Start With A Win - 5 Reasons Real Estate Agents Fail

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

As Adam has talked about before on the podcast, failure is often the key to understanding success in business. During this episode, he outlines the 5 reasons real estate agents (and people in business in general) fail:No System – You likely have a plan or vision for what you want to do, but if you don’t have a system in place, you will not accomplish anything. Think about: What? How? How much? How will I measure?No Accountability – You must be accountable to yourself first. Many people think that if they have a coach, they have accountability. But a coach is only capable of increasing your performance based on the accountability you have set up for yourself and communicated to them. If you are not getting better every day, you are getting worse.Just Watching – If you are not trying to master something by executing habits over time, you are just sitting on the sidelines. Adam has seen this play out many times with people using social media as a business tool, and he provides specific examples of what works and what doesn’t.No Follow-Up – The majority of business comes from repeated customers and referrals, so connect with your customers person-to-person and maintain a relationship with them beyond the initial “transaction.”No Value – People fail in business because they don’t help people with their known or unknown challenges. Meeting customers where they are and anticipating their needs or problems is essential to success.Links:“Atomic Habits” by James Clear - https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299 Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/ https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At top of the 12th floor of the REMAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor here at REMAX World Headquarters, it's Adam Kantos, CEO of REMAX, sitting here with producer Mark. How are you doing, Mark? I'm so good. So good. Right on. And he has this big beaming smile across his face as well. Oh yeah. So happy. You know, they say that if you are not happy, but you tell yourself that you're happy and you try to smile, that eventually

you'll become happy. Well, your body can't lie for your brain. Yeah. So you've got a, you're convincing your brain and really you're convincing your body that you're happy. So, I mean, you're just, you're just telling the truth. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. So sometimes I'm smiling. I don't even know I'm smiling though. People are like, why are you smiling? I'm like, sorry. What's wrong with smiling, right? Nothing. You know, what's cool is you can give out smiles all day long and you never run out. The endless supply. Endless supply of smiles. Oh, that's awesome. Just make sure you don't have like salad in your teeth or something, right? Always be checking. That's right. ABC. Always be checking. So what are we talking about today? Well, Mark, I like talking about failure

because if we understand failure, we also understand how to find success, right? Because I mean, really a lot of failure happens through success. So I want to talk about the five reasons why real estate agents fail, which, you know, it's common thing, right? I mean, there's people who get into the business thinking, ah, I'm going to go ahead and crush this. And then they end up hanging up their hats. Well, it, and frankly, it's not just real estate agents that fail based upon these five reasons. I think really it's business in general. And you think about it and you go, oh, what do you mean business in general? Business is different. But really, it's not. What's different is the marketplace, the product, and the customer, but business structurally

is very similar. So these things really transcend life, transcend business, and will help people kind of take a reflective approach to their business or what they do and figure out, do I have any gaps? Well, what are those five things? Well, let's get into those, Mark. So the first thing is no system. Which is like the beginning of anything. Right. You need to have a system. You got to have a plan, okay? And your plan really defines your system. So if your plan is to go sell houses, what's the system that gets you there? And that system will probably be go find customers, create some value and deliver to those customers, things like that. But really, you got to have a system. And going and finding customers breaks down into a system of what, how many times a day,

what am I going to do? What are my activities? How am I measuring those activities? Things like that. And ultimately people say, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go sell houses. But if they don't have a system to do it, you might get lucky with, you know, selling a house to your, your brother, your sister, your cousin, your parents, whatever it might be. You know, the, the first people that anyone typically goes after when they start a business, which is friends and family. And then, you know, they accidentally find somebody on occasion, but ultimately you can't run your system or your business by accident. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. So

number one, number one system. Have a system, buddy. All right. Have a system. It's like this system of wires and stuff we have here for our podcast. That's right. We have a system of how it all works. We've got a system, man. So that we can record the show.

That's right. It just doesn't happen by accident, right? That's right. So all right. How about number two? Number two. So you might have a system. You might have some goals, things like that,

but do you have accountability? So number one, no system. Number two, no accountability. That's really powerful. I mean, with anything in life, accountability helps you follow through with your system. Right. Okay. So you have your system. Let's talk about accountability here. Yeah. And really, ultimately, what you have to do is you have to decide to be accountable to yourself. And let's compare a entrepreneur to an employee, for instance. An employee has accountability, right? They have to show up at the office by 8 a.m., let's say, and then they have to go to their desk and they have to do certain things. Or maybe they're in a service industry where they stand at a counter and wait on people. Or maybe they're in an industry where they go and they perform some sort of a manual

task, maybe factory worker, maybe they're building a house and they're a carpenter or whatever it might be, but you're accountable to somebody generally in life unless you work for yourself. And that's one of the, you know, real estate agents work for themselves generally. So who are they accountable to themselves themselves? So, I mean, you ultimately, you first have to be accountable to yourself. A lot of people go, well, I can get a coach and be accountable to them. Well, can you, because a coach doesn't necessarily create your accountability. A coach helps you reflect on your accountability and they figure out where your benchmark is. If you're going to perform at a level of three,

the coach's job is to get you to outperform what you think you can do through increasing that accountability. I'm going to get you to perform at a four or five mark, not a three. And you go, oh, how are you going to do that? Well, accountability, but you have to be ultimately accountability starts with yourself before you allow anybody else to hold you accountable. You gotta be strong enough to do it yourself. Yeah. Does that make sense? Totally. So what do you think are some things that people can do in order to hold themselves accountable or, you know, get that accountability? Great question. So we have to hold ourselves accountable through some sort of a leverage.

And a lot of leverage in holding ourselves accountable is through kind of a personal embarrassment, if you will. So for instance, let's say you want to get out of bed at 5 a.m. And you want to hold yourself accountable to not pushing the snooze button. A good way you might do that is put a note on your alarm clock or your phone or whatever is going to wake you up at 5 a.m. that says, don't push the snooze button, lazy, or something like that. So you're basically holding yourself accountable to create that accountability. And that typically happens through some level of embarrassment. Because you're not going to reach up and smack yourself, right?

You're not going to go, you dummy, and slap yourself across the face. I'm holding you accountable. And you're not going to go and, um, you know, I don't know, make yourself do 20 pushups. I don't, I don't know. But ultimately, typically you hold yourself accountable through this personal level of embarrassment where you you're down on yourself. And that's where it's got to start is you have to be willing to hold yourself accountable. And that turns into a habit where you don't have to hold yourself accountable to get up at 5 a.m. then. You're used to it. And typically it takes about 66 days for a habit

to form. That's kind of the latest through like James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, which highly recommend that book. He talks about 66 days. It just so happens that 66 days passed us in this year, not too long ago. So we, we had 66 days, I don't know, a week, week and a half ago. And I think it was closer to a week and a half ago, but ultimately it boiled down to, can you hold yourself accountable to begin with? Yeah. And then you can probably get a coach to help up your performance. But I truly believe there has to be a level of personal accountability because your coach, it's like when you see somebody at the gym and they have a trainer, but they're standing there talking on their phone or talking to their buddy or whatever. And the trainer sitting there kind of twiddling their thumbs going,

you know, you're paying me to be here. I'll either help you work out or I won't, but you're still paying me. Yeah. One of the things that I always, um, like when my alarm goes off at 5am and I'm, I'm feeling like not waking up or, you know, not going to the gym or something like that. There's the thought that always comes in my head is who do I want to become? You know? So when the alarm goes off, I'm like, who do I want to become? And then I get out of bed. Well, that's a good question. I mean, do you have, you have like a, a choice? Yeah. You got three choices. Okay. Who are, who are the, what are those choices? Well, you know, you can either choose to move forward, choose to go back or choose to do nothing. Right. I think we've talked about that before. Yes. You've been listening right on.

Yeah. So yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's one of those things like you can stay who you are or you can become something better. Correct. And so when I asked myself, who do I want to become? Well, it's, I don't want to stay where I'm at. Right. So, you know, it's interesting in business, staying where you are is actually moving backwards. So, you know, you've always got this, this theory that if you do today, what you did yesterday, tomorrow, you'll get nothing more than you got today. It's a tongue twister. Okay. So, I mean, does that make sense though? Yeah, totally. But ultimately, if you look at tomorrow compared to yesterday,

it costs more to live tomorrow than it did yesterday. You're older tomorrow than you were yesterday. You're probably not in better shape tomorrow than you were yesterday. So if you don't do something today that's better than yesterday, if you're not trying to be better every day, and that's a saying of my not trying to be better every day, and that's a, that's a saying of my friend, Darren Hardy, better every day. If you're not trying to be better every day, you're going to get worse. I don't think there's a, I don't think there's a maintain. Yeah. I really don't. I'm, I'm a true believer that there's no maintain. It's either

get better or get worse. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, all right. Well, moving on. So we got the reasons why real estate agents fail. No systems, no accountability. Yep. Number three. Number three, just watching.

Just watching. Yes. From the sidelines. From the sidelines. Yeah. I mean, you took the field, you got the jersey on, but you're not in the game, buddy. So we see this a lot in life. In fact, it was interesting. I spoke at a social media mastery class this morning that one of our amazing offices is putting on here in Denver. And I asked the question is, what is mastery? And everybody kind of looked at me. Mastery really is the

execution of habits over time. And I don't mean just trying, it's doing. You're not watching on social media. I said, what happens if you go to a social media class and you go, all right, I'm going to go work on Facebook. And you sit there and you hit the news feed and you start scrolling through and you're like, all right, I'm doing Facebook. You're not doing anything. You're just watching. So are you watching or are you doing? So let's break that down a little bit. Let's say you want to do social media on Facebook. What do you do? Do you scroll through and go, all right, I'm going to like a few things. That's not doing social media either. That's not marketing your business through social media. How about creating an ad on Facebook? That's marketing on social media. Give somebody someplace to go that

creates an addition to your customer list, your customer base that is using social media to grow your business. Or something else you could be doing is looking for your customers on social media. So you're not watching, you're doing by researching your customers. And what do you do when you find them? You figure out what their likes are. What are they enjoying? What are their challenges? What are they talking about? And then you know what you do? You reach out and you talk to them. That's doing. That's not watching. That's doing because you're, you're communicating, you're touching your customer watching. I'm on Facebook. That's like when, you know, when we see people that are recruiting to their business, recruiting people, recruiting customers to our business, what are you doing? I'm working on my social media. No, you're not. You're on the Twitter feed or you're on Instagram looking at pictures, right? That's

not recruiting your business. Reach out and talk to these people. Do something with it instead of just watching. Get off the sideline. That's it. Get off the sideline, get in the game and touch the ball and score some points. Right? Got it. So fourth thing. Well, first let's review the first three. Okay. No system. no system. Yeah. I got nothing. No accountability. I don't care if I do anything just watching. I'm really not doing a fourth one is no followup. Did you know the majority of business is done as repeat and a referral business? I did not know that. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. A great deal of the real estate industry is done by repeat and referral business. Why would you go look for new customers

in a manner that you got to go out and talk to people cold when you can call people, you know, and say, Hey Mark, it's Adam. Um, you know, a few hundred people. Do you happen to know anybody that I could contact that would possibly be interested in buying or selling a house you've just accomplished two things one they might know somebody they may have talked to somebody two you've got them thinking about buying or selling a house yourself so a couple of things you've just impacted there. And also you might ask him, and you know, Mark, I never asked you to do this last time we did a transaction together, but I'm putting together some reviews, some online reviews.

If I send you a link, which you might give me a Facebook and a Google review and a Yelp review for that matter on the service that I, that I provided you when I helped you buy your house. And now you've got somebody invested in you doing something. So, but so you're following up, you're, you're continuing to keep that, that fire burning in your business. Yeah. I know one of our agents, um, you know, they send us stuff in the mail, like buy one, get one free pizzas for the family or things like that, you know, or send us stuff in the mail, like buy one, get one free pizzas for the family or

things like that, you know, or even something simple like the, the Broncos schedule. You know, I get that on my fridge and then they get their faces right there all the time. And I'm always thinking about like, who's playing today. And then it's like, oh, there's my agent. That's funny. Yeah. And you put it, you show up and you're like oh hey agent how are you who the bronco is playing today yeah exactly or this weekend or whatever yeah but following up i mean and you know they say it's it's easier uh the easiest customer to have is the one you already have or the easiest customer to keep is the one you already have or something like that exactly yeah but and and i would say follow up be be a human. Don't be impersonal. Don't say,

I would appreciate any referral that you might have for me. I mean, you're going to kind of look at me and go, did you just read that to me? Is that a script? I, instead I might call you, I'm gonna go, Hey buddy, it's Adam. How's it going? Oh good. Hey, just want to touch base with you. I'm sitting here going through my favorite people list and you're one of them. And I just wanted to call and say, Hey, thank you for everything you do. And if you, you know, just a favor, if you happen to know somebody that is interested in doing that, would you mind making me the first person you mentioned to him, please? And be like, Oh, okay, cool. You know, commitment. Because if you say, I'll send them to you, Adam, the chances are a lot higher you're going to send them to me

than if I don't ask you to answer that question. Does that make sense? Yes. You've committed. Got the commitment. That's it. Yeah, we like to make commitments in life and we like to follow through on them.

Yeah. It's satisfying. It's been marking something off. Yeah. It's satisfying. It's a mark and some off your list. That's it. So the number five reason why agents fail. The fifth reason. The fifth reason. The fifth of five. The fifth of five. Five of five here. No value. No value. No value. So if I'm going to talk to you, if I'm going to, if I'm going to deliver things to the marketplace, I'm not necessarily just going to say Adam Cantos with Remax, because that's not necessarily valuable to people. What's valuable. What's valuable to people is me

helping them with their challenges. Everybody wants you to solve their problems for them. Or what might be valuable is me notifying them of one of the challenges, the challenges that they face that they don't know about that I can then help them with. So I'm either going to identify something that they're aware of as a challenge such as Mark, you're probably wondering where interest rate's going with the current, the Fed's idea of where they should go, the mortgage industry, the real estate market,

things like that, and how that affects the value of your home. And you may or may not have been thinking about that. Or maybe you're thinking about taxes this time of year. Hey, when's a good time to buy and sell your houses with respect to taxes? Anytime. I mean, you need to be thinking about the value of your house constantly and what your mortgage payments are and where they're at and how does that affect your taxes? You need to talk to your tax person about that. But ultimately I want you to know that I'm here to help you with that as well from the real estate side. If you're kind of wondering. And you might go, oh, okay, what do you need to tell me? This is where I deliver my value. Or, you know, you mentioned the Broncos schedule. If you're a huge Broncos fan, I might want to be the very first person

to deliver to you. Hey, Mark, the Broncos schedule's out. And you go, oh, cool, thanks. Oh, by the way, they're playing your least favorite team on September 10th. And you might go, Oh, right on. Oh, by the way, I just bought their Jersey. So we're going to have a little competition, buddy. I mean, just, you know, just stir the pot or create some value or whatever. Or maybe I send you, um, the schedule, uh, taped to a football. Are you going to remember that more than me sending you their schedule? Totally. Absolutely. So how do we create value? So we've got five reasons why agents fail. No system, no accountability, just watching, no follow-up, and no value. Those seem to be the top reasons why I see agents not getting anywhere in their business or really any other business for that matter,

not getting anywhere. So you know how we fail as a podcast? How do we fail? If we don't ask somebody to subscribe. You know what? That is so true. So everybody on Start With A Win, don't forget, hit that subscribe button. Also, don't forget to leave us a review. We'd love to see those reviews. We've had a lot of amazing feedback on this podcast. Yeah. And don't forget to follow us on social media.

That's right. So anyhow, from the top of the 12th floor at Remax World Headquarters with producer Mark, this is Adam signing off. We'll catch you guys next time. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go on to iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

And remember, start with a win.