Ep029: The 4 Stages Of Lifelong Improvement and Professional Development for Real Estate Agents

Chris: Hi everybody and welcome back to the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast. I’m Chris McAllister and I’m thrilled to be here with my podcast partner, Laci LeBlanc. Good morning, Laci.

Laci: Good morning.

Chris: Today we’re diving into the fifth episode of our 12-part series called Protecting the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs and, yes, you, the listener, are the goose. This episode is titled the Four St of lifetime improvement and progress, so feels like there’s a lot of words in that title this morning, lacey, but I think it’s something that we need to discuss as we continue through this.

Laci: Yeah, I think so. And before we get to it, I think that you know, during this series we’ve had several episodes where we’re kind of talking touchy feely stuff, where we’re talking about people’s personalities or you know how they work, or but this is really a matter, I think, of you know. This isn’t as touchy feely as it sounds like it’s going to be. These are very practical things that we’re about to talk about.

Chris: Yeah, and that you know the whole thing, that thing that call it a journey of professional growth and personal growth and professional development. It does often unfold in stages, but often those stages don’t necessarily have hard edges or hard boundaries. They tend to blur into one another. But each stage has its own challenges and its own opportunities for advancement. So I you know this is pretty arbitrary, but what I’ve called the four stages are the first stage in a realtor’s career, is what I call technical proficiency.

The second stage is the quest for growth. The third is the achievement of status and the fourth stage is the pursuit of excellence. And I think this is one of those things in life where everybody starts at the beginning and very few people, if ever, jump from stage one to stage four or even stage one to stage three, from stage one to stage four or even stage one to stage three. You know it’s a pretty linear progression and you know I think it’s worth talking about from a coaching perspective, because realizing you know where you are, you know in terms of these stages in your career, I think helps you make better decisions going forward, and a lot of those decisions have to do with taking care of yourself, and that is the essence of protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Laci: That’s a great point. The coaching part of it is something that most people, when they start a career or, you know, especially if they’ve already been in a career for a long time don’t consider as an option or an opportunity, or it’s just not mainstream right. Having a coach, or even a mentor, I think, is maybe more mainstream, more accepted. But having a coach who can help you identify where you are, what you need to grow and based on your feedback, obviously, and your feelings, is such a powerful tool to get from technical proficiency to, ultimately, the pursuit of excellence.

I know in my career I think this is true for any career what you’re saying and in my career I would never be where I am today without coaches and mentors. That I didn’t knowingly, you know. I didn’t say, oh, will you be my mentor or let’s hire a coach, but I had those along the way and they really made the difference for me in how quickly I was able to move from one stage to the next, versus because there’s X amount of work that has to be done in each stage. Like you said, you don’t skip them.

Chris: And you know it’s funny because I feel like I sort of a bit self deprecating or even disparage the series some sometimes when we get together, because I don’t know if touchy-feely is the word that I want to be using. I do think that what we’re doing, especially in this series, is coaching. I truly believe that these are the conversations that I have with, you know, the agents that work at Roost. You know, and I’ve been, you know, working on these conversations for years and years, and this is sort of the culmination of those thoughts and those efforts. You know, a few years ago I sort of digested my unique ability statement to say that I create and coach business opportunities and strategies that support and add value to the lives of real estate professionals and their clients. And you know I it sounds like a big thing, you know, like am I really qualified for that? But you know, I think I am at this point and I’ve had some success and my agents have had some success.

And when you talk about coaching, you know Michael Jordan had a coach, right, any of the greatest of the great have a coach. And I have paid for coaching literally tens of thousands of dollars. I have paid for personal coaching over the years, studied, but I got the piece of paper that I needed to. You know, go get a job. But you know that doesn’t teach you anything about being an entrepreneur. It certainly didn’t teach me anything about being a successful realtor. And you know, the first time I paid for coaching was I had a Buffini and Company personal coach.

Actually, I had Dave McGee, who’s I think he’s a vice president there now, maybe even higher than that and he helped me become, you know, a damn good realtor. You know it and you know, speaking to him and being accountable to him, you know, a couple of times a month really was it caused a profound change for me. And I started with the coaching groups. Teach a Coach Dan Sullivan’s group, I think it was in 2003 or 2004. And you know I’ve worked with them probably at least 15 out of the last 20 years. So to me, this quote touchy feeling stuff it’s not optional, it really is critical and my hope is that you know, as we go through these discussions, that the listeners out there that you can pick up, you’ll pick up things that do resonate with where you are personally or where you are in your career, things that have happened before or things that you anticipate are going to happen, and for that reason, I do think this is important and it’s why we’re both devoting so much time to this.

Laci: Well said, well said. I think that’s the message right, it doesn’t feel mainstream, these parts of the conversations that have to do with professional growth and learning and personal development, but when you get right down to it, any just highly successful agent or investor or broker or anybody in the industry that you talk to does participate in this. So just because you don’t hear about it, you know, when you see an offer from a broker for coaching to come along with you know, as just part of the package, I think that’s a huge testament to how dedicated you know you guys are to success or whoever you know, whoever it is, but it just doesn’t always get talked about. So I think it’s very cool that we’re talking about it. I think that you know. I also hope that people will, you know, kind of take away from this that this is the delineation line. This is what highly successful people do that most people don’t do. Even if you don’t hear about it, even if it’s not mainstream, even if it’s not, you know part of the compensation.

Chris: I think it’s not, you know, part of the compensation or that people talk about. I think it’s the reason, it’s a big reason, why our agents do as well as they do. And you know, maybe that sounds self-serving, but I do think it’s absolutely true. And here’s the other thing you know, today is July 30th, 2024. So we’ve got what? 16, 17 days before all the changes that we’ve been talking about for the last nine months with NAR take effect. And this is still going to change. I mean, there’s no question about it. It is going to have an effect on every single one of us. It’s going to change how we do business. It’s going to change how we have to, you know, be able to articulate our value to our clients.

It’s a big deal and you know, on one hand, people say, well, I don’t have time to think about how this is going to affect my career or my personal growth. I’ve just got to make sure I understand what form needs to get signed before I go show a house and I’m not disparaging, that’s critical, but I never like to let a good crisis go to waste and I think this is the perfect time to sort of reevaluate. Okay, this is changing. It is a big deal. How do you want to embrace this as an opportunity to maybe make the changes and make changes in your business that maybe you always wanted to make but for whatever reason didn’t make? So I just think that, with all the changes in the real estate industry happening in the next couple of weeks, I do think it’s a good time to sort of think about dig into personal growth, continuous learning and all that good stuff. So it’s kind of a long introduction, but I guess I’ve been needed to get that off my chest.

Laci: I love it. I love it and my brain also. It’ll create a crisis when there’s not a real one, so there might as well be a real one, honestly.

Chris: Okay. So stage one, the foundation of technical proficiency. So at the beginning, we real estate professionals, we focus on trying to master the essential tools of the trade, and by that I mean good God. How do you log into the MLS, right? How do you get a contract? How do you fill out a contract? You know. How do you even things when you’re a brand new agent? How does the office work? What’s the culture? Who’s in charge? You know. Who can answer questions, who can’t answer questions? You know.

And then, my God, you know what does the advertising platform look like? It really is about the nuts and bolts of just being in business, and that’s the foundation, right? You could add in there things like the. You know the CRM. How do you use a CRM? And you know. Forget about you know how you’re going to get your first client right. Forget about what your personal marketing and so forth looks like. That is critical and it is part of technical proficiency, but the fact is, the basics you know. If you’re a new agent, you just got through your pre-licensing classes, you just passed the test, congratulations. But now you’ve got to get down to the fact, because God forbid somebody sprays their hand and says they want you to help them buy a house. What do you do? Right? So that matters, and it’s funny. It’s not funny, but you know, again, I’ve been focused on as all of you know, you know these changes that are coming up for several months now. We’ve talked extensively about it.

But one of the things that concerns me, you know, as a broker and a realtor, quite frankly, is all these new forms, whether it’s the buyer agent’s forms, adjustments to the exclusive right to sell contracts and so forth. Where are those forms and are they accessible? And I’ve been spending quite a bit of time the last month working with Dotloop. We’ve used Dotloop for years and I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I let the whole platform kind of get away from us and there was all kinds of old forms and old folders and offices and it was just a disaster.

And you know I thought, well, this is the time that you know I need to get in there and I actually hired somebody from Dotloop to work with us for the next 90 days to get this cleaned up. But I can tell you, when you talk about technical proficiency, you do sometimes have to fall back right, because I’m spending a lot of time. In fact I have another meeting at two o’clock today with Dotloop, just making sure, you know, we’re actually in five MOSs and we’ve got to make sure or I’ve got to make sure as the broker that all of those new forms are showing up in dot loop, the right versions, they’re all fillable, you know, they’re available to all the agents, and I just think that’s a great example of technical proficiency that we all need and it’s also an example of how you know you can sometimes you have to move around within these four stages.

Laci: Yeah, everybody’s kind of starting from scratch on this stage in the next month or so. Right, technical, because it’s not just about knowing how to do it and, you know, having access to it and choosing the right form when the time comes, but you also have to be able to explain it right, like you have to be able to tell the client like this is what you’re, this is what we’re filling out, this is what we’re you know, we’re agreeing to, and I think that there’s a obviously a renewed interest in making sure that’s very clear after all the NAR stuff.

Chris: The transparency is critical. And you know, as far as technical proficiency in stage one, you may not be absolutely great in stage one at marketing yourself and figuring out what your value proposition is and what your personal branding looks like, but you’d better be absolutely clear and comfortable with the basics of contracts and the MLS and agency law and everything else. That is technical proficiency, you know. And again, just because you pass the test doesn’t mean that anything that you studied to make that happen are things that you’re going to be, you know, really doing or thinking about on a day-to-day basis. So you’ve got to get out there in the world. You’ve got to figure out, okay, how do the tools work and, quite frankly, nobody can do that for you.

The sad thing you know and I about you know, the foundation, the stage one is, you know, the best of us move on right to stage two, but sadly there are so many people who go out and get a real estate license and join our profession that just go to stage one and stop. You know a lot of these people, you know. Maybe they didn’t really care to make real estate a career, maybe it wasn’t a passion, maybe it was something they did as a second job, you know, or a second career, a third career, but a lot of people just stay right where they are. And you know some people just don’t care if they ever sell a house again. So that’s not really who we’re speaking to today. But you do have people that get so good at the technical stuff Like I wish I had somebody right now who was better at dot loop than any of us, right, but a lot of times they do.

they just work for dot loop, unfortunately a lot of times people, you know they become adept at utilizing technology to facilitate transactions, but they never learn to use technology to create lasting relationships or build a scalable, sustainable business. They just stay right where they are. They’re really good at contracts. They’re really good at the rules. They’re really good at being a realtor. They just never get really good at building a business. They’re really good at being a realtor, they just never get really good at building a business.

And that sort of leads me into and this sort of is because it bears the line between stage one and stage two. But you know people really get hung up on training, you know, in stage one, and rightly so, and you know I’ve been challenged on that. You know how we train, what we train, what we do for training and so forth, and my philosophy has always been that we need to train agents on how to get someone to work with them before you know they worry too much about. You know digging deep into. You know how to list a house, so I do lean that way. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t at least know what a listing contract is and where it’s located and how to fill in the blanks. But I can’t physically get a new agent to the point where it’s time, to where they actually get the opportunity to sit down on the kitchen table and write a contract, but it is my job to make sure that they have the resources and the coaching that they need to write one when the time comes, if that makes sense. Right, we can show people, we can sit with people. You know how to write a contract, how to use the MLS. There’s tons of training that the MLSs provide, the boards provide and so forth. But at the end of the day, you can coach, you can give ideas, you can offer solutions, but until somebody actually creates an opportunity for themselves to get out in front of somebody, let’s face it technical proficiency is just useless. So there’s three sides of training.

So this is something that I’ve been going with for a while now. You know there’s what I call mentorship and coaching. There’s, you know, the other thing that I’m calling in this sort of relates to Roost. It’s done for you support, and then the other thing is formal instruction. So we do a lot of marketing for our agents, but the training part for us is explaining why we do what we do, why we know this works for our business and why we know it’ll work for the agent’s business.

Mentorship and coaching a lot of that is tied up in Connect, practice, track and Grow and this series of podcasts. But formal instruction you know that to a huge degree speaks to technical proficiency and you know, aside from, you know, using the MLS, the forms and so forth, you do also you know sort of move along in this stage too, as you develop negotiation skills, how to manage a client’s expectations and then you get into time management, all that stuff. But you know, at our company and I’ve been thinking about this a lot it’s almost like a triangle and we’re going to publish a blog post about this soon. But you know you have mentorship and coaching you have done for you support and you have formal instruction and these are like three sides of the triangle. But formal instruction is where the foundation of technical proficiency lies. So if you can envision a triangle, formal instruction is the base of the triangle for us.

Laci: Yeah, and I think that stage one is yeah, that stage one is where you get your technical proficiency right. But theoretically anybody can train you to do a contract right To write a contract. Anybody can train you on where you go. But stage one is also where you start to build your professional network right.

So, surrounding yourself, I wonder if the people who stay in stage one right and don’t ever move past the kind of technical proficiency level, I wonder if they are missing the other two sides of that triangle. In the beginning, right, there’s nothing to kind of compel them or motivate them or inspire them or even just show them that there are two other sides to this triangle, with the mentorship and the coaching and you know. So I think that it just goes to show how important it is that you consider the folks you’re surrounding yourself with, even at this technical proficiency stage, because those are the folks who are going to help you get to the next stage. You know, if you look at technical proficiency not only as a stage in and of itself but as a foundation for growth, the next stage that we’re going to talk about- it’s almost like when you end up is really important.

Chris: Yeah, it’s almost like there’s probably there’s stages within each of those three sides and you know your first year in real estate you probably need a little bit of all of them. So you and I have discussed this blog post. I guess we just committed to making this part of the show notes, didn’t we? So we’ll put the Roost Training and Support Triangle in the show notes of this broadcast, and what you’re talking about, too, is that blurred line as you transition to stage two, and you know that’s the quest for growth. And stage two, the quest for growth. I think some of that starts to involve big picture understanding. It starts to involve, you know, context for your experience. Context, I think, is a big part of the quest for growth and that’s sort of, you know, from our point of view in the training and support triangle.

Stage two is where you start to really, or should be, taking an interest in the other two sides the mentorship and coaching and the done for you support, making sure you’re taking advantage of everything that your brokerage offers.

But the second stage is also marked by a yearning for expansion beyond the routine, right, you’re looking for something that’s satisfying, something that justifies why you got your license in the first place, and the sad thing is some people never really get that far. So sometimes they become disillusioned, right, they get caught in the cycle of repetition and they just never seem to get traction. And at that point you know sometimes people who just can’t break through they’ve got a choice to make. They either keep trying, they try another brokerage, they look for additional help or coaching or mentorship or in some cases, quite frankly, they decide that real estate’s not for them and they move on. And maybe that’s a little bit harsh, but the fact is, if you can’t get out of stage one, my guess is that you know real estate may not be for you. How harsh is that this early in the morning, lacey?

Laci: Well, you know, I think it really applies to everything.

If you can’t get out of stage, one like insert profession here might not be for you.

So I think that you’re speaking words that need to be heard, and I think that in real estate it is unique because a lot of folks are doing it at part time, right, as they try to get out of another career or, and so I think that the tendency for folks to become jaded or, you know, to not get past that first stage maybe is maybe that happens more frequently than in other professions, because a lot of times people will have something to fall back on, or.

But I do think that the difference maker again and I think I’m repeating myself here, but I think it bears repeating is having someone or a team there that knows you can help you identify what your strengths are and can help you work on your weaknesses, whether that’s you know figuring out how to be better at those things or figuring out you know who not how right, who can help with those, or you know providing that support to you and that you know kind of personalized motivation to to work through it, because this happens in every part of your life. Right, things get hard and you have to decide in every part of your life are you going to work at it or are you going to pack up and pack in?

Chris: You could almost call the quest for growth as purgatory right.

Laci: Am I stuck there?

Chris: It’s a knight’s quest too. You’re either going to move on and find a way to be successful in this business or you’re not, and part of that is you know again who you surround yourself with. This is the stage when you start to really question. If you’re not where you want to be or you don’t feel like you’re making progress is where you start questioning Am I with the right brokerage or am I working with the right broker? You know, is this the style or the culture of the brokerage I’m with? Does it, does it not just mesh with how I view the world and how I want to conduct my business, but does it support how I want to conduct my business? Does my current brokerage relationship make my business better? Does my current brokerage relationship complement my skillset? Does it brokerage relationship complement my skill set? Is it a plus for the clients I choose to work with?

So this is also a time in stage two for some agonizing reappraisal. Right, and it becomes more prominent and pronounced and a little scary if you haven’t had the success that you thought you were going to have or the success you were promised, and for people who feel like they got off to a hot start and they’re moving right along they’ll eventually end up in that purgatory. It just might be a little bit longer down the road. Sometimes the people with the initial success, they have a harder time in stage two. But it does come later. That makes sense For the people who just didn’t get what they wanted in the first year. You know stage two can be. It just can be a little bit tough. So this stage is, it’s critical. It consciously or unconsciously are falling back to stage two to try to get our, to get a plan together for how we’re going to move forward move forward?

Laci: Yeah, and I think that it’s worth noting that, you know, can you be successful if you’re not aligned with the right people? Right, absolutely. There are plenty of people out there, plenty of agents out there, who are highly successful in spite of the broker they’re with the agents they surround them with. You know their personal relationships, what’s going on at home? Right, but from experience, just like with any relationship in your life. Right, but from experience, just like with any relationship in your life, it’s I was much more successful afterwards, even, you know, alone, rather than and it wasn’t that I was not successful before, right, it was just in spite of you know who I chose to surround myself with. So I just think there are absolutely people out here who are going to be exceptions to these rules and are going to be successful, no matter what.

Chris: I think you said something really interesting there.

I think both of us, it sounds like, have been successful in spite of our circumstances and when I think back from that point of view, there is no question that I was successful in spite of the fact that I didn’t feel fully aligned with the brokerages or the franchisors that I was working with.

And what happens is you can be successful in spite of that friction, but you can’t do it forever, right. And I think the times that I’ve gotten burned out in my career and felt like that I needed to take a step back and reassess were the times when I wasn’t fully aligned with the people I was working with. And, quite frankly, that’s why I created Roost. I wanted a company that I would be comfortable working in, you know, building relationships with my clients for the long term, a scalable, sustainable business that would support me and people who see the world like me for the long term Not just, you know, a year or two, three years, whatever, but for the long term. And actually I just kind of had that real realization. So this is good therapy, lacey, thank you.

Laci: Yeah, my pleasure, you know, if I get my personal anguish can help someone see through their own. That’s why we’re all here. We’re all just walking each other home, right.

Chris: So, as we’ve said, the quest for growth can be scary, it can be fuzzy and it can be transcendent, but transcendence hurts. So the quest for growth is number two. And then you know, once you come through that purgatory, once you complete that night’s journey, then the next stage tends to be the achievement of status. So, with time and dedication, you know, professionals reach a stage where they enjoy significant respect and status within community. And that’s probably where the top 20, 25, maybe 30% of realtors are today. Right, you’ve got 70 to 80% of us that aren’t even close to achieving what we had hoped to or achieving any sort of status whatsoever. But you’ve got the top 20%, 30% that almost at this point make it look easy because they know what they’re doing. They’ve been practicing for a significant period of time, maybe they’ve already gotten some coaching and so forth. That’s helped them along the way. They got aligned with a great brokerage, they had a good mentor, whatever. So stage three is you’ve got your head above water, you’re secure in your profession, you know you’re doing well and and you know you did what you set out to do Congratulations. That is an awesome place to be the downside and I always have a downside or the potential conflict or concern is you can’t get to stage three and view it as an end in and of itself. For the best among us, getting to stage three is an awesome thing that needs to be celebrated, but at the end of the day or the end of the career, it’s simply another milestone and a very long and purposeful journey. You know the respect and status people earn when they’re in stage three. You know it’s directly related to the commitment to personal improvement and professional improvement, and I want this those of you who are listening to this that see yourself in stage three. I just want this to serve as a reminder that, despite your past successes, the journey of growth is ongoing. So it’s a great place to be. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but it’s as transitory as stage one and stage two.

The biggest concern I have for folks in stage three is complacency, and complacency poses a threat to continued relevance. You know I’m always urging our realtors the best we have, anybody I come in contact with to maintain and enhance their skills, to get better and better every year. How are you going to add more value to your clients next year than you are this year? And again, the whole thing we’re going through right now, with the changes with NAR and so forth, is a perfect time to sort of reevaluate and figure out how am I going to add more value, how am I going to articulate that more value?

Because let me tell you something you know, I don’t know how many listeners that we’re going to have to this broadcast, but the people who are going to get to level four and they’re going to stay in level four and you have it sounds you know. Well, let’s just say it. I think you have an advantage by listening to this and thinking these thoughts and figuring out how you’re going to go forward successfully for the long-term with all the changes that are coming down. So in stage three, I really want you to celebrate Congratulations. I’m so proud of you. But just know it’s much easier to fall back from stage three than it is to go forward, and the skills that got you here into stage three will not get you to stage four. So you’re going to have to level up.

Laci: So let me ask you a question about achievement of status, because to me, I think that you know, when you hear that sometimes you can think, oh well, that means you know I’m in that social media post that my brokerage puts out every month that I’m in the top 10, or but that’s not really the status. That’s not necessarily the status. A lot of times you know that’s part of it, but the status is something personal. I think. Right Achievement of status Like I’ve got a couple of friends here who are real estate agents and their brokerage is fully aligned.

They do a lot of good work in the community and their status that they’ve achieved is as much about doing that good work in the community and having the freedom of time and you know their bills are paid so they can take a little bit of time to do something that’s really important to them, which is support the community around them. And you know, maybe for other people it’s being able to send your kid to the school you want them to go to, or you know they’re just different levels of achievement and I feel like the achievement of status is not just being at the top of the list of you know who wrote the most contracts, or who sold the most value, or you know in this quarter that there’s a personal, there’s a personal. Yeah, everybody likes public recognition.

Chris: Everybody likes to be patted on the back, everybody likes to be reminded that they’re winning. Right, you know it’s, but status is, can be fleeting, it’s ephemeral to some degree and the standards for status change and it’s almost like it’s extrinsic right, like an extrinsic reward versus an intrinsic reward, an extrinsic reward versus an intrinsic reward. And when you talk about, you know, not only are you publicly recognized, you know you don’t have to go out and door knock like you used to anymore. You’ve got a steady stream of referrals coming in and that is fantastic. And you can pay to send your kids to the school you want to go to. Those are all extrinsic. Did I say that right this time Rewards, but that is status. You know status is.

I don’t want to say status isn’t real, status is very real, but status in and of itself isn’t necessarily sustainable. It into real estate in the first place, and that burning desire to do better, learn more, create, take care of their clients at a level that is better than it was last year or the last five years or whatever, and that tends to be what the but that’s the defining factor, that tends to be what drives people to stage four, which is called the pursuit of excellence and move on from the achievement of status. You know if we’ve got 20, 30% of the realtor community, you know that have achieved a certain level of status. I don’t know what the percentage is, but my guess is it’s five to 10% of the people in the real estate community that are actively pursuing excellence. And these people know that nothing stays the same, nothing is fleeting, that bad times come and go, good times come and go. You know one day you’re on top of the world. You know the next day it’s what. What have you done for me lately?

Laci: Right, but I keep thinking about MC Hammer. For some reason, like MC Hammer, achieved status, but he never pursued excellence.

Chris: Well, maybe that is a good one, I don’t know. And you know there’s a lot of fleeting status in the age of TikTok and Instagram and all that too, and influencers and all those things. But the pursuit of excellence is something that you know, you can commit to, it’s going to be there, it doesn’t go away. But I guess the best way for me to describe it is the pursuit of excellence. It’s a state of, you know, continuous learning and, more importantly, curiosity. You know, professionals in stage four, they build upon their cumulative experiences in stages one, two and three and they view their career not just their career, but everything that they’ve gone through, good and bad as investments in themselves. Right, everything that’s happened. You’re either earning or you’re learning, right? So if you’re not earning, hopefully you’re learning, and that in and of itself is an investment, especially if you can persevere and continue to move forward. You know I used to talk about we’ve all met people in many different professions where you know they may have 20 years in the business but they’ve just gone through the same year 20 times, right? We’ve had other people who have 20 years in the business and it’s like compound interest. They just become, you know, better and better at what they do, they add more value, they help more people and so forth. It’s a compounding, it’s cumulative. So, again, you know we’ve talked before about the shiny object syndrome and fear of missing out and so forth.

I think the folks in stage four, you know they’ve sort of gotten past all that. You know they aren’t necessarily. They may be attracted, they may be curious, but they’re not going to just jump in, you know, without looking when the next shiny object arises, or try to hop on a trend that you know is likely going to be fleeting. You know the difference is that they focus on again deepening their expertise and expanding their capabilities. And you know, I do believe that there are people who get to stage four and maybe they never.

You know there’s a lot of people got to stage three that never had to really focus and work hard at getting better. They never had to build a coaching relationship or they never had to think about surrounding themselves with good people on their team or even creating a team. But all of those things are what the people in stage four are working on putting together and leveraging in order to continue at a high level of performance and achievement for a long time, and when I say a long time, I mean we’ve got fabulous people in this business that have been doing it for 20, 30, 40 years and you know they love it. We have other people who never, ever get that far because they just couldn’t find their footing. So it starts with stage one and it moves all the way through stage four, the pursuit of excellence.

Laci: I think Dolly Parton is the embodiment of stage four. If MC Hammer is stage three, then Dolly is stage four. I mean, and who doesn’t want to be like Dolly? Am I right Like just constantly looking for ways to improve the world around you?

Chris: She just did the rock and roll double album.

Laci: Yeah, you know what? Because she, she can. And I think a lot of people just don’t, are not born with, or ever in their life experience the level of privilege which Dolly Parton, if you know her story, obviously not born into privilege, but I think most people never. They just don’t believe that about themselves, right, they don’t? My kid is 10 years old. He, in his heart of hearts, believes he can be like Mr Beast. Mr Beast is from North Carolina, we’re from North Carolina. Like he will find every similarity on the face of the planet. He believes in his soul. He can do what Mr Beast has done to you know clean up the oceans and be famous on YouTube and like they’re just the whole nine.

And I think that people just don’t see that possibility in themselves, especially, you know, after stage three, after you’ve spent all this time in a career working. I just think that you know and this again is where coaching can be so important but people just don’t. They don’t see that next excellent step for themselves. They just don’t believe that it’s a thing. And that’s why I think a lot of people get stuck in stage three and they don’t feel stuck right. Stage three is not a terrible place to be most of the time. But I just think that with a little bit of coaching or mentorship or, you know, surrounding yourself with people who push themselves, that’s when you get, you know, the belief in yourself that there is a stage four, there is more beyond where you’re at and you can actually achieve it. And I think that without that, without kind of external factors, a lot of us just are not kind of pre programmed to believe in ourselves enough that we think we’ll ever get there.

Chris: I think that’s profound and I think that goes back to surrounding yourself with people who care about you and vice versa. You know, the part of the beauty of a great mentor, a coach or a leader or a manager or so forth is that they care enough to get to know you well enough to find out what you’re really great at and also you know what maybe you should be hiring somebody else to do for you, right? So sometimes that kind of feedback, you know, can be tough to give and it can be tough to hear. But you know, a great mentor relationship, coaching relationship, management relationship, is that you’re with somebody who cares enough to see where your greatness is and where they think you should double down and what makes you special. And, quite frankly, that’s invaluable. And I would say that most of the folks, if not all the folks who make it to stage four and beyond, had somebody like that in your life. So, you know, be open to finding that person. So, in summary, the journey through these stages is not just about professional achievements but it’s about embodying the whole principle of lifelong improvement. It’s a commitment to not only keeping pace with the evolving landscape of real estate, just like this whole NAR thing, but it’s also to leading that charge by embracing growth, pursuing excellence, and critical is investing in yourself. For real estate professionals that are committed to that path, the journey itself is as rewarding as the destination.

I think as people get into stage four and they look back, they find that stages one and two were where the real action was and stage three wasn’t all that exciting in retrospect. But each stage offers different lessons, different challenges and different opportunities. So just to wrap up today, I just want to kind of cover a couple of key points. So we talked about the importance of mastering technical skills and building a strong foundation. Then we talked about the quest for growth and the need to break out of routine and align with supportive environments, meaning the brokerage that you choose to associate with. That foster and care about your personal development. Status was our third stage, emphasizing that reaching a milestone is not the end but only part of an ongoing journey. And finally, in stage four, we discussed the pursuit of excellence, where continuous learning and personal development aren’t just key but it is just a way of life. So it’s about investing in yourself and seeing your career as an ever-growing journey. Anything else before we close up shop today, lacey.

Laci: No, I think this was. I’m feeling very introspective. I need to look at my own path and journey. I hope that’s how people listening are feeling too, because it’s always worth a second look. Part of it is just assessing and reassessing and constantly being aware of where you are, because before you know it, the days are weeks and the weeks are months and the months are years, and you’ve been in one stage for longer than you ever intended to be.

So self-awareness and setting aside a few minutes to really look at where you are versus where you want to be, I think is critical too.

Chris: I agree. Well, thank you all for joining us today. If you have any questions or want to share your experiences, feel free to reach out to us and stay tuned for our next episode, where we’ll continue to explore more ways to protect the goose that lays the golden eggs with part six. To protect the goose that lays the golden eggs with part six Don’t fight the flow.

There is a rhythm to our business and also we just updated our career section of the Roost Real Estate Company website. So if you want to check out www.careerwithroost.com, take a look at how we work with real estate agents in Ohio and Florida and see what you think and if you like what you see, we’ve got several quote, whenever you’re ready options at the bottom of the page for you to click on if you’d like to learn more about our company. One of these options is to schedule a 45 minute call with me, a free coaching call. I’d be thrilled to spend some time with you on a Zoom call and hear about your business and hopefully learn something and see if there’s anything I can do to help you move forward through these stages. So that’s it for today. Thank you so much and we’ll see you next time.

Laci: See you next time.