Pedal to the Metal- You Get What You Give

Imagine that you are driving down an empty highway. At first, your right foot rests steadily on the gas pedal. But the longer you drive, the heavier your foot becomes. You put more pressure on the gas and, in return, your speedometer puts out more horsepower, helping you zoom down the highway. In science, this is acceleration, a variant of velocity. I prefer to think of it more simply, though: basically, you get what you give. The more force that your foot gives the pedal, the quicker that you zoom down the highway to your destination.   

Real estate requires a similar “get what you give” mentality. Though we aren’t physically racing to get anywhere, we are always hustling to sell properties and build our business. Sometimes an agent’s mindset is wrong—they’re focused on what they can get, and not what they can give. But focusing on giving back—to your community, to your colleagues, and to your employees—is one of the secrets to being a successful real estate agent. If you don’t give much, then you won’t get much in return. And you won’t get very far in your real estate career, either. Keep your pedal to the metal and give back to the people in your personal and professional life by using these ideas below. 

1. Give back to your employees through trainings and events:

You spend a lot of time recruiting, hiring, and training the best employees for your company. Just because you’ve spent all of that time and effort on finding the right fit for your company doesn’t mean that your employees wouldn’t still benefit from a little extra training every now and then. Even if your employees are doing an exceptional job already, by providing them with unique training courses,you can inspire them to go above and beyond in their office roles. Bring an expert into the office and give your employees a seminar in new technology. Call a conference meeting and teach them what you learned about marketing at your latest conference, yourself. If one of your employees has expertise in a certain area, give them the opportunity to teach you and your colleagues. When you invest in your employees this way, you will help them grow in their own knowledge and skill set and prove to them that you care about their professional growth. Giving opportunity to your employees will allow them more ways to give back to your company through their work and will make them more excited about doing so. 

2. Give back to your colleagues through conferences:

I travel a lot for work. In the real estate industry, we have dozens of amazing conferences that we can choose to go to every year. I’ve written before about how important it is to attend these conferences in order to network with fellow real estate professionals and to learn from their wealth of knowledge. However, it’s important to remember that conferences should not only be about what you get. They should also be about how much you can give. You have your own vast wealth of knowledge about the real estate industry that deserves to be shared. Moreover, going out of your comfort zone and sharing what you know can benefit you as much as it benefits the people that you are talking to. For example, recently, I was honored with the task of being a speaker at the Inman Connect Conference in San Francisco. Not only was this an extremely exciting experience, but also a very humbling one. While I’ve always gone into conferences with the mindset of learning from others who know more than me in a particular area, by speaking to a room full of other brilliant real estate professionals about marketing, I gained confidence in knowing that I had something valuable to say and advice to impart on other agents. By sharing my own knowledge, I was able to give back to the real estate professionals who have shared so much with me over the years.and I was able to gain a new confidence and appreciation for conferences. 

3. Give back to your community through charity:

As a real estate agent, getting to know your community is extremely important. One of the best ways to do that is by giving back. It’s also one of the easiest. If you’re in a community that you truly love, then giving back is probably something that you do anyway. For example, I love fishing.So, for me, giving back to my community through Reels for Easter Seals, a charity that benefits special needs children by raising money through fishing tournaments, is a fun way for me to connect with coworkers and people in my community who, like me, love fishing and want to help people out. While helping people in your community find homes where they can live, grow, and raise a family is a valuable service in itself, helping people in your community through volunteerism is an equally important way to serve your community and to make connections with the people in it. People want to know that their real estate agent is someone who genuinely cares about and loves the people of the community that they work for, and giving back through charities and events that you are already passionate about is the perfect way to prove that.