KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Why Agents Should Think Like Business Owners not Employees

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Agent PowerHuddle is a daily jumpstart, giving you all the tools you need to create an amazing real estate career. Led by top experts in the field, you'll learn how to sell more houses in less time while creating the life you want. Welcome to the Agent Power Huddle. Welcome, welcome, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are listening or watching, this is Keeping It Real Estate, which make a look at my shirt that I got for this, which I really should have waited because I ordered three of these. I ordered three things that day, keeping it real estate. And I'm just going to be honest, I've been on Ozambake and I've lost 10 pounds in two weeks.

So I probably should have waited until I lost the weight I wanted to lose before ordering three of the same. Well, they're not exactly the same. to all say something different. Thank you so much. Thank you for the congrats. My sister did it first, and I was just shocked because she had such a hard time, and she was a workoutaholic and all of these things, and she just could not lose certain weight, no matter what she did.

So anyway, if you guys are wondering, and you want to know about it, hit me up. But otherwise, today, this is a really good topic. I like to bring real life experience into these. And so I may go, it may not be as organized and succinct as I want it to be today because I have so many ideas and got so much input and things like that from different sources. The main one that I came to was, well, first of all, we're going to talk about why real estate agents should think like business owners slash entrepreneurs and not like employees. So we're going to dive into what that looks like

and how this impacts in my life personally and how like my mindset totally changed once I became a business owner and now I can spot the things that, you know, the mentality of an employee versus the mentality of a business owner or an entrepreneur. So the main idea that I got this from, well, it was first of all,

for my own life. And then I went on to like listen to what I normally do like YouTube videos about it, which that already right there is a business owner's mindset to educate yourself, to invest in your future, to invest in learning. And so, so you're doing that right now by listen to this. So well done, everyone. But anyway, so what I did is I went on there and onto YouTube and I searched it and a TEDx talk by Amy Wilkinson. came up and it was like the secret to thinking like an entrepreneur or something along those nights. As a matter of fact, I haven't written down. Hopefully my phone won't die in the middle of this, but no, we're good. Good. Okay, it is called the secret to thinking like an entrepreneur. Yeah.

Or along those lines. So Amy Wilkinson, TEDx talk. It was like a follow out. You think it was great TEDx talk, by the way, only like 18 minutes or so. Oh my goodness. So much good stuff. But I'm going to try to break it down. And I'm going to try to give you guys examples. So we're going to jump right in so that we don't miss anything And I'm sorry if I talk very fast And I go a million miles for a minute I will try to slow down

Take deep breaths Okay, here we go All right So the number of being as agents Is that we are business owners Whether you like it or not I mean with the exception of maybe I mean I don't want to call out Redfin agents

But Redfin agents can get paid A salary and things of that nature But the majority of the typical real estate agent is working based off a commission, right? We're not getting paid. And you know what? I'm so shocked, by the way, just a little tangent, side tangent. I have been taking Zillow calls for one of my clients lately. And I am shocked at the number of people that do not realize that real estate agents don't get paid hours.

We need to educate, okay? they think that we're getting paid hourly, plus we're making big commission. So just a side note, please educate, please tell buyers and sellers the reality so that they're not going to Zillow and asking, hey, I have an agent, but I want to go see this. So that's a little side note. And I think whether you like it or not, maybe the new rules that are coming into effect or if you're listening to this later are already in effect, maybe there'll be a good thing. And I'm in Washington State, and we've been doing this for a long time. So we're not tripping about the virus agency. Anywho. Okay. So, as agents, we are business owners. Okay. We may be part of a brokerage and all that, which we pay to be a part of. And if you are your own brokerage, you still paid for the education to become a part of it, right? To be your own brokerage, be a broker owner. But all of our money comes from our efforts and our consistency. Okay. So employees are paid hourly to,

to do the same job every day, pretty much. And that's not what real estate is, okay? As a real estate agent, one day you might be the accountant, the marketing person, the junk removal person, the cleaning person. You might be, let's see, the landscaper. I mean, if you've been in real estate for any period of time, you know, that just showing pretty houses

is not the reality of the job. So if anyone is listening to this and you are thinking of getting into real estate, please talk to a real estate agent before, you know, jumping in. And I'm not trying to discourage you from it, but you should be prepared and understand that your effort are where the money is going to come from and not just, it's not just going to fall in your lap. And even if you put it out to the whole world, right, there are still lots and lots of activities that you need to do to help people to see that you are a qualified real estate agent, which we'll get into a little bit about why you need to believe that you're the best and all of that.

So hopefully this is resonating with some of you. Okay. So the next thing that I have here is there's a difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership. And there can be a little bit of both. But I liken this to transactional is like, I guess like putting in your, your hours and getting paid to do your work, like going to a nine to five job. I guess I would say if you've ever seen a government position, right, if you've ever walked in to get to renew your license, let's use that as an example.

Government agencies are or maybe even like the military. It's like don't ask questions. Come in, do your job. It's going to be the same. There's not a whole lot of, you know, we've got a system. We're following a system. Come and do your job. Do it.

Transactually. Like you just transact, you get paid. You work the hours. You get paid. Right. And that's not the way that we should do things. I mean, there are parts of that. Yes. But you want transformational leadership, which is like what I was talking about. Educating buyers and sellers, educating people on the team, educating agents, right? Like that is providing value. And that is also very important. So I think that was one of the things. It was one of the things I didn't add to this that ran out of time. But what? of the things that Amy Wilkins said at the end is that we should be giving small increments of value, like small increments of time and value to everyone. And this will give you a good reputation. And that is huge because like a lot of people will book discovery calls with me for my ISA services and

things like that. And we are very selective about who we work with. We have a very specific niche, niche type of clientele. So a lot of people will book it with me thinking we're just like, average ISA company, which we are so not. And instead of just telling them like, hey, no, this, you know, this isn't a good fit, I give them pointers. I give them advice on where they can look so whatever they're looking for. I don't just say, hey, you know what, you're wasting my time. This is no fit. We're done. Right. So I had one of those calls the other day. Someone could not afford our services. And instead of just like say, okay, well, I, you know, I sat there and I gave for about five minutes, maybe 10 of my time to help her understand, you know, what she could do

to get there if she wanted to, okay? Which in turn gives me a very good reputation. And one of the things that's surprising right now is that we're like technically going into like the slow season, you know, a lot of agents go on vacation right now. And then we have the fall. People are going back to school, like, you know, the kids and stuff. And then you have the holidays. And so really are like big booming time for real estate is you know like spring and that's over so um so either way uh you know we have to try to find ways to like keep ourselves busy and um keep ourselves in transforming what we're doing at all times like adjusting to market and adjusting to what we're doing and i think that's really important okay okay so um the difference between an employee mindset and

I'm trying not to like hate on employee mindset, but I really do think that as agents, this is crucial, like, because it's not bad to the employee. Don't get me wrong. But if you have an employee that thinks like an owner or has owned a business, you've got a gem. So keep that. So let's see. So, uh, trans owners accept responsibility for their actions, stakes and all. Um, but some employees don't want to be held accountable at all. I think that's pretty self-explanatory. I could, I could explain, well, yeah, I think that's pretty self-examination. Sorry, let's just leave it.

Let's just leave it that. But it is really important, obviously, that as entrepreneurs, as agents, we accept responsibility. When we make mistakes. And I find some people have a hard time with that. And that's not easy to handle. So I don't want to go down a rabbit hole on that one, but you can understand where I'm coming from. As I said in the beginning, business owners invest in their future by listening to podcasts, which you're already doing. This is what I do by watching YouTube videos.

Okay. And business owners are curious. They're constantly learning about ways that they can improve. They always believe that tomorrow will be a better day. This is something that they also do that they don't complain. They don't make excuses. They learn how to do. fail wisely, which is another thing that Amy Wilkinson brought up in that TED Talk.

She was talking about, this is a really good story. As a matter of fact. She was talking about when you are a business owner, you keep track of statistics. Like, you have to try new things all the time. I don't know if any of you think of yourselves, hopefully think of yourselves as business owners. But I'm going to use the example of something really crazy that she used, which is that the Titanic had like 2,200 people on it. And we know that it hit an iceberg and it sunk in like two and a half hours,

maybe just over two and a half hours. And only under a third of people were saved because they didn't have enough lifebook. But if you were thinking like an entrepreneur or like a business owner, you would have thought outside the box, you would have got inside of your comfort zone. And you would have looked at, okay, there's tires on here from, you know, different vehicles that are on the ship, We could take the tires off.

They could be flotation devices. We can use the iceberg as an island because it's certainly not going to think, right? We can put people on that. We could use doors. We could use, there's so many different things that they could have started pulling apart and instead of just sitting there waiting to be safe. So I think that's a very dramatic example, but it is one that she used. And I was like, wow, that's really, really smart because I've done the same thing with my

own business. I'm trying to save an employer. way when I have to, you know, adjust their hours and this person was very, or like a contract is not included, like trying to say someone on my team, from having to go through the uncomfiness of up and down hours that come with real estate, right? So I went and I thought outside the box and I found her something else to do and tried to make it work. And I'm just going to leave it at that. It didn't work. But if we fail wisely, then we'll understand, I think it works. doubt in the end because I think everybody is in a better position totally like overall but I was trying

to help and trying to establish a situation and trying to make it work for everyone and it did for a little bit but then until it didn't which is when we realized it just wasn't a good fit um for the position overall so we learn things and maybe that saves the time and money in the longer but either way you don't want to have a zero percent ratio of failure because that means you're not even trying I hope that makes sense. Like, let's just say that, okay, if you own a salon and you try different products out for your salon, and one in five of those products works, then you know that I need to try at least five products to find one that works. So you kind of track those numbers, and that's what I guess I'm seeing.

So if you have a zero percent ratio, it means that you're not even trying anything different. You're just doing the same thing. So we have to try to figure out how many times, well, how many times do I have to make a phone call to get an appointment, right? That's something that I think about as an ISA. Well, it's usually, you know, 10% of people pick up the phone. So depending on your skill set, how many of those people are also going to set an appointment with you, what type of lead they are. There's all kinds of factors that go into it, but usually it's about 100 calls and you'll get one appointment. But better ISAs could do about five appointments and 100 points.

Which I did yesterday. Okay. On to the next one. All right. So, owners challenge the status quo and recognize that you're offering something that people really need. Do you believe that your clients are better off without you or with you? This is super important if we're talking about this whole buyer's agency agreement and what's going into effect. August 17th, well, probably most of you are listening to this after August 7th.

17, 22, but if you were not, what's going into effect August 17, we need to educate. We need to educate people. We need people to understand. And if you have the conviction and believe that your clients are better off with your services, that you're going to be able to guide them through all of the ups and downs of buying and selling a home, right? That is the key and that's what's going to make you stand out. So that is, especially with all the North stuff around, you know, remember the ups and the key to sales is conviction.

So believe that you are exactly what your clients need. And then educate them. Okay. All right. The other part of this was maybe brought up something called fly the Oudaloo. And this is like an old fighter pilot term. Well, at least that's what you should.

And it makes sense. Okay, but fly the ODA loop. It's O-O-D-A. So, I mean, you could take the fly and the loop part out of it. But just use the acronym. M-O-O-D-A, UDA. And Uda stands for, observe, orient, decide, and act.

So, I'm going to use this as an example for when I started my business and how I used these four things. I observed that real estate agent hated to make follow-up calls. Don't like it, most of them don't do it, most of them would rather pay someone to do it, or they were too busy to do it anymore

they used to do it and now they don't have the type. So I observed that there was an issue and I also observed that there were hardly any real estate agents that were offering these services apart from like joining that team, you know, doing it locally and things like that. I observed that the majority of ISA companies had no real estate experience. They were outsourcing at all. And so I would be very unique. As a matter of fact, I've never found another ISA company that has the licensed agent.

in the United States, hires in the United States, trains in the United States, and teaches how to follow up that way. So we have a very unique. But I do have a friend who should get her license just for the confidence in it because I think, and she has an I-Fa company in the United States, and she does more of the things

that I don't like to do, which she's awesome. And I've had her on her here. Her name is Heather. You could find that episode. Okay. Okay. Okay. So then I oriented myself to be in front of people. So I came to Agent Power Huddle. I would show up every day.

I would friend requests all of the agents that I saw on here. I would attend events. I attended a lot of real estate events. I got my name out there. I made sure that people knew and understood my value proposition. So I oriented myself to put my business in front of the people that I wanted and I adjusted. It was in the beginning. I was going to hire brand new real estate agents and teach

them how to take this as a stepping stone, take follow-up as a stepping stone. And that was my big idea. That was what my vision. And I also created this whole idea of, of like how to get compensated because I really truly believe that ISAs need to be compensated with the mission. And so I created my whole business plan. And then by the time I rolled it out, it's too complicated to actually implement. There were too many things. So I had to break it down and just go, okay, we're going to do a flat rate and a this. And then eventually, if the agent want more, then there's other services, you know, exclusive ISA services with commission and thing like that. And I'm not trying to promote my business. I'm trying to use it

as an example of how I observed and oriented myself. And the next one is, I think it was decision, right? Yeah, decide. Decide. Okay, so then I decided I decided I was going to start to this, create the business, market, business, go to all the things, right? I decided that I was going to put myself out there and I was going to fail wisely. And if I if this wasn't going to work, I had my real estate license to fall back on. But it quickly took off because of my character, my integrity, my knowledge, all my skill set, all of those things. So I haven't had to look back at real estate. I thought about it, but I really liked my weekends off. I like to watch Seahawks on Sundays, not go to open house. Okay. So I decided and then I acted, which I,

you know decide an act so let's go over again um it's observe orient decide and act which is called fly the oobloop and i guess you can repeat so if you can do these things faster than your competitor then you've really got something and i'm also going to use an example that she used um so youtube you may not know this youtube was originally supposed to be a video dating site this is fascinating because they ended up going they went into a zoo to do it to do it test video and they took a video of an elephant and they posted it on YouTube and all of a sudden they were shocked that everybody just wanted to watch this video of an elephant in a zoo apparently and so they turned it into the platform where you could post videos it was no longer about a dating

site or a video dating site or anything like that and YouTube is the number one search engine in the world right so I think that's pretty cool that's a pretty cool little fun fact that you guys have um that I've found from there Okay. So you have to adjust. So the point of that story, right, is you have to adjust for the betterment of your business. Whether people like it or not. I try to, I try not to hurt feeling. But when I can tell that something isn't, you know, if somebody is not cut out or the position, if they don't have, if they don't have, if they don't have, if they don't have, if they don't have, if they're not motivated by, you know, the winds of, you know, making calls and like setting appointments, if they don't have, if they're more like thinking about the hourly rate and they'd rather. talk to someone for 10 minutes that they know isn't going to buy or sell because they just told them that they're in a lease for two years. I feel like, okay, let's give them some value, tell them how they can do it and let's get off the phone, right? Let's move on to the next. And so sometimes you have to make, you have to make

decisions for your business and for, and you are a business as a realtor. Let's not forget that. And I'm not just talking about my business. I'm just using my business because that's why I see day to date. But as an agent, if I were doing that full time, I could use those examples. Okay. Another thing I did want to bring up, which we have eight minutes, I think we have time for this,

is that before, before I started my business, I thought like an employee. And something I think agents should be aware of is the money, the money. When you have people helping you that you're paying hourly, be aware of talking about the money that you make.

Be aware, like, make sure that if you're talking about how much money you have coming in, make sure that you also talk about how much you put into marketing, how much it costs to have a CRM, how much, like, make sure that people understand that, yes, you may have made $300,000 in GCI, but 250 of it went right back into the business, right back into your marketing, your CRM, your leads, and follow up, all of those things, because this was a problem that I had when I worked for a real estate agent. And like I just, I saw, I saw flashy stuff.

And so I assumed this person had more money than they did. And this is where I'm admitting my own vaults too. So I, yeah, I acted like an employee. And I wanted, I wanted, you know, and I'm not saying that like I wasn't good at what I did. I felt like I was good at what I did. And so, you know, but I didn't see it in terms of everything. Like so just be aware as real estate agents sometimes we like to show just the pretty stuff and just the nice stuff and just the oh this is flashy glamorous life and that's not the reality and we all know it so let's show it all right like my CRM cost $555 a month which is outrageous and that doesn't even include the dialer and um and all of the other things and all the calls and Twilio and the slow numbers and the 10 DLC campaigns and yeah so anyway, real estate is not cheap and neither is being a business order, but make sure that

people understand that, especially if you're paying them hourly, just so that there's no misconception, because I had that problem. And as soon as I started my own business and I realized all the things that that person was paying for because I had to pay for it myself, then I was like, oh, okay, now I get it and have since, you know, well, that person that I apologize for being a brat. Okay. So another thing, another reason that you should think like a business owner or a way to think like a business owner instead of employee is in solving. Problem solving. Okay. So as an individual, you can usually solve a problem at about 44% of it. Like on your own, just ditch you. Now, a lot of people will go outside of themselves and they will go ask their closest friends who also think very much like them. So, When you go to others that think like you and ask them to help you solve a problem, then it goes up 10%. It gets to 54% you'll succeed at solving the problem.

Now, when you bring in somebody that thinks completely differently from you, it goes all the way up to 75%. And that is really, really cool. And this is why I love my husband and I bring him up all the time because we could not be more opposite in the way that we interact with the world, I guess like I'm very outgoing and very, you know, loud. He's very quiet and thoughtful. I think without speaking, well, he's taught me not to do that.

But, like, I think that it's really good to have people around you, no matter how uncomfortable it is, because sometimes it can be really frustrating. And just imagine if the Democrats and the Republicans were capable of doing this, right? Like, if they could, like, set aside their problem, they could solve 75% of America's problem. Just throwing that out there. That was a side note. Okay, so get out of your comfort zone and get into where the magic happens, right?

So most employees like to be in their comfort zone. This is another topic that I'm going to have another time, which was originally going to be the topic for this one. And that is, this was from Leila Hermosie's like, don't let emotions control or dictate how you handle employees. So if somebody is visibly upset when you give them more work, what's your immediate response? A lot of times it's like, oh, no worries, I'll take care of it. I understand you're stressed out. I'll give this to someone else. Well, they do that and that's reinforcing bad

behaviors. And so I've learned lately and I'm not going to get way into it. I've learned lately to ignore emotional tactic to get for people to get what they want. And the reason that people use emotional tactics like crying or visibly upset or, you know, passive aggression or whatever the case maybe is that they don't they don't have the tools to effectively communicate and this comes from lay-lithromozy again like there's a really cool video about it I can't remember what it's called right now I will probably do this topic next time so keep an eye out okay so the other um this other part comes from a different video but I thought it was early important um the beginning steps of being an entrepreneur is the creative and artistic process this is where you're thinking about like you know

the beginning of the business, something that you're going to solve a problem with, right? And then you have to execute that product or service. So it goes back to observe, you know, orient, decide and act. So it kind of goes along with it,

but I thought it was pretty cool. And then there's like three different levels. So the first one is the creative process. The second one is the operations of the business. So now you're looking at like, how are you going to, how's it going to function? Like how's the business going to function on a daily basis?

what does that look like? Are you going to create systems? Obviously, you have to create systems, right? But at the next level, which is, oh, I guess there's four, actually, business owner. The third level is business owner. And that's where you start delegating work. You know, you're onboarding, off-boarding processes. You're thinking, what's my strategy to grow, right?

Like, how are we going to market ourselves? Like, how are we going to get bigger? How are we going to make this happen? Like, how are we going to train? There's a lot more that goes into that process, too. and how can we improve on putting costs? Like those are all parts of like the business owner. And then above that, I put the board slash brokerage because a brokerage can also be a part of this.

But we're not a part of a board, but the board can help the CEO, you know, be held accountable. They can help them see things from a different perspective, right? Sometimes they can be really annoying. But in the end, they overall have the good. of, you know, of the company, the vision of the company, hopefully, like, fingers crossed, right? So that is those parts.

So let's see, the only other, yeah, the only other parts I have, you know, is, um, I was going to just say business owners should know how to control their emotion. And I was going to play Layla's video on this, but we'll do that another time. And then I had a quote which,

um, which applies to that. And it's manipulates. is when they blame you for reacting to their disrespect. And that's something that, like, it's really hard sometimes to be a business owner and have a team. Because we want everybody to be happy. We want everybody to be on the same team and go in the right direction. Are we moving the boats forward, as Christa Meshaw would say,

like, does this make the boats go faster, right? And when you have something that's not working, or you have somebody that's emotional. You have to find ways to help them see that and help them effectively communicate with you. Or sometimes you just have to like bite the bullet and say, okay, maybe this isn't boring. And whether you've invested a lot of time and energy into training someone,

you got to do it best for the company and it comes down to that and you've got to take emotions out of it. So if any of you are listening to this and you're going through an issue and you need somebody that thinks completely differently from you to help wait in, find that person. Find that person and hopefully that will help you up. And that is my time for today. Thank you for coming. Thank you for listening.

You guys know how to find me. Sarah DeLancig. Oh, and I don't know if I showed this, but I'm going to show it again keeping it really safe. Because I didn't even have to special order that, which is funny. But I used to go by the Keep It Realton. So, all right. Thank you guys so much. See you next one.

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