Hey Reader,
I recently read an Inc. article by Jeff Haden about the 7 habits of mentally tough people.
And I immediately thought:
Real estate may be one of the best mental-toughness training programs ever invented.
Think about it.
You can do everything right and lose the listing.
Spend three months with a buyer who decides not to buy.
Hire someone you thought would be an amazing hire—only to discover you’ve simply added another person you now have to manage.
Interest rates change.
Markets change.
Brokerages change.
Agents leave.
Clients ghost you.
And somehow the deal that was supposed to save your month always seems to blow up at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon.
Mental toughness matters in this business.
But I don’t think mental toughness means walking around pretending everything is wonderful.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Mental toughness is being able to look at what isn’t working and still make a good business decision about what you’re going to do next.
Here are seven habits that you can learn to stay mentally tough in this business.
1. Operate as though you are in control.
Notice I didn’t say you ARE in control.
You’re not.
You cannot control the market, interest rates, your competitors, Zillow, your Broker, or whether the client you’ve nurtured for three years suddenly lists with their neighbor’s cousin.
But you absolutely control what happens next.
When I hear:
“The market is slow.”
“Buyers are scared.”
“Inventory is terrible.”
“Nothing is working.”
My response is usually:
Okay. Now what?
How many conversations did you have last week?
How many people did you follow up with?
How many appointments did you set?
What are you doing with the hundreds—or thousands—of people already sitting in your CRM?
Stop allowing the things you cannot control to become excuses for the things you can.
2. Protect your mental bandwidth.
Your energy is a business resource.
And some of you are spending it like there’s an unlimited supply.
- Watching what another agent is doing on Instagram.
- Obsessing about your competition.
- Complaining about your brokerage.
- Reading every Facebook thread predicting the death of real estate.
Meanwhile, your database hasn’t been touched in three weeks... OR 3 years!
That is not a market problem.
That is a resource-allocation problem.
And YOU are one of your company’s most important resources.
Before you give something your attention, ask:
Can I influence this?
Can I change this?
Do I need to make a decision about this?
If the answer is no, stop giving it premium space in your brain.
3. Treat the past as data—not your identity.
You made a bad hire.
Okay. So what!
As yourself Why?
- Did you hire too quickly?
- Was the job poorly defined?
- Did you fail to onboard them properly?
- Did you ignore red flags because you were desperate for help?
Learn from it.
But stop saying, “I can never find good people.”
Same thing with lead generation.
You spent $30,000 on a lead source and didn’t get a return.
Was the lead source bad?
Or was your follow-up bad?
Those require two entirely different solutions.
Use your past to diagnose your business—not define what’s possible in the future.
4. Stop using someone else’s scoreboard.
Someone sells $100 million.
Someone launches a team.
Someone opens another office.
Someone gets 100,000 followers.
Good for them.
Celebrate it.
Learn from it if there’s something worth learning.
But after 40+ years in this business, I can tell you this...
You have absolutely no idea what is happening behind someone else’s numbers or social media/stage image!
I’ve seen enormous businesses with very little profit.
I’ve seen impressive volume accompanied by enormous overhead, stress and complexity.
And I’ve seen smaller businesses generate excellent profit while
giving the owner something equally valuable:
A life.
Stop using somebody else’s scoreboard to determine whether your business is successful.
5. You can complain. But then we need a solution.
I’m actually fine with complaining....
For about five minutes.
Sometimes something IS ridiculous and you need to say:
“This is ridiculous.”
Great.
Now what are we going to do about it?
“My agents aren’t following up.”
What’s the accountability system?
“My assistant keeps dropping things.”
Where is the documented process?
“My expenses are out of control.”
When did you last review your P&L line by line?
“I don’t have enough leads.”
How many people are sitting in your database that you’ve already paid for?
A strong business owner doesn’t pretend problems don’t exist.
They identify them. Diagnose them. And deal with them.
6. Stop building a business designed to impress people.
Real estate has a serious vanity problem.
- Volume.
- Team size.
- Office space.
- Number of agents.
- Awards.
- Followers.
- Markets.
- Headcount.
But revenue is not profit.
Headcount is not leverage.
And being busy is absolutely not the same thing as owning a successful business.
You don’t need 14 or 47 people on your org chart if six great people can produce a better result.
You don’t need to expand into four markets when you haven’t figured out how to operate profitably in one.
Stop building for applause. Build for results.
Build something profitable.
Build something sustainable.
And most importantly, build something you actually want to own.
7. Pay attention to what IS working.
When business gets difficult, we naturally focus on what’s broken.
The negative thoughts always trump the positive ones.
The deals that died.
The employee who isn’t performing.
The marketing that didn’t work.
The difficult client.
Spend some time asking the opposite questions.
- Which lead source IS producing?
- Which employee IS performing?
- Which system IS saving us time?
- Which clients ARE referring business?
- What part of the company deserves more investment?
Gratitude in business doesn’t mean ignoring problems.
It means having enough perspective that the problems don’t become your entire reality.
Now Accelerate your Actions...
Take out a piece of paper and make three columns:
Label them Control, Release & Action
Under CONTROL:
Write down the things happening in your business that you can actually influence.
Under RELEASE:
Write down the things consuming your energy that you cannot control.
Under ACTION:
Write down the three things you are going to do next.
Not 27.
Three.
Because mental toughness isn’t pretending you’re fearless.
It isn’t pretending the market doesn’t bother you.
And it certainly isn’t falsely waking up motivated every morning!
Mental toughness is being able to say:
This IS the situation.
This is what I can control.
This is what I can’t.
And this is what I’m going to do next.
The people who survive—and profit—in this business over the long term aren’t always the smartest, loudest or best marketers.
They are usually the ones who keep making good decisions even when circumstances aren’t perfect.
And right now, that may be one of the most important business skills you can develop.
Best
P.S. If your CONTROL column is full of things you know you should be fixing—but you’re not sure where to start—that’s usually not a motivation problem. It’s an operations problem. And that’s exactly the kind of work I do with agents and team leaders.