If you are really enthusiastic about what you do, whether you’re a waiter, a teacher, or anything else, people are going to notice and you’re going to rise.
Reign Streiter, Give Back Real Estate
Reign: Even if you can’t be an entrepreneur right now, you can learn something every day to move yourself toward becoming that in the future. The sum of all the experiences you have already had in your life will contribute to your entrepreneurial journey whenever you decide to start it.
It may sound like an old cliche, but we don’t know what we don’t know. And no matter how old you are, when you’re opening yourself up to learn something new, you’re in the right place.
Chad: Was your desire to be the biggest, best, most recognisable real estate agent in Athens like you are right now? What gave you the confidence and ability to make such a big influence right from the start?
Reign: I looked at a sampling of the other agents in the area and I realized that most of them sat around waiting for business to come to them. That’s real estate. You don’t have to put any serious money into overhead and advertising real estate like you would for most other new businesses. And I kept hearing the little that agents were doing to advertise their companies, so I decided to try to market myself as if I was a business.
Part of what business involves is the idea that if people think you’re doing well, they’ll want to associate with you. Then they become your clients. As an entrepreneur, you have to give people confidence in you that you’re a horse they should back. It’s difficult to start with 100% performance, so marketing increases their confidence in you.
It’s good to research, but at some point you just have to go for it. You can’t think about it too much because then the idea or the problem or the deal is gone. You just have to make some decisions and go for it.
It’s to your benefit to preserve your relationships with people, even relationships you don’t see as having any advantage. Your long-term relationships will serve you so much more than the desire to squeeze someone for more profit in the short term.
Josh: Talk to us about your organization, Give Back.
Reign: In real estate, you can make a lot of money. But then when you’re “helping someone,” you’re really just helping them get a better deal. It’s not that fulfilling. So I craved and missed the true ability to help people on the daily, like I had when I had been a teacher.
Give Back’s premise is that every agent that works at Give Back agrees to donate 10% of every commission they get to a local Athens Area nonprofit. We have twenty nonprofits that we support, and the client gets to choose which of the twenty gets their money. And then the agent is required to take the money to the organization for the give back. And it’s really powerful in that moment to see the people you’re helping.
This can be difficult to sell to new agents, because giving up 10% of every commission is a significant chunk. We realize that if we want to bring someone in to work with us, we have to know our value proposition.
What value do you give to people in exchange for the sacrifices they make?
You have a story to tell, and the story doesn’t always have to be about you.
“Story Brand” by Donald Miller talks about how people don’t want you to be the hero, they want to be the hero of the story.
Josh: Now that you mention that book, what’s one book, one podcast, and one piece of advice you’d give to every entrepreneur?
I’d recommend anything by Jesse Itzler – his books are humorous but also motivating. The books I read are typically about being your “best you” and enjoying it in the process. Jesse writes about the motivation of what makes him tick every day and getting up and getting after it.
And to go off of that, here’s my piece of advice: If everyone tells you that you should invest in real estate or flip houses but you don’t really like doing those things, you’re going to be miserable.
If you believe in and enjoy what you’re doing, it’s an easy sell.
For podcasts, I listen to a lot of Grant Cardone. I’d say that would be what I recommend to people. Also Jesse Itzler and Lewis Howes.
Resources:
“Story Brand” by Donald Miller: https://amzn.to/2M7jzVE
“Living with a SEAL” by Jesse Itzler https://amzn.to/2XDucVx
“Living with the Monks” by Jesse Itzler https://amzn.to/2zFtHCf
Cardone Zone podcast: https://grantcardone.com/podcast/
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