Why Real Estate is for Entrepreneurs Only

SUMMARY

Job mentality is death to an agent… 9-5.

Entrepreneurial mindset is what works in real estate.

You own your own business…OWNERSHIP means RESPONSIBILITY and OPPORTUNITY. It’s the opportunity to determine how much time you spend and how much money you make.

Here are four Entrepreneurial Characteristics:

Initiative.

Used to waiting for someone else to tell you what to do…won’t work.

Risk.

No production = no money.

Grit.

Vigilance. Pay attention to what’s happening…changes…

FULL TRANSCRIPT

A job mentality is death to a real estate agent.

Hi, there. It’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and successes in your business and your life. And today, this is a little bit of a weird video. I just see to many real estate agents not making it. And all these statistics, about 70 to 80% fail, and all that kind of stuff, because I believe real estate is for entrepreneurs. In other words, it is for people who are business minded. And if you have a job mentality, if you come out of an industry where you’ve been in a job, you’ve been an employee, and you’ve had an employer telling you what to do every day, that employee mentality, that job mentality is death to an agent. The 9 to 5 mentality is absolutely death to a real estate agent. And I frankly, believe it’s one of the greatest reasons that real estate agents fail.

And if you have this, if you have this entrepreneurial mindset, if you think like a business owner, your chances of succeeding in real estate are immediately dramatically improved. And I also believe that an entrepreneurial mindset is something that you can develop, it is something that you can create if you understand what is required when you come in real estate. Too many agents come into real estate brand new, they just got their license, and they come out of a job, corporate background or whatever.

And they are used to showing up, they show up for a regular job, and the boss goes, “Okay, here’s your job. We are taking you to do this training. You’re gonna do this, you’re gonna do this,” and every day, you’ve got your tasks, you’ve got your accountabilities, you’ve got your responsibilities. Every day, you’re being held to that behavior and activity, because it is your job. And then they get into real estate. They get their real estate license, they show up, they’re all excited. And they say, “Okay, boss, show me what to do.” And he goes, “I’m not your boss, I’m your broker.”

It’s different, because you’re an independent contractor, and your broker is not gonna treat you like an employee. They expect you to take ownership. They expect you to move, you to do your own stuff. And so if you don’t show up, they’re not gonna fire you. They are not even gonna challenge you. They’re just gonna go, “Okay, well, like another realtor, not gonna show up.” And so, the gap between agents that either barely survive or don’t survive at all, and those that are massively successful is right here, is this idea, this concept of being an entrepreneur.

So, let’s break it down. What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? And how will that help you be successful in real estate? What are the characteristics, what are the traits of being an entrepreneur that matter for you to be successful in real estate? So, here are the most important things. Number one, I think the most important keyword to understand as an entrepreneur is the word “ownership.” And that is that when you’re an employee, it’s not your business. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you own it. You are there, and it’s your, failure or success is up to you. It’s on you.

Out of ownership comes two big keys, and that is, with ownership comes responsibility. If you fail or if you succeed, whichever way it goes, it’s your fault. It’s on you, it’s your responsibility. No matter what happens to the business, you can’t blame it on somebody else. I mean, you can, but you’re gonna still be just as broke. An employee can gripe, and complain, and blame it on the boss, and all that kind of stuff, and you’re still gonna get your paycheck, as long as you show up and do your work. But when it comes to owning the business, you are responsible for your own success. You have to figure out, “What do I do to be effective?”

Now, the second thing that comes in this package of ownership, this is the heavy part, this is the great part, and that is with that, also comes opportunity. And this is why people get into real estate. It’s like, “Yes, I get opportunity,” primarily, in two different areas. There are two different things that you get opportunities for when you own your own business. When you own it, when it’s your baby, you got number one, you have the opportunity for what I’m gonna call time control. In case you can’t figure it out, that’s an analog clock.

All right. You get the opportunity to control your life. You get control. I can choose when I work, I can choose where I work, I can choose what I do, I can choose what I don’t do. You get control. Nobody’s your boss. You’re the boss, right? And with that, the other opportunity is, and a big one is, is the money. When you own the business, all the profit is yours to control. You decide profitability, you decide how you’re gonna invest it, you decide how you’re gonna spend it. It’s all on you.

So, with the ownership comes this huge responsibility that, sink or swim, it’s up to you. And the opportunity is, “If I’m willing to own the responsibility, boom, I have the opportunity of time control, and financial control, which basically says, I get to pick my salary.” You want to make more money? You have control of it. Because if you’re an employee, it’s very unlikely that you can walk into your boss tomorrow and say, “Okay, I like working here for you, boss. I like the company. But I want to make an extra $100,000 in the next 12 months. I want a raise. I want a $9,000 a month raise.” Highly unlikely that most employees could go in and get a six-figure income increase in a corporate job as an employee.

However, I have tons of real estate agents right now that are coaching members that are adding six figures to their income every year. And some of them adding a quarter of a million dollars to their income in a year. Because it’s their business. You have the opportunity to dramatically explode your income, and to control your time, and control your life. So, what does it take, what is it that entrepreneurs have, that employees don’t have? And it’s those four characteristic differences that I think of the biggest and most are most dramatic things. And there’s more than just these four, but I’m gonna give you the four most important characteristics that entrepreneurs have in the real estate industry that cause them to be successful, that employer job-minded people do not have.

Number one is, they have personal initiative. Initiative, there you go. I almost got that right. Personal initiative. And that is, you’ve heard people say you gotta be a good self-starter. And I say okay, we’ll go with a self-starter. Initiative just means you gotta be able to put yourself in gear and go. There’s gotta be that drive, there’s gotta be that go-getter that, “I’m willing to get up and take action without having somebody else breathing down my throat.”

One of the greatest, most common things that I hear asked for in coaching is, “I need somebody to hold me accountable. Now, I have another video on YouTube, and I’ll put the link down in the description on the, what I call accountability myth and why accountability is way overrated if you’re gonna be this. Because basically, accountability means, “I need somebody else forcing me to do what I’m supposed to do.” And the whole problem with that is, it goes against the entrepreneurial mindset. It’s the employee mindset, is, “I need somebody else, if somebody else tells me what to do, I’m good. I got this. But if I gotta go out and figure it out on my own, I’m in trouble.”

If you want to be successful in real estate, part of the entrepreneurial drive is this personal initiative that says, “You tell me what to do man, I’m on it. Bam.” And that’s the way the greats operate is, they have that drive. I have an internal push that says, “Boom! Show me what to do, I’m doing it. I’m in gear.” So, number one is initiative.

Number two, the second characteristic of an entrepreneur is, they are okay with risk. Now, this is one of those, “Uh, risk! I don’t like risk.” But if you’re gonna own your own business, that’s what you take. You take a risk. Because unlike an employee, an employee, when they show up, they work, they’re gonna get paid every single week, or every two weeks, or every 30 days, whenever you get paid. An employee knows there’s no risk. “As long as I do what the boss wants me to do, as long as I’m dependable, as long as I’m efficient, as long as I’m productive and doing the work, I am gonna get paid, and there is no risk.”

Now, a lot of employees say, “Well, my boss makes all the money, and I should make more because it wasn’t for me, he would be making as much money.” Yeah, but the difference between the employee and the employer is, that the employer is the one that takes all the risk. And when you take all the risks, you get all the rewards. With risk comes the rewards. If you’re unwilling to take the risk of owning your own business, then you need to stay in a job where you have a boss, where you’re an employee.

But with the risk, which is, this risk is what implies responsibility. With that, comes the opportunity for all the rewards. And that’s where the magic is. But you’ve got to be willing to take the risk and go, “Okay, if I don’t produce, I make no money.” That’s the risk in real estate. There is no guarantee, there’s no base, there’s no salary. It’s commission-based. 100% commission. And you’ll see, if you’re watching this on YouTube, and you watch other YouTube videos, you’ll see video, after video, after video of people who are like, “You shouldn’t get into real estate because man, it’s 100% commission only. And if you don’t succeed, you’re dead.”

Right. There’s risk. But the reason the risk is worth that is because when you have the initiative and you do the right stuff, you can make so much more money than if you’re working for the boss. You be the boss, you be the owner. And if you’re willing to take on the risk, that’s half of the price of paying, of being able to have the opportunity.

So with that, with that initiative, and the risk, the third characteristic is, it takes grit. You gotta have the grit, you gotta have the determination, the tenacity that, “I know it’s not gonna always be easy. I know things aren’t gonna always go the way I expect them. I know that it’s not gonna always be smooth sailing.” And when things don’t go right, and in that risk, I hit the wall, or I get knocked down, or I’m not getting the results, do you have the will? Do you have the determination? Do you have the salt that you’re gonna pop back up and go anyway? You’ve got to be able to take a punch in the face and say, “I can get back up, and I can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. I’m gonna keep moving forward.”

Because if you’re easily discouraged or easily dissuaded, and go, “Well every time I get going, then something happens that just takes all the wind out of my sails,” well, my friend, if you allow stuff to take the wind out of your sails and that blows you down and knocks you down for a month, real estate is probably, this entrepreneurial enterprise is probably not for you. Grit, my friend. And you can find it. It’s in you. Every single human being ever born has got the grit inside of them. It is wired in our DNA as a survival code that you can bring it out.

Most of us just, because we grew up in a safe world, in a safe environment, where everything was made easy for us, we just kind of turned that code off. We just turned off that gear inside of us. It’s there. The grit is there, you just gotta find it, turn it on, and go, “Okay, I will not stop. I will not quit. If it gets tough and I get knocked down, I’m gonna get back up. I’m gonna have the grit and determination, and I will succeed.” You have grit, you have no quit. And that, my friends, is the third trait of an entrepreneur that makes them successful in real estate.

And then, the fourth thing that you must have, the fourth characteristic is vigilance. And that is, if you’re gonna succeed in real estate, you gotta pay attention. You gotta pay attention. Now, another characteristic that some people would throw into this is creativity and the ability to innovate, which are really important that you have that. The beauty of it is, because the real estate industry is so developed, there’s some many people doing it, you don’t have to figure out, because it’s already been figured out. As long as you’re paying attention, and you see something, you can go out and it’s easy to find and learn if you got the right coach, if you got the right mentorship.

The beauty of it is, it’s not that hard to do it if you’re willing to do this stuff. If you’re willing to take the initiative and own it, willing to take the risk, willing to work with grit, and then you’re paying attention. And vigilance just means that I’m always watching what’s going on, what’s happening. You’ve gotta be vigilant with the market, you gotta be vigilant with technology, you gotta be vigilant with yourself, with your mindset, with your work ethic, and everything. It’s just every day, “I’ve gotta be aware that if something isn’t going right and it falls through, it’s on me. I can’t blame it on somebody else, because I own the business. And with the ownership of the business comes ownership of the responsibility.”

And so, if you get lazy, or if you get to where you’re just kind of like, “I get in the zone, and I’m not paying attention,” and you just show up every day and you kind of do the same thing, and something changes, and you don’t adjust, you don’t pay attention and notice it and go, “Ah, this is different. Ah, this isn’t working now. Oh, that just happened. Wow, I think I’m being taken advantage of.” You’ve gotta be paying attention and have that vigilance, so that when you see what’s going on, I now have the initiative to adjust, to adapt, to make the change so that I can win.

So look, here’s the beauty of all of this as a real estate agent, is that this entrepreneurial mindset, when you come in with it, and you run with it, it’s almost impossible in real estate to fail. If you’re coming in and you’re expecting everybody else to do the work for you, and you’re expecting someone else to tell you what to do, you want to play it safe, and you expect somebody else to take care of you, and as long as it goes smoothly, you’re gonna be fine, and, “I just want somebody else to tell me what to do,” I’m just gonna tell you right now that real estate is gonna be a painful journey for you.

And whatever of this you don’t feel like “I’m not strong in that,” you can focus on this and build it, find help, get help. Because this is what turns strugglers and survivors into massive succeeders. And you can do this. So, if you have any questions on it, make sure you post them down below. If this video helped you, make sure you give it a thumbs up. If you’ve not yet subscribed to the channel, make sure you subscribe to it. Let me know. Do this. Play with this mentality, and you will always be able to expect yes and success in your business and in your life.