Many realtors get excited about the note business because it is a great way to find leads, future REOs, and short sales. However, that is only touching the surface because, in order to succeed at it, there is a lot that goes into that most notably with the actions you repeatedly take, tiny or not. Scott Carson talks with real estate investor and record-setting realtor Karen Briscoe of the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group about some of the ways to find success five minutes a day. She breaks down this top secret of the successful in business and shares how you can get the momentum rolling yourself. Karen also discusses the importance of mentors and attending masterminds. Don’t miss out on this episode as this could be that little extra step that will take you a long way.
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Five Minute Success with Karen Briscoe
I am jacked up to have a very special person that you are going to learn a ton of information from not only about success but marketing and successful habits. I am honored to have the distinguished, Karen Briscoe, join us. Karen is the Principal Owner of the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group with Keller Williams. The HBC has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 250 Top Realtor teams in the United States. Her group has helped sell over 1,500 homes in over $1.5 billion in value. She is the creator of the transformative, 5 Minute Success concept, and the host of the podcast by the same name. Her books, Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed and Commit to Get Leads: 66 Day Challenge, offer a combination of information and inspiration delivered for memorable stories. We are honored to have Karen Briscoe join us from the DC market. How is it going, Karen?
It’s great. I love the fact that we’re focusing on closers. You’re in focusing on note closers and I’m focusing on real estate closers.
Let’s face it, there are only about 5% of people that take action anyway. There are specific things, habits and actions that successful entrepreneurs whether you’re an investor, note investor, realtor, mortgage broker, things that the people commit to, to have success. That’s why I’m excited to have you on to talk about, especially with our note nation. We have a lot of realtors that get excited about the note business because it’s a great way to find leads and future REOs or short sales. There’s a lot of marketing that goes into that. I love the fact that you’re part of Keller Williams because we’re in Austin, hometown for KW here. They used to run a short sale negotiation office out of their main corporate offices down south years ago. In your years of experience and closing more than $1 billion sales, what would you say is probably the main key to being successful for your reign of success?
It’s habits. I know that’s not sexy or anything. I hate to break it to you but it’s the things we repeatedly do where success comes from. The difference between a one-hit-wonder or a two-hit-wonder and a professional who achieved success over and over again is they have strong habits. The most important habit from all the people I’ve interviewed on the 5 Minute Success Podcast and all the people I’ve talked with, the most critical one of that is the lead generation, business development, prospecting. I call that commit to get leads. What often happens with people in sales and entrepreneurship, it’s the shiny object syndrome, the squirrel phenomenon. They are always running after the next hot thing. The reason why you’re great at what you do is that you’ve been doing it a while and you keep doing it. That habit formation is so key to long-term success.
I’m a big proponent of that. You’ve got to go out there and avoid the shiny object and shoot some squirrels so that you can be focused. I’ve been teaching this note game stuff for over a decade. I had been a full-time real estate investor since 2004 and you’re right, stay in your lane, try to avoid it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be educated. I love that I can see in the background all the books. I even see a lot of the same books that I have on my bookshelf, which is great. Leaders are readers for a big part. It’s good to learn too but you’ve got to focus on taking action. It comes down to those day-in and day-out habits.
In terms of the success thinking activities and vision is what I talk about. People have a vision about where they want to go and they think about it. A lot of people skip that middle step, the actions. There are activities in there that need to be done consistently. It’s not saying affirmations to yourself in the shower and not creating a vision board but there are activities in between. When people develop it as a habit, first of all, they could build on habits. It’s a lot easier than reinventing the wheel every time, which is what many people do. When you talked about all the books that I have, that’s where a lot of my ideas have come from. As often happens to people who achieve a high level of success, a lot of people want to know how I did it. I started speaking, coaching, training and invariably people say, “Yeah but I don’t have time. I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to go to training. I don’t have time to get better at my skills.” I’m like, “Do you have five minutes a day?” Everybody said they had five minutes a day.
That’s why I wrote the book, Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day, because it follows under Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law states that limiting and restricting time makes us more efficient and effective. You know that. You get ready to go on vacation or have something in play, you get purposeful. You’re doing what has to be done. That’s why limiting has more impact. The other benefit to five minutes a day is because a lot of training and information are tsunami-like. You come back and you’re full of all these ideas but, “What do I do first and where do I begin?” It’s so overwhelming, you don’t do anything. It’s so much of paralysis of analysis. The idea of investing five minutes a day, then you put one core concept into your repertoire, into your practice, into your business, into your life. It can be one of several things. Sometimes it’s a domino. Sometimes it knocks over a chain of things. Sometimes it’s more snowball where it builds over time. Sometimes it’s more like the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple. I don’t know which one’s going to happen for you but do it.
Building that habit, there’s a lot of research on habit formation. The 66 days, which is the Commit to Get Leads, that came out of research that’s in the Habit Loop by Charles Duhigg. There’s a lot of it in The ONE Thing with Jay Papasan and Gary Keller. Sixty-six days, why that? The first three weeks, 21 days, people are very evangelistic about their habit. Talk to somebody who got a Peloton Bike or started a Whole30 Diet. They’re telling the world. They’re so pumped about it. About the next three weeks or 21 days, they’re going, “I don’t know if I want to eat keto for the rest of my life. Can I have a piece of bread?” They’re hanging their clothes on their Peloton bike. They’re going through this evaluation phase. That’s what Seth Godin calls a dip. I’m like power through the dip. Keep doing it because when you get to that next 21 days, three weeks, you start experiencing the benefits of the habit. The truth is to achieve success long-term, you don’t stop at 66 days. The 66 days is habit formation. The idea is to put these habits in place and then your energy can be devoted instead of on trying to get yourself to do things that you know you should do. Your habit drives that, then your energy can be focused on being more effective, on covering more market share or going and doing something you want to do. That’s the purpose of the 66 days.
I love it because most people have bought into the 21 days to build a habit and that is not the key. That’s to get the momentum going. That’s why you see the gym full come January but vacant come February. Sometimes it’s a grind to stick with it. The 66 days, you can look back and start to see differences in whatever you’re doing, building momentum with it, lead generating, working out, whatever it might be. I’m glad you’re talking about that because that’s the one thing I harp on all the time over here. Give yourself 60 days reaching out to banks or doing whatever it is just to find that success.
You said 60 days, a couple of months. In real estate business, to get a lead and get it to settlement, you need at least a 90-day lead time and your business has got long lead times too. A lot of it is planting seeds. A lot of it is building up for ongoing success. At the same time, that’s where then continuing the habit afterward. It’s like brushing your teeth. You’re not stopping at 67 days. You know that you’ve built the habit. What a lot of people do is they do the rollercoaster business. They do that stop, start, stop, and start. That’s a lot of energy.
It takes so much energy to get that ball momentum running to get away from your bad habits. One of the things I’ve always told people or investors as they become an entrepreneur. I was like, “You’re 40 to 50 hours a week, you’ve been the home to somebody as a boss. If you’re getting out to do your own thing, your freedom can either be a benefit or it can be strangulation with that much freedom. It’s making sure to do specific things every day. I’m a big proponent of time blocking.
Time blocking works for a lot of people. I also have found activity blocking. Activity blocking is you choose a certain number of contacts you’re going to make a day, touches or whatever you want to call that type of method of lead generation. That has lots of benefits in that. Sometimes with time blocking, people figure out all the things to do other than doing the lead generating. It’s very self-accountable. You write down the five or ten that you’ve done every day or whatever it is that you’ve deemed is the level of business development, lead generation, prospecting that you need to do in order to create the business you want and live the life you want. Tracking is a proven way of success and when you track what you measure improves. When you track, you will then know where your business is coming from. You will have a better sense of recreating what works because time goes away.
You could set a certain amount of time, but if this certain amount of time didn’t achieve the results you wanted, you can’t reproduce that time. You can reproduce the contacts you made or the type of prospecting you did. That’s why I’m a big fan of activity blocking. I like setting a number and then doing that for 60 days and seeing, does that generate the business I wanted? If you got a tsunami business coming in and you’re going, “I don’t need to do five a day. I can do two a day,” whatever. If I see five a day isn’t enough, I could step up the game and make more. There are different cycles in businesses and everything when you need to do that. You will learn what level of activities are going to get you. The other thing I love about it is for me, I love taking time off to travel and to do personal development and other endeavors. I will set a certain number of days off every year so then I’m working inside the days I do work. I can do what I call front load. Right now, I’m doing front-loading for the whole month of August because I’ve got a lot of travel planned in August. You can’t do that with time. You can’t time load ahead of time. Wouldn’t that be great? That was a strategy that’s worked well for me and a lot of people that I’ve worked with.
Where are you traveling to?
I’ve got a mastermind group that I’m a part of that’s meeting in Cleveland in August. My daughter and I for her birthday have a trip to Switzerland planned. I’m part of a high-level women’s real estate agent mastermind group that’s then meeting right after that. It’s back to back. That’s the way life is. The point is that I know what level of activities generates the amount of business that our team operates off of. I’m still predominantly the rainmaker. I can front load that time so that when I’m gone in August, I know I will come back in September to business. The other way around is you make it back to September and go, “I got to double-time it to catch back up with what is in the pipeline if it’s gotten dried up.”
You don’t want to come back home to crickets.
Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed
There’s nothing worse than that.
We’ve seen across the country the market is rebounding, the market is doing strong. You’re in a pretty stable market there that hasn’t seen a lot of ups or downs versus in other parts of the country. I always find it interesting because everybody wants to be a real estate investor. Here in Austin, we’ve got a pretty stable market. We’ve got a flush of realtors, but when the market turns south, people that don’t have these systems in place leave like rats on a sinking ship. Can we agree to that?
Absolutely, in fact, in some ways, it’s one of the benefits. You can always find a positive in everything. That’s positive. Everybody thought anybody could be a real estate agent, “I will do it too or we’re going to a broker.” It’s interesting you said that. I’m in the Washington, DC metro region, which they call the DMV, believe it or not. I’m like, “Don’t they know that people don’t want to go to the DMV?” The Department of Motor Vehicles is not in people’s high levels of happiness. We’re impacted by a lot of things. For example, sequestrations or government shutdowns and closings of bases and things like that. It’s not like we haven’t had market corrections over the last couple of decades. We do have a stable economy in the sense that as a general rule, we have this big employer called the federal government and all those ancillary industries contracts and everything. It is an expensive market. That’s where it can be more challenging for the investor market. My husband and I bought an investment property. There are still good values. You have to know your numbers and know your market segments. There’s still always opportunity. I always say there’s always opportunity. It’s how you’re going to look at it.
It’s a bit different than it used to be when we used to have the dollar days many years ago. Now, it’s all the artsy district of the area for the most part.
People are like, “I wish I would have bought.” I’m like, “Okay, so you didn’t.” That doesn’t mean you don’t buy because it’s the proverb that says, “When you should plant a tree twenty years ago, the next best time to plant that tree is now.” You should have bought real estate in ‘09, why didn’t you? The next best time is now because what is happening in our market here and the United States fairly, I could speak pretty broadly, is that since the recession and the market correction, I believe we’ve been recovering. That means we haven’t appreciated in a decade because we’ve been recovering what we lost. If you look at the fact, there are still a lot of opportunities for future growth and it’s still appreciating. I feel like there’s still plenty of room. Some areas are getting overheated. You could say that about anything. You’ve got to look at the fundamentals as to why you’re investing, what you’re buying and what market segments you are in.
If you’re going where everybody else is going, you’re probably going to be paying, overpaying. You’re going to have to use some strategy to come up with looking for what maybe everybody is not going to. I’m talking about Wayne Gretzky in his quote, “To skate to where the puck is going.” If you skate to where the puck is right now, then you’ve missed it. You’ve got to be skating to where it’s going. If you’re going to buy in National Landing right now where Amazon two headquarters is, I’m like, “You missed that boat.” If you want to say, “Where are some other places that have great value?” What a lot of people aren’t recognizing the fact is that Herndon, which is out by the Dulles Airport, is going to be part of HQ2. They’re going to have as many people there as they’re going to have in National Landing. You just have to be smarter. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. I always firmly believe in real estate. It’s the only thing that’s real. You can touch it.
It’s not going to go up and down by opinion or somebody’s changing the stock market or anything like that on speculation. It’s something there. You can touch it. You can feel it. They’re not building any more land. I’m a big proponent of going outside of the major areas a little bit and finding the path of progress or growth. We’ve seen that in Austin, Texas. There is a lot of growth taking place and people that bought outside what used to be a flashing stoplight many years ago, it’s what we say spaghetti bowl for the most part with highways and things like that in the Lonestar State. That’s the thing. Many people have knee-jerk reactions. I’m a big proponent and I know that you are, you said it before. You’ve got to plan out what your focus is. You’ve got to plan out some things. Being a part of two masterminds in August, I guarantee it’s probably been a big part of your success over the years.
What happened is it often happens with many people is I achieved a certain level of success on my own, smart knowledge, skills and abilities. A lot of people hit ceilings and I did too of what I could attain on my own. That’s when the benefit of getting the wisdom in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich The Master Mind is proven success principle. I find that I’m in several masterminds. I’m in one with real estate which is the progression in my field. That is very valuable. I also liked though to get into masterminds with people in other industries and professions. Jeff Hoffman, who is one of the founders of Priceline, he calls it info-sponging. He will see things that are happening in other areas.
He will even read magazines that are not related to his industry at all or watch a program or whatever. He wants to see what’s going on in other areas. That’s how he came up with the idea of Priceline. He saw that commodities like bananas have shelf lives. He’s going, “What’s more has a shelf life than a hotel room?” Once a day is over with, that has no value. Even the banana, you can make in banana bread. The idea is these masterminds with broader sectors of people that are entrepreneurs and sales professionals and people in other industries. It blows my mind away and I start seeing new ways of doing things. The connections and relationships that happened too are very valuable as well.
There’s a big conference that I love going to in San Diego every February and March called Traffic & Conversion Summit. I always go out there. It’s all about digital entrepreneurs and online traffic and how to convert that into leads and business. I’ve been going for a few years now. I think they have 8,000 people at the next conference. I always get one, two or three nuggets out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I come back like it’s over-saturated. That’s a tsunami you said, but I’m trying to focus on just three nuggets that I can put the work almost immediately. It’s helped me grow exponentially with that aspect. It’s people that aren’t on the real estate.
I’m a very niche-y thing in buying distressed debt. I think we can all agree to that. We’re a small group of freedom fighters making America great again, one distressed borrower at a time. You learn from being open first and foremost, going in with an open mind. I’m a big believer that we can learn something from everybody that we come in contact with. Not just in our local community but especially outside of community masterminds. People are doing many amazing things that can transfer across industries or transfer similarly for overcoming obstacles that we’re all dealing with issues.
Oftentimes the tunnel vision, the incestuousness of everybody doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. All of that happens in industries. The real estate is not unique. I’m sure it’s not unique in your profession as well. When you get outside, sometimes I find it’s easier to see what’s going on in somebody else’s business or life. I can see what they’re doing wrong and I’m like, “What am I not seeing?” Sometimes people can reflect and share back. That’s another beauty of masterminding. I would agree about sticking with three because I do find that it is a common phenomenon where you come back with many ideas and then you have this implementation overload and then nothing gets done well. Back to Wayne Gretzky quote, it helps you to see trends. It helps you see where things are going because there’s a first-move advantage but there’s also a second-move advantage. You want to not necessarily be the one that creates the trend. You want to be in the trend while it still has a lot of opportunity in it. By the time the bandwagon, everybody else has figured it out. That happens with a lot of investors.
Everybody likes to jump on board one specific style, one specific area or one specific tactic. They don’t cross-market. They try to focus on one thing and rely on it. We’re mailing out foreclosure postcards or yellow letters or go door knocking. Those things can work but you can’t focus on one aspect of that thing. Sometimes you’ve got to change what you’re doing as the market evolves to be more effective doing it. I love what you’re saying about you’re learning from other people’s ideas, then coming back saturated from events, being able to see the trends and knowing when to make that jump. Not waiting at the very top of the trend when the least amount of profit but at the bottom line or on the rise of the trend.
Warren Buffett says in looking at these things that he’s talking about investors, “You either can do it on the way up or you can do it on the way down depending on what it is you’re looking at.” If it’s on the other way, you could look at it when it’s correcting. You catch it before it hits the bottom or when you see it as it’s rising. Those are where the opportunity zones are usually. If you’re right in the middle of where everybody else is, you’re probably swimming with sharks. That water is not blue, that water is probably red.
As you’ve grown in your business, did you have a mentor that helped you get on the right path earlier on or throughout your business at some point?
Yes, I recognized that very early on that this thing called real estate, other people had done it before. Success leaves clues. I went to the top. She had been the top agent or marketer because she was number ten in the nation at the time. I said, “I’d love to learn everything you’ve got.” I was a great student because I ended up becoming her top producer within a couple of years. She asked me to become her partner. That is a great strategy for everybody. I know there’s some bootstrapping and some the entrepreneurial cowboy and everything and there is always the desire to be creative. There are a lot of things that you can learn from other people. You’ve been from Texas, my husband tells the story of you can either learn from reading, training and coaching or you can learn from other people’s mistakes or you can piss directly on the electric fence. What do you want to do? I avoided the third as much as possible. I can learn but it’s painful. I’ve kept wiser over the years and said, “Other people have done this before so let’s learn everything I can from them.”
Daily Habits For Success: If you’re right in the middle of where everybody else is, you’re probably swimming with sharks.
From there, you innovate because it’s always changing. That’s the other thing, some people are like, “I’ll wait for it to go back to the way it was.” I’m like, “First of all, it wasn’t that great. I don’t know what you thought what’s great in that.” If you sit around waiting until things come back, the industry is always changing. You have to always be evolving, learning and growing. That’s good because think about it. What’s the worst market to be in than the one where nobody’s doing anything? Would you rather have something happening or some activities happening? You don’t look at foreclosures as a negative activity but we were living through the short cycle and foreclosure stage. We’re going, “This is not fun.” You can at least make the phone ring. I have to say, I think back, my phone rang more than it ever rang. I think, “That had the opportunity in it too. What doesn’t have opportunities when nothing happens?” Think about the Dead Sea. The reason why it’s dead is because nothing is flowing in and nothing’s flowing out.
I couldn’t say any better for that. It’s always better to have the phone ringing or doing something versus sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Growing up my dad said, “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.”
You sound like Ray Crock. That’s a classic.
Every successful person has a coach, has somebody and has a mentor. They are part of masterminds. We’re part a couple of different masterminds as well. We have one for our note business. The thing is you’re always looking forward. Where do you think the market is going in the next 6 to 24 months? Do you see things keep growing for a while or market corrections taking place and property values dropping or things like that?
What I see are tales of two markets and it could be tales of several markets, but our market still has a tale of two markets. We had the best of times and we had the worst of times. It depends on your perspective. If it’s a seller’s market, it’s the best time for sellers. If it’s a buyer’s market, it’s the best time for buyers. That’s all driven by supply and demand. I am a huge proponent of knowing my numbers. Whatever market segment I’m looking in working with a client or myself, I am very numbers-driven. I look for trends and I look forward which direction it’s going and if possible, to get there a little bit before buddy else does. Generally, in our market area, it’s a great market to be a seller. Dominate a seller’s market except for some segments.
The upper brackets are the worst of time for sellers and the best of time for buyers. Interest rates are historically low. I see that there are some signs like when I told you that we have recovered in our market areas, I’ve seen that in others and we’re starting to appreciate. We’re peaking prices and ceilings are breaking on prices. That is a sign that it could be getting out of line with affordability and other indicators that help people know. That is something because I went to a listing appointment with the seller and the last time those peak prices occurred was ‘05 to ‘06. You know what happened after that. If history repeats itself, it’s been known to do that. The difference between this and that was that had five years straight of double-digit appreciation total unbridled growth that was not sustainable. This has been recovery. It’s still different. There’s no way to say this is an apple and apple comparison. We are seeing some signs of froth and overheating and irrational exuberance, multiple offers, escalation clauses.
All those can start to be the beginning of the top. I like more gentle corrections. I’m not a huge rollercoaster fan like crashing, then going up and crashing going up. I think it’s better for markets to have natural corrections built-in. I think there’s probably something on the horizon. That crystal ball is not telling me what that is other than October, fall, third quarter, late third quarter, fourth quarter are the most historical times, those types of events. If you’re waiting around, I would wait and see if that happens. We’re having our best year ever in over a decade. We’ve sold double the real estate in 2019 than 2018. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy. You know that old shoe drop thing. It could be a good shoe, but it can also be like, “I didn’t think about that one.” That’s the thing about unpredictable events. You can’t predict them.
Are you working primarily with retail clients, with investors or a mix of both?
I am predominantly a residential real estate agent for retail for their own personal purchasing and selling. I have a number of investor clients and I invest in myself. My son does commercial shopping centers in the Washington, DC metro region. He’s pretty astute about what’s going on in those markets. It’s interesting you mentioned about the fringes. That edge city is something that they focus on. The suburban shopping centers, their focus is on the things that you can’t buy on Amazon.
Many retail stores are struggling because people don’t want to get in the car and fight traffic. They want to be able to sit there on their phone, in their pajamas, on their couch and order what they want, have it delivered directly to them. We see that happening here in Austin quite a bit where those brick and mortar locations that have this stuff are struggling because people are ordering predominantly online. You look at Toys ‘R Us, they’re trying to come back but doing more things online versus their large big box stores.
If you think about it, you’re going to take your dog to the vet, taking them to Amazon and you’re going to get your nails done. You’re going to eat out. The banking still needs a lot of brick and mortar locations. There are still the car washes and there’s still plenty of retail suburban shopping center uses and needs that’s focusing on the things that you’re not going to get delivered in a box.
It’s more of the service-oriented aspect of things.
That segment is growing.
We’ve seen quite a bit. We’ve seen more debt pop up from different banks looking to see if we’re going to buy in some of these shopping centers and the older malls with their tenants haven’t evolved as they should have and that things like that. We’re seeing a lot of that stuff come across our books and some other interesting things. I’ve converted a mall that was turned into a grow house.
What state was that, Florida?
Los Angeles.
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A lot of spaces are getting repurposed and that is great. They say when we have driverless cars, what are they going to do with all those parking garages? Data storage takes a lot of space and it has to be conditioned. All that concrete could be conditioned. They have to be creative. There’s always an opportunity. Driverless cars come and that changes that need for parking. There are other needs that come into the marketplace. If you’re an opportunist and you’re info-sponging and you’re looking to where the puck is going, those are key strategies for being an investor.
What was your opinion when Keller Williams announced that they as a company will be buying a lot of individual real estate, along with Zillow opening up a brokerage or looking to buy a residential real estate across the country? Do you have any opinion on that?
Wherever there is money to be made, there’s going to be people try to get into it. That has always been the case. There’s always going to be a need where we got back to the whole service thing. I still believe there’s a need for service and customer service. How that’s going to be delivered? You think about other disruptors to the industry and that will still be delivered. It’s just maybe the formatting or the forming of maybe a different kind of delivery, but people are going for opportunities. I look at it as an opportunity for me to improve my knowledge, skills and abilities. I find that my business is growing.
The more they are in the business, the consumer oftentimes recognizes that there’s value in the experience and knowledge because we’ve also had Purplebricks that has come and gone. The iBuyer system with them, sometimes it can be fads. It’s just a flash in the pan. Is it sustainable or successful? Some of these big companies are smart. They know what they’re doing. They may know something I don’t know. I’m saying that they are opportunists and I respect that. I am going to look for how I can create my value proposition.
That’s a huge thing is being able to still stand out experience and be able to offer the services. That’s one of the big things that is so great about what you’re doing, what you’ve shared with us is you’re prospecting and reaching out not only for new businesses but effectively servicing your previous clients. A lot of realtors that we’ve dealt with come in and go out. They’re constantly servicing their other clients, their older clients. I don’t mean by age. People that have bought a house a couple of years ago, they’re not falling back up, except maybe the first of the year when they’re in the call blocks.
The thing is this. The amazing thing about staying in a profession is if you are good at what you do and you consistently do it over and over again. It’s like launching the rocket. Once the rocket is launched, then you can keep it in orbit. That is the benefit. If you’re not doing that, I will encourage you to do that because there is a lot of benefit in this profession in particular. I think yours too because you think about who are more likely in the relationships that you’ve made that you have returned and repeat business? You can spend the energy going after new business. There should always be some of that because there’s always going to be attrition. At the same time, you have to think about it. I sell people’s houses and they move away. Most of my clients flee the market areas. I have to constantly be looking for new relationships, new businesses but at the same time, the business that is the referral business and because I sold the house down the street or in the neighborhood or more community building or that kind of thing, that is where you can grow. You’ve done that too with your community building. You said you help one banker and then he’s telling you the other banker. These principles, everybody could do them.
They’re not brand new but it’s that extra 5% or maybe the five minutes to visit, to ask for the referral or to talk to other people in the same block you’re selling houses on. A little bit extra habit goes a long way, especially when you do it consistently. If you do 5% extra each day, it adds up to a lot of good stuff. When you look back after 30 days or 66 days too.
I call it the connect to, build and grow because everybody does lead generation, commit to get leads and then everybody has a process to take those leads through to get into settlements. I call that consult to sell. What often happens is people get on this hamster wheel. They just churn it. They’re only as good as their next deal. I’m like going, “That’s going to get exhausting after a while.” It also means that you will be out of business as soon as you do your next deal. Why not do the principles? Why not put in place the things that will connect to build and grow so that you can create a scalable, sustainable, ongoing enterprise, so you can go out of the country and have a life you love? That’s why you also have a thriving business. That’s what happens with people. That’s why there’s such a high incidence of burnout is because they worked until they drop and we’re in a profession that doesn’t have a 401(k).
Even though if you’re going to put all your faith in that, then you’re probably putting your faith in the wrong thing, Social Security. I’m putting my faith in me. I am my best asset. If you want to talk about assets and investors, invest in yourself. If you think about the ability to create wealth, I have a tremendous ability to create wealth and value. Investing in myself is back to creating and building something scalable. You mentioned about mentors, training, coaching and going to seminars and how that breaks you through the ceiling. You go to the next level. If you can go to the next level, you could cut a lot of time. You could cut a lot of energy. You could cut a lot of hassles. That next level is what could take you out of that hamster wheel of life, which somebody has been in.
I’m a big believer that we’re all here, but if you want to go from where you’re making $50,000 to $100,000 a year, you’ve got to develop your mind and grow into that position otherwise, you’re going to lose. You may have a flash in the pan and hit it but then if you don’t develop those habits or that mindset, you’re not going to grow to that next level making $1 million. You’ve got to grow in that position with skills, systems and then also learning to delegate. You’ve got to leverage yourself and your time.
I think that was a Jim Rohn quote, “You will never rise higher than what your own personal development is at.” If you think about it, it’s obvious because if you’re not capable or you don’t have that capacity, then how is your business going to have that? That’s why when you said you’re going on two masterminds, I’m like, “I should probably go on more.” My team loves it when I go away because they’re like, we got so much done. You come back inspired and empowered, don’t you?
I always come back with something learned and something I can implement. It drives the creativity and productivity for that quarter or six months. We took a transatlantic cruise and we spent three and a half weeks away from the office. Our team did an amazing job. I came back fresh recharge with some great ideas for everybody out there for what we’re doing not only here in our office but our other students and note nation people out there and taking action. I love what you said about how you schedule your days off. How many days off do you schedule on your calendar each year roughly?
I’d usually take three international trips a year. That’s ten days to two weeks each. That’s six there then I do these three masterminds, which ended up to be about a week for each. That’s three week and then family trips and ski trip and all of those things in there. I also wrote a book called Flip Time / Love Life. What I found is that people will achieve a high level of success. They will be very productive and then they will look around and go, “Is that it?” If you love the life you have while you create the life of your dreams, then to do that, I find you need to flip the time and you do that first. You may remember Abraham Maslow and The Hierarchy of Needs. You’re supposed to work your way up the pyramid and you start with your basic needs, your physiological needs, your safety needs, your security needs, your esteem needs, then you do the things you love, your self-actualization. I’m like, “It’s the other way around. You flip it.” If you’re doing what you love, aren’t you the most productive?
Think about it. Are you productive when you’re grinding and you’re going, “When is this day over?” That’s why people who work for other people, they’re waiting for Friday and the clock because they don’t love it. If you love what you’re doing and your zone of genius is flowing and all these things. If you love what you’re doing or you know that what you’re doing is for the purpose so you can travel and do the things you love to do, you will be inspired to do it. You will do your most creative work and by creative I’m not thinking like painting or music. I’m thinking about creative ideas. How to lead-generate, get people, meet the people that you can do business with. That’s where your creative energy comes from. It’s when you’ve been revitalized. It’s not when you’re tired and burned out and can’t wait for the day to end. We’ve got it so backwards. The idea is you flip the time and you put that first. I put it first all my time off, all my masterminds, all the training and then I’m like, “I am going to be inspired.” My activities are going to be inspirational because I’m going to make it happen because I’m going to do the things I love to do.
It’s Robert Kiyosaki, Dave Ramsey thing, pay yourself first.
Pay yourself first with time because you can make more money but you cannot make more time.
Daily Habits For Success: To create a true habit, you’re going to have to put it in place into your business and your life.
You’ve got a seven-day quick-start program that you wanted to talk about a little bit too. Share with our audience about that.
It’s The 5 Minute Success principle to get you jumpstarted. You can join the seven-day quick start which we have for your community. The idea again back to habit formation, it’s to jumpstart. To be a true habit, you’re going to have to put it in place into your business and your life. It will give you an idea of what it is, then the Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day and Commit to Get Leads: 66 Day Challenge are all available on Amazon and my website. I have a 66 Day Challenge online course for the Commit to Get Lead. If you want to commit and make that happen, that’s one other way, other resources that people could get access on the website.
Is the website the best way for people to get ahold of you?
5MinuteSuccess.com is the website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and then the 5 Minute Success Podcast, which you’ve been a guest on. We have a great mix of guest, predominantly real estate and ancillary industries. At the same time, back to the idea of info-sponging, I find it powerful to hear how other people lead-generate and build their businesses. It’s has a great array of guests that you can tap into.
I love the podcast. Go check it out. I love how you break it up into those five-minute segments and allowing people there and asking them questions and then having people being direct to give those nuggets out there. It’s a great podcast. I’m honored to be a guest on there. I’m honored to have you on here. You’ve delivered many great nuggets and an insight into what builds success and how to be $1 billion buyer-seller out there. When you’re headed out to Cleveland or Switzerland, have a great time. If you make it down here to Austin for the next KW family reunion that they have down here, let me know. We’ve got to get together and I will show you around some good Margarita and Mexican food places in Austin.
I’m on a radio show in the DC metro region. If you’ve got anybody in this DMV that has rolls they need, have them reach out to me. I’m pretty googleable.
Guys and gals, check Karen Briscoe out. She’s an amazing realtor. She runs the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group, HBC, with Keller Williams. You can google that and find them on there as well. Karen, thank you so much for taking time on your busy schedule and join us here in the Note Closers Show. Go out and make something happen. We look forward to seeing you at the top.
Important Links:
- Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group
- 5 Minute Success
- Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed
- Commit to Get Leads: 66 Day Challenge
- Keller Williams
- The ONE Thing
- 5 Minute Success Podcast
- Think and Grow Rich The Master Mind
- Traffic & Conversion Summit
- Flip Time / Love Life
- 5MinuteSuccess.com
- 5 Minute Success on Facebook
- 5 Minute Success on Instagram
- 5 Minute Success on LinkedIn
- http://www.5MinuteSuccess.com/7-day-quick-start/
About Karen Briscoe
Karen is the principal owner of the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group (HBC) with Keller Williams. The HBC Group has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 250 Top Realtor® teams in the United States.
Since 1977, HBC Group has sold over 1,500 homes valued at over $1.5 billion. She is the creator of the transformative “5 Minute Success” concept and the host of the podcast by the same name.
Her books Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed and Commit to Get Leads: 66 Day Challenge® offer a combination of information and inspiration delivered through memorable stories.