4 Quick Steps to Easily Form New Habits as a REALTOR®
How Successful Real Estate Agents Stick to Their Habits
As a REALTOR®, you need to have habits in place to give you the best shot at a lifetime of success. Here you will learn four quick tips to help you stick to your goals and habits in real estate.
Do you struggle to stick to habits when you have them picked out? Don’t worry; you are not alone. This is a common struggle.
We have no problem knowing what we need to do. It’s the consistency that most of us struggle with.
Good news, it doesn’t need to be that way. In this episode, you will quickly learn how to stick to habit with ease.
These rules follow the book by James Clear, Atomic Habits.
Rule 1: Make it obvious
Rule 2: Make it attractive
Rule 3: Make it easy
Rule 4: Make it satisfying
Bonus:
If you are struggling a miss a day of your habit, no worries, brush yourself off and get right back to it the next day. Try never to miss two days in a row.
Missing two days is enough to put you back to square one.
We all slip up from time to time. Life can get in the way, and we can miss essential tasks like prospecting; however, we can turn a corner and start again fresh the next day.
Bonus Rule: Never miss two days in a row
Follow Up Reading:
Successful REALTOR® Daily Schedule
What are your favorite habit tricks? Let us know in the comments below!
-Michael Montgomery
Full Podcast Transcript with Timestamps
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School like with quick tips and actionable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome to another episode of Rev Real Estate School. My name is Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:18] Do you have trouble sticking to a new habit. I sure know that I do. And trying to find a system in order to lock down the habit and make it a daily thing has always been a challenge. Well in this episode I'm going to break down the habit process and how you can start sticking to these habits with ease. Also as a bonus at the very end we are going to discuss what to do when you fail or if you fail. I know I have sure failed when it comes to habits in the past. So we have a great tip for you at the very end on how you can bounce back. If we do slip up a little bit as far as the habit is concerned.
[00:01:03] First off have you ever heard the saying "we do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems". This is such a powerful line was first said by an I'm going to totally butcher his name, ArchiIeous.
[00:01:26] So this habit building process is not just about what we want. It's about the system that we have in place in order to get there.
[00:01:36] Now we're going to go over four quick rules in order to make the habit-forming process super simple and this comes from James Clear and his book Atomic Habits. It's an amazing read if you haven't picked it up you can pick it up on Amazon and the Audible version that I listened to and it was super good. He broke it down in a very simple way so that we can actually go about achieving our habits. Oftentimes we know that we need to do these habits but how do we go about achieving them. The "how" is what's answered in this book. And we're going to jump into his four major laws right now.
[00:02:13] Number one is make it obvious. So the whole concept here is that you basically need to trip over the habit in order to miss it. He's a great example of a community within Amsterdam in the 70s where they noticed that the energy usage was going down substantially. And when they looked into this they realized it was because these homes in this community energy usage were lower had their energy meters on the main floor where people could see them every single day whereas the other homes that were just continuing on like normal had their meters in the basement or where they were not plainly visible. So let's talk about real estate here. Let's talk about prospecting. If you want to make prospecting a habit. How do we go about making it obvious. So I'd recommend planning the night before and have a list of exactly the people that you need to call exactly the people that you plan on reaching out to during your prospecting time and put it out on a piece of paper right in front of you. So when you wake up in the morning and you're sitting down to do your prospecting it is obvious it's right in front of you here's your piece of paper with the exact names.
[00:03:23] Now let's move right along to number two, make it attractive. I love this law only because it definitely calls me out. And this law is all about emotion and it's about usually the things that are most satisfying in the moment are poor habits and those that are most satisfying in the long term are good habits. So this is pretty tricky right? Because something that feels really good right now let's say missing that prospecting time so that we can spend more time on social media. This feels good right now in the moment because we don't have to pick up the phone and go through that whole process. But in the long term we will be a lot happier if we follow the good habits. It's kind of like going to the gym right. Going to the gym and working out isn't always the most fun. It's painful we're sweating it takes time one of our busy days. And if you were just to skip that habit that day that one day would probably feel pretty good because you'd have that extra time back and you wouldn't have to go through that process. However down the road you would regret that decision because you would be lacking your health. The whole idea here is how can we make something attractive to us where we know down the road it will pay off. But in the moment it's a little bit of a pain. So let's talk about prospecting how can we make this more attractive to ourselves. Well we need to focus on the long-term benefit of prospecting so coming back to the fact that you're going to be happy that you did this in years down the road when you start to see the success that you want is very very powerful.
[00:05:24] Let's talk about rule number three: make it easy. If you think about the habit of going to the gym or prospecting for one to two hours this just seems hard. And if you can go to the gym or sit down in prospect easily for one to two hours every single day and it doesn't seem hard then please tell me what your secret sauce is because you must be one of the only ones out there I know I have struggled with this in previous years. So how do we go about making the task easier than it actually is. How do we go about making the task of prospecting for two hours easier than it actually is. Well his rule here James says that you should follow what's called the two-minute rule. So instead of focusing on the task as a whole focus on just the first step. So he uses the example of going to the gym and we've probably heard this one before right. Put out your gym clothes or put out your shoes the night before and you basically it comes back to the obvious thing. You basically have to trip over them in order to go to the gym. He takes this one step further and he says "OK yes make it obvious so that you trip over them but also make it easy". Tell yourself that look I'm just gonna go to the gym and I'm going to run on the treadmill for five minutes and the whole concept here is that once you're there you're going to continue it. Another great example here is flossing. So if you want to build up the habit of flossing instead of telling yourself OK I need to floss my teeth" it's just flossing one tooth. And by the time that you've done that chances are you're going to continue on and finish the rest. So how can we make it easy to prospect. What I'd recommend here is just make it your goal to make one phone call. This is only going to take two minutes. This is his two-minute rule. Just make the one phone call once you've made one phone call tell yourself we're just going to make another phone call. So it's one phone call at a time. It's not two hours of prospecting that is painful. It is literally just one quick phone call. Anybody can do that.
[00:07:26] Moving along to number four this makes it satisfying. So this builds on to make it attractive. The rule number two and it's about the habit and in being a long-term win. But with the short-term pain we again need to focus on how we're going to feel down the road. But we do also need to give ourselves still a little bit of a boost we still need to feel satisfied so it not just about how it's going to feel in one to five years down the road of prospecting we also want to have it immediately satisfying. We have to play on the fact that we are human. And we need some level of immediate satisfaction from doing our prospecting. Here he pulls the example of Jerry Seinfeld and if you've heard this before he Jerry Seinfeld had a goal of writing one joke I believe it was every single day and then on the day that he did write the joke he'd draw a big X through the calendar indicating that he wrote the joke that day and he never wanted to break the streak. So it was small but it was satisfying for him to see a calendar of x x x x x having a full streak a chain of X's. So it's small but effective. It's not like you're going to make your one day of prospecting calls and then you're going to pat yourself on the back take the rest of the week off because you did that one thing. No it's small but it's still satisfying. So if you do want to do something like this I'm currently using the HabitBull app or the Momentum app works really well or I think there's one called Coach.me in the show notes to this you can go over I will link up some of our favorite apps for tracking habits. If this is something that you do want to follow through with. Also if you'd like we do have a cheat sheet a freebie for this episode just because it makes it a lot easier if you're able to come back to this and look at each of the rules again. So if you just head over to the show and oats or head over to read real estate school dot com slash tip slash habits you can grab the freebie there and you can follow right along as well. It has our 10 top habits or real estate agents.
[00:09:35] Now what happens when you fail. This will happen. Everybody drops the ball at some point and the big tip here is that. We don't want to come down on ourselves and say "OK...the whole habit has gone up in smoke." As soon as we've dropped the ball one time that's just not true. So don't don't put ourselves in that sort of position. Instead what James Clear says in his book is "Don't miss two days." It's a very very simple concept. If you start to miss two days or three days then you've been derailed. So if you do miss the one day, which it inevitably will happen, then just make sure with 110 percent certainty that the next day you're going to show up and get it done. The other small caveat I would say here is don't play the game of I'm missing one day and then I'm going to work the next day but then I'm going to miss the next day so I'm going to work the next day. That isn't necessarily habit formation. This is more so when you have a goal you have it set out that you're going to do X number days of prospecting and X number of hours. And if you miss that day don't be too hard on yourself. Just make sure that you show up fully the next day.
[00:10:51] Thank you very much for listening to this episode. I really appreciate you taking the time out your day to tune in and we will see you at the next lesson.
[00:10:59] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back here a lesson.