Finding the Right Role Model: Your Choice is Critical to Your Success

One of the most powerful things you can do when you start a new venture, whether it be a new career, hobby, or health routine, is to find the right role model.

We all need at least one: someone who is deep into that pillar, who has accomplished what you are looking to accomplish, who inspires and instructs.

Why? Because the person whose advice you follow, whom you choose to model your own behavior after, will determine the level of results that you create.

Why the Right Role Model is Critical

Model the wrong person, and you won't get results. Adopt the wrong mindset, and you won't get results. Rely on the wrong book, and you won't get results.

The risk from choosing the wrong model is high. So, before you make a choice as to whose behavior you wish to emulate, you must use diligence to determine whether that person and their message is the “real deal.”

Figuring that out requires an inquisitive mind and commitment to focus. It requires asking "why" many times over to get to the bottom of it. 

Challenges to Figuring Out Who is the “Real Deal”

In real estate sales, finding the right role model is challenging. You have to push through the surface-level social media posts and dig into who is actually having success and living the lifestyle you want for yourself.

Most of social media is ego- based activity and positioning, people trying to get some eyeballs on their posts and making themselves look good to their followers. Take those posts with a very large grain of salt.  

Similarly, vanity metrics -- sales and volume – are just one clue of where true value creation occurs in business.

Over the past few years, we have learned for ourselves that these metrics can be smoke and mirrors. So often, we have found that the hardest working, highest volume producers and teams barely make any profit.

Yet, profit, a medium of exchange for labor, is the factor that really matters: how much profit (output) is a person making, and for how much time (input)?

These are things we have to really dig into when we decide who to model after in the real estate world.

When we naturally compare ourselves to others in the industry, we have to ask whether that big-name realtor, team, or brokerage is actually achieving the type of success that matters… or is it an illusion?

Is a high-volume producer who also has a high time investment and a low profit, the best model for you and your business?

Tips on Figuring Out Who Deserves Your Emulation

So, how do you find the valid, diligent industry leaders who are on the front lines, succeeding in the ways that matter, with high profits from reasonable time commitments?

Here are some clues:

1) Valid Leaders are Transparent and Ruthlessly Honest. They tend to be the most transparent with their results because they actually have them. They're often open to sharing their profit & loss numbers, and how they achieve them, with you privately. And they are not afraid to tell you when you are wrong.

2) Valid Leaders are Happy to Help and to Share. They go out of their way to invest time (and maybe even money) in others whom they see put in the work and take action on the advice that they offer. They love to see their impact multiply through you.

3) Valid Leaders are Walking Value Creators and Relationship Builders. They find ways to get involved in things that matter to them, with others who have influence. They invest heavily in relationships on a deeper level.

These are just a starting point. Even when you do find someone who is transparent, ruthlessly honest, and interested in building relationships and adding value to the community –potentially the “real deal” -- you must keep digging and looking deeper.

Assessing What You Find.

In today's world, you must triangulate your information against other perspectives and your own - and then further check the validity of the source from which you are receiving that information.

Only after validity is established, do you have the foundation to develop the necessary focus to examine, and sometimes reject, the status quo and reach your life goals. 

This is serious work. If you don’t do your homework, and find the right role model on which to base your career and business, you could end up with a well-known but low-producing brokerage with non-valid leaders, and experience serious limitations to your own growth and development.