KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Escaping the Trap of Urgency: How to Focus on What Truly Matters

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

Summary:This episode tackles one of the biggest challenges for real estate agents: the difference between being busy and being productive. The speaker breaks down the "Trap of Urgency," where agents spend their days putting out small fires instead of focusing on high-leverage, income-producing activities. Listeners will learn a practical framework to identify their most important, non-urgent tasks—like proactive lead generation and relationship building—and a system for time-blocking them to ensure long-term business growth over short-term reactivity.

Welcome back, friends. It is the Grand Cran Master, Aaron Hendon. The Cranmaster? The Cran Master. Am I a Cran Master? You were the Grand Cran Master. Excellent. And I am your Uki.

I am your Uki Crusangel. Wow. You know, and Uki is the one they train on in martial arts. You're the one that gets like punched and thrown and knocked it on. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. I had a friend who was an Aikido master guy. He was like, he was like, hey, come up here and help me demonstrate. something you'll be the uki and so i was the yeah anyway ukey and yeah and cranmaster

cranmaster isn't a thing cranmaster's not no i made that up but okay fine yeah but but being taking the purple crayon for a walk i figured you know you're the cranmaster today i'll think i love you know i'm big on cranberry juice by the way so um and the other great reference for crayons are um there's this great new movie uh a relatively new movie this point called my old ass yeah with oh i think i've seen that yeah i've seen the trailer yeah on netflix and it's with uh what's her name who we love Aubrey plaza uh-huh and it's it's a spectacular movie it's just it's it's just fantastic and they're cranberry farmers i'm giving nothing away by oh got it okay that piece nice um but they're cram and it which is such an oddball

profession right yes there's only just a just just be clear. When I say Crayons, I mean the Crayons, the purple crayons. Oh, the Crayon master. The Crayon. Not as in a Cranberry master. I hear short for Cranberry. But you were like the Crayon. Crayon. What are you from New York? You enunciate everything. That's okay, man. Okay. The Cran master. Ah, the crayon master. All right, let's stop delaying. Let's get into this conversation. All right. Well, that was the conversation that we wanted to have today was just that whole world. of, no, but taking the crayon for a walk, you know, that's, yeah, yeah, right, right. That's our, that's the flag we fly around here, right? That's right.

So to clue you all in on where this conversation started, which may or may not matter, um, we've got a, uh, we're launching a mastermind again. And, uh, this is for people that have completed the nine week mindfulness training, how to live a grateful life. And, um, you know we're looking at what are the topics what's the context of that what's the container yep right where's that going to go and um you know so much of what we do around here is taking the crayon for a walk is like see what the crayon wants to draw and then yep being in a dance with that

right which some people might call listening for god's plan you knew i was going to get it in there What does God want for me now? Yes. Which is really not a bad context for that. You know, it's really not the, you know, I don't even have a problem with that. Where prayer is speaking to God, meditation is listening, and I get all my good shit for meditation. And, but there's a dynamic in being a CEO of, you know, CEOs in one hand, you're the visionary. yeah it's your company you have a purpose a mission a vision you are out to fulfill on something you

have a big why you know if you take all the conversations we've ever had around here you can begin to hear you know what matters to you what's your true east all those yeah what cathedral are you building cathedral yep yeah all those things are and you've been to whatever degree you I've been taking the crayon for a walk and seeing what opens up next and all of that is great. I mean, it's what we've been preaching.

And there's this and then my, and I had this experience this week where my wife took a launch your online program in seven days thing, course. And it was brilliant. I thought it was really well done. I don't remember the woman's, it's Alina something.

I don't remember her name, but she was really smart and good and authentic and not slick in it, you know, the ways that those things get to be, I don't know, they turn me off. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it was good. And one of the things that she has her students do, and I thought this was super smart and worth talking about, was, you know, you post. you make a Facebook post and you say I'm thinking about making a course that does X solves some problem that you are interested in solving yeah right what's the problem that you solve I'm in going to run a course my wife is doing a course for women that are depleted uh-huh from having given too much that's in a very short sentence that's who she speaks to that's her work right and you know if you're interested comment here and let's talk about it no price no course nothing and she's

alina the woman that teaches the course is clear don't write anything don't write a module don't do anything interview these people they're your target audience for the problem you want to solve. They heard the problem. They, you know, they heard it. They want it solved. So talk to them and find out in their words what they would want to get out of that course and then go build that course. Use those exact words in the marketing. Use those exact words in the design, build the modules out from what they tell you they want, what it would look like for them to have that solution. Right. And I thought, that's one possible way to let your customers take the crayon for a walk. Yeah. And then you go, you know, you're, you're going to, I don't know, follow them. You're going to

then go, you know, keep fulfilling what it is that they want in their, in their world. And we just, I just thought that was a really interesting way to, an interesting enough conversation because it was, it's different than me taking the crown for a walk. Yeah. It's not just my good idea. Right. It's not just what speaks to me from the universe. I'm out here listening to what my customers want.

And I thought, yeah, we don't, you know, in the world, the CEO-ness, that's a really, really useful and interesting dialogue, yeah. Yeah, Seth Godin years ago said, stuck with me. He said, don't find people for your products, find products for your people. And the whole thing was like, to your point, like in an entrepreneurial space, we can tend to be like, this is what I want to create. Now who wants to buy it? Hey, everybody.

I made this thing. Who wants to buy my thing? And he's like, listen, once you, specifically in the context of tribes, a thousand true fans like um you know you find your people once you found them what else do you want let me let me source that for you let me bring that to you and so i think that's very specific to what you're saying here which is ask your people what they want and keep give and you guys already found each other there's already trust so now that you found each other just keep finding out what do they want next and what do you want next let them take the purple crayon for a walk yeah that's you know it's

It's nice, too, because it dovetails in this whole world of mindfulness because I get to watch. This happens a lot when I write ads. Yeah. And in any kind of ad testing that you do. It's really the same thing with selling houses with pricing a house is you don't know shit. You have, you're going to start where you start. Yeah.

And you're going to use whatever genius you have to start. But you got to dance to what the market tells you. Yeah. You know, or perish. I mean, there's no, you know, right. No two ways, no other. That's it. So this is a really interesting way to go about soliciting from the market what it wants.

When you write ads, you know, if you're testing ads. ads. You don't know what headline's going to work. You don't know what language is going to work. You don't know anything about it. And you're sorting through to see which get the most clicks, which is the, which resonate most with your target audience. And you've got to be open to that versus, I mean, I remember, you know, when I wrote my first book, I was very, very attached to, no, this is what I want them to buy. which is why no one bought it because you know it's the problem real estate agents have one all they post is their open houses on social media because

no one is interested in the thing you're interested in that's not that's not the formula you're not jobs not to get them interested in what you're interested in your job is to get interested in what they're interested in find your drive find the same

find the people that are already interested in what you're interested in find a group of people but you know if all i'm interested in is real estate and how and i really was at the time very fascinated by the way i still am actually but the way real estate works the machinations of the industry where the consumer doesn't know is happening in the background and they have all kinds of misconceptions and and myths and making really bad decisions all the time in a really, really expensive proposition. And having really no way to know that they've ever made a mistake. Right.

As far as they know, they did the best, you know, it was fine, but they still don't know that they made massive number of mistakes. And no one's ever going to tell them. All that shit really bothered me. But, you know, it didn't bother them. It doesn't bother people. You know, that what they don't know, sure. And they don't know, they don't know, doesn't bother them. You can't, you cannot sell them a solution to a problem they don't think they have.

Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. So you got to find out what problems they already think they have and then find solutions for there. And then in those solutions, if you can illuminate, if you can get there trust enough to illuminate additional problems, great. But they're unlikely to just assume you know better about problems they don't think they have. If you slow it down and you think about meditation, I'm currently going through your nine week course and cohort and those spaces of noticing, seeing the thoughts as you're meditating, oh, I had a thought. oh there was another one and you're just watching the thoughts that there's a there's a stepping out

from behind the being the the one having the experience to the one observing the one having the experience and I think something I hear something similar in that when you're asking your people what they want there was like a instead of listening to what they say through the lens of the one having the experience I'm observing me listening to them like there's an opportunity to be really mindful of like, don't go in with any preconceived ideas about whether you can or can't do what they're asking for. Just sit with. It's as if what they're saying to you are like your own thoughts that you're observing. You're just observing what they're saying. And you go, like, is there anything I want to do with this? What do I notice about it?

What do I hear about it? Like, I don't, it's interesting because I don't think I do that a lot. I'm a good listener and I do listen, but I don't often, when it comes to business, I don't often ask them what they want because I'm very attached to what I want to create. Business for me is an art. Business for me is my self-expression. And I'm not interested in you telling me how to self-express. I want to find that out. But to your point about your first book, like I think my business could be producing a lot more than it's producing.

And I just haven't really asked people what they want. Yeah, it's interesting about that thing about art. Art is really, I mean, you know, I spent much of my youth. yeah in that world right with the art school and all that and all that righteousness and all the punk rockers and you know selling out and commercialization and the villainization of selling out right and how that's you know from you know that's always the death knell of punk is that's the call selling out yeah selling out right i remember bob we were talking about selling i was like we tried to sell out. We've been trying to sell out for fucking ever. No one's never been buying it.

We'd love to sell out, right? When they finally did with Touch of Grey. But it, you know, it's like, and then from the artist's perspectives, you know, there's all that judgment about there's a corporate sellout, right? Right. Right. You're just a shell. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's, you know, if you're at the same time, there's a context of, look, if I'm going to be of service to people, I need to meet them where they are. Yeah. You know.

Ooh, we just kind of moved into a tension here. And we kind of, when we talk about the tensions, I love it. We kind of just found that, like this tension between being of service and yet being self-expressed and really bringing your art to the world.

You know, shout out to Rick Rubin. Yeah. The creative act. Yeah, right. Because his thing is you never go to the fucking audience. Yeah, yeah, right. I wouldn't go to the audience asking what they want. It's not the job or the artist.

Ooh. Yeah, and I think, I think on one hand, that's completely valid. You don't go to the audience to ask them what they want, right? Because otherwise, because they don't know, right? And that's, that's an interesting thing, too. Yeah, there's an interesting tension there because you're, you know, Steve Jobs often said, if I ask people what they want, what, you know, what they want, they, I forgot what the, what he said is, but, you know, I don't know, but 10B4 was like

a faster horse, you know, faster horse, right. That's, because they're. not the visionary right right right um so there's that world of the artist right in which it is what you're creating and you're not you're the one taking the crayon for a walk and then when you get into the commerce of it yeah you know how do you then you then uh-huh yeah yeah i just yeah

yeah how do you then get that to sort out god i hadn't even thought about that particular tension about it but that's a real yeah think if you're going to be an artist if you're going to view yourself from the perspective of being an artist and i just yeah i just think there's an inherent it's interesting it's is there an inherent antithesis is

commercialization and artist's expression antithetical to each other well so yeah so I'm glad you said that because I was just as you were chewing on that I was just thinking about Ikegai which we've talked about before right where Ikegai is kind of this

it kind of holds the tension Ikegai allows for that tension because it's both it's both and it's both I'm trying to pull it up here it's do what you love What are you good at? What do you love to do?

What will people pay for? And what is the world need? What does the world need? Yeah. What can you be paid for and what does the world need? So it holds, like if you ask, hey, what do you need in this? I'm thinking about creating a course. What do you want it to include?

What do you need? And they say, and they deposit into the middle of the room or the Venn diagram. This is what I need. Awesome. And how I can solve that, what I'm good at and what I love. Here's how I can solve that is. listening is being mindful of what they said it's giving them space to take the crayon for a walk but it's also letting you take the crayon for a walk in terms of how you decide to serve that need

right so there we go yeah you got solved it that's right that's right because how you're solving it is your self-expression right yes right that's right um interesting it the whole the whole artist conversation is so funny is such an odd conversation because I, you know, I mean, I love, we love the book, you know, the Rick Rubin's book. Right, right. And I've loved his work for years. And, you know, even in all of that, it's funny, even in all that, I don't, I don't know

if you ever read the Beastie Boy book, but I did not. Oh, all right. So if you ever get a chance to listen to the Beastie Boy book, I never read it. I've listened to it. it's a fucking journey it's something different people read each chapter uh-huh like amy polar and oh okay uh nice just a whole variety of of different people read different chapters you know john malcovitch it's oh nice it's it's fucking outrageous it's great spike jones reads a Oh, wow.

A chapter. So it's fucking great. And, you know, this is really interesting. So Rick Rubin, right? The creative act. What do you write? What was the name of the book? The creative act.

The creative act. Okay. Don't ask the audience what they want. It's your expression. You go do you. Right? Yep. So the Beasie Boys and Rick Ruben,

Rick Rubin's the original DJ for the Beasie Boys. You know this? Okay. I didn't know that. Okay, yeah. So the Beasie Boys met Rick Rubin when, obviously, when they were all like 18 or 19, he was a student at NYU and he, you know, had, and he was the guy that, so he was there, DJ, went on their first tour with them and produced their album and produced run DMC. It started Def Jam Records and licensed to ill.

the first Beastie Boy album comes out on Def Jam and it's fucking global massive fucking unbelievable thing and the Beastie Boys are this stupid large you know act uh-huh and uh-huh and uh uh you know in their shows are all about them getting drunk and you know they're throwing beer all over the place and you know it's very much licensed to ill style right i mean if you've I didn't get into the BC boys until I never listened to a license to ill when it came out. That wasn't my thing when it came out. Yeah. So I wasn't part of all that. But that whole bro culture

of license to ill was a real thing. It was very you know, fight for your right to party. And by the time they got done with all the tours for that album, supporting that album, the Beasie Boys were like done with that. They were like, We don't really want to do this. This is not how many more, you know, large penises can we have on stage of go-go dancers and cages and drinking beer.

We don't want to be that act. That's not, right, right. We don't want to do that. Interesting. Okay. And Def Jam, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons were like, no, that's what works. That's what's selling. You have to, you have to make that album.

You have to give us another, you have to, they had a two album deal. and they were expecting that album and the beastie boys were like no we're not going to do that we're not doing that and rick rubin the creative act was like no that's that's what's selling that's what we need you to do and they were like fuck it they broke their contract with def jam and they moved to california and they never got another dime off of license to ill because they broke their contract with Def Jam Wow And

And then it was like another two years And they You know, they just were like Done with the industry And they were like Yeah, yeah It's not a thing for us Uh huh

We don't want to do this We don't want to do that And they just took the time They separated They moved from New York to California Or one of them Adam Yowke went to come forward. Anyway, they eventually wound up producing Paul's Boutique, which is where I found them.

And I don't know if you ever heard Paul's Boutique, but no. Okay, Paul's Boutique is someone after Adam Yalk died, I read a little tribute, you know, one of the big things, all the different tweets. And Paul's Boutique was the Chemical Brothers. and it was the the tweet was Paul's boutique took every song ever written and overlaid it with every word ever spoken and put it together. I mean the album is so fucking heavy

so heavily mixed and so intricately done. It's the greatest piece of work. It's one of the greatest piece of music I've ever heard of greatest albums of all time as far as I'm concerned just completely lasts and it's just unbelievable and nothing like license to ill. Yeah, yeah.

But I think it's interesting that here's Rick Rubin, you know, and 50 years later, like, you know, don't ever ask your audience what they want. And at the same time, when it came, when it, I don't know how he would be about it today. But, you know, I mean, Rick Rubin was as old, you know, it was like 25, two years old and in charge of a record company that, you know, it was like, hey, this fucking worked. And from the record company's perspective, was demanding that the beat,

and I don't even know that that's Rick Rubin's perspective of it. I know that's the Beastie Boys perspective of how that went down. Sure. But I think that's an interesting story about the tension there is that the demands of the commercialization upon the artist. And even someone who is so pro artist as Rick Rubin is now

Right Was so in the world of commercialization at that moment Was like no, it needs to be what we know is going to sell And Paul's boutique did terribly Did not hit And because most again, that's the way capital records promoted it And yeah Also different issues with the promotion of it

In In retrospect right when you go back and look at that album that's one of the great you would love that album it's unbelievable anyway I just think it's an interesting expression of that tension so I think if we look at our businesses like art we do have to respect that tension what's the market going to buy and then how can we fulfill on it while also building the cathedral we're interested in building it and honoring

where our crayon wants to go And an interesting way to do that is what I thought Alina's process was, which, okay, well, don't paint anything yet. Right. Find out what is interesting, how the market speaks about it. Yeah, yeah. Right. How does the market speak about the painting you're thinking of painting, right? And then if what they say is something you can deliver with authenticity, well, now you got a perfect match. Right. Why not? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And in the background of that, it's not saying, hey, what do you want to be, what do you want as a painting and then asking you to go become a car mechanic? Like, like what's implied in there is that there's a particular way you intend to serve people through the, the skills and the things that you love and that you're good at.

Sometimes we miss that because you might come into that and think so openly about, oh, they said they want that. So I have to go do something that I'm not skilled in. that's not what we're saying no and it's interesting too because you know i mean you look at the renaissance you know michael angelo it's just okay to take an extreme example all of it commissioned work i mean just like yeah paint the ceiling of a chapel what the fuck he's he's a fucking house painter you know i mean he paints murals right right he's he's a muralist it's that's a fucking mural that's you know that's as commercial as you get here's money paint this house uh-huh you know here's money carve me a statue of jesus i mean it's just not like it's straight up commercialism yeah and expression as it turns out what we hold up is the

great one of the greatest artists of all times you know the myth of the you know so there's there's that mythos of the starving artist. Yeah, we have to contend with the drunk blues man kind of thing that killed Janice. You know, you've got to suffer to sing the blues, that whole genre that killed Janice Joplin and so many people, you know, that whole world of that. You know, the way we look at, you know, pop music through that lens or, or, And it's not okay for artists to sell their work. I mean, that was always a big conversation in arts school.

And then, you know, then, and there's the opportunity for like, you know, when the Beastie Boy said, no, we're going to do it this way. The market caught up to them. Right. Right? They kept going and the market caught up to them. And, you know, in a lot of ways you can never predict that kind of thing. you know how to get if you're true enough to yourself so that's just all the tension there is to dance with yeah you know there's you taking the crayon for a walk there's your client customers

taking the crayon for a walk there's the line you're going to draw there's at what point is it selling your soul and at what point is it you know there's an interesting interview with harrison ford which i love um harrison ford um yeah he was not going to about, the interviewer was asking, does it ever make you feel stupid, you know, when you're there acting as the Red Hulk?

You know, do you just feel stupid and dumb? And Harrison Ford said, no, that's what the money is for. You know, and that's what the money is for. You know, and that's, and that is, you know, that way it's you know right is that is that's what the money's for you that keeps you from

feeling stupid they're paying me to do that they're they're paying me to do this i'll do that you know that and uh so everyone gets their own lines everyone gets you know to draw their own lines what you will do what you won't do you know yeah we tell our agents on our team all the time you don't have to work with everybody uh-huh yeah you know you don't get you can fire clients that are that client wants this from you and you're unwilling to do that great fire that client don't do that you know you don't have to you're not you're not their beck and call bitch is how we say it on the team like you know someone calls you at midnight don't pick up the fucking phone you're you're not that beck and call bitch you don't yeah it's not your job so um good you know but those are

all tensions worth feeling into for you yourself i like how mindfulness can play a role here in the in the sense of and this might be the lesson in a place to wind it down because i feel like there's a there is a if you're if you're in the inquiry of like what do they want versus what do i want to create if you're and you're you can get a little bit because i've been in this space you can bit get confused by which one am i going to listen to which one is it and i can't decide because there are too many it's too noisy in that space and mindfulness can be a really versatile tool in that like to really sit with and get present to what's here right now if you don't use mindfulness then what you're going to

try what are you going to use logic or a pros and a cons list of Benjamin Franklin close on yourself like well the pros of it are this and the cons of it I mean you know like if you want to be at peace with yourself for me I'm finding mindfulness really brings me a lot of peace with the decisions that I make. And then sometimes you could say some people will make decisions and they're still not at peace with the decision they made, but they're going to do it because that's what the market wants or this is what I said I was going to do. And I just think that there's something about mindfulness that brings a lot of peace to whatever decisions you make. Yeah. Yeah. It's a grant. It's you can trust yourself. Yeah. Right. When you get quiet and

all those biases sort of slow down and all the in order twos get seen for what they are you can make a call that you can trust and the ultimate in taking the crayon for a walk is knowing that no matter what you can't make a mistake yeah right do it or not is going to be the the next thing is going to open up so good yeah yeah love that good stuff man that's a good place to end up the crayon master ah the crayon master aaron the crayon master thanks for another great episode hey if you guys wanted to learn more about erin's next cohort um where can they go, Aaron. Thegratefulbreath.com.

It's how to live a grateful life in a fucked up world. And if you're in real estate, you can go to the Realtors Edge and sign up for how to live a grateful life in a fucked up industry. Nice. Love it. Yep, that's a great place to start gang. And then there are things on the back end of those experiences where you can continue this journey of mindfulness in different spaces that Aaron and I are working on creating.

So go to the Gratefulbreath.com or the Realtorsedge.com and learn more. Thanks for hanging out. If you'd like to subscribe to our channel, do that and leave a review. We'd love that as well. And until next time, peace.