(This is the 1st post in a 9 part guide, please read them in order)
What is your real estate agent personality type?
Imagine you lived in a small town and it was announced that a beautiful flea market was going to be built right downtown. It would be the only one in the history of the town and would be marketed as a tourist attraction. Everyone in town gets excited and rushes to sign up for available spaces.
The demand was so great that the town officials decide that the spaces would be given out through a lottery system, and only 100 people would win the 100 available spots. Whoever got one was free to sell whatever they wanted.
By a stroke of luck, you draw one of the lucky numbers and secure a space. You’ve never opened a flea market booth before, you don’t know what skillsets you need to succeed, and you’re not even sure if you’re going to last 3 months.
Building a thriving real estate business shares many of the same challenges. Before you build anything, you have to first understand what tools you have in your toolbox.
The first thing you need to do is figure out your personality type. Your personality will dictate how you approach the many roadblocks ahead of you. More importantly, real estate is a people business, and you will need to enhance your EQ (emotional intelligence) when dealing with clients. It’s vital that you understand how people think and react.
There are lots of personality systems, and some of the popular ones out there are DISC Personality, Myers-Briggs, and Enneagram. Whichever system you explore, there will be a test that will determine which one you are. No personality is better than the other, so instead of worrying about what your weaknesses are, learn how to play to your strengths.
Once you take a test, the results will generally reveal the following information about yourself:
1. When it comes to energy, you either save your energy for yourself or you like to share your energy with the world. This has a huge impact on how you feel about dealing with people on a daily basis.
2. You either gather information in zoomed-in mode or zoomed-out mode. In other words, people who rely on sensing will look for things that are practical and detail-oriented while people who are intuitive are more broad thinking and like to see the big picture as a whole. This will affect how you learn the business and apply systems as a whole.
3. You either make decisions prioritized by how you think or by how you feel. Thinkers default to logic, principles, and truths. Feelers cherish personal values, harmony, and the well-being of others. This can affect the triggers that cause you to make decisions in your business.
4. You either prefer plans and predictability or you crave spontaneity and adventure. This affects your risk tolerance and how comfortable you are trying new things to grow your business.
5. You either prefer taking the lead or you prefer responding to what’s happening. Assertive individuals are direct, decisive and prefer control while responsive individuals are open, adaptive, and cooperative. This affects how you handle processes and deal with conflicts or challenges when they arise.
6. You will have core things that motivate you and fears that will cripple you in business. It is vital for you to understand what makes you run and what makes you freeze. This affects your overall personal motivation levels in the face of grinding it out every day.
Knowing how you operate will show you which aspects of your business you will naturally excel at building, and which ones you will eventually need to delegate to someone else.
You will also learn how to identify personality types, which is crucial when you are working with clients. There are optimal ways to speak to someone so that they understand you and trust you, and these insights come from understanding all the personality types and how they interact with each other in common scenarios.
By the way, I’ve written a detailed article on real estate personality types if you really want to deep dive and learn how to leverage your own personality.
In addition to understanding your personality, you will also require specific skills and systems in order to succeed at real estate. They are:
Communication
Negotiation
Prospecting
Lead Follow Up
Market Knowledge
Time Management
Marketing
Branding
Some of these may come naturally to you already, while others are skills you’ve never tried or might be weak at. However, at some point you will need to use each of these skills at a high level in order to have a thriving real estate business.
Ignoring any of these creates a weak link in the chain, and can crucially hinder your progress. In short, there is a lot of work that needs to be done before you make it big.
As we move through this guide, you’ll get a better picture of the high level things you need to master.
Let’s move onto Level 2: Capturing The Real Estate Mindset You Need To Succeed