Millionaire Mindset for Real Estate Wealth | Traci Gagnon

This market requires more of us. It requires us to have a vision beyond today, this month, and this year.
Our vision must be cognizant of what the real estate industry has the potential to do for us, our loved ones, and our legacy.

Show Notes

Our vision must also recognize that at times like right now, when markets are shifting, those with a millionaire mindset create massive separation between themselves and the average agent.

Right now is when the table is set for real wealth to be built in the years to come.

In this episode, I interview Traci Gagnon, a real estate coach with one of the largest organizations under the umbrella of her organization. She specializes in helping other agents have a millionaire mindset.
Links:
Full episode with video, audio, timestamps and full transcription
—
Explore past episodes: thinkbiggerre.com/podcast/

Download my international best-selling book, The Upstream Model, here: justinstoddart.com/freebook

If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a short review on Apple Podcasts.  I love reading reviews and engaging with our community.

Follow Justin:
Instagram: instagram.com/justinstoddart
Facebook: facebook.com/justincstoddart
YouTube: youtube.com/c/justinstoddart
RateThisPodcast.com/thinkbigger

Creators and Guests

Host

Justin Stoddart

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.

Justin Stoddart 0:01
When you have the Millionaire Real Estate mindset, you recognize that times in the market such as this are not scary. They're not upsetting. They're exciting. Today's guest, who has an amazing track record of the real estate industry is going to teach us how to have that millionaire mindset. I'm thrilled to introduce it to you so grateful that you're here today, you're not gonna want to miss this episode. So the big question is this, how do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart. And this is the Think bigger real estate show. Good, welcome back to the show. Thrilled to be here today. Today's guest she has been in industry for a number of years, she's a real estate coach, really an author, she has, by the way, a free giveaway of a free downloadable eBook that you're all gonna get. her backstory is phenomenal. I'm gonna let her tell some of that. But she has one of the largest organizations underneath the EXP organization, which says a lot. Tracy dagong. It's such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for joining us today on the Big big real estate show.

Traci Gagnon 1:18
Justin, such a huge honor. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. You're such a legend in this industry. And you've helped so many real estate agents get financially free. So in the honor is all mine. Thank you so much.

Justin Stoddart 1:32
I appreciate that very much. Tracy, talk a little bit about your backstory. So people know where you're coming from? Well, physically right now you're in beautiful Florida just had lunch by the pool. Now you're back with us. Thank you for stepping away from that setting that says a lot. I'm honored are all kinds of reasons. Now. Tell us a little bit about your your history in real estate. So people have some context.

Traci Gagnon 1:52
Yeah, sure. Sure. You know, I was a long story short as possible. I went to Baylor had a full ride scholarship and studied education because apparently I wanted to be poor the rest of my life, I was brought up really poor. And so you know, when you don't have any good role models, you kind of think well, what's the best you can do? Right? Well, I made I bought a house five years into selling it five years into teaching. And my real estate agent wasn't very good and wasn't very helpful. And she made more in one month than I she made one more of that one check that I would make an entire month. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, if she can do this, well, I can knock it out of the park. So one Friday night, I was sitting in Barnes and Noble, which was a bookstore for those of you that are over the age of 40 used to actually have to go and go to bookstores to read books. And I stumbled across the book Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. And I started reading that book. And for the first time in my life, I thought, Wow, maybe I really can design my life. And the book was $14. And I had $21 Till payday. So I was money ahead. I bought the book and within a couple of weeks, started real estate classes, and got my real estate license really struggled for the first five or six months. My training at my real estate office is here's your cubicle, here's the crisscross directory. And they gave me a mike ferry script. And he said, Go get them girl, you're gonna be great. Well, by the grace of God, I had enough tenacity to make enough cold calls to make a living. And I found a new life and a new lifestyle. And I think that's the thing about real estate, you know, for less than at the time 1000 bucks I could get my real estate license started completely different life, a completely different lifestyle. And I fell in love with real estate I fell in love with helping people achieve their dreams of owning a more beautiful home of getting to the next phase in their life of getting their kids into the very best possible schools of really changing your lifestyle by changing your zip code. And then after a couple of years, I started my own city 21 franchise, first three and a half years I lost over half a million dollars. The reason that real estate brokers are called brokers is because we're always brokers that are real estate agents. But after a couple of years, I took some classes I did some seminars, I really kind of learned how to change my unique value proposition. My real estate company grew and prospered. And I grew it to the fourth largest century 21 office in the United States. And six weeks before the market crashed in 2007. By the grace of God, I sold that company. So I got to see the downturn. Very similar, my good man to what we're experiencing right now, but I thought with cash in the bank, so I could look at it from a very analytical perspective. And I went on the professional speaking circuit and became a real estate consultant and coach was working with a lot of brokers on basically how to keep their doors open during the downturn and he Here is what I learned that our greatest opportunities that we will ever have in real estate are in downturns exactly like what we're experiencing right now. So for the agents that are prepared for the agents that are willing to do the right things at the right time, my goodness, I think you're gonna look back on 2022. And say, this is where I really developed my financial future, and how I really got out in front of the pack and my real estate business, I truly believe that the best opportunity to grow and prosper in real estate is right now while everything is changing.

Justin Stoddart 5:36
For Tracy, what an absolute beautiful story. And what a tribute to the kind of the person that you are, the contribution that you gave during that time. It's absolutely inspiring. You know, I think back about myself as a homebuilder in the year 2000, it was right, it was a very challenging time. And I didn't have the maturity at that point to say, to see the opportunity, right. All I saw was my pipeline of high end Custom Homes, one at a time saying we're going to wait till next year, you know, we're gonna wait, we're gonna wait, we're gonna wait. So funny. I'm having almost deja vu now, where many of the agents that I coach and I work closely with are saying that's the most common thing that I'm hearing is, you know what, we're just going to wait. So here's what I want to kind of go deeper into, is really allow you to teach us why one could say when their immediate pipeline, right, and I'll emphasize the word immediate, because what we're talking about as having a vision, right? Envision goes beyond the immediate. So that's a little bit of a of a hint as to where we're headed here. But when the immediate situation right now current transaction pipeline, current conversations you're having, aren't looking like they're full of opportunity. What is it that Tracy sees, help us to look through kind of your lens for just a minute to see why is the opportunity so bright during a downturn, when most do not see it that way?

Traci Gagnon 6:58
What Justin, what a beautiful question. When when the market shifts, the way that it has, the biggest thing that I can encourage your listeners to really do is to take a deep analysis of their business, and really take a look at if you say where you are, what's ahead for you. Right. So I ate like I said, I sell my century 21. franchise, I had a non compete. So I stayed with Century 21, for a brief period of time after that. But here's what I discovered that my agents that had been with Century 21 forever. We didn't have a cap, right. And it was okay, because the market was good. Everybody was doing fine. We're all making lots of money. So the agents weren't really paying attention to how much money that they were spending, right? They were looking at what was coming in the door, but not looking so much of what came out the door. Well, when the market shifted, what happened almost immediately, is that everybody really started looking at where's my business coming from? I'm going to double down in that way. And where am I spending money that maybe I don't need to. And so what I saw very quickly is at the time, Keller Williams started to really gobble up market share, because they they had a cap. So an agent that maybe was working for my office, they could pick up their book of business, move it to a different company, make more and keep more. So that's one of the biggest things we've certainly seen. Of course, now I'm with exp. But that's one of the biggest things that we're seeing now with exp our business brokerage is growing by leaps and bounds because we don't have a cap and we don't have a franchise transaction transaction fee, and we don't have a franchise fee. And we don't have a lot of those things that agents are used to spending. So you really have to take a deep dive of where you're spending money, what is not serving you anymore, and maybe what's the next best step. And I will tell you, one of the best things that you can possibly do is reach out to your center of influence right now and have conversations Hey, you know, hey, listen, Susie, you know, you and I do yoga together. Hey, listen, Susie, you and I, our kids go to the same school. You know, I'm in real estate. We're seeing a lot of shifts in the real estate market, Susie, and I'm curious, this is a really good time to maybe invest in real estate. Do you have any money on the sidelines that you'd like to look into? Maybe getting some of those really great deals that we're seeing right now? Or you know what Suzy homes in our area are still the prices are still really strong? Have you given any thought to selling while the market is still somewhat good? And while there are still people out there looking if people are looking at renting, hey, listen, I know you've seen your rent increase by 10 10% 15%. Over the past few years. We're seeing prices adjust in certain markets. Have you given any thought to buying a house now. There's always opportunities. And I'm telling you if you reach back out to the people that know you like you and trust you, you're gonna get much better results. Over the past several years. We've seen a lot of real estate agents that have you know, flashy Instagram pages, or have a big social media presence. They're making a lot of money and they're kind of gobbling get market share from your typical agents that have maybe been in the business longer. But as the market shifts, we go back to people and relationships that we know people that we trust people that we care about, I'm telling you, this is the best time you'll ever have to reach out to the people that know you, like you trust you and want to do business with you. Because people are much more selective about who they do business with, whenever the market shifts.

Justin Stoddart 10:24
For Tracy, I see all kinds of opportunities, just and what you said right there. And I'm gonna distill them down a little bit. I heard you say that at times like this, agents themselves, start looking around side to side to say, am I at the right brokerage? Right? So if you're in the brokerage business, now's a great time, if you're an agent, it's also a great time to really audit to say, am I at the best possible place? Number one, are my fees in line and number 2am I around leaders that have the kind of vision that Tracy is talking about, because if you have leaders that are like, like, buckle up, you know, like all kinds of words that are like more retraction based, more like kind of duck and hide base like prepare, this is going to be hard, lotta yada, yada, like when you hear that, you might start to question if you're in the right spot, right. And when there's agents, it times like these people are looking for confident leaders who see opportunity. So if you want to expand your brokerage business, whether you own an independent brokerage, whether you're in an organization that rewards growth, and you helping with the growth, this is a great opportunity, a great opportunity to be doing that to be to be re I guess, helping people to relocate to brokerages where they see lots of opportunity and where they'll get the leadership that they want. That's what that's one thing that really stood out to me what you said, a second thing is, is that right now, more than ever, more than probably in the past decade, you have clients that are really looking to real estate agents to say, tell me what's going on? And what are the opportunities, my money's losing 8% a year just by sitting in a bank account. Right? And it's, it's, it's losing even more than that sitting in the market, like, what can I possibly do with my market? Maybe because your real estate market isn't strong, doesn't mean that all types, right? Maybe there's commercial opportunities, maybe there's 1031 exchange opportunities, like just be open to educating people and hearing where they're at. So I see both on the production side, as well as on the on the brokerage growth side. I hear you saying that, in fact, I've heard you say this before is that winter is our time like this is the time when we can really grow is that? Is that an accurate kind of summary of what you're seeing Tracy

Traci Gagnon 12:26
100%. And, and you know, as we've all heard, some of the biggest companies in the world were started during a recession. So the truth of the matter is people right now are looking for opportunities. And if you have an opportunity within your company, within your team, Everybody's hungry, everybody's searching for something different. What worked two or three years ago doesn't work anymore. So people are looking for leaders, and it might as well be you. If you have any, any any desire to help other real estate agents grow and prosper. This is your time, if you want your clients to grow and prosper if you want to help your clients increase their net worth, my goodness, it's a beautiful time to be guiding people in the magical power of real estate.

Justin Stoddart 13:15
That's so well said. Because when you think about it, we get paid to solve problems. Right. And sometimes when problems arise, we think there's no money to like the opportunity's gone. It's like, No, you don't understand, like, we get paid to solve problems. There's more problems. Now there's more people with more problems. So that like we should make that direct correlation. And sometimes we don't, right, sometimes, kind of the fearful side of us will say, Man, the opportunity like fewer transactions, higher interest rate, decreased buying power, we see all of that, as opposed to saying, and everybody in the world is impacted by that. How can I help them? How can I help them insulate their wealth, grow their wealth during times like these? So love that Tracy? What What else when you're looking at it, helping people to develop a millionaire mindset in real estate? What else are people may be missing? Or what else would you advise them to do in order to really embrace that and see this as such a period of opportunity?

Traci Gagnon 14:18
Yeah, well, part of it is what you shouldn't do. And I am a former journalism teacher. And so I can tell you if I could give your listeners one piece of advice. Don't watch the news. Right? So when it teaching journalism, you know, if the journalism One on One is if it bleeds, it leads, right. But graduate level journalism is it's not what's being reported. It's what's not being reported. So you can think that you're watching the news because you want to be informed, but you're not being informed. You're being indoctrinated. Okay, and you're being indoctrinated by Somebody that has a level of wealth beyond anything that most of us mere mortals can imagine. Right? So it's not your job to worry about what's going on in the global real estate economy or what's going on statewide or nationwide. It's your job to know what's going on in the real estate community that you serve in the subdivision that you serve. And there are always, always always opportunities, I believe that the opportunities in real estate are going to be massive in the next six to 12 months. So this is a great time to build your database, right? With with exp, we have a really great system that every agent gets called Cavey core. And you can basically run a promos for free telling people, you know, houses in your subdivision are selling for X number of dollars, what is your house worth, right? And people can go in and type in their address. And even if they don't give you their name and their phone number, guess what you have their address, so you know that that person is at least considering selling. So look into systems that will basically put people in your pipeline that maybe are not ready to buy or sell now, but are ready whenever the market shifts even more. So whether prices go down further or whether interest rates change? I mean, the truth of the matter is, we just came back from our global convention. And between me and you just does Justin, I didn't hear a lot of optimism, right? I mean, for the most part, don't you agree that we're all preparing for a much longer winter, which means that the strong real estate agents are going to clean up. And the agents that have been nothing more than order takers are going to be getting jobs. This is a great opportunity for professional real estate agents to go deeper with their clients to go deeper with their education, and to build a business that not only will thrive through this recession, but when we come out of it. On the other hand, my goodness, the sky is the limit.

Justin Stoddart 17:01
It's interesting, you say that some of my agents that I've brought on to the show and interview them and have such admirable businesses across various different brokerages. Many of them got their start 2006 2007 2008. And it's, you know, as you talk to them, it's like, how, how bad was it getting started at that point, they just shrugged their shoulders. And I didn't know any different, I didn't have an expectation of what it was supposed to be like. And I guarantee that if you were to pack any one of us up and set us in Venezuela, or some of these countries that are in more turmoil than we can imagine, and say go sell real estate, we'd be like, Oh, my goodness, the United States is the most fertile land of opportunity I've ever experienced, I see nothing but opportunity. But for some reason. We compare right now to a few months ago or a year ago, and we are laying down with our thumb in our mouths saying like, there's no like, there's no more opportunity, there is opportunity if you can learn to see it. And I love what you've shared with this year, Tracy about, about really using this as an opportunity to really build your database and add value to people because it's those people who do what you just taught us to do. That's the people who are have massive empires right now, or those who did that in 2007 2008. They just got to work, right? They just got to work, as opposed to overthinking it listening to all the fake news and buying into the sound bites that are sensationalized news clips, as opposed to the full data and the full opportunity customized for us. So fun to be in your presence in in around someone like you, that's that sees that opportunity. I see it as well. And it only helps me to continue to see it to be around that. So in other words, anybody here that's that is is listening to this. And it's like, Oh, my goodness, it's so refreshing to hear this. Just know that that's like, it's by intention that I reach out to people like Tracy, number one selfishly because I want her to rub off on me, right, like, and number two, because that's my commitment to those listeners show is that they're going to think bigger, right? By being around other big thinkers. Tracy, I've got I've got one more question for you. But before we do that, I want to let everybody know that in the show notes, you're going to get the ability to download for free Tracy's ebook, which talks all about the millionaire mindset. So if you've enjoyed this, yeah, hold it up close. Look at that. I love it looks like an Avengers copy or something like something like superhuman, which that's kind of what you get to be when you hang out with Tracy. A little bit of superhuman. So just know that you're gonna have the opportunity to download that. So be watching for that link. We'll put it in the show notes. Tracy, you are a big thinker. Right? You surround yourself with other big thinkers. What is Tracy do to continue to be a big thinker to continue to expand your possibilities? What does it look like for you?

Traci Gagnon 19:52
You know, what a beautiful question. I am. I am a self development junkie, right? I mean growing up my house faced a laundromat. Okay, it's just so in the words of Reba McIntyre, to say the least we were hard pressed, right. So I think when you come from that background, I relate very strongly to Tony Robbins, who also was raised very poorly. And by the grace of God, now I'm very blessed to be one of Tony Robbins platinum partners, right. But I started listening to Tony, back on the infomercials in the early 2000s, right. And when I finally when I finally made enough money that I could afford the $597 to buy the CD set, I did, the biggest thing that you can do is to go really deep in your self development. Okay, whatever that is. And the great thing is now with the amazing invention of YouTube, you don't even have to pay for any education, right? I mean, you can learn to do anything almost in the whole world, and not have to pay a single penny. So what do you want? What do you want to make your life better? Do you need to spend more time on your relationships? Do you need to spend more time on lead generation? Do you need to spend more time on an exit strategy? Do you do you want to focus on being a neighborhood expert? I mean, whatever it is, you got to go really deep with your own self education. And really build this six inches right here, the most expensive real estate in the entire world is this six inches right here, right? Go deep, this is a great time to really invest in yourself to really learn and master skills. And obviously, as we've all heard, there's nothing more powerful right now than really mastering using video, your neighbors want to know what's going on in their community, and they don't want to read about it, they want to see videos about it. So you know, grab your cell phone, go to a local restaurant, film, a quick video of the manager of the restaurant talking about maybe the specials that they have going on, talk to your previous clients, call them up and say, Hey, listen, I know Suzy that you know, you work for heating and air conditioning business. Can I interview you about what's going on in that marketplace? Reach out to your former clients, and build your own built your own network of people that are your raving fans, build a channel that focuses on more about your specific community? And what does that do? First of all, it makes you the neighborhood expert, which is what people are looking for, and their real estate agent. It also endears you to the people that you're talking to. It gives you an excuse to reach out to your previous clients, call your previous clients and say, Hey, listen with the turmoil in the market, what's been going on with your business, have a genuine interest in the people that you serve, have a genuine interest in your community. And when you do that, and when it truly does come from the heart, not only you're gonna see your business grow, but my goodness, I mean, look at what you're doing for your karma, right? Look at what you're doing for the people that you're helping out. The more people that you can serve, the more money you're going to make, and the higher quality of life that you're going to have. And above and beyond that you can have a lot more fun.

Justin Stoddart 23:02
You know, what you've really personified and how you've gotten to where you're at as, like you just gave it gave us a great recipe for that. Right, which is just genuinely care for people. And go learn how to take that care and magnify it right and just serve in and give that value to more people. So, so fun to be able to learn from you, Tracy, thank you so much for contributing, and adding so much value to this audience. I look forward to seeing in contact with you and continuing to have your vision rub off on me. I know you've already done that. For me. I'm grateful for that. And to everybody listening here today. I want to give you this last simple request number one, I should say to request number one, go download Tracy's book. And then number two is to go think bigger. Tracy, so grateful for you helping us do that today. Appreciate you blessings to you. And if you enjoy this episode that I have a very special invitation for you. I have created a private Facebook community called successful real estate agents where the focus is going beyond success having both a successful business and a significant life. If you're not yet a member. Go sign up now.