401: Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day

SHOW NOTES FOR EPISODE 401: REAL ESTATE SUCCESS IN 5 MINUTES A DAY

Do you have 5 minutes?  With most people, time is our most valuable asset.  Yet it seems that we seldom have enough time to do anything we truly want to do during the course of a day.  In today’s podcast, Realtor, real estate investor, author and podcast host Karen Briscoe shows how you, by just committing to 5 minutes a day, can create new success habits,  accomplish great things and yield phenomenal success.

What You Will Learn

• How, by just spending 5 focused minutes a day, can help you achieve real estate investing success
• Why Wayne Gretsky inspired Karen to shift her real estate strategy
• How recognizing that people had no time to do anything help her find a niche to grow her business
• What “creating success habits in small chunks” means
• Why lead generation is so important to all phases of real estate
• How you can create a steady flow of leads throughout your real estate career by recognizing and applying the concept of mindset
• What it means to “create success habits”
• Why most people don’t recognize time management as energy management
• What gigantic real estate opportunities are ahead as a result of the millennial generation

About Our Guest

Karen Briscoe

Karen Briscoe is the creator of the transformative “5 Minute Success” concept.  Her books  Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed and Commit to Get Leads:  66 Day Challenge® offer a combination of information and inspiration delivered through memorable stories.  Karen is the principal owner of the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group (HBC) with Keller Williams, which has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 250 Top Realtor® teams in the United States.  Since 1977, HBC Group has sold over 1,500 homes valued at over $1.5 billion.  The team consistently sells over 100 residential properties annually ranging from multi-million dollar luxury estates to condominiums and townhomes.  Her primary market areas include Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, and Washington, DC.   As a real estate professional, Karen is a member of the Institute of Luxury Home Marketing, Senior Real Estate Specialist, FIABCI International Real Estate Federation and Women’s Council of Realtors®.  Karen is also the host of the “5 Minute Success” podcast.

More About Karen

• A lot of people say they don’t have enough time! That’s where the idea of the 5 minute success came from
• Grew up in the Midwest
• Moved to Dallas after she graduated from college
• Got a job with Trammall Crow, a development company
• They developed lots for home builders
• She learned a lot in that business
• Met her husband, got married and had children
• Ended up moving from Dallas to Washington DC Metro region
• For the next two years, she was the primary caregiver for their two children
• As her kids grew older, Karen wanted to go back to the development business however, in DC, there was not much going on in that profession
• Karen, instead, got a job with a technology company where she managed warehouse and engineering offices for the company
• This was right around the big tech bust and she eventually lost that job

Moving Into Residential Real Estate

• However, she had her real estate license so she decided to leverage her commercial real estate experience to become a residential Realtor in 2002
• Moving from the commercial side to the residential side of real estate was not that easy but she decided to combine the two – like peanut butter and chocolate – “the best of both worlds”
• On the commercial side, she had her hard skills – negotiation, market knowledge, strategy
• On the residential “soft side,” she had relationships skills
• She became very successful at that time
• Attracted the interest of a top producer in the DC Metro area who was #10 in the nation and Karen was asked to be her junior partner – “sweat equity” position
• She went from selling a house a month to 2 houses a week
• Sadly, her business partner passed away in 2008, the same month the financial markets crashed
• It was a very challenging time period
• However, she was able to sense the shift in the market and knew what to do
• She equates it to what Wayne Gretzky said about him “skating to where the puck is going”
• She would analyze markets to determine where they were going and go there
• She started making changes to her business — to not just survive but to thrive
• There were moments when she wasn’t sure she wanted to state in real estate (FYI: only 6% of agents stay agents after 5 years)

Restructuring Her Business

• Set her mind on building and bringing the company back
• Karen took on a partner – Lizzy Conroy – because she recognized the benefits of her strengths in relation to her own – they complimented each others’ skills
• They have been partners for over 10 years
• Their business had previously focused on the luxury home market
• They broadened out their market to include boarder cross-section of homes
• It took place over the next 4-5 years
• She felt like there was still something more for her to do
• Some people said she should write a book
• She had been writing a blog since 2009 and she felt like she had a voice in the community
• She kept hearing that people just didn’t have the time to do most everything
• But she would ask, “Do you have 5 minutes?” and most everyone would say yes
• This became the focus of her book, which was published in August of 2016

Becoming an Author

• Her first book was entitled Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed
• The book’s focus is on “creating success habits in small chunks”
• The book is broken up into daily readings that should take no more than 5 minutes each to read
• It’s a real estate business book, not a devotional or inspirational book
• The idea is, if you just read a page a day, it’s easier to remember what you read and therefore to put it into practice!
• The structure of the book is applicable across many different professions and disciplines, sales, entrepreneurs and investors, almost any business

Key Principles in the Book

• Commit to Get Leads – Without the lead, you don’t have a sale
• Consult to Sell – Convert the lead
• Connect to Build to Grow – Get off the “hamster wheel” and create a steady flow of deals and sales
• Achieve Your Sweet Spot of Success
  • Success Thinking
  • Success Activities
  • Success Vision
    • Mindset and Motivation – You have a vision for what you’re doing, you think about how you’re going to do it (planning) and then there’s the action in between
• All of these topics and principles are also available through her “5 Minute Success Podcast”
• Everyday, there is a different idea, concept and they build on each other
• As you grow in knowledge, you are remembering and applying more

Her Second Book

• A lot of realtors just wanted info specifically on lead generation
• She then wrote Commit to Get Leads:  66 Day Challenge®
• To create good habits to grow leads

Applications for Real Estate Investors

• Commit to Get Leads, for an investor, becomes “Commit to Get Deals”
  • How are you going to find deals? and the financial component
  • Principles and strategies
  • The “roller coaster effect” happens when you start the process for getting leads/deals, you get the deals, you get busy with the deals and then you stop the process/pipeline/flow for generating the deals.  Then, you run out of deals and you have to start the “lead generation machine” up all over again and you keep repeating.  The trick is to always keep the lead generation process going!
• You still need to “Work on the Business” (aka eMyth) all the time
• Karen and her husband have 5 rental properties and they apply these concepts to their investing efforts
• Are you at your “highest and best” all the time

Biggest Mistake(s) People Make Regarding Time Management

• Confusing time management with energy management
• If you have difficulty managing your time, it’s really an energy management problem – not a time problem
• “Time is the fundamental currency of high performance” – Lazu
• High achievers recognize the things that bring them energy or their “highest and best” activities
• They direct their time and effort in those areas — where they get energy
• Karen’s highest and best activity is lead generation
• Another highest and best activity could be negotiation, for example
• Recognize where you get your energy and then focus your attention on those activities

Biggest Success Factors

• There’s an old proverb – “When was the best time to plant a tree?  20 years ago.  So, the next best time is now.”
• The same goes for real estate investing
• “Old dawgs can learn new tricks.”  She was an old dawg when she figured it out.
• She became an” accidental investor”
  • He son moved back to her house after college because he couldn’t find anyplace to live
  • Karen and her husband bought a townhouse and rented it to her son and his friend
  • They weren’t the best tenants
    • Had two dogs
  • But they eventually moved out
• Typical cost for townhomes in her area was $500,000
• To earn $500,000 and put that in a regular investment (not a tax deferred account) account really costs $700,000 because you have to pay taxes on it
  • You have to earn more than $700,000
  • They were able to buy the whole townhouse for 20% down – $100,000 – they were able to own a $500,000 investment for $100,000 and someone else pays the rest of it in their rental payments
  • The idea that you have total control of the asset and someone else is paying 80% of that, get the depreciation,  tax benefits and the equity is amazing
• Recognizing this fact, the leveraging effect of real estate investing, has significantly contributed to their success

Advice for Old Dawgs Looking at Real Estate Investing to Help in Their Retirement Years

• Owning rental properties is not a full-time job
• Find financial partners if you need to get started
• Stay close to home on your investing, if you can – it’s better
• For lead generation
  • Some farm a geographic region
  • Her best is the contacts she’s build in her long years of networking
• Where to invest
  • She also does the “New York, New York” – find a similar area to a successful area you are already investing in
  • And the “Wayne Gretsky” – and go to where the puck is going. rather than where it’s been – stay ahead of trends

Current Business

• Just just passed 60 years of age last year
• Feels like she just got started
• Met was on a podcast recently with a real estate person in her mid-80s and she thought – “That where I want to be!”
• That’s the beautiful thing about real estate – it’s something you can do for many years – age isn’t an issue!
• She’ll continue to focus on the creative efforts she has launched in the last 3 years:
  • 3 books
  • Her podcast
  • Online courses she offers
• She’ll continue to grow her rental portfolio
• Has a partner that is 15 years younger than her
• She sees the real estate market continuing to be strong
• There is some major demographic shifting that is occurring in housing
  • Baby Boomers were the biggest generation at 80 million
    • They want to downsize
    • Want lifestyle and travel
    • Will live longer
  • The next generation is at 70 million
  • Millennials are the next generation at 90 million that need housing
    • Big opportunity out there
    • Need 10 million more homes
    • Should see big growth ahead!

Rap-It-Up

• Favorite real estate book: Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents by Hal Enrod and Michael J. Maher
• Favorite business book: The One Thing by Gary Keller
• Most valuable web site for success (other than your own): BiggerPockets.com
• Favorite app: The 5-Minute Journal
• Favorite quote: “There’s one investment that supersedes the others – invest in yourself!” – Warren Buffet
• If you had to start all over, knowing what you know, and you only had $1,000, what would you do to launch your real estate investing business? I would invest the 1,000 in lead generation because you always need opportunity in your future. Her primary success has been with hand-written note writing and postcards. Every day she writes 5 notes with special offering.

How to Reach Karen

• Email: Karen@5MinuteSuccess.com
• Website: 5MinuteSuccess.com
• Podcast: 5 Minute Success Podcast

DISCLAIMER:  Many of the above strategies take knowledge and have a higher degree of risk.  You need to do your research and/or work with someone who is experienced to reduce your risk.

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Additional Episode Sponsor: Meno Studio – menostudio777@gmail.com