Three years into building The Brooks Group, my team before Momentum, I had a recurring problem. We'd recruit someone who looked great on paper and six months later they were a different person. Defensive. Bitter when a peer outperformed them. Always an excuse for the last missed conversion. The talent existed. But every bad hire cost us six months of coaching, thousands in lead spend, and momentum we couldn't get back.
I told myself for a long time that I just kept getting unlucky on the hire. I picked up Carol Dweck's Mindset on a flight back from a business trip and stopped being able to tell myself that.
Two Belief Systems Behind Every Hire
Dweck is a Stanford psychologist who spent decades studying why some people compound and others stall. Her answer is simpler than it has any right to be. People operate from one of two belief systems about ability. Fixed mindset says talent is innate. Either you have it or you don't, and effort just exposes your ceiling. Growth mindset says ability gets built through effort.
Effort is the point.
When a fixed-mindset agent reads a coaching note, they hear an attack on their identity. When a growth-mindset agent reads the same note, they hear a tip and try it.
When a fixed-mindset agent watches a peer pull off a $14M year, they decide that peer is special and unreachable. The growth-mindset agent emails that peer and asks what their setup looks like.
I'd been hiring for the wrong signal. Production history tells you what someone already did at one company in one market with one set of conditions. It tells you very little about what they'll do when the conditions change. Mindset does.
The Two Questions I Ask Now
When I was hiring after reading the book, the interview changed, especially for newer agents. Two questions I lean on now.
"Tell me about a time you got hard feedback. What did you do with it?" A fixed-mindset answer explains why the feedback was wrong. A growth-mindset answer explains what they changed.
"Who are the top three producers in your market right now?" Fixed mindset is dismissive. They got lucky. They had connections. They spend too much on marketing. Growth mindset is specific and admiring. Here's exactly what they do. Here's what I'm trying to learn from them.
You can't fake the second answer if you've never lived it. Fixed-mindset agents don't study competitors because studying competitors feels like admitting they're better.
Everyone Has Both Wirings
The piece most people skip in Dweck's book is that everyone has both wirings. The question is which one is on top when the pressure comes. I had a fixed mindset about negotiation for years. I'd avoid hard conversations because losing them would mean I was bad at negotiating. The moment I named it I could work on it. You don't fix the wiring by trying harder. You fix it by noticing which one is running.
A quick test. When someone at your level outperforms you, what's the first thought that arrives? If it sounds like "they got lucky," there's work to do. If it sounds like "what are they doing that I'm not," you're already moving.
We Stopped Building a Sales Organization
Eventually I realized I wasn't building a sales organization. I was building a learning organization. The agents who win long term aren't the ones with the most talent. They're the ones willing to stay students the longest. That's the culture we're trying to build at Momentum.
JB. Reach me at jon@movewithmomentum.com.
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