The 6 Guiding Principles for a Successful Real Estate Career

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I'm Jennifer Myers, Founder of Agent Grad School and host of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent, The Agent Grad School Podcast.  My goal for each episode is to give you actionable steps you can implement today to grow your real estate business.

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Success is 80% mindset and 20% doing the right tactics, the right way, at the right time.

That means your success in real estate is 80% controlling your emotions and the games your mind will play on you.

With that in mind, here are six guiding principles to help keep you going when the going gets tough:

Principle #1: What You Tell Yourself Will Be Equal to The Results You Will Experience

I’ve seen self-fulfilling prophecies come true over and over again with our students.

For a decade, I’ve studied Agent Grad School students wondering why every student was given the same exact resources, yet had totally different results?

Why did some students succeed in creating the real estate business they wanted and then kept going even higher from there, while others, with the same exact information and sometimes even more support because they were “struggling” never experience the results they said they wanted?

It came down to two things—the first is the students who told themselves this would work for them, got the results they wanted and the students who said “it might work for her or him, but it won’t work for ME” didn’t succeed.

Or, how it sometimes comes out is focusing on something negative or finding something to pick apart. They spend more time finding reasons why it won’t work for them then actually doing the work that is proven to work.

The students that implemented and maybe failed the first few times but believed in themselves enough to keep getting back up, now have the real estate businesses they always wanted and the ones who were looking at all the reasons it wasn’t a good enough solution for them are still exactly where they started or are even worse because now they proved themselves right.

As Henry Ford famously said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

So, what’s the second difference between the students who succeed and the students who don’t see results?

That leads us to…

Guiding Principle #2: Be Willing To Be Uncomfortable

In addition to believing in themselves, our successful students are also willing to put themselves in uncomfortable situations.

They were willing to try something we outline in this course, completely bomb it the first few tries and keep getting better until they’ve mastered it.

They are willing to sit through the discomfort of being bad at something at first and they were willing to get incrementally better by trying again and again, until it becomes automatic for them, until it becomes HOW they are and WHO they are.

This leads us to guiding principle #3:

Guiding Principle #3: The Dunning Kruger Effect Is Real

The Dunning Kruger Effect is the roller coaster ride that two social psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered we all go through on our way to acquiring the skills and knowledge to be an expert at something.

Here’s what the Dunning Kruger Effect looks like:

Here’s what that chart means:

You start out with no knowledge and no confidence. We know we don’t know something, we know we are beginners. Both our confidence and our knowledge is low.

But what happens shortly thereafter is we learn enough to have gained confidence but not enough knowledge to support that level of confidence.

Our confidence spikes, because we’ve learned something new, we get really excited and think, I understand this, I can do this.

But what tends to happen next is when we actually implement it in our own lives, we realize just how hard it really is.

That’s when we enter the valley of despair. The valley of despair is the WORST.

This is when we feel hopeless and like we can’t do something. We get down on ourselves and go searching for something else.

We think we aren’t capable or good enough and our confidence plummets, even though we are further down the line on the knowledge and skills path.

The valley of despair is something WE ALL go through on the way to becoming highly skilled at something.

For those us who keep going, guess what comes next. WISDOM.

We are starting to be both knowledgeable AND confident because we are implementing.

For there, if we keep going even further, we become an expert and that is when you reach the plateau of sustainability, which means consistent outcomes. You’ve mastered it. It’s automatic. It’s who you are now.

So, expect to ride the roller coaster ride along your journey to a successful real estate business and know that it’s COMPLETELY NORMAL and it’s called the Dunning Kruger Effect.

Guiding Principle #4: Celebrate Your Failures

For some reason, we are taught that failing is a bad thing.

Failure is a wonderful thing, something we should be celebrating. Why? Because it’s our biggest learning opportunity.

Now, failure can oftentimes be confused with its cousin—quitting. Do not confuse the two. There is a huge difference between quitting on yourself and failing.

When you fail at something, which you will at least the first several times you try something instead, instead of getting down on yourself, ask yourself this question—what can I learn from this? Celebrate the fact that you tried something and remind yourself that if you choose, you can learn something huge from your “failure.”

You can ask any of our successful students, they TOTALLY bombed their first few listing appointments, their first few buyer appointments their first few anything they implemented. Instead of giving up on themselves, they decided to keep trying and keep getting better.

Now, they are winning almost every one of their listing and buyer appointments and they have become masters at them. They would have never gotten there without being willing to fail, pick themselves back up, ask how can I make this better?

Guiding principle #5: What You Put In Is Proportionate to What You Get Out

This one is a sneaky one!

How this looks is consciously or subconsciously is we don’t fully commit. You kind of have one foot in one foot out… because, deep down there is something preventing us from diving in with both feet.

Sometimes it’s a fear of failure and sometimes it’s a fear of success. It’s usually tied to one of those two.

The only times I’ve been successful in my life is when I am not willing to entertain a plan b. When there are no other options, the only option is to make it work and do what it takes to succeed.

You are here. You chose to be here and I’m so glad you did. And since you are here, be ALL In. Truly give it your all. Don’t have one foot out and one foot in. Tell yourself your success is inevitable and jump in with two feet.

Guiding Principle #6: Watch out for the Bermuda Triangle of Drama

Your mind doesn’t like change. Your mind wants to keep everything the same, even if the change is a GOOD thing. Even if the change means having the life you want.

Anytime you are up-leveling yourself in any way, your mind will try to keep you safe. It doesn’t know what else to do, so it’s like a child and it throws a temper tantrum.

That will happen at SOME POINT and likely MANY POINTS along your path to creating the real estate business you want. It’s definitely going to happen while you are an Agent Grad School student.

You have two choices:

You can either get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle of drama and get STUCK in there and get nowhere or maybe even disappear and we never see you again.

OR

You can become the observer and say, “Oh, isn’t that interesting. My mind is freaking out. That must mean I’m on the right path.

And then take your mind who will be kicking and screaming to the next level along with you.

Keep these six guiding principles in mind as you make the vision you have for your real estate business a reality.

If you want help growing your real estate business, become a student at Agent Grad School.

We teach a non-salesy method for getting clients coming to you consistently that doesn’t rely on old-school techniques.

Not only will you never have to worry about when your next commission check is coming in, but you’ll actually enjoy marketing yourself to get clients.

If you want a real estate business like that, think about becoming an Agent Grad School student.

To your success,

Jennifer


Episode Transcript

On this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent the six guiding principles to keep in mind, as you build a successful real estate career. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent I’m your host Jennifer Myers listen in. As I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to becoming one of the top 1% of agents in the US to even opening my own brokerage full of agents helped me serve all their clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents the same strategies I used in date to become a top producing agents. Now through this Podcast and agent Grad School dot com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, just the exact steps to get you the real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. A question I get asked a lot is will Agent grad school work for me, real estate agents. I talked to seem to get that what I teach is what I did to be successful. And they, you know, believe the examples of successful agent grad school students that I present, but they’re like, yeah, that’s great. It works for you. It worked for them, but will it work for me? And here’s what I know just from observing real estate agents and especially our students over the last 10 years that I’ve been teaching real estate agents, how to create successful businesses is that the students who follow our blueprint and then add their own uniqueness to it, our Successful. So then the question is, or, you know, the question begs, why then doesn’t every agent Grad school students see the same level of risk of results. That’s how these six guiding principles that I’m going to go through with you on today’s episode came to be, I’ve been a real estate agent for 18 years and I’ve studied real estate agent. Success closely for a decade. I was curious why some agents are hugely successful and some are not some kind of a, you know, kind of pitter out of the business and change careers, especially when it came to the agents that I’ve been lucky enough to coach and teach and have go through agent grad school. You know, I was really trying for a while to understand why are some students getting result in some students aren’t like, it really started to bother me. And I started to look at the The and always evolving and trying to make our curriculum better. But I started to see some patterns and the more students that I’ve worked with, the more clear those patterns have become. And so I created these six guiding principles for our students inside agent Grad school to help explain what made the difference between our students that succeed and our students that didn’t see the results that they wanted and the end, like after our program, right? Like what is the difference? Because when you start a new program, you know, you are kind of wondering like, will this work for me? And so there are six guiding principles that I tell our agents right upfront. Here are the things that you need to keep in mind if you want to be successful, not only at agent grad school, but just anywhere that you’re, you know, building a business. And in this case, that happens to be in real estate. So I wanted to share this with you today so that you could not only get a glimpse at what its like to be an agent grad school student. This audio that you are going to hear is essentially the abridged, you know, edited version of the very first lesson that students watch when they enroll in agent grad school. But even if you never become a student, these guiding principles, these six guiding principles are important for every agent to keep in mind as you build your real estate business. And as you go through what you’ll here in a second is one of our guiding principles, this roller coaster of Success that we all go through on our way to the top. So I’m going to let you listen in here to the sixth guiding principles that we teach our students to keep in mind as they embark on their age in grad school journey. But I hope even if you never become a student that you find these six guiding principles, helpful in your business and really help you kind of control your mind and your emotions as they go up and down as you build your business, because that will definitely happen. All right? I hope you enjoy this episode As real estate agents. Hopefully you’ll appreciate this analogy. I always say building a real estate business is building a house. And whether you’re here to build your real estate house from scratch, or you’re here simply to run a more efficient or more consistent real estate practice that doesn’t rely on you so much. You’re going to be entering a season of building and renovation and transformation. That means things are going to get a little messy and you might be spending more time working on a project that you would normally, and you may have to say no to some things to get that renovation project finished, but it will be so worth it once it’s done. Because once you’re done, you get to step back and not only admire the finished product, but you are going to be proud of the work that you put in to create such a huge transformation. As you know, though, transformation is not easy. Growing pains are real. So I want to give you six guiding principles that will help you get the most out of this experience and keep you going. When the going gets tough principle, number one, what you tell yourself will be equal to the results that you will experience. Now that may sound obvious, or it may sound booboo, but whatever you want to call it, I’ve seen self-fulfilling prophecies come true over and over again with our students for over a decade, I’ve studied agent Grad school. Wondering why every student was given the same exact resources you had different results. Why did some students succeed and creating the real estate business they wanted and then kept going even higher from there while others with the same exact information and sometimes even more support because they were struggling, never experienced the results. They said that they wanted, well, it came down to two things. The first is the students who told themselves this would work for them, got the results they wanted. And the students who said it might work for him or her, but it’s not going to work for me. They didn’t succeed. Or how it sometimes come out is focusing on something negative or finding something to pick apart. They spend more time finding reasons why it wouldn’t work for them that are actually doing the work that’s proven to work. The students that are implemented and maybe fail the first few times, but believed enough in themselves to keep getting back up. Now have the real estate businesses they always wanted and the ones that are looking at all of the reasons that it wasn’t a good enough solution for them are still exactly where they started or even worse because now they’ve proved themselves, right? It didn’t work as Henry Ford famously said, whether you think you can or you think you can. You’re right. So I know that’s been true for me in so many aspects of my own life. And it’s true for the students in this course. The way I look at it is we’re all telling ourselves some story that we believe is true. So why not tell ourselves something that will get us in the direction we want to go? So what’s the second difference between the students who succeed and the students who don’t see results. Well, that leads us to Guiding principle. Number two, the willing to be uncomfortable. And in addition to believe in themselves, our Successful students are also willing to put themselves in uncomfortable situations. They’re willing to try something we outline in the course and then completely bomb it. The first few times they keep getting better until they’ve mastered it. They’re willing to sit through the discomfort of being bad at something at first. And they are willing to get incrementally better by trying again and again, until it becomes automatic for them until it becomes how they are and who they are, which leads us to guiding principle. Number three, guiding principle. Number three, the Dunning Kruger effect is real. The Dunning-Kruger effect is this rollercoaster ride that two social psychologists, David Dunning, and Justin Kruger discovered we all go through on our way to acquiring the skills and the knowledge to be an expert at something you start out with no knowledge and no confidence. We know we don’t know something. And we know that we’re beginners both of our confidence and our knowledge is low. But what happens strictly thereafter is we learn enough to gain confidence, but not enough knowledge to support that level of confidence, our confidence spikes, because we’ve learned something new. We get really excited and we think I understand this. I can do this. But then what happens next is that we actually try to implement it in our own lives. And we realize just how hard it is that when we enter this Valley of despair and the Valley despair is the worst. This was when we feel hopeless. And like we can’t do something. We get down on ourselves and go searching for something else. We think that we’re not capable or we’re not good enough. And our confidence plummets, even though we are further down the line on the knowledge and skills path, the Valley of despair is something we all go through on the way to becoming highly skilled at something. The difference is some of us are willing to sit in that discomfort of being bad at something. And we keep going past that Valley of despair while others stop their journey right there. For those of you who keep going, guess what comes next wisdom. We are starting to both be knowledgeable and confident because we are implementing. And from there, if we keep going even further, we actually become an expert. And that is when you reach a plateau of sustainability, which means consistent outcomes. You’ve mastered it. It’s automatic. It’s who you are now. So expect to ride that rollercoaster ride along your journey to a successful real estate business and know that it’s completely normal. And it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. You just have to be willing to sit in that terrible Valley of despair and continue to gain knowledge and skills as you implement, because what comes next is wisdom. And With wisdom comes to that confidence again, and then comes expertise. You become the expert goal, cheat, guiding principle, number four, celebrate your failures for a second, we are taught that failing is a bad thing. And I actually think failing is a wonderful thing. Something that we should be celebrating. Why? Because it’s our biggest learning opportunity. I would not be standing here today talking to you if I hadn’t failed over and over again, every single thing that you were about to learn and implement an agent grad schools that came directly from a failure, one failure after another, and being willing to say, how can I do better next time? What is this teaching me? What do I need to put in place in my business? So this doesn’t keep happening. So I don’t lose another client. So my clients come back to me when it’s time to sell my constant failures. And the early stages of my real estate business is what created my success. And that is why you and I are here together right now. Now failure can oftentimes be confused with its cousin quitting, do not confuse the two. There is a huge difference between quitting on yourself and failing. When you fail at something, would you will at least the first several times that you try something, instead of getting down on yourself, ask yourself this question. What can I learn from this stuff? Celebrate the fact that you tried something and remind yourself that if you choose that you can learn something huge. From this failure, you can ask any of our Successful students. They totally bombed their first few listing appointments. Their first few buyer appointments, their first few, anything that they implemented, but instead of giving up on themselves, they decided to keep trying and keep getting better. And now they’re winning almost every one of their listing appointments, every one of their buyer appointments and they’ve become the masters. They would have never gotten there without being willing to fail, pick themselves back up and ask, how can I make this better onto a guiding principle? Number five, what you put in is proportionate to what you know, you’ll get out. Now, this one’s a sneaky one. How are you? This one looks as consciously or subconsciously. We don’t fully commit. We kind of have this one foot in one foot out because deep down there is something preventing us from diving in with both feet. Sometimes it’s a fear of failure and sometimes it’s a fear of success. It’s usually somehow tied to one of those to the only times I’ve ever been successful in my life is when I am not willing to entertain a plan B when there was no other options. And the only option is to make it work. You do what it takes to succeed. Now you are here, you chose to be here and I’m so glad that you did, but since you are here, be all in, truly give this your all and don’t have one foot out and one foot in tell yourself that you’re success is inevitable and be willing to jump in with two feet last, but certainly not least. We have guiding principle, number six, watch out for the Bermuda triangle of drama. So you don’t mind that doesn’t like change. Your mind, wants to keep everything the same. Even if that change is a good thing. Even if that change means having the life and the business that you want. So any time that you are up leveling yourself in any way, your mind will try to keep you safe. It doesn’t know what else to do. So it’s like this little child and it throws a temper tantrum that will happen at some point and likely many points along your path to creating the real estate business you want. And it’s definitely going to happen while you’re here. Agent grad school, you have two choices. You can either get to that, backed into the Bermuda triangle of drama and get stuck there and get nowhere and maybe even disappear. And we never see you again. Or you can become the observer and you can say it isn’t that interesting. My mind is freaking out. That must mean I’m on the right path. That means I’m about to up-level and start being someone new. And it’s only when I be what I want. Do I get what I want in return? And then take your mind who will be kicking and screaming to the next level. Along with you, you are the driver of the bus called your life and your mind. And it’s drama. Temper tantrums is just being this annoying backseat driver. So all you need to do is look in that rearview mirror and say, thanks. But I got this. Keep these six guiding principles in mind as you move forward. And speaking of moving forward, here’s what you’re going to do next. After you’ve watched this video until the end, you’ll see a button that says, take the tour right underneath where you’re watching. You’ll head there. Next don’t go there now. But once this video is done, click on that button to take the tour of the student portal. So you know where to find all the resources that are available to you. And then from there, you’ll move on to the start here section that’s where I’m going to walk you through the agent. Grad School blueprint for a successful real estate business. It’s the framework that you’ll be using to build your own successful business. Now, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and like there’s a lot to do, that’s completely, but just remember, you’re going to create your real estate business one stage at a time, just like when you build a house, first, you pour the foundation and then you do the framing and then you move on to roughing and the plumbing and the electrical and the HVAC. And so on a building, a successful business is also kinda like going to the gym. You’re going to work hard for a few months and you might not see any huge change, but if you keep going, it seems like all of a sudden, one day you dropped a size and people are starting to notice that you look different. That’s kind of how this will feel. You won’t see immediate results when you are at transforming your body are in this case, your business, it takes a little time to see results, just keep going, be consistent, and people will start to notice. Thank you for being here and thank you for wanting to build a real estate business that you are proud of. Thank you for being willing to stand out from the sea of real estate agents, a sameness that is so rampant in this industry. Thank you for wanting to create a real estate business that your clients are actually excited to engage with one that both reflects your uniqueness and adds true value to people’s lives. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Remember change happens when you take action. So apply what you learned today to your own real estate business. If this episode has helped you subscribe, leave a review and share it with all your real estate agent friends, and as always, if you want even more great resources to create the real estate business you’ve always wanted and have the life you want outside your business to head over to agent grad school.com and sign up for the free weekly trainings, you’ll get free classes, discounts, and other goodies that only go out to real estate agents on that email list. See you next week right here on Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent The Agent Grad School Podcast.

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