How to Stay Relevant as a Real Estate Agent in 2023
Are you struggling as a real estate agent in 2023? The number of real estate transactions in the US has been dwindling and is weeding agents out of the real estate market. In order to stay in the market, follow the suggestions that Nazar Kalayji shares and create good habits in your life. By creating those routine habits you can achieve amazing things within your business and provide the best experiences for your clients.
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Nazar Kalayji 0:07
Alright, so here’s some things that we’re gonna be talking about today, there are things that we absolutely have control over. And then there are some things in business, or lots of things, that business that we have no control over at all. Right! And so today we’re gonna be talking and focusing on the things that we have control over, obviously. Now, before I begin, I wanted to share some stats with you guys. Okay, this is the whole US stats of transactions that have happened. So in 2021, right, right, when the thick of the pandemic when the world seemed like it came to a screeching halt, and then, and then afterwards, like, it just started going crazy. There are 6.1 million transactions that took place in the US. In 2022, that number went down to 5 million. Who remembers last year, it was it was a fun time, wasn’t it? We had a lot of uncertainty rates started shooting up like crazy. And of course, because of that the demand for buyers or for homes reduced significantly. In 2023, they’re anticipating that the number of transactions, the volume of transactions that take place actually goes down to 4 million transactions. Now, the cool thing is, is that in 2021, there was 1.6 million agents nationwide, these are rough estimates, right? Give or take one or 1020 23, that number went down to 1.2 million agents. So if you were to add those numbers, or divide those numbers, you’d say that the average agent had the capacity or did four transactions, or there’s four transactions per agent that was licensed in the US in 2021. And in 2023, that number is now down to three, which is a 25% decrease in volume. Right? Now, obviously, we all know that that’s not the case that, you know, your overall volume isn’t going to be the same just because you’ve got the 8020 rule that applies, right, you guys all know what the 8020 rule is, right? You have 80% of the people do 20% of the work. And you’ve got 20% of the people that do 80% of the work. And so that being said, if you were to look at the two numbers of the volume down, we’ve had a reduction in volume by 34.4%, in the from from 2021, to now 34.4%. So I want to ask this question to you. If you had your income be reduced by 34% this year, would that be okay with you?
Nazar Kalayji 2:45
If you had your income reduced by 34% as an agent, right? If you were making $100,000 before, and now you’re making 6600 or 66,000? Would that be okay? If you need to do the number of by by the month and that’s fine, you can do it. But the point I’m making is that that reduction in overall income is going to have a lot of impact on every single one of us as agents. So what do we need to do? Like, again, as I talked about, there are things that you can’t control, you can’t control what happens with interest rates, you cannot control what happens with the amount of transactions that happen, you can’t control buyer demand, right? That those are gonna be dictated by external forces. But you as an agent, what you can control are certain things and that’s what I’m gonna focus on today. And here’s a couple things. I wanted to start off by saying, You got control of your mindset. Now, what are you feeding your mindset? Right? Are you the person that watches the news? Morning, evening? Right, or listens to it? Or, you know, listens to podcasts that are about the news? And what’s going on world events? Or are you listening to uplifting and inspirational podcasts, right things that give you tactical approaches, give you business ideas, give you ideas in which you can increase your mindset to be able to be positive and have an abundance mindset. Where are you with that? Are you listening to just music? Right? I love music. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to all the time, what I’ve realized the difference between listening to music and listening to uplifting and podcasts and, and just, you know, strategy based information that I either consumed through YouTube or consumed through podcasts, that my mindset changes significantly, right? When I listen to music, and sometimes I’ll send like, even if it’s inspiration or classical music, it’s good. But it’s not. It’s not feeding my brain as much as I would if I was actually consuming content. So working on your mindset in this environment is huge because guess what? That number of 4 million transactions that they’re anticipating selling this year is very similar to how it was back in 2008.
Nazar Kalayji 4:58
Most of you guys have not been around in 2008, you guys weren’t selling real estate, you might have been born, right? You may have been an adult, some of you guys are young enough, you might have been in diapers or whatever. But for the most part, most people during that era, like, it was bad. If you’re an agent back then it was rough, it was absolutely rough. And so that’s what they anticipate happening this year. And a lot of agents in their mind when they’re going through that route, when they’re going through, like, oh my gosh, like, you know, transactions are not just naturally falling in my lap, like, I’m gonna have to actually do something about it. That was a huge shift in mindset. And a lot of people freaked out. And frankly, a lot of people left the industry, which they’ve already started to do. And so working on your mindset, you guys might seem trivial, or might seem like it’s not a big deal, but it absolutely is, it is absolutely critical that you work on your mindset.
Nazar Kalayji 5:51
Number two is your body. What are you feeding it? Right? Are you numbing the pain by drinking alcohol? And by doing drugs, whatever type of drugs that is to be able to relieve the stress and the anxiety that you feel? Are you eating overeating with food or eating a whole bunch of sugar to be able to numb the pain and the stress and the anxiety? Where are you eating healthy foods? And are you exercising? And is that a part of your regular daily routine? Now I’m speaking to all the guys, right looking right in the camera here, I want you to be able to have the highest probability and the best chance of success in 2023. And not just in business, but just overall life. And I promise you that these two things right here are critical to get a foundation set. So you could actually excel in this life or excel in business, and in your personal life. Okay, so if that’s not, if you are numbing the pain, I’m not saying if you have an occasional drink, I’m not talking about that. But if you’re every single day, get home, and you have to have your, your glass of wine or in the morning, or whatever it is, if that’s how you cope with your stress and anxiety. Like I promise you that that you think that you’re doing something good, but it’s actually impacting your life more than you can possibly know. Because that by doing that by numbing yourself, either through food or alcohol or drugs, those things make you have no desire for growth, right? You just kind of you just become numb and lethargic. And you don’t have any desire to do anything. Right? You’re just kind of just there.
Nazar Kalayji 7:28
The third thing that I want to things that we can focus on is our knowledge. Right? What info are we studying? Okay, are we studying music lyrics? are we studying music or movie quotes? And we know do we have that knowledge in their head? Sports games and stats like is that what’s the occupies your mind? Are you looking at market trends conditions? Are you looking at inventory both online and in person? Are you looking at the interest rates and seeing the trend of what’s happening? You guys realize that last month when rates went from like seven to 6% that there’s a surge of buyers that came out? Do you guys remember that? You guys experienced any of that? Yeah, like it happened. And guess what happened though, rates back are back up to seven. Right? Like you can’t control that. But what you can control is your mindset in control your body in control what information you put into it. Because guess what happens when you feed your mind and you educate yourself with information then you become that expert knowledge that people are looking for you guys in this world and age that we live in where there is so much information on Google right and with even like chat GDP now and all these other AI stuff that’s coming out like people have information at their disposal at their fingertips so quickly. But here’s what also happens with that information of you have all that info but it’s but you need someone to be able to explain it to you need someone to be able to articulate it to you right every single one of us we had a medical condition or we had you know an issue where we’re being sued or we need an attorney guess what we can look online that all the informations there, right all the medical journals are there for our availability right to be able to view and read but we still want that person to say hey, help me make sense of this data. How do we make sense of all this? How do I use these laws that are available here to be able to protect me or help me accomplish my goal and so even though most agents have scammed themselves or even think in their mind that all they’ve become are just door openers that that’s only valid that represented that they’ve got the super on their phone so they can check or an open the lockbox and let people in. If that’s the only value you think you bring in, that’s the only value they think you have. Guess what’s gonna happen your commission or guess what’s gonna happen to you? Right You’re gonna become non existent.
Nazar Kalayji 9:57
But if you control that, that narrative, you control that data that’s there and you say, I’m going to read this data, I’m going to watch these things. I’m going to educate myself, I’m going to look at the inventory, I’m actually physically see the houses that are available for sale, as I preview them. By doing those things every single day, what’s that going to do to us? It’s going to educate you. So that when someone comes to you as a seller, let’s see, you know, a seller walks into your open house or a buyer walks into your open house, you guys, please correct me if I’m wrong. But if a buyer walks into your open house, and they’re looking, you know, call it an $800,000, price range, or 400, whatever doesn’t matter, right? If they’re looking at a specific price range, do you think that they know, every single home that’s available in their price range? And in the area? Biggest thing? Do they know you raise your hand? Or if they don’t know, keep your hand down? Do they know? They absolutely effing literally know, they know what is available. They don’t need you to tell them that. But guess what, if they know what’s available, but you don’t, then you’re an idiot, you you’re not relevant to them, you have no value that you can offer them. Is that true? You guys, like if you know the inventory, and they come up to your open house, because that’s one of the houses that they’re looking at seen? And that homeless in the $800,000 range? And they say, oh, yeah, like, and then if you say, oh, cool, like, have you seen the house on? You know, yada yada St. There? Yeah, actually, we’ve either been to it, or we are planning on seeing it? Or yeah, we’re actually curious about it. Right? They know. And so when you speak in an educated way, by saying, oh, yeah, do you know about that home? And then you go further, and you say, I’ve actually been inside that house. And that home actually is better, worse or equal to this house here? Oh, and is this really cool feature about this house, and then you tell about the home and they haven’t seen it yet. And you’ve got that knowledge and you provide that to them? You guys, that’s when you create value for those agents or for those buyers. Same thing with sellers, right? sellers know, if they’re getting a look, lube, neighbors coming to your open house, they are investigating that home, and they’re also investigating you as an agent. And so if they’re investigating you as an agent, they want to know how knowledgeable you are. How well do you represent that home? Right? How well do you represent yourself and compose yourself? How much knowledge do you have? Are you the right fit? Do they even like you, right? So that they’re kind of filling you out? And if they come up to you? I’m like, oh, yeah, well, my neighbor just sold their house, you know, six months ago for whatever price? And you don’t know, because you haven’t done the research, because it literally will take you five minutes before you do the open house to get that info. But you didn’t do it? And they’re like, Oh, yeah. And that’s all you can say. They automatically shut down. I don’t know if because you’ve seen us before or not. But when people realize that you have no value to them, they just shut you down, they dismiss you, they might be pleasant to you. Right, especially from if you’re in an area where people are nicer. Generally, California is not the case. But other parts of the country, people are nicer. They’ll be nice to your face. But then after that, you’re never gonna be able to have contact with them. Because they’ll be like, oh, yeah, that that. That’s so and so doesn’t those early Squad, and I’m not gonna waste my time. It’s just like that example of getting you guys in the past where, by walking to the grocery store, if I go to Home Depot, and I’m like, I don’t have time to search the 40,000 square foot warehouse space for something, I’m just looking for one part or one thing that I go to a person I say, Hey, I’m looking for this one thing. And if they have that stare on their face, like, I don’t know, then I automatically dismiss them like, Okay, you’re wasting my time I rather you know, you I’m gonna find someone else that knows where I’m just gonna walk down the aisles and find it myself. Right. And so to be able to not have that dismissal happen, you need to have that knowledge, you need to educate yourself. I’m not saying don’t go watch movies. I’m not saying that don’t waste your time and have fun with whatever, listen to music, or that’s great, right? You know, but our capacity in our brain is so much more that if you’re not at least giving yourself that knowledge and that wisdom to know exactly what’s happening in your marketplace. And you guys with the tools that we have it, it’s so easy, isn’t it? It’s all there for us. Like it’s so simple.
Nazar Kalayji 14:27
Every single morning, you wake up and you pull up the hot sheet of every single one that hit the market in that neighborhood or in that community or the city or whatever it is, then set yourself a time to go see it. Right. What I love about the rubber mat group is that every single Friday, they wake up and they have broker preview and they go preview all these really nice homes, right? That’s their marketplace. And what does that do for them? Yes, it allows them to network, but it allows them to get to know the inventory. And then so when they have a client that says oh yeah, I’m looking for home for you know, 7.8 million. They’re like, Oh, yeah, actually, there’s this house. I saw last week, that would be an amazing fit for you based on what you’ve what you’ve told me, let’s go take a look at it again. And he can speak educated Lee because of that, because he’s seen the property. He’s, he’s given himself knowledge. And he also knows when he shows a home, right? If you’re going to show a property, are you getting all the sold data in that neighborhood? Anyway? So one is I’ll do that after if they liked the house or not. It’s not for that reason. It’s that when you know that information, which would literally take you very short amount, amount of time, and then then you go show him that house and you say, oh, yeah, well home like this down the street. So for this, right, and let’s, you know, obviously the the vows would come down a little bit. So if you say that on down the street. So for $900,000, which is exactly the same floor plan as this, and this one was nicer, and it’s listed for 875. You guys want to tell him that, like, it draws that buyer to you even more, it makes them loyal to you. Because they know that you have information that they may be able to find online, but you have Johnny on the spot, you know, same thing with schools, right? They do know what schools that home belongs to. Now, they might be able to know, right, but you can say, hey, you know, this particular house belongs to, you know, Clara Barton Elementary School, which is a not a year round school, and you can rattle off all this information about that particular elementary school, because you know that because you see, they’ve got a 10 year old there, that most likely will be going there. And you can have that conversation with them. Knowledge is power, and I invite every single one of you to gain more knowledge. I know you guys don’t do it enough. I know it’s not something that is a normal part of your routine, I invite it to be a normal part of your routine, just the same as you wake up in the morning and you have your cup of coffee, or you have your cereal or whatever you eat. And just like how most times most people don’t miss a meal, right? Like gain that hunger for knowledge. And I promise you that as you continue to feed your your, your mind with knowledge of data and stats and and information that will serve you immensely Well, okay. Okay.
Nazar Kalayji 17:18
Ok number 4, 10 new contacts a day. Like, this is so basic and fundamental. But it is also something that is extremely hard to do, and people don’t do it. If you can talk to 10 new people every single day about real estate, then independent of market conditions, independent of the demand that’s out there, you will naturally accomplish your goal that you have, you’ll just naturally accomplish a goal that you have. And I invite you to take that challenge on that challenge on that I’m giving you right now. Like do do it for one week. Get yourself make yourself make those 10 context, talk to fresh turning people on to other people that you’ve known in the past. And if it is something you want in the past, but as long as you haven’t talked for three months, it counts it out, allow that. But talk to 10 people, right. And even if you work five days a week, that’s 50 new people that you get to talk to every single week, and ideally, in some way, or ship one way or another either get those people already in your database, or get them in your database if they have any desire to make a move, or just want to know, and you guys, most people love talking about real estate, don’t they? Right? It’s an easy conversation to have. And so when you talk to them find out if they’re a buyer seller or an investor. And if they are, they might not be this moment, right, but some owns a home, they’re eventually going to be a seller, inevitably, at some point, right, there’s going to be some life event that happens that is going to cause them to want to make a move. And so get them and put them on homebody, put them on whatever system that you have, that allows you to be able to send monthly updates with their house values. And if they’re a buyer, and they’re not looking to buy for another three years, that’s fine. But set them up on a search so that on a daily basis, or at least a minimum weekly, they’re getting listings from you. And then they are part of your CRM system and that you can to follow up with them once a quarter or whatever it is and see if they’re changed or the timeframes has changed in their lives or not. Their investors, same thing, send those listings of investment opportunities that come along, if they’re a particular investor, and set yourself a reminder to be able to check on a weekly basis. So you’re not sitting I’m just crap when you’re looking through some of the listings, right, because you already are previewing property, and if anything falls in line with what they’re looking for as an investment semitone. Right, it’s that easy, but make those 10 contacts a day. And if you do that in the morning, then I don’t care if you do nothing else for the rest of day if you’re not productive. by just doing those 10 contacts every single day you’ll naturally have appointments with buyers and sellers and investors that you won’t be able to, you’ll have so much business you won’t know what to do with it and you’ll need help to be able to manage them. Promising take me up on it. Number five roleplay practice. Regardless of time, I’m going to show you this really cool video. Hopefully see if I can have stop sharing all that up. This Okay, I’m gonna share this video. This has nothing to do with our industry. Okay, this is this is lady that that plays the piano. But she talks about practice, and roleplay is virtually the same thing. And I want you guys to listen to it. Okay, here we go. I’ll see you guys have audio on. And hopefully this audio works.
YouTube Video 20:42
I decided that I wanted to do ordinary thing in my life? Good practice. I did a little bit of estimating. And in my lifetime, I’ve spent 6440 hours approximately on the bench practicing. Now we’ve all been told at some point in our life. Practice makes perfect. Well, I am here tonight to burst the bubble. That’s not true. Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. And tonight I want to share with you my three step process to perfect practice. Now as a quick disclaimer, I know that perfect is kind of an intimidating word. I like to think of the rushing figure skater, your guinea Plushenko, who after he withdrew from the Winter Olympic, said in an interview in broken English, I’m not a robot. I’m not suggesting that we should try to become perfect robot, just that we should strive for the highest level of excellence and each can possibly achieve. That just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely as perfect practice makes perfect. So the first step in this process is consistency. I had a lesson, a piano lesson during my freshman year, it was really discouraging for me, I felt like I was making a lot of mistakes. And I was just not really getting to where I needed to be. And I sat down with my teacher and I’m so discouraged. I feel like I’m doing so badly. And he said you just need to increase your sitting power, power. And he basically said, sitting power is you’re on the right track, you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not doing them enough. We develop sitting power, we develop the patience and the perseverance to sit down and work at something. Now it’s another aside, I recognize that most of this audience is not going to go home tomorrow and practicing musical instrument I know I’m in the minority. However, this applies to anything that we do on our lives that’s commonplace or ordinary. And when we rethink the way we do ordinary things like me practicing, our results become extraordinary. So fitting power, I did a little bit more calculation. In the past year, I spent 828 hours at the piano practicing the bare minimum practice requirements for music performance major BYU Idaho, it’s three hours a day, six days a week. Now, admittedly, I am a millennial. And we like our information shorts into the points. We are notorious for our lack of investments, and our penchant for getting bored easily, and not investing in things. However, excellence was never achieved within the length of a tweet. And this is why I think sitting power is so important. When we are able to do things we don’t feel like doing, sit down and put in the work and put in the time. That’s when we’re able to get more work done. So the next thing is evaluation. Sitting power by itself is not enough. I could sit at the piano for eight hours a day. And if I was practicing a steak, it would actually be doing more harm than it does good point teacher I refer to him affectionately as a crazed perfectionist at his most picky, I won’t spend an entire lesson on the same three chords, I would play them for you. But I don’t want to step down step back up into this whole precarious stuff here. I will never forget those three chords. It was a it was a hard lesson. But this is where perfection and striving for perfection in my practice really comes into play in this evaluation step. I could sit down every day. And if I played from end to end, my piece, inevitably made a few mistakes and patted myself on the back person and getting 80% of it right and then did it over and over and over again until I met my allotted three hours a day that’s required me to get course credit, that would never really benefit me at all. Instead, you have to split your activities up. So there is stuff that I know is good stuff that I can do. And I put that in the I don’t need to practice this as much but then there’s also stuff that’s not so good. And in this step of evaluation I asked myself two questions. The first is, was that perfect? Now there’s that word again. But essentially, was that right? Or the correct? Because I played with the composer intended this can apply to any of us, you know, did I get the answer right on this test? Could I do this task, but I was given correctly? If the answer is yes, the next question you asked yourself was, was that easy? Did I get lucky? Because I white knuckling it around the corners? Or did I actually do it? Well, and it was natural for me easy. Now, if the answer to both those questions, yes, you can take that thing that you’re doing and put it in the I don’t need to work on so Hardbox. However, if the answer is no, that we’ve done, which it often is, that leads us to the last step of the process, which is repetition. Now, when I was young, my teacher would give me what she called Gil spot, she would go to the music. And she would pick a measure or a small section that she knew was tricky or challenging. And she would put a little smiley face star sticker on it, and then send me home to do repetition. Her required number, my age. So five repetitions was not a problem. Well, repetitions, I can handle 16 repetitions, you know, whatever. That’s it’s not that many, I got to the point in my life where 21 repetitions doesn’t have it anymore. And so I developed a system that makes me kind of accountable for my repetition. And this is just a scan that I took of one of my pieces. And you can see these numbers on the side, I basically divided every single piece of music that I play into, you know, 50 or 60 skill spot, it’s just that I used the whole piece. Now, instead of just a little small part of it like my teacher used to, then once I’ve done this, I know it was a little bit small, but I make a spreadsheet. And across the top, you have the date and across the bottom this section, and I go through and the number of repetitions that I do, I keep track of it. So if I was playing something 50 times a day, incorrectly, I’d be enforcing a bad habit. However, when I play something multiple times a week, or 35 or 50 times a day, I’m putting it right, I’m building in my personal case, a tactile foundation. I’m training my mess, muscle memory, how it feels to do something, right. So when I get in a situation where I’m nervous, or when I’m playing faster, or if I have a memory slip, I can fall back on this tactile foundation that I’ve built. And I know how to do something right. Now let’s apply this to an athlete, someone who skis does not think about every little anatomical shift that they have to make in order to execute a turn is to it because it’s natural. So essentially, whatever it is that you’re doing every day free thinking, get in touch with your inner crazy perfectionist, like my teacher, increase your spending power, work a little bit harder, and train your instincts to do something excellent. Just remember that everything that you do, practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.
Nazar Kalayji 28:07
All right. You guys, I hope that you got a chance to be able to really understand how this applies to us. Obviously, it’s a completely different thing, right? She’s she’s an instrument or a piano player. But what are some takeaways that you got from that? What are some things you’re like, oh, shoot, that actually would be amazing. And how, how much do we fall short and doing that like actually looking at our business with a magnifying glass and saying, What am I doing right? What is it? What is it that comes super easy, and you don’t have to practice? And then how can we put that in a bucket? And then say, well, what are some things that I am not good at? You guys all know are some of you guys that know me? Well know that I play pickleball I love it. It’s it’s a passion of mine. And what I would see people do is that those that could not get a third Trump or third shot drop, which is basically your third shot that you’re doing, you want to make sure that you drop it in the kitchen. Again, forget about the semantics of what I’m saying. The point I’m making is that those people that play that sport, they’re not good at because they haven’t practiced enough to get that shot in, what they’ll do is they would drive the ball hard. And so doing a softly and what that will do is it would make the opponent on the other side be able to get it and put it back on their side and they’d lose the point. And so I would see these people that wouldn’t do that. And I’d say why do you why do you drive the ball on the third on the third shot, you should be dropping it in. And like I’m just I’m not good at that. And so they would overcompensate because they knew they weren’t good at certain things by doing other things that were not productive, that weren’t effective. That didn’t give them what they wanted. How do we do that in business? How often are we overcompensating in certain aspect of it by doing something else that’s really not effective? Case in point how much time Do we spend on servicing the transaction servicing the deal? Instead of actually going and producing more transactions for ourselves? You guys, most of you live in an area where if you sold 20 homes, you’d be a rockstar, right? Some areas, you need to sell 40 or 50 homes to like, be good. But most of you guys can do a handful of transactions and, and you know, live very comfortably. Right? But imagine if you did more, right? I mean, if you’re doing five or six deals, if the average is four, seven deals per person, I mean, think about it, like, what are you doing with it for the rest of the rest of your time? And if you can hold that energy and say, Okay, well, I know, I’m really good at this. And I want to spend my attention and doing this, that but I’m not good at and make it better. How much more skill set would you have? How much more productive would you be as an agent? And ultimately, what would that mean for your bank account that makes sense?
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