The speaker (host of a YouTube talk) argues that leadership — especially in real estate businesses — is under-emphasized in formal training and requires long-term, continuous development (described as a ~20-year journey). He shares personal evidence: substantial spending on coaching (~$600,000), a Duke MBA that lacked leadership focus, quarterly anonymous engagement surveys (Engagement Multiplier), and anecdotes (John Maxwell seminar, Bar Rescue) to illustrate how leadership influences team morale and business resilience when markets slow.
I covered some of this. Any, any training that I've been to and I've been, I've spent more money than anyone, I promise. I think it's up to like $600,000 on different training and coaching at this point. Not a lot of it covered leadership, even business school. I have a Duke MBA and we didn't cover leadership all that much. It's the one topic that I think puts everything into perspective and gives us the ability to really, really start a, to really have a sustainable business. And I get it because we're trying to generate leads, we're all entrepreneurs and we're just trying to hustle and generate leads, close deals and this is a slow down kind of thing that develops over a long period of time. This isn't a come read a book, come to a conference kind of thing. This is a 20 year thing that we're embarking on together. So I feel like we're doing this together. And really in my businesses I have been challenged with leadership and I've just seen my business, both businesses sort of almost be hindered by my level of leadership. And I'll cover some of that. And so like, personally, I feel like this is something that if, and this is me just being real. If the guy that you're looking at for advice is feeling challenged with leadership, then unless you all are way ahead of me, you know, I know that I need to really make sure you guys slow down and, and really invest in this on a continual basis, lifelong. So it's not a quick study. It's almost easier to study the things that, you know, there's just everyone selling sort of a system now, an expired system or drip system or stuff is really easy compared to this because this really requires you to look at who you are. And we'll get into some of that. And it's really not, it's not that pretty. We started surveying my real estate team. We do a quarterly survey. I think I mentioned it last time. It's engagement multiplier and like it's brutally honest. So it's anonymous for everyone on your team. And it's brutally honest, the feedback that you get. And this time around Cherie and Jessica said that I couldn't read it, you know, so I'm not even going to get to look at the results. And they'll just tell me what I have to cover with the text team. So it just takes time and you just make mistakes. And so I really want to. The challenge is that we do this together. It's going to be an example that John Maxwell uses in his book, he was doing a seminar on leadership and there was a young guy like in his 20s in the front row just taking notes and really engaged. And probably his first seminar ever. And he brought the. Brought him up as an example. He said, okay, so this is like five years from now, you'll be a little bit better. And then in 10 years you'll be at a certain point 15, you might start to get this stuff. And then at year 20 is when you're going to have your real impact. So this is not a quick thing. I want to plant a seed today that all of you just take back in your lives and realize that if you're really going to impact lives, because grand scheme of things, we're all doing okay financially. You know, this is not. No one's really suffering. I mean, some people go through challenges and we share those and we work through them. But grand scheme of things, we're not struggling. Like 97% of the world is struggling. So the thing that we're blessed with most is our ability to impact the lives that we touch. And I see that more now. I mean, you guys know me. I've never been like the touchy feely, you know, oh, we helped you buy your dream home. But I feel it more with my team members. Like your ability to step in and lead them without frustration, without impatience, and just lead them to do better things. So are you guys up for this lifelong journey? Raise your hand. Everyone raise your hand in the room. And you guys gotta help me because my energy level compared to Kyle's is just lower. So when I ask you to interact, you just do it. You don't question it. All right? So real leadership is being the person others will gladly and confidently follow. Who's seen bar rescue? The bar rescue, it's this guy, John Taffer goes in and he helps, like filling bars. And you can imagine, I don't know, maybe I'm stereotyping, but some of the guys that start bars, you know, they just want to like be in a bar all the time and drink all the time. So it surprises me though, how dysfunctional and jacked up these businesses are. And people stay like they get abused by their bosses, they're making no money. There's like cockroaches and raccoons walking around and just jacked up stuff that you see. But you don't want to be that guy that people just stay with you because, you know, you're providing leads or it's a decent job. You want to be the guy or girl that people want to follow. It's a little easy now because, I mean, homes are selling pretty easy. Is anyone in a bad market right now? Raise your hand. No, I don't think so. But when times turn and there's a shift, hopefully demographics are going to play in our favor. Millennials are going to save the baby boomers and all that's going to level out, and we won't have any kind of economic weird thing go on. But if the market turns, that's when your leadership really needs to show up. Because if people are selling homes in your team now, they think you're the best thing ever. But things slow down. We're having some challenges on the buyer side of my business, and it really requires someone to step in and truly sort of lift up folks that are sort of doubting themselves.
