Ep027: Finding Opportunity Within Your Unique Ability

Chris: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Connect, practice, track and Grow podcast. I’m Chris McAllister and I’m thrilled to be here this morning with my podcast partner, Laci LeBlanc, and today we’re diving into the third part of our 12-part series called Protecting the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs, and this part, this episode, is entitled Finding Opportunity in your Unique Ability. So good morning, Laci.

Laci: Good morning, Chris. Happy to be here. How are you?

Chris: I’m doing okay. Seems like it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve done this. So, like we said, we’re a little out of practice this morning, but I’m sure once we get started we’ll find the flow.

Laci: Yeah, we always do, we always do, and this is a great topic, so I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it.

Chris: Yeah, today we’re going to be exploring Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, dan Sullivan’s concept of unique ability. And, for those of you who aren’t familiar with unique ability, it’s really about identifying and leveraging the combination of talents and passions and skills that are unique to you, that well, maybe they’re not necessarily unique to you, but they are the things that you are exceptionally good at and not just exceptionally good at, but you absolutely love doing. You can even look at it as this combination of talents, passions and skills that, quite frankly, you’re just better at than anybody else talents, passions and skills that, quite frankly, you’re just better at than anybody else and this concept of unique ability is the key to creating and capitalizing on opportunities and achieving your long-term success.

Laci: Life-changing. This was a life-changing concept for me as somebody who’s always been proud of being kind of a jack all trades master of many figuring out. It took me years to figure out my unique ability and when I did, it really and truly empowered me to to take steps in my career that put me in this exact position doing this with you today. So I think this is, if they don’t already know about it, this is really going to open people’s eyes to a new way of looking at their business and their lifestyle.

Chris: It’s been life-changing for me. You know, when I first got out of college and went to work in retail. You know you get rewarded for doing every single task at hand. You don’t get to pick and choose what you’re going to do or what you’re good at. So one of the benefits of being in business for ourselves is that we get to decide what we’re going to focus on. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a drawn out process to actually get there and live it and enjoy it. So that’s a mindset.

It’s something that I think we both work on, continuously, trying to spend more and more time in our unique ability. But it’s transformative, right as you just said, it’s incredibly powerful when you allow yourself to do more of what you’re naturally great at, and 99.9% of the time when you do that, eventually you make far more money and achieve far more goals and get your time back, and all of those things know a clear definition of it. When you take that idea and you combine it with some self-assessment tools like Myers-Briggs and Colby and Fascinate and Clifton, you start to see insights and patterns that really help you discover not just discover more of who you are, but become more of who you are deep down and I know it’s kind of a buzzword, but you know, when you take these assessment tools, which I’m a junkie for these. I can’t. You know, I’m addicted to these.

Laci: Same. Send me every link, yeah, you know and your unique ability.

Chris: What you end up with is you start to connect or reconnect with your authentic self. You know you’d say that sounds a little new agey, but I think it’s a big deal, especially when you talk about daily peace, daily happiness, you know, daily wins and so forth. So it helps you reconnect with who you are and those unique strengths and talents that a lot of people have lost sight of over the years.

Laci: Yeah, it’s like a guiding light, right Like it’s once you figure this out. And I love doing everything and I love learning new things, but everything doesn’t come so naturally to me, and so that’s where, as somebody with severe ADHD and who really does enjoy being kind of all over the place, my focus ended up being what comes naturally to me. And when I’m doing those activities, just like sitting here talking with you on this podcast, thinking about things from a marketing perspective, I am happier. Just in the moment I am happier, and then, kind of overall, I am happier, and I think that’s a huge thing that we miss in this country, maybe everywhere, I don’t know. But you know, work and happy are not necessarily supposed to align. You’re supposed to work yourself to death, to the bones, like. If not, you’re not doing enough.

Work ethic, you can be happy while you’re doing, while you’re working yourself to the bone and not feel guilty about being happy while you’re working.

Chris: You know, so now we’re moving into a therapy session. So, but why can’t we be happy at our work Exactly? We also want to touch on today strategies for focusing on high impact activities, delegating things that aren’t your unique ability, and building a supportive environment and a team around you that compliments your unique ability. We’re also going to emphasize the importance of continuous improvement and personal development, just to get to that sense of ongoing, I guess, success and fulfillment. So, whether you’re a seasoned real estate professional or you’re just starting out, this episode, I think, is going to be packed with insights and tips that can help you generate more leads, book more appointments, close more deals and, ultimately, make more money.

All right, so let’s get into the actual definition of unique ability. So Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, defines unique ability as a combination of talents, passions and skills that you are both exceptionally good at and love doing. So. The concept centers around the idea that everybody has at least one unique ability that can be harnessed to achieve greater success and fulfillment in both their personal and professional life. And you know, according to Dan, recognizing and focusing on your unique ability allows you to contribute the most value to your team, your organization, your business, your clients, while also finding that the work you do, you know, becomes more energizing and motivating. In other words, lacy, as you just just said, it makes work a happy thing, not a drudgery or something to be avoided what a novel idea it is a novel idea.

Laci: It really is for most people, I mean you know you talked you talked about.

You know, we talked about this being transformative and that’s one way, but just like delegating tasks, and I think that people in a self-employed situation so a real estate agent, in a lot of ways right has a broker to rely on, but they don’t have a staff. Right, I don’t have a staff, necessarily, but finding out this information about yourself and putting together this list of you know where your Venn diagram collides on things you’re good at and things you actually enjoy, really can be life-changing in that way.

Chris: Exactly so. When you leverage your unique ability and you focus more on those aspects of your real estate business that you naturally excel at and are more passionate about again specific to what we do in real estate you just get better at the whole business and again you’re just a lot happier. You also get to maximize your impact, you become far more efficient and again your satisfaction level at the end of the day just goes through the roof. And then the whole. The really cool thing is and we’re going to dig into this too when you combine your unique ability with somebody else’s unique ability, you have the foundation of a unique ability team, and you know we’re going to talk about that here as we get into these tools. But you know, I really think of me, you and Kylie Sark, our, our artist, our graphic designer as like the perfect unique ability team and, I think, a great example that we’ll touch on today. So I’ve been with a strategic coach client for many years and I think the world of Dan Sullivan and the program and we’re going to provide a link to tools you can use to get clear on your unique ability in the show notes here, and you can always learn more about strategic coach at strategiccoach.com. So let’s jump in a little bit to these different tools and resources that can help you identify and capitalize on your unique ability. And, again, the cool thing about these tools is they can help you discover and become more of who you are deep down and help you reconnect with you, know who you were at five years old, right, your authentic self and some of the strengths that you may have lost sight of. So the first one I want to touch on is one that I’m just super excited about, because we’ve been working with this tool just this year.

But there’s a tool called Fascinate that was created by Sally Hogshead, and if you’ve done a traditional personality test like Myers-Briggs which we’re going to talk about here also then you already know a lot about your strengths, right, and that’s great. But Sally’s point of view is, in a crowded and competitive market much like real estate, to stand out and win you need to get clear on what makes you different, right, and I can’t help, but you know, equate different with unique and unique ability. So that’s how we get here, and we’ll have a link in the show notes to the Fascinate test that Sally’s put together. But you know, my fascinate profile is called the maestro and you know it’s amazing to me how accurate that really is. And, in a nutshell, you know I communicate my value through Sally’s definition of power and prestige. So you know I have a little discomfort with being motivated by power and prestige, but the way she defines it, when you read through it it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it’s such a cool tool. And tell us about your fascinating profile.

Laci: Yeah, I am the talent.

Chris: Yes, you are.

Laci: It’s what it’s called, and it’s passion and prestige. So I think that’s the way that I felt when I got this result was a combination of maybe justified and relieved and proud, like those were the feelings that came to mind when I got the passion, prestige, the talent result on the fascinate report. And how did you feel?

Chris: It’s all yours, other than a little worried that you were going to, you know try to take over the world, yours other than a little worried that you were gonna you know, yeah, try to take over the world right.

You know, at some point you just got to accept it and that’s who I am. And then there’s and I get that same message from every other instrument you know I use. So it’s not like one says this and the other says that. There’s a constant theme that runs through. You know my, my Clifton strengths, my Colby, my Myers Briggs, and fascinated I don’t know why I feel that twinge of discomfort. I don’t know if it’s. You know I don’t want to appear too prideful or you know what will people think, but the way Sally defines it, it’s a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. And you know I do want to make the world better for real estate agents and homeowners and investors and so forth. So you know it’s one of those things you got to kind of let the baggage go and embrace your authentic self. So if that’s me, that’s me.

The other cool thing is we have to get Kylie on a podcast here too, but Kylie’s profile is called the catalyst and I think it’s interesting, even when you think in terms of the profile.

I mean, I tend to have these ideas that I can’t put into motion Pictures Certainly not pictures and what’s interesting is I get this idea and maybe you and I discuss it, you know, as we’re developing the idea, and then I hit a stopping point, and then you know we try to, we don’t try, we communicate it to Kylie and then Kylie starts to put it into a visual right, using pictures, using design and so forth, and that first pass, or second, third pass, whatever, each pass that she takes, each iteration is a catalyst, in my opinion, for the next breakthrough, and that whole process of the three of us working together over and over, iteration after iteration, has become super powerful, and I think you can see it in the updates to the website and the weekly emails we’re sending out and all the other things that our listeners might come into contact with on a daily, weekly basis when they interact with Ruth.

Laci: Yeah, I totally agree, and I share prestige with you and I share passion with Kylie, and that puts me in the middle as a communicator right, a translator almost and that’s one of the things that I identify as my unique ability is the ability to translate from, in my case in particular, entrepreneurs to implementers, right From the from the idea at the idea guys or girls, to the people who are actually implementing the ideas. I’m I’ve always been able to speak both of those languages, so I think that’s huge in this team.

Chris: That’s your unique ability.

Laci: I mean you make it real yeah exactly, and so that was just to be a part of this team with you and Kylie, and to feel like it works so well, to be able to put some you know science or logic or behind why it works so well. I think is and this is, after the fact, right. We didn’t take these and decide to work together because we thought that we aligned, we worked together, knew it worked well, then took these and figured out oh well, that makes sense, that’s why it works Now we’re fine tuning what we do together and we’re becoming that much more and more productive, so it’s a pretty cool thing.

Right, and so my comment earlier about how you know I don’t have when you’re self-employed or you don’t necessarily have a staff, or that’s what I was getting at, it probably seemed a little open at the end. But they’re finding out your unique ability and really using that as a guiding tool in your day-to-day helps you find the right team, whatever that looks like for you. So if you’re a real estate agent, you know can’t help but emphasize how your relationship with your broker, the mortgage lenders that you work with, you know how those need to align in order to best support you to do to be your best self in your career.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. The next tool I wanted to bring to everybody’s attention is called the Colby Index, and the description from the Colby website, which we’ll put in the show notes as well, is do more naturally. Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Colby A Index, the only assessment that measures how you instinctively get things done. Then unlock pain-free performance by tapping into your team’s unique strengths. So, again, that whole description just ties into you know unique ability, but it takes it the next step about how you actually do work. So Colby A is interesting. It gives you a score across four dimensions and the four dimensions are fact finder, and this is somebody I equate this with somebody who does deep research or research in general Follow through, which I always equate to finishing up what you start being a quick start, which is somebody who jumps into an opportunity with both feet, you know, almost without thinking, or at least it appears to be without thinking. And then an implementer, somebody who actually likes to use tools and get things done, finish things, fix things and things like that. So those may not be perfect descriptions, but you can find out on the Colby site when you take the test. But for me I’ve only met a couple of people who have a Colby, like I do. And again back to strategic coach. Everybody is strategic coach takes the Colby. You know their first year in the program. So whenever we go to a meeting or whatever workshop, everybody has their Colby on their name tag.

But for fact finder, I’m a seven out of 10. So I have a very long fact finder, meaning that I like to dig in and do a lot of research and I like to understand things. My follow through, on the other hand, is only a three out of 10. It doesn’t mean that I can’t follow through, but when I push through that to get to the end of something, I’m pretty miserable. I’m not happy at the end. It’s clearly not something I’m doing. That’s part of my unique ability, right? So I like to.

I don’t like the follow-through. I need people around me who can follow through. As far as a quick start, I’m a seven out of 10. You know I’ve met a lot of people that are nine out of 10, 10 out of 10. Some people are 10 here and zero is everywhere else, but I’m a seven out of 10. So I’ve got a pretty, pretty strong quick start and my implementer is about as weak as my follow through, it’s a three of 10. So I’m a 7373. And well before I wanted to comment on that. But do you remember what yours are?

Laci: Oh yeah, I’m part of this cult, so 5482, it just rolls off the tongue.

Chris: Or a fact finder.

Laci: Yeah, I’m a four follow through, I’m an eight quick start and a two implementer, and I’ve always been understood that the implementer is kind of like the process, like using the tools to figure out the process, which I actually love, but apparently it’s not natural to me, but I do have enjoyed making myself do that, and then the follow through is actually implementer is make it real. Then follow through is like make it recur. In my world, where it’s almost all about implementing Right.

Chris: I’m pretty okay Learning how things work and I’m happy to you know, do it once or twice as I learn it, but after that I can’t. I don’t want to ever see it again.

Laci: I am also like that with most things, I think for sure, but yeah, this is the Go ahead.

Chris: Our Colby is not that far apart. Essentially, we’re heavy on the fact finder and quick start, relative follow-through and implementer. And then what’s interesting too is we keep track of these for all of our team members. And when you look at the folks in property management, which we have a fantastic team right now and the most successful people on that team have very long follow-throughs, and that’s exactly what you need when you’re dealing with a lot of detail and communicating with owners and so forth. So what’s interesting is there’s kind of for all of these, there’s a Colby for every person and the right person with the right Colby really for every position. So the last thing you would want to do is put somebody like me in an accounting or bookkeeping position because I would hate it so much that I would likely do a terrible job or I would quit really fast.

Laci: So yeah, I think that one of the things that they told me when I took this Colby and I took it through my the entrepreneur I was working with at the time was in strategic coach and he did the team program right where all you send all your team to a strategic coach session designed for your team and not the entrepreneur themselves.

But they said there is no right or wrong. There is no way to have a wrong Colby, there’s no way to you. Know how you work is how you work. The key is the balance across the team that you’re working with right. So if you have all fact finders with a low follow through score or a low implementer score or a low quick start score, then they’re going to spend a lot of time collecting all the facts. Right.

Chris: But nothing’s going to get’re.

Laci: They’re going to spend a lot of time collecting all the facts, right, and I’ve been on teams where everybody is a you know is a quick start or you know a quick to implement person and nobody has any follow through. So everybody’s got all these ideas, we all, we get started on all these projects and then who? Who follows through with it? Somebody does Usually it’s me but begrudgingly right, I don’t want to be the one who has to track. I don’t like to make sure everybody else is doing exactly. If you say you’re going to do it, I expect you to do it right. It’s almost like a management thing for me. So there is no right or wrong to any of these. I think is an important thing to note. It’s really just about finding a balance when you’re looking at who you’re surrounding yourself with.

Chris: Yeah, so that’s really fun. So the next one is Myers-Briggs, and I think almost everybody’s had some exposure to Myers-Briggs. But Myers-Briggs defines itself as a new perspective on you Let personality insights guide your success. And there’s four Insights Guide to your Success. And there’s four.

I don’t know what you want to say, but the first one is introverted, slash extrovert, so almost like they’re not really opposites. But the first of the four categories is are you introverted or extroverted? The second category is are you intuitive or are you what they call sensing? The third is thinking or feeling. And the fourth is are you more judgmental or perceiving? And mine is an INTJ.

So I think I’ve said many times I’m a flaming introvert. You know I love doing these podcasts but I have to go decompress for three or four hours afterwards. If I meet somebody, even one-on-one, I need a little time afterwards. If I’m in a group situation, or I have to address a group, or after a meeting and so forth, you know I enjoy it in the moment but I need a lot of time to recover. I tend to intuit things. I don’t even know the right definition, but I know when you really dig into Myers-Briggs I am not sensing, I am 10,000% intuitive.

I am a thinker, I am not a feeler, and I struggle working with feelers, quite frankly. I mean, there’s many times that I’ve butted heads with people who are strong on the feeling side and I’ve had to really use the tools and insights from Myers-Briggs to make sure that I monitor my own behavior and my own. I guess how, what kind of vibes I give off, so to speak. You know, when I’m around somebody who is more of a feeler than a thinker and it’s something I have to be conscious of I am definitely a judgmental person. I am so far away from how they define perceiving. I’m not a go with the flow guy. I make decisions, I make snap judgments, you know. So there’s strengths in that and there’s also, you know, potential pitfalls. But so I am an INTJ. And where do you fall? I don’t remember.

Laci: What would you guess? What’s your guess here?

Chris: I think you’re an introvert. I think that you’re probably more on the intuitive side. I’d say maybe you’re more. I think you’re a thinker too, but I don’t think that you’re that judgmental. I’m going to go out on a limb and say EITP, how’s that?

Laci: I am an ENFP, so I am extroverted, intuitive feeling and perceiving.

Chris: That’s what I said. I hit it. I hit the nail on the head.

Laci: No, you got two out of four at that.

Chris: Oh, oh, I said, e intuitive, so you’re sensing.

Laci: So E-S-P.

Chris: No, I am intuitive.

Laci: E-N-F-P.

Chris: What’s the N stand for?

Laci: Intuitive.

Chris: Okay, so we’re both interested.

Laci: You might have said I so you might have gotten three out of four yeah. Okay, I am not thinking, I am feeling. But I can see where you would get that. I’m thinking because I also am an overthinker. I think that’s the anxiety inside of me.

Chris: Yeah, so we’re pretty opposite, which is perfect, right. That’s really what you want, because if you start surrounding yourself with people like you, you just tend not to get anywhere. So that’s kind of cool, I guess. I know I have you on the spreadsheet. We keep a spreadsheet for everybody in the company and we can see how many people are, who they are, what they are and, yes, I am the only INTJ in the company, so go figure. But I think it’s really cool, though, that we are essentially opposite three out of four times, right.

Laci: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, but I think that’s one of the reasons why we work together and we’ve both been through these processes and enough self-reflection over time that we embrace those complementary aspects of ourselves, and I think that’s why we work so well together.

0:24:28 – Laci:
I think that’s a good point to make, especially right now, as we’re on like three or four of these tests that we take, like we’re, you know, like we’re reading our horoscopes, expecting them to be 100% true every day, because there gotta be some people out there who are rolling their eyes Like these tests can’t possibly mean what you say they mean, but really it’s like a horoscope the value is what you put into them, right, and so using them, like you said, knowing about yourself that you’re more judgmental, that you’re more thinking than feeling, and that you sometimes your interactions, you know, come off as uncomplimentary with other people, using that to make yourself better, I think is the is part of the point here. You know you don’t go around with that. You don’t wear a name tag all the time that says 5482ENFP the talent.

Chris: But it is cool. You know when we keep that spreadsheet, you know we talk about it and you know our leaders. You know everybody is conscious of you know who they are and who they work with are and we try to be, you know, really open about it and I think that does help, you know, head potential conflicts and misunderstandings off at the past. So I think that really is a critical step to you know forming a unique ability team in your organization or, you know, in your real estate practice.

Laci: There’s camaraderie there too, as you, you know, you think about when you’re part of an organization right, be it a brokerage or a team like you and I like a marketing team that works kind of separately across the country. When you’re part of any kind of team, knowing more about one another just individually builds relationships in a way that I think you know a trust fall or some of those typical team building activities doesn’t. Knowing about a person personally is really powerful for a team.

Chris: Yeah, and I think as leaders, we have to go back and revisit it, you know, on a regular basis and you know, keep those discussions alive. The fourth tool I wanted to share with everybody is called Clifton Strengths Finder, and again we’ll put that in the show notes. But their description is live your best life using your strengths. We’ve all wondered who we are and what makes us unique. The CliftonStrengths assessment answers these questions.

So with CliftonStrengths there’s 34 possible attributes and they highlight your top five and my top five are significance I think that goes back to prestige, but I do want to make a difference. So here I am getting uncomfortable are significance I think that goes back to prestige, but I do want to make a difference. So here I am, getting uncomfortable with significance. But significance analytical no question, I’m the most analytical person I know Individualization, focus, and I live in the future, I’m futuristic, so I think those are pretty darn dead on, quite frankly. And my strength themes, as they call them, are executing, influencing, relationship building yay and strategic thinking. So you know, as I said a billion times over the course of my career in this podcast, everything in real estate is about relationship building. So I felt really good that at least that showed up as a strength for me, as I’d be in real trouble.

Laci: Yeah, that’s great. I haven’t taken this, so I don’t know my. I don’t remember my StrengthsFinder. I haven’t taken it since 2015 when I had logged in to check it, so don’t trust it. But you know, again, I think that I did take an Enneagram test not that long ago, which is just another one of these tests, and I think these show so much about you that you can use to make yourself better.

And I found in this Enneagram that I’m a type one, which means I stand for what is right and good, you know, fight for. I’m a rule follower. But it also means that apparently there’s a boiling cauldron of rage. That’s literally what the like little graphic said inside of me, which I was, for some context, really sad that I wasn’t an enneagram too, because they’re all that they’re like the peace, love, happiness, enneagrams. That’s their type, and I was really sad, so that was really surprising to me that I apparently have a boy, a little boiling cauldron of rage inside that’s about to bubble over at any moment. But once I really started to look inside of me, you know, when it comes to injustices and people not being treated fairly and then people not following rules, and you know all those things I do. I can get real angry about it. It doesn’t come out as rage, but inside that’s the feeling. So again, just super valuable tools to knowing thyself, which?

allows you to move forward in a way that makes work and life so much more pleasant and successful.

Chris: So I wanted to touch a little bit on when a unique ability sort of intersects with company or team, personal mission, vision and purpose. So you know, this is kind of a real time thing that we’ve been going through since, you know, the post NAR lawsuit and all the changes and so forth we’re going through. So I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know, mission, vision and purpose and so forth. And I’ve also been listening to Jim Collins’s book Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. And, believe me, I don’t have time to read either. But I’ve gotten into a habit that I hope I never break of whether I’m doing a hike in the morning or I go to the gym or I’m on my bicycle or whatever, I’m always listening to a book. So it’s very hard for me to sit and read anything, but I can certainly listen to something every morning for an hour to two hours, maybe a little longer on the weekend. So that’s how I get through these books.

But I’ve been listening to Jim Collins’s book and the chapter that really got to me was a couple of chapters about vision, mission and purpose and what Jim calls the BHAG big, hairy, audacious goals and I started thinking about, you know, where unique ability sort of becomes that right or influences that or even is that? And you know, I’ve been kind of rethinking my personal unique ability statement and I’m kind of atthinking my personal unique ability statement and I’m kind of at the point where, if you were to ask me this morning, my response would be that I create and coach business opportunities and strategies that support and add value to the lives of homeowners and businesses, real estate professionals. And I think that’s actually really going to be more along the lines of I create and coach real estate opportunities and strategies that support net value to the lives of homeowners, residential real estate investors and the professionals who work with them. So I think that’s kind of where my personal unique ability falls, but I also think it’s more of my purpose. Does that make sense?

Laci: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean the clarity on that is it’s crazy.

Chris: Yeah, and it’s funny because you’re rethinking it right now. I’m rethinking it in real time.

Laci: They can’t see you people listening you can’t see him, but I can see his face and he is rethinking it right. He’s tweaking it right now.

Chris: Yeah, and I’ve been really thinking of, well, who are we for now in this new world order? And I’ve been all over the board on this since we started Roost. In previous episodes we’ve talked about being in the shelter business, and that was like the first pillar of Roost Real Estate Company was the shelter business. We’re here to help 100% of the people who need a roof over their heads, not just the 60% of the people or whatever it is in a given market that own that roof. So, you know, are we here for home? Are we here for investors? Are we here for agents? Are we here for buyers? Are we here for sellers? Are we here for tenants? And you know, the fact is, we’re here for homeowners and the people who rent from them, and we always have been.

So then, you know we’ve been going back and forth on some marketing ideas and advertising ideas with you and Kylie, and you know where I’ve landed right now is that if there’s a vision right, that sort of comes before, say, mission purpose, whatever, the idea that we’re going to be focused on at Roost, going forward is Roost equals home. So you know we do these. We always have a post on Sunday on Facebook and Instagram that you know says it used to say home is where, and then it would be, you know, just a really cool vignette or a little video about things that happen at home, like, home is where you make a splash and it would show the kid in the pool and the family all around.

Yeah, so we’re changing that to. Roost is where you make a splash and the idea is, and it could be like tilting at windmills, but when people think of Roost Real Estate Company, I want them to think of home, and that’s incredibly different than when people think of Remax they don’t think of home. When people think of Caldwell Banker or Keller Williams, they’re not thinking home. I don’t know what the end user is thinking, but they’re not thinking home, and I want our company to make people think, oh, home, because everybody needs a home, whether they’re renting or owning.

So I think that’s kind of where our vision is, and if you take the vision as the concept of home, and then you think of all the things that we do in support of home, that sort of are, you know, a wheel. So home is the hub, and then you know sell with roost, buy with roost, invest with roost, manage with roost, learn with roost, etc. Those are the different lines of business that we have learn with roost, et cetera. Those are the different lines of business that we have, all of which, though, are in support of home, and you know our purpose is that. You know we support homeowners and residential real estate investors, so everything tends to come back to home. Am I making any sense here in real time or?

Laci: Yeah, no to this feeler. It’s like the dream come true, but yeah, I think that it’s. It really clarifies the mission. As you know, look at big picture, right, when you’re looking at your unique ability. It helped me to finally come up with it because I was looking at all these individual tasks that I do every day, right, and which ones I was good at and which ones I actually enjoyed.

But in order for me to really figure out what my unique ability was, I had to take a step back right, and I am a big proponent of the desire map by Daniel Laporte, and the whole concept is really just you set your goals based on how you want to feel right. So you pick your feelings that you desire and then you set your very like. It is, that is touchy, feely, but then you set your very real, tangible goals based on achieving that feeling. So the first time I did it, I was feeling trapped in my job, in my life, you know, living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted to feel free right. So how do I set my goals so that I feel? What do I do to make myself feel free Right? And so I started creating all these tangible things. So I think that the idea of roost equals home is a little touchy feely probably for some folks out there, right? But then we set our goals to accomplish that. How do we make roost feel like home? That informs every single daily task that we put on our to-do list. So, yeah, it makes perfect sense to me.

I hope it makes perfect sense to folks out there, because it’s not always. You know, being successful is not always being a number one on the sales list for the month, right? I have some real estate agents in my network that I connect with on Facebook and I’ll see them post, you know, for their brokerage they were number one in sales and it gives the actual amount and that’s a real motivator for them. Obviously, right, they’re achieving that. That’s not the motivator for me. Necessarily, I do want to be successful. I do want to have the money to pay my bills. I don’t want to have to worry about finances, but I want to achieve something different. That’s what’s going to make me feel successful is helping people achieve what they want to achieve, right? So, yeah, it makes perfect sense to me and I think that once you dig down deep into it, it hits it all. It’s not just touchy feely and it’s not just oh, what am I going to do today?

Chris: But well, our agents at our company have always been known for their productivity and the fact that they you know they’ve always made significantly more than the quote average realtor. And you know they’ve always made significantly more than the quote average realtor. And you know Priscilla Sims is the most talented realtor I’ve ever worked with and she’s been with us for years and years now and you know she’s I think she’s got to be. She’s not number one or two this year, she’s probably the top three or four listing agents in Clark and Champaign County in Ohio agents in Clark and Champaign County in Ohio. But she and we do not wave that flag that says you know, list with me because you know I’m the best or I’m a billion dollar producer, whatever.

What she focuses on, of course, is her relationships and the fact that the thought process is always guided by what’s in it for my clients, and even when you think about doing a Facebook post, it’s like what’s in it for the client. You know, I just feel like and again, this is my judgmental part of me coming out, but I think anytime we put, it’s great to say congratulations to our top X number of agents or whatever, every month. I mean I guess that’s recognizing your team, which is freaking awesome and I but I think that’s something that you do internally. I think you do it amongst the team. I think you do it one-on-one, because I don’t think the general public really cares. I can tell you, you know the people that we work with to buy houses or sell houses that’s not what they care about. They don’t care about us, as you know, winning some competition. They care about us in terms of are we going to help them realize their goals for?

Laci: home ownership, right. Well, and when it comes to agents, right, it’s the same they care about Priscilla cares about, and I guarantee you this is you know, it plays a big role in her success is she found the right team to help her realize her goals as a real estate agent. So that’s where this unique ability thing really comes into play, and I think we’re. Maybe it was a long winded way to get to it, but when you start to know yourself, when you know thyself as a real estate agent, and then you can pick the team around you that complements what you’re already good at. Priscilla doesn’t need somebody to help her do the things she’s already great at. Priscilla needs somebody to support her in the things that she doesn’t enjoy as much, that are going to be a pain for her to do, or that she doesn’t you know, she’s not as great at, right.

Chris: So that’s how you leverage it. Yeah, and we’ll get Priscilla on the podcast with us. She was on like the very first Connect Practice, track and Grow episode, so you can go back and find Priscilla’s episode, but it’s time to get her on with you and I because she can really speak to what it’s like to be at Roost, which is, you know what Connect Practice, track and Grow is all about. So if you’ve got a vision that Roost equals home, right, and you know what your purpose is. So you know I always hesitate with labels or getting the right labels, but you know, with labels or getting the right labels. But what is our mission? And you want to talk touchy-feely.

I’ve been kind of settled on the past few days as our mission is to be the best loved real estate brokerage and home services company in North America. How’s that for a big, hairy, audacious goal? But we’re having this discussion about what’s in it for them or what’s in it for us. I don’t know that I want to be the most admired, although I care about prestige. I hope we’re the most profitable, but that’s not the goal. We don’t want to be the one with the most agents, but we want people to the only word that comes to mind is loved, and I think that’s a natural outcome if we do get to the point in the future where people that see roost and they think of home. So you know, and again, a lot of times, real estate companies, you know, have. There’s a reason why there’s that joke that the only people that are less loved than realtors are used car salesmen or whatever, because there’s always some truth somewhere in the population.

Laci: I really hit the jackpot with that one, didn’t I? My family is full of realtors and used car salesmen.

Chris: And used car salesmen. That’s right. Anyway, I think when we think about what makes us unique as a company, you know it sort of comes from what makes me unique, you know as the person who started this company, but I think that’s where it is. You know as the person who started this company, but I think that’s where it is. I, you know, I think that my unique ability becomes not just the purpose, for I think it morphs into the purpose of the company and it’s influenced by the people that take care of us as a company and the people we work with and have been for years and years. And you know, I would like to grow this into something that you know helps a heck of a lot of people over the next 20, 30, 40 years, whatever it is. So that’s my digression today. So thanks for listening to me think out loud. So let’s touch on because we’ve already got almost an hour gone here leveraging unique ability in real estate. So here’s some tips. You know, and sometimes these are easier said than done, and I’m sure we’ll touch on these as we continue to go through this series of protecting the goose that lays the golden eggs.

But you want to focus on high impact activities. You want to concentrate on those tasks that align with your strengths and passions. If you want to delegate or partner, you know, so that you can offload those tasks that don’t align with your unique ability and give those to other people who love doing that stuff and people who are great at that stuff, and their strengths and their greatness complements yours. If you’re a listing agent, what are your high impact activities? My guess is it’s being across the kitchen table with a client and helping them through thinking about what they want in their next home. So, in simple terms, what do you need to do in your business to be able to spend, you know, 50% of your time in consultation or in negotiations, and what can you do to get help with all the other stuff that you need to support that business? You know as simple as putting up yard signs, getting paperwork signed. You know getting things closed and so forth. So, in practical terms, that’s where we’re talking about.

The other thing is that you’ve got to have a supportive environment. You know you’ve got to have a team around you. You’ve got to have a brokerage around you that allows you to maximize your unique ability. You know, does your broker understand the whole idea of unique ability. Are they there to complement and support your unique ability? What does that relationship with your broker look like?

And that gets us to that whole piece about connect, practice, track and grow and finding a broker that is right for you. Learning to delegate or partner with others whose strengths complement yours is just critical. And it’s not always easy and some people never get there. But you know, and I’ve had to really work on it over the years but when you do that, it allows you to concentrate on what you do best and ensures that all those other things about your business are handled effectively. You know there’s so many things that can fall through the cracks and ruin the ruin, a closing. You know that you’ve worked so hard for if you don’t have the right people around you to yeah, for sure, for sure.

Laci: I think the thing here is once you know what your unique ability is, you also know what it’s not Right. So that’s huge, and I do think that this is. You know, we talk a lot about mindset and where this is kind of a big idea type of podcast episode, but I do always like to come back to practical and tangible, like you mentioned a few minutes ago, and I think that you know what you guys do at Roost is a fantastic example of this delegating and partnering and identifying what your unique ability is not and letting, figuring out ways to get that stuff done efficiently, effectively and well anyway. So you know, in all of the real estate agents that I’ve ever known, none of them are marketing professionals.

You know none of them are copywriters none of them are graphic designers, you know. Almost none of them are, you know, really interested. They’re probably good at it, but none of them are really interested in sitting at their desk and addressing envelopes or, you know, printing out labels or making sure that the you know, the support activities are getting done. Almost all of them would rather be whether they’re an introvert or an extrovert or however they do business, they would rather be out there creating business for themselves. So at Roost, you know you guys have acknowledged that and you’ve put systems in place that you know take care of in a lot of ways lead generation and referral, proactive referral generation, and, you know, all these communication tools, and so all of that exists and is. They can just tap right into it automatically so that they can focus on your agents, can focus on building their business in the way that makes the most sense to them, without having to spend that extra time addressing envelopes or trying to figure out how to market themselves.

Chris: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you very much. Our job is to use our unique ability to complement the unique abilities of our agents. And you’re right, as a rule agents are just. You know, they’re great at connecting, they’re great negotiators, they’re therapists and everything else, and we want to do everything we possibly can for our agents to make sure that they get to spend all the time they possibly can on those things that make them unique.

So I want to touch real quick on continuous improvement and self-development. You know I’ve said before, you know I’m a bit of a self-development junkie. We’ve talked about my audio book and podcast routine. At the end of the day, I just want to get better at what I really enjoy doing and I’ve always been a coaching junkie. You know I’ve always been a coaching junkie. I’ve always gravitated to strategic coach. I’ve done Buffini and company with a personal coach at Buffini when I was actively listing and selling which I can highly recommend to anybody. Lately, for me, marketing and learning from you and Dean Jackson and so forth has sort of been my major, my focus. I can tell you that one of the tools I’m super excited about going forward from a self-development perspective is ChatGPT. I’ve actually set up my browser to open the ChatGPT and this forced me to try to do queries there instead of, you know, heading straight to Google or whatever.

Laci: An introvert’s best friend. Yeah, yeah, it’s like my own imaginary friend right there on chat GPT, I’m really glad that chat GPT is getting to know you because I feel like you’re part of the solution but at the same time you know it is amazing.

Chris: You know I sprung for the twenty dollar tool and it remembers previous conversations and it’s definitely a productivity booster, no question. So again, continuous self-development, improvement. You know you got to challenge yourself. You got to reassess and adjust your focus to ensure you’re always leveraging your unique ability. You know I’ve kept a morning journal, or actually I hit a 1500 day milestone a few days ago. So I’ve been keeping a morning journal for 1500 days now and I don’t write it out longhand, I just have a massive Excel sheet where I keep my own thoughts and so forth and it’s kind of interesting to go back and see things previously. But I think that’s an interesting tool for continuous improvement and self development and I do that first thing in the morning when I get up. So those are some ideas that maybe you want to think about for yourselves.

And in conclusion, you know what did we talk about today? Well, we talked about Dan Sullivan’s concept of unique ability. You want to focus on your natural talents, passions and skills to create opportunities for yourself and achieve long-term success. We talked about the transformative power of doing more of what you’re naturally great at and how you can combine that with self-assessment tools like Fascinate, myers-briggs, et cetera, to increase your productivity, your effectiveness, your satisfaction and overall happiness there’s that word again, Laci happiness. And by understanding and utilizing these tools, you can focus on high-impact activities, delegate tasks that don’t align with your strengths, build a supportive environment that complements your unique abilities and again, I know I sound like a broken record, but you want to find a brokerage that provides that supportive environment that complements your unique abilities. And finally, we talked about the importance of continuous improvement and personal development, lifelong learning and so forth. So you can check out all the different instruments. We talked about strategic coach and so forth, and we’ll have all that in the show notes when we get this published.

Laci: Yeah, anything else, my friend, great conversation today. No, yeah, just you know. Again, I think about how touchy feely this might’ve sounded at points and when you were talking about your 1500 days of journaling and how you’re kind of addicted to this self-improvement thing, I didn’t find self-improvement. It started with Jim Rohn, when I was about 29 or 30 years old probably, and I wish I had done it sooner because, in the end, the most successful people in any industry in life do these things that we’re talking about, and that’s a testament to how effective it can be. So I’m really happy that we’ve got a real estate brokerage out there who values these things and is willing to share them with the world.

Chris: Ah bless your heart All right well, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions or want to share your experiences, feel free to reach out to us. Stay tuned for our next episode, which will be part four of our series Protecting the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs, and that next episode is called Introverted or Extroverted. Unleash your Natural Unfair Advantages for the Win. I love that title, Laci. I think that’s going to be a good one. If you’d like to learn more about our company, roost Real Estate Company, check us out at www.roost.com. Until then, keep focusing on your unique abilities.