KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Scaling Real Estate Teams Through Leadership Gravitas and Emotional Intelligence

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Summary:In this episode, Jon Kitchens and Tina Caul discuss the pivotal shift from being a top-producing agent to becoming a CEO who leads other leaders. Tina explores the concept that there are "no business problems, only leadership problems". She details her journey using Fortune 500 coaching frameworks, such as the "EQ Matrix" and "Kairos Circles," to move past growth ceilings. Real estate professionals will learn how to regulate emotions, unpack interpersonal triggers, and transition from high-support to high-challenge leadership environments to achieve exponential growth.

Seven-figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO. Welcome to the John Kitchens coach podcast experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. Get ready to think bigger and transform your business into a path to lasting freedom. What is happening to everybody, man? Thank you guys. Tune in to another episode of Expert Mentors Live, episode 312, and we've got the one and only Tina call back in the house.

Tina? What's up? What is happening? I was, you know, Iva always sends me, kind of before before we go, I always kind of get a breakdown, especially, you know, EML, multiple guests. And it looks like one, two, three, four, five, six. This is your eighth appearance on the show.

So I think you have the trophy. I think you're leading the way. You and Alex Piac and Joe Perso, right there, right there. You guys are all kind of the right. Yeah, six years that I first met you six years ago. at EXP. November 13th, 2020, episode 80 had to go from zero to 50 deals in a year. I think it was you and Kev. We had our own and we were. Oh, that's right. We were talking about one of the skill sets in this industry that travels really well. And that is the skill set of knowing what to

say on the phone to be able to get people to want to meet with you face to face. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we talked about, yeah, I think that the, 20 things. I still teach it today. I mean, it is the foundation of the business that never goes away. Never goes away. And, you know, the beautiful thing where you and I can go down a lot of different paths. And one of the ones that we were talking about offline. And it's one of our mentors that really anchored in the leadership side of things with us was Clayte Mask. When we were, we had the opportunity with Clayt and spending a lot of time with him. We were in his elite. program and really the high level mastermind.

And it was really cool how they did that. But by the way, Clayton is CEO of InfusionSoft. And it's key, whatever capacity that that tool is still around to this day. But we got into the high level mastermind. It was only like five or six companies. And you would have to go out to their office in Glendale. You'd have to go out, fly out three times a year. And I remember every time we would go, man, do we really got to go?

Do we like, man, man, got to fly, got to stay in the hotel right across the street, got to walk over. Man, do we going to do this? And every time, Tina, every time we were leaving her like, God dang, I can't believe we were questioning ourselves and thinking that we weren't going to come to this. But Clay taught us a lot, a lot around leadership and leadership principles. And it had a lot to do. It goes back to coaching. had a lot to do with with his coach at the time, Steve Hardison. And, you know, Steve's one of those guys where he only takes on 10 to 12 clients a year.

You write him a six figure check at the beginning of the year. You have to fly to his, and go to his house and sit down in his studio in the back. And it's just really being able to connect, but growing as a human, growing as a leader. And one of the mantras that we kind of pulled out of there was there are no leadership problems. There's only business problem. I mean, no business problems, only leadership problems. And you start to think. think back every, every situation, every, you know, bump in the road, everything throughout, like,

I just think back over, you know, 21. I got licensed now in January of 2005, got got on board with Kinder, came into the industry in October of 2004, and I look back just on this career in the real estate space, every situation can be traced back to a leadership problem, every one of them. So you look at like what's the skills to develop. And even back to our first conversation right here on this show, it was the skill of what to say. Leadership's no different. It's the skill to constantly be in pursuit of and constantly to be able to develop in the

game kind of where we're at. This is all leadership. Everything you do every day is leadership. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. 100%. And I think that's, you know, when we.

talk about or I talk to other agents that are building teams and, you know, they ended up being the top agent in their brokerage. And then naturally the next step was, okay, let me bring more humans around me for help. This is my experience, but I find that it's very common. I'm selling 130 homes. I need help. Hey, you have a heartbeat. Take all the buyers. Now it's, I have this partner. Now we need more staff. Now we bring more people on. And then I'm still the leader, but I'm leading buyers and sellers, which I do really well. And then all of a sudden there's conflict, there's jealousy, there's posturing, there's titles, there's no one listens to my ideas, there's, you know, I'm the leader when you're not here. Who's the boss when you're not here? And you just go,

oh my God, everybody, like shut the F up. Like we're just selling houses here. Like that was me. I'm like, why are these things so important? Who cares about titles? We all fluff the pillows. You know, we all, that was my, my thing. We're all, I mean, an included. We're all going to be included in this. And I was pretending that I wasn't the leader, but I really was. And so they would look to me for vision, which I always had. I'm like, this is what we're going to do now.

But it never, I know for a fact, I never thought I'd be running an 80-person brokerage with staff and 55 agents. And there's a lot of people problems. And that's all that it is. And so I never really. understood what leadership was until I stepped out of leading buyers and sellers and then into this. But what happened for me was innately, I think some people have their own set of skills that they, you know, I think you're like this. You can kind of see the path forward. You come up with ideas. You're an observer of the environment. And I'm also that way. It's like, okay, this is happening.

I'm feeling this. This is my gut. It's my intuition, my discernment. And I took the team. team to where I naturally could. And then I hit a roadblock. I have a whole separate second leadership team. So we first hired friends and people, oh, you seem good in this role. Yeah, you should definitely be the sales manager. That's a great idea. And then you start to see it's not the gaps in the people, the people have the will. I didn't have the ability to train them, teach them, hire correctly, move them from seats correctly. So it was like we were all navigating from our gut. trying to do the best we could. And we did great in spite of ourselves. I mean, we were a top three team at EXP. And I'm like, I don't even know how we got here. I don't even know why people

like follow me. And so, but then again, you wake up and we, we've hit 700 to 800 deals every year for the last three or four years. And I'm like, we've hit a ceiling. So then we look around and we go, well, maybe it's it's that person. Maybe we need to get a new person here. Maybe we need to, And by the time we started pointing the fingers and I said to my operations manager, I'm like, well, it sounds like everyone else is the problem except you and I. And I said, I think it's you and I. I think we, we, I personally feel, I can't lead you to lead others. So we're all effed at this point.

Like there is a there is a ceiling that I've hit in my leadership lid. And no John Maxwell book and Tony Robinson. conference is going to get me through it. Like I have not learned the true skills of communication. So I read a book called Leadership Gravitas and the guy that, the coach, Eric Pfeiffer, anytime I read a book and it inspires me, I'm like, hi, Eric, you need to train us. And so I did. I reached out and I come to find out he works for Fortune 500 companies. He coach it. He coached the lions and, you know, true people that are leading different organizations than real estate. And so I hired them. And what I saw was, you know, like we have this whole now, you know, leadership cohort. Like we have a book. We have eight skills that we need to learn. So it's like we got to see into the matrix. We're like, oh, the problem is us. We don't have the tools to communicate with the people to lead them better because we have our own insecurities. And if we don't fix those first, we'll never be able to step into those leadership shoes. So so that's where we're at right now is like we're literally going through this. And I just.

took every member that leads other people on my team. And I'm like, okay, Daria and I learn this. And we can't teach it as well to everyone else that needs to lead people. Then we're also screwed. So we literally brought everybody in that leads humans. And we're all going to learn this together. And at first they were like, this doesn't feel good. This is new. You know, it's like that four levels of competence. So right now we're, we're consciously incompetent. Like we know we're incompetent in this. And I want to get to conscious. competence and then finally mastery, which is unconscious competence. So, so yeah, we're, we're literally in the infancy stage of learning leadership. And you would look at us and go, yeah,

but you've been around for 25 years. You're so successful. You've got it. Yeah, but it, but it got me to a point. And now it won't get you. Yeah. It's the whole what got you here, won't get you there. And I couldn't agree with you more, right? I just, I mean, I'm so anchored in the belief of you can't coach and lead another human until you can coach and lead yourself first. and that's kind of like the first unwritten rule of leadership is lead by example. But one of the things that you said there that's really, really interesting is kind of this concept of ones and threes. You know, the people that got you to a million in revenue are probably not the same people that can get you to three million in revenue. The people that got you to three million in revenue are probably not going to be able to ride with you to get you to 10 million in revenue.

And then 30 and then 100, right? So every new level, you have to unlock a new level of talent. Yeah. And very, very rarely can you find somebody that's going to ride through a stage or two with you, right? You know, you might find that person that kind of get you over the hump, get you to a million in revenue. And so it's not like listening in guys, real estate space.

It's not a million in volume. It's a million GCI, million top line revenue brings in. all revenue streams that you have, you know, from from the endeavor. And you're like, well, millions, not too much. Well, when you're selling $100,000 houses like, like we grew up selling. Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot of houses to get to a million in revenue. And so it does take, you know, pieces. But what starts to happen, Tina is, and it's the whole checkers and chess analogy. Right. And there's a great book called, called Checkers and Chess. It's a real short, real quick read. It's one of the best little simple leadership books.

And it's about this guy that gets mentored by kind of this under the radar grand chess master. And he has to go and he sits with him. But he learns all of the leadership in business and life lessons through chess. And that's where the whole checkers and chess analogy comes from. And it's like, listen, the board stays the same. Like if you step back and understand the two games, it's played on the same board. and what happens is that the game flips and you don't even realize it. Like you're just in the trenches, just like you were.

You're in the trenches. Hey, we're going. Hey, we sell houses. This is what we do. And then all of a sudden, you're looking around. You're like, holy smokes, the game changed. When did the game change? It typically happens around five or six people.

When you've got five or six people that you're responsible for, right? Like if I don't show up as the best version of me, if I don't step up and lead, if I don't make sure we're navigating and removing obstacles and roadblocks and providing opportunities and guidance and, you know, the consistency and the accountability, it'll slip out of underneath you in a hurry and it'll change. But it's about five or six. And so what happens in what you were just talking about is that the difference is the pieces become specialized. That's really the difference in the game, right? Checkers pieces are all the same. Yeah, you can stack another in can you to move around, but you only have certain moves.

Chess, you've got specialized pieces. You have your head of sales. You have your head of growth. You have somebody that's focused on marketing. You have somebody that is on the back end on the operational side. You've got somebody that's integrating and making sure that your ideas as head of company are being managed and being implemented. We're driving strategy.

We're focused on profitability. And those take specialized components once you get. it to a certain level. But that's all growth, right? That's just a lot of it is formed in the fires. Like you said, you can read all the John Maxwell books and you can read all of the books. But you just got to get in, you got to get in and do the work to really, you know, learn those lessons. And, you know, some of us need to learn the lessons, you know, a lot harder than others. Yeah. And so, but yeah, I mean, it's a much better game to play. And it's, you know, the, it's what takes you through the white water and get you into more,

kind of less McCowan's kind of predictable success model. And, you know, because it's hard, like the growth, the leadership growth that you had to go through, that ain't easy. That's hard. Going through. Still going. Still going. It's so hard, right?

But what happens is that you've got the four or five man, mom and pop operation. they're having fun, right? That's the family, right? We got this family. We got going, we're tight. We got this. But family, as we know, is all messy, right? Because you got the crazy uncle.

You got the degenerate cousin. You know, you still got them on board, but you can't just kick them out of there until you make that shift. And that's where getting through the bumps, what less calls whitewater. And that's where most people, you know, turn around and go back to comfort. and they're not willing to push through. But when you push through, there's so much more reward on the other side. Yeah, it's like falling, again, going back to that, you know, brand new agent or brand new

leader, it's like you're unconsciously incompetent. You're just excited. And then you get to conscious competence going, oh, my God, like you just said, this is going to be hard. I don't know if I can do it. I could fail or I could go backwards. But a lot of people fall into that pit where they, they just start to shrink. I'm just going to keep it the same size. I don't like this. This is not good.

Everybody's crazy. Agents don't want to sell homes. That person, it's like it's always a deflection of everyone else. But to me, any team leader that I've seen that's stopped doing it is just they've stopped growing or unwilling to get uncomfortable. And it's a really uncomfortable process to unpack emotionally what gets in the way. And for me, it was it was the whole. thing was like actually being the leader and I'm fine to make decisions. I can make them all day long. I have the vision, but it's like almost like having to hold people accountable felt the obvious to me. I expected everyone, just be excellent. Read the books I read. Learn what I need to learn what I learn. And you should just learn by fire, basically, versus like really taking someone

by the hand and saying, no, this is exactly how we want it. And so, But it was, again, poor leadership growing up, fear that sets in that I don't want someone to feel like I did. And that's what I had to unpack, literally, through breathwork and, you know, doing some plant medicine. It was like, oh, I had really bad leaders in my life. I love them to death. But back then, you have an 18-year-old raising you. You have a 24-year-old raising you. That's, they don't know what they're doing. And their emotions are not regulated. So as a child, you're like, I just got to be safe. And then as an adult, you're, you're, you're, saying, I don't want anyone to feel like I did, so I'm going to protect them.

And I'm going to project my feeling onto everybody else, but they're not feeling that way. That's the thing I had to unlock is, you know, I had this problem with including everybody for too many opinions. I want to hear their opinion. I think you're probably like that, John, too. It's like, let's hear what everyone else has to say. And, and, you know, when you look at a spectrum, it's like I was over here in the unhealthy spectrum.

And then there's the, I don't give a shit about anyone's spectrum. I should have been in the middle, but I would bring so many people into decisions because I didn't want them to feel excluded. Because I felt excluded, let's say as a child. So again, projecting the emotion to not be able to step up and lead because you don't want people to feel the way you felt. And so that gets in the way. And if you don't unpack that stuff, and that's the stuff you have to open up Pandora's box, go down into the icky feelings. And feelings, nobody wants to feel their feelings. So they just store it all away.

And then you're basically saying everybody else is the problem. It's like, no, you're the problem. Hi, it's true. You're the problem. So that was a really eye-opening investigation. And now at least I have a strategy to say, okay, strategically, who needs to be in this meeting and why? And if I feel the fear creep in of, oh, God, I don't want that person to feel included. It's like, is it the fear talking or is this good for the business?

I at least have a strategy to get through that as I'm worried. working on my own issues. So I think the lesson here is, you know, we look at all these people leading and, oh my God, they're so amazing and they're doing, they are going through the same shit that everybody else is, your agents are. And one of my coaches who, in Costa Rica, we were talking about it and they said there's three defense mechanisms. This is why people get defensive. It's significance. They feel insignificant. They feel ignorant. And it's their likeability. So, so I had a significance wound feeling more abandoned by, you know, family and childhood. So I don't want anyone to feel abandoned. So I make them feel included at all times. And so I think that's really

hard to unpack for people because that takes conversation, introspection, and vulnerability. Yeah. Yeah. I think you've got to have a desire to want to truly be better. And I think, you know, it definitely starts with making that distant. That, that decision, right? And knowing, you know, I am the problem. And I think that falls back into kind of extreme ownership, you know, 100-0 principle to where, you know, I think that's why it's probably one of the most foundational best reads is Jocko's extreme ownership. Because the way that he really takes it to the extreme and you're like, like, Jock, it's definitely not your fault. He's like, yeah, I could have done something better, though.

I could have trained a little bit harder. I could have communicated better. I could have, you know, prepared a little bit more. I could have done a little more research. I could have had a couple more conversations. So in every situation when you latch on to, you know, I could have always done something better to improve the situation. But that's a maturity and growth thing. And I'm with you, Tina.

I mean, there's just so much stuff that happens to us at such a young age that just latches on in the background that if you don't get into the right environment with the right people to help unpack that, that's stuff that'll weigh you down and hold you back from your best version of yourself, no matter what you try to do. If you don't address those things, and, you know, even for me working with Matt for the last four years, it's, you know, just holding the mirror up and having those tough conversations to really explore, you know, what's serving you and what's not. And, you know, how you can, you can navigate those is, it's, it's so key.

But Tina, take us, take us through the kind of that, that leadership cohort, if you don't mind. I think that'll be fantastic to just give as much framework and as much context to people. I mean, at the end of the day, you still got a, you still got to, you know, it's my favorite sign of all time. And it was above Zane, my youngest. going into his karate studio. And, you know, you walk into the reception area. And then you got to go through the door to walk into, to walk in.

But above it, it said, the teacher can open the door, but the student must walk through. When the student is ready, the teacher will come. I've heard of that way too. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, all of the frameworks, all of all of the information. everything's out there but it's just taking the so it's the courage right so that's why when you look at kind of the 4C framework of what it takes to get to you know to to really winning at a high level right it all starts with a commitment to be better right like you have to commit to take your leadership game to a whole other level but you got to have the courage to go through to go through it and I think that's what you know kind of a lot of of people, they just walk away from that door. They're like, yeah, I'm not going to touch that.

I'll come back at that later. Yeah. They're the problem. It's not me. Well, I think and also too, as much introspection as I like to do and go down those paths, there were still blocks without somebody else pointing it out and saying, let's unpack this together. Like, I always thought like therapy, people needed therapy. They, you know, they had bigger issues than me, you know, so that was my, I don't need a therapist. Why would I? How good? I, I guess. talk through my problems. Like I figured it out. I'm not a victim. You know, I'm a victor. So it was funny because I had, you know, our women's retreat founders in Costa Rica. And I had seven or six speakers and one of them was a psychiatrist that works with women specifically in their

insecurities and how they show up and work for NASA. I mean, the lady is brilliant. And it's funny because after that, you know, session, I went up to her and I lived in the same house with her for a And she's like, I noticed some things. I said, okay, you can bring them to. I love feedback. Like, give it to me. And so we unpacked a little bit. I'm like, oh, my God, yes.

So what does that mean? She's like, well, we need to have a consultation. I said, let's have one. Here's my money. And literally, John, in one hour of unpacking my life, she connected all the dots. And I was like, where were you all my life? You know? And it's like therapy to me always felt like, because I met people before.

Like, oh, my therapist said, I've been in therapy. And therapy to me feels like you're just trying to. I don't know, work out this problem that you can't figure out, but I'm a fixer. I figure out my problems. But she's truly like a mad scientist where she can literally show you what you're not seeing because we can only see what we can see. And so once she put all that together, it literally unleashed the matrix for me. And I went, okay, now I understand.

And I'm going to do probably six more sessions with her to really unpack other things that bother me to make me a better leader. So I think some people look at therapy as a failure or you're crazy. Now you need to go to therapy. It's not. It's truly just having a confidant there that's used to this to really unpack things that you can't see. So going back to the leadership cohort, what we call the matrix, it's the pathway of personal responsibility, which I think you've probably heard, is that moment in time where, you know, there's a trigger that happens. You know, you say something in a meeting and someone's like, oh, who does he think he is?

and you can feel it. Your temperature rises, your head gets hot. Skinballs. Like literally, like my skin, I can look down and my skin's like, it's like bubbling. I'm like, what is happening here? So when you think about it, you've got this in here. I'll show you a visual, but you've got this. Well, I guess my.

Yeah, I got it. But you've got this path. So you're walking along the path and all of a sudden there's this moment in time. And you can either go pinball and goes, you know, down the pinball machine where you're hijacked, or you can have a pathway of personal responsibility to say, no, no, I understand it's happening in my body. I'm triggered right now and work your way through it. And the best leaders are the calmest ones, right? They can, they understand how to manage their emotions. They understand their triggers. They understand how to regulate emotion. Now, funny enough, and that's why I never thought, I don't have issues.

I'm so calm. I rarely, unless someone's dying or the house is on fire, there is probably, nothing in real estate. I mean, we just had a woman that just wired $130,000 to a hacker. Well, I can either cry about it or spiral for that client, but what good is that for me, for my stress level? Like, I feel really bad for the client. Let's just see what the solution is at this point. So very regulated. I mean, Kevin and I rarely like have these, you know, we have bickering moments, but again, I have a good regulator for emotion. But there are certain, moments that I don't. And those are the moments where I think I have to, you know, understand how to regulate better and also teach my people how to do it. And that's the leadership difference is

if I'm good at it, but I'm the only one out of 80, then we're just big deal. Like, you're not helping anybody. So they're teaching our leaders, number one, these tools. There's eight tools. So that's the first one is the pathway of personal responsibility. You can't, you know, a thought comes into your head, you're triggered. You can't stop that first initial reality. reaction, but you can see it happening and decide in that moment, I'm not going to pinball, and I'm going to go take the, you know, what would my best self do in this moment? So, so that would be one of them. The other one is, they call it the EQ matrix. So it's self-awareness and others' awareness. So I think the best leadership or leaders that I've seen, they're very

self-aware. They have high EQ. And, you know, to people think, oh, you're just born with EQ, not really. It can be taught. It's just who's there really calling you out. And the hard part is when you're running a company or leading, most people around you don't want to tell you what's going on that's wrong with you or how you make them feel because they're worried they're going to get fired. And so as a leader, you can walk around going, well, no one's going to fire me because I'm, you know, I can do what I want. I don't have that fear of being fired. But when you do, if you don't have high trust environment, you're never going to get the appropriate feedback. So who's going to tell you, maybe you're therapist.

We promise you you probably need one. You know, so that's kind of the stuff that we're working on right now is I need to make sure everyone's emotionally regulated. They know how to, when an agent triggers them or anything triggers them in an environment, most of us are, we have like six, Dr. Stephanie talks about six, six versions of our self that we show up with. We could be the villain. We could be the critic.

We could be the victim. and like most of us have two or three that are really prominent in our life all the time. Hey, quick pause before we keep going. This market is shifting fast. And if you've been feeling the pressure, you're not alone. But here's the thing. It's not going to slow down so you can catch up. I've opened a limited number of executive 101 coaching spots this month for agents who are ready to stop spinning their wheels and lead with clarity.

If that's you, head to johncitchens.com, and let's go. Now back to the episode. And when you can have somebody say, like, victims to me are the worst. Like, they have the most power over everyone because everything's just for me. And everyone feels sorry for them. But that is the biggest manipulation that there is out there is the victim. Well, too. And it goes back to that piece that you said earlier.

That's where they drive their significance from. Right. And so they learned early on. that, oh, poor pitiful me, now they're getting attention. And that's something that they've latched on to. And that's become their belief system. Yes. And those are the worst people to be around.

They are like, oh, my gosh. What you were saying right there, kind of the six reminds me of, I'm going to, I'm going to forget the book, but it's kind of like, it's basically the six different hats, right? Like, you know, it's like, hey, we need to black hat this. Hey, we need to green light this. We need to, you know, because what it does is it, it gives you. the awareness of how we need to think about this situation and in the conversation that we need

to have around this situation based upon what color hat we're wearing. So that's like the different because because we can tap into all six of those different like I'm saying. We have that all within us. Yes. To be able to tap into it. But that goes back to my favorite kind of distinction. It's knowledge and power. Knowledge is just awareness. Right. Right? Because we have it all. We have all the resources. We have everything within us. But the knowledge is being able to, uh, awareness to be able to see it, right? Within ourselves and see it within others to be able to see the thing. But power then is just choice. Now you have a choice to do something about it or do nothing about it. But there's always a choice.

Once you have that level of awareness, and I can't agree with you more, that EQ matrix. And I remember Matt telling me about three years ago, because I mean, I asked them the question. I said, you know, for us as humans going into the future, what's like the most important skills that we have to focus on to develop to continue to push to be the best versions of us and he said you got to have some type of mindfulness practice. Yes. You've seen that firsthand.

You've seen it with Kev firsthand. Like that level of whatever that is for you. For some people, it's scriptures. For some people, it's full on sitting like a monk, you know, meditation practice. There's some type of mindfulness. You know, for me, Tina. I mean, I've like literally have been on, there's two, there's two apps I've had as long as I've ever had this device. And one of them is the Headspace app.

Okay. I've heard of that one. 41,471 minutes, 3,6277 sessions. So I've been on this app. I joined September of 2014. So I've been on the app forever that long. And what does it do? So it's more guided meditation.

Nice. He'll talk you through whatever situation. There's different kinds of things like I'm going through a sports motivation kind of pack right now to where I'm building back into the endurance stuff as we start to get into season. Next next race is in May. So we're building back into it. So sports motivation, he just talks to you and takes you through, you know, breathes. exercises. But do I sit and listen to it? Hell no. Like on my run or on my walk, first thing in the morning, that's the first thing I listen to. So that's the first thing that I'm

going through as I'm moving my body. Am I getting 100% maximum value from the exercise? Maybe not, but I am getting something. And I can tell you, it goes back to what you just said, calm is power. Calm is contagious. Calm is leadership. And so anything that you can do, but the other thing that he said and you nailed it is constantly pursuing and getting better with your with your EQ, your emotional intelligence and understanding the tenants that that make up emotional intelligence. And that first one is self-awareness, right? Like you have to know you, you have to know you if you want to be the best version of you and you have to know those things. So I couldn't agree with you more. I love it. And love the things about yourself. That's the other one,

self-love. So you can be aware of it, but then a lot of people hate everything about themselves, or they hate this, or they hate that, or they compare and say, well, he's such a better leader. She is, and the comparison is like, it's literally a trap. It literally will put you in victim mode and that you're comparing and there's this gap and I just will never have what they have. And it just becomes a jail cell. And so it's that. It's like, how do we embrace self-love? Well, how do we love ourselves? I mean, it took me. a long time. I mean, now it's been over 15 years, but back then when we started doing a lot of this mindset work, I couldn't say I loved myself. First of all, it sounded narcissistic. And now we

use the word narcissists, like, you know, every other word. It's like, oh, they're a narcissist. Okay, well, self-love is a good thing. If you can't say, I love every piece of me, the good and the bad, you know, and it's not even bad. It's just who I am and accept it. It's going to be a long rolled with yourself because you're the only one there. And so I think that that's it. And the other thing I look at is a lot of times when you you think of people of the past, you know, the last 150 years, the industrialization of food, all the fast, you know, stuff that, you know, we're on these phones now. They were saying in 2013, since 2013, since the onset of iPhones, we have decoupled one-on-one time with our family and friends, 20 hours less a month.

month of seeing your friends and family. 20 hours. So people used to not only spend time with their people and get energy in packs, and that's for longevity studies, that's what you need. But they also don't, they're not introspective. People used to sit under stars and like study them. And that's like quiet. It's, it's, there's no noise. And so we have so much noise now. Our kids are just going to be little robots, you know, that don't have connection anymore. And really, that's my fear. We're going to literally lose ourselves so bad that we don't. know where piece is. We don't know how to find it, but piece is right here. It's literally right here. Not here. You go, fight or flight. But I told a gal yesterday who was talking about suicidal

thoughts. And I said, you know, you can't stop what comes into the processor and the ego, but you can say, let me go to my soul. And is that a truth statement for me, whatever came in here in the monkey brain? And I said, and if it's, if it doesn't, the soul doesn't align with that thought, then you have to change it and then put it on your source of truth document. And so I would say if something comes into my brain, nope, what does my soul say? Okay, my soul really knows I'm not like that. I didn't do that. I don't feel that way.

So let me now get my source of truth document. Let me write it down. And then I would read that document every night because that's the source of truth. But we can't stop that immediate thought that comes into our head. We can't. But we can't change it if we just quiet. it and listen. And so, yeah, I'm very passionate about people like, listen. Like we, we had breath work, John, in Costa Rica and women were like losing their minds because they felt their breath for

the first time and actually their physical body. So we were teaching business and all, they were like, no more breathwork. You can do that at home. It's free and it's with you all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm so, so, I mean, obviously, you know, the people being able to cross path with, you know, over the years just so fortunate. And one of the gentlemen was actually the first one that I've ever heard of that got to a billion in production one year, which was Brett Jennings in Silicon Valley. And, you know, the time working with Brett and, you know, helping him and, you know, what ended up happening out of that dynamic in that relationship is his pursuit of, on the meditation side of things.

Literally, the reason I got on the Headspace app and did something was because of Brett Jennings and being introduced to that breathwork, being introduced to how important that is. And it is. It's so critical because, I mean,

that's the first thing, right? Like, and it's a trigger for me. And I'll say it out loud to people when I see, you know, that intensity and kind of,

oh my gosh, right? Like they're starting to tense up and panic. I'm like, breathe. Yeah. Like just breathe through this.

Calm it down. Breathe through this. And then that just allows you to start thinking again instead of getting all tensed and tightened up and we stop thinking. We just, we stop. So it's super important to be able to have that. I love that. And yeah, in those type of environments, being able to have that breathwork, I could see

it how powerful that would be. It was. And we've brought it to our team before. I actually want to implement it even more because we're a mind-body business company now. Like we want to work on our mindset, get rid of call reluctance. That's my next mission is, you know, working with trainers to get rid of call reluctance. And then the body is how do we feel? How do we not numb? And so we want to once a month or even once a quarter, bring in a breathwork specialist. And we've done before and our agents love it. But it's like, again, we want them to

physically become better humans here, not just sell real estate. How did your life get better being in these walls? Because the business, if we can't get mine, body business functioning at an 80% capacity, a B plus, at least, life's going to be tough. We won't, we'll never get to A plus. That's unrealistic. That's perfectionism. But we can be a B plus. We're going to be great. So yeah, 100%. So we have our pathway to personal responsibility, our EQ matrix. What is our next kind of cohort that we have? What are what was kind of our next piece of this puzzle? Well, I mean, they have like six or seven, um, uh, a two. Cool. So we're only through the first two, which were those two. They have one called the Chiroc Circle. So it's like, you know, just taking people through. Let's say you and I had an issue, an argument, whatever it was. Instead of me coming at you and being like, you made me feel this way or whatever, it's sort of like we let it diffuse. And then literally we can both sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder with a whiteboard in front of us, draw a circle. And then there's six steps to it. It's like, okay, let's unpack what happened. So we're looking at the situation.

as a moment in time, the kairos. What was the kairos? We go through life having a lot of triggers and kairos moments. Chiros means like basically a moment in time. And so you're going to have a million kairos as a day. You know, you and your girlfriend fight about something in the morning. She steps on your toe or whatever. She threw away the banana you were going to eat. Every moment there's these situations where two humans are disconnected in not seeing eye to eye. And that's where you would say, hey, I think we're having a kairos. Let's unpack it. And so when we unpack it, though, it's after the moment when everybody's settled down when no one's triggered. And it's like we can look at it and go, you know, this happened. What happened? In your vision, what happened? Well,

you did this, this happen. You know, you did this, this and this. Okay. And I felt you did this, this, not like attacking. And then, well, why did we feel that way? What were the facts? What could we do better next time? How do you need to partner? So it just basically takes, humans through this like process and we're not there yet. But it's so much easier to unpack things instead of like, oh my God, I got to give them feedback. Well, they did this to me. How are they going to react? What if I don't say the right thing? And that's where human communication trips up. Because if I'm not as good of a communicator to articulate what I think, I might offend you. If you're not great at receiving feedback, that could be a roadblock where you're in flight, you know, like get me

out of here. So when we unpack it in this circle, it's like very non-threatening and it helps everybody sort of navigate the moment. This moment happened. Let's unpack it. And it was beautiful because the coaches were there in my house with all of our team. And, you know, Dawn, who's the facilitator, Eric is the leader, let's say. And I guess they had a moment. I didn't see it, but they had a moment. And so they went up to the bonus room when we were doing an exercise. And it was kind of cool because they came back and they're like, oh, yeah, we just processed a Chirass. And they went back and forth of how he made her feel, she made her feel, did it. And I was like, how great that it was so unemotional. Hey, this thing happened. Instead of it triggering me, me being pissed off, packing it, you know,

for later as like a tool that I can throw in your face. They literally unpack it so beautifully. I'm like, wow, I don't know that I would be at that level to unpack that with Daria right now, but I want to get there. It was so beautiful to model that. Imagine being that way with your kids and your spouse and your friends to be like, you know, when you said, you know, I looked bigger in that dress or whatever, like we're having them up. But if they don't understand what the hell you're talking about, they're going to be like, oh, my God, she's attacking me right now. So I think as an organization, you as the leader, yes, have to have to have these tools, but everyone has to have a unified language around them and then and then utilize them over and over, sort of like the working genius.

If I'm the only one that knows it, it's not really going to be effective. If we're like, hey, I'm Wing right now, just bear with me, or I'm trying to land the plane right now. So everyone has to level up together. And that's where I said, you know what, in our organization, yes, are there people that I think could have a higher skill level in certain areas? Yes, but I have not given them the opportunity to level up as a leader. So let's see where they can grow. And then if they're still outside of their capacity, then we might have to move seats or whatever. but I haven't given everyone that equal opportunity to step up to the plate.

Yeah. No, I love that. And it is. It's the capabilities and the skills that you have to develop. But at some point, you know, not everybody wants to keep pushing, right? They get into a certain level and they're good, right? And so if you can get them to, you know, maybe move up a level or two, that's going to, you know, help the entire culture and ecosystem. system that we're creating, you know, if everybody's continuing to grow. And then you just get to a

certain point where, you know, that's not for them anymore. They move on. But then we bring people in that fit right into where we're at. And that helps us to continue to keep to keep on going. It's so good. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely going to have to check that out because I could definitely use some framework on, you know, how to how to navigate in. And that's the thing that you said it. It's the frameworks of the coaching. Nobody's ever given me a book with the tools. They give me concepts. They give me great analogies. They give me stories. And I go, yep, but I still need a framework. And that's what they've discovered here. So that part to me is really cool. That is so cool. And, you know, especially like you said, you know, in those moments to where you can work through

so you don't just pack it in and hold on to it. And, you know, I'm an SC on the disc. And so my my C is I'm going to hang on to that shit. And I'm going to read into that. 20 years from now. You know? And like, I think back on me. Like I still can think of things that happened 20, 25 years ago that I'm like, why does that even still bother me? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, you might have to go see my, my therapist, John, and my new leadership coach. Sounds like it. We've exchanged, we've exchanged coaches and coached each other. So why not? That's great. So run us through a couple more here. And then, you know, obviously just being sensitive on time.

But what are a couple of the other, the other tools and then we can. So they have, you know, they have the developmental square. So that's the where we talk about, you know, unconscious competence, conscious competence. So all of that. So that's, you know, we learn that because I can't take a D4. Like if I'm D4 in my developmental stage for, let's say, real estate, I can't teach a D1, you know, somebody who doesn't know what they don't know, the same way I would teach somebody who's, you know, in D3 or they're, you know, consciously competent.

So it's like that's kind of cool because you can put people into buckets. And then almost like train people to say, hey, this is how we learn skills here. And this is where you are right now. And it's okay. It's like managing the emotions of the agent as they're going through our performance system to say, this is where you are and this is how you feel. This is where you are and you're going to want to give up here and you want to go into the pit. But it's uncomfortable.

We're going to get you through it. So it's like the stage. of development, I think are massively important. And then they do something basically called, let me see, I've got a little book here. One was, what was it? Oh, it was sort of like they have like, you know, four quadrants or whatever. And like, where are you as an organization? Are you high challenge, low support? Are you low support, low challenge? Are you, you, you know, high, high support, low challenge. And we discovered that we were high support, low challenge.

But my original team, my first five agents, I was high support, high challenge. I sat around the table with them. I did it. They did it. Now they're selling, you know, 45 million. They're 70 homes making half of, you know, but those agents were led differently in a high challenge, high support environment. And so it's, we had our team do the exercise where everybody put themselves in

quadrant. So now the agent could say, oh, God, I've been in the cozy quadrant. I've literally been so cozy and no challenge. And to truly move an organization forward, you need to have high, higher challenge and high support. So then you show the agent where they're deviating from the path of growth. And if they're outside of the growth boundary, then you can leave them back to it and say, hey, you know, you've kind of fallen over here or high stress, you know, where people put so much stress on themselves. You're like, wait a minute, we're a high support environment. Have you tapped into the resources that we've provided you? Because some of these high achievers are in a high challenge, you know, environment that they've given to themselves. You know, they've given even

more challenges than we give them. So it was a wonderful tool to like help the organization. So that's why I say they have like eight tools that once we as the leaders can really unpack really well and understand, now we're in the matrix. Like we see the trick, we can manage our triggers, correctly. We can be unemotional. We can unpack a, hey, you know, when I was training the other day, you whispered something in someone's ear. It made me feel like you were talking about my presentation. So can we unpack that? I feel like it's a kairos moment. So the kairos makes it feel like it's just a moment in time. I would like to unpack it and see where you came from. And I, nope, we were actually whispering about going to the bathroom and how much longer was this or

whatever it was. But but what the gap filler, the brain needs to fill the gap, if the store, is missing and what do we all do? We fill in the stories in our head, right? There's no context. We're like, what do they mean by that? Oh, they must have meant this because you have to finish the story. So, so again, I just get so geeked out about having tools now that I can help lead everybody better myself and others. And that that's what we're learning here. Yeah, I love it. It's it really is, you know, I think that the measurement, especially when we're talking around leadership, it's not the size of the organization. It's not, you know, what we were able to accomplish. To me, the metric, and we see it in professional, we see it in sport, right? Like, just even with the

latest college football run, the last four coaches all came from the Nick Sabin coaching tree. They were all on his staff. Yeah. And I forget, I forget how many of the 12 of the playoff teams, how many of the coaches were on his staff at one point or another, right? So like you can look at, oh my gosh, that's that look at saving. And that's why he's on a whole other level because of the leaders. He's been able to develop and create. And so I think that is kind of that next jump, right? Like you gave the great example.

Yeah, we were we were playing checkers and we were the best. We were the best. We were five or six because we were high support, high challenge. Yeah. And then I think we kind of lose sight of that. And reason it is, is that you talk about lids. And the lid is firm and it is in direct proportion. Your size of your company is in direct proportion to the size of your leadership capabilities.

And the work you're doing right now is the work that will allow the organization to have no limits, right? When you're developing that second, that third. And it was one of the things that it was kind of our mantra, one of our mantras at NAA, we had to, right, before the emergent of AI, we had to put another body in the seat instead of being more efficient. Was, you know, it's all about leaders creating leaders, creating leaders, right? So it's pouring down.

It's even like what I coach, a lot of the bigger teams and organizations. I'm like, you got your top producers. And I know, you know, most of the team leads top producers, Whistle, for example, right? Like whistle, whistle gives to his top 20%. He pours into them. But what he's pouring into them, he wants that to cascade down to the next 60, 70, 80%,

because he's growing leaders that are then in turn going to pour back into the organization to continue to grow. So, like, there's no way that you can take it yourself, but it's developing those leaders around you to be able to take the organization to the next level. 100% like today it was so fun like when i'm watching all of our agents train each other on zillow then the next hour they were looking at the 40 listings we have how can we sell each other's listings it's all agent led

that's leadership you don't need a title to lead and that's why i try to train them i'm like you can go sell a million homes your next level is going to be you and how you show up others and for yourself um you know so yeah we're it's exciting there's so many good things happening but but again it's just It's having the trust of them to go, hey, I'm going through this myself. It's so good. I want you guys to go through it too and not being afraid to say, be vulnerable, which I think a lot of leaders are not. They're like, oh, I'm leading this.

I can't show weakness. It's like, my God, I trust people that show weakness more than people that look perfect. Yeah. I don't know if it's a weakness. I mean, it's something that maybe we haven't developed. If you look it out on a SWAT, you might put it in the weakness bucket. But, man, it's just vulnerability. It's just transparency.

and my favorite definition of trust is just authenticity times time, right? It's just being you, where you're at, being vulnerable, being transparent, and knowing, you know, that you have the intent for good, you're aligned, you're living to your values. Is why core values are just absolutely non-negotiable. Having those values, living in alignment to them, and just being open and transparent. And then just being consistent over time. that's where you build a trust organization. That's how you build a trust community. That's just to me is the recipe to win in the future is that you've got to establish and build

trust. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So true. So true. Well, I'm working on it day by day. We're always a work in progress, aren't we? That's right. That's right. I love it. Tina, I appreciate you. This is so, so good. Absolute gold. Any resources that you would push people to to recommend that of have really opened your eyes and helped accelerate, you know, this focus right now? Yeah, well, I would start with the book Leadership Gravitas by Eric Pfeiffer. Quick read, great book. And it starts with that trigger, you know, that pathway of personal responsibility. I think everybody should start with that book.

And I think I read that four years ago and became obsessed. So that was the first. And then, of course, you can follow Eric and Dawn Neldon. And, you know, they do a great podcast, empower, coaching. Fantastic podcast. But that's where we're at right now. We've gone away from real estate trainers into, you know, people doing, people that

are helping Fortune 500 companies because we're like, okay, well, we, if we want to get to 20 million, 30 million, what we've done here is, is not going to get us there. So just like you do. I know you go outside of the real estate realm a lot. Yeah. That was, you know, another lesson, right? That's part of, I think, being coachable. and you've got to look outside of your industry for exponential jumps.

Yes. We can do, we can, you know, sit here. I can, you know, copy what Tina's doing. I can copy what Kyle's doing. That's going to give me incremental gains. But if I want to really exponentially unlock the growth potential that we have, we do have to look outside of the industry. 100%.

100%. Awesome. Tina, you're amazing. I know we'll do this again. And yeah, let's, let's, Keep pushing. Love it. Thanks, John.

Thank you. Thank you guys. We'll see you. Thanks for tuning in. If you're done guessing and ready to lead like a real CEO with a custom strategy, real accountability, and proven systems, check out my executive 101 coaching at john kitchens. com. Fill out the application and book your one-on-one call with me. Be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode.

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