From Burnout to Boss: How to Think (and Live) Like a CEO

It's time for you to be the CEO of your business and your life. Hey, what's up? It's Steve Valentine and this month we are just talking about business in general. So it's going to be easier for me to help you understand business practical, tactical. From my perspective, in the real estate business, you can apply this to just about anything. Just take the word real estate agent out of it and apply it to employee or whatever that looks like. So let's dive into this and really I want to share with you some of the journey that I'm on currently shifting from the old school entrepreneur real estate team leader, which would typically be the business owners, to being the CEO of my company and companies and the other things that we do. So just wanted to give you some insight as to what that looks like and how to change that mindset earlier in your career rather than later. So let's dive into this. Some of the things that are here are, you know, what are some of the biggest mistakes real estate agents make when they come into the business is they act like employees. And my dad used to always tell me, are we working in the business or on the business? So as the entrepreneur, it's separating the mindset of. And when you're, when you're solo, right? Maybe you're a solo agent, you're a solo entrepreneur. It's kind of like time blocking to be the CEO and the employee. And so you're wearing all the different hats and you have to remember to segment those things in your life because there's times that you need to work on the business and there's times you need to work in the business. So what's the difference? When you're working in the business, you are an employee. So you're doing hourly tasks. You're doing all the jobs that somebody you want to hire should be doing, and that's what you're doing during that time. Then you have to block out time to become the CEO. You see eventually that the table should tip to where you're spending more time being the CEO and less time being the employee. And that's a mindset. And, and one of those big mindsets is, number one, is you have to let go of control. And so just because you think you can do it better than everybody else doesn't mean you're still the person that should be doing it. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. My wife tells me that all the time when we buy houses. So let me give you a great example. In my business, about seven Years ago, I was at a mastermind with Chris Harder and Drew Canole, the founder of Organifi was speaking. And what he was sharing was, hey, it took me a long time to realize that if somebody can do the task that I'm doing 80% as good as I can, I should let that task go to that person. They will learn and perfect the other 20% in their own way. And just know when you do that, you're going to have some mistakes. It's going to cost you a little bit of money, but the goal is to get that out of the way so that you can take that task off your list and move into working more on the business than in the business. This is how we get from being the employee to the owner, right? And by the way, the goal of the owner or the CEO of the company is to only own one thing, and that is the business. Everything else in the business, somebody else should own as a task or a to do or a job in that aspect. Now when you go through and you start to change that mindset, you have the ability to shift perspective, because now you're going to be looking at your business from 30,000ft rather than through the front door. And it makes a big difference in what you see and how things operate. In order to be the CEO of your life, you have to be the CEO of your business. Because when you're the CEO of the business, you are dictating what you will and won't tolerate. So how do you do that? Well, it comes from negative clarity. So as you start to do the employee tasks, you start to take those employee tasks and figure out which ones don't you want to do ever again. And you start making a list of those, and that starts to formulate the job description of the first hire that you're going to make. And what happens with that is it allows you to become the CEO of your life. Because now you're hiring help at work, not just so you can do more work, but so that you can have a better quality of life. You see, I've done it in my career where I'm the solo real estate agent entrepreneur, where I'm running from house to showings to doing contracts to, I almost said faxing contracts out. How long I've been in this business, answering my pages and, you know, charging my block phone, all the things that I've done in my career. When I was a solo agent back then, it was a lot harder. Technology was not at our fingertips like it is now. You actually had to stop at offices and print things out and do all those pieces. And now you look at it two decades later into this business, and I have staff members that do certain parts of my business that also increase your customer experience by doing that. And that's where a lot of us, when we get into the CEO thing, we don't think that somebody else can provide the same level of experience that we have. The reality is we need to train and teach and hire the right people at the right amount of money that are there to serve in that capacity. You know, I was actually so blessed as I really looked through a meeting yesterday, and I realized where I'm becoming the CEO and understanding that my role is really to be the visionary and to drive the ideas and the team that I have. I hate even calling them staff or employees. The team and partners that I have in my business, they are here 100% to support those ideas, help me noodle through them and bring the right ideas to the top. And. And then their job is to execute them 90% of the way and let me finish off the 10%. And so it is a different way of running the business, which again, is also allowing the customer to have a better experience because they're not waiting on me. Things aren't delayed, decisions aren't delayed, and we're being able to move through the process. That also takes some training on the client side, because any of us that have been in the position where we're the employee, the CEO, and then a returning client comes back and you have an employee in there now, and you want that client to deal with the employee, sometimes the client gets a little frustrated, like, well, we want to only deal with you, but let's all look at it and go, well, if that person was trained and brought up and does the things that I do, then they're just as good as I am. And that's the whole goal. When you really look inside my business. Tammy and Erica have been with me a decade, and they know my heart like the back of their hand, and they can answer and respond in the way that I do and take care of clients and customers the way that I do, because it's our culture. And that's what you're wanting to build in your business when you become the CEO is you're building that culture that then flows out into your clients and your community. And it starts from within, and it starts from within you. And that's where being the CEO first of your life and making sure that your foundational principles in your life are set in stone so that those don't waver. And. And then when you take your CEO into the business, it creates that other part of culture where it flows out. So if you really, like, want to dive into that is making sure that you yourself are whole, your head and your heart are connected at home, and your spiritual, mental, all those things are connected. And you will be a much better CEO as you start to build. You see, it's really hard, and I can speak to this. It's really hard to build a culture when your foundation is not set in stone. And a lot of you know that I've gone through a pretty significant personal journey over the last four years, and that has changed how I operate. It's changed my capacity because I had to go inward and get my head and my heart reconnected, which has changed a lot of my business, a lot of my relationships with my clients, with you guys right here on this channel and in my staff. And if you were to call or text any of my staff members, they would tell you a significant difference. And once I figured out where my foundation needed to lay, how it's changed the business, how it's changed the culture. So remember, it really starts with you at home, internally, before you start to build, because what you're putting out is going to be put out to your clients. So if you're training somebody new in your business and you're not wholly set your foundation and your principles and what you will and won't tolerate, you won't be able to lead that person effectively. And again, I can say all these things because I've experienced it. You will make poor hires. You will get frustrated with those hires that they're not the right person and that they didn't do the right things. And the reality is, it's because you're not in the right mindset and you're not hiring in the capacity of what you truly need. So one of the differences between agents that burn out or quit, by the way, if you didn't know this, real estate agents, 87% of them burn out and quit within the first five years. And that could be diminished by a long shot if they would understand this difference in becoming the CEO. Because real estate, just like entrepreneurship and anything, you can burn yourself out burning the candle at both ends, trying to be successful and going through the process, paying the expenses. Because the reality is, when you're the entrepreneur, you're also the CEO, the cmo, the cfo, the coo. You are all the things to everybody, and there's not enough Time in the day, so other things suffer. Usually what suffers is things at home, your personal life, your health. And so in order to get those back on track, when you do start to hire or you're at capacity, you're not just hiring to build more business, you're hiring to have a better life. So quick, small example, if you needed to buy, and let me just take this in perspective here, if you needed to buy an extra 10 hours a week in order to have more quality time with your kids, less time at work, whatever that looks like, start with something small. Can you hire somebody at home to take care of cleaning, laundry, all the minute things that you spend the weekends and nights doing? Can you hire a virtual assistant at four or five dollars an hour to scrub data, do different things? It's all about places where you can buy back time and eventually hire the right people for the task. And it might not be employees. The best part about today's day and age is technology is rampant with all the different things that you can outsource to buy time back. Great book, by the way. Dan Martell's Buying Time or Buy Back Time is a book. Last but not least, real estate is not just about selling homes. It's about building a business and a life that you'll come to enjoy and working with people you enjoy working with and they enjoy working with you. You see, when we build into the number one salespeople and how many transactions did you do and what stupid plastic trophies did you get this year and your posts on Look at me, I'm top 1%, those don't do anything for anybody. They don't add zeros to your bank account. They don't tell you what kind of experiences you've had, they don't say what kind of person you are. And they ultimately don't grow your business, they grow your experiences, they show your value. But the ultimate part is, are you burning yourself out? Getting to, I don't know if it's ego or arrogance, right? Some people like the Limelight, lived it. I can say that there are better ways to do it. And one of them is realizing in your real estate business or your business that you start to picture and work through the things, making a list of the things that you do not want to do. Now it's not just that you don't want to do, it's the things that your company won't do anymore, right? Like we have a list of non negotiables of things we won't do anymore. And it's just part of our business. Now can we connect people for that? Yes. If you try to be everything to everybody, you will burn yourself out. You'll realize that you're taking on the wrong client and leaving behind the right client because of energy. And I recently had a conversation with a client the other day, another agent that was really hard pressed with a client. She's like, you know, he's aggressive and he's doing these things and I've tried to fire him and I referred him to another agent and he's still coming back. And I'm like, look, what won't you tolerate from this client if you're going to do business? She's like, well, I'm not going to invest a portion of my unearned income or discount my commission for the way he treats me and what he's asking me to do. And I'm like, okay, then just set the rules. And here's, I'm glad to work with you. Here's the commission, here's the structure, here's the time, here's all the pieces. And if he agrees to it, then great, you're on the same page. If he doesn't, you know that you set the terms that you were willing to accept and he can accept or not accept. And we all have that ability in our business. And the minute you find yourself being the CEO and making the right decisions for your company, it will change the way you operate as the employee until you can start hiring those people. And then you get to take on the responsibility of being the CEO that has other mouths to feed, which is a whole nother topic for another day.