- 2 months ago
This week on RealTrending, Tracey Velt talks with Dre Baldwin, former professional basketball player turned business coach and author of "Work on Your Game." Tracey and Dre dive into the mental game of real estate, exploring how the discipline, resilience and systematic thinking from professional sports can transform an agent's performance in today's market.
Dre shares how mental toughness separates high performers from those who fall out during tough times, the power of detaching from outcomes while staying committed to process, and much more.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Why mental toughness and resilience are the #1 skills missing in real estate today
How to create personalized daily routines that save mental energy for what matters most
The art of transmuting rejection and disappointment into productive energy
Why discipline beats motivation every time, and how to show up on your "third day"
How 85% of your communication happens before you even speak
Related to this episode:
Dre Baldwin
https://www.dreallday.com/
Dre Baldwin | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreallday
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
To learn more about Homebot go to https://homebot.ai/
The RealTrending podcast features conversations with the brightest minds in real estate. Every Monday, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts join us to share their secrets to success, trends, and the lessons they’ve learned. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by the HousingWire
Dre shares how mental toughness separates high performers from those who fall out during tough times, the power of detaching from outcomes while staying committed to process, and much more.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Why mental toughness and resilience are the #1 skills missing in real estate today
How to create personalized daily routines that save mental energy for what matters most
The art of transmuting rejection and disappointment into productive energy
Why discipline beats motivation every time, and how to show up on your "third day"
How 85% of your communication happens before you even speak
Related to this episode:
Dre Baldwin
https://www.dreallday.com/
Dre Baldwin | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreallday
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
To learn more about Homebot go to https://homebot.ai/
The RealTrending podcast features conversations with the brightest minds in real estate. Every Monday, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts join us to share their secrets to success, trends, and the lessons they’ve learned. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by the HousingWire
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00If you're a sports lover, you're going to love today's podcast. I am talking to Dre Baldwin. He is a former professional basketball player and now author and business coach. His book, Work on Your Game, offers some great insight into how your mindset, discipline and resilience play into your business. And it is a perfect fit for real estate.
00:23So I hope you enjoy the podcast. He's offering some great insights that you can take away and put into your business today. And a special thanks to HomeBot for sponsoring today's episode of Real Trending.
00:37So Dre, world famous. Thanks for joining the Real Trending podcast.
00:43Thank you for having me on, Tracy. I'm excited to be here.
00:45Yeah, yeah. I want to talk a little bit about how kind of your coaching and your style, and I know you wrote a book, Work on Your Game, how real estate professionals, what they can learn from that specifically from you as a professional athlete.
01:01Right. So you talk a lot about work on your game, but when you look at the real estate industry today, it's been a lot of challenges in the past year.
01:10So what do you think is the mental skill real estate agents are missing the most when they're working to be as successful as possible?
01:18Number one thing for a high-end professional and any type of service-based business, especially where you're rewarded for being a go-getter, person who goes and makes things happen instead of waiting for things to happen, is that mental toughness, the resilience, or some people call it stick-to-itiveness, persistence, being a go-getter, all different forms of the same idea.
01:39And it's your ability to keep showing up, getting up, making the phone calls, knocking on the doors, following up with your prospects, turning prospects into clients, and doing it even when the success you've expected to achieve has yet to occur.
01:52And that applies in the real estate space the same way it applies to a baseball player, the same way it applies to a singer trying to get a record contract, or, I don't know, trying to get their SoundCloud to pop off.
02:02I guess it's a new thing now. But that resilience is the biggest thing that any professional needs, especially in challenging times, because in challenging times, we all know what happens.
02:14The people who don't have their resilience, they all fall out of the game and is the ones who can stick to it and stay through the tough times when things kind of level off again and get back to normal or they start going well again is only the ones who are able to stick through the tough times who will be around to enjoy that.
02:29And they'll be battle tested from having gone through the challenging times, because if you don't go through a challenging time, you don't have the mental toughness to deal with whatever comes next, because there's always going to be ups and downs in every industry.
02:40Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, all athletes kind of have game day rituals. So what do you, you know, every day is game day in real estate. So what should a high performing agent's daily kind of warm up routine look like?
02:54That's a good question. And I don't think it's going to be the same for every single person. I think everybody needs to know what works for them the same way as an athlete, you know, your body.
03:04So even though you may have a trainer or a coach who says warm up this way, once you have enough experience, you kind of know what warm up works for you.
03:10I was in a boxing gym this morning and I have a boxing trainer and sometimes he would try to give me the way to do the warm ups and I don't want to do it his way.
03:17I'm not uncoachable, but I know my body. I've been a pro athlete for a long time, so I don't need him to tell me how to warm up once I know what parts of my body I need to use.
03:26I know how to best warm it up to get myself ready. And I'm analogizing that to the real estate agent because this real estate agent over in L.A., they have their morning routine, their way to get ready to perform.
03:36And there's a guy over in Philly. He has his way and they both are high performers.
03:41So it's the key is not necessarily that you have to follow certain things is that you need to understand that human beings are creatures of habit.
03:48And we do best when we throw things over to our subconscious mind rather than having to consciously think about it, i.e. making a routine or a process out of what we do.
03:57So we do it without thinking as opposed to every day. We have to decide what to do next because that saves us mental willpower.
04:04It saves us decision making energy. And then we can save our energy for doing the things where we really do need to think.
04:09Such as a client comes to you with a challenging or complex issue or there's a complex deal you're trying to close.
04:15Similar to most people are familiar with Steve Jobs, the guy who made the iPhone.
04:19He kept wearing the same outfit every day at the end of his career.
04:22He just bought a whole bunch of the same shirt and the same pants so that he could save his mental energy for coming up with crazy ideas like what became the iPhone and iPad.
04:31And we may not create the iPhone and iPad. If you're in real estate, you're selling houses.
04:35But the whole point is you want to save your mental energy for what matters the most.
04:38So just create a process that works for you.
04:42So when you have a day or a month or a week that does really well for you as a real estate agent or broker,
04:47then the next thing you should ask yourself is, OK, how do I deconstruct what I did that led to this outcome?
04:52And then take those pieces, put them into a system and then just follow that system every single time.
04:57So what I tell professionals, Tracy, is it's the same things the same way every time.
05:02Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that makes so much sense for real estate because, you know, they need to be prospecting.
05:08They need to do certain things in order to get the business and then they need certain things to keep the business.
05:13So so so that makes a lot of sense to get those systems in place and kind of with the systems.
05:20It's kind of the same as sports. Confidence comes from reps, right?
05:24Doing it over and over again and then getting great results finally from what you're doing.
05:29So in real estate, I'm sure much like sports, rejection can crush you.
05:36And I think it goes back to some of the mindset.
05:39But how do you coach people to be durable and kind of have that confidence when things fall apart?
05:49Well, the first thing is to accept that sometimes things are going to fall apart.
05:52You're going to be well prepared for the game. You're going to lose.
05:54You're going to think the shot's going in and you miss and you thought you were going to win the championship.
05:58You didn't win. Thought you were going to close the deal. You don't close it.
06:01Or the prospect agrees and you think you have a deal done.
06:04Then they back out a deal the last minute. You wake up to a bad news text message.
06:08We've all had it happen. So the thing is, first of all, accepting that emotion, that feeling of anger, sadness, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment,
06:16whatever you want to call it, accepting that emotion.
06:18And then the next step, once you accept and recognize the emotion, is now learning how to channel the emotion and use it for productive purposes.
06:26So the whole purpose, if anyone who's listening or Tracy, you, if you read Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich,
06:32he talks about this concept of transmutation.
06:35And what he's really referring to is the law of conservation of energy, which states energy is neither created nor destroyed,
06:40merely changes forms or it moves from one object to another.
06:43So the energy of disappointment or frustration is may not be the energy within that emotion may not be very productive for us,
06:51but we can extract the energy and we can transmute it into using it for something else.
06:55Like, OK, today I'm going to make 20 extra phone calls that otherwise wouldn't have made because I'm taking the energy of that frustration
07:01because every emotion contains energy and energy is mechanically is defined as the capacity to do work and work,
07:08meaning being able to make an object move in a different place, not necessarily like a job.
07:13So the number one thing is recognizing the emotion, then learning how to channel the energy from that emotion.
07:18And then on top of that is recognizing that when you lose a game or you miss a deal or a prospect doesn't pick you
07:25and they get somebody else to list their home, they're not rejecting you necessarily as a person.
07:30They're just rejecting what you represented, which was your offer.
07:33Or maybe they know somebody who you don't know. There's a different type of relationship.
07:36They like the kind of shoes that girl had on as opposed to yours.
07:39Maybe a lot of different things that could lead to a different outcome.
07:41And it's detaching. The key skill that I teach people, we have this program called A Power of Presence.
07:47It's all about detachment. And detachment doesn't mean suppression of your feelings.
07:52It doesn't mean don't recognize that something happened, but it's emotionally detaching from the outcome of a situation, good or bad,
07:59because the only thing you can actually control is your mindset and your process and execution of your process.
08:04And if you have a solid mindset and you have a process that is known to work and you just keep executing it,
08:11it's inevitable that you're going to get the outcomes that you want and you can stay detached from it and not let your personal value
08:18or your personal worth go up and down based on whether you close a deal or not.
08:21You're going to close deals anyway.
08:22Yeah, I mean, that's so true. I think too many people tie their personal worth into the rejection that they that they get.
08:29And then it's a spiral, right? Like, I can't do this job. This isn't for me.
08:35I'm going to try something else instead of just sticking to the playbook and, you know, realizing that it will it will work.
08:44You just have to keep sticking through it. And that's one of the things that you talk about.
08:48You're big on discipline over motivation.
08:51And I know brokers and team leaders are constantly trying to motivate their real estate professionals that are with them.
08:58So what should they be doing instead?
09:01Well, I'm glad you asked the question that way. I thought you were going to ask something different.
09:05So number one thing is you're not trying to motivate people.
09:09Ideally, ideally, we can go back retroactively.
09:12You hire people who already have that internal drive so you don't have to worry about motivating them.
09:16But we all understand that not everybody has that internal drive.
09:19And if you get enough people on your team, you work with enough people, eventually you're going to have some who don't have it.
09:24They're good when motivated.
09:27Professionals should not need or want to be motivated.
09:30As a professional, your job, by definition, is to do something as your main paid occupation.
09:35And the only way you're going to get paid to do something consistently is if you actually deliver consistently.
09:40Because if you don't deliver, well, no money.
09:42And you're in sales, of course, you've got to sell something in order to make money.
09:45And everyone inherently understands that.
09:47And still, people who are in sales will still find themselves not driven to show up.
09:51So there's a concept we have over here.
09:53We call it the third day.
09:54And the third day is all about how do you show up and give your best effort when you least feel like it on days that you don't really feel like working?
10:02Because every profession has these days.
10:05One thing that I tell professionals all the time, Tracy, it doesn't matter what type of audience I'm in front of.
10:10Whether you're talking to a lawyer, a real estate person, an athlete, a maintenance man, or a librarian, every career has a grind.
10:17You know what I mean?
10:18When I say the grind, the grind is that part of the job that you didn't see it in a brochure.
10:23They don't mention that part when you sign up.
10:25But it's a part of the job that you are not going to be excited to do.
10:30It's grunt work.
10:31It's a bare knuckle work.
10:33And it is required in order for you to keep the job.
10:36And there is no profession that does not have it.
10:38Even an athlete, there is a grind in doing that too.
10:42So the question is not, is there a profession that doesn't have a grind?
10:44The question is, how do I make it through the grind when the grind hits?
10:49And like we talked about earlier, part of that resilience is your willingness to show up on what I call, again, proverbially, the third day.
10:56It doesn't have to be one day.
10:57It doesn't have to be the third one.
10:58It could be any day.
10:59It could be a whole month straight.
11:00If you can keep showing up during that time, you build internal, emotional, and mental muscles that make you that much stronger and that much better for the long game.
11:10So then when things are not as tough and you're not on one of those days that's a grind, it almost feels like you're not even working.
11:16It doesn't feel like effort, but you're still getting a whole lot of things done.
11:19And that's the reason why going through those challenging times matters so much.
11:23And the third day is a challenging time that is inevitable to happen.
11:26It has nothing to do with the market.
11:27It's just the nature of life as human beings is going to be a challenging time.
11:32How do you fight through it and push yourself through it and do it in a strategic and systematic way, not in a motivational, emotional way?
11:40That's the key.
11:41Yeah.
11:41I mean, I kind of like it.
11:42You know, real estate agents tend to they have to generate leads.
11:45So whether they do it through, you know, cold calling or warm calling or, you know, any other way, it's kind of the same as working out.
11:54You know, the first the first couple of days of working out, you're just like, OK, this sucks.
11:59I'm not doing it anymore.
12:01And then you kind of get in a habit.
12:02And once you're in that habit, it's kind of like you said, it's the grind.
12:07But you kind of develop this way of doing it that you just automatically do.
12:13Is that kind of what you're saying?
12:15Similar to that?
12:17Yeah.
12:17When you first start, we call that the first day.
12:19Yeah.
12:19So the first day could be the first day could be very easy if you're doing something new or it could be very tough, depending on what it is.
12:27But you get into the groove by the time you get to that proverbial third day and the more you go through that, the easier the job gets.
12:33Yeah, absolutely.
12:35So where do you see real estate professionals self-sabotaging the most?
12:40I don't you know, it's kind of what's the equivalent of film study that they should be doing to kind of correct things that maybe didn't go well so they don't make the same mistake again?
12:54Good question.
12:55And the answer was right there at the end of your question, which is self-evaluation is looking back over what you did and asking yourself, where could I have done that better?
13:04Where could I have improved?
13:06What could I have done to maybe make this deal even better?
13:09I closed the deal, but how could I have closed the deal even better?
13:11How could I have gotten this done in 60 days instead of 90 days?
13:14How could I have gotten my client an even better, better number than what they ended up getting?
13:18And professionals, what we do is you mentioned film study and the professional sports world, a football team plays a game on Sunday and on Monday, everybody comes into the facility not to put on the pads and tackle each other, but to sit in the film room and watch the film of the game that they just played the day before.
13:34Win or lose, they review the film to find out, here's what we did well, let's do more of that.
13:39Here's where we messed up, let's do less of that.
13:41Let's correct this.
13:42Let's fix our technique here, here and here.
13:44That's down to the individual player, the groups of players, and to the team as a whole, whether they won the game or lost the game.
13:51And the reason professionals are at such a high level, in addition to being talented and skilled, is that they're consistently reviewing their performance so that they continually get better.
14:00Because as the saying goes, practice makes perfect, but we all know there's an addition to that.
14:05Proper practice makes perfect.
14:06And it's reviewed practice, practice that is being reviewed by someone else who can hold you accountable and say, hey, do you notice that little slip up there?
14:14You notice that in a boxing ring, you're lowering your left hand, that's how you get knocked out, you're hitting the chin.
14:18So it's having those small reviews or big reviews of the small things that you're doing so that you can catch yourself in any level of slippage and staying at that high level.
14:30Because being a pro is not about just getting there, it's about staying there.
14:34Yeah, absolutely.
14:34Absolutely. And so if an agent wanted to double their business next year without burning out, what would be the first habit you'd make them build or the first habit you'd make them break?
14:47Number one thing I tell any pro in the service-based business who's asking a question that sounds like that, Tracy, is you want 80-20 of your clientele.
14:56So look around 80-20 being Pareto's principal, 80% of your results come from 20% of your inputs.
15:01So ask yourself, who are your top 20% clients, the ones who you've made the most money working with?
15:10Then ask yourself, okay, how can I get more people like this and spend less time working with anyone who falls below that line?
15:17That's the question to ask.
15:20Now, of course, if the answer to that question was really easy, we would all already be doing it.
15:25We all know that. So the point is not having an answer immediately that's easy to the question.
15:32The point is asking the question and then allowing your mind to wrestle with the answer.
15:37And this is, people have heard the term insight.
15:40I tell people this is where insight comes from.
15:43Insight is not about having the right answers because ChatGPT can give you answers.
15:47Google can give you answers.
15:49YouTube can give you answers.
15:50Everyone in the world has access to all of those things and is free.
15:53So if having the answers was the key to success, then everybody should be successful.
15:57The key, Tracy, is asking the right questions, especially the questions that you can't answer.
16:04The question that you can't answer is actually the key to breakthroughs.
16:07Why? Because it forces your brain to think in a different way.
16:10And it forces you to look at some potential realities and opportunities and options that you otherwise were not considering.
16:18And the breakthrough lies somewhere in there.
16:20And the other thing I'll say about this to follow up on what I just said is that often the breakthroughs in life are most of the time.
16:28I just said 80-20, but this one would be about 95-5.
16:3295% of the breakthroughs you achieve in life occur when you do less, not do more.
16:37And a lot of people, especially in the world that we live in today, where we can see everybody else's work or at least what they want to tell us about their work,
16:44is we fall victim to the hustle culture that everything is about.
16:48Well, wake up earlier, stay later, work harder, do more than everybody else.
16:52I am not here to tell you that work doesn't matter.
16:53I mean, my brain is literally called work on your game.
16:56So I'm not going to tell you not to work, but it's what kind of work are you doing?
17:00And once you get to a certain baseline level of skill at the professional level of what you do,
17:05the next question is about what can I edit?
17:07And the editing process, you know, being a podcast host, anybody who's ever written a book,
17:12anybody who's ever recorded a video and put it on YouTube, editing is what?
17:17Cutting things down, getting rid of things.
17:19So when you start cutting things out and you focus on the essential, there's a book called, what is it?
17:25Is it Essentialism?
17:25Yeah, Essentialism, I believe it's called, Greg McCown.
17:29And that book is all about what are the essential things that I need to be doing?
17:32That's the 20% that produces 80% of the results.
17:36The challenge, Tracy, that a lot of people have, and especially in Western society,
17:41is that it doesn't feel right to not be working hard, hard, hard all day.
17:45You feel like you're cheating.
17:47Yeah.
17:47I should be doing something else.
17:48Why am I not working hard?
17:49Why do I not feel exhausted at the end of the day, like I just ran the treadmill,
17:52even though you spent a third of the time you usually spend working and you produce double
17:57the results.
17:57It still doesn't feel right because you're emotionally connected to the effort rather
18:01than being more connected to the process that leads to the desired outcome.
18:05So the biggest challenge for many people is, as always, is mental.
18:09But a sports world, real estate world, everywhere else, it's the way that we think.
18:12It is not what we do.
18:13Yeah.
18:14Yeah.
18:14I can relate to that for sure.
18:16The running on a treadmill and getting as much in as possible.
18:21It's ingrained in us.
18:22Yeah, it definitely is.
18:24All right.
18:24I'm going to do a lightning round of questions.
18:27So what's harder, being coached or being coachable?
18:33Being coachable.
18:35Because once you're coachable, should I give context to this?
18:38Yeah.
18:38Okay.
18:39Once you are coachable, then being coached is easy because that comes with it.
18:44Being coached can be hard too, depending on who you're coaching, who's coaching you and
18:48what they're coaching you on.
18:49That can be hard.
18:50But if you're coachable, that means you accept it.
18:51So being coachable is the hardest part because the mindset comes before the actions.
18:56Okay.
18:57Great.
18:58More important for agents, resilience or discipline?
19:03Discipline.
19:04Because resilience is part of the package deal of discipline.
19:08Okay.
19:08One sports rule you'd import into real estate.
19:12That's a really good question.
19:14One sports rule that I would import into real estate.
19:17I would say, hmm, you got to show up to practice every day and you practice the way you play.
19:25Yeah.
19:26Whenever you say that, I just think of the practice.
19:30I don't even remember who said it, but it was a basketball player, right?
19:33That's my hometown, so I remember that one way.
19:38If real estate had a playoff system, who would qualify for the finals?
19:44Well, it depends on who's making the rules.
19:46So in basketball, the rule is that you have to win all these playoff series and then you get home court advantage and it's best out of seven.
19:52So it would depend on who gets to set the rules.
19:55So I would guess it would be either the number of deals closed or the amount of money transacted in the number of deals you get done.
20:05I guess it would go by the amount of money.
20:06So you could do one deal and sell a $10 million house.
20:09You beat out somebody who sold $10,000 deals.
20:12So I would guess there'll be the amount of money transacted because you make the money move that helps everybody.
20:16That's true.
20:17We do have Realtrends verified rankings of agents and we'd rank them both by number of sales and volume of sales.
20:25So they get ranked by both.
20:28Well, Dre.
20:28When somebody who sells way fewer, but the deals are a lot bigger, wouldn't they be the best one or would you say somebody who does more transactions?
20:38I mean, I don't think you can compare that equally, honestly.
20:42I mean, think of the amount of work that goes into each transaction.
20:47You know, if you're a luxury salesperson and you're selling, you know, there are luxury salespeople who sell high volume.
20:57So not only, you know, transaction sides and the cost of the home.
21:03So, yeah.
21:05Yeah.
21:05Makes sense.
21:07Any final words?
21:08Now, 85% of communication is nonverbal and mastering that nonverbal communication makes all your verbal communication hit that much harder and your verbal communication becomes only a multiplier.
21:21And most of that nonverbal communication is not just put your chest out and your eyes up and your chin up and all those things that people probably know about shoulders back and have good posture.
21:30So, yes, that's part of it.
21:31But most of your nonverbal communication is the work that you've done before somebody even comes across you.
21:37The discipline, the resilience, the work you do every day, the systems, the structure, your routines and your habits.
21:42All of that coalesce into one signal that people can feel.
21:46People sometimes call it presence or aura or energy.
21:48And people read that off of you within 10 seconds of coming across you and they decide about you right there.
21:53Then everything you say just multiplies whatever they decided.
21:56So if you get that dark in the shadows work proper, then everything that comes out of your mouth and the things you do on purpose are just extra icing on the cake.
22:05I love that.
22:06Dre, thanks so much for joining the Real Trending Podcast.
22:09This was a real pleasure.
22:10I appreciate you coming on.
22:12I appreciate you sharing your platform.
22:13Thank you for the opportunity.
22:15Thanks, Dre.
Be the first to comment