In the age of digital marketing, where there’s so much choice and so many distractions, it’s easy to find a reason why a listing or a lead didn’t go your way. Maybe that buyer wasn’t actually ready. Or maybe that seller decided to list with an old friend.
But for Tim and Julie Harris, there’s only one reason why your real estate business isn’t what you want it to be, and that’s you.
Being successful in any business, it doesn’t come down to a million things. It comes down to just doing maybe three things every day.
— TIM HARRIS
Tim and Julie know a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in real estate. In their first year as real estate agents, they managed to sell more than a hundred homes, bringing in over ten million dollars. That success propelled them to a thriving real estate coaching business that’s helped thousands of agents improve their craft by taking ownership of their strengths and weaknesses.
For Tim and Julie, success in real estate is all about removing ego from the equation and taking “extreme ownership” when things don’t go your way — even if they seem out of your control. “If [a prospect] had an inroad and they listed with somebody because they golf with that person, well it’s your fault because you’re not getting out there and working with your sphere of influence,” Julie said. “If you lost it because of price, it’s because you’re not great at pricing…The ego comes in when you don’t want to accept and own those facts and do anything about it.”
That doesn’t mean that agents should focus exclusively on their shortcomings, however. “The truth is that there’s not enough time in the day for most folks to get better at their weaknesses,” Tim explained. Instead, agents should focus on building their core strengths and implementing them aggressively in their business. “Being successful in any business, it doesn’t come down to a million things,” he said. “It comes down to just doing maybe three things every day.”
Unfortunately, Tim and Julie pointed out, all too often agents are focused on the easy path, lined with shiny new tools that promise to do the work for them. That path, Tim says, leads to trouble, particularly among new agents enticed by buyer leads. “[There’s] a whole generation in the past 10 years of agents…that have never learned how to generate their own listings,” Tim pointed out. “Listing agents have leverage, buyer’s agents are only leveraging their time. That’s the difference.”
In this special extended interview, Tim and Julie Harris describe the benefits of living a media-free life, and explain why taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong in your business is the key to building a successful real estate practice.
– Seth
