Peak performers #WSD – write stuff down:
∙ Tasks
∙ Goals
∙ Worries
∙ Feelings
∙ Thoughts
∙ Debriefing (make it better notes)
Journaling is one of the fastest ways to dump stress and gain clarity. I use the high performance planner by Brendon Burchard
“Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.”
It seems in business, there are two approaches:
Those who are prepared and those who are not.
A commonly observed trait of peak performers?
Leave nothing to chance; always be prepared.
Anticipate, and prepare, the 6 key questions:
America’s happiest cities. Researchers for decades have studied the science of happiness and concluded that some of the key ingredients include: a positive mental state (a growth mindset); strong social connections; job satisfaction; health, and financial stability. One study suggests the incremental amount of happiness stops at around $75,000 of annual income.
WalletHub examined every state and 182 US cities using 30 criteria and created a list of the happiest cities.
The Top 5 Overall Result:
For Community The Top 5 Result:
Many factors affect our happiness, so the study included a panel of experts who commented on various aspects of happiness, like:
I’ve lived in 8 states (VA, CO, TX, KY, OH, MI, CA, and MN) and 10 cities, and what I’ve found? Grow where you are planted! Every city, state, and region has a history, a story and a community. As I recall, Abraham Lincoln said it best:
“You are as happy as you choose to be.”
Do it until… is the most common denominator for success in anything.
Some of us learn fast, others slowly, and many of us in between. When you are committed to the cause, the effort, and the result, “you do it until ___.”
Fill in the blank; you do it until you gain mastery; you do it until you have confidence; you do it until you are the best!
The common denominator is “I did it until I got it! It doesn’t matter how long it takes.” This is a great growth mindset.
You don’t know how long or short it will take to become an expert, yet if you keep doing what needs to be done – one day at a time – one hour at a time – one minute at a time, one second at a time – eventually all those seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours and so on.
It’s not about how long it takes – if we keep doing what needs to be done – eventually, we get there, and we win.
Do it until ____!
#WinTheDay
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” ~ Stephen Covey
Have you ever worked backward from Friday? At the end of the week, imagine you are sitting down and looking back…what would make this week great?
We can’t control the market this week, yet we can control the daily activities that lead to our expected outcomes.
I’m sure you would agree – without a doubt – we are in uncertain times. The paradox is this: we need both uncertainty and certainty in our business. Yet, from the conversations I’ve had this week, we have more uncertainty than certainty. How can we create more certainty?
Get Clear On What You Really Want.
You know this is really clear when your purpose resonates and moves you emotionally.
Make It Part Of Everyday!
Have a strategy for when you feel stuck or lost.
If you show up for the day with no structure in your calendar and decide to do “urgent” tasks like returning calls and texts and checking Facebook, those activities will expand and eat up all the time you hoped to devote to more “important” activities. You will end the day unfulfilled and have more uncertainty. Get clear on what you want, make it part of your everyday routine, and have a plan for when you feel stuck or lost. That is a winning formula.
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.
1. I don’t have time
2. I don’t have the money
3. I will try it next year
4. I don’t have enough data
5. I am too tired, skeptical, or biased
6. No one ever did it before
7. It’s too much work
8. I could fail
9. I will wait until I retire
10. It’s too risky
You can bust through too. One of my associates told me all of these “excuses” are rooted in some sort of fear, so really the top 1% are masters of fear.
Near-death by a car accident, boot camp, Kilimanjaro Summit day, Hellmecula, Snowmageddon, Spartan Beast, crazy markets, and so much more.
Some things are just hard, and you want to quit.
I’ve made it through some tough situations with this one strategy: looking only a few steps, tasks or minutes ahead.
“Doing the next right thing.”
At certain times tunnel vision is a good thing.
Consider this – the next time getting through a challenge that seems like it might be too much for you. Lower your gaze to whatever the next minute, step, or task is right in front of you. Then take it.
There are times when big-picture thinking is needed. Yet the moments when you doubt you have the strength or the desire to put one foot in front of the other isn’t among them.
Do the next right thing.
Focused Time. The top 1% know that less is more! Say what?
Who would you imagine to be more productive—someone who works 55 hours a week or someone who works 70?
If you guessed the latter, you’d be incorrect. Research done by Stanford showed that productivity diminishes after 40 hours and falls off a cliff after 55 hours. In essence, less is more.
Resource? Life on The Wire by Todd Duncan – in his book Todd challenges the status quo in search of a better, smarter way to work and live.
#100DaysOfSuccess
When you are inconsistent, nothing works at the optimal level.
Here’s what I know: recruiters, talent attraction coordinators, team leaders, managers, and real estate sales professionals who consistently set and attend appointments are producing more results, period. These leaders are consistent and disciplined in their daily prospecting and marketing routines.
Consistency… social media does not work if you are not consistent; geographic farming does not work if you are not consistent; repeat and referral does not work if you are not consistent; open houses will not work if you are inconsistent; online leads – a waste – if you are not consistent; recruiting and talent attraction is a roller coaster without consistency.
Show me something in your business that works when you are inconsistent.
Anything you are going to do, the more consistent you are with your mindset, attitude, approach, expectation, strategy, and tactics, the more predictable the result.
Bottom line: when you are consistent, everything works… when you are inconsistent, nothing works.
So my question is, what have you been inconsistent with?
What has that inconsistency cost you financially, emotionally, or physically?
I’d submit that the action we can all take is to be more consistent in creating, setting, and attending more new appointments.
We cannot control the market.
We can control ourselves, our thoughts, and our actions.
Next Steps:
#WinTheDay
Mark’s Note: Originally published February 2023. This version adds the Recruiting 8 D’s, a section on market intelligence, and a clearer split between the two audiences this post serves. If you read the original, there’s enough new here to make it worth another pass.
Pull up your calendar from last week. Now pull up your new appointment count for the same week.
Do the two tell the same story?
The calendar shows how you spent the week. The appointment count shows what it bought you. When those two numbers stop matching, you don’t have a business problem — you have a confusion problem. You’ve started mistaking activity for productivity.
Here’s the line I’d draw: an hour that ends with a scheduled next step is progress. An hour that ends with a good feeling is motion. Most weeks are full of motion.
Appointments are the lifeblood of this business. Not leads. Not listings. Appointments. Nothing happens until you’re sitting across from someone who needs to buy, sell, or make a career decision. Your marketing, your branding, your social media — all of it is noise until it produces that moment.
And appointments are the one thing you actually control. Not the market. Not rates. Not your competition. But you can pick up the phone. You can knock on the door. You can show up. That’s where your power lives.
This post is written for two people, and I’m going to speak to each of you directly rather than making you translate.
If you’re an agent, this is about setting more appointments with buyers, sellers, and the people in your sphere who need to hear from you today.
If you’re a recruiting professional, this is about getting in front of agents who haven’t yet realized their next move starts with a conversation with you.
Same discipline. Same math. Same payoff. Where the tactics diverge, I’ll say so.
Most people in both roles wait for the perfect appointment — the signed listing agreement, the committed candidate. That mindset starves your pipeline.
An appointment is any meaningful interaction that moves a relationship forward and ends with a next step.
For agents:
For recruiters:
Every one of those counts. Start tracking them that way and your numbers — and your confidence — change in a week.
Nobody wakes up and decides to move for no reason. Life events drive transactions. Learn to recognize them and you’ll never run out of people worth calling.
My good friend David Knox identified the eight that consistently drive real estate decisions:
Once you’re looking for the D, you stop cold-calling strangers and start talking to people in the middle of real change. Completely different conversation.
Inspired by David’s framework, we built the parallel set for recruiting — the forces that make an agent open to a conversation about their career.
Read these in two groups, because they don’t do the same job.
Seven of them are what you offer:
One of them is what makes them listen:
That eighth one is the whole ballgame, and it’s the one you can’t manufacture. Dissatisfaction is never announced. It shows up in the questions agents start asking, the frustrations they let slip, the call they finally return after nine months.
You can’t create the moment. You can only be in the conversation when it arrives. That’s what persistence actually buys you.
1. Make it non-negotiable. Appointment setting isn’t what you do when the morning frees up. It’s the first block on the calendar — before email, before admin, before anything. Pick the window and defend it. Mine would be 8:00 to 10:00; yours might be different. What matters is that it’s the same two hours every day, and that everyone around you knows not to touch them.
Run the math once and you’ll stop negotiating with yourself: two appointments a day, five days a week, is about forty a month. Nobody who sets forty appointments a month has a pipeline problem.
2. Expand your definition of a win. A real conversation with a past client is a win. A preview with a curious buyer is a win. For recruiters, a ten-minute call where an agent finally tells you what’s actually frustrating them is a win — that’s Dissatisfaction surfacing, and it’s worth more than a polite no. Volume and consistency build pipelines. Perfection builds nothing.
3. Get your head right. Your mindset walks into the room before you do. If you believe you’re bothering people, your voice will tell them so in the first four seconds. Say it until you mean it: I provide real value to the people I talk with every day. You’re not selling. You’re serving. Recruiters — if you genuinely believe your brokerage offers agents a better future, the call isn’t an intrusion. It’s the service.
4. Work your CRM like a business partner. Because it is one. Every lead, every past client, every agent prospect, in the system with a follow-up date attached. If it’s not in the CRM, it doesn’t exist. And a great CRM is only as good as the person opening it — daily.
5. Find your Automatic Shot and run it. Everyone who’s winning has one source that reliably produces. For most agents it’s past clients and referrals. For others it’s a farm or a niche. For recruiters it might be a production tier, a specific competitor, or a geographic pocket you know cold. Identify yours and work it relentlessly. Don’t chase the shiny new lead source — master the one already paying you.
6. Get sharp on objections. The difference between people who set appointments and people who don’t comes down to what happens after the first no. Don’t memorize scripts — learn to listen. Ask the second question. Understand what’s really underneath. Lead with curiosity instead of a pitch and objections turn into conversations. I went deeper on this in Persistence Part 1.
7. Stay goal-focused, not outcome-attached. Your job today is to set the appointment. That’s the whole job. Stop trying to diagnose whether this person will list, buy, or make a move before you’ve had the conversation. Hit the daily number. The deals — and the recruits — follow the appointments every time.
Before any appointment — buyer, seller, or agent prospect — know your market cold.
There’s a version of the opening line that changes the temperature of the whole call: “I was looking at the data for your area this week and noticed something I thought you’d want to see.”
That’s not a sales call. That’s a resource. Resources get appointments. Real-time market data — [I use Altos Research Reports] — is what makes that line true instead of a setup.
For how this connects to persistence and long-cycle follow-up, see Persistence Part 2.
Three things, before lunch:
This business rewards the consistent, not the occasional. Every agent winning right now has one thing in common: they’re talking to people daily. Not when they feel like it. Not when the market cooperates.
Same for the recruiters building brokerages worth joining. Discipline over feelings. Consistency over intention.
That’s how you win the day.
