The 85% Agent Fail Rate Is a Lie — Burnout Is the Real Story | Steve D. Valentine

I believe that 85% of agents don't fail. They get burnt out in the first 5 years of the business. And because they burned out chasing more in the industry noise than chasing less. And that 85% sounds like you. It's not because you're burnt out. It's because you are burnt out with the noise and the chase. 85% of real estate agents fail in the first year is the stat that's actually floating around out there. But when you ask for the stat, there really is no origin of that stat. So here's what I know. I believe that 85% of agents don't fail. They get burnt out in the first 5 years of the business. And because they burned out, it's a chasing more in the industry noise than chasing less. So let's dive into this for a second. Let's just have a casual conversation about what's actually transpiring in the industry and what I'm seeing after 30 years of being in this business. I'm Steve D Valentine. I have flipped more than 1,000 homes. Not that that's important. What's more important is that 27 years we've been part of about 10,000 transactions from creative financing to commercial to second homes to primary residence to building portfolios. We have done a little bit and a lot of everything inside the real estate space. So there's a lot of experiential wisdom that comes with this conversation. If you're a struggling agent and that 85% sounds like you, it's not because you're burnt out. It's because you are burnt out with the noise and the chase. You see, no one has told you to take a pause and look at what you truly started this business for and where you truly want it to take you. Instead, you're chasing what everybody else is doing on a regular, which is the actual burnout. So let's take a pause here before you decide to quit the real estate business and listen to me for a second. I've been in burnout. I have drank myself to burnout, and I have recovered from all of it, including my business, and making it something that supports the life and the dreams that I'm building rather than a business I want to escape from or look at my phone and go, oh my God, I don't want to answer that call. So let's just talk about and break this down and help you make some decisions here. One, you never have to be out of the real estate game ever. You may not like the things that you're doing, and if you don't like them, you can choose to change. If you're not changing, you're choosing to stay the same. And if your life is miserable and your real estate is miserable, then you're choosing to stay there. So let's take a minute and pause and talk about the things that you can choose to change and understand that this business can go in 9,000 different directions. And I have the career and the receipts to prove it. So let's just walk backwards a little bit. Like you, I started out in traditional real estate. I did have great mentors. If you don't have great mentors, you need to. And I worked for pretty much pennies on the dollar when I started so that I could learn the business and have the support that was really important. That's what got me through the 5 years. Those were the opportunities that I saw. You see, what I do realize as I ran a small group of agents over the last couple of years is very few agents can see the opportunities that come with proximity to people that have done what they want to do. Let me repeat that. Very few agents realize the opportunities that arise by being in proximity to somebody that has done what you want to do. There's value in somebody's experience being alongside of you and understanding the investment into the life you want to build. And so many of us take splits and make it the end-all be-all of our life and how we live. And we never look at splits as an investment. You see, when an agent works with me, they are investing a portion of their business for the support, the experience, and the wisdom that they need to grow. The same reason that a seller or a buyer invests in you to guide them. It's because of what you know, and they don't want to do it by themselves. But yet every day you run out and do it on yourself with no invested backing into who's guiding you through the career and the life that you want to build. Which is exactly why I built the community Built Not Bought. It comes with strength. It comes to the fact that those of you that are in this discouragement piece, which I have been there when we lost everything in 2008 and were financially ruined and had to start over in the business. And even as of recently in the last couple of years of having to evolve into something new. So I built a community called Built Not Bought, and the built is the strength of rising from the ashes, from rising from the things that you've broken, maybe the things that you don't know. Maybe the things that you want to learn that you will fail at if you try. That is the goal, is to try and fail and learn from it. I have the receipts to prove it. Do you have the receipts to look back and say, I wished I would have? You see, that receipt is living with no regret. And in the real estate business, I have no regret. There's some things I would have done differently, and because of that, I know what I needed to change to get where I wanted to go. So let's talk about your stat. I don't want you to be part of the stats. I want to take that 85% and see if 5% of you will move and change your life and understand that real estate is not about the production. See, you've actually been conditioned to the wrong things, and these are the things you're chasing, and these are the things where you feel, uh, shame and guilt, or that you're not good enough in the office awards or the brokerage awards because you're not selling 100 homes a year and your life is kind of a mess. Does it feel familiar? But here's the deal. Your life is okay. The chasing the 100 transactions may not be for you, but you've never determined that for your own life. And there's a difference when you're chasing transactions in GCI. That's chasing burnout. It's chasing more. And I know what more leads to. And so much of our business is conditioned that if you want more, you have to become a leader. You need to grow a team. You need to expand in these areas. And I'm telling you that that's false. So let's talk about ways that in your 85% of people that are in burnout, what can you change? So here's where the change comes in. One, understand that you can exit the business and know that if you are not great at selling, Are you great at connecting? Your real estate license without doing any of the work can be worth 25% of a transaction if you make the connections right. So let's just start here. Very easy. In your first year, your first 5 years, focus on connecting the dots. You don't have to be the agent that does the work, and you don't have to be the person that knows everything. You should be the person that knows somebody for everybody. That's where you connect. You see, I believe that you could make $100,000 just being referrals. You see, I have agents that work with me that have a real estate license, that their only goal is to just refer people to me so that they can create an additional $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year in connections. Because you never know who you're going to run into. You may not like the stress of real estate. Okay, then get out of the transactional side of it. What does investing look like for you? You've taken this knowledge, you have a license. Don't let it lapse. Do the hours. Find good agents that you can partner and collaborate with and create referral sources. By the way, the people that you know, they're not always going to fit one real estate agent referral. That's why you have a lot of people. And then if you reversed it and you said, hey, I'm just going to be a referral agent and I want to learn to invest, so I'm going to start working on investments and the same agents that I can refer to, If they're agents that see hoarder houses or deals, can they bring me a deal? Can we collaborate in that sense? Yes, I have the receipts for that. Probably about, I'd say, 40 to 50 homes a year we buy on the investment side from agents just like you who have connections with people that earn money by connecting the dots and being aware in their circles. You see, let's not chase the transaction side if that wasn't what you're cut out for. Unless it's something that, hey, I want to grow in this, I want to be better at it, and you're devoted to it, then guess what? Your burnout probably comes because you're in the wrong environment. Either your brokerage or your team, whoever you're learning from, might not be the right place. So therefore, you could go and leave the business because of your opinion in the environments that you were coached on, trained in, and lived in. And all of a sudden you're out, but you didn't pause and say, What else is out there that I'm not seeing? Is this it? Instead, we think that this brokerage doesn't have what it takes, or this team, and we go jump over here to somebody else that sold us something better, and we find out it's pretty much the same. It just looks different. And then we go and do it again, and we never really find our place. It's because the reality is, until you build what you want, it will never be yours. And you can build the life that you want inside real estate however you want to live it. If you stop getting conditioned by the industry as to what's important to you. See, plastic trophies and transactions and GCI, they don't pay the bills. They don't build your wealth. They certainly don't make who you are. You see, most of you like me have lost your identity and you've become a realtor and then you're a burned-out realtor. And now I want you to be an amazing human being on fire that has a real estate license that uses that not as their identity, but as a place to connect. See, the change in my business and why I'm not burned out in this is because I'm more about people than I am about transactions. And I'm encouraging you, if you're in this 85%, one, uh, join me on Wednesdays, Built Not Bought, the link's below. Two, do the identity work. If you wanna know who you are and where you are, look at your blind spots and see where you wanna go, then do the identity work. The link is below as well. Jump in there, check it out. It's something that I went through. I have the receipts. It's what my companies are built, the backbone on is this identity prompt of becoming somebody that you want to become and own a business that you are truly proud of that defines you. You define that business. You get to show up as you, just like I'm showing up as me for you, with you. So those are some things and ways that we can work through this burnout. Stop looking at more. Stop looking around at everybody else and start asking yourself better questions. Not what my license is used for currently. What can it be used for? What can I still learn? What trees can I still plant and what wealth can I build for my life? You're burnt out because you're chasing the wrong things. Let's unburn you out. Join me on the Build Not Bought call and let's find a place where you belong authentically in the real estate business. And again, it might not be transactional. It might be in the investment space. It might be in referrals. It could be anything. When you come into the community, you're learning ideas. You're taking those ideas combined with technology of AI, and you're learning who you are. And then you're gonna find those specialties and those talents that don't create burnout, but they create peace and joy, and they create devotion and discipline to the things you truly love and the life you're truly looking to build. Thanks for joining me today. I hope you'll subscribe, like, and share with somebody. You got a comment below, you're struggling with something, let's have a conversation. Follow me here, Instagram. Let's get it.