Top 5 Mistakes of Newly Licensed Realtors

If you're new to the industry, there are a number of things that you can do really really right and really really wrong as you start your career. Hey, my name is Chance Brown. I'm the broker owner of CB&A Realtors. And what I'd like to tell you today are five mistakes that we see new lenses make that hopefully I can help you avoid starting out. Number one is not recognizing that you are running a business. A lot of people come into real estate and they see things on TV or they see their friends do it. you are running a business and you have to take that approach as a business owner of getting up in the morning and going to work and investing your time, investing your money in the things that lead to success. And what that looks like is a lot of hard work. Often we see people underestimate the amount of work that goes into starting a new business. And that's really what you're doing is it's a startup. It requires a lot of time. It requires a lot of effort. It requires a lot of mental effort. There's stress involved, but you've got to work through it to get to where you want that business to grow and go in the future.

The second thing that we see them make is they choose the wrong broker. And listen, I can tell you this from firstirhand experience. I did not go to a broker when I first started in my industry that had a great training program. Great guy, love him to death, still send him referral business to this day, but not the best when it came to training and not an organized training program to help me set my business up for success. If you are coming in to a new business, don't you want to be set up for success the best you can? Don't just go to where your cousin works or your best friend works or the cheapest. Look for somebody who's going to invest in you and how you want to build your business and go there. The third mistake is not coming into the business ready to start up a business financially. Meaning, you don't have at least 6 months in reserves. And one of the things that I always like to talk to people about when we're having this conversation is you need to not only be prepared to be able to go 6 months or more without a paycheck, you need to be able to still live your life relatively comfortably. There's a difference between being able to pay your mortgage and still be able to live relatively comfortably, still be able to if you need to put an investment into your business or if you just want to go out to a restaurant with your spouse or friends or something like that, being able to live comfortably because what ends up happening, you get really tight with the finances. And maybe you're doing all of the right things and the money is coming, but when you get really tight with the financing, there's a lot of pressure. And that pressure, you can almost see it on people. it radiates out and your customers and your clients see it and it makes for a bad relationship.

And so your ability to live relatively comfortably for the first 6 months or so while you get up to speed and start getting some closings under your belt, super super important. Mistake number four is not tracking everything. Most of the people that get into the real estate industry are not by nature great trackers. They're not the most organized. We just want to go and do the things that are awesome. But what really leads to a great business is knowing where your business is coming from. Knowing the activities that you're doing that work, knowing what you're doing with your time so that you can work smarter, not harder. Maximize the efficiency and the effectiveness of your business. And that really comes down to tracking a few simple things. First of all, you want to track your activities each day. Second of all, you want to track your time and make sure you're using your time wisely. And third is you want to track where your leads and where your business are coming from so that you can invest in those places to get more in the future. And number five is not coming into the business with a long-term vision. It is a marathon, not a sprint. You've got to set up and do the things today that will lead to future success. And you can't do it all at once. If you do it all at once, a couple of things will happen. Number one, you'll likely burn out. It we see it all the time. Try to cram everything into to I'm going to have my entire business set up this week. You're not.