KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Burn the Boats Ditch Excuses, Lock In, and Get PAID in 2026

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Summary:Chris Craddock delivers a high-energy "no-excuses" roadmap for 2026, shifting the focus from passive marketing to aggressive lead generation. He introduces the concept of "unreasonable goals," arguing that success requires an unreasonable level of activity: specifically, having at least ten two-minute real estate conversations daily. Craddock also provides a 2026 economic forecast, predicting that a new Fed Chairman and lower interest rates will release "shadow demand" by August, creating a massive opportunity for agents who have already built deep pipelines.

If I can't ask my friends to help me when it comes to building my business, when I literally am not going to put food on my table if I don't ask for their help, and they get upset at me, they get bug hurt that I call them and asked them for help in that first year, in those hard years, then they're not my friends and screw them anyway. Screw them. Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year.

Don't follow the herd. Be uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Saferight. Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast. This is the beginning of the new year, and we are getting started. So let's rock and roll. If you're joining me live or seeing this on Facebook, I'm in a little pod cube at the office.

I had to find a place. My normal spot was taken, but I am here with you. And I have had a lot of yelling from playing pickleball and other stuff over the break. So my voice is kind of going out. and yes, I do get fired up when I play big a ball. And no, I don't play with just Gladys and Mabel, the 90-year-olds.

I have a lot of fun. It's super competitive, and I love it. So any of you pickleball people out there, hit me up, and we can talk, and it'd be awesome. So with that said, we're going to get into what should we be thinking about? How can we win in 2026? I want to start with this. If you want to win in 2026, you need to be thinking more than just about the next transaction. Obviously, the next transaction is how you start to win, but to really run up the score,

you've got to be thinking about how to build wealth. Let's start with transactions. If you want to be doing more transactions in 2026, let me throw out how you will do this. It's not a secret. You've got to 100% talk to more people. My friend Brent Daniels has a program. It's called TTP, talk to people, and literally it's one of the most successful real estate investor coaching businesses out there. And you know what he teaches that you need to talk to more people.

It's not brain surgery. It's not rocket science. It's talk to more people. It's the law of large numbers as you talk to people. I don't know everybody you're going to say, oh, Chris, Chris, blah, blah, blah. But let me tell you about a failure that I had for years and years and years. For almost a, let me see, like almost 25 years, I have not been super fit. Here's the crazy thing.

I went to the gym, but I was not fit. I tried isogenic. I did P90X for three years. It's supposed to be 90 days. I did it for three years. I'm an over-achiever. What else did I do? I did Nume.

I did every shake meal replacement you can think of. I did Weight Watchers. I did all the different things. And everybody that I talked to when I said I needed to get fit, I had so many of my friends that said, Chris, you seem like one of my more fit friends. Like, why do you need to get fit? Like, why is this a big thing? And they would say that, and these were my unfit friends, they would say that because

like I looked like a guy that went to the gym. And actually, one of my friends when I was in my late 20s used to joke with me because he knew that it would just burn me to my core. He would say, oh, Chris, you look like a guy who used to work out. And I was like, how dare you? How dare you say that I look like a guy that used to work out? It was the biggest insult ever. And so if you ever want to insult one of your guy friends,

go tell them that they look a guy that used to work out because it burned me. It burned me deep. But with that said, when I finally decided to get serious about my first, fitness, it changed. Like, everything changed. So what happened was I started tracking my food. And as soon as I started tracking my food, I realized that I ate about a quarter of the protein that I should eat every single day. And I had about six times the carbs that I should eat every day. And I was eating way more calories than I thought I was eating. That is the crazy thing. I thought I was eating way less calories than I was, but there was so much mindless eating where I just would walk by a table and grab like some

of the pretzel chips or I would be at a party and just, you know, harvest half of the shirkutory board into my belly. And like I just, I didn't realize how much it was until I started tracking it. And then all of a sudden I'm like, holy crap, I just ate 8,000 calories in the last couple, you know, couple hours. And then it was just, it was game over. And of course, course I couldn't get super fit. So I lost 30 pounds, got to 10% body fat, and understood this was how you win. So if you're looking for fitness advice, you know, all of that, I'd be happy to introduce you to the person that helped change my life as I started to learn what I needed to do. But the biggest piece was I started tracking. So now what is this? This is a real estate podcast. It's not a fitness

podcast, but it's also just what I've learned. So here is why this is important on a real estate podcast. I have talked to so many real estate agents. I have coached so many real estate agents over the years. I have trained so many real estate agents over the year. I just had a conversation with five agents in December. And all five of them did not hit their goals this year. And so the first one I talked to and I said, all right, go into your follow boss and tell how many conversations you had about real estate there were two minutes or longer in the last week she pulled it up it was seven divide that by a week and how many times were people talking about real estate in the last week one time a day or let's let's be generous here and say there were only five

business days so one point is that two whatever whatever that is one point two times a day they were talking about real estate, less than two times a day. That is never going to get you successful. You know, somebody once said, asked me, they said, how many conversations do I need to have? And here's the deal. For Redux, like our motto is you need to have 10, two minute or longer conversations every day, and you need to have at least a half an hour of personal development every day. That's how you win. But let me go a little, a step further. How many conversations you need to have? You need to have as many as it takes. Like my word for this year is unreasonable. Why is it unreasonable? My wife was like, oh my gosh, I don't, I don't like your word. What do you mean by

that? As we got into it, I was like, well, here's the deal. I'm going to be unreasonable about my goals. I don't want anybody to listen to my goal and say, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I want everybody to hear my goal and say, they should roll their eyes. They should say, oh, who does this guy think he is, that he thinks he's going to do this? I want people to think that my goals are so stupid because they're so unreasonable. But you want to know how to accomplish unreasonable goals? You got to be unreasonable. You got to say, how many people do I need to talk to in a day to hit my goal?

as many as it takes, as many as it takes. I don't care. Like, when I started, the reality is everybody in my office, I was in a KW office walking around all day with my headset on, just call them one person after another, after another, after another, after another. And you know what? I had a family. I knew that if I didn't make money,

my family was not going to have food on their table. I had friends that didn't want to be my friend anymore because I was just calling all the time to every single person I knew about real estate. Now, granted, I was like, I was not a skillful salesperson when I started. I was not at all. I was more like a freaking hatchet man, like just asking everybody. But I was running scared. I knew that if I didn't ask all my friends to help me, that I wasn't going to put food on my table.

So I was asking everybody. And I had some friends that are like, oh, Chris just, you know, he just calls about real estate. He just asks about real estate. I'm tired of hearing it. And you know what? The reality is where I landed on that is if I can't ask my friends to help me when it comes to building my business, when I literally am not going to put food on my table if I don't ask for their help. And they get upset at me.

They get bug hurt that I called them and asked them for help in that first year. in those hard years, then they're not my friends and screw them anyway. Screw them. Like, I'm willing to help my friends. My friends call me and ask for help. I want to help them. And anybody that says, hey, when my friend calls me and asks for help, when my friends call me and ask for stuff, like, how dare they ask?

Screw them. You don't need them in your life. Get them out of your life. Who cares? On to the next people. There are other people that are better than them that you can have in your life. So I just want to be super clear about that. So what does it take to win in 2026?

Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Do whatever it takes. If you need to talk to 100 people a day, talk to 100 freaking people a day. But whatever you do, track your numbers and know that if you're not talking to at least 10 people, I'll tell you what, you don't have a full-time job. You have a freaking hobby. Chris, you're being a jerk. Chris, you're, yeah, you know what?

I'm tired of soft words. soft words, create weak people. I want to have hard words here. But I'll tell you what, anybody that interacts with me, you know that I come from a place because I care about you and I want you to win. That is who I am at my core. I care about you and I want you to win. And I'm tired of coddling. Like, I don't do that with my children. I don't do that with other people, but I've done that with people in the business world too often. You don't need to be coddled. You need to be told, do whatever it takes to win. And you know what? If you're talking to less and 10 people a day, you are not doing whatever it takes.

What else are you doing with your day? What else are you doing? The fridge doesn't need to be cleaned. You are a real estate professional. If you want to continue to be a real estate professional, make your balls. So 2026 projections. Where are we at? I'm going to share with you my projections.

We're going to end a little bit early today. So we got about five minutes left here. But I am going to share with you my projections. All right. So here they are. My projections. for 2026. I believe that the interest rates are going to continue to go down. And here's why I believe that. I think Trump is, you know, one, we see the job market needs to be like it's not going great.

Trump wants interest rates to go down. He absolutely does. He has been putting so much pressure on Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell is saying, I don't give a rip. I don't care. I am not going to kowtow to what you're saying. He still has lowered the interest rates over the last, however many, like I think we had three interest rate drops in the last, in the last three months. And I think we're going to continue to see interest rate drops coming on. And come, come May, Trump will not be reappointing. Jerome Powell. There's not a world in which Powell gets reappointed. Like, not a chance. So, what happens in May? Trump is going to appoint a new chairman of the Fed. Now, let me ask anybody

that has followed anything political over the last, over the last year, is Trump at a place like them or hate him? This is not a political love story or bash story. This is, hey, what is going on? So like him or hate him, here's the question. Is he at a point in his presidency where he cares what anybody else thinks at all? Absolutely not. Nobody, nobody will think he gives a rip of what anybody else thinks. So the only thing he cares about is what he thinks right now. And this is not a judgment against or for him.

It's just what he is as far as I see it. So what he thinks is that the housing market will stimulate the economy. Low interest rates will stimulate the economy. And he is like, I want low interest rates. So he's not going to be looking for somebody that is a political choice. He is in his last term. He's not going to be reelected. He doesn't give a rip what anybody else thinks.

And he's going to do what he sees as the best thing. you know, for business and for the economy, which will also benefit him as somebody that has, that does business and also owns a lot of real estate. So love them or hate him. This is just what is, it is what it is. And what he's going to do is find somebody that is such a freaking low interest rate hawk that he is going to appoint as the chairman of the Fed, who he's going to bring interest rates down. And what's going to happen is, is when interest rates come down, I don't know what the impact will be to inflation, but it will probably drive inflation up a little bit.

But you know what happens when inflation gets driven up? The price of hard assets is that hedge against inflation, it will go up a little bit, which is the housing market. So it's kind of pushed the housing market up. We also know that there is shadowed demand out there right now. Anybody in the real estate market that has worked with sellers over the last two, two and a half years, I can promise you, you have had sellers say the exact same thing to you. And this is what they have said.

They have said, I don't want to sell right now because I've got a 3% interest rate. I don't want to go from a 3% interest rate to a 6% or a 7% interest rate on the next house. I'm going to hold on to this. or maybe they move from their last house to the new house and they say, I make more money putting my money in savings than I do. Like my savings account and my bank makes more money than what my interest rate is. I don't want to sell this house. So when I'm moving to the next house, I'm going to hold on to the old house.

So what that does is keeps the old house. Now, what happens when interest rates come down to like mid-fives or like, low fives, all of a sudden, that gap becomes small enough that all the people holding on to their old interest rates are willing to sell. All those people that say, okay, my interest rate was here. I need to sell to buy the new one. You know what? A 2% jump in an interest rate, I don't want to swallow that pill, but I'm willing to swallow that pill. And you will see the market open up. And all the shattered demand will be there. All these. buyers that say, I will buy when interest rates are close enough to where my current interest rate is,

they will sell and buy and then we'll see a lot of velocity in the market. And we will see a massive, change. So that's what I see as what's happening in our interest rate or in our world coming up. So what does that mean to us right now? What it means to you as a real estate professional is get out there, Talk to people, talk to more people, and then talk to more people. I started this off by talking about pickleball. One of the pickleball pros that I follow says, when you're hitting the ball, you may think you're getting low, get lower. Right?

And that is the advice of somebody who's world class at pickleball. However low you think you're getting, get lower. Well, here's my advice to you. However many people you're talking to, talk to more people. build that pipeline. I can promise you you're going to find more and more and more people that are ready to buy and sell properties. And as soon as the interest rates come down just a little bit more, like the whole floodgate opens.

And if you're already in conversation with these people that are kind of wishy-washy on the fence and then all of a sudden housing gets a little bit more affordable, maybe it gets a little more expensive, but it gets more affordable in their monthly payment, then boom, you are ready to go and your pipeline is there. It's built. It's ready to go. And on top of that, I have a lot of friends that were in real estate in 2008, which was a much harder market than it is right now, much harder. They were in real estate in 2008. And a lot of them made a lot of money in 2008. So if you can make money in 2008 in the worst real estate crash in the history of all real estate crashes other than the Great Depression, if you can make money then, you can make money now.

And it's just how much work are you willing to put in? Now, listen, think about this. It may be hard. You may be swimming against the tide. But if you swim harder, you will outpace the tide. It's still going to be hard and it's still going to go. But while everybody else is willing to just stay still, think about being on the beach. Like you hang out on the beach.

your family is like right there in front of you, then all of a sudden you look and you realize you're half a mile down the beach because the tide has pushed you in. But if you're fighting against the tide by talking to enough people, then you will get out ahead of it. Now, granted, it'll feel like a grind.

Last year we were up year over year, we were up as an organization. But with that said, I kept joking. We're up, but I feel like we're winning an NFL game 9 to 7. Like we're winning with field goals. but we're still winning. But man, every yard was a grind. There was a time a couple years ago

where it just felt like the yards were just being given to us. It was like we were playing against our Washington commander's defense. Sorry, all you guys. And I speak this with great sadness in my heart about the defense we had this year in 2025 and 26, you know, where like it just opens up like Swiss cheese, right? It did not feel like we were playing against classic bears defense or classic Steelers defense. We were playing against, you know, defense that just opened up.

But over the last few years, that defense has become stalwart. It's been a fight. But the way to solve it is to talk to more people and to educate yourself and to get better at what you're doing. You're going to win in any market if your activity is more than anybody else and you're fighting to get better than anybody else. So with that said, that is how we win in this market. I want success for you.

I want you to win. And I'm not telling you anything that's a super magic bullet. I'm not telling you anything. And so many of you will just roll your eyes and say, oh, Chris, I prefer if you tell me about how I can post something on social media and get like 4,000 leads and everything else, then you're telling me to get on the phone and make calls. Yes, get on the phone and make calls. I'll tell you what, social media, there is a benefit to social media.

But I'll tell you what, if you spend all your time, time thinking about your social media or the color of your website or the color of your business cards or your whatever that's fine you can have a really pretty business but if you want to actually make money talk to people serve people help people the more the more people you help the more money you're going to make and and i'm going to give you my last little piece of advice here here's what i learned when i was like you know first year and i made a lot of my friends mad at me because all i did was call and I asked them, hey, do you know anybody looking to buy or sell real estate? And then I learned this. I went back to what I did when I was in ministry.

Every time I called somebody, I never asked for anything anymore after that. I didn't ask them about real estate. And granted, I was, you know, yeah, I was a surgeon with a freaking sledgehammer. I was not a surgeon with a scalpel early on. But then when I realized everybody I called, I'm going to call and find a, a way to offer them value, the more value that I offered other people, the more they wanted to help me, even in my friends. You get a couple asks of all of your friends, for most of them. The ones that won't let you ask ever, screw them. You don't need them in your life.

But for the average friend, you can ask a handful of times, but then eventually you've got to start giving value too. So I start calling. And even now, I call and I add value. I offer value. I say, how can I help you? How can I serve you? What can I do? Can I give me? Can I connect you with any vendors I have? Can I connect you with any friends that I have? What can I do to serve you? And once I started serving them, that was when the world opened up. Because there's a law of reciprocity.

You give somebody a gift, they want to give you something back. That's why people offer free samples at the mall, because they know that if you give them something for free, you're probably going to buy something from them. I still remember somebody like, I walked by and somebody put hand cream on me, and I ended up, like, wanting to buy hand cream because I felt like I owed them something. And I'm like, and my wife walks up and she's like, oh, you don't want that hand for what are you doing? And I'm like, what am I doing? Like I felt like I got caught in like a witch's spell, you know, like that I had to buy this ham cream because they gave me a free sample of it. And then all of a sudden my wife was like, you just snap out of

it. Don't be an idiot. And so that's that important thing for us is to remember. You give value to somebody, they're going to want to give something back in return. And that is how the world works. And frankly, that's how to be a good friend. You just call and add more value than somebody could ever give you in return. But when they know that the way that they can return the favor is to give you referrals, then you make a whole heck of a lot of money by just being a really good friend to people. And whether that is new leads, whether that's a long-term friend, whatever it is, every single time you get on the phone, just think, I want to add more value than I take. And if you do that, I promise you, you will get so much business.

We're going to continue going through 2026, and we are going to absolutely blow the barn doors off it. And if you want coddling talk, it's probably not going to be me this year. But if you want somebody that's going to give you the tools to win, this is just go and do it. We're going to talk to the tools, and we're going to talk to some great people this year. If you want that, continue to tune in. give a review, tell me, hey, if you think that I'm an idiot, that's fine. Just put that in the comments. If you think that this is helpful, please put that in the comments. And you know what, reach out to me on Instagram if I can do anything to serve you. And until then, go out, live uncommon, kick butt,

take names, and talk to more people. Go get it. Boom. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to chriscratic.com.