it. I think it's exactly what every agent that wants to dominate this shift needs to start with their mindset. So give us a little bit of a short bio. I've followed you for a very, very long time, so it's always an honor for me to get to chat with you. But start with that and then we'll take it from there.

Yeah. Well, Lars, first of all, thanks for having me on. And yes, I was on. I think it was a long time ago though. Um, so excited to get back and I'm a big fan of, of what you do and I, I follow it on social media a lot. So as far as myself goes, I got my real estate license in 1983, which is probably before most of your listeners were alive. So I've been at this a long time. I became one of the top agents in the U.S. fact in 2009, I was the number one Keller Williams agent in the world. Sold over 4,000 homes. I've had a real estate team in San Diego for 33 years. In 2010, I stepped out of the role of actively running that team and took an executive position with Keller Williams, was the president of their worldwide division. Launched Keller Williams globally and then in 2015 became the CEO of the company. After 13 years, I left Keller Williams in the middle of 2017. I ended up joining Loan Depot, the second largest non bank lender in the country. Became the CEO of of their sister company called Mellow Home. All the while I had been very active in and Involved with real estate technology and investing in some companies, advising companies on the board of companies. I was on the board of a company called OJO Labs in Austin, Texas. And in 2019, they said, hey, we could use you full time, you know, would you consider joining us? And I did. And so for the last few years been helping Ojo grow. We now have a network of 36,000 agents. We own the property portal called movoto.com and we introduce a lot of consumers to real estate agents all over the country. So did I do that in two minutes?

Yeah, that was awesome. And let's, let's start out with this. So it's very rare, you know, I could have 100 agents on a screen and say like how many people went through the last shift? But here we have someone and I don't know how many shifts you've been through, but it's definitely 2008. It definitely was. There was like a shift in, because I only got in 2007. There was like 99, 98. There was a shift.

Yeah, actually there was a big one in even farther back than that in 1990, from 90 down to 97 and then 97 and 98 is when it started going up again. And that lasted until about 2005. So the shift in 2008 really started in 2005. 2008 fell off the cliff with the banking crisis. But I've been through some very significant ones and a whole lot of ones that weren't as significant. But it's interesting, regardless of what decade it was in or when it was or how long it lasted, they all have traits that are very, very similar. And the impact to the industry, the impact to agents are consistent along all of them.

Yeah, so, so let me ask you, and I think the book, and I want to unpack the big themes of the book here, but like a couple thoughts. Heading into another shift or you know, the start of another shift, I think it's going to be a multi year thing that we're going to deal with. What are just a couple of things that come to mind. Like, man, I wish I knew this. And my first shift. So there's so many agents, this is their first shift. What are just like a couple, three things that come to mind and then we'll get into the book.

Well, you already alluded to it. 90% of it is mindset. But there's really only three things that change when the market shifts. People still buy and people still sell. So that doesn't change. What changes is the level of education that we have to provide to be effective with our consumers, the type of expectations that we need to set and new expectations that we need to set. And then third is how we react to it, how we react to that change. So those are the three things. The education and the expectation settings are skills that anyone can learn. So if, and let me give some examples on expectations. A year ago, if you're working with a seller, the expectations you'd be setting as Mr. And Mrs. Seller, we're going to set the price here and your house is going to sell for more than that. And our biggest challenge will be deciding which of the 27 offers we're going to accept. And you're going to be very happy. You're going to walk out with more money than you, you know, imagined you would. Now, the expectations that we said are, Mr. Ms. Seller, we're going to price your home as aggressively as you as you can. And that may or may not work. We'll know in 10 to 14 days if the price is where it needs to be and if not, we need to be prepared to adjust it down at that time so your home doesn't get Market Warner sale. That's an easy message to deliver. It's not an easy message to get a seller to say, okay, great, thanks, Chris. Let's do it. All right. We have to be able to then educate them as to why it's in their best interest. Educate them as if they don't take that advice. What's likely to happen, be able to use market stats, days on market, number of pendings and the change in the market from six months ago to now so they have a enough information, enough good information to make a good decision so we can learn those two things. Right. Expectation setting, how to educate a buyer or seller. And the good agents already know how to do that because they've been through this before. And the ones that have been in the business for probably 10 years or less, these will be new skills that they'll need to learn. The mindset piece. How we react to the change is the critical one. And typically people react to change in one of two ways. Either they view it as an opportunity and they get excited about what's next or what they can do to capitalize on the new changes or opportunities. Or they get fearful, scared and pull back or hunker down. And that's a choice we all get to make.

Yeah. That's awesome. So dominant thoughts, things grow where our minds go. Talk first about, you know, this book is probably 33 years in the Making, I would imagine, as you've navigated all these things that made you uncomfortable and challenged you and stretched you, why did you write the book? Talk about, like, the genesis of the book. And then I want to get into specifically what we can expect when we read it.

Yeah, I thought about doing a book for. For many years. And I think for anyone who's thought about that, the same thing stopped me from doing it right was time knowing exactly how to do it and what it would take. And I was fortunate enough to be on a podcast like this about a year and a half ago, and the host, and there were multiple guests on the podcast or three guests, and the host, near the end of it, said, hey, Chris, when are you going to write a book? Well, one of the other guests was a gentleman by the name of Greg Reed, who was. I had heard of, but never met. He's written 30 or 40 books. So I said, hey, I. I don't know. I thought about writing a book, but I'd have to. I'd have to pick Greg's brain to, you know, to know how to do it. So two days later, Greg called me and said, hey, you mentioned about writing a book. He goes, I have a title I've been sitting on. If you have the content, I'll show you how to do it. I have all the connections, everything from the person that can do the art for the COVID to, you know, the publishers and agents and everything else.

And.

And he said, if you want to put me on as a co author, then we can partner on this. And I said, deal. So it's ironic because the book is a story. There's two characters in the book, a mentor and a mentee. And it's ironic that I had a mentor mentoring me on how to do this book that's about a mentor and a mentee. So that's the genesis of the book. The book really covers. Each chapter hits on a major lesson that I've either learned or used or both in, in my career. So, for example, and I know this, you're going to ask me this next, I'll just answer it now. Like, what are some of the. The key. The key themes or thoughts or lessons or ideas? You know, one of them is, is not being attached to the outcome. And that's something that I've. That I got really good at, at developing that muscle to be able to do that. And, and what that means is in really, in our business, things happen all the time, right? Good things, bad things. The bad things are the things that impact Us the most. We lose a deal the day before it's supposed to close. We have a buyer buys with someone else the day before. We thought we're going to write an offer with them, or our friend lists their house with someone else instead of us. All those things happen, and agents get crushed by those things. I've seen it happen a thousand times, and they're just ruined for days or weeks. I knew I couldn't afford to have that happen to me. Not that those things wouldn't happen to me, but I couldn't react to it that way. I couldn't be out of the game for days or weeks or even hours. I actually had a rule with my real estate team called the three minute rule. And if they came to me with news that something bad like that happened, I had three minutes to react to it. And you know, I get pissed, I get emotional, I do whatever I was going to do. But after three minutes, it was next. I'm, I was on to the next thing. Now that doesn't mean I didn't care. Didn't mean I didn't care that my client didn't get the house or that their deal fell out or any of that. I cared as much as anyone, but I wasn't attached to it. When you're attached, you, you feel it emotionally, you get, you feel in your gut, you get, you get emotionally involved. And when you're, when you're that way, you can't be objective, you can't be professional, you can't be as effective as, as you would want to be. And we see examples that in all, all walks of life. So I, I, I made the distinction of being committed versus being attached. So I was committed to doing the best job. I was committed to my client getting everything I wanted, but I wasn't attached to it. So if it didn't happen, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't crushed or ruined or going to be impacted so that it would affect my life, my family, my business, my other customers, my team, any of those things.

That's awesome. One other chapter in the book you talk about, don't worry what others think. Right. And this I don't know if it goes into. I've ordered the book, but I haven't read it. Just want to be honest. I will read it, talk about that. And maybe that kind of goes into comparison, thinking that everyone has it going on and you don't. So talk about that. Don't worry about what others think.

Yeah, there's two pieces to it, and you just Identified one of them. Lars is comparing yourself to others is a no win scenario. And the only person that we should ever be comparing to is the person in the mirror. And the only person we should really be worried about is the person in the mirror. It's okay to admire what others doing or to want to emulate what they're doing, but when we compare, we tend to put someone up here and us down here and that never feels good and never is empowering. Not worry about what other people think also is allows you to move quicker and with more ease to wherever you want to go. When you're worried about what other people think, you take on a lot of new considerations. You take on a lot of added weight that you carry around. For me it was a little easier because my personality style is, is one where, you know, I'm very introverted and I don't need the, or seek that those types of social interactions. So it's probably easier for me than others. So I'll admit that going in, but to the extent that we can, can not worry about what other people think and, and just focus on ourselves. I mean the best analogy is runners. You know, in a sprint, you know, if you're watching the Olympics or attract me, the winner is the one that's like has blinders on, they're laser focused on the finish line and the runners that are looking over their shoulders at what the, you know, the runners next to them are doing are the ones that always get passed. So I always kept my blinders on only, only competing with myself, not with anyone else, to constantly improve what I was doing. The other piece of that is, I think a lot of times especially, and this is not unique to our industry, but it's very prevalent in our industry is a lot of us, A lot of agents take themselves and what they do too seriously. And because of that they're very concerned about what other people think. And quite frankly, people really don't care. Right? We aren't we, what we do is not life or death, right? We are not, you know, we are not performing brain surgery or heart surgery where it is life or death, right? We're helping people buy and sell homes and typically no one dies during that process. And so we don't need to take ourselves as seriously as most of us do and not worry about what other people think. I, I, it's funny that you're bringing this up. Last night I was talking to my wife and this, this topic came up. We're at dinner with some friends about worrying about what other People think. And I said, I got a perfect example yesterday. I posted a video on. On social media. And in the still shot of the video, my face was all contorted and it was like this horrible. Like, you couldn't have got a worse picture of me. And I. And I posted it anyways. And I even said in the heading, yes, this is a scary face.

But I don't, I don't.

I. I didn't care that it was a horrible picture of me. Right? It was like there was a message in the video that I wanted to get out and that I wanted agents to see. And I'm able to laugh at myself and go, yeah, wow. That was like the worst photo that you could ever post up there. But it's just when you are consumed with what other people think or comparing yourself to others, you. You are creating a lot of headwinds for yourself that you just don't need to.

That's awesome. My wife took a picture of me on an airplane where I had fallen asleep with my mouth open, like, the worst picture ever. And she has like 30 of these pictures. It's always on an airplane. And I was wearing a shirt that didn't match the way I was looking. And she showed it to me, and I got so pissed off. I'm like, do not share that on social media. So get this. Probably five years later, I used that picture. It was our best performing ad in the history of my coaching company. You know, somebody that's willing to put themselves out there in a way that like every. Everyone sort of isn't, is never on their game and looking their best. So it's just, it's interesting that people. People want to see the reality of the messiness of business or the messiness of whatever. One thing I definitely want to get into, you know, a chapter on discipline. So talk about, as you've, you know, you've done the journey that most will never do. Right. I mean, you started out selling homes, you know, and now you have all these sort of different positions and you've run like big and moving big pieces of the industry. But talk about discipline as it relates specifically, you know, in a shift in the core activities of being successful and taking your unfair share quote unquote of the market as we head into these tricky times.

Yeah, you know, Lars, that's probably. That's probably the single. The single most important thing that I was able to develop that helped me accomplish a lot what I accomplished, and that is the building the muscle of discipline in some specific areas. And it's and you're right, it's as, as or more appropriate now or relevant now than at any other time. And, and I did it around the, the, the area of my daily activities in my schedule. So as agents, we have a single goal, and that is to generate new business every day and then obviously convert that business. So lead generation, lead follow up are the two key components of that. Because without that, there's no business to close or to take care of, or to administer, to work on. So having the discipline to do the things we need to do every day, especially on the days we don't want to do it or don't feel like doing it, or don't think we have the time to do it. So what I did was I came to the early realization, yeah, I could work as hard as anyone and harder than most, but I still had only a finite amount of time, right? I couldn't create more time than, than you or anyone else. So how do I become as efficient and effective with the amount of time that I had? And that was have extreme discipline around my schedule to the point that I actually viewed my job not as selling real estate, helping people buy or sell homes. I viewed my job every day as just following my schedule. All those things were in my schedule. And if I followed my schedule, all those things happened. But my focus on a daily basis was at every moment of the day do what I had scheduled myself to do. And if I did that, several things happened. One was at the end of the day, it was a lot easier to leave. It was a lot easier to say I'm done because I did what I said I was going to do and what I needed to do that day. And for the agents that don't you end up, you know, continuing to work, right. Expanding into the evening, and, and you, you just keep expanding at whatever time that you allow yourself to. And, and that's not an efficient or an effective way to accomplish things. So having that discipline is, is key. The, the real question is how do you develop that discipline? You know, how do you have that mindset that no matter what's going on around you, you're not going to deviate from the things you need to. And, and that's, that's, that what we talk about. That, that success mindset or that mindset of success? You know, how do you have that really strong mindset to, to be disciplined, right? And to, not to keep the, not to sabotage yourself with distractions or, or unproductive thoughts or anything else? And that's, that's really where the challenge is for people. And that's where you know, our attitude, for example, you know, how do we develop a strong attitude? Well, I know this. It's a lot easier to have a good attitude when you aren't constantly consuming negative thoughts and ideas in news and everything else. So, you know, one of the things I did early on was, was shielded myself from the negativity. So, you know, not watching news, being very, very mindful of who I was spending time with, right? Not having negative people in my life, everything I watched, listened to and read was, was, had no negativity in it. At the same time, everyone I spent time with, everything I watched, everything I read, everything I listened to, was filling my head with positive things. And it's much easier to do what you're supposed to do, to operate at a high level when you're in a good, a good state of mind, in a positive state of mind. When you're in a negative state of mind, you're fearful, you're, you're scared, you're, you're insecure, all those things. It's hard to operate at a peak performance. So having that strong mindset, having that good mindset and that good attitude become really important. So I just set up structures to do that. Like I said, I remove the negative, poured in the positive, and then did other things like really focused on, on, on, on three things. My attitude, my approach, my expectations. The attitude is what I just talked about, right? Making sure that we're putting in a lot of positive, shielding against the negative so we have a good attitude. My approach was my skill level. Like am I, am I prepared at the highest possible level for that listing appointment, for that prospecting session, for my lead follow up. So you know, that meant that on a daily basis I was practicing and role playing. And I shared this actually with my real estate team the other day. I, I had multiple listing presentations every day. But one day I had five. I took five listings in a day. I practice my role, my listing presentation every day. I role played every day. So the next day, even though I took five listings the day before, I still role played my listing presentation. Now I knew it inside and out, but I never stopped. Just like a professional baseball player or the, the teams that are in the World Series right now, those players don't stop taking batting practice because they make it to the, to the big leagues, right? They keep practicing every day. So that's how we improve our approach and then our expectations. You know, are we expecting when we're making a call that we're going to be interrupting someone, that they're going to be angry, that they're not going to be there, that they're going to be annoyed at us? Or are we expecting that they're going to be happy that we called, that we're calling them at just the right time, that they have a real estate need that we're going to be able to walk into and help them with. So our attitude, our approach, our expectations are things that can really help with that, that strong mindset, which then makes it easier to develop the muscle of discipline in the areas that we want to develop it in. So that was a really long answer to your question. So sorry it took so long.

No, that's so awesome. And you made a comment. And I think we share the personality of introversion and putting ourselves in positions where we're probably playing the part of extrovert when we need to. But then ultimately, you know, the systems and the cadence. And there's something that I say, and I want you to go deeper on it because I don't think everyone in real estate is wired like us. But you mentioned that the calendar. And just the reason I know what to do is because I just look at my calendar and I predetermined on a quarterly basis, but then also monthly and weekly and daily where I'm supposed to be spending time. So I call it. There's like massive freedom in structure. I can take all the time I want off because I follow my calendar and I put myself in a position to do so. So what advice would you give someone who's like, they're not as disciplined, they're not as dialed into their calendar. They're, you know, they kind of open their phone and they're on social media when they should be like, what are the three things? How do you coach your agents to be more disciplined when it comes to their calendar?

Yeah, I think. I think the first step is understanding that it's a good thing. A lot of people have a negative thought or discipline has a negative connotation in their mind. Right. And if you're a kid, it should. Right. When you're a kid, discipline is a negative thing. But as an adult, discipline does equate to freedom. Like you just mentioned, the more disciplined we are with our time, the more time we actually have, the more disciplined we are with our money, the more money we'll have, the more disciplined we are with our health, the better health we'll have. So first thing is having that mindset, hey, that this is a good Thing, Right. The discipline is a good thing. Now then how do I, how do I do that? One of the, one of the ways is to find one thing that's hard for you to do and conquer that one thing. Then it might be something as simple. I'll, I'll share what it was for me. For me it was getting up early in the morning, right? It was not natural for me. I was a, from as long as I can remember as a kid, you know, I'd stay up late, too late and, and that makes getting up early hard. So, you know, and I probably, I was, back then, I was probably Getting up at 9:07 or 7:30 in the morning and I said, you know what? I, I gotta, I have to figure out how to do this. So I just said I'm gonna. Like most things, I take it to the extreme. So I said I'm gonna get up at 4:30 every morning. So. And I did. And at first it was brutally hard, but after a while it just became a habit. It just became like brushing my teeth every day or you know, anything else that you do that you develop that. So find that one thing and then figure out how to do it. And by the way, I started doing something back then that to this day I still do. And that is my alarm clock is far away from my bed. You know, my phone, which is my alarm clock, like most people's, is usually in the bathroom. Like if I'm in a hotel, it's, it's in the bathroom at home, it's in the bathroom. I'm staying at a friend of a friend's house right now. And yeah, my phone is plugged in in the bathroom away from the bed. So when it goes up, I'm up. When it goes off, I'm up. I have to go. And that then I get, get going on my day. So find that one thing that's hard. Whatever it is, it might be, it could be anything. But just find the one thing. And if you do that one thing that's hard for you to do, then everything else becomes a lot easier. So that's one way to develop discipline. The other is understand that discipline is a habit. So how do we create habits? We do something consistently every day until it just becomes natural. It's like someone who's starting to work out that hasn't been working out. Yeah, it's really hard at first, but after a while, you know, it's really hard not to do it. Right. For those of us who work out every day, missing a day is like, like, like horrible. Like it messes your whole, your whole day up. So just finding those things that are hard and then whatever it is, just doing it until it becomes natural. And it's okay to, to get help. It's okay to have structures. You know, when I was developing the discipline of, you know, protecting my prospecting time, my assistant, I made it her job to make sure that I wasn't interrupted and that I didn't interrupt myself. So she actually took my cell phone every day away from me during that time so I couldn't be texting or on social media or anything else. So it's okay to set up structures like that until it becomes a habit.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I recently had to reclaim my mornings and the thing that got in the way was that the two hours of mind numbing Netflix or whatever crap you do from 8:30 to 10:30, it's not going to enrich your life unless you're, you know, hanging out with your kids or whatever. So I physically had to hang a big. We shouldn't have a TV in our bedroom anyway, but we do. So five nights a week we hang a big picture over the TV so it looks like a piece of art. And then if I'm, if I'm taking that down on a night that I know I'm not supposed to, then at least I'm consciously sort of breaking a rule that I made to myself. But I would say if there is one thing to start with, you know that waking up early will change your life forever. The freedom you feel being in your home for a couple hours when no one's awake and you're doing focus, super focused work. That, that is a life changer. Like you're not going to miss the things that, the little thing you had to give up to go to bed early to pick up what you were able to pick up there, you know, 30 days in, you'll be like, man, my life doesn't even look the same at this point.

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Awesome. I've already ordered the book. I just went to Amazon. But what's the easiest way to kind of get into your world? Is there a different way?

That's the easiest way. There is a website called dominant thoughts.com if you want to find out more about the book or for. We've had a lot of people ordering it in bulk, so for orders more than 20 go to the website because we can get a lower price than you can get on Amazon. But yeah, Amazon. And it's in every format, paperback, hardback, Audio. And there's another format, right? Or maybe not.

Yeah, there was an audio cd.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's. It's available all those ways.

Awesome. Chris, I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule. I would say if you're in a position of. I mean, we're all leading ourselves, if you're in real estate, you know, to be able to. The cool thing about a piece of work like this is that you've condensed three plus decades. You're in your fourth decade of being in the real estate business. You've been through multiple shifts, and you put it all in. Something that I can order and just press play on is. It's an unbelievable gift. We thank you for it, you know, and I know you didn't have the extra time, quote, unquote, to write it, but the fact that you did it, it's almost Dishonoring to your 33 years to not spend the time. And if you lead people, if you're in a team or a brokerage setting, you know, that's the point. There's, you know, get. Get the budget from somewhere to get this book in the hands of. Of those that you lead. This is the time I've got to believe there's no coincidence with this. This piece of work coming out right before what might be the more. More challenging economic. Economic time than. Than we've seen, you know, in. In. In our. In our lifetime. So really.

Will determine how we get through these times, 100%.

So I appreciate you, Chris. We'll definitely talk soon. I'll get this everywhere and we'll keep doing the good work.

All right. Thanks, Lars.

All right, see you.