Ep025: How (and Why) Real Estate Professionals Set Boundaries

Chris: Hi all, chris McAllister, here with the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast, where it’s my job to make your real estate business better and your life easier. I’m here today with my podcast partner, Laci LeBlanc, and today we’re recording the first of what is going to be a 12-part series called Protecting the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. Good morning, lacey.

Laci: Good morning Chris. How are you?

Chris: I’m good. We may have some technical difficulties. We’ve got some storms coming through and Mr Musk’s internet here is having a little problem with the storm, so if we go in and out, I apologize. We’ll do the best we can. So if there’s any doubt, you, my dear listener, are the goose and the golden eggs that you produce not only make your clients’ real estate dreams come true, but they also support the lifestyle to which you and your family have become accustomed, and the golden eggs that will support you in the matter that you hope and expect to become accustomed to in the future. So I love this topic about protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs, and part of being a professional and perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the new real estate professional is the ability and the motivation to take care of yourself, and in my experience if my personal experience is any indication many, if not most, of us are just not very good at this. How do you do about taking care of yourself, Laci?

Laci: Yeah, I’m not great at it either. I think anybody who values their career, no matter what industry you’re in, no matter what job you have is somebody who really values their career and has the luxury of prioritizing that right. Not everybody can do that, but I think anybody who values their career has the luxury of prioritizing it at least goes through some bouts of maybe not taking the best care of themselves.

Chris: Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of weird stuff that goes into that. I think it has a lot to do with you know how we were raised. You know, and there’s a certain amount of guilt that’s associated with taking care of yourself, especially when you think about taking care of yourself first. So I’m going to blame it on my Puritan work ethic. That was filled in me at an early age that if you’re not producing you’re in me at an early age that if you’re not producing, you’re you’re. You know you don’t have a lot of worth. I guess as horrible as that sounds.

Laci: No, absolutely. That’s exactly how I feel. If I’m sitting around, I it could be you know researching something about, you know something my kid is going through, or reading, or you know doing things that by all, really measures are productive. But if I’m not, if I’m not producing visible results, to like other people and I think honestly my parents are the ones I’m thinking about when I’m subconsciously trying to be productive all the time, then I don’t feel like I’m a valid human being in a lot of ways.

So you’re exactly right there. I think that can definitely play into it. That’s certainly part of my generational trauma.

Chris: Yeah, maybe I’m simply projecting on you, but there’s a lot of guilt, I feel like, with taking time off. I worry about whether or not I deserve it, have I earned it, have I worked hard enough to reward myself? And what I’m here to tell you is that is just flat out unhealthy. It’s wrong, and you know, we’ve got to get to the point and I’ve been working hard on this for quite some time where it’s not about earning time off, it’s about scheduling in time off, because if you don’t take some time to, you know, rest, prep, prepare, retrain, whatever you want to call it, you’re not going to be in any condition to help anybody. You know much less yourself, right.

You know there’s a seasonality to every business, including ours, but it’s kind of interesting to think about it in terms of, you know, like a sports season, right, there’s a season for being in the game, being productive, working your ass off, and there’s also a season for, you know, celebrating what you achieved, taking a break, regrouping, you know, and time off is scheduled into, you know, a lot of professional, a lot of professions, and there is some seasonality to our business, and we’re going to discuss that in a future podcast, but you’ve got to plan for it. You have to schedule it, because if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re just not going to be in any shape to take care of anybody else either.

Laci: Yeah, I think, as a mom, we hear that a lot. I hear that a lot. That’s in my algorithm what I see, what I hear, what I read, people I hang out with you know you can’t pour from an empty cup, which is absolutely true. It’s a cliche, but it’s absolutely true and I think that there’s just like being a parent or, you know, being a business. It’s all the same. And even in when, in during the seasons, having a routine where you can prioritize yourself and your health and your mental health and, you know, your family and your home, is imperative. So excited to hear your, your thoughts on it.

Chris: Yeah, and so, and I think it’s one of those things that takes some of us a heck of a long time to learn and you know I don’t feel like I’m just. You know it took me years and, honestly, you know, as I got older and, you know, fell in and out of shape and had more stamina than I used to, and so forth, it became more of a concern as I got older. So you know professionals of a certain age, you know what I’m talking about. On the other hand, younger folks, when you think about you know your favorite entertainer, your favorite actor, your favorite entrepreneur, your favorite basketball player, you know they start taking time off and protecting the goose that lays the golden age at a young age. So I think people that are just extremely successful in any walk of life they get into the habit of scheduling off time. You know in their calendar. You know a year in advance or multiple years in advance, and I think that’s something that we really need to all think about and we’ll talk more about as we go through this series.

You know, taking care of yourself is not just about playing defense. It’s also about making sure that you’re always putting yourself in a position to succeed, and you know, for me that’s all encompassing right. This means building a business that works for you. It means becoming, you know, personally bulletproof. You know financially, of course, and also mentally and physically and physically. And it’s about consciously creating the life that you want to live for yourself and those around you. So you’ve got to. You’re the goose. You’re laying these golden eggs. Many people are benefiting from your efforts, and let’s make sure that you are benefiting from your efforts and that you’re not spreading yourself so thin that you know you hit a wall, you burn out, you end up, you know, by quitting or retiring early. So that’s what we’re here to talk about in this series.

Laci: Yeah, I think as somebody who just hit 40, actually I’m about to be 41, I guess I, for the first time have you talked about spreading yourself too thin, and this made me think of this. But for the first time last year, I was in a season where I just had more to do than I could accomplish and I’ve always spread myself very thin. It’s one of the ways I manage my anxiety. If I’m always doing something or always have something scheduled, I don’t have to think my brain can’t take over. But last year I came like there was a month period where I had so many things that I had promised, that I had scheduled across, you know, my life.

So it wasn’t just work, it was work, it was home, it was kids, and then you know, a wrench inevitably gets thrown in, a kid gets sick, or I get sick, or you know something changes and I, for the first time ever, didn’t accomplish everything that I had set out to accomplish because I had spread myself too thin.

I did not build in the time that I had set out to accomplish because I had spread myself too thin. I did not build in the time that I was going to need to take care of myself and my family and I, for the first time, had to let something go and not finish something when I wanted to. And you know, and nobody died, luckily like it wasn’t a life altering situation necessarily, everyone was gracious about it, but I think that the comment about if you’re young and you can start doing that now is really applicable, because you know nobody wants to be. That was the worst position I think I’ve ever. That was the worst I’ve ever felt about myself Not being able to do everything I had set out to do. For the first time ever which I guess I’m lucky I made it to 40, but it was the worst.

Chris: Well, when you’re young and strong and you know bulletproof, basically you don’t think about you know going to doing too much or going too far and yeah, who needs sleep, or like real sleep?

you know and all that.

And you know I worked hard continuously you know, probably 30 years, if I’m honest with myself, before I just went too far and had to start thinking about taking breaks and getting comfortable with taking breaks.

And the other first thing is you know when we’re on a roll, when we’re accomplishing things, when we’re getting that hit of dopamine over and over again because we’re doing something, it’s coming into reality, it works then you don’t want to stop and you know, quite frankly that’s probably the point that you’ve got to figure out how to pull back. Right, you got to figure out okay, I did this, this is what I plan to do, let’s celebrate that Now. You know I’m taking this weekend off or I’m taking the spring break or whatever it is, and you know it’s just one of those things we get on a roll and we never want it to stop and that’s dangerous too. So that’s a little bit of background of what this series is all about. And I want to start with this discussion today about boundaries, and it’s a very simple title for part one professionals set boundaries.

Laci: I feel personally attacked. So I feel personally attacked already, but I am excited. I’m excited I have the luxury of seeing some of these notes beforehand. I’m very excited for you to share this. I do think that your vulnerability in this as a business owner, as a real estate agent, as a broker, as a manager of people, is going to be so, so helpful for folks. So, yeah, I think that I can’t wait. Let’s get going.

Chris: I appreciate that. So, anyway, boundaries so it is the mark of the new real estate professional. You know, a characteristic, a hallmark of the new real estate professionals their ability to set boundaries in life and business. And boundaries of course include some basic time blocking, but they also include setting limits on who or what gets your attention and when they get your attention, and knowing why they deserve your attention. So that’s kind of some of the things that I want to touch on today and, as in most things we discuss on the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast, it’s about adopting the mindset you need to create the daily routines that allow you to be the best you can for your clients and your family and yourself. So I guarantee that you’re going to find some inspiration, lessons, tips, tricks, habits and mindsets that you can use in your business to generate more leads, book more appointments, write more contracts, close more deals, earn more referrals and God forbid make a little more money. So that’s where we are today. That’s our introduction, so let’s get going.

Setting boundaries between life and business. Okay, one of the things that is just a fact of life in the real estate business is we all know that it can become all consuming, and it can become all consuming for successful and it can become all-consuming for the not-so-successful, but the common denominator for both is a lack of boundaries. And the successful often fail to set boundaries because they become addicted to their success. And there’s a point where you just can’t stop. And if you’re young and strong and fearless and you don’t know any better, there’s just no good reason to stop. So if you can’t stop, it’s no big deal. But as you get older and you find yourself in a position where you just can’t stop, it’s too much fun. That’s when you’ve really got to try to raise a red flag for yourself, a red flag for yourself.

So, but the less successful, you know, they also run into problems, right, because they fail to set boundaries, because they don’t feel like they can afford to miss any opportunity to make a sale. So you know, in both cases it’s kind of a bad thing. It just comes to the same conclusion for different reasons. You know, some of us get lucky, we get on a streak, we’re successful, we never wanted to stop, can’t stop, won’t stop, we say. And then for other of us, you know, we’re committed to this business but we’re not seeming to get any traction and we just go and go to the point where it’s like you’re trying too hard and you know you start to make things worse for yourself, right, and then get better for yourself, and again the common denominator is a failure to set boundaries.

Laci: Yeah, I think that second part is very interesting. When you’re not seeing the success and you fail to set boundaries, you know, I feel like you do. You feel like you need some of that time, right. So, taking time off when you’re not being successful, that’s, like you know, rule number one that I would avoid, as somebody who, you know, has to be productive all the time. But I often feel like if I keep like moving in desperation, moving forward in desperation, then I keep doing the wrong things. And if I could just take a step back and take a minute, then I can reassess what I’m doing that’s working, what I’m doing that’s not working, and move forward, you know, doing the right things. Does that make sense?

Chris: Yeah, so like, for instance, if I’m having a great week and everything’s working, you know there’s times that I just want to blow right through the weekend and just keep at it right, and every time I do that I fail right.

And by the same token, there’s also times where you’re just having a shit week and you want to make up for it, so you just want to blow through the weekend as well, and in both cases that’s the worst thing that you can do, because you know, a lot of times, if you’re just trying too hard, if you can’t seem to catch your breath, you can’t seem to get any stillness or awareness, the best thing you can do is to, you know, do whatever you need to do to shut yourself down for the weekend and let nature take its course.

Right, you know, try to get a good night’s sleep, try to distract yourself, get to a movie, play with the kids, exercise, whatever it is, because invari, you know, if you’re having a bad streak, getting a little bit of respite as well as rest for, you know, a day or two or whatever it takes, that tends to clear your head. It certainly clears my head, and it took me a long time to understand that and believe in that. But, by the same token, if you had a fantastic week, you know, and you just want to keep going, you don’t want to stop and you know maybe you could do this and do that. Well, you know, and you just want to keep going. You don’t want to stop and you know maybe you could do this and do that. Well, you know, you got to shut that down too, because if you don’t take that weekend before you quote need that weekend, you know you’re just going to end up with future problems down the road that you just don’t need to create those obstacles for yourself.

Laci: Yeah, that weekend is going to find you and it’s probably going to find you in the middle of the week. You’re probably going to have to take a Monday or a Tuesday or a Thursday or your busy days off.

But I feel like that’s applicable to real estate in particular, especially right now. You know it hasn’t been the easiest of times. There’s a lot changing and so folks are probably feeling a little desperate in some cases, and you know, worth a reminder that acting out of desperation, you know, can lead to some bad decisions and not the best way forward.

Chris: Well, and you know we’re recording this a couple of weeks after, you know, nar settled their lawsuit and you know we, as in the real estate business, are all, just, you know, completely out of sorts over what is our business going to look like as we get past July, with all the changes that are coming with commissions and everything else we’ve been talking about for the past few months. And you know, part of me the last couple of weeks just wanted to dig in and make that plan and I still want to do that. But I also know that I’m not ready to do that because not enough time has passed, not enough things have happened. We haven’t learned everything, the shoe hasn’t dropped and you know there’s times that you sort of have to force yourself to step back from something as much as you really want to use it as an opportunity or find a way to get your arms around it. So enough of current events. This isn’t about the NAR situation. So you know I wanted to also share with people that. You know I feel like I was fortunate enough to realize fairly early in my career that I that if I was going to succeed and for me success meant for the longterm right, scalable and sustainable, that I had to be the type of professional that my clients were willing to make an appointment for, and I think that’s something that people need to think about and adopt as a mindset. When you think of successful professionals, you know, I always think of doctors and lawyers, and you know accountants and you know people that you naturally have to make an appointment for. And you know, as real estate professionals, I would say 80, 90% of us just don’t do that, right, if we’re beholden to Zillow for our next paycheck, you know, and that phone goes off because somebody clicked on your name, you know, you’re taught that you’ve got five minutes to respond, right, so there’s no boundaries between time off and time on unless you literally, you know, have the fortitude to shut off your, your phone. But you know, professionals, it’s built into their schedule, right? You know, other than emergency room doctors that stay up for three or four days every, you know, everybody gets a time off, everybody sets appointment days, and we have to adopt that mindset as much as we possibly can, right? So you know, I’ve never gone to see my doctor on Saturday or Sunday. I’ve never met. Well, it’s not true, I have met my attorney on the weekends before, but that’s because we were close friends and clients. But you got to set boundaries between your personal and professional lives.

And one thing that you know I did get right early in my career, when I first got my real estate license, was I decided that I just flat out wasn’t going to work on Friday evenings and I wasn’t going to work on Saturday afternoons, right? So as a real estate person, at least where we were in Ohio at the time, sundays was open house days, so I always planned to work on Sundays. I usually worked a little bit late on Monday to make sure I got all my paperwork together and made, you know, phone calls to people who signed in at the open houses. I was prepared to show houses, you know, in the evenings on Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday, but I shut myself down on Friday night. I said I was going to stay home. You know we were going to have dinner with the kids and I was willing to work Saturday mornings.

But I was always going to block off Saturday afternoons and I can tell you, every time I broke that rule it was a complete and utter waste of time. Not once did I break that rule and show a house on a Friday or meet a client on a Sunday where anything came of it. It’s just that, for whatever reason, somebody raised their hand. I felt obligated to go. I thought, well, maybe there’s something there. You know, this is a referral or whatever. And I can tell you, every time I broke that rule, nothing ever came of it. So at a minimum I at least I carved out some space early on in.

Laci: Which was incredibly helpful. I don’t know how soon. I can’t imagine how fast I would have burned out if I hadn’t at least done that at the start. And it really has flipped the script a little bit, because on my calendar I say hey, Chris, and you’re like, hey, can we get together to talk about, you know, the next podcast? Yeah, Pick a time on my calendar that works for you, Right, and that is giving you the luxury of setting the appointment at a time that works for you.

But in actuality I select the times on my calendar that I’m available, Right. So I only, you know, have a certain set number of blocks on my calendar. I can set it so that when I have an hour long session scheduled, I have the next 15 minutes free, right. So I mean I can, without doing a thing, I can set my schedule and and then pass on the luxury of scheduling an appointment or a call or whatever at a time that works for the client. So I think that for people who really struggle with setting those types of boundaries, there’s a way to flip that script now. That’s going to make it a lot easier than it was probably when you got started doing this Super fair?

Chris: Exactly, yeah, and holidays have to be off limits too. I know there’s a lot of realtors out there who think they’re getting the jump on the game by working through the holidays or whatever. Again, the few times I broke my rule for things that I thought were going to be surefire hits, they just never panned out. And I have to tell you, I live for those three-day weekends now, those extra Monday holidays, and I appreciate them. I know our team appreciates them. We’ve got a lot of folks that are W-2 employees in the property management business and we all look forward to those three-day weekends, whether it’s, you know, president’s Day, martin Luther King Day, you know, outside of those of the original federal big six. And I think we’re up to nine or 10 weekends a year to where the calendar works out that we can do an extra three-day weekend, and I absolutely look forward to those.

Laci: So yeah, don’t forget solar eclipse half day.

Chris: Yeah, and we are actually closed for the afternoon of April 8th for the solar eclipse. That’s a pretty big deal here at Ohio. I guess we go a few miles down the road and it’s like total eclipse of the sun.

Laci: So oh, what a relief though, as, again, as a parent who has my son is so excited. My kids are science nerds and they’re so excited, and so you know, I think about the people in your office who have kids or who, just you know, want to see it themselves and the ability to go and pick them up early from school.

Chris: Schools are closed. Our schools are closed here, so it’s even a bigger deal.

Laci: I’m in the wrong spot. The.

Chris: East.

Laci: Coast does not properly respect me. I just I think that it’s and, as a manager of people, you modeling that healthy, boundary setting kind of lifestyle is huge because you are impacting everyone you work with. By setting those three day weekends, giving permission to have a half day on solar eclipse day, you are modeling the right way to do things and I think that’s just so impactful. And you know, as people, if you’re a broker, if you have a team, if you are a manager of people in any way, then I think it’s really worth thinking about how you know do as do, as I say, not as I do, but how actions really do speak louder than words and and modeling that is so important.

Chris: I appreciate that. I can tell me it took years to get to this point, but I feel good that we’re here now. So the other boundary I want to talk about is professionals. They don’t just jump in to a given opportunity. So I want to just kind of frame this around setting boundaries around an opportunity, right? So professionals do not jump in with new clients, for instance, no matter who referred them. Right? So you know you get a call from a great client and they say, hey, my brother-in-law, you know, wants to see this house. You know, can you help them? Sure, you know, turns out they want to see it.

Right, this second, you know, you got to hold true to your boundaries and you have to be able to explain what your boundaries are and set the work successfully with this potential client, even if it’s a referral, before they become invested in that new client or that new opportunity. And by invested I mean that you’re making a financial investment, that you’re making a time investment and that you’re making an emotional commitment and a commitment of your bandwidth to this person. Right, just because something looks like a fantastic opportunity. I don’t know how many times we’ve gotten so excited about something. We need to be excited, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t need to get so excited that we, you know, go running off down that rabbit hole and wake up 48 hours later and find out that they bought the house with a listing agent. Professionals protect themselves by setting boundaries, they don’t just jump in. So you know some things that you know I think some of the most successful among us do is you know, before showing a new buyer, client, even a single property, you know the real professionals require a face-to-face meeting, right, either in Zoom or in person, maybe at the coffee shop, maybe at the office, and they literally get to know each other and they ask questions about you know, what are you looking for? What do you hope to accomplish from this move? What’s your motivation? And they go through their presentation as to how they’re going to help them and they establish and communicate their boundaries and ground rules for working together. Right, and we’re going to do another episode coming up about our updated buy with Roost and actually list with Roost brochures. And it also functions as listing presentations because we’re going to be updating those over the course of the next two or three months as we see how the NAR thing is going to finalize. But again I digress and notice I’m not jumping in to redo those today. I’m letting my plan work.

But anyway, we don’t just go out and show a house because somebody asked. We don’t just show a house because, you know, a great client referred them. We still have policies, procedures, we have boundaries that we have to follow. We have to protect ourselves and professionals.

By the way, when we talk about these listing presentations, buyer presentations and so forth, professionals use the same template. They use the exact same script every single time they meet a client, whether they just ran into them off the street or they were referred to them by their best friends. And when they do that presentation, they’re constantly referring back to that document, as they need to, and they don’t even think about it. There’s no self-conscious consciousness about it. They don’t feel like they have to memorize anything, right. But they have a plan, they know it works, they have it on paper and they do the presentation the same way every single time, just like an actor in a play, you know, recites the same lines the same way every single time at every performance, and that’s what professionals do too. You know, recites the same lines the same way every single time at every performance, and that’s what professionals do too. You know they.

There’s a boundary, so to speak, in that you know when somebody comes into the office, it’s not the, it’s not the guest in your office that should be dictating the terms of the get together, right? You’re the professional, you’re in charge, you have a job to do and you want to find out at that first meeting if this is a good fit and if you’re going to be able to work together. And one of the reasons the people among us who are successful are so successful is that they do the hard work up front of getting that presentation set up and fine-tuned to the point that it works every time. And the reason they do that is that it eliminates friction, it eliminates heartache and it eliminates disagreement and potentially, you know, a pissed off client and a disappointed referral source later on. So you know it’s another boundary. Professionals don’t just jump in when they do have a meeting. They control the parameters of that meeting and they never deviate from their plan. Does that make sense?

Laci: Yeah, absolutely, again, difficult boundary for for most of us to set, especially when you’re self-employed and you’re responsible for not only paying your own bills but, you know, feeding the mouths of babes, of other people, it can feel again, I think a lot of this is not acting out of desperation, is acting out of a, you know, an abundance mindset, knowing that if you follow your plan, like you said, then there’s going to be more than enough, and really believing that. So you know you mentioned early on that this is about the mindsets that allow you to implement the practical steps to set boundaries, and I think that it does go back to knowing that you’re going to, you’re going to make it, you know, and you’ve made yourself bulletproof and, in certain ways, I mean what you said is I think you’re right.

Chris: I think a lot of the reasons why all of us fall off the wagon on some of these mindsets from time to time is sometimes it’s out of excitement, but other times it’s out of desperation. And you know, as we go through this series, you know we’re going to talk about, you know, becoming bulletproof financially and we’re going to talk about becoming bulletproof physically and mentally as we go forward. Because, obviously, if you’re feeling secure, you know financially that you’ve, you know you’ve at least got enough money in the bank to get through the next 30, 60 days, whatever it is, and that you know you’re healthy and you’re eating as well as you possibly can, and you know getting your exercise in and so forth. Obviously that just increases your confidence to the point where you’re far more likely to do the right thing at every single encounter, at every single opportunity. So you know we can sit here and I can sit here and spout these things off and talk about them, and I know it’s not easy and it involves, you know, a much bigger picture of protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs. And again, that’s what this series is about. If you happen to go to the Roost website. Right on the main page there’s actually a place where you can download our list with Roost and buy with Roost brochures and hopefully by as we get into August, september, we’ll do the updated versions in response to the NAR settlement.

Okay, here’s another boundary I just want to touch on quickly today, and this is about access to you, the professional, and I want to talk about client access versus customer access, and this is going to become far, far more important as we move into the new post-NAR settlement world, when buyers are not all the same right. You know we always talk about your availability to customers should be very different than your availability to clients and members of your database. That’s the first thing. When you think about what’s going to be happening with working with buyers going forward, you know there’s going to be a certain level of commitment to somebody that you’re just interested in showing you’re listening to, versus somebody who’s referred to you that you want to work with and help them find the house of their dreams, not just that particular listing that you have today. So you’ve got to set some boundaries. You have to become more discerning as to not just who you’re going to work with, but what kind of professional commitment they get from you. And again, the basic one is how you approach a client relationship versus a customer relationship. And again, the basic one is how you approach a client relationship versus a customer relationship.

And customers are defined as people you do not know and who have not been referred to you and you know. I think the best way to understand this is think about what is your availability to him, to them, right? So if a customer, I don’t want to give anybody I don’t know my cell phone, I barely want to give them my personal email, right? I want to be able to interact with these people at a distance to some degree. I want to observe, I want to do my due diligence, I want to figure out if this person you know, literally, is worth my time, right? So it doesn’t mean they can’t call the office number, it doesn’t mean they can’t email me, but I’m not going to be nearly as accessible to somebody I do not know as somebody I do know.

And when you think about your clients, these are people in your database, right? These are people who already know, like and trust you. Your clients get preferred access to you, right? I can tell you that if one of my agents calls, I’m going to pick up that phone, you know, no matter what right. And if they do call me outside of quote my hours availability, I know there’s a darn good reason and they’re going to get my undivided attention. That is a relationship that is absolutely critical to me. I care about them, they care about me. I’m there, they get my cell phone, they can text, they can email my personal email address, whatever it is, but that is access that anybody I don’t know doesn’t get. So customers have to cross an additional boundary to get to me and get to my attention.

Laci: It seems so natural, but again, implementation is the key there. So can you give us an implementation tip? And it’s hard to think about that in the moment too, I think.

Chris: It is. But practically for our agents, everybody has an 8×8 branded voiceover IP phone line. So we contract with this company called 8×8, and there’s an app you can put on your phone and it assigns every agent their own office line line. Right, whether they have an actual phone or an actual office or not, they have a business line that they can use with their cell phone or they can use from a handset in the office or wherever that handset is right, so they can interact with people they don’t know via their published office line. Now we do have probably most of our agents still put their cell phone on their website. Now we do have probably most of our agents still put their cell phone on their website.

It’s not necessarily sustainable for the long term, but you know again, you want to publish your public-facing email address, you want to publish your office line, your business line, but you want to, as best as you can and as you feel it’s appropriate, restrict access to your personal cell phone number to those absolute key clients. So practically, you may not even have your cell phone on your business card. Or maybe you have a second business card that has your cell phone on it, or maybe when you’re going to hand somebody your card. You take the time with a nice pen to write yourself on the back and they feel that much more important that granted access to you so practically. I think that’s really how it’s done. That’s how we try to teach it.

One of the things that’s funny that I’ve been wrestling with is the amount of spam that I’m getting at Chris at Roost, and I think what’s happening is that’s the email that I use for all the MLSs and I think a lot of those databases get sold to other people. And I was thinking the other day and I think this is something that we need to do for all the realtors Maybe what we end up doing going forward is it’s Chris at Roost that’s public facing, but also create a boundary so that you’re able to protect that time and that access with your very favorite people and have some distance between people that aren’t yet your favorites, if that makes sense.

Laci: Yeah, absolutely, and again, I think technology has made this so, so easy to do. You know, if you don’t have access to eight by eight, then Google voice numbers are available right.

Chris: Anybody can have multiple email addresses and forward them, and it’s really super simple to implement practically so it’s just something that we don’t do, you know, either because we don’t want to miss an opportunity, either because we’re, you know, we’re new in the business and we want to take a chance, or whatever. But Right.

Laci: Well, and just from a again, from a practical perspective, being able to, one of my big things was being able to turn off work and still be open to. You know, I can’t just put my phone on, do not disturb, you know, if my kids are at their dad’s or with my parents, or you know my parents are getting older, my grandparents, you know you can’t just not be available in a lot of cases. So, having a line of delineation where you don’t have to be, you know, beholden to every notification, to even just to check, right, if it’s like, even if you’re going to ignore it because it’s a work call, then just having the ability to turn that off entirely and know that you’re not, those notifications aren’t just coming in and you don’t have to check just to make sure it’s not an emergency, or your kid or your parent or whatever, it’s so freeing.

Chris: I want to feel like I’ve gotten better at that. But I think it’s because I’ve designed my business and life at this point that I just don’t get bothered as much on the weekends. But I’ve been toying around with doing a bonus episode for this series, a 13th Baker’s Dozen episode, where we talk about this whole concept of unplugged free days. You know, I am terrible at that. I don’t unplug my phone on the weekends. I’m still looking at it. The closest I get to an unplugged time is, you know, my wife and I go to a movie matinee at the local AMC, you know, like every single Saturday, and that’s a couple of hours where I really don’t even think about my phone and I feel so incredible afterwards that. But you know, I just don’t do it for more than two hours. And I want to get to the point where, you know and again, this is a mental problem, quite frankly. You know other people don’t have this issue but I want to get to the point where I’ve constructed my business so that I can take not just a full day but God forbid a full week without thinking about my cell phone. But that’s another podcast. So the other thing I want to touch on and again this is still about boundaries but how to learn and be conscious and be present in the moment. When you’re with clients or with anybody, quite frankly, it could still be a customer, but if you’ve sat aside an hour in your calendar to be one-on-one with somebody customer, client, whomever then you owe it to that person, you owe it to yourself, to be present in the moment. You know people. We still have this issue, maybe a little bit less so. Coming out of COVID no-transcript is right. You know being busy and on the phone all the time is well. I think it’s the easiest path to burning yourself out, quite frankly. So you know, even though we all have trouble with not we all even though some of us have trouble with, you know, unplugging the phone for free time. I think you have to look at this as a business decision that when you’re one-on-one with a client, turn the damn thing off or, better yet, leave it in your car. That ability to be present in the moment, face-to-face with another human being is a great example of what it looks like to be a new real estate professional and it literally it’s a superpower that I’d say 99%. Just don’t have you cultivate that one thing. That is just about basic courtesy. When you get down to it and I’m telling you this is your big tip for the day You’ve differentiated yourself from 99% of the competition. You know it’s a big deal and some people are really good at this and they expand it, like.

I read a story a few months ago about an entrepreneur that was so devoted, but she promises that she will call them back tomorrow. So she sets that expectation up front at the first meeting. She reinforces it with her voicemail message I’m with a client right now. I can’t get back with you today. I’m with clients all day. I won’t be able to get back with you today, but I promise you I will get back with you tomorrow morning. That is super professional, right, but it’s also gutsy and she backs it up because she’s great at what she does and she’s the kind of professional that she can say she’s not going to call him back for a week and these people would still probably be beating down her door to work with her. But she backs it up with being great at what she does, being present in the moment and, more importantly, most importantly, she returns every single call and email she gets no later than the next business day. So there’s something that I think all of us can think about and I think it’s worth implementing for all of us.

Laci: Yeah, that’s great. I think that part of that too is when you have those expectations for yourself right and you make it really clear, then you also that changes your expectations of others. So if you are gutsy enough or brilliant enough, or whatever the case may be, to set the that boundary for yourself, then you’re also not going to expect others to call you back right away or to answer every text right away, or just what an impact that has on relationships. My mother bless her heart.

She, she never has her heart. She, she never has her phone. She’s one of those people like she only wants to make outgoing calls, she only wants to talk when she wants to talk, right, or text when she wants to text. But if I don’t respond to a text message within like 38 seconds, then I get a hello text message. So, like she’s done a great job of setting that boundary for herself. But you also have to extend that that you know expectation to others, and I just think that it really positively impacts a relationship when you can kind of automatically start with a 24 hours worth of grace, right, I think that’s that should be the new standard for sure.

Chris: I’m going to mention this as a recovering workaholic and, more often, anxiety ridden workaholic. You know I do love what I do and I do think about it. You know, even on weekends, you know, especially if I get up in the morning and I’ve got some quiet time and there’s no emails, there’s no this, and you know I’ll come up with some of my best ideas. Just, you know, getting up early and journaling and everything, and I have got.

I’ve had this shitty habit of you know, as soon as I think of something, you know, of course I think it’s the most original thought that’s ever occurred to anybody and I need to share it immediately and I’ll fire off emails, you know, to whoever I’m thinking about, regardless of the time, day or night, and that is just the rudest thing I could possibly do, Right?

So I have to temper that. So I’m really conscious about and I probably sent you emails last weekend, so I apologize for that what I’m really trying to do is get to the point where, OK, I’m going to take the time to compose this, but I am, I’m going to set it up. You know, whether you’re on Gmail or Outlook, you know I’m going gonna schedule that to go out Monday morning at eight. So I’m trying to practice what I preach and protect myself and protect everybody else from me. That I may end up doing some work, I may compose an email, but my commitment is I’m gonna schedule that to send out on first thing Monday morning. I’m not just gonna fire those off because it makes me feel like I did something and I get a dopamine hit over the weekend. So that’s my commitment. You can hold me to that.

Laci: Okay, I’m going to report back next time for sure. But I think that’s you know, and I love weekend emails. Those are some of my favorite emails, so don’t do that on my my behalf. But I think that also is the difference between client and customer, right? Like I am excited when.

I get an email from Chris, right, that’s not the same necessarily for everybody that I work with. So I think, again, it’s being present and in the moment and relationship building, right, it’s building a relationship with your clients and really getting to know them sincerely, which, in the life of the new real estate professional, is kind of the point because you want to work with them for their you know what were we talking about yesterday their first roost, their next roost, their not last roost, their right size roost or whatever. However we get there, you know you want to be in a relationship with these folks professionally, but that requires a level of, you know, personal knowledge and a personal relationship as well. So you know that if you send me an email on a weekend, then I’m not going to be, you know, overwhelmed by it and that’s okay. But there are clients that I absolutely would not contact on a weekend, most of my clients.

So, again, it’s in this life, thanks to technology, we have tried to systematize everything and I think in a lot of ways we’ve lost that personal touch, right, and so now we’re trying to backtrack, you know, and all the marketing we do is meant to really scale up that personal interaction, right, we’re not trying to. We’re trying to mirror in all of the marketing that we do, we’re trying to mirror the conversations we have every day in real life, because that’s the vibe that we want, that’s who we are and that’s what we want people to know. And so I think a lot of folks need to kind of scale back the automation and really start putting thought into. You know, if this happens in real life, how do we respond and react? And it’s not.

You know, if somebody walks into your office, then you don’t immediately, you know, bombard them with four emails right away, right? You know, when they leave your office, you don’t call them six times in a row from six different numbers, all marked as potential spam to you know, to get them back into your office. Like what office? What’s the real pattern here? How can we recognize that and really work with that instead of against it?

Chris: I think the other thing we have to keep in mind is you and I have discussed hours at this point of why we choose to base our business on relationships versus transactions, and I think that’s just become all the more critical when you think about going forward. In this post-NAR settlement world, who’s gonna be more likely to wanna hire you and write you a check for your services? Somebody who which everybody now right Buyers have to pay out of pocket for their commission, whatever your fee. Is it more likely that somebody who over time has gotten to know you, discovered that they, like you, absolutely trust you? Are they going to be more likely to want to write you a check? Or somebody who calls in because they saw a house on Zillow, right? So boundaries are a choice, right? You want to build boundaries that hold relationships close and you want to build boundaries that hold the transaction opportunities. That’s probably not the right word, but potential customers add enough of a distance so you can do some basic research and practice some discernment as to who you bring in within those boundaries, who you bring into that circle so quickly as we conclude, what happens to realtors who never learned to set professional boundaries and there’s a lot of us out there, no question about it.

But I think that there comes a point for all of us where we simply can’t work any harder than we’re already working, and there comes a point where we can’t work any longer, right, so you can’t push any harder, you can’t try any harder, you can’t commit any more and you can’t go forward.

And that’s what happens when we fail to set boundaries. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say when you fail to set boundaries early in your career, this isn’t something that you have to wait to establish yourself before you have the luxury of setting boundaries, this is something that you’ve got to set boundaries basically the first year that you get your real estate license. You know there’s always a place where the harder we try, the further behind we fall. And that joy that you know sort of characterizes our work. You know, you realize after the fact that you slowly lose it over time, right, and that’s where people burn out, fade away, quiet, quit, turn in their license, whatever you want to call it. So again, I think the best way to avoid that protect the goose that lays the golden eggs is decide where you need to set boundaries and decide what those boundaries are going to be and give yourself permission to maintain and defend those boundaries.

Laci: Beautiful, beautifully said, and this is only part one of 12. So it’s not this feels like the whole message, Like it’s such an impactful message. It feels like kind of the whole conversation.

Chris: But that’s why it’s the first one, so you don’t the luxury I think back to.

Laci: You have a blog post on your website about the four freedoms of being in real estate and you really just don’t have access to the rest of these opportunities we’re going to talk about. Unless you take this first step, it’s just super easy to get overwhelmed and again I think about I’m not a real estate agent, but I am self-employed and you know you’re in charge of you. That’s one of the things my kids learned in school. It’s like you know you’re only in charge of you, you can only control yourself and you know your responses and your reactions and your rules. And that’s really the starting point for all of it.

Chris: I agree.