Be the One | Justin Prince

There aren't many books that inspire me to the point that I go back and read them repeatedly. The book this episode's guest, Justin Prince, authored is one of those exceptions.

At a time when even the most successful have their struggles and challenges, the most profound source of power is getting clear on your true identity (who you are and who you can become) and then, from there, LIVING AN INTENTIONAL LIFE.

Learn the simple tactics that make this possible in your life so that you can BE THE ONE that changes everything.

Creators & Guests

Host

Justin Stoddart

Host

Stephanie Peck

What is Think Bigger Real Estate?

The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.

We interview a mega influencer, an individual who has spent his life not only building businesses, but inspiring other people to build their own. He has an international best selling book called Be the one which gives us all a perspective on what it means to step back and get a 30,000 foot view on the impact that we can have, not just upon our clients now, not just upon the people that we interact with daily, but potentially on our posterity for generations and generations to come. Super excited to introduce you to today's guest. He's someone who's inspired me, and I'm completely confident he's going to be inspiring you as well in a really, really big way. So stay with this is going to be a great, great episode. Welcome back to the Think bigger real estate podcast, where big thinking, high achieving real estate agents come to build successful businesses and significant lives. All right. Welcome back, everybody. And Justin Prince, welcome to the Think bigger real estate podcast, man,

Justin, what an honor to be with you. So anyone you know, we were off to a good start. You know, with our when you say your name is Justin, so I knew, I know it's the only reason he

agreed to come on the show, folks, is we just had that in common so and special. Thanks to my lovely co host, Stephanie Peck, always so great to have you here with us. Appreciate you joining us today.

Thank you. I'm surrounded by greatness of Justin's today,

right? Lots of Justin's. We try and keep it easy on you.

Well, Justin, I read your book, and then I read it again, and then I started it again, and it really it gave me an entirely different perspective on what it looks like to have a deeper purpose and the story at the beginning of the book, for anybody who hasn't read it, you need to go get the book. You talk about your fifth Great Grandpa, you and your son going to a graveside to lay flowers down on this and kind of pay a tribute to somebody who you never met, who lived a long time before you, but had a significant impact upon how your family lives. Now. Would you share with us just any highlights from that that you feel like would be very relevant to real estate agents who maybe get caught in the mire, who get stuck in in laws change, or high interest rates or or too low of inventory that story, and feel free to tell any parts that you'd like. But that really will, will pull us out to say, Wow, I can have a much bigger impact than just selling a house today. Yeah,

no. First of all, man, what an honor to be going with you and Stephanie and and, you know, I love real estate. I love real estate professionals. I grew up my dad was originally as a young kid, was a new home sales, then ultimately became a builder, and then landed up her so my whole life has been in the real estate world, you know. And I owe a ton of my, you know, education and just learning the game on my dad's work projects, you know, doing work even as a young kid. So I love the real estate world, and I'm super admire all the great work that all of you do in our communities and ultimately in our country. But I wrote a best selling book called be the one. And there's really two concepts here. One is that you are the one success as an identity process, and so you're never going to outperform the way that you see yourself. If you see yourself as a loser, you're not going to show up and play like a winner. If you see yourself as a winner, you're not going to roll over and quit like a loser, like six we'll be consistent over time. It will never outperform the way we see ourselves. So the first thing is, you're the one, and if you think of your parents and your grandparents, and your great grandparents, by the way, you know you can envision your mom, envision your dad, their life, their impact on you, their impact on the world, and their in their own way. You know, if you go back 12 generations, 12 generations was 4094 people. So 4094 people, over the last 12 generations, came together from all over the world to create you. And you are the one. You know. You're the one these folks live for, bled for, cried for, died for, gave everything they had for. And so first is understanding who you really are. You're the one. The second part is not become the one. You are the one. The second part is to be, you know, it's the Gandhi concept of like, Be the change you wish to see. It's like to be the one you were born. To be, be the one that lives a life, be the one that writes a story that future generations look up, and they say it was him, you know, or it was her. She's the one for our family. So that story that you referenced, you know, my fifth generation, grandpa and grandma was a guy named George and Sarah Prince. They left England in the pursuit of improving their family's financial situation and economic status and went to South Africa to create a little homestead. They were ranchers. Soon as they got there, they were involved in what's called the Hosho wars. The Hosho was the native tribes at the time Mandela, by the way, was a was from the hosha, hosha tribes. And so 1850, my fifth generation, Uncle John was shot in the eye by an arrow during one of the battles and killed 1853 George says he's out on the on the, you know, kind of cleaning up on the ranch, and he hears a voice. He hears a voice button, by the way, this story is in his journals and his daughter's journals. But the voice says, George. He kind of. Like, turns around like this, and he says he sees an angel, and the angel basically has a message of faith that says that that some men are going to come to his home, that message they have to share is true. He and his family, should, you know, accept this kind of Christian message So, long story short, 1853, a couple years later, he and his some two men come walking up and his wife see him, and he says, that's the two men from the vision. They accept their message. 1855 they leave southern Cape of South Africa and come to Massachusetts, ultimately get to Nebraska, and the last wagon train West 1860 to get to Salt Lake City. Sarah, if you can imagine those of you that have kids. She has five kids, and she's pregnant with twins, and she ultimately delivers these little babies on the on the western plains. They both die shortly after birth. So they did kind of hand dug grays and bury these little lifeless infants. Get to Salt Lake City. Sarah never emotionally or physically recovers. She dies. So, you know, being the ones not always easy. My friends like, you know, chasing your dreams, chasing your goals, trying to improve your family's financial situation, trying to maybe be true to your faith or the things that are important to you know, from a spiritual perspective, that stuff's not always easy. Imagine you're George, your brother's now dead, your two babies are now dead, your wife's now dead, and you've gone 36,000 miles across the world to in this pursuit of, you know, being the one for your family. And Hilton makes it down to Southern Utah, not far from where I live now. And so that morning, my son and I went to his grave. My son, at the time, was 16 years old. And those of you that know teenage boys, right, this kid has a hat on, and he kneels down next to this guy's headstone in his grave site, and he pulls off his hat, sits in the grass next to it, and he's like, having kind of, like a moment, like he's like, it looks like he's praying we get in the car after I said, Hey, bud, what was that experience like? And he said, you know, Dad, he said, I was thanking George for his courage. I was thanking him for his faith and his resilience. I was thanking George for being the one for our family. You know, he's the one that brought us the United States. He's the one that, you know, in this case, you know, gave us our faith. He's the one that kind of set this example of trying to do what it takes to improve your family's financial situation. And I just remember thinking, Man, what a powerful example for this kid who's six generations away from this guy, you know, thanking this guy for changing our family's life. And so what decisions can you make right now. What decisions can you make today? I'll share this with you the word decision. The word decision is a Latin word when they created the word incision. The incision meant to cut in. The decision meant to cut off. So in other words, you come up to a moment of your life, even a discussion like this, even a podcast like this, and you come up to a moment of your life, and you make a decision to go right, you cut off all the possibilities of going left. And what I'll share with you is this, my friends, every decision you've ever made in your whole life, every single one you've ever made in your whole life, puts you on this podcast with Justin Stephanie and myself right now, whether you're in your car, whether you're at the gym, doesn't matter. Like you made an appointment to be here right now, and you've never been this old before, and you'll never be this young again. And you can't always control what happens in life, but you can control what happens next, because you can make a decision right now to be the one for your family and to be the one that's going to go live a significant life. So that's kind of where the concept came from, and that original story, you

know, I bet if you went and asked George, at the end of his life, if how much of an impact he had, he probably believed that he didn't have much of one, right? It's like, yeah, I lost my wife, lost some kids, like, I'm here. Probably wasn't, you know, overly wealthy at that point, right? There wasn't a lot to show for that. And I think oftentimes success looks like that is from the inside, we can't see the impact that we're having. You know, Stephanie, your life, to me, is very inspiring. The way that you've raised your children, the way that you've you've held to and cultivated your faith, the way you've become one of, in my opinion, and not just my opinion, but one of the very best real estate agents in the entire industry. So now that I've got you probably blushing a little bit, how do these principles relate to you? Obviously, you recognize that you have an impact upon your kids. But does it inspire like, are there people, whether it be your ancestors or those who will follow you, that you feel like this concept is is maybe causing you to look at your business and your life a little bit

differently? Yeah, well, gosh, no pressure. I mean, I'm already trying to fight back some tears here. And Justin, I are both parents of teenage sons, and so I'm feeling myself in this moment. And you know, what? What would my son do in that moment, and how would he react? And it's definitely already inspired me to think more about that. Every moment that we have with our kids and the impact that we can have on them that will have an impact farther down the road is pretty incredible. It's incredible to have that, that perspective on life. And you know, if I, if I put a real estate agent spin on. This, I'm really thinking about the impact that I can have on so many people that are making a decision to change the trajectory of their lives and generations to come. You know, it might sound cheesy, but I wholeheartedly believe that what we do as real estate agents, helping people become homeowners completely changes generational wealth. It changes the way they live their life and what they'll pass down to future generations. And man, I'm just like moved by this right now to think that me, as a real estate agent, I get to be a part of that moment for so many families. That's that's huge. I feel so inspired right now to just go help more people.

I've got goosebumps. That was a win for answer that I could have ever come up with, and it's, you're right, the impact this industry has upon family's wealth and upon also creating the safest place in the world for each and every person. That's a big deal, folks, that's a big deal. And I love that you shared that. Justin, what are the thoughts you have as you, as you hear Stephanie's perspective on this industry and the impact that can have upon people, not just her family, but all the families that that we serve in such an intimate way?

Yeah. I mean, look, so first of all, she's she's right, which is that if you're going to create kind of a generational wealth. The generational wealth starts in our homes. You know, the the appreciation that we're receiving in our homes as we're paying down mortgages. And, you know, as I look back at my even my my journey, you know, I have no fine so I have a ever graduated high school college. I have no financial background. I was making pizzas. I was doing construction projects. And I used to work at a mall kiosk. Guys, I worked. How many of you remember the mall? Okay, the mall is where all this older people used to go in the Amazon was a river, and we would hang out at this place called the mall. We'd walk around. And if you remember these days, you try and avoid the mall kiosk worker. People like eye contact, because you knew if you might eye contact, they'd suck you into their molecules. I was the mall kiosk guy that you tried to avoid eye contact with. So, you know, I always had big dreams and big goals. I always wanted to do something with my life, but I have no college education. My folks divorce when I was 12. We moved 13 times in the seven years to the teenage years. So no professional background, you know, no finance, no financial literacy, no financial training, that whole thing. As I look back at the journey my wife and I have been on, you know, some of our biggest wins, economic wins, obviously, come in business, for sure, but man, a lot of them came in real estate, you know, and in both in just home ownership, as well as the real estate projects that we worked on. So real estate is just this cash engine, if you do it properly, to be able to change someone's family's life, versus renting, you know, renting their whole life. The other thing I would say about real estate is it's, it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, for most families, I would assume it's the biggest purchase they'll ever make in their life. So it's a highly emotional time, and so you get to truly be a true pro, like you get to be an emotionally mature Pro, and to help them through the ups and the downs of, you know, offers and, you know, acceptance and rates and mortgage and pre approval and not getting approved, and just all the emo, you know, selling, not selling. You know, we need to move, you know, all the, all the emotions that come with it. And you're going to, you know, these homes that you're helping folks to purchase, this is where they're going to, like, dig in their roots, like their family lineage will come through those communities, you know, in the high schools and the junior high schools and, you know, in the churches and in the charities and in the employee base and in the entrepreneur base in those local cities. So it's a, it's a, it's really is great work that you get to do as a real estate agent, you know, to help someone again, economically, to help them with, you know, the way that they raise their families, the experience they have, you know, growing up. And then also to be a true pro, by the way, I'll share a little formula that I that I think about when it comes to being emotionally mature and emotionally stable. So you can imagine that there's so many things that come at you as a real estate professional. So you have other people's emotions, right, all of their stress and angst and pressure that they're feeling. Then you have, you know, fluctuating interest rates. You have fluctuating, you know, inventory. You have competition with other, you know, other professionals, competition with online brokerages, etc. So there's a lot of stuff where we have to be really highly emotionally mature. John Wooden was the famous UCLA basketball coach. He said that when reporters walked into his locker room after the game, he didn't want the reporters to know if the kids won or lost, because the kids were just so emotionally mature and emotionally stable. So I'll share with you a quick a quick formula. It's what I call E plus r equals O, so E plus r equals O is event plus response equals outcome. So three really quick lessons from this. This concept is first lesson is that the E does not equal the O, meaning the events of your life don't equal the outcome of your life, you know. So the events of Real Estate. The events of the career, the stress, you know, the interest rates, all that kind of stuff that doesn't equal the outcome. Because you aren't a victim to the events. You're a victor to your response to the events, you get to own the R you get to own your response. You get to own the way that you choose to show up. And Ma'am, you know, Martin Luther King says that stars shine brightest in the darkest nights. In other words, if all the Stars Shine Bright and you choose to shine bright, you'll blend in. But if none of the stars are shining bright and you choose to shine bright, you'll stand out. So the darkness creates contrast. It's like creates your moment, those tough times when there's a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. This creates the moment for you to have a great response, you know, just to the way that you show up with those those events. Second quick lesson is that the R is not react. The R is respond. You know, leaders don't react. Leaders respond. So you get to say, I'm not going to react to the marketplace. I'm not going to react to the customer being stressed out. I'm going to respond to this stuff. And again, that's a way you separate yourself as a true professional. That has high emotional maturity. And then the third one is it that your R creates an E for others. So the way that you choose to respond in your life will create events for other people in their life. And so you want to ask yourself, what type of event are you creating for other people. So with your kids, if you fly off the handle, you're going to create an event for your kids. If with your clients and customers and the folks you work with in title and mortgage and, you know, appraisers and so on. If you're you're creating events for these people, right? And so you want to be creating a positive event for people versus a negative event. You know, they look at you and say, Man, that's one of the best I've ever worked with. Or, man, that's someone that, even when the chips were down, even when it stressful, they still really showed up with a high level of professionalism emotional maturity, because your response creates events for other people. So it's a way to kind of to consider your own emotional maturity, your own emotional stability, and say, What am I doing to really separate myself again, the contrast. It's separation season right now. It's the contrast. The contrast is the great teacher. So in the dark nights, when it's stressful, that's when the stars shine brightest. This is when you get to step up and be your very

best. What a beautiful lesson. And I think going back to the big picture of the impact you can have upon homes and families and your own posterity. It all comes down to that very simple decision. Every time an event comes into our life, which is happening all of the time, right? We have a choice. Do we say that's the outcome, or do we say, you know, I get a chance to respond? And I think, you know, Barbara Corcoran, kind of the queen of, you know, real estate in New York City said it like the difference between those professionals who are just average and those that are great is their ability to get back up when they get knocked down, like it's their it's their response to events. So I love that you said that, Justin, it's so much ties in with kind of the greatest, you know, thinkers in our industry. Stephanie, what thoughts do you have as you hear that lesson coming from, from Justin, how does that apply to you? Leading a, you know, a very productive team, leading a family, let it hear your thoughts on that.

Well, I've always lived in that same calculation there, but what I picked up that is going to change my mindset now is that my response creates an event for someone else, and that the outcome is then an event for someone else. And when I think about the maybe the stressful situation that we might be in in transaction, or, you know, just the everyday life of a real estate agent, maybe we're showing a lot of homes, and we're like, just pick one already. We got to remember that their their decision, just like you were talking about the the decoupling with the decision making. You know you choose this home. It means that you didn't choose all these other homes, and now that determines the way you drive to work. It determines the grocery store you go to. It determines the neighbors that you have, and then the trickle down effect of all of those relationships and all of those impacts that they will have, that it really is more than just picking a home, it's choosing the lifestyle, and that we get to be a part of that, and that my response to Whatever hard situation we're going through in that moment will create that event for someone else that's just going to completely change the way I interact with my clients. So

good. Justin, what would you add to that, as you hear Stephanie's perspective?

Yeah. I mean, look, I think some of these, these, you know, becoming more hyper aware of, you know, hyper self aware of not only the decisions that we're making, but the way we're impacting other people. So heartmath.org, says that the feelings of our heart that it emanates out about 10 feet around. Us in a circle, like it, like we kind of like you can feel people. And by the way, take away the woo, woo part of this for a second. Let me just ask you this question. Have you ever walked down the street or been at a store, or whatever it is, and you see someone, you walk past them, and you think to yourself, I don't know what it is with that guy, but he's off today. You know, some something's up, or you'd walk past someone, you say, Man, she seems like a really happy person, you know, that kind of thing. Didn't talk to him. Don't know him, because you can sense them, right? And so we rub off on people. You know, the birds of a feather flock together. Heartmath.org, says that you're either a germ or you're vitamin C, and we're affecting people. You know, the way you show up matters. You know, the energy that you choose to show up with, matters. Uh, Brendon Burchard has a super simple concept that he teaches called bring the joy. What a super simple concept. And he says that he has door frame triggers. So when he walks through a door frame, he it's a trigger for him to bring the joy. So what would bring the joy look like? It's a smile. It's remembering someone's name. It's good. It's having positive good energy. It's having good, good, good shifts. So for example, when you drive into the garage, you shift, or you pivot from garage work mode into like, family mode, for example. Or when you walk into that closing, you shift into like, you know, from all the stress of the client you just got off with, into like, the celebration of the clothes. So having good shifts or pivots. You know, in our life can help us to bring the joy and just the way that we show up matters this energy. You know, it reverberates out. We affect people. And you want to be, you want to be vitamin C, if possible, versus a germ. You know, when

I think there, it really takes away the mystery of why some get more opportunities, why some have higher close rates. Why? Some people are just attracting great opportunities into their world? It's because of what, what they're becoming on the inside, what they're putting out to the world is either repelling good opportunities and good people who can really collaborate at a high level, or they're or they're deflecting them, right? I mean, they're attracted, they're deflecting. And so I love all that. You know, there's so many of these lessons that I feel like we've just scratched the surface on I hope at some point we get the chance to have you back. Justin, but for those of you that have not read the book, be the one. Go get it. It's it will change the way you look at it. I mean, one of my favorite principles you teach is, is, you know, the three dimensional identity, right? Which is super powerful. I don't know we have time to go into that today, unless you're just dying to share with the Justin. We could probably give you 60 seconds to trending

on it last night. So, you know, I'll summarize. But so the first thing is just this concept, which is vision. You know, listen, Helen Keller said the only thing that's worse than having no sight is having no vision. You know, there's old, ancient Bible wisdom that says, where there is no vision, the people perish. And so vision is so important. You say, Well, why? Like, why do I need to be a visionary or have vision for my life? And the reason why is because, when times are tough, Vision answers this question. This is an important question for all of our marriages, for us, raising kids, for us, in the marketplace, particularly in the marketplace, is challenging, but when times are tough, Vision answers the question, Will it always be this way? And if the answer is, it's always going to be this way, we're always going to feel this stress. We're always going to feel this pressure. It's never going to change. Man, there's no vision, no hope. We're going to make different decisions versus Hey, listen, I've been through cycles. The sun's coming up in the east. We're going to get through this. Maybe we're having a tough moment, but we're going to get through this. That's what vision does, is it propels you forward. That's why the people perish where there's no vision. So a 3d Vision is really three, you know, kind of three, three dimensional. It's three different elements. The first thing is to define your vision. So there's define. What do you want with your life. You know, what do you want with this career? What do you want? What are you looking to accomplish? What does success look like to you? You want to define this stuff. You actually create a definition for it. Success is this for me, because is success for example, is it $100,000 a year is success? A million dollars a year is success for you, not even the dollar amount success for you is X amount of time with of time with your kids. Or, in other words, I create this type of life, or maybe it's I create this type of impact. What does success look like for you? How do you know when you're winning? How do you know when, when you're putting the right points on the board of what you want to accomplish with your life? So first, number one is you define it. Number two is you declare it you know. You share it with people. So Brandon Burchard wrote a book called high performance. Habits. It's the biggest study of high performers in human history. He said that if you ask a high performer, if you like, were to tap him on the shoulder and ask him, Hey, what's your latest dream? What's your latest vision? And imagine I'm asking you this right now. You're driving in your car, you're at the gym. I say, Hey, what's your latest dream? He said that a high performer can answer that question seven to 10 seconds faster than the rest of the population. Why? It's because high performers have defined the dream. They define the vision. This is not ambiguous to them. In other words, they know exactly what they're working on. They got goals planned. It's like, it's like they've defined it and they declared it with enough regularity that they've this stuff rolls off a tongue. Remember dreams in the back of your mind won't motivate you. It needs to be dreams need to live on the tip of your tongue, stuff you're working on. It's like a burning desire. And then the third thing is you. The third D is you dedicate, dedicate your life to your vision. You dedicate your life to your dream. You know you want to be about it, not just talk about it. You know it's, it's dedication. You know, want shows up in conversation. You know, dedication shows up in action. You know, it's just like you. There's someone's just all about it. They don't talk to you about getting in shape. You see them doing the work. They don't talk about closing more deals. You see them doing the work. You know, they it. Most people just talk a good game. They don't actually dedicate themselves to it. Remember, success will not attack you. You're not going to accidentally stumble onto the top of the very of the very top, top mountain. This is stuff that takes true dedication. You know, takes commitment and energy and dedication. So you define it, you declare it, and you dedicate yourself to it. And that's how visionaries become people that actually will make things

happen. Amazing. So good. As I mentioned, Justin's story and what he put in the book, and what he continues to put on social media, by the way, follow. Media. By the way, follow him on Instagram. It's very inspiring. Justin such a pleasure to spend some time with you. Any any final words from you, Stephanie, before we wrap up,

yeah, just feel inspired to be it. I mean, whatever you want to attract, you need to get out and be that. So if you you want more clients, yeah, be out there and be someone that's doing the work that people want to be working with and want to be around. You know, if you want better friends, go be a better friend. You want to you want better kids, be a better parent. I love it

so true. Justin, thank you for inspiring us today. Again, this is the show where real estate agents come to have successful businesses and significant lives, and you've absolutely added to that been a great benefit to our mission of extending that to our industry. So thank you for that. Wish you continued success and tremendous impact that that that continues to spread for you as it should. So appreciate you very much. Honored

to be with you guys, excited to get to know you better and love the great work you're doing. Thank you again. And

our final request of everybody listening here today are these three simple words, and they are, go think bigger. Thanks again, Justin for helping us do that today. Thank you. Now, before you go, remember big thinkers and high achievers take action. Here's one way to do this, find me on social media and send me in a direct message one Aha, that you're going to take action upon from today's episode. I can't wait to be connected to another.