Episode 175: Sales Success Habits That ALL of Us Need

[INTRODUCTION]

 

[00:00:31] Jon: All right. Welcome, everybody, to our Achieve Your Goals Podcast episode. Hey, before I introduce our guest, Karen Briscoe, who is a member of our Quantum Leap Mastermind who I first met at our Best Year Ever Blueprint live event, just a couple of quick commercial announcements. First of all, our seats for the Best Year Ever Blueprint event where I first met Karen are quickly filling up so November 17, 18, 19 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. If you intend on joining us in San Diego, make sure you take a look at the website BestYearEverLive.com. It’s our flagship event that we put on every year. It sells out every year and if you’re interested in joining, make sure you go reserve your seat because it’s going to be an incredible event, November 17, 18, 19 in San Diego.

 

So, that’s the only commercial I want to give at the moment and now I’m going to shift gears to our guest today, Karen Briscoe, who is one of our Quantum Leap Mastermind members. That’s a private mastermind group that Hal Elrod and I have been running for about four years now and Karen is the author of Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed. She’s been in real estate since right out of college. She was in commercial real estate. She’s won a number of awards and has been highly successful and I’m super pumped to bring her to this community through this podcast because I know there’s going to be some great wisdom, some practical wisdom that we can all benefit from. So, I’m ready to jump in. Karen, you look great on the webinar. Are you ready to go?

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[00:02:15] Karen: Here we are. Let’s do it.

 

[00:02:16] Jon: I got to tell everybody too. Before we started recording, I was complimenting how on the video, your background looks a lot cleaner than mine does and you pointed out that in real estate these things matter. And if you don’t mind, I got to share people your comment about my background because I was pointing out that as I’m looking at the background on the video, if you watch this in the live stream like the background almost looks really cool and then I find a way to muck it up with these posters that are sideways. And, Karen, you in the most endearing way you said, “Oh, well that’s the way you would do it, Jon. It’s your style.” So, I love it. I love it. Hey, tell us, Karen, about your relationship with Hal Elrod and how you meeting him and you writing your book are all connected together because you’ve got a really cool story and I think it would be fun for people to hear that connection.

 

[00:03:16] Karen: Oh, I’m delighted to share the story because it really was life transforming. As often happens, when people achieve success at a high level, a lot of people want to know how you do it and over and over again, some coaching and training and a blog that I have for a number of years, it kept coming up that I should write a book. There are lot of real estate books out there so I was like, “Okay. I’m not going to write another real estate book.” So, I had this epiphany, this brilliant idea that it would have a different format. A lot of real estate agents that actually salespeople in general are very easily distracted. We call it the squirrel or the shiny objects syndrome. They’re off to the next thing. So, getting them to focus on their personal and business development to stay the course, they often would get distracted and not stay with it and they felt like they didn’t have time to read or to work on their personal development.

 

So, I had this, I’d ask them, “What can you do at five minutes a day?” And most people say, “Yes, I can devote five minutes a day to my personal and business development.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, so if I wrote a book where it was in a daily reader style which is very common for motivational and inspirational reader, well, if I did that and merged it with business concepts and personal development concepts where literally if you write a page a day, over a year you would have all this acquired knowledge in the real estate world. Would you do it?” And over and over again people said they would. So, I started talking with people that have written real estate books and been successful and one person I chatted with was Pat Hiban. And Pat said, “You need to meet Hal Elrod because Hal has a book called the Miracle Morning,” and I did not even know about the Miracle Morning until Pat told me about him.

 

[00:05:17] Karen: So, I actually wrote the book mostly because of the Miracle Morning in the sense that I felt like I never had time myself to devote to writing a book so I committed to getting up an hour early every day. And that is when and how I wrote my book. So, I felt like I was on this mission to meet Hal Elrod and it seemed like one of those comedies where every time I was – I should’ve met him and like it didn’t happen until Kristin Brindley was having Hal come to Maryland to speak and I, in typical Hal Elrod format, I got up early and I made sure I was there when he arrives so that I can meet him and that was such an amazing experience with him being very gracious and agreed to endorse my book. And it really does fit in very well with the Miracle Morning SAVERS. Hal has endorsed my book and so has Michael Maher who did the Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents. So, that’s the journey to Best Year Ever because then of course Hal could leave it at that. He’s like, “No. You have to come to Best Year Ever.” So, here I am because of all of that.

 

[00:06:35] Jon: That’s awesome. Karen, as you shared that story and in a second here I want to ask you to share because you’ve been really successful in your career and you’re humble about it but I want to make sure that we hear from you some of your best advice on achieving goals. And before you share that, I just want to drive everybody’s attention. I don’t know if everybody caught this but, Karen, just when you’re sharing that story, there’s a few things that stand out that I just want to really support and magnify for everybody. So, the first thing is the way that you approached writing your book, it’s so easy to overlook something that you said which was you listened to your customers. I was actually just on somebody else’s podcast a few minutes ago where we were talking about this except idea, the idea of like when you create something, how do you make sure you’re creating something that people might buy and you’re pointing out a big part of the answer which is ask the people that you want to be selling it to what they want. And that can sound obvious but it’s so easy to overlook how important that is and what I love about what you shared is they gave you the answer. They gave you the signals and it sent you in a direction where you knew you could sell the books. And the other thing, Karen, that you said, that again it’s so easy to overlook this, but I think there’s so much wisdom, sometimes in these profoundly simple ideas but you said it as though it’s second nature is if I’m going to do something, let me go talk to those who have been successful.

 

[00:08:17] Karen: Yeah.

 

[00:08:17] Jon: Right? Let me not talk to others who are trying to figure out how to do it but talk to people who have been successful. So, I just want to call that out. And a quick shout out before we come back to having you share some of your best tips on goal achievement but you stumbled across Pat Hiban who he has become a great mutual friend and mentor for a number of us. And for those of you that don’t know, he is one of the founders of the GoBundance community which I love the work that they do. It’s a men’s group and they’re an incredible group where they are helping people in all areas of their lives. So, that’s kind of fun. I did not realize it was Pat that connected you.

 

[00:08:57] Karen: It’s Pat, yes. And he also has a Real Estate Rockstar podcast and he has a book himself quite successful I bet. That was the first step I took was to talk to people that have gone before and had achieved and to learn from them because I felt like they would, clearly in my real estate success, I recognize that early on in my career and so I felt like, okay, I’m going into this new area of writing a book which I felt like for sale by owner, I knew nothing.

 

[00:09:31] Jon: Nice.

 

[00:09:31] Karen: I was like I’m going to go to the people who actually have expertise in this.

 

[00:09:35] Jon: Well, tell us a little bit about you have an awarded career. You’ve done exceptionally in your field, the top percent of percent of everybody that attempts to do what you do. What are some of the big lessons that you’ve learned about goal achievement? To broad topics, you can approach it any way you want.

 

[00:09:56] Karen: Well, it really is attainable. I mean success is attainable but it also is part of what Hal teaches and that is that not everybody will do it because it often requires following some that are setting up good habits. Many people think that they’re going to just will succeed or achieve success by luck or happen chance. There really is a matter of habit. And the beauty of habit is that once you have established it, then it will propel you into it just like the writing of the book. I’ve made a habit of getting up an hour early and by that habit was able to write the book in nine months period of time. In terms of the structure of the book, Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day, even though every day is different, it does have a format because as you said, there are key fundamentals to success and this isn’t just for real estate but it actually applies in many areas of business and life.

 

And the first one is everybody needs to have a lead or commit to get leads in order to have something to do. And it’s obvious, almost seems obvious in the sales world but it actually applies in other areas as well. So, I say like my dentist, until my dentist has a patient, he doesn’t have anything to do. He doesn’t have anything to practice industry on. Churches, if they don’t have people come in the doors, they call it evangelism. They don’t call it lead generation but they don’t have anything to do. So, the first step in almost every endeavor is to have, I mean, okay, universities, schools, you have to have students, right, or you have to have people that participate in your coaching program, more people who in your – we think of it again very commonly in sales.

 

[00:11:55] Karen: We don’t realize that everybody actually is in that lead generation business. Then what happens is you have that lead or you have that patient or you have that student, you have to do something with that. You have to we call it a transaction in our business but in your field, you’re teaching or coaching or encouraging or moving them through some sort of program and what often happens is that their people become very good at the actual process and they oftentimes will get stuck in what I call this transactional loop so they’ll get a lead and then they’ll get that lead to settlement, they’ll get it through the process but then they wake up and they got nothing to do. So, they go get another lead and then they go do it all over again and they get stuck. They’re only as good as their next program or next transaction is sold.

 

And so, then that’s where the third component of what comes out of the success principles are connecting the building and growing. So, in order to sustain on a long-term pattern in business or for churches, they have to sustain as well. I mean many of them close down because they don’t do anything to keep the members that they have. Schools are the same way. I mean, we see schools that close as well. We see dental practices that close because they don’t get the patients to come back. So, there are things that businesses or organizations do to sustain, to connect, to build and grow and that all that comes together what I call the sweet spot of success. I use a Venn diagram so, the math major in me, when they all come together that’s where the convergence habit is the sweet spot and it’s all surrounded by mindset or success thinking activities and vision because it is with that then you’re able to really achieve at a high level.

 

[00:13:57] Jon: I like this a lot. Hey, a shout out to those of you that are watching live and please don’t hesitate any ahas that you have. Just post them in the comments as we go through our conversation here. So, Karen, I want to come back to a few of these things that you shared here and I’d love to get your wisdom diving into a few of these whether it’s about habits or lead generation and I love the point that you’re making. It’s so simple but it can be so important that to remind ourselves that as entrepreneurs you gotta have somebody to sell to. Some people call that managing your funnel or your pipeline and folks who market things on the Internet, that industry people have gotten really clear on this reality that it’s like a math equation. I get enough people in the entry of the funnel, somebody’s going to buy something but I’m glad that you’re talking about dentists and schools and churches because you’re reminding us that it doesn’t matter what kind of work we do. If I’m an entrepreneur of any kind, I’ve got to constantly have a focus. I cannot take my eye off of how many people are being brought into the front end of my funnel.

 

So, I’d love to talk about some of the things you’ve learned about that through real estate that might apply to others but I want to go all the way back to even just the idea about habits. In your experience, what are some of the types of habits that have been most important for you to be successful and I’d also be curious to know what have you learned about being able to change habits or develop new habits? Because I think of myself all the time and I think I have certain habits that have gotten me really far and I guess I’m fortunate that I have those habits. I also have certain habits that a day doesn’t go by where I don’t think, “Gosh, I’d be better off if I stopped doing this or started doing this.”

 

[00:15:52] Karen: Oh, we all have that.

 

[00:15:53] Jon: Yeah. So, I’d love to know what have you learned about how to tune into more of the good ones and tune out the ones that don’t help us and what have been some of your habits that have gotten you to where you’re at?

 

[00:16:04] Karen: Well, Jon, I mean that’s a human condition and actually that’s what keeps us humble, right? I would say one of the habits is being a lifelong learner. So, if you’re a lifelong learner then you realize that you’re on the road to perfection and you’re not going to achieve it and so you live into that and that is certainly something that Hal in the whole Miracle Morning and the reading component and the scribing or the journaling component to take your experiences and to learn from them but also to learn from others. There’s an article and it just came out in Inc. Magazine about what they call and it came from Benjamin Franklin that why constant learners they set up this time or set aside this time for doing that, and that I have to confess, it’s been kind of a piecemeal. It’s been constant but it’s been a little, it’s been piecemeal and it’s become more, I’m more committed to it and more proactive about it as I’ve gone into this next area of my life because there are many opportunities to reinvent ourselves when I look at my career. The world is going to change whether we keep up or whether we do anything or not. So, just staying current with the rapidly changing world is I think that being a lifelong learner is one of the key aspects or key habits.

 

[00:17:34] Jon: So, I want to comment about this and just converse with you about this. So, I personally have long felt that in terms of all of the values that we could live out especially as an entrepreneur, I’ve always believed that curiosity in a real authentic curiosity is maybe one of the most important. And I’ve noticed that those who I respect and learn from when I ask them the question what matters most, their answer is exactly what you shared which is lifelong learning which I believe comes from a place of authentic curiosity and I’m so glad to hear that, Karen, that that’s your response to what are the habits that matter most.

 

And one idea that I’d love to just react to what you shared and share with everybody on that is that being a lifelong learner and having what I call an insatiable curiosity is something that can be nurtured. It’s not something that you either have or you don’t have. It’s something that can be stimulated and for me, personally, one of my first mentors, Dan Casetta, used to teach me that my life was always going to be a reflection of what I’ve learned and that would always be true. And that always stimulated me. And one of the things that I have loved is that I’ve noticed when I learn something, it’s like I discover something that is never going to be taken away from me and now my view of the world is never the same. My capability is never the same but it can be stimulated by genuinely asking ourselves, “What am I learning right now? What’s happening around me? What can I be discovering right now that maybe I wasn’t seeing before?” And there’s a lot of ways I think to stimulate that learning but I just want to point out that I think it’s easy for people to proclaim that they value lifelong learning.

 

[00:19:34] Jon: But as you pointed out, Karen, it can be a habit that gets deepened and so I think some people want to be lifelong learners and then there are others who actually they walk around in a permanent state of curiosity and that is very different. That’s authentic and you said a word earlier. You said a word, and the word that you said that I think is at the source of what creates a lifelong learner is it’s the source of curiosity, it’s humility. And it’s not until we are willing to acknowledge that there is this almost infinite depth of knowledge and wisdom that is always still out there for us that we actually come from that place of walking insatiable curiosity. So, I love hearing that as a habit that you consider to be important. You talked a minute ago about lead generation. Do you have any wisdom you can share with us as many of us are entrepreneurs on just fundamentals of generating leads regardless of business or industry that we’re in, things you’ve learned about that?

 

[00:20:51] Karen: Well, I do. One of the things that happened to me recently was I was doing a training and this actually applies so across industry but the topic is called Commit to get Leads and this young man is in an ancillary industry. He actually is with a junk company or a company that helps clean up houses. And he said, “I didn’t know I was supposed to commit to get leads,” and he said, “Once I decided to commit to get leads,” he said his business quadrupled. So, I would say first of all commit to the process. That’s a mindset to say I am committed to get leads. And then my next tip along that is to set a number. So, many people trained on time blocking and I think that there is value in that. I’m not discounting that but what I find is that a lot of people commit the time or they say they’ve committed the time but then they don’t actually use the time to lead generating. I have a story. Our daughter had learning disabilities when she was younger and so we had sent her to a tutor and she would come out after an hour and I’d say, “Well so, what did you learn? Did you get your homework done?” She said, “No, I didn’t get my homework.” “Well, what did you learn?” “Nothing.” And I’m like, “Well, what did you do for that hour?”

 

And I find that that happens a lot of times with people who say they’re committing to lead generate but if they’re not seeing the productivity out of it then I’m like, “Okay. Well, try activity blocking.” An activity blocking is you select a number and you commit to that number and once you’ve talked to that number or met with that number or what, if you’re setting up a sales funnel then you have drawn in that number or attracted that number, that gives you something that you can actually track and you can see where your business is coming from and you actually have, you know what numbers you need to achieve in order to achieve the goals that you have established for yourself. So, that would be a couple of my tips that are in the book and that I would share for lead generation.

 

[00:23:03] Jon: You just described, it was funny, the scene here at FLI this week. I’ve been kind of out of the office not necessarily physically but mentally for the last six weeks because we had two major conventions that we were designing and facilitating. And so, we have long known on our team here that as soon as we got through these big events, we were going to go into a sales season where and I’m a more primary sales person at the moment where I was going to drive sales into our next certification. We certify people in how to do what we do.

 

[00:23:36] Karen: So, you do lead generation too.

 

[00:23:38] Jon: Oh, I do. Well, here’s what’s so funny is as you’re talking about this and my team sitting right here, we literally started the week and I said to our team, I’m like, “We got to have a goal this week and my goal is I need to talk to 14 people and I think I’ll sell seven of them.” Well, I ended up talking to 10 or 11 and I sold eight so I beat my number. But literally, I still lived that today and I love the way you describe that and that’s kind of how we operate here. It’s like we know that we need to commit. I mean we were literally at one point I’m walking around the office digging through business cards. It’s like, “Wait a minute, I know there are some people who said they want this stuff. Let’s go find who it is we’re supposed to sell to,” and I love that focus on remembering that it’s a numbers game.

 

You know, that’s something that Hal was exceptional at as a Cutco sales rep. And when Hal and I lived together and we sold knives and we competed, one of the things that Hal is known for is he turned the whole prospecting thing into a game and he was so good at being detached from the results and being committed to the process. And he would tell himself, “It’s a game. I’m just committing to making 20 phone calls or 40 phone calls,” whatever it was, and he got so good at letting go of the emotion because he knew that he could make 40 calls and nothing could happen but he knew that in the long run that averages would play out. He and I had a shared mentor who used to say, “If you commit to consistent activity and say you can have a bad day and you can have a bad week,” but in that business, he would say, “You cannot have a bad month if you commit to the process and forget about the results,” which is one way of putting it all but that’s kind of what you’re talking about.

 

[00:25:25] Karen: Well, and I still do it. So, you said 15 years so 15 years I had committed my very first week, in fact, I have it and I’ll show it in training my very first week in August of 2002 and I’ve written one through 25 and I can track the business that came out of that week and the repeat clients and I know exactly what generates business. And there are lots of benefits to activity tracking. One is you can do what’s called frontloading so you can work ahead and you could also backfill. You really can’t do that with time because once time is passed, it’s passed. The other benefit is that if you want to up your production, you know what level, what number of calls or what number of activities will generate that business and so you can adjust accordingly. Time again, once it’s passed it’s passed and I agree with you that there is some game element to it. In fact, I call it game application but I look at it more as there’s something very empowering by actually writing down that you have done something that it cements in your brain that you have accomplished something. And so, there are lots of reasons why activity tracking works and it seems like you picked up on that.

 

[00:26:47] Jon: In my own awkward way. Yeah.

 

[00:26:49] Karen: Yes.

 

[00:26:50] Jon: I have my own notepad that says, “We need 14 meetings so I can close seven,” and we had ten and I closed eight.

 

[00:26:56] Karen: And if your numbers aren’t what you want them to be then you also could then know, “Oh, maybe I need to be working on my conversion or my consulting techniques,” because if you find that your numbers aren’t in line with industry standards or what you want in terms of your achievements then you can seek out training or coaching to improve those skills.

 

[00:27:20] Jon: Yeah. As we’re sitting here talking about this, Karen, I’m realizing something that I wouldn’t say I’ve taken for granted but I’ve never publicized it really. When I look at the experience that I’d gained working with Cutco Cutlery as a young person, one of the things they do phenomenally as a company, and it’s how it is, their entire company is run by 18-year-olds selling hundreds of millions of dollars of knives. Literally, it’s all 18-year-olds and one of the reasons why they are so good as a company is because part of their culture, they’ve got a fantastic culture of lifelong learning but another part of their culture that doesn’t get as much recognition, I don’t think people realize this, but they track everything. If you go talk to a manager of a Cutco office, I mean, they know how many incoming recruiting phone calls or outgoing happened every day. If you said two months ago on this day they could go back and they could tell you this is how many calls came in, this is how many we made, this is how many we’re set for the interview, this is how many showed for the interview, this is how many showed for training. To many of you depending on your industry like we all do that.

 

But I think there’s a lot of people who get into entrepreneurship and they don’t realize the level at which tracking these things is actually a good idea. That Cutco manager he’s going to tell you how many showed to training, how many showed on the first, second, third day, what the average person sells in their first three days, their first 10 days, their first two weeks. Literally, every one of those data points that I’m mentioning, every manager has an exact number that they could tell you on the spot and so that’s how they have 18-year-olds running a several-hundred-million-dollar business and that’s what you’re talking about and I think a lot of people can take for granted. Even if you’re listening to this and you just want to lose weight or if some other goal, what are the things that all impact that, the dominoes that you could be tracking? There’s a saying and I’m probably going to butcher it and whatever, you could fix it for me, Karen, but it’s a track coach at Stanford that is credited for being the one that made this popular. It’s the idea that performance monitored equals performance improved. It’s the whole idea that when you start to put attention on something that’s like the simplest way to improve it is to just put attention on it.

 

[00:29:41] Karen: Well, you said 15 years so 15 years in the business I still track it. So, it’s not like I stopped tracking it when I achieved success. I believe that the achieving of the success, that’s why I love the topic of this podcast or the title of it, Achieve Your Goals Podcast, so you said, “Well, what are some of the ways that you have achieved success at a high level in business and life?” One of the ways I’ve achieved it is by tracking because by tracking then again you have so that you know what your conversion numbers are. I know what my conversion numbers are. When my conversion numbers consistently or not in line then I’m going, okay, there are some that’s kind of like you’re watching your oil in your car, whatever you like. Okay. It’s time to take the car in. It’s time to perhaps I need some coaching in this. Perhaps I need some training in this. And without that, you’re just trying to determine what it is that you could do to achieve at a higher level. If you don’t know what, then how would you know what to do or where to begin?

 

[00:30:44] Jon: Yeah. Karen, one of the things that you said earlier that I have so much respect and appreciation for you, for having succeeded in a career in the long run because – and I respect anybody who succeeds as an entrepreneur or in sales and one of the reasons why is because I know how much of a toll it can take, mentally and emotionally. And you mentioned earlier that for you like a centerpiece of success is the ability to manage our mindset. And I would love to get some of your advice on managing that mindset on how to be resilient in the face of adversity. Because in your career, you have dealt with a ton of it and I think it’s something that any of us can constantly be learning about. So, any ideas that you could give us in what you’ve learned in that area?

 

[00:31:38] Karen: Well, I would say that our industry is very personal because a person’s home is their castle, a person’s home is their – the whole endowment effect I’m sure you’ve heard about when people own something then they give more value to it. It’s not a commodity anymore for them. It’s also very emotional many times because they often are going through another significant life event in addition to buying and selling a home. It could be a positive one, a baby is coming on the way. It could also be divorce or death or other things that cause people to make a move. And oftentimes, working with friends or people that I know, people in my church or community, it becomes very personal.

 

So, one of our mantras is from the movie, You’ve Got Mail, I’m sure you may remember that movie where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and she’s the big bad bookstore which is Tom Hanks character is. Her small bookstore is going out of business. So, they’re indicating online and he says, “It’s not personal. It’s business.” So, that’s one of the mantras that we incorporate in our group and our team when something happens and it seems like it could be something that you might take personally, we remind each other this is business. It’s not personal. So, you talked about the rejection aspect. That is frequently common. Statistically, a third of the people that you either go on an appointment on to show or to help them sell their home or to help them buy a home, a third will go to someone else, a third won’t do anything and a third will go with you. So, it’s like baseball here already.

 

[00:33:38] Karen: The best in the business reach a third success ratio. So, that means you’re going to not be successful two-thirds of the time so you have to be able to manage that. Some of these little mantras we have, we also are big fans of the whole idea of I don’t know if you heard of the Presence by Amy Cuddy and she talks about the Wonder Woman pose or the – have you heard of Amy Cuddy?

 

[00:34:04] Jon: No. Now I want to go find out.

 

[00:34:05] Karen: Oh my gosh, you got to find out about this. There is something to be said about posture and carrying yourself in a positive way. It’s been shown to at least keep the mindset in a positive way. There’s all about body image in that so sometimes we’ll all get up and do our Wonder Woman poses or Superman poses as the case may be. Another technique that we found. The other thing that we do is we talk about how the person may be going through something that we may not be aware of. And so, engulf them in what we call kind of like their force shield of grace. So, we just give them a lot of grace because they must be going through something that if they weren’t under a stressful situation, they may have behaved differently. So, we just have and they’re in the book to some of these success principles that keep people. In terms of habits, I think habits are beneficial for having a good success mindset and that is the exercise, the meditation, the aspects to the SAVERS.

 

[00:35:16] Jon: I love this advice that you give us on not taking things personally. I don’t know if I’m very successful at it but I love the advice and one of the things I think is so helpful about it is we often when somebody rejects us in business, what you’re saying is, what we do is we mistake what they’re rejecting, right? What they’re ejecting is what we are offering and that what we do as humans is we interpret that as they’re rejecting me as a person. And I’ve seen this play out and I think this is actually a key distinction between a business owner, salesperson, entrepreneur who is not going to last and those who thrive is in that moment how do they handle it because there are really two choices. It’s if I take it personally then what I end up doing is I actually just want to defend myself and the problem with defending is now if I’m defending, I’m not learning. If I’m defending, I’m definitely not evolving. Whereas the other option is if somebody says no, instead of telling myself, “Well, I’m a bad person and they’re saying no to me,” instead, what I could ask is a question which is, “Well, why did they say no?” And maybe I can learn something. Maybe they’re saying no. It’s not me personally but it’s how I present it and it’s the way that I framed it or whether or not I did or did not handle an objection in advance. But I only learn those things and evolve if I can stay curious and I can only stay curious if I could be present enough to realize when I’m taking it personally.

 

[00:37:06] Karen: And sometimes you don’t know. So, that’s where you have to be able to let it go. I’ve had many times people say, “Well, I don’t want to work with a friend,” because then it may harm their friendship. I’m like, “Okay. But if you don’t work with a friend then you could harm their friendship because they’re going to be offended because you didn’t work with them.” So, in fact, I wrote a blog about it recently about that, about why work with a friend and that many reasons why people say that they don’t want to work with a friend but why work with a friend.

 

So, there are reasons to work with a friend because oftentimes a friend is going to have your vested interest at heart. They’re going to be very sensitive to your situation. They also could be the most likely to help you achieve your goals. I mean, if they’re the most professional, why not work with a friend? But it really does matter the response so you have no control over what they’re going to do but you do have control over how you’re going to respond. And that’s where the mindset comes in because if you have this mindset that whatever is the best for that person that they’re going to achieve it, if that involves you are not, it’s still the outcome that you want to have happened. I think they know the difference. But you know the difference even if they don’t, right?

 

[00:38:30] Jon: Yeah. Great advice. Karen, this is awesome. This conversation has been fantastic. Before we close here, I would just love to make sure for someone to check out your book, Real Estate Success in Five Minutes a Day, they’d find it on Amazon I presume or anywhere else.

 

[00:38:47] Karen: Absolutely. On Facebook and there’s a website and many of these principles that we’ve talked to, as you could tell, transcend the real estate industry. I have many business owners, entrepreneurs that are reading the book and saying, “Wow. The applications really are across industry and profession.”

 

[00:39:07] Jon: That’s so cool. Well, congratulations to you with the success of your book. I love that we got to connect today. I love that you are a member of our Quantum Leap Mastermind and it’s really cool that we met you through the Best Year Ever Blueprint event and ultimately it all came through somebody telling you, “You got to go meet this guy, Hal Elrod.”

 

[00:39:28] Karen: Yeah. He’s the one that started it all but I would say the whole Miracle Morning community and the Quantum Leap Mastermind community has been so embracing and it’s a wonderful thing that you and Hal have created and nurture and continue to take us on this journey of lifelong learning.

 

[00:39:49] Jon: That’s awesome. Karen, this was a pleasure. This was a privilege. Thank you for bringing your wisdom to our group today.

 

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