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Welcome to It's a Good Life, where it's all about helping entrepreneurs think, feel, and do better. Today we have a special treat for you, Brian, live on stage from a recent event. Let's listen in. The most important thing in your business life is to understand and focus your energies on your sweet spot. What's your sweet spot? We've done the heritage profile, rename the Real Strengths, all that stuff. Because from day one, we weren't just going to coach people. We wanted to know how they were wired up. We wanted to know people's gifts and abilities. The next piece is that's not enough. That's not enough. We just want you to become aware of them is the key. So what happens is your truest abilities are so natural to you, you don't even know you're doing them. Does that make sense? How many of you have had that awareness brought up to you between coaching and the Real Strengths process? Great. The next thing is you do certain things and you have experiences. Usually when you do it either the first time or a new way, and you have that, it's like, huh. My wife saw me speak before we were married at a friend's wedding. And I was literally, I was speaking at this wedding because no one else would speak. And I kind of knew them, but I didn't know them great. And they're like, well, he's Irish. He'll talk. And I did this little thing and of course had the meeting out of my hand and I didn't want to verbalize that. And my wife, 37 years later, will always go back to Jimmy's wedding. I might speak in front of 35,000 people in a stadium. She goes, I saw that 37 years ago, Jimmy's wedding. She saw it. I kind of felt it. But you have all the crap in your head and your self image and all this stuff, and sometimes we tune that out. Does that make sense? Sometimes we want someone else's song, we want someone else's gift. The amount of people who want to come to me, I want to do what you do. Really? You want to do this? Like, have you noticed that none of my kids want to do this? Because it's not a. It's not their calling, it's not their gift. And also they've seen the price that was paid. All my kids have seen the price that was paid. And like, I ain't doing that. Does that make sense? Like, no, I've seen that. We appreciate it, but I ain't doing that good for them. When we get busy and busier we stop doing the very thing that we're best at. The first time I became consciously aware of this was 1986. And the reason that day is etched in my brain is when Jack Nicklaus won the Masters. I'm a guy who's maybe cry. I don't cry very often, but I cried in 1986 when Jack Nicklaus won the Masters. He was my idol, he was my hero. I loved how he loved his wife and still does. I loved how he took care of his five kids. He was a great man and he was a great champion and he wins this unbelievable tournament and when he's way past his prime and so on and so forth. And the week before the Masters he said something and it shook me to the makor as a kid when he was being interviewed and he said, well, you know, I mean, I'm going to give it a try. I just don't get to play much golf anymore. And I'm thinking how in the world does Jack Nicklaus not get to play golf? One of five kids? Because he had his priorities and this and that and the other and whatever else. But it was the business of Jack Nicklaus and the busyness of Jack Nicklaus that kept him away from the very thing. By the way, decades later, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I know the gifts of God's given me. I know what I've worked on and I know right when that's there. Now as you become more mature and get older, you're called to different things and you have different responsibilities. But it's very easy to get fully away from the very thing that is the sweet spot that God has given you this gift for. Is this making sense? And you might be running a big old team, but you were the greatest in the world. Sitting down with a scared first time buyer and it may even be good coaching. That said, hey, we need to raise your average sales price. You can't be spending any time with the first time buyers anymore. You can't be talking to sign calls. We've got to give those out to the team. And yet somewhere, and I'm just giving you examples, somewhere inside of that we stop doing that which was in our sweetest, sweetest part of our gifting. And then what happens is the joy becomes the job and then it becomes all about these other things. Now one of the greatest things about success is you get a chance to go and re engineer your business and life which may reduce your income, it may bring in less money to go live closer and Closer to the sweet spot every day it may. Now, the market tends to really reward sweet spots, so there's a balancing act. But you have to be prepared that this might cost me money, this may lose me enterprise, this may stop me going this way so that I can be deeper inside this sweet spot all the time. If that makes sense, say aye. Great quote. I want you to take a photograph of it. You're going to have your phones ready on a few of these things I got for you. The magic happens when you find the sweet spot. Here it is where your genuine interests, skills and opportunities intersect. So what's the sweet spot? Where does it get genuine interests? Right. Is genuine like an authentic type word? Okay. Not perceived, not what they should be, not what somebody else says they should be. What. What genuinely interests you? Now, here's the thing. Our sweet spot is who we are, but we also have different seasons in life. This used to fire me up, and this doesn't fire me up anymore. It's okay to admit that. It's okay to say, man, I used to dig this. And now the season I'm in, I'm not sure if I dig that anymore. That's a great authentic conversation to have in business. It's okay. I've had brokers who are hugely successful brokers, sell the brokerage and go back to selling, made half of what they were making and are over the moon every single day. So you have your genuine interest. The next thing is skills. Oh, I want to be a speaker. You suck. I know you want to do that, but what does the market say? What are your skills now? Skills can be improved and increased and all that kind of good stuff, but you either got it or you don't. So you have interest, you have. And then you have skills. Now you have good skills and talent, and you work on them. You can be great, Everybody with me. And then what's the last piece? The opportunity. This is what a sweet spot looks like when these three things collide. Understand this. It will move, it will change. Life gets busy and noisy. It's harder to hear this. It becomes obligations. Harder to hear this. Habits and routines, harder to hear this. We're going to focus on our sweet spot here. So we have a process for this, right? With the real strengths. Right? So these are just a few of mine. How many of you know your core strengths? Let me see your hands. Great. And I keep coming back to it all the time. It's very valuable. It's a great tool. And this, these right here are the dominant attributes. Okay? And so I'll give you an example of where my sweet spot is, is when my detective is directed to what people's needs are. That's a sweet spot in my profile, by the way, my profile has an unsweet spot because I can get lost in being the detective. Does that make sense? I can get caught up in the unsolvable murder and chase and chase and chase. So, for example, you want to be an entrepreneur. Find a need, fill a need. It's the most basic thing to be successful in business. Find a need, fill a need. So when I'm focused on your needs and how many of you have ever come away from an event and go, man, that's just what I. And they think it's some kind of wizard of Oz trick. What I do is I listen. Tony Love, the great coach, travels with me everywhere I go. Tony knows we're in the airport, first thing he's going to hear from me. How are your folks doing, folks you're coaching. What's up? What are you hearing? What you seeing? Wherever I go, whenever I talk to coaches, whenever I talk to people, whenever I talk to clients, when I see the notes, when I see the emails, I want to find out, and I'll dig in. And the detective goes to work, what are the needs? I go listen, I think, and then apply. Whoa. That's just what I needed. He heard me. They heard me. Powerful stuff. Would you guys agree? So that's when the gift is in the sweet spot. Olympian. All right, how do we compete? How do we beat it? Market sucks, let's get after it. Rates are up, let's go. Taking on challenges. Love to take on a challenge. Love to compete. I can live and die. I don't have to. Anna's a conqueror, so she has to win. You either win a gold medal or you're a first loser. Okay? For me, I just got to compete and I want to beat it. And as long as I put my best foot forward, I can live with a defeat as long as I know best foot's forward. What drives me bat nuts, ape crazy is when I or my organization is not doing its best. Not perfect. Just know we're not doing our best. Where does the Olympian get in trouble? When things are going good, I'm looking for something to beat. So I have to find different challenges. So what I often have to do is switch to a different circle. Does that make sense? Sometimes it's going good in the business, going good in the finance. Okay, great. Time for the health stuff, you know, whatever else so some of you have this and it's like, hey, things are going great. Some throw the spanner in the works, See all the pretty sparks fly. So again, sweet spot. All the gifts have it, right? Pioneer, new and create. Let's go boldly where no one's gone before, right? Bufco, working by referral was totally contrarian. When I first came out coaching 30 years ago, when we were talking about coaching, people were like, what is this coach thing you speak of? Remember 30 years ago, no one had a coach. It was considered bizarre. It was considered. Something had to be wrong with you to have a coach. It was like twisted therapy for Realtors, which it can be. So new and create. Okay, what's the downside of the pioneer? Well, just because you start something and you're excited at the start, you also got to finish. Does that make sense? Got to maintain, got to finish. Showman. The showman is really the impact. Wanna bang? Okay, let's go. That's why the impact guy shows up on stage. Or how do we impact, right? So impact is make it important. Refiner. That's where the coach comes in. Now this is my most aggressive attribute. I mean, I'm still working on this one. John Deloney walks off the stage yesterday. He says, what could I have done better? I've learned bit through my hand to not tell him. I said, I'll tell you after. Here's what you did great. Here's what I really got from us, okay? Had to learn. My wife, she never says it, but I know she thinks it. Refine off. No, she's shaking her head. I don't even think it. I know you don't, but I would think it if I were you. I'm a house painter. I walk into the house, I just can't help it. I walk into somebody's house. We're a guest in somebody's house. Oh, this beautiful mansion, yada yada. And I'm walking down the stairs and I can feel that it hasn't been sanded underneath. I go in to take a leak. I see the caulkins missing on the tiles. Notice all your hats are tight. Kind of perfect people having stress for hours over that stuff. So it's a gift. When not managed and maintained, it's a problem. Right? And so all of these things together represent my sweet spot. And they also represent my Achilles. So then I think of and I remind myself of sweet spots. And that's why for many, many decades, just doing this here was the sweet spot, right? 2,500 seminars during a period of time is a lot of travel, a lot of this, a lot of that and a lot of the other, right? And so a company our size should never own a jet. The reason we own a jet is because I had a wife and kids and I wasn't going to do one if I couldn't if the other. Right? Because it's this business. A trail of tears. So this is my sweet spot. I always remember flying in, impacting people, entertaining people. Remember that Mastermind brought the DeLorean in. The clutch almost slipped. I almost killed the front row meeting with people. What I've been looking forward to most here, here's a lady in our coaching program that couldn't have a baby and all the money she saved and whatever else went to all the treatments to help her conceive and have a miracle baby. And that was getting to see him at Mastermind, getting a bunch of people to sign up. Hey, we, we authentically integris, communicated to people what their need was, what we had and how they could do it. Not some short term shaggy system to get people to buy what the hell you had from your warehouse. Like, because we knew where people are coming home. But trust me, like, hey, how'd we do? Because I'm not a. Standing ovations, guys. How many people did we just get on the journey to come and coaching? Because I know this, if we get them into coaching, the impact happens at the seminar. The refining happens with the coaching. Would you guys agree, yes or no? Our mission to impact and improve the lives of people. The improvement is the slower, more deliberate hard work. Your coaches deserve a hell of a lot of credit. It's a hard job. It's a hard job. It's a hard job to be that persistent and that patient, that caring, that good and that tough to love you guys enough to help you reach your goals. And that's how it works. And then there would be the community, the team player part of it again. For 19 years, I'd always take a couple people on the plane who'd never been on a private plane. We'd order the best, whatever the best. We were in Texas, we're having barbecue, we're in Maryland, we're having crab cakes, whatever it was. And then we'd get on the plane. I had a guy working for me named Polly Thibodeau. Paulie lived in a trailer, but on the jet he had Maker's Mark whiskey with his name on it. Only Paulie got to drink that bottle. And at 47,000ft, we'd hand the phone to the people who were on it for the first time and we kind of get nudged them on how to make the call. Hey, honey, I'm at 47,000ft eating filet mignon and I was thinking of you. Just we'd be all like good times. And I think on the hard work, a lot of travel, a lot of this and that, but I think about those sweet spots. I think about when I felt that tuning fork, when I think about receiving lines that went on for hours and hours and hearing story after story, just like today fills the tank, fills the spirit, fills the heart. What's the sweet spot? The business gets big, things go. Next thing you know, Noah Brian has seven armed guards and a 72 year old realtor comes up and gets tackled to the ground and tased didn't happen. I'm a speaker. It's an exaggeration for effect, but it didn't mean it couldn't have happened. Are you guys with me? Why? Because when there's 7,000 people in the room, they get goofy. They get goofy. They want me to be their husband or their father or their this and their that and things get goofy, right? So guess what though. You're building, you're growing. Now you get away from the very thing you do it for, the very thing that made you start it in the first place. You remember your first buyer. More importantly, you remember your first deal because you screwed up your first buyer. What's your sweet spot? I went first. Now it's all about you, this whole thing. So here it is, let's go. It's about the value you provide. Another Beverly ism. She's talked to so many people over the years and it always gets down to. And I always know when Beverly's in the room because there's a line of women crying and then the men are worse. And it's always about a person's value. Whenever she talks to them, she just reminds people of their value and it has such a grip on their hearts. So let's talk about in your business, what your value is. First of all, your expertise. You heard about Carla talking about it today, didn't you? Your expertise, by the way, expertise in wide supply today in real estate or low supply. For the love of Mary. Drowning in information, starving for wisdom, no practical experience. Only know how to operate in raging hot markets. Which is why when you call in, they go, oh, we got two other offers coming in. And they got no offers coming in because they don't know how to market and promote and Communicate to somebody without that. And now because they don't have the skill, a little piece of their integrity dies. Just like following up, people are putting deals together and the agents on the other side are disappearing and going in the witness protection program. Have you guys experienced this? You guys are experts now. The way you have to communicate that is talking in regards to the needs of your customers because it is hard to talk about yourself all the time. You want to ask them, hey, what's your still. What's your biggest fear of concern about the upcoming transaction? Tell me about an experience you had with a previous agent. They'll tell you. And they say, well, here's my approach. After you understand the needs, here's my approach. And it's. Here's my expertise. Next, your giftedness. Giftedness. We have a whole set of giftedness in this room, just in your small group. Tremendous gifts around the table that many people are even blind to because it's just natural to us. But those gifts, we need those gifts to come to the forefront and stop being in the back of the bus. Make sense. And then the client experience. The client experience. So many people. The world has become transactional. And that's why you're going to hear all the talk about. We're going to talk a little bit about AI today. You're going to hear about AI agents eliminating the business. Oh, AI in Spain sold 728 homes. You're going to hear about that. Elvis Presley said it this way, values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave them all over. Everything you do. That's the authentic piece. Your expertise, what you bring to the table, your giftedness and the client experience. From soup to nuts. Which makes people want to tell their friends, which is why what percentage of the business is still repeat and Referral? What percentage? 66%. Oh, what's new? And next. I've been hearing this for 40 years, how that's going to change. Always, I always hear that's going to happen. All I will tell you is the technology is going to speed it up, not slow it down. And it'll intensify the referrals, not weaken it. Because in a world we're living in today, we're in more need of somebody to trust, not less. You guys agree? Next, let's go to this. How about the joy you experience? How about the joy in the sweet spot? It's kind of fun, right? It's how we make God smile. Your kids, your grandkids, you see them doing something, something that's just Them. One of my grandkids is just like grandpa. His name is Caden. The difference is he's built like a truck. So from day one, I've called him first round. I make very little demands as a grandpa, but I demand that he and his dad and his mom watch the NFL draft every year. That's all I ask. I call him first round. We practice, putting on the hat, holding up the jersey. He's five, we've done this five years in a row and he's just wired for it. Cause he's bigger than all the kids in his school. So every time he's like Kaden, he goes to, when he goes to, even he's very loving, but he, when he goes to love on a kid, he just knocks him over. So it's always, Caden, don't do this, Caden, knock this. And recently Caden was allowed to play hockey. And his daddy goes, what do you love about a Caden? He goes, daddy, I knock people down and they cheer. First round draft choice, let me tell you right now. What's that joy? What's that joy your parents saw in you when you were a kid? They took joy in you. You made them smile. In our world today, we make God smile as his children when we use our gifts the way they're designed. I know that's a head shaker for some people who've had the religious stuff, but the relationship stuff says God smiles. You're his delight when you're doing what you are supposed to do. The gifts he put in you and using his way, that tuning fork goes all the way to heaven. So we're going to talk about first the non fiscal reward, of course. Show me the money. Great stuff. We should. When you're the best in a marketplace, especially in North America, you get paid very well for being really good at something. And for the single largest investment that people have, we should be compensated highly. But there's another payment. You guys know what I'm talking about, am I right? Putting the keys in the hands of a buyer who never thought they'd have it. Getting someone out of a really sticky situation with a marriage. And the thing, the anchor around their neck was the home. Getting these people to put their kids into the school that they know they're going to flourish in, helping people downsizing and also get the vacation home sent a referral through the network and someone in the sunny states took care of them the way you take care of them. There's a compensation that's way beyond money. Would you guys agree? Einstein was brilliant to me. Because of what he thought about more than astrophysics, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. How about this? How about we do the things that bring us the joy, that bring other people joy, that bring these rewards that are non financial and then we get the financial rewards as well. How about that? The reinforcement of your gifts. The reinforcement of your gifts. Yeah, that's it. That was you. You went in and did that deal. I've told the story many times. Turning point in my real estate career. Took my top 10 clients to lunch over the space of five weeks. And I asked them this question. We're chatting, we're spending time talking about them and their family and everything else. And I would say this, I just curious to know something. You've sent me referrals and I just want, you know, I appreciate it. So my whole thing works this way. When you refer me, what do you say? And over and over and over again, these people would bring up all these things and all these cool things that I had. But the number one thing they always said was, I always tell people, you negotiated me a great deal. You're a good negotiator. You took the stress out of negotiating for the house. It was not even on my radar. It was in nothing I communicated. It was not in my marketing. It was not anywhere because it was a gift to me. It was just. That's just what you do to sell a house. I'm representing the buyer. I'm going to do the very best I can. This is what they saw. Here's the thing. Other people, your community, your family, your coach may know your gifts better than you do. Check in, understand that value, and then instead, in the back of the bus, make it the front. So all I did was then negotiate you a great deal, Take the stress out of negotiating, became on the front of all of my marketing, all of my communication. And then it reinforced even more with the next referral and the next referral. And by the way, my referral business expanded appreciably because it turns out people were nervous about negotiating. People didn't like the idea of paying too much. People don't want to get. There's people who want to get the lowest deal in the history of mankind. They weren't my client. You, you guys know those clients, right? Because it's an ego thing. But people know they don't want to pay too much for a house. They want to pay what's fair. That's true. And having a good negotiator was just a great stress relief for them. David Viscott says it this way. The purpose of your life is to discover your gift. The work of your life is to develop it. And the meaning of life is to give your gift. Sam.