3 Reasons Real Estate Agents Do NOT Grow Their Businesses

by Carla Thompson

 

Do you get in your own way? We all do, right? And yet we want to succeed! We want to go to our next level of performance! Well, what gets in our way?

 

Ego. That’s our inner roommate who tries to guide us to actually not change. It tells us stories that we believe in order to protect us.

 

So why do we believe the stories we tell ourselves?

 

Reason #1: I’m Not Safe! Yikes!

 

The primitive parts of our brains are scanning the environment every day to make sure we are safe. When our brains sense even a slight threat, we react as though we might die because our brains still respond as though we are fighting saber-toothed tigers from many years ago. And when we are afraid, we react in one of these three ways: fight, flight or freeze.

 

How does this survival instinct affect our success in real estate?

 

A coach may suggest that you contact people you know to let them know you would like to help them or their friends. It’s a simple suggestion. And it works of course. How do you react? You say,“It doesn’t work!” Yet if it logically works, why do you respond that way? Your mind is telling you stories to protect you from being attacked by that pesky saber-toothed tiger. Your ego loves the stories as it protects you from doing something to put its power at risk.

 

Next time you pause when you know you should be lead generating, tell your imaginative brain that those tigers are not real. Talking to people will not kill you. Tell your brain to stop being so melodramatic!

 

Reason #2: I Don’t Believe It!

 

We don’t believe that things can actually work. Most of the time, our brain patterns are incredibly strong as we have repeated narratives in our head so many times that the neural pathways are thick and powerful and override new ideas.

 

So even if we intellectually understand that something can work, because we don’t have evidence of it working in our memory, we still defy the idea that it can work for us!

 

What do we do to tackle this inertia?

 

We have to figure out ways to get ourselves to do things anyway until we have experiences doing something new that will help us begin to formulate new mental models of success. As an example, one agent decided to lead generate an hour per day alongside another agent. They committed to do this for two weeks. Peer accountability can work beautifully for short periods of time. And in that two-week period, guess what happened? The agent had many positive conversations and procured multiple leads. Now the agent has new neural pathways in his brain that indicate making calls to people he knows does indeed lead to finding people he can serve.

 

Reason #3: I Want It NOW!

 

We don’t see the long-term results of what we do now. We want immediate gratification. Of course we all want what we want and we want it now! It’s the world we live in but more importantly, it’s our brains again causing this orientation.

 

An interesting result of brain research is the finding that our brains are wired to scan the environment and locate immediate threats. This part of our brain is the oldest part of our brain and it overrides the newer part of our brain where we focus on the future. So we are in a perpetual state of focusing on the immediate world.

 

In order to grow a business, we need to take time to create systems that will impact the future. We must resist our physiological urge to focus on our immediate needs and instead protect time to work on systems, behaviors, activities, structures, etc. that will create a different future state for our business.

 

We know agents are trapped in the immediate world when their production levels are about the same year after year. We know this because it indicates that agents are repeating the same behaviors.

 

If you would like to take your success to your next level, coaching allows you to focus on the steps you need to take weekly to create your future! Coaching pulls you away from the immediate world long enough to help you focus on the changes to make.

 

Ready for your business to evolve? Reach out to us today: agentpluscoaching.com

 

RAISE YOUR GAME.