Succeed As A Real Estate Agent By Choosing The Right 5 People To Spend Time With
Back when I was a teenager, my mother told me over and over again: “Choose your friends carefully”. At that time I really didn’t understand the importance of what she was saying - I was just happy to have friends! We roller skated after school, played snooker, bowling and football all day long. We were very happy all day long.
Guess which one is me?
Now when I look back over those years I realise that, had I hung out with a different group of people, my life could be so different to what it is today. It maybe better or worse, nobody knows.
Fortunately, I was blessed to be academically inclined, and typically scored in the top three in my primary school classes. But I didn’t excel in secondary school because I guess I was just enjoying spending time with my friends. Luckily for me, I managed to get into a Ngee Ann polytechnic and just managed to scrape through and graduate with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering.
When I started working as a young adult I realised very quickly that it was up to me to determine my level of success. I knew that I could achieve whatever I wanted in life as long as I work hard, persevered and used my natural talents.
However, after a few years working as a real estate agent, I came to realise something else - that our successes in life more often than not come down to the people we choose to spend our time with.
Yes, where you were born and the family environment you grew up in, and how smart and talented you are, do play a role in how successful you will be in life; however, in my opinion it’s only a small role when compared to the impact of surrounding yourself with people who can lift you higher.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” - Jim Rohn, the renowned motivational guru
The theory is simple - if you want to be happy, you need to be surrounded by happy people; if you want to be healthy you need to be surrounded by healthy people; and if you want to be successful you need to be surrounded by successful people. In essence we become more like the people we spend most of our time with.
Robert Kiyosaki in his ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ book mentioned the same experience. He had two Dads — his poor Dad, stuck in middle-class with limiting views on money, and his rich Dad, who was smart about getting money to work for him. By choosing to learn about money from his rich Dad, he gained many positive beliefs and a distinctive mindset on how to become rich, eventually resulting in him becoming financially successful in life.
How Do We Find Our 5 People?
Because we know the people we surround ourselves with affect us on many levels, we need to learn how to attract people we admire, at the same time phasing out toxic relationships with those who suck the energy out of us.
Consider the people you spend the most time with. Are these positive people who empower you to become the best version of yourself? If the answer to this question is no, then you must identify then increase contact with those people who encourage you to become the person you truly want to be.
As a quick exercise, write your answers to the following questions –
No. 1: Consider the kind of person you want to be, then write down what your ideal self looks like. What specific qualities do you wish to have?
No. 2: At the moment, who are the 5 people you spend most of your time with? How would you describe these people? Write down the top 3 characteristics for each person. Are their ethics in line with yours?
No. 3: Do their qualities tie-in with who you wish to become? Do these 5 people detract from or support you with your vision for yourself. Do these people bring you down, or do they elevate you?
If the 5 people in your list above does not have the same qualities you’re looking for, FRET NOT!
You can start looking out for people you respect or aspire to become like in one way or another. It may well be a person who has already achieved the end goal that you hope to achieve. You may have named a celebrity, an industry leader, a personal friend, a person alive or someone who has already passed on, or someone outside your social circle - it doesn’t matter who it is, just use your imagination.
If your aim is to become a million-dollar per-year real estate agent, you will surely know the names of those who have already achieved that goal. If your aim is to build a 1000-man sales team, you will surely be able to list that team leader.
Take Action Right Now
Now that you’ve identified the 5 people who can assist in improving your performance, you need to determine how you can increase your contact with them. Of course it depends on who these people are, but the following suggestions may assist in reaching out to them –
Direct Contact
Direct contact refers to face-to-face, telephone or email contact. Work out how you can communicate with this person more often if you already know the person. However, if you’ve never met this person, do they belong to a community that you could also join? Perhaps you have friends who know this person? Perhaps there’s a way that you can become part of the same social circles.
Tips - I bought many lunches for top achievers during my rookie years and it shortened my learning curve tremendously.
Their Work Products
Because we live in an amazing technological age, we have the ability to surround ourselves with inspiring people, without initiating direct contact. The person you aspire to be can always come to you in the form of their work.
Get hold of everything you can and immerse yourself in them. These materials were made by them and the content contained therein will convey their knowledge and consciousness. Exposing yourself to these materials can be the same if not better than interacting with that person.
o Read as many blogs and books as you can. You will be lifted up by their inspiring success stories. Your creative thinking will be nurtured and your knowledge library will be expanded exponentially.
o Watch their videos to expand your skills and knowledge.
o On social media channels, follow inspirational people that can lift you.
o Subscribe to newsletters that not only help you achieve your goals but add value to your life while you’re working towards your goals.
Visualisation Works!
Visualisation works for those who believe in it. To some people visualisation sounds unbelievable, but for those who practice visualisation they know first-hand that it can be extremely powerful.
‘Think And Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill was the first self-development book I ever read. Hill wrote that, each night before going to sleep, he would visualise the events that would occur for him to achieve his goals.
For me, personally, I still practice this powerful visualisation technique, and I must say that it has helped me achieve numerous goals over the past 20 years. This is a very powerful tool that’s also used in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
When I was a rookie real estate agent, I imagined myself walking up onto the stage to collect my awards, and I could clearly hear the people clapping and cheering for me. When I started building my team, I visualised training a room full of my agents, with many coming up to me after the class and thanking me.
In the last couple of years I began visualising my team growing to 3000 agents, with at least 10 of these agents earning $1 million per year, and another 100 agents earning $500,000 per year.
Why does visualisation work? It provides the courage and strength to tackle daunting tasks. Research shows that visualisation triggers hormones and synapses - one neuron sending a message to another neuron - thus making it easier to achieve your goals. Once you have envisaged a scenario, it makes the real thing feel familiar and totally feasible. It feels as if you’ve already done it, and inside your brain you already have.
In Conclusion
You’re the sum of the 5 people closest to you so MAKE IT COUNT. You’re literally shaping your future by choosing who you spend your time with. I love the saying “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future” because I know first-hand that it’s true.
If you hang out with a group of successful, positive real estate salespeople who accept responsibility for their own results, you’ll become a proactive person who accepts responsibility for shaping your own performance. If you hang out with pessimistic people who believe that the world owes them a living, you’ll eventually begin to descend into a pool of negativity, even if you were initially a positive person.
So if you want to succeed as a Real Estate Agent, choose your friends very carefully!
** Please share this article if you find it useful or know someone who can benefit from it. Thank You.
To Your Success,
Gary Chua is the co-founder of Navis Living Group
—A 1800 agents-strong division with Huttons real estate agency, and the fastest growing group in this competitive industry. Gary is also a mentor to many real estate agents and team builders, for two decades and counting.
Before devoting his work full-time to grooming realtors, Gary was himself an distinguished real estate salesperson. He first stepped into the industry at age 30 in Year 2000 and having been Top 50 Achievers in his 5 years of sales, he understands the hurdles and challenges facing both new and experienced agents, and is thus equipped with a wealth of knowledge to aid and teach the property agents whom he takes under his wings.
In 2005, Gary realised that his true calling was to groom and coach the next generation of real estate agents. It was also the year that he consciously diverted almost all of his time and effort into recruitment activities, putting his personal sales aside and taking a hit in his bottom line.
Through sheer grit and determination, Gary's vision took hold as his team expanded, eventually growing to become the largest division in its agency, and also one of the largest in Singapore. It cultivated numerous top producers and achievers throughout the decade—some of whom have clocked in more than S$1,000,000 in commission in a single year, broken many sales records, won many local and international awards, and helped many real estate agents achieve outstanding results and realise their financial freedom.
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