Top 5 Ways to Build a Team with Cleve Gaddis

I can't make a team work. And so what happens is they take a concept that should be able to be leveraged correctly so they can have some additional freedom, so they can have some additional enjoyment, so they can make at least the same amount of money while not killing themselves. And they turn it into something that is so negative in their minds that, I mean, you've seen these people, Chance. You bring up the subjective team and, oh, you've got to be kidding. No way am I going to hire a team. No way under any circumstances. And if they just do the basics right, everything is different. And then the team leader who's trying to grow the team, they can at least feel like they're making some forward progress. At least not feel like a failure. That's right. And that's, you know, it's one of the tough things is they get emotionally invested because it's theirs.

And, you know, one of the hard parts is you've created this business that is doing really well, you're successful, and you're wanting to leverage that into something more. And you can't because you have these feelings of additional stress and additional fit and all that. And it's just, it's really, really tough for a lot of people to deal with for the long term, and then they end up going backwards instead of going forwards. And so that's what we want to try to avoid today by sharing some of your tips. Just to give our viewers a little bit of background information, Cleve's managing partner of Go Get Us. Like I said, they have been one of the top 10 teams in the state of Georgia for the last, better part of the last decade. That's right.

He hosts a radio show. He's a business coach. He has, he's a father to four daughters, husband to a wife. He runs a property management company. He's got all these different things going on, but he's also got this super successful team that's out there killing it. And generally speaking, for the last, you know, three years that we've been working together, he's a pretty happy guy. That is true. Well, when you're the dad of four daughters, that generally makes you happy anyway, because they all think we're the kings. But let me tell you, so I appreciate you mentioning all that. But the reality is, is none of those reasons are why somebody should listen. The reality is they should listen because anything you can possibly have screwed up trying to grow a team, I have done it.

Now, and because I'm this high D personality similar to you, I mean, like when I'm headed in the wrong direction, I'm smiling and waving to people along the way because I'm so impressed with myself with what I'm doing. And so any of the things we're going to talk about today, Chance, I'm not telling you do as I did in the first place and everything will be fine. Because every single one of these five I have screwed up and I have screwed it up big time. And then I've had some type of realization that's like, oh my gosh, I've got that totally wrong. I'm not even thinking about that correctly. Because it really, from a team leader standpoint, it's how we think. It's how we process information that comes to us. Chance, I don't know, you being a real estate broker, I don't know if you ever have any days that are more stressful than others because of the issues that pop up.

And so you have to learn to handle that stress and you have to learn to react appropriately to that. And so I spent the first three or four years, I was trying to grow a team reacting inappropriately to everything. Yeah, you know, the analogy that I use a lot of times is I'm washing the car that I'm about to drive off the cliff. Right? Putting air in the tires, tuning it up. Exactly, you know, and then I would drive the sandwich right off the cliff and, you know, here we are. So, yeah, absolutely. In terms of us high Ds, or the reality is, is that the people in real estate who are the most successful, that does not mean they can translate that over to being a successful team leader. In most cases, what makes them a good salesperson makes them a very poor team leader. It's not that they can't fix it. They can absolutely positively fix it.

But I see exactly what you're saying. That would be like the very successful individual agent washing their car up, right? Getting ready to drive it off the cliff. You're exactly right. Exactly. All right. So, let's jump into our Top 5. And I'll let you kind of take it from here. Well, I had a hard time, Chance, narrowing it down to five. And so, I tried to pick five that are really ways you need to think differently about the entire situation. So, my first one is, and this is not the first time anybody's heard this. This will be the 900th time people have heard it, but it's all about the destination. It is all about the why. And so, let me give you an example. Let's just say we have a team leader whose name is Eric, and I'm changing the team leader's names to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Let's just say we have one team leader whose name is Eric and another whose name is Steve. And Eric wants to create a team because he doesn't want to have to do the work anymore, and he wants other people to come in and do the work. And so, he thinks to himself, if I hire four or five agents, and I get them to go out and get business, and I get them to split that business with me, then I'll get half of what everybody is doing. But in that case, Eric is thinking exclusively about himself, and that is absolutely no way to grow a team. So, to grow a team to make your life easier and to have your income come from the backs of other people, that just won't work. But then let's take Steve, for example, and Steve's goal is, hey, I want to continue doing business myself, but I'd like to lighten up just a little bit.

And I would love to find four or five people who look at the world correctly, who have the same value system that I do, and I would like to train them to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that, number one, they find on their own, and number two, that I'm able to provide them from Team Leadflow, from my client database. Maybe Steve wants to work most exclusively on the seller side of the business, and he wants to farm out or refer out his buyer business. Well, you can hear the difference in those two, in that Steve is very specific about what he's trying to do. He's trying to help and give opportunity to other people, and Eric is trying to take opportunity from other people. He's trying to get his opportunity by stealing it from somebody else. And so, you can grow a team, and I'll get your thoughts on these, but you can grow a team because you want to sell it.

You can grow a team because you'd like your team members to take it over. You can grow a team because you want to grow it for the next 10 or 15 years and shut it down and go away and do something else. But you need to be very specific, and I'm not saying that last option is a good option, but you need to be very specific with what you want to do with your team. Because then every decision chance that you make along the way should lead you to that end result. Yeah, and I would just, if I was going to tag anything onto that, the one thing I would probably throw onto that is, is the team the right thing anyway? Because in a lot of cases, you know, I see agents who really, it ought to be a working partnership. What they want is, if they got to go out of town, if they want to go do something with their kids, if they want to do, someone else can answer the phone.

So could it just be a working partnership, or do you really want to build a team? Because I think one is the difference between having a buddy in the industry, and one is a business, a real business. I think that is a very, very good point. And so let's do this. Let's define what I mean by a team. And so by a team, I do not mean two agents teaming up to work together just to sort of help each other out. That's just a partnership, that's just a buddy system, an accountability system. But I define a team as anything from an individual agent with a licensed or unlicensed assistant, helping them with administrative functions. So that's the simplest version of a team, all the way up to, you know, a team leader with a CEO structure, and then somebody handling their marketing, and somebody handling their listings, and all their buyers agents.

And so the team, the definition of a team starts with just one agent and an administrative assistant. And I will tell you that there very rarely is a case where you have an agent that wouldn't be way better off if they had a really good, smart, sharp administrative assistant, helping them with all of the lower value activities. I used to say $15 an hour activity. The truth is, is that those administrative assistants who are really good, they're worth way more than $15 an hour. And they put you in a position as a team leader where you can go out and do your $200 or $300 or $500 per hour activities. And that's the key is really kind of equating what is my time worth. And it's really hard to do. And you know what's interesting? So I was writing an article the other day that's going to be published in a magazine in a couple of months.

And I said in the article that you have to understand your value, what you're worth per hour. But at the same time, I'm trying to say that there's no more important time than the time you spend with your family. And so see, those two things don't line up. And so what I thought was interesting, Chance, is that I changed the description of, we don't have to understand what our value is per hour. We have to understand what's truly important to us. Because you would gladly exchange $500 an hour for more time with your beautiful daughter and your handsome little devil son. I mean, you would do that. And most people would. You know what I'm saying? I only call him handsome little devil son because he's got a mohawk. I saw he had a mohawk over the crisis period. It was dyed blue.

Yeah, I couldn't tell it was dyed blue. But so what we really want is to be able to have the time for things that are imported to us. And we do so many things that nobody cares if you do. So as an example, as a team leader, nobody cares if you prepare the pre-listing package. Nobody cares if you prepared all of the pricing information. Nobody cares if you, for example, go out and take the photos of the property or if you put it in the listing service or if you set up the drone. Photography or the three-dimensional virtual tour. Nobody cares if you do that. They care that they have you to help them make the best decisions along the way. They want your experience. You know right from wrong when it comes to buying a home or selling a home. And they want you for that experience.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Hey, is it okay if we go in, if we jump into number two? Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. So, and you've probably experienced this as well, but you talk to team leaders, you talk to agents on team, administrative staff, and everybody's bickering and complaining about the other people on the team. And I find it so interesting that they think that their team will function differently than a family. So, number two on Cleve's Top 5 for basically how to grow a team worth having is that teams have dysfunctions just like a family. So, as a family, you understand that you have dysfunctions and you work towards solving those dysfunctions.

But we do one thing more important with our family that we need to learn to do with everybody else. With your wife, with your kids, with your in-laws, with whoever they are, you give them the benefit of the doubt first. So, you don't assume they're coming from a bad place. You assume they're coming from a good place, even if it's not where you want them to actually come from. And even if they're heading in a direction, I have in-laws as well, even if they're heading in a direction that you don't think they should go, you assume they're coming from a good place. So, if you're treating your team like a family, and I'm not saying the team is as important to you as your blood relatives, as your family. What I'm saying is, if you treat them like a family, then you have a much better, you have a much increased ability to understand what they're capable of and where they're coming from.

And so, Chance, if you and I are working together and it's your job to train me, if you understand where I'm coming from, and if you really understand what my capabilities are, what I'm good at, then you'll probably be the best teacher I ever had. You know, when I would first run into this, my initial thought was, well, the team leader isn't doing a good enough job of setting expectations, of spelling out, this is the process, this is the system. And that was just kind of like the default thought, because a lot of people rush into building teams and they haven't got the systems and processes and expectations and roles and all of that written out. But what I have realized over time is that that's just human nature.

It's just the way it works in family or in business. Just understanding that you don't understand as a team leader will set you free. So, whatever you think is happening, I can assure you as a team leader, you don't truly understand it. And once you start to seek to truly understand, I've got a team leader here in Atlanta who has a team member who has an attitude problem. And he's trying to solve the attitude problem by sending a 2,000 word email to explain why it needs to, you wouldn't send a 2,000 word email to your son to tell him to change his attitude. And he is assuming that the person's coming from a bad place. But the reality is, is what his agent wants is whatever is best for her.

And they're not having alignment of what's best for her and what's best for him. Now, I'm not saying, Chance, that when it comes to a real estate team, you have to treat them like a family. And everybody who's in the family today needs to be part of the family next month, because that's not the case. Sometimes in businesses, you have so much of a disconnect that you have to make some changes. But if you do that, it's the last resort. And you're assuming that they want the same things out of life that you do. Chance, I've met a lot of people in the last almost 52 years, and I've never, ever, ever met someone that just had bad intentions. Right. They all wanted good stuff. Unfortunately, some people didn't know that they shouldn't have to cheat to get it or things like that. But they wanted what I want in life. They want balance and time with their family and reasonable ability to have some financial stability as they get older.

They want to be able to help others around them and do some good and give back. That's what people are looking for. And so if you have a hard time getting people that bit into your culture, it could be because you have none. And so that was going to be actually my question for you right there was, how often is the dysfunction because of the head of the family, not because of the family member? So I will tell you it's probably 50-50, but let me answer your question differently. 100% of the time, 100% of the time, the team leader needs to assume it's them and not the other person. So I know I kind of danced around that a minute because there are times when we have people who are staff members, administrative staff or team members, they just can't cut it.

But I'll tell you, 50% of the time it's us and 50% of the time it's them. But 100% of the time, we need to assume it is us. I have a great team leader, south of Nashville, Tennessee. Nothing was ever his fault. Everything was somebody else's fault. And we spent six months working through that mentality. And as he changes his mentality, it is amazing to see, by the way, what happens with the attitudes of the people on his team and the production, which is really what he's looking for. People want to be happy. They want to have fun. You know, you create culture, which involves making people have fun when you have meetings. And this is a small example. But I said, you got to start playing music at the beginning of your meetings.

And he would get people on his, you have a private Facebook page for your brokerage. And I think that's awesome. And he has the same thing. And so I get to peer behind the, under the covers, if you will, for both of you. And when he started talking about what song was going to be played at the next meeting, he had more conversations from people who worked for him about that dang song than anything real estate related. Because that's what, that's how people are wired up. And so he has decreased his level of stress and judgment on other people and increased his revenue and his income. And it seems weird that that would be the case. But if you could ever get over thinking, hey, my business family should be perfect, even though my, I've never met a real family that was perfect. And I'm sorry, Chance, I've met everybody in your family and they're beautiful and gorgeous and smart and handsome.

But the truth is, is that they're just like any other family. Yeah, absolutely. No matter how good we can make it look on Facebook, right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So our third point is. So the third point is you have to create accountability, but you have to do it through awareness. So let's say that we had a brand new agent who was coming into the real estate business. I cannot create an internal feeling of accountability within them. Meaning if they don't want to perform at a certain standard, they are certainly not going to do it because I want them to. And so awareness is a gentle, easy thing to do.

So awareness is saying to your 15-year-old learner's permit driver that, hey, just so you know, your right tire is off the road. And ideally, all four tires are on the road, ideally. That's creating awareness. Creating accountability is if you don't get back on the road, I'm going to take this car away from you. You're never going to get the keys. And we know, and Chance, I know you don't have kids that are quite old enough for that yet, but you're coming. You're coming up on that. Real quick. Creating awareness because they're going to measure themselves because they want to measure themselves against what you give them. And they have to have that internal motivation. And so there's really five keys.

And I don't know. I was thinking that we would jump into your brokerages training center, and maybe we'll do that for one time. But I don't want to do it for all five, if that's okay. But you have to have a system for teaching people what to do. And there's really five basic systems. And anybody who is out there, Chance, I guess if they reached out to you, you'd probably share these with them because you have copies of all of these. But number one, you must use a lead tracker. And the reason you must use a lead tracker is because it's the same reason that a grocery store must use an inventory control system because they got to know how many people are coming in to buy Wheaties this week. And they know that by the number of people who bought them last week and the week before and the week before. And that's how many boxes of Wheaties they order. And I know it sounds strange, but you have to feed a real estate business with a certain number of new prospects on a monthly basis.

We recommend, and I know you recommend that that number is 25. In some cases, it's 25 to 30. So as a team leader, the first thing you can do to help your agents be successful is you can help them be fully aware every single day of the number of leads they're bringing into the system. And I would use a lead tracker in order to do that. If you don't mind, let me share the screen. And where they're coming from, right? Because you want to know where you can allocate more resources, time, effort, so that you can draw more leads from those places. You are exactly right. So I'm just going to pull up the On Demand Learning Center, which is your training center. And there is a program called Rising Agent Mastery Program, which is a training program for all new and experienced agents.

If somebody is listening and their business is not where they want it to be, the RAMP program is where they need to go. One of the best programs I've seen. And I'm just going to go to the beginning of week two. Sorry, my internet's a little slow today, but go to the beginning of week two and see there's a video right here. And so your people who are learning to track leads are learning to do it through a lead tracker. And so they'll open this video. We won't play it here today, but it's a whopping nine minutes and 26 seconds, meaning we're asking them to invest nine minutes and 26 seconds today. And then we're giving them the lead tracker document that they can use to start tracking all of their leads. And so let me make a copy of this. I'll go ahead. My internet's going a little slow. But it shows how they will track their leads. And it allows them to go in and have summaries of where did all the leads come from.

It allows them to look at charting of, you know, the lead sources and it lets them to look at the production. Where did the sales come from, from the lead sources? And so step number one is you must use some sort of a lead tracker. The next thing is daily success habits. You have never had this problem, Chance, but a lot of people do. And so you understand it's what you're doing every day that produces your results 60 days, 90 days down the road. You get that from a real estate perspective. You've never celebrated last month's closings for the next three months while you went broke in the process, which unfortunately a lot of people do. And I hate to say that, but your average real estate agent, they have such an exciting personality that unfortunately they're kind of like this.

High one day, low the next. And that's why people love them. And that's why people want to work with them. The issue is, is that in order to produce consistent income, and if somebody's out there listening and they can relate to, oh, my God, I made $10,000 last month and then $0 for three months and then $14,000. And then I made negative $3,000 because I had, you know, to pay some expense I didn't know about. I mean, nobody wants to be on the earnings or revenue roller coaster. Nobody wants that. And so what we have to do is we have to learn to celebrate the activities today that lead to results tomorrow. And so we've created, go ahead, Chance. No, I was just going to say, you say that I've never known that, but honestly, I have. I am, I'm the first one to get call reluctance.

I hate making phone calls. I hate doing that. And so having that piece of accountability for me, even if I'm not going to go out and get, you know, the prescribed number of points for the day, but I need to make these five things. I have to be very, very deliberate about that or it just, it's the very first thing I'll put off tomorrow. It is so easy to do. I mean, it is so, so easy. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I can take something that is entirely inconsequential and make it seem like a really big deal so that I don't have to do the thing that I'm uncomfortable doing. And what's interesting is, and this is a topic, let's, I don't know if you're interested in having me back, but we got to have another conversation because we've got to talk about the real five top strategies for eliminating call reluctance.

Because when people are reluctant to call us because they have an increased understanding of their importance in the world, meaning they think they're more influential in the process than they are. And the reality is we're just trying to find people who are planning to buy or sell a house on their own separate from us and convince them to use us. But let me show you here on the new habits. This is the creating new habits video. I think everybody who's going to grow a team, you have to have some ways for training your people. You have to have some really good systems in place. This is a nine minute, 28 second video. And then you've got a daily success habits tracker. And so what happens is we're trying to say, so if somebody sold 24 houses a year in the Houston market chance, what would their earnings be? Average earnings. Probably somewhere in the 175, 200. Can we just call it 200?

So we believe that if an agent would get 61 points, would get 61 income producing points a day, then they would earn $200,000 a year in the Houston market. And I don't know about you, I'm not smart enough to stay on track to earn $200,000 a year, but I'm dang sure smart enough to get 61 points a day. Now, I don't currently get points in my business, but somebody has to get them for me because I have to continue to produce. I have to meet with sellers. I have to meet with buyers. I have to do things to produce. And so what happens is it allows somebody to keep up with the number of calls they make, and then it allows for them to get points based on certain activities. It's real simple calls, emails, texts, handwritten notes, showing homes to clients, buyer listing agreements, and you get a certain number of points. And what's amazing is that people who cannot keep up with the fact that, oh my God, I worked my butt off and that's why I made money for three months.

And then they can't figure out for the next three months why they're broke, broke, broke. And by the way, they had already spent all the money that they made in the prior three months because they knew they were going to get it. So they went ahead and bought the new car and spent it all in advance anyway. And if you'll just judge your success on a weekly basis by the number of points you get, that is the key. And I would just throw on there from the perspective of the team leader, I think that it's really important that you be able to see these points because over time, you're going to start to be able to say, okay, well, buyer agent Joe was getting 50 points a day for this week. And he set X number of appointments and ultimately that translates into Y number of closings. And so you're able to say, for every 10 phone calls you make, you're getting a closing.

Or whatever the number is. Right. If you want to go out and make this much money this year, this is the number of phone calls you're going to have to make. Phone calls, text messages, whatever it is. And then as a team leader, you're having a meaningful interaction that says, if you're not happy with where you are, change these activities or continue to do these activities and this will happen. See, that's helpful. But what a team member hears is, oh, Chance, you haven't sold anything in a few months. And I'm just going to pretend here for just a second because I would never say this. But, I mean, are you stupid and lazy? I mean, is it just, is it one or the other? Are you both? That's what they hear when we go and get on to them. And, by the way, I listen to how sometimes team leaders talk to people and I think I would feel the same way. And so, this is a positive, proactive way to work with them. Let's cover three real quick things.

Go ahead, Chance. Oh, no, then I was just going to talk about the term accountability for a second because, you know, I think accountability in a lot of cases has been equated over time with punishment. And I think that if you're coming from, you know, going back to your first point where it's all about the destination, if you're coming from a position and your team member knows you're coming from a position where you have their best interest at heart, where you're trying to help them get better, to do more, to have more freedom, to have more flexibility, all of those things, then accountability is really me caring enough about you to hold you accountable to the things I know you're capable of.

So, and I hope anybody who's listening to this really paid attention because if I hold you accountable through awareness for your benefit, you will give me permission to do that all day, every day, and three times on the weekend. Because if I'm like, Chance, you said you wanted to buy an investment property and we're not moving forward with that and what are we doing? I'm not going to make you feel inferior by pointing out that you're falling short from your personal goal. And I'm going to say, Chance, why are we falling short and what do we need to do to get back on track? And it makes all the difference in the world, all the difference in the world. Let me tell you, and I'm going to combine two things. We need to make sure that everybody has a good system for categorizing leads and for managing their CRM. We have an agent here in Atlanta. Her name is Debbie Liggett. She's been in the real estate business for 27 years.

To say she understands, real estate, Chance, would be an understatement. She likes to travel four times a year, go overseas to ride horses. She doesn't like to work nights, and she doesn't like to work weekends. She also hated to categorize leads and use her CRM, so she had a problem. Now, we figured out how we could get her to $100,000, $125,000. She wanted to get to $150,000 to $200,000. And she realized that if she would just do two things, number one, categorize every single lead that flows into the system as either an A, a B, or a C. That is, somebody who needs to buy now, you have an appointment with, somebody who needs to buy within the next 90 days, you follow up twice a month. Somebody needs to buy in 90 days or longer or sell in 90 days or longer, you follow up once a month. So, number one, she started categorizing every single lead.

And when I say every single lead, I mean all capital letters, every single lead. And then she'd put them in a CRM system. She'd launch a plan for them. And is it okay if I curse on your video? She'd follow the damn plan. If it says call them, she'd just call them. And if she didn't know what to say, she'd just call them and talk to them about what was going on in the market, what was going on in the world. And what happens is the discipline chance to do categorization of leads correctly and CRI management correctly leads to all the freedom that she wants in life. Because at the end of the day on Friday, sorry, Chance, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that for anybody listening who is having trouble equating this to real world experience is this. I don't think that there is a real estate agent in America who's been at this for any period of time who hasn't had that client they've been working with that's walked into a builder's model and bought a home without them.

Walked into an open house and bought a home without them. And it's just, and almost always you're like, damn, I was going to call them last week and I didn't. A, B, C or whatever that classification system makes sure that those things don't fall through the cracks. And that's the key to me. It's huge. And so as a team leader, I need to make sure you're aware and you and I need to probably have a sit down and take a look at your CRM at least twice a month. And I need to ask you four or five questions. We can talk about that at another time. And the last thing in terms of creating awareness, accountability through awareness, is you need to have a good program for following up with your SOI, a top 50 program. That's what we promote. And you need to have the 50 people who are most likely to give you referrals. You need to have some deep conversations with them and connections with them on a monthly basis.

And the reality is, is you as a team leader, if you, number one, make sure they have 50 people categorized as top 50, what a novel concept. Number two, make sure that the date of last contact is no more than 30 days in the past. And number three, that they have a topic to talk to people about on a monthly basis. What's amazing is that if you tell somebody, here's some valuable information, you can share it with everybody. They're a lot more eager to call people than if they're calling going, hey, Chance, do you have a referral? Chance, are you going to buy? Chance, are you going to sell? Chance, are you going to get your investment property? Chance, do you want to this? People don't want that. But if I called and said, hey, Chance, let me tell you what's going on in the Houston market. Let me tell you what we can and can't do from real estate. Let me tell you about mortgage forbearance. Let me help you. The odds are when it's time for you to buy or sell. I don't even have to say anything. You're going to say, Cleve, can I stop you right now? My wife and I are planning to go over and look at the new home community on Sunday.

Can you meet us over there? That's what happens. Yep. That's what happens. So two additional things, and I know we're running long, and I hope it's good information. But number one, you have to understand that when you perceive something one way and somebody else perceives something different, that the difference is not just in the difference. The difference is the difference times the difference. It gets magnified huge because I'm saying something to you. You don't even understand where I'm coming from. You understand they do not understand and keep trying to teach them. So you've got to overcome the optics. You've got to overcome the fact that they see it one way and you see it another way. And they're listening to what you say from their perspective, and that's okay.

And you're saying what you're saying from your perspective. It can be a real problem. So what's the cure to that? Just repetitiveness? Exactly. So whenever you think you have talked about it enough, keep talking about it. Gotcha. And the main thing is if I want to understand, so let's just say we have our core values. And I'm trying to make sure, because you're my new team member, you're my team member chance. I'd love, by the way, to have you as a team member. By the way, it's not a little recruiting employee. So I'm telling you, okay, you need to understand these core values. If I really want to understand where you're coming from, I'll get you to tell me a core value, and I'll get you to tell me what it means to you, and then I will listen for the gap. I will listen for how your understanding is different than I wanted it to be.

And now you and I can have a meaningful conversation, not right then, but at some point to help you better understand. So I have to watch you, I have to see you in action. Got you. All right, so point number five in these, you know, this statement that you're about to make is like, has a very, very deep meaning for me. So I'm going to let you take it. Well, so, but if so, I'm going to have, now you've got me curious, which means I have to know your meaning. So it really, it's not about you. And so let's start, you've got a story. I'd love to hear that first. And then I'll tell you real quickly kind of what that means to me. I've told this story to people before. So some people who are watching this are going to have heard it before, but you know, I graduated from college and I grew up in the era of Reaganomics and Alex P. Keaton.

And, you know, I had these huge ambitions that when I got out of college, I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was 30 and this and that, whatever. How did that work out for you? How did it work? At the ripe old age of 24, completely disappointed with my progress in life. I'm sitting on the floor of my shitty apartment that was like a $350 apartment. Is that a specific floor plan for an apartment? A shitty apartment? Yes, it is. In this case, it was. And, you know, I'm just, I'm not happy with where I am in life. And I had this bookcase in my apartment and one shelf of it was filled with these religious books that my mom would bring me. And as it turns out, as I was going through college, as I was going in my early 20s, I was less concerned about my spirituality than I was about, you know, the dollar beer special at the bar and whatever else.

I don't think that your situation in college was unique, by the way. No, no, it wasn't. So, just out of dumb luck, I reach over and I pick up this book off the bookshelf that my mom had left for me years before that I had never touched. That just was decoration on this bookshelf. And it was a book called Purpose Driven Life. Oh. It filled a zillion copies. Rick Warren's super famous because of it. And I will tell you, I read the first four words of it and never picked it up again. And the first four words of that book are, it's not about you. And it changed my entire perspective of what I was hoping the world was going to give to me versus what I could provide to the world.

And, you know, being of service to people as opposed to being in a place of expectation from people. And that's why it's not about you story. And it's such a beautiful story. I thought I was going to be all that. Turns out I was not all of that. So, I'm sitting around drinking too much, eating too much, feeling sorry for myself, whatever the bad things you're not supposed to do. Sort of what could, by the way, spiral out of control. I mean, there are people who spiral out of control there. Well, now, I believe, by the way, talk about spirituality. It probably wasn't by accident that you pick up that book. And I don't want to get into that stuff today. I'm okay with what everybody believes. But the cool thing is that when you understand it is not about you, then and only then do you have the chance to influence people around you.

Yeah, because the reality is, Chance, I watch what you do as a leader. And because of your charitable giving and because of a lot of the things that CB&A likes to do, you really get people inspired to move in the same direction where you're going. But the reality is you're not doing it because it's good for you. You're doing it because it's good for the people you're helping. You're doing this because it's good for the people who work with you. And so, I would love to give you more meaning to it's not all about you. But no matter what you're talking about or who you're talking with, whether it's a seller, a buyer, an administrative assistant, a listing partner, a runner, a buyer's agent, anybody. It's not about you. It's about them.

And if you'll make the conversations you have about them instead of about you, make all the difference in the world. And if they think differently, Chance, just one last thing. If they think differently than you, then you care about them and you make it about them and you continue sharing your vision for them and your vision for the company. And you'd be surprised if you make it enough about them. Eventually, they will catch it. And when they catch it, they'll have it permanent. Yeah. You know, I think one of the words we've been using a lot recently as we've kind of gone through this whole coronavirus scare and the stay at home and everything else. The word that's kind of come to the forefront has been empathy and being very empathetic to the situation and how people feel. Even if you aren't feeling sick or you're not feeling scared or whatever it is, putting yourself, you know, in the place of those other people and kind of feeling what they're feeling.

And I think that that kind of ties into that. It's not really about you. And by the way, let's acknowledge that being empathetic is harder in Texas than it is in most states. And I love Texas, by the way. I'm from Georgia. I love the great state of Texas. But sometimes we're like, boom, let's just rock and roll. And we're going to kick its teeth in and we're going to put our cowboy hats on and go. And that's fine. But people who don't feel the same way, they're not going to want to go with you. And it's OK for them to feel differently than you. You still want to help them get to where they want to be. And you want to get rid of some of the weird feelings that might be holding them back. But you have to understand where they're coming from. So that's a big mouthful. So it's not about the destination. Teams have dysfunctions just like families. You create accountability through awareness and no other way. You understand that when you look at it differently and somebody else looks at it differently, it is magnified by multiplying those two together.

So it's like because you look at it differently and I do, it's multiplied by itself. And it's worse than we could ever imagine. And then it's not about you. And if you get that, you will probably lead a much happier life. And I will bet you that you have probably had some struggles after 24. But I'll bet your life has been entirely differently than it would have been had you not learned that it wasn't about you in the first place. Absolutely. All right. So that wraps it up for today. I want to thank our guest, Cleve Gaddis, for sharing his tips. I want to thank you for taking the time to watch and be committed to helping grow and improve your business and we will see you next time on Top 5. Thank you. Thanks, Chance.