In real estate, success isn’t just about the numbers — it’s about leadership, adaptability, and growth. Jason Mitchell, CEO & Founder of the Jason Mitchell Group, discusses how the definition of success should evolve, what the qualities are that separate great team leaders and broker owners from the rest, and why focusing on what you can control is key. Learn how top industry professionals build lasting success by investing in leadership skills, partnerships, and business development. Whether you’re a top agent looking to lead or a broker refining your strategy, March’s tip of the month delivers practical insights to help you thrive.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You know, I think defining what becomes a success is really, there's no blanket statement
00:12for that.
00:14It's kind of like, I did a video on why I stopped, you know, for about a year there
00:21I was coaching agents across the country and I stopped doing it and the reason I stopped
00:26doing it is because there's no way that I could have a group call with 200 people and
00:32give them the value that they deserve because everyone on that call is different.
00:38They're at different phases of their career.
00:40I can't, I can't teach a $10 million producer how to become a $50 million producer while
00:45at the same time telling a $200 million team leader how to become a billion dollar team
00:49leader because they're just at completely different phases of their career.
00:53We can talk accountability, we can talk about motivation, drive, there's certain generalities
01:02that you can speak to, but you can't get tactical.
01:06It's just impossible.
01:07And so I didn't feel like I was bringing the value and so I just said I'm not going to
01:09do it anymore.
01:10Plus I wanted to focus on building our company, but the reality was, is I felt like I was
01:14failing people because I couldn't one-on-one meet with them to really go over their goals
01:18and expectations and what they really need to do in order to move the needle.
01:22It was a lot of general statements and I didn't think that was fair.
01:26And I think when you define success for a team or a brokerage, it's unfair to make a
01:30general statement on what that really represents because everybody's goals are different.
01:36When I tell my agents, you may have a month where you don't sell four homes a month and
01:40you think you're a failure because you only sold one home, but during that month, if you
01:44spent that downtime where you weren't so busy in production, but you were really working
01:49on building your business in terms of putting together certain components of your marketing
01:55plan, when you're going to deploy your newsletter every month, every quarter, getting better
02:00internally with your structure on your outbound calls from prospecting to past clients.
02:04If we're building and you're seeing that your business is getting better, then that's a
02:09successful month.
02:10A successful month isn't always based around, did I sell X amount of homes?
02:14The successful month is, did I complete tasks?
02:19Did I get better operationally as an entrepreneur, as a business owner?
02:25Am I doing things every single month that is making me better so I can be more efficient
02:30operationally?
02:32So I can sell more homes in the future without having spending as much time to do so.
02:36That's a successful month.
02:38And so you don't always look at, when you talk about teams or broker owners, I'll bet
02:44you 95% of them didn't hit what they thought their goal was this year from a transaction
02:49or volume count.
02:51That doesn't mean, I know we didn't.
02:53We wanted to do five and a half billion in sales this year.
02:55I'm not going to hit that.
02:58But I don't look at our year as a failure.
03:00I look at our year as, we did a lot of really good things internally and we put a lot of
03:05good processes in place.
03:07We defined and identified better departments and what that represents.
03:12We got more efficient.
03:16We got better with technology, with our partnerships.
03:19We provided more value to our agents, but we didn't hit our goal when it comes to transaction
03:24and volume count.
03:25But I don't consider this year a failure.
03:27I consider this year a success.
03:29I think that we did very good relative to what the market brought us.
03:36And everything's so fluid when you talk about goals and expectations because things can
03:39change quickly in our business.
03:41When interest rates go up 200 basis points within a year, it's probably going to be harder
03:46to sell houses.
03:48So there's outside influences and external factors that contribute to goal setting that
03:53you just simply can't control.
03:54That doesn't mean you get down on yourself.
03:56The adverse would be true if all of a sudden rates dropped 200 basis points like in COVID
04:01and you have a gangbuster year, but you didn't do anything internally or operationally to
04:07be better.
04:08I think that's a fail.
04:10You just rode the wave.
04:13It's like any realtor or loan officer that crushed it.
04:16I hear this all the time.
04:17Well, in 2001, I did this or in 2020, I did this.
04:22That's like people that have the, oh, woe is me story when they talk about, well, 2009,
04:30I lost everything and it broke me and this and that.
04:33It's the same story, just the opposite.
04:35The failure side of you didn't fail.
04:37The market failed versus you weren't so great.
04:41The market was so great.
04:43So these external factors play such a big role in what you would consider success.
04:49Where I look at success as measuring, did we get better with what we can control and
04:55we can control operational things.
04:58We can control efficiencies.
05:00We can control scalability.
05:03The external market we can't control.
05:05Those are factors that are going to lead to revenue or a decrease in revenue, but you
05:11can only control what you can control.
05:13So I wouldn't look at measuring success on a purely numbers basis of transactional or
05:17volume count.
05:18I would look at measuring success on how did we perform overall when it came to enhancing
05:23our business.