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I used to feel like I had to do everything all myself because I was a control freak and nobody could do it as good as me. And, you know, all of these different bullshit stories that I was telling myself. So what I ultimately did was I didn't rest after these types of events and I would continue to go and, you know, I'd wake up in the morning and feel like I have to hurry up and rush to the next thing and just so I can fit everything or cram everything in. to a day, into a week into the month. Yeah, I can do that anywhere, right? So I quickly realized, well, maybe not quickly, it took me a little bit to realize that, you know, what if I are actually to find people that I can surround myself around with and, you know, they actually work towards my weaknesses and it's their strengths.

Welcome to the Leading Lane podcast. For Real Estate Pros, Buy Real Estate Pros with your hosts, Ashley Frederick and Stephen Burch. If you're looking for an honest, authentic, and raw perspective, you found it.

All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to the Leading Lane podcast. We are fresh off of a week at our conference in New Orleans, which was during Mardi Gras. So it had its own interesting parts, but lots of conversations that were had, you know, in the evenings, during the days, lots of topics that will help feed our pipeline here for a little bit with some topics. But a question that Steve and I both got were kind of how do you do it all, more or less, you know, seeing online that you're busy, which that's just part of it, right? They're seeing what they see online. But a lot of people are, you know, thief by comparison, right? Thief of joy by comparison. So they're just trying to compare and compare. And I think that that in itself can be a problem. So let's just open up that can of you do it all, Stephen. How do you do it all?

Well, you know, I don't know how many times I got asked that last week. And first of all, I have to say, It's exhausting being around people all of that, all the time, right? Like, I love people, but that's a lot of peopling and it's a lot of things to go. So, I actually booked out my entire week this week of not doing anything.

I got sick, so mine inadvertently turned into that.

Right, like, but I think it's, it's important to recognize that it's so great to go to those events and spend time with people. but also to recognize that you have to take the time for yourself. And for me, like, I need to recharge. I need my own quiet space. I don't need to be around people. But to answer your question, how do I do it all? You know, back in the day, I used to feel like I had to do everything all myself because I was a control freak and nobody could do it as good as me. And, you know, all of these different stories that I was telling myself. So what I ultimately did was I didn't rest after these types of events and I would continue to go and, you know, I'd wake up in the morning and feel like I have to hurry up and rush to the next thing and just so I can fit everything or cram everything in to a day, into a week into the month. Yeah, I can do that anymore, right? So I quickly realized, well, maybe not quickly, it took me a little bit to realize that, you know, what if I were actually to find people that I can surround myself around with and they actually work towards my weaknesses and it's their strengths. So one of the great books and I know that we've talked about it before, it's the force multiplier. I believe it's the founder and the something in other force multiplier. I have to look it up. But it talks about how you need to be able to put these other individuals on your team to amplify and multiply what you are extremely good at. And for me, even though I say people are exhausting, I'm great at working with people. So how do I get these tedious things, in my opinion, the tedious things, but in somebody else's eyes, maybe the fun things that they love to be able to do. So I can go ahead and like now what I do is I build it up or have the idea and then I delegate it and fold it into somebody else's role. so that it appears that I'm doing it all. I'm the face of it all, if you will. But I make sure that I always say that my team makes me look damn good. They're the ones that are behind the scenes making everything actually happen and they have to deal with all my craziness and me shifting all over the place. But, yeah, I don't do it all. And there's a book that somebody actually recommended to me. It's called Quit. I have not read it yet, but he came up to me and kind of had this conversation at conference and he said, you know, one of the things that we have to realize and understand is that we actually have to quit a lot of things, quit doing this, some of these things that are not serving your purpose and not serving what your mission is, even though you like to do them, but you gotta quit it to be able to move forward. I'm just paraphrasing what our conversation was. But yeah, I don't do it all. Like there's times that I'm like twiddling my thumbs, like what should I be doing? And I feel kind of guilty that I'm not doing something. But in reality, you know, recharging myself and working on myself, working on my health, that is working on my business. So, and I know Ashley, you get asked all the time, you know, even the assumptions of, oh, you look too busy and I didn't call you, you know, to list my house or to go look at this house or whatever else, but you get it as well, right?

Mm-. Yeah, you know, I think that it comes to like, right, we basically started these businesses from scratch, right? So for a while there, like, we did do it all, like you had to do it all and you had to make that happen. And then I think for us in those positions, it takes time to realize that like you can start to hand some of these things off. And it's kind of to your point of there are things that I don't like to do or that I don't think are if we break it down with our scale of your worth per hour, like me doing some of these tedious things just didn't make sense anymore. You have to get to a point where you can acknowledge that and then find other people that love to do those things. And so again, it's about building out the right team. I actually literally just said to Caitlin this morning that I feel super bored right now. probably because we're in this weird market shift of like just about spring, it's probably gonna snow again. Right? So it's kind of strange here. I mean, sure I'm bored, but I also said like, I wrote an offer, I got an offer yesterday, but that's boring for me. Like as far as it's, I like to do more than that, right? Like I remember the days of Codecademy and you wrote like 10 offers a day, right? So it is the, that weird part of you have put so many systems in place that it ends up running like a well-oiled machine, but on the outside, people just think that that's you continuously, you know, to do it all. Like, I always think, too, it's funny, because Caitlin will do a lot of my Facebook posts, and then I'll be like, well, I was home sick yesterday, but, yeah, you were, like, busy on Facebook. And I was like, yep. Okay. So it wasn't necessarily me. Right. So people, like, have this Assumption, you same thing for you. I know that, you know, you have someone help you with your social media. So I think that's what people have to remember, is that just what they see, you know, isn't necessarily all reality. And if we have all of our systems set into place, yes, that is one of my biggest pet peeves that people are like, oh, you were traveling or you look so busy with your recent sales. I just called someone else. I'm always like, that makes like zero sense to me. Like you could have called first and been like, hey, I know you're normally busy, but do you have time? And like, I don't know, like I look at my calendar and I was like, I don't know, like, I got two appointments today. Like, you know, I'll fill it with stuff, but one appointment tomorrow, you know, so I think it's just funny again that people get stuck in this mind shift of thinking people are too busy for them when in all reality, I guess I always like to be like, don't you want to work with the busy people? Like, I want to work with the busy people. I want to work with the people that are, that are in the know, that are boots on the ground, that have all of those things readily available to them. So I think the biggest point is, right, how you do it all is you don't once you get to a certain level, it's being able to get those right people. And we've also talked about sometimes you realize that the right people aren't in place and you have to be willing to make those changes too. I think that you and I talked to a lot of people and it's a lot easier as an outsider looking into someone's business to be like, that doesn't make sense. I mean, you've done that to me, right? And we've made changes, but you have to be willing to make those changes. You know, you know I have had conversations with people that we both told them like that, that looks problematic, that might cause extra stress. And sometimes it takes people six months to get to that point of being able to remove whatever that is. I think, you know, you make a good point about the quitting or for me it's more of the saying no. I think it's a matter of really too as you grow finding the things that bring you joy. and I've removed myself from a lot of, you know, organizations. It feels really weird because again, like that filled a lot of my time, which again, people probably think I'm, my time is filled working with those organizations where I've taken a step back. Um, and again, it's weird, like it's this weird lull of, but I'm also okay, like, oh God, I remember like a year ago I would have been stressing about getting 100 baskets and all those types of things, right? And, when it just doesn't fill you the same, and when you do really want to work on your craft, whether that's, you know, specifically in, in real estate or speaking or whatnot, you have to find that time that you're willing to invest more into yourself. I think that's the other thing that we talked about is, you know, over the last week, it's like the people's kind of bullshit excuses, right? Like, I heard a lot of that. And it just shows to me, like, some of those people really do need someone in their corner to call them out. A lot of people want to be better, do better, but I kind of just stuck in this pattern of, I think, waiting for someone to pull them out of it when in all reality, like you typically have to pull yourself out of it. But you make a good point of, you know, if you're not willing to invest in yourself, how are your clients supposed to invest in you? And I think that that's where people get stuck is, you know, they're just doing status quo. They want to get to the next level, but they just won't invest. And I guess What are your thoughts or intake as far as not investing in yourself?

I think that the first step is you have to look in the mirror on everything, right? And you have to have that realization yourself. And one of the things I've learned is that you have to be able to get whoever you're talking to on the other side to be able to speak it so it actually becomes true. We can point fingers, we can tell all day long, we can show all day long. But until that they actually speak the truth and have that realization themselves, you're not going to change. So I think it's that first step is being able to admit it. But also it's this thing of like, oh, I can't afford to hire a coach. Oh, I can't go afford to be able to go to this workshop or whatever else. All bullshit excuses. Right? Like these things that people are saying and there are of course legitimate things that are happening. But when you see these individuals post on going all these vacations or partying every weekend or all of these different things that like, cool, well, in reality, it's just not a priority for you. And so because it's not a priority, you are not realizing that you need to be able to do it. You understand something needs to shift. So I think investing in yourself is the number one thing that you can do. changing your actions and changing your methods and procedures and all of that. If you want to change an organization or you want to change a team or you want to be able to impact others around you, the very first step is yourself. And so I have a really hard time and I get really passionate about when we talk to people about doing these different types of things and they continuously give us these bullshit excuses. Really, I'm kind of now to the point like, cool, I'm just gonna remove you off of my list 'cause I'm not gonna waste my time. I see it in you, you deserve to be here, but the ball is in your court. And not that that is a sales tactic by any means, I guess it kind of is, but like in reality, I'm not giving you my energy if you're not willing to give the same energy that I'm providing you to yourself. And I think that being exclusive like that and being a little aggressive with it, I know my personality is different than a lot of people's, but that's what people need to hear. People need to hear the cold, hard truth. And I don't know what movie is if you can't handle the truth, right? Whatever it is.

Yeah.

But like you, you like Robert De.

Niro or I can see it in the courtroom, yeah.

But yeah, it's really wild to me that Oh, I want it, but here's my excuse. Oh, I can't change. Here's my excuse. And you know, like the thing that I used to tell myself all the time, because I used to be one of those people. I used to, you know, oh, no, nobody can do it as good as me. I don't need the help, right? Like, I'll figure it out myself. I can't afford it, right? If it's something I truly want, even if I can't afford it, there's a way. If there is a will, there's a way. There's credit cards, there's payment plans, there's how can you make, you know, can you switch or can you trade out something? and in real estate, we're in the world of negotiation. And people in those seats that are complaining or whatever, they're not even negotiating. They're just, oh, let me just go on to the next one and let me continue this lifestyle of bitching and complaining. Like, crazy.

Well, and I think the other thing of that too is like, right, like with coaching or whatever it might be, something that's gonna improve what you're doing, right? you. My intentions are always that, like, you increase your sales.

Right.

So, like, by having more sales, that's the ability to pay off those credit cards or whatever so that it paid off your investment. You know, one thing I was trying to think of, like, calculating as far as going to a work conference, like, if we heard a lot about being cost prohibitive, which I definitely understand there is a, a cost of travel and hotel rooms and the conference itself. You know, one thing I encouraged one of my agents in my office was to look at that over a yearly basis. So I think I guesstimated like, let's say it's $2,500, right? I tried to do the math of what it might be for flights, a couple nights in a hotel room, a conference ticket, $2,500 divided by 12, just over $200 a month. So, you know, if you look at your spending and that's just to say, like maybe you can't put away for one month, but then one month you have three great closings and you could put away for six months, right? Maybe that's something that you work out with your brokerage, like, hey, can you help hold these funds for me so that I can't touch them? I think that we could just try to get creative of, you know, am I willing to put aside $200 a month to potentially go to a conference, meet a new referral source that I didn't have before, go to a breakout, learn something new that I didn't learn before that changes the trajectory of my business. I think, you know, getting focused on, it's just a big number versus the outcome of what can happen. And I mean, example, right? Like we met at a conference.

Yep.

But what if I wouldn't have gone to that or you or I hadn't gone to that conference? Like we wouldn't be here having these discussions. So it's just amazing the people that, that you meet, you know, throughout this time of, of conferences and get togethers and people can literally change the trajectory of your life if you're willing to put yourself out there.

I mean, let's even break the $200 down even further. $200 divided into days, right? Like it rounded up $7 a day.

Yeah, that is someone's Starbucks order.

Right, that's a Starbucks order. That's a cocktail. That's, you know, like look at all the different things that truly is that's an order off Sheen. Like, figure this out. If you really want it, you're going to figure out a way to be able to invest in yourself and actually show up and be there. You know, I shared on one of the Facebook groups about utilizing your credit card properly and making sure that you have points. And if, I mean, we spend a lot of money to run a brokerage and to run our own businesses. So why not actually make money off of that or utilize the points off of it to be able to pay for the flights or the hotel? Figure out how can you maximize your dollar, right? It's a bullshit excuse that people are telling themselves.

Well, and I did that not only for the company, but on my personal, as a realtor, right? everything that I'm spending. So, you know, if you were to talk to people in banking, there is a lot of fraud now in checks, right? A ton of fraud in checks. And I used to write a lot of checks between the photographer, the newspaper, all those types of things. I switched them all over to my miles card. Right. And it's just accumulating miles so that whether we want to travel personally or for work, I got a boatload of miles that I can just. take out for that. And it's just leveraging your money is what it is versus paying those same exact things and getting nothing out of it.

Well, and I don't know about you, when I first started, I was not the best about categorizing my expenses.

No.

You know, everything would just basically go on one and then I would have to go through at the end of the year and try to be like, is this personal? Is this per, you know, on the professional side, like what side is this? Now, if you think about that and you run all your expenses through your credit card, there is your full expense, you know, I mean, gas even, right?

Like gas on that credit card only. Like I didn't have to pull out every receipt or whatnot. It's all on that credit card. Like my bookkeeper knows everything and every now and then, right, I'll try to get some bonus out of something that personal that we're gonna buy. But then I know, like, hey, this was a personal purchase, but we used it on this card, right? But again, it's just making your money work for you versus just spending it and not having it invested somewhere, but. I think that's just something for people to think about is, I remember when we first started talking to a financial advisor and he wanted us to put $100 a month away and I was like, no. It's really funny, this is probably like seven years ago and so then I made them automatically withdraw it because I was like, if I just don't see it, better idea for me. So again, think of something like that, like what if you just set it up with your bank that $10 a day gets moved into a savings account, right? And I had that discussion with an agent too. It doesn't have to be that you're putting thousands and thousands of dollars away, but if you started with $10 a day and now you can go to a conference or you started with $50 a month and you put that away for a weekend away, it's just when you're not actually putting it at once or thinking about it, it just seems to accumulate and you're like, oh, look at that. I do have all of that there.

You know, a really good book. And for this topic right here is the prophet's first book, right? Like, I mean, it literally goes through about how, what percentage you should be pulling from every check and to which account and then basically hiding those accounts so you can't see them or having them in a different Bank so you don't have the, the want or the little ick to go spend really quickly, like, making it to where you're almost tricking yourself. Like, you know how you tick. you know, like at least, I mean, I know if the money is there, I'm gonna see it and I'm like, Ooh, let's go swipe. Let's go have a big fun day, you know, type of thing. But if I see that it's limited and I see that, you know, I need a hustle and I need to, I know I need to make X amount of dollars for my bills. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put my ass in gear and I'm gonna run for it. So if your brain is wired like mine, trick yourself. and yes, you know in the back of your mind that you have these other accounts, but you know you set those up for a reason and you can't see them, so you're not gonna automatically run and pull those numbers or pull those funds out of there.

So, yeah, we actually started the profit first account, I think maybe two years ago, and we put some extra money in there, like when we weren't paying our rent, when we were kind of in the in-between or whatnot. And then we had an opportunity that a bank was holding a special for, like, a 5% CD for eight months. And I was like, literally just took the money out of our savings account, put it in that CD, letting it grow for seven months.

Like, right.

It's just money that we're trying to make money and trying to make a profit. So we can still add to that by using the profit first. I mean, that's helping us up. So if we want to make a change at the office or if we want to do something, you know, really big or something, like we have the ability to do that because we we're just consciously putting away of each check.

And again, like, where did you learn all of that from?

Well, you told me to read the book. And then I read the book.

But like, I learned from a conference in another person, right? Like, and so this is the trickle effect of how you go in because you're investing in yourself. Like, you invested in working one-on-one with me. And that was a recommendation that I had for you. You have to have these investments into yourself for professional development and personal development so that you can then see that impact roll over onto your business side.

Well, I think the other part of that is there is a recommendation, but you also have to do the follow through. Yeah. I mean, because right, we make recommendations to people a lot and then you see them like six months later and it's the same situation. You know, I think that is more or less what we talk about is people just get in their own way, like over and over and over again.

And it's the simplest things that we tell ourselves that they're not going to answer their phone because they're too busy.

Well, I think even, you know, you met, you mentioned something about being left on unread and we're in sales.

You know, I'm doing.

I don't always leave you on unread just when I'm like really sick, but.

Anyway, I know, I know, like, and I had to tell Ryan that too. So they're either at volleyball and she doesn't want to tell me or she really is sick. So. But no, like even after this follow up, you know, leaving a conference and, you know, I'm going to call people out right now, like, I'm not going to call you out by name, but every single person at that conference is in sales trying to sell something. And when, you know, I was I'm reaching out and doing my follow up and saying, hey, it was great connecting with you. you expressed interest into this event, the broker fast track retreat, how would you like to move forward? Crickets. Crickets. And so the only thing that my mind can go to is either you don't have enough balls to say, no, I'm not interested, or two, this is exactly the reason why your production and your units are lacking and you're not being profitable because you actually have people reaching out to you and you don't even have the common courtesy, the decency, to make a response or say, Hey, see your message. I'm busy. Give me a little bit of time and I'll follow back up with you, regardless if it's yes or no. So I just think it's kind of just crazy to me of we're in sales. We bitch about that we aren't doing well enough or whatever the case may be, but you can't pick up the phone. You can't respond to a message. Maybe you have people literally knocking on your door and you're just not willing to get your ass off the couch and open the door.

Well, and I'll be honest, I had a situation sometimes I think we also assume that we know why someone's reaching out. So, right, I was super sick on Tuesday, like down and out, right? Not a good day. So, a lot of phone calls I just didn't take because I knew mentally I wouldn't be able to take them. But I missed a voicemail that didn't come through until the next day. And it was a realtor from New York that was calling with a referral. Right. And my heart sank because it had been more than 24 hours. So I called and she's like, no, I completely understand that people are busy and here's the information. So still got it. That worked out right. But another person had called and just had a missed call. And normally they call for a donation. So I was like, I'll. I'll call them back. I'm sure they want the donation that we normally do every year. Called again, like, later on in the day, but I was on a call. So I was like, that's strange. So then he called again on Wednesday morning, and I was, like, literally made sure that I was in a place I could answer it. And, nope, they had referred me to someone that was looking to sell their. Right. So I'm thankful that they know that I'm good for it. And he's like, I thought it was strange. And he's like, now, I know that you're sick. It makes sense, but. Same thing, right? Like I just assumed that calling for what they normally call would so it is, you know, our phones are our lifelines and sometimes they can be overwhelming, but as long as we take a minute to realize that that's what literally brings us money at the end of the day and if you do miss a call, you know, try to call it back, but if you leave people on unread, likely they're gonna move on within a short amount of time.

It's really funny because now that you said it, I didn't really realize that at the time, but one of our staff could not go to the conference. And so there was an agent that I knew would really benefit from it. I'm an outside company and a different brokerage within the same franchise. So I called him. They went to voicemail. I was like, Hey, give me a call back. He called me back probably about 20 minutes later and he was like, oh my God, I didn't have the number saved and it's from Kansas. And I was like, who is this? And I didn't answer. and then he was like, then I heard your voice. Then I knew I was in trouble because when you were here, you said if you have every single buyer that was looking to ever buy their name and phone number in your phone, you would have no issue. Right? Like, but so why are we trying to, like, go ahead and field these calls and screen them? Even some of the stuff that comes across as potential spam, that's not true.

Like, a lot of them aren't. Right. Like, yeah, really, it's a bam, just hang up. Right.

I mean, at the end of the day, sorry, I'm not interested. Thank you, bye click. Yeah. What does it hurt? Like, at least answer the freaking phone and that gets you into the habit versus you just pushing it aside and not giving the other person on the.

Other side their common decency. Well, and I always say too, like, we always talk about how some of our closest friends are out of a real estate transaction, right? Many of my close friends came out of real estate transaction, like, What great human did we miss adding into our lives because we didn't take that call?

I think that's great. Didn't take the call. I didn't show up for myself. Didn't invest to go to that workshop. Didn't invest to go to that conference. There's so many opportunities that are literally right there that can change the entire future of yourself, of your business, and how it can lead you to the next opportunity.

I couldn't agree more.

All right, great talk. Tune in next time. And as always, if you have any topics or you would like to be a guest, please reach out. We would love to hear from you.

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