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Your business won't outgrow you.
Real estate agents are constantly bombarded with tactics and strategies to grow their business. Yet, why is it that so few of them actually have the business and life that they want.
The answer is more simple than you think. It's because we must grow so that our business can grow.
Show Notes
Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and this topic today is very meaningful to me. Even having this guest on today is an exciting thing for me. I'll introduce her here in just a second. But here's the problem that I want this episode to help you solve, which is: There's endless amounts of tactics and strategies and ideas for real estate agents to grow their business. And the opportunity is most of them will work if you grow into being the right person. The challenge is if you don't grow as a person, none of them will work. So I have with me today, Sarita Dua. Let me first of all say Sarita thank you for coming on the show today.
Thanks so much Justin, for having me.
I'm excited to have you here. For those of you that don't know Sarita, let me give a little background on her and I know many of you do. Over the past two years, her team, a very small team, has produced over $130 million in real estate volume. Pretty impressive for a small team. In addition to that, she has entered into the executive MBA program at MIT. For those of you who are familiar with MIT, it's a very prestigious university and to be accepted in means a lot. She loves teaching and training. It's really a passion of hers. Maybe some of you have seen her on some of the biggest stages including Keller Williams big annual event, Inman Connect, the big event that they have multiple times a year. And all over the place on podcasts and other places. So I'm, again, fortunate to have you here today, Sarita, pouring into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for again for your attention and your time.
Of course. I appreciate it.
So let's, let's dive into how are we going to solve this now. I know Sarita, you have developed and followed a growth plan and you say that that is an essential component of helping you to produce at the level that you have and I want to talk through some of the things for you that are a part of this growth plan? And, uh, maybe let's start with something that you put into the growth plan first, which is your fascination with travel. Talk to us about that because most people think that has nothing to do with real estate. That's what you do when you're not doing real estate. But for you, that's been an essential component of helping you produce at the highest level. True?
Yeah, absolutely. And if somebody asked me like what are the three things that mean the most to me and I can't put individual people in my family, then it would be honestly my family, education and travel. And one of the things I love about travel is that it's a perfect intersection between family and education because anytime we go anywhere, we're learning and we're together. And so it isn't this, you know, a quest to fill my passport, although I do love that part of it. What I found is as my kids were young and active and I was working quite a few nights and weekends, we realized that when we connect, the few times we have, let's say we had an hour here or like 30 minutes between appointments, I would try to connect with my family and guess what, they were busy. They'd have soccer games or lacrosse or birthday parties or whatever.
So if it was a good time for me, it may not have been a good time for them. And what we realized is anytime we went anywhere, the four of us, and we reconnected, whether it was a long weekend or for a week, we would just come back synchronized and recharged. And then, my husband especially, he's a bit of a nerd and he loves like these educational field trips. So anytime we go on a trip, he's going to make us go see the largest ball of twine or how cashews are made. And we always, you know, the kids, especially "Daddy," and they roll their eyes. But the funny thing is we started playing this game called Trivia. We were at a restaurant, we were waiting for a two hour wait and I was trying to keep them awake. They were jet lagged. So I was like, "Hey guys, we visited Google today. What were the colors of their logo?" I didn't even know most of the answers. I was asking questions and I didn't even know the answers. Or, "What gate were we at?" Or, "What seats were we in?" Or, "Who was our flight attendant?" And it was so funny because my son was like maybe six or seven, "Momma ask me another question." And since we started doing that too, we've become very observant when we travel. And you're always learning when you're just looking around and your present. Right? So it really did bring our family together. So, one of the best coaches I've had in my career said, "Hey, you don't always have to have a goal of how many houses and what's your production. It could be [for me] how many days, how can you maintain your production and how many days out can you take?" So every year I start with what are all the days I'm going to take out and then I cram all my real estate in in those days that I'm not out of the office.
Which typically is not how it works. If I have time this year we'll go on a vacation. What you're saying is "This is a big rock. Put the big rocks in first and then business will happen around it."
Absolutely.
And the cool thing is is that you have enviable production, Sarita. You would think that someone that started with that, "Let's go play first," they wouldn't have produced. What you're telling us is that actually helps fuel your ability to produce at a high level.
Yeah. I mean I don't know if you guys remember when you were in school or when you have a deadline, the more you have to do, like if you have something due every night, you're going to have to time block and get it done. If you have a month to do it, like let's say taxes, right? There's a lot of us that are going to, probably on the 14th, "Shoot, I got to get these done." But if you don't have time and you have to slot a bunch of other things and you just get it done, right?! So I did find that it actually made me more efficient and more productive.
I love it. An enticing deadline is what you've created. Let's talk about your speaking and teaching. This is part of your growth plan. Obviously you've agreed to come on today to really benefit this audience. You are on stages. You've been a MAPS coach in the past and that's really become a part of your passion in your life. Talk to us about why that's an essential part of agents becoming the person, growing into being the person, that can then grow a business to the level that they want it to.
Okay, sure. I mean, everyone has a different reason. I'm not going to sit here and say, "Golly shucks." You know, I, you know, at the end of the day, like we all have reasons for doing things. Some people want the visibility, some people want referrals. For me, I'm focusing on getting comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable, right? So the more uncomfortable you can be and start being okay with it, then you always learn. So for me, teaching and coaching has just, you know, there's that phrase, the teacher becomes the student. You actually get way more than you give. Even when I coach a client one on one who might be a newer agent and I'm talking to them about systems and models. I mean, who do you think is learning that? Like for me, it's very difficult to talk about how you should make your contacts and work your database and then I hang up and I don't do that? Then I would feel like a fraud. So for me, it's just another way to sharpen the pencil. I'm not the greatest public speaker. In fact, I do quite a few educational videos to my clients. And I used to really get nervous about, "Well, does my hair look okay?" and "I just flubbed this up," and I should retake it 10 times so that I sound like, you know, like an anchor woman or like the weather person" or whatever. And you know the more authentic, like when you actually screw up and you say, wait, I like lost my train of thought, let me rephrase and you're actually honest and open, people really connect with authentic people. And you don't realize, but right there you're building a relationship with them.
So, I love teaching because I learn more. Like I said, every time and I get great feedback and you just resonate... I think there's a lot of people that take advantage of our industry, right? We can kind of calculate everything too, "Well, if this gets me a deal, I'll do it," because a lot of people, they're looking for this easy button, but the truth is we shouldn't be. If I go see a speaker too, I'm like, "Oh, I should be doing that." And the truth is we should figure out what we're really good at and just amplify or do more of that as opposed to, "Oh I don't door knock. I should start doing that." Nothing against door knocking, it's not my thing. But for me going to a networking event three or four times a day doesn't feel like work. Now there might be the same people who go door knock that don't actually want to chit chat with people at a networking event. So it's about finding... there's so many different ways to slice it in this business. So, finding what fits for you and doing it. So that's been great for me because the speaking and the coaching have brought in my world as well as my connections and I learned so much from my peers as well.
I love it. It's really the focusing question from the ONE Thing which is the 80 20 rule applied over and over and over until you get down to "What really fuels my business and what fuels me?" And for you, you've found a part of that is the speaking and teaching and kind of giving and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I love that. Let's talk a little bit about, about learning. Obviously we're going to end this based on an invitation for people to create a growth plan. So that's a little preview of what's coming, which is an invitation for each of you to create your own growth plan. But Sarita to talk to us about how you've taken learning to an all new level. When I saw that you were applying and then admitted to MIT, I thought, wait a minute, you've got a massive real estate business, not leveraged by a huge team. You're still an active part of that and getting into and then keeping up with the workload at MIT. That's no small endeavor. Talk to us about why have you done this?
I'm going to also tell you I'm not the most popular person at home. My husband's like, "You're doing what?!" And I told him "If I get in, I'm going." And of course he said, "Well Honey, I love you but you're probably not going to get in. It is MIT." So then of course when it happened, we looked at each other like, "Oh shoot, here we go." But you know, I have a big birthday this year and maybe it's my mid-life crisis, but at the end of the day, I think it's Albert Einstein that said, "The day you stop learning is the day you start dying." And this is the most embarrassing part of this MIT thing. It's an executive MBA. I already have an MBA. I got one like 20 years ago. And there's another phrase, "No man goes through the same river because either the man has changed or the river has changed." Well guess what, school changed since my first MBA. I think we had phones in bags and we would like still fax things and email was just coming out or whatever. Things like AI and Big Data, you know, artificial intelligence and some of these things that we're talking about at school. Those things didn't exist. There are entire fields of business ideas and models that didn't exist. I'm not going to leave real estate, I'm not changing my career, but honestly, I was craving learning and MIT has this mission and it sounds really grand. In fact, I thought "I'm embarrassed to ever repeat it because it sounds really arrogant. And I'm paraphrasing, but it's "To train the leaders that will change the world." This is essentially what it said, which I just thought, well that's kind of a crock, like "Who do we think we are?"
But the truth is if you think really big, you do change the world. And you may not change the entire world, but you'll change your world. And then you become an ambassador when you come back and you talk to your networks and you're changing their world too. We're talking about big things like climate change and big global issues. And so for me you can probably hear I'm super passionate, right? I haven't complained once about the workload because I'm learning. I'm meeting great people. I just anded something pretty big in my real estate business and the reality is it was because I was thinking bigger. So it changed the way I look at things and I even approach it differently. And so I'm already seeing everything you do, if you do it well and you're really present, you can apply it to anything.
So to kind of segway to what you were just asking about a growth plan. Like my challenge to everyone here is you don't need to go to MIT to grow. I mean, I'm just insane and I kind of did it on a dare, but the truth is you need to think about growing all the time and make it a deliberate thing. And it can be very simple. It could be "Who do I admire business-wise, maybe picking three or five people and making sure you connect and have coffee or lunch with them. Nobody really turns you down. If you say, "Hey, I admire your business, can I spend 15 minutes chatting with you and learning from you?" People are flattered to do that. It could be you want to read more. Maybe it's a book or two a month. Literally on the first day of the month, writing down those 12 or 24 books, putting them in literally a table of 12 months, which book am I going to read which month? Putting down, "Hey, I go to my one or two conferences for my company. What are the company conferences outside of my company?" Maybe asking at those coffees, "What conferences do you go to?"
Now here's the deal guys. We can learn all the time. We still got to do, right?! You can actually physically probably go to 52 conferences, one a week and probably never actually be in your business because you're learning. It has to be the right balance. So you might say, "Look, I'm only going to do three conferences this this year." What are the three that are the most important? Why am I picking them? And, and be deliberate about that. And you know what, you can't go wrong. Even if you pick one from that, we're probably going to still meet amazing people and learn from something there. So I do that as a plan because otherwise a repair addendum emergency or something's going on with your kids and next thing you know it's April and now you've got to catch up on eight books, right? So just having it as a plan and being deliberate about it really does make it happen.
I love your point about being deliberate and part of my reason behind Think Bigger Real Estate is, I'm a passionate learner as well. I'm always taking some course, I'm always reading something and what I realized is that learning for learning's sake is good, but what is better or best would be to take that and then like you said, to reteach it. So I'm having a website developed in which I'm going to be taking the books that I'm reading and writing blog posts about how this applies to real estate agents. And I'll be putting that into Think Bigger Real Estate, in part to add to enhance the value that I can offer to real estate agents, but also to be sure that I'm not just reading to check it off my list, which I've been guilty of. "Okay. I did that book. What's the next?"
I said I'm going to read the book. I got to skip through this quickly. Yeah, exactly.
I've put it on like three times speed on Audible just to get through it. But now "How's it making me better and in turn, how can I impact other people?" So thank you for sharing that--deliberate.
Well and that website for you, that's the accountability, right? Like the fact that you're doing that now, you sort of said you're doing it, you're going to do it. Like for me, I tried to take a lesson for school and share it with my network, but by having to reteach it and apply it, it really forces me to like learn it and think about it and be prepared to answer questions. So it takes that accountability to the next level and you know, when you go to school for grades, you just sort of learn how to memorize things and you get the grades. I don't care what grades I get, like I'm not on an employee reimbursement plan where I have to get this GPA to get my money back or whatever. It's amazing to me, the minute you forget about those results and you're just there to learn, you learn so much more.
So good. The last point that I want to talk about here and really your growth plan that I have identified it as an outside observer and you've validated that yes, that has really helped me is your commitment to create. I know for the past year you've given so much of your time and effort to help create and be a part of the Keller Williams Labs in helping them create this technology that I saw firsthand. I've been concerned about what technology would do to the role of a real estate agent until I saw what you guys were creating, which was something that actually gave real estate agents the ability to harness artificial intelligence so that they could be more face to face. When I got that glimpse of what, in the right hands, AI can do it blew me away and gave me great hope for the future of great professional real estate agents. Talk to us a little bit about how being a part of the Labs and creating something, very intentionally has helped you grow, and in turn your business grow.
No, of course. Thank you so much for asking that. So for me, um, my background was real estate, sorry, tech before real estate, 15 years of tech before real estate. So to see this disruption of tech and real estate sort of collide and figure out there's this tech enabled agent and then the agent enabled tech and there's a bunch of people that think you can just press a button and the house will sell by itself and people aren't going to be involved. So I loved that it was sort of coming together and it was sort of blending my world, my old world with my new world. And then having Gary invite us to actually build them from scratch. This is built by agents. It gave me a chance to honestly erase my white board, if you will, and build a system and give feedback for a system that works the way we think as opposed to, "Oh, this is a system. I need a field for the address label for my holiday cards. So let me make up a field." We were basically engineering our systems, working our business processes to fit a system instead of the other way around. And when you have a lot of agents, this isn't even a Keller Williams commercial in any way, you have insights because we have those intuitively, we know how much earnest money to put it or what it takes to win an offer. But if you were to collect, ask 10 people or 15 people or 100,000 people and share those insights, it just makes us all smarter. So it's something, I mean, my production took a hit. I spent a ton of time in Austin and I would do it again in a heartbeat. And what we're building is Gary will say "It's not perfect. It's a work in progress. That's right. It's a lab." But you can probably hear it in my voice, I am so passionate about this industry again. I found my spark between going back to school and then learning and applying from in the tech space. I just sort of found my thing again. It's been really, really exciting. So, anyone out there who has an opportunity to build something or shape something and if you find that it gets you jazzed and you literally can't sleep at night because you're so excited, do it, right?! Don't worry about the consequences. Do it because you end up being personally you develop, professionally, it helps you. So tech actually makes you do what you're supposed to do, right?! Be in front of your clients! So for me, the more tech we use means the more we get to touch our clients in terms of relationship building, which is what tech is all about, enabling that. So nothing will replace the relationship, but it's been really an honor to be part of. Okay.
I hope that everyone listening today looks at Sarita's business and looks at her life and everything that she's done and created and says to themselves, "I can think bigger. I can do more." I can absolutely do more because of her example. And I would encourage everybody out there to create a growth plan, to actually create something that helps you grow into the person that you need to grow into. So I want to thank Sarita. And it looks like we have had a little bit of a technical difficulty here, so I just want to thank Sarita for being a part of this episode. I'm so grateful for her and the example that she sets for everybody in this industry. And again, my passion is to help real estate agents to become the people so that they can have the business and the impact that they want. So again, I want to thank everyone for being a part of this episode, and I look forward to connect with you on next one.
Thanks so much Justin, for having me.
I'm excited to have you here. For those of you that don't know Sarita, let me give a little background on her and I know many of you do. Over the past two years, her team, a very small team, has produced over $130 million in real estate volume. Pretty impressive for a small team. In addition to that, she has entered into the executive MBA program at MIT. For those of you who are familiar with MIT, it's a very prestigious university and to be accepted in means a lot. She loves teaching and training. It's really a passion of hers. Maybe some of you have seen her on some of the biggest stages including Keller Williams big annual event, Inman Connect, the big event that they have multiple times a year. And all over the place on podcasts and other places. So I'm, again, fortunate to have you here today, Sarita, pouring into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for again for your attention and your time.
Of course. I appreciate it.
So let's, let's dive into how are we going to solve this now. I know Sarita, you have developed and followed a growth plan and you say that that is an essential component of helping you to produce at the level that you have and I want to talk through some of the things for you that are a part of this growth plan? And, uh, maybe let's start with something that you put into the growth plan first, which is your fascination with travel. Talk to us about that because most people think that has nothing to do with real estate. That's what you do when you're not doing real estate. But for you, that's been an essential component of helping you produce at the highest level. True?
Yeah, absolutely. And if somebody asked me like what are the three things that mean the most to me and I can't put individual people in my family, then it would be honestly my family, education and travel. And one of the things I love about travel is that it's a perfect intersection between family and education because anytime we go anywhere, we're learning and we're together. And so it isn't this, you know, a quest to fill my passport, although I do love that part of it. What I found is as my kids were young and active and I was working quite a few nights and weekends, we realized that when we connect, the few times we have, let's say we had an hour here or like 30 minutes between appointments, I would try to connect with my family and guess what, they were busy. They'd have soccer games or lacrosse or birthday parties or whatever.
So if it was a good time for me, it may not have been a good time for them. And what we realized is anytime we went anywhere, the four of us, and we reconnected, whether it was a long weekend or for a week, we would just come back synchronized and recharged. And then, my husband especially, he's a bit of a nerd and he loves like these educational field trips. So anytime we go on a trip, he's going to make us go see the largest ball of twine or how cashews are made. And we always, you know, the kids, especially "Daddy," and they roll their eyes. But the funny thing is we started playing this game called Trivia. We were at a restaurant, we were waiting for a two hour wait and I was trying to keep them awake. They were jet lagged. So I was like, "Hey guys, we visited Google today. What were the colors of their logo?" I didn't even know most of the answers. I was asking questions and I didn't even know the answers. Or, "What gate were we at?" Or, "What seats were we in?" Or, "Who was our flight attendant?" And it was so funny because my son was like maybe six or seven, "Momma ask me another question." And since we started doing that too, we've become very observant when we travel. And you're always learning when you're just looking around and your present. Right? So it really did bring our family together. So, one of the best coaches I've had in my career said, "Hey, you don't always have to have a goal of how many houses and what's your production. It could be [for me] how many days, how can you maintain your production and how many days out can you take?" So every year I start with what are all the days I'm going to take out and then I cram all my real estate in in those days that I'm not out of the office.
Which typically is not how it works. If I have time this year we'll go on a vacation. What you're saying is "This is a big rock. Put the big rocks in first and then business will happen around it."
Absolutely.
And the cool thing is is that you have enviable production, Sarita. You would think that someone that started with that, "Let's go play first," they wouldn't have produced. What you're telling us is that actually helps fuel your ability to produce at a high level.
Yeah. I mean I don't know if you guys remember when you were in school or when you have a deadline, the more you have to do, like if you have something due every night, you're going to have to time block and get it done. If you have a month to do it, like let's say taxes, right? There's a lot of us that are going to, probably on the 14th, "Shoot, I got to get these done." But if you don't have time and you have to slot a bunch of other things and you just get it done, right?! So I did find that it actually made me more efficient and more productive.
I love it. An enticing deadline is what you've created. Let's talk about your speaking and teaching. This is part of your growth plan. Obviously you've agreed to come on today to really benefit this audience. You are on stages. You've been a MAPS coach in the past and that's really become a part of your passion in your life. Talk to us about why that's an essential part of agents becoming the person, growing into being the person, that can then grow a business to the level that they want it to.
Okay, sure. I mean, everyone has a different reason. I'm not going to sit here and say, "Golly shucks." You know, I, you know, at the end of the day, like we all have reasons for doing things. Some people want the visibility, some people want referrals. For me, I'm focusing on getting comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable, right? So the more uncomfortable you can be and start being okay with it, then you always learn. So for me, teaching and coaching has just, you know, there's that phrase, the teacher becomes the student. You actually get way more than you give. Even when I coach a client one on one who might be a newer agent and I'm talking to them about systems and models. I mean, who do you think is learning that? Like for me, it's very difficult to talk about how you should make your contacts and work your database and then I hang up and I don't do that? Then I would feel like a fraud. So for me, it's just another way to sharpen the pencil. I'm not the greatest public speaker. In fact, I do quite a few educational videos to my clients. And I used to really get nervous about, "Well, does my hair look okay?" and "I just flubbed this up," and I should retake it 10 times so that I sound like, you know, like an anchor woman or like the weather person" or whatever. And you know the more authentic, like when you actually screw up and you say, wait, I like lost my train of thought, let me rephrase and you're actually honest and open, people really connect with authentic people. And you don't realize, but right there you're building a relationship with them.
So, I love teaching because I learn more. Like I said, every time and I get great feedback and you just resonate... I think there's a lot of people that take advantage of our industry, right? We can kind of calculate everything too, "Well, if this gets me a deal, I'll do it," because a lot of people, they're looking for this easy button, but the truth is we shouldn't be. If I go see a speaker too, I'm like, "Oh, I should be doing that." And the truth is we should figure out what we're really good at and just amplify or do more of that as opposed to, "Oh I don't door knock. I should start doing that." Nothing against door knocking, it's not my thing. But for me going to a networking event three or four times a day doesn't feel like work. Now there might be the same people who go door knock that don't actually want to chit chat with people at a networking event. So it's about finding... there's so many different ways to slice it in this business. So, finding what fits for you and doing it. So that's been great for me because the speaking and the coaching have brought in my world as well as my connections and I learned so much from my peers as well.
I love it. It's really the focusing question from the ONE Thing which is the 80 20 rule applied over and over and over until you get down to "What really fuels my business and what fuels me?" And for you, you've found a part of that is the speaking and teaching and kind of giving and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I love that. Let's talk a little bit about, about learning. Obviously we're going to end this based on an invitation for people to create a growth plan. So that's a little preview of what's coming, which is an invitation for each of you to create your own growth plan. But Sarita to talk to us about how you've taken learning to an all new level. When I saw that you were applying and then admitted to MIT, I thought, wait a minute, you've got a massive real estate business, not leveraged by a huge team. You're still an active part of that and getting into and then keeping up with the workload at MIT. That's no small endeavor. Talk to us about why have you done this?
I'm going to also tell you I'm not the most popular person at home. My husband's like, "You're doing what?!" And I told him "If I get in, I'm going." And of course he said, "Well Honey, I love you but you're probably not going to get in. It is MIT." So then of course when it happened, we looked at each other like, "Oh shoot, here we go." But you know, I have a big birthday this year and maybe it's my mid-life crisis, but at the end of the day, I think it's Albert Einstein that said, "The day you stop learning is the day you start dying." And this is the most embarrassing part of this MIT thing. It's an executive MBA. I already have an MBA. I got one like 20 years ago. And there's another phrase, "No man goes through the same river because either the man has changed or the river has changed." Well guess what, school changed since my first MBA. I think we had phones in bags and we would like still fax things and email was just coming out or whatever. Things like AI and Big Data, you know, artificial intelligence and some of these things that we're talking about at school. Those things didn't exist. There are entire fields of business ideas and models that didn't exist. I'm not going to leave real estate, I'm not changing my career, but honestly, I was craving learning and MIT has this mission and it sounds really grand. In fact, I thought "I'm embarrassed to ever repeat it because it sounds really arrogant. And I'm paraphrasing, but it's "To train the leaders that will change the world." This is essentially what it said, which I just thought, well that's kind of a crock, like "Who do we think we are?"
But the truth is if you think really big, you do change the world. And you may not change the entire world, but you'll change your world. And then you become an ambassador when you come back and you talk to your networks and you're changing their world too. We're talking about big things like climate change and big global issues. And so for me you can probably hear I'm super passionate, right? I haven't complained once about the workload because I'm learning. I'm meeting great people. I just anded something pretty big in my real estate business and the reality is it was because I was thinking bigger. So it changed the way I look at things and I even approach it differently. And so I'm already seeing everything you do, if you do it well and you're really present, you can apply it to anything.
So to kind of segway to what you were just asking about a growth plan. Like my challenge to everyone here is you don't need to go to MIT to grow. I mean, I'm just insane and I kind of did it on a dare, but the truth is you need to think about growing all the time and make it a deliberate thing. And it can be very simple. It could be "Who do I admire business-wise, maybe picking three or five people and making sure you connect and have coffee or lunch with them. Nobody really turns you down. If you say, "Hey, I admire your business, can I spend 15 minutes chatting with you and learning from you?" People are flattered to do that. It could be you want to read more. Maybe it's a book or two a month. Literally on the first day of the month, writing down those 12 or 24 books, putting them in literally a table of 12 months, which book am I going to read which month? Putting down, "Hey, I go to my one or two conferences for my company. What are the company conferences outside of my company?" Maybe asking at those coffees, "What conferences do you go to?"
Now here's the deal guys. We can learn all the time. We still got to do, right?! You can actually physically probably go to 52 conferences, one a week and probably never actually be in your business because you're learning. It has to be the right balance. So you might say, "Look, I'm only going to do three conferences this this year." What are the three that are the most important? Why am I picking them? And, and be deliberate about that. And you know what, you can't go wrong. Even if you pick one from that, we're probably going to still meet amazing people and learn from something there. So I do that as a plan because otherwise a repair addendum emergency or something's going on with your kids and next thing you know it's April and now you've got to catch up on eight books, right? So just having it as a plan and being deliberate about it really does make it happen.
I love your point about being deliberate and part of my reason behind Think Bigger Real Estate is, I'm a passionate learner as well. I'm always taking some course, I'm always reading something and what I realized is that learning for learning's sake is good, but what is better or best would be to take that and then like you said, to reteach it. So I'm having a website developed in which I'm going to be taking the books that I'm reading and writing blog posts about how this applies to real estate agents. And I'll be putting that into Think Bigger Real Estate, in part to add to enhance the value that I can offer to real estate agents, but also to be sure that I'm not just reading to check it off my list, which I've been guilty of. "Okay. I did that book. What's the next?"
I said I'm going to read the book. I got to skip through this quickly. Yeah, exactly.
I've put it on like three times speed on Audible just to get through it. But now "How's it making me better and in turn, how can I impact other people?" So thank you for sharing that--deliberate.
Well and that website for you, that's the accountability, right? Like the fact that you're doing that now, you sort of said you're doing it, you're going to do it. Like for me, I tried to take a lesson for school and share it with my network, but by having to reteach it and apply it, it really forces me to like learn it and think about it and be prepared to answer questions. So it takes that accountability to the next level and you know, when you go to school for grades, you just sort of learn how to memorize things and you get the grades. I don't care what grades I get, like I'm not on an employee reimbursement plan where I have to get this GPA to get my money back or whatever. It's amazing to me, the minute you forget about those results and you're just there to learn, you learn so much more.
So good. The last point that I want to talk about here and really your growth plan that I have identified it as an outside observer and you've validated that yes, that has really helped me is your commitment to create. I know for the past year you've given so much of your time and effort to help create and be a part of the Keller Williams Labs in helping them create this technology that I saw firsthand. I've been concerned about what technology would do to the role of a real estate agent until I saw what you guys were creating, which was something that actually gave real estate agents the ability to harness artificial intelligence so that they could be more face to face. When I got that glimpse of what, in the right hands, AI can do it blew me away and gave me great hope for the future of great professional real estate agents. Talk to us a little bit about how being a part of the Labs and creating something, very intentionally has helped you grow, and in turn your business grow.
No, of course. Thank you so much for asking that. So for me, um, my background was real estate, sorry, tech before real estate, 15 years of tech before real estate. So to see this disruption of tech and real estate sort of collide and figure out there's this tech enabled agent and then the agent enabled tech and there's a bunch of people that think you can just press a button and the house will sell by itself and people aren't going to be involved. So I loved that it was sort of coming together and it was sort of blending my world, my old world with my new world. And then having Gary invite us to actually build them from scratch. This is built by agents. It gave me a chance to honestly erase my white board, if you will, and build a system and give feedback for a system that works the way we think as opposed to, "Oh, this is a system. I need a field for the address label for my holiday cards. So let me make up a field." We were basically engineering our systems, working our business processes to fit a system instead of the other way around. And when you have a lot of agents, this isn't even a Keller Williams commercial in any way, you have insights because we have those intuitively, we know how much earnest money to put it or what it takes to win an offer. But if you were to collect, ask 10 people or 15 people or 100,000 people and share those insights, it just makes us all smarter. So it's something, I mean, my production took a hit. I spent a ton of time in Austin and I would do it again in a heartbeat. And what we're building is Gary will say "It's not perfect. It's a work in progress. That's right. It's a lab." But you can probably hear it in my voice, I am so passionate about this industry again. I found my spark between going back to school and then learning and applying from in the tech space. I just sort of found my thing again. It's been really, really exciting. So, anyone out there who has an opportunity to build something or shape something and if you find that it gets you jazzed and you literally can't sleep at night because you're so excited, do it, right?! Don't worry about the consequences. Do it because you end up being personally you develop, professionally, it helps you. So tech actually makes you do what you're supposed to do, right?! Be in front of your clients! So for me, the more tech we use means the more we get to touch our clients in terms of relationship building, which is what tech is all about, enabling that. So nothing will replace the relationship, but it's been really an honor to be part of. Okay.
I hope that everyone listening today looks at Sarita's business and looks at her life and everything that she's done and created and says to themselves, "I can think bigger. I can do more." I can absolutely do more because of her example. And I would encourage everybody out there to create a growth plan, to actually create something that helps you grow into the person that you need to grow into. So I want to thank Sarita. And it looks like we have had a little bit of a technical difficulty here, so I just want to thank Sarita for being a part of this episode. I'm so grateful for her and the example that she sets for everybody in this industry. And again, my passion is to help real estate agents to become the people so that they can have the business and the impact that they want. So again, I want to thank everyone for being a part of this episode, and I look forward to connect with you on next one.
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.