Stuck In a Real Estate Slump? I Gotchu!

In this episode of the Rested Real Estate Agent podcast, host Sumina Bhatti introduces the concept of a 'motivation menu' designed to help real estate agents overcome slumps and burnout. She discusses the importance of community, creativity, and practical strategies to reignite passion in the real estate business. The episode emphasizes the need for agents to recognize when they are in a slump and provides actionable steps to create a personalized motivation menu that can be used individually or collaboratively with colleagues.

You can find me on instagram @rested.real.estate.agent, and you can sign up for my newsletter to keep up with upcoming workshops and other offerings on my website www.suminabhatti.com. 

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Transcript

Why A Motivation Menu

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Rested Real Estate Agent, a podcast that helps you navigate life as a real estate professional while finding some rest and balance along the way. I'm your host, Amina, an agent with 18 years of experience practicing real estate in the Austin, Texas area. I believe there's a better way to do our business, serve our clients, and not get burnt out. I help agents get from chaos to clarity. Today I'm going to share with you something I am so excited about. And it's an idea that I just made up. My team and I just made it up. And we're calling it a motivation menu. Like I said, it's completely made up. So what is a motivation menu? How do you create one? Who needs one? Etc. Stay tuned and we're going to discuss all of the above.

Market Whiplash And The Doldrums

SPEAKER_00 0:50

My team and I sat down to figure out how to motivate each other when we're in the doldrums. And listen, we all get in the doldrums in this business. So how can you recognize when you're in the doldrums? Um, it is totally normal to get this in any career, and especially in real estate. I think if you are working with a market like we have in the Austin, Texas area right now, which is a market in 18 years that I really haven't seen other than the very beginning of my career, which is a very, very strong buyer's market. Austin, for the most part, has been a balanced market to a very, very strong seller's market in the pandemic years. Really from about 2016 or so, we started moving into a more active market. Homes were on the market shorter amount of time. Um, and then of course the pandemic hit and we went to just total chaos when it came to homes being sold, you know, in record time with multiple offers, etc. And now we are experiencing the opposite market where it is taking a long time for homes to sell in many markets and parts of town, the overall inventory in the whole city per RMLS or per MLS area at least, I think sitting around six months or so for most of Central Austin, which is a pretty strong seller's market for our area. So if you're a newer agent who got into the business in the past five years in this market, and even if you're like me where you've been around for almost two decades, working with sellers who are frustrated, being creative and figuring out ways to market listings that have been sitting for a while, it is easy to get pulled into the doldrums. And working with sellers who may not be selling for the best reasons, like maybe they bought three years ago and at the top of the market and now, or four years ago, and now they have to sell for family reasons or whatnot, and the news you're giving them isn't the news they hope for.

Team Tool Becomes A Framework

SPEAKER_00 2:47

So we put together this concept, this little tool I'm calling the motivation menu. This can also happen if we hit a personal slump in our lives too, that we just kind of we go on vacation, we get sick, we get back to work, and we are just in a slump and it takes us a while to get back into our routine. And while this started as an idea to help me, I realized as a team lead, it really could be helpful to use on our team when they're feeling stuck. And not only that, but they can refer to it when we're feeling stuck. So, as you know, I have a team here in

Solo Agent Paths Out Of Slumps

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Austin. However, if you are a solo agent, I have a version of how I recommend you approach this. So, option number one, if you're a solo agent, is finding other agents to brainstorm with. Find a few of your colleagues, block off a couple hours. Um, that's option one for a solo agent. And if you are gonna do this by yourself, do it over the course of a week or so, compiling ideas of times that you notice you're excited about your work. Do not try to do this by locking yourself into an office and just trying to brain drain and come up with creative ideas by yourself in a room for two or three hours. So you don't have the magic that you need that comes with multiple minds or time working in a creative space. So, again, if you are a solo agent and you are going to be doing this on your own and you're gonna find some of your colleagues to do this together with, this solves a couple problems. One of number one, you are not relying on your one brain to come up with all the creative ideas. Number two, part of falling into a slump is often isolation. And by talking to some of your colleagues and coming together to do something like this, this can help the very thing that's causing you to be in a slump, which is isolation. And the antidote to isolation is community. So community and creativity and fun. That's the idea behind doing this with your colleagues and not doing it alone unless you are just really committed to doing it that way. If you are going to be doing this, option one or two as a solo agent, here are ways to get your creative juices flowing.

Spark Creativity With New Environments

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Go for a walk in a neighborhood you are not familiar with. Because if you're familiar with a neighborhood, you kind of already know what to expect. So maybe you're meeting up with your colleagues, you're gonna start off with a 15, 20-minute walk before you go into the office and sit down and chat more about this. So go somewhere that you don't normally walk. Sights for your eyes, new smells for your nose are things that are gonna help your creative juices flow when you're putting together ways that can motivate you in your business. Do you see where I'm going here with this? Um, go to a museum or an art exhibit. Maybe you meet your colleagues at a local museum, you grab lunch, and you just start jotting down ideas of ways to keep yourself motivated, um, you know, in a new spot. Museums, art exhibits are always great because there's so much creativity happening there as well. Coffee shops are an obvious thing. How about things like a garden center? Look at nature, look at how the plants grow, look at the colors. Nature can often be a place of inspiration. So walk into your local garden center, poke around, maybe, you know, meet for a coffee, go to a garden center, and then go to the office or somewhere at a coffee shop or something and sort of like do a brain dump of all the different ideas you're coming up with as you're walking through these creative spaces. Um, the idea here is not to just sit in an office with no other external input and try to come up with this on your own. And I will say that you do get bonus points on this if you get to stick your hands in the dirt and see some of the roots of plants and see their way of communicating with the microorganisms in there. Because if there are connection points and roots that you can see and touch and like really get your hands dirty in, that's exactly what you're trying to do in this endeavor of going out into the creative world, bringing that back into your business world and with your colleagues to then be in touch with your clients, right? You are the plant with these roots stemming out of you that you're trying to reinvigorate, right? You're trying to put some fresh fertilizer and fresh nutrients into your business and your mind and your brain. And what about doing something creative, like taking a painting class or popping into like a local craft studio with a colleague and then maybe getting dinner or coffee shop afterward to think about ideas that you can utilize for your motivation menu? You basically want to do something that's new and novel for your brain, right? Our brains like being in new environments. It's like juicy for it for them to do that. And our brains can start making connections in ways that it may not before.

Rest, Naps, And Idea Incubation

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Now, the other thing I think it's important to do when you are building out your motivation menu is to take a nap. Yes, I'm serious. The name of this podcast is the rested, rested and rich real estate agent. But rested also means that sometimes the best ideas come to us when we are thinking about it as we fall asleep. We wake up with solutions to some of the things that we're familiar with. If it worked for Einstein and Edison and Leonardo da Vinci, it can probably work for you too. Give yourself the time to really delve into this practice of creating this motivation menu for yourself.

Power State vs Primal State

SPEAKER_00 7:50

So now that we've talked about how, like how to set the right conditions for Quinn's motivation menu, let's talk about what you're doing. What is it that you're doing? What I want you to think about as you are contemplating this idea of creating a motivation menu. And if you want a copy of our motivation menu, just drop me a message and say motivation menu, and I will send you a copy of ours. I'm I'm more than happy to do that. I really think a lot of the magic comes when you're with your group and thinking about what works in your market and where you're at right now in your business. But I think you can totally steal away ideas that we have on our motivation menu as well. To give you an idea of the kinds of things I want you to be thinking about when you're creating your motivation menu, and you can also divide these into categories. We didn't we didn't really do that. Start with the question, start with the question, am I in a power state or am I in a primal state? Right? If you're in a primal state, which means you're really kind of in fight or flight, higher level thinking, creativity is like not accessible to you because maybe you're really scared about business, you have just lost a big contract, etc. And you may be in a place where being creative is just your brain just can't go there right now. And so you may have to start with kind of more primal

What Actually Makes You Feel Alive

SPEAKER_00 9:03

activities like moving your body, listening to inspiring podcasts, getting out of nature, phoning a friend to help yourself move out of this sort of frozen fear state and more kind of into higher function thinking, right? Some of these are some of the ideas we came up with. These are what juiced us up. This is what we all throughout as a team that helps us. The questions you want to ask are: what makes you feel alive in your business? What do you really enjoy about the work that you do with buyers, with sellers, with other agents? Is it the negotiations? Is it the walking properties with first-time buyers? And listen, if your answer is also nothing, nothing is making you happy about this business right now, that is very valid. That means you probably hit a point of burnout, right? That you are so burnt out that the thought of interacting with somebody just fills you with dread. You're probably beyond the point where motivation menu can help. But if you're not there, and I hope you're not there, then try to see if some of these can help pull you out or that you can challenge another agent to help you with this. So do you feel really engaged and connected with your business when you're at an open house, uh talking to folks who are coming in? Um, what about talking to people moving to the area about the new businesses that have opened up? Or are you someone who loves the financial and math side of it and helping people understand how to build equity, the tax and other financial advantages of homeownership? Is that what really juices you up? Create your motivation menu, your and your colleagues' motivation menu. It's just as a brain dump. Just dump them out there. And the reason that this is a menu is because depending on the mood you're in and the time you have available and kind of where you're at, not all of these can be done at any

Menu Items: Outreach And Education

SPEAKER_00 10:51

time, right? One thing, for example, one thing we put on our list was writing note cards to clients. And maybe you're in a place where you can't really do that at the moment, but calling a client is one way that you feel connected to your business. Some of the other things that we came up with were things like getting educated, take in-person classes. It's so easy to get stuck on Zoom doing classes. Go to your local board of realtors, go to your title companies, get dressed, get out of your house, go to the office or title company and hop not with your colleagues, see what that's like. Go into your office. What's the vibe? What's going on there? You know, what are agents talking about? Um, sometimes that can help give us a little bit of juice when we're feeling depleted. And again, like this is a menu because you have to ascertain, you have to use your wisdom, you have to look at it and see, you know what, right now, what feels really good to me would be to connect with past clients who closed. One practice that I've been trying to do while our market has been slower, certainly for sellers, is to remind myself that business is actually happening every single day. And one of the things I will do is log into the MLS. Our MLS, when you log in on the homepage, tells you it has like a little grid that tells you new listings, pending listings, under contract listings in the past week. Um, and you can look at that and see, you know what, even though I feel like nothing is happening and nothing is moving and everything feels really stuck, I can look at my MLS dashboard and I can see that actually

Reality Checks With MLS Data

SPEAKER_00 12:20

60 houses went under contract in the past 24 hours and a hundred of them closed. So if all those people, there are buyers out there and sellers out there wanting to transact, if that's true, then why could I not be one of those agents or why could my clients not be one of those people who are going to be a buyer or seller actually transacting in this market? Um and you should be able to pull those reports pretty easily if your MLS doesn't have that default view like ours does. But if I can I can toggle that and I can look at a week. So in a week, it tells me in the past seven days, 700 homes have closed. So that's definitely down from the volume we would expect around this time of year, but it 700 houses is not zero. So it's helpful for me to remember when I get into my doom and you know, doom mode of like nothing's happening and this is this is the end of real estate for me. Uh no, it's not. I also asked myself, will I never sell another house again? Obviously not. That's another way to kind of get my convince my brain that the story it's telling me is not true. The other thing I will do sometimes when I'm feeling in the doldrums of my business is go read my past client testimonials. I've talked about this on other episodes, but it's a great way to motivate yourself. Again, it helps you to remember that sometimes your brain is not telling you the truth. So when your brain is making up stories that you're not good at real estate or the market's never going to change, go back and read some client testimonials. Remember that nothing stays the same, right? Is a change of pace from where you work something that helps motivate you is maybe working out of a different coffee shop, out of your library. Austin has a beautiful downtown library with amazing views of downtown and the lake. And it is really nice to go work out of there. And I forget that sometimes.

Testimonials, Places, And People

SPEAKER_00 14:01

And so looking at my little motivation menu, I can look through this and be like, you know what? Actually, there's a there is a lot I can do when things feel stuck. Um, meeting with other brokers, agents, team members that you admire, let them know, like, hey, I'm kind of feeling a little slump. Can I buy you some coffee, tea? Can we go for a walk? And, you know, how's business going for you? And then there are practices that are not specific to real estate, but are generally considered good sort of mental help processes like gratitudes, being grateful for what you have, um, spending time in nature, moving your body, um, and could you do that with a friend? Could you do that with someone in your family or your neighborhood? That is what we came up with for our motivation menu. I hope that you find it useful. And if you'd like a copy of our motivation menu, the one we came up with with the Good Deeds Group, please just drop me a line, say motivation menu, and I will get that over to you. If you come up with something and you have things on your motivation menu that are different than ours, please let me know that too. I would love to see what ends up on someone else's motivation menu. And yeah, I hope that this helps you get out of a slump when you find yourself in one and that you can connect with some colleagues and create something of value for yourself and maybe some of the people at your office. Uh, would love to know how you implement

Gratitude, Nature, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 15:15

it. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Rested and Rich in Real Estate. I will look forward to seeing you as we move into the fall. As I have mentioned before, this podcast is still relatively new, and if you're listening to it and uh want to share it with someone in your office, I would greatly, greatly appreciate that. Thank you very much and stay well.