How To Stop Comparing Yourself to Others in Business
Avoid Comparing Yourself to Other Real Estate Agents
As a real estate agent, it is easy to compare yourself to others. Other agents at your office may be quick to let you know about their recent successes and social media has made it too easy to compare ourselves with others. It’s human nature to look to others to see how we compare. Regardless, we all still find ourselves scrolling through one of our competitor’s social media profiles wondering what we are doing wrong.
In this real estate agent training podcast, you will learn how to stop comparing yourself to others in real estate.
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School. The podcast with quick tips and actionable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:12] Hello and welcome back to Rev Real Estate School. I'm your host Michael Montgomery. Today we have a really interesting listener question and one that I think goes to absolutely everybody's mind and it's how do we avoid comparing ourselves to other real estate agents. This is so common. And if you're a new or experienced agent it doesn't matter. We all have these feelings of wanting to get to the next level whether that be you haven't done one deal and you want to do five or whether you have done 100 deals and you want to build that up to 200 deals. There's always the next step.
[00:00:44] It's just in human nature so much of sales and communication and real estate for that matter is tied up into human nature and how we've evolved. Now I'd like to paint a picture for you. Let's say that you grew up playing basketball you were always surrounded by NBA players. You grew up to be about six feet tall. You would think that you are actually short because you're surrounded by all the tallest people in the world basically on a day to day basis. This is what we're doing when we're comparing ourselves to other people is we're looking on Instagram we're looking on Facebook and we're comparing ourselves to other people and we're not actually looking at the pros and the cons.
[00:01:25] We see somebody sold five homes one month and all we're trying to do is sell one. Let's say that's the case. Well you don't understand some of the very huge challenges that that person had to go through some of the nights that they missed with their family. Some of the challenges that they've had and some of the bills that they may have to pay with some of that money coming in like we do not see the whole picture we just see the picture of how it is and it's just like that person that grew up around only NBA players. You'd think you're short because that's all you're comparing yourself to.
[00:01:53] We know that this is a struggle. We know we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to others but that doesn't necessarily make it easier. We're not going to stop comparing ourselves to other people just because somebody says or just because logically we know we shouldn't. We need strategies to overcome this.
[00:02:10] Let's talk about a few strategies that you can put into place right away to stop comparing yourself to other people. It's not healthy. It does not produce a positive mindset. We have to be running our own race and real estate. So let's talk about it.
[00:02:24] First off you need to understand the game that you're playing the game that you think you're playing is that you want to do more transactions and you want more money. That's very often what I hear from agents is I just want to do more deals and I want to hire GCI. So you think you're playing this game of financial success but in fact you're not. You're actually playing a game of happiness and fulfillment. That's what you want really but what you think is that the financial success. Financial freedom more deals will lead you to full happiness and fulfillment. This is why we get jealous when we're comparing ourselves to other people's successes. So we're looking at the number of homes that they sold and we think wow they must be happier or more fulfilled. Truly the game that we're playing is not financial success. What we're playing is we want this thing called happiness and we think that the financial success will get us there.
[00:03:21] Now countless times even in my own life achieving a certain financial goal does not lead to an increased level of happiness. Yes we need to be able to provide for ourselves. But understand your target will always change. I have some coaching clients that are doing great business. They are doing great business but they want a little more. And then I have some agents that are working towards getting their first deal done in real estate and all they want to do is get a couple of deals done.
[00:03:48] We have to understand that that yardstick will change and what we want out of real estate is we want to enjoy it. We want to enjoy the good days the bad days and we want to enjoy everything in between. We know that there's going to be some struggles and if what you're comparing yourself is to somebody else's financial freedom and real estate understand that. That also comes with some serious challenges in life. That's why a lot of our training and coaching is all built around trying to create an enjoyable life for yourself while still doing great in real estate because at the end of day we want happiness and we want fulfillment.
[00:04:23] Next is understand that social media is contrived. You are never seeing the whole picture. You see somebody post about a big listing that they just got. You don't actually see some of the challenges that are associated with that. You see somebody sell a number of listings. You don't see all of the hard conversations. You don't see the listings that they lost. You don't see the friend's listings that weren't listed with somebody else. You don't see that sort of stuff. We need to understand that what we're seeing on social media and oftentimes what we're comparing ourselves to is contrived.
[00:04:56] Next do not compare your say two years in real estate or three years in real estate to somebody who's 20 years. Now I think we know this. We don't really want to compare ourselves to others that are have been in the industry for a long time. But the other piece of this is don't here are your three years in real estate to somebody else's three years in real estate. And what I mean by this is we all come with different backgrounds. Some people are just coming out of university. Some people are just coming at a high school for that matter. Other people have been in business for years so they already have a network built up. Some people are jumping into real estate in a new city or a new town so they have to build their network. It's going to take a different amount of time. So we have to honor the fact that we're all on a different journey so you cannot compare your two years or three years in real estate to the next person's two or three years in real estate. If their family was in real estate and they grew up in this town and their family has a number of connections and they have a previous job that also had a number of connections associated with it and you're brand new in the industry and you're in a brand new town we have to understand that it's going to take a different amount of time. It's still very doable but it's going to take a different amount of time.
[00:06:05] Next stop focusing just on the sales. You can't always control if somebody is going to sell or buy through you. Yes there's a lot of things that we can do so that we can move ourselves and put ourselves in the position to be in the right spot at the right time and we can be top of mind with our database but we have to stop comparing our sales to the next person sales. What we need to be focused on is our plans and executing our plans focusing on things that are within our control and sometimes sales are not within our control. But how much we prospect in how we go about doing that is within our control. So instead of comparing ourselves to somebody else's sales what we should really be comparing ourselves to is what sort of effort we're putting in versus the next person because this is a metric that we have power over within our coaching system. It all comes down to a point system you have to achieve a certain number of points each day. And if you hit that number of points good you're done for the day or you're done for the week. If you hit the certain number of points throughout the week. But if you don't then you have to keep working and we say Look as long as you hit this number of points it doesn't matter how you hit them but if you hit these points you're going to be successful. So you need to be focused on things that you can control. You have to let go of your desire to just be number one in the office and focus 100 percent on sales. We do focus more on the activities that will lead to sales.
[00:07:29] Next is a quick mindset shift. So any time that you're saying I'm not a top producer or I'm not this or I haven't achieved this that or the other thing or I haven't sold luxury listing whatever sort of limiting belief that you have and you're saying I'm not this just follow it up with ...yet. So if you find yourself saying Oh I'm not a top producer like that other newer agent that's a top producer I'm not a top producer... yet. What you're doing is you're changing your mindset away from you are not that thing to you are not quite that thing yet but with practice and with effort you will get there. So any time this can work in so many ways in life whatever you want to achieve. You haven't achieved it yet you still can and you still will with effort and with practice.
[00:08:18] Finally we have to change our mindset away from being jealous and annoyed and upset with people that we're comparing ourselves to and be happy for them. I want you to take one minute right now and just think of somebody at your office or somebody in your city that you've compared yourself to recently. And I want you to really picture that person in your mind and to think I'm happy for that person that person is doing everything they can to be successful. And that's great that they have achieved success over the last period of time. Just change that mindset and realize that you will even start to feel a smile come across your face because instead of comparing yourself to them yes they're doing great. And that is amazing. Good for them. This mindset shift totally changes the way that you perceive the world in the way that you look at those that you are potentially comparing yourselves to with that.
[00:09:09] Thank you so much for hosting this episode I really appreciate it. Remember you can ask a question anytime you'd like. All you have to do is go to revrealestateschool.com And go to the ask a question section and remember you can reach out to me anytime there or on Instagram I'm @the.michael.montgomery thanks so much for listening and we'll see you in the next lesson.
[00:09:28] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back here for the next lesson.