Podcast - Episode 4: The Hustle Hangover: Overcoming Burnout in Real Estate

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Episode Transcript:

The "Hustle" Hangover: Addressing Burnout and Maintaining Work-Life Balance

Lance Pendleton: Are you living? Hustle culture. Are you every day getting up, putting your feet on the floor and just hitting it? Winning? Doing it? Guess what? If you are, it's really bad for you. This week we're going to explore how hustle culture probably isn't great for not only your mental health, your physical health, but believe it or not, it's really not great for your bottom line. This is Consume the podcast for real estate agents who are tired of hearing the same old industry stuff and want to experience something completely different. So I'm super excited today to talk about the hustle hangover mentality, uh, specifically in regards to agent burnout in the real estate business, because I genuinely, honestly believe that one of the biggest reasons that agent burnout exists is because we collectively spend too much time feeling like we need to be all things to all people, at all times, and whether it's our personal lives, the business life. I have got so many clients across the country that are constantly trying to be all things to all people, at all times. So here's the biggest mistake that I see. Real estate agents call me all the time and they're like, hey, Lance, you know, I want you to help me with time blocking. I want to learn time blocking. And, you know, I just I read this book, I'm in this club this morning and it's a morning, you know, motivation club. And they recommended this book we're all reading. It's called the 12 week year. And so I want you to help me learn how to maximize my business in a 12 week year. And the first thing I always think is, look, there's 52 weeks in a year and you're going to need all 52 of them in order to actually survive and do anything. Multiple People: So to be successful.

Lance Pendleton: Yeah. Let's stop with the 12 week year thing right off the bat. Right. It's like the four day workweek. Okay. Sure. That's great for, you know, some people. But if you're not independently wealthy. Yeah. I need seven days to actually get all my poop in a group. So if you listen to people tell me that's what I try to think about then is where does this come from? Where is this pressure and this stress always stemming from, and the place that I always come back to is because we operate in an industry that continues to feed to us that if we're not operating in this style, we're not going to get new clients, we're not going to be successful, we're not going to win. We're not going to be able to feed our families that it's having to be omnipresent, right. And we talk about 24 over seven. I got to be available 24 over seven. If you're 24 over seven, if your business and you're telling people out there that you're available 24 over seven, I guarantee you your mental health, your physical health and your psychological well- being is going to diminish very, very quickly.

Lucy Edwards: Unless unless you build your business and your practice properly, you have a team, you have help. You have virtual assistant, you have real assistant. Unless you do it the right way. You can't build a successful business. But I do agree with you that, you know, sometimes I go to that Keller Williams board, which I'm not too fond of, but but I can get some things out of it for sure. Sorry. Keller Williams agents. Um, but one one presenter was talking about being staying between the lines like, oh, my God, I just got a contract. I'm going to sell that house and I got the right price. Oh no, they don't want to sign it. They found another agent. What do I do? And so but it's so hard to stay between those lines. But it's it's like that for everybody. I am like that. Oh my God. I got a new client and we're going to have a corporate account. I'm so excited. Oh, no, we cannot do that. We don't have the coverage. We don't have enough photographers or no, they just the prices are too cheap and we cannot accommodate them. And then and then I'm going down. So that really wears out. So something like that. Those emotional ups and downs, just like having bad immune system where your temperature jumps from very low to very high. So that's that's something that but it can be cured. It can be cured. If you properly build your practice, you have assistance, you have systems in line. You, um, incorporate the technology the proper way. And and yes, I think it's not that I do it. I don't never did. And I don't think I ever will at this point. But I think it's good to have time blocks. I, I convince myself every morning I build systems for me to put time blocks. It doesn't work for me, but if it doesn't work for me, other things work for me. So I have to. I have to work around what works for me, and I don't think there are enough books for me to read to change my personality. At this point.

Lance Pendleton: You just hit the nail on the head for me because I think you just proved my point right there. Because what I heard you just say was, well, I've always wanted to be good at time blocking. I've always wanted to do that. But based on who I am, fundamentally, I'm already all over the place scrambling from thing to thing to thing. Correct. Isn't that what you just said?

Multiple People: Exactly.

Lance Pendleton: Okay, so if that's the case, I think you are like most of the agent population out there. And that's why when agents talk to me about this time blocking and all this thing like it's all bullshit. And here's why. Agents only operate in two periods of time. Ready now and not now. That's it. There's only two periods of time in an agent's life now and not now. And if you're an agent and you're listening to the sound of my voice right now, I can promise you you are really good at the now stuff. But you're not good at is the not now stuff, and you're not good at the not now stuff all the way up until the not now stuff becomes so urgent because you left it all in the not now that it becomes what a now thing. And that's the entire way that you operate the business. Lucy Edwards: And then it's one one of the agents that I spoke to for quite, quite a bit and she she became my friend. I really enjoy her company. I enjoy her spirit. I just enjoy being spending time with her. And she's saying that we all have disease. What's next? Like I she's dreadful that she's going to close on that house today at 3:00 pm because she has nothing in the pipeline and she is so scared and paranoid. What's next? I don't have anything in the pipeline. Oh, my God, I have to rush. And she's putting that extra pressure on herself that really overwhelms her and probably makes her less productive because she cannot focus on what's next. All she's going through right now is that panic about nothing in the pipeline, and she's going to close today at three, and she has nothing else to do on Tuesday afternoon. And she has no open houses, and she has no one to drive around because she has no buyers right now. What's next? So that is something that it's a struggle. And, and I wish you and I can help with what's next and and figure out how agents can, can, can be healthy enough to focus on on on on being productive in that way.

Lance Pendleton: First of all, just just for all of our listeners, I want to be clear. I am disease free. I don't want to put that out there for anybody. That was one time in college. They gave me a cream for it. Everything is fine. So I just want to put that out there. But let's talk about this idea of where this feeling of again, having the hustle hangover, the emotional downs comes from and feeling burnout because it is. And again, my experience in talking to people. And since my background's in behavioral psychology, and I talk to a lot of people about what sort of drives the motivating factors for them, very often the most common thing that I hear in conversations is that there is this constant loop of going, going, going, going, going until I crash and then nothing, and then going, going, going and going until I crash. And then I'm doing nothing. And that's a major part of the problem. So I'll give you an example. I have a really like an amazing client that I just I adore her, she's fantastic. She is exceptional as an agent, one of the top 50 agents probably in the country. She's amazing. With that being said, I can tell her, hey, for this week, one of the things I want you to work on is I just want you to jot down and give her something really simple.

Lance Pendleton: Now, when things are super busy in her world, she will always get it done the next time I talk to her. We go over something when she has nothing going on and it's super slow. I will never get her to do anything that I'm asking her to do. And you think, well, why? If you are busy, then you shouldn't be. Why? Because agents are dopamine junkies and they feed off of dopamine. And again, not to get too scientific, but now we're getting into a lot of the things that come where there's limitations in executive functioning skills. Right. Where they struggle with, again, prioritization, organization, time management and stuff like that. But what I see and where the burnout really comes from, it starts with this idea that when they're busy, they are able to fire on all pistons and do all things and be all things to all people. When things slow down, it is almost impossible to get an agent to generate any type of positive workflow because again, dopamine has gone down, levels have gone down, and there's nothing that's driving that process back up again.

Lucy Edwards: But Lance, it's anyone is like that. You know, I maybe maybe realtor just rubs off me too much. And I've been in real estate world for 25 years and all I know is realtors. So all my friends are realtors. Uh, and it's, uh, that's that's maybe I'm thinking like one as well. And that kind of, uh, puts a damper. But I can tell you, my daughter, who is not a realtor, she is like that. She the minute she slows down, she doesn't know what to do with herself. And I'm just like, well, you like riding a bike. You never have time. Go ride a bike. No, I can't ride a bike. I just have to sit here and think what I'm going to do next. I have nothing in the pipeline. She works with lawyers. So completely different industry, but she gets high in a way. On being busy. On having no time. On getting up at 5:00 in the morning, taking a bike, by the way, and then get to work and work all day and be excited and be happy. So we all put ourselves under that pressure of being busy. The minute my project is like I'm working on one project now, I am terrified that that project will be done by Wednesday and I have to turn it in and I have to create another project. I must have another project, and I think it's just a human being thing, not just the realtor thing.

Lance Pendleton: Yeah. Um, no, it's not a human being thing. I could introduce you to hundreds of people that do not operate in that function. And I'm not here to say that the operating style is dysfunctional. Let's be super clear. There's no such thing as normal anymore. Normal is just a setting on a dishwasher. Okay, so what I like to think about is am I operating in a way that creates balance. And yes, I have a good friend of mine over the years that used to run around. He was a coach in the industry, is a coach in the industry and used to tell people balance is bullshit. Balance is bullshit. No it's not. We should be trying to achieve some semblance of at least shrinking the frenetic ness and the chaos that exists in our life into something a little more balanced state. What I heard you just describe, though, is an ability to settle. To settle into what it is that gives you the space to be creative, gives you the space to be effective. If you are constantly. It's like people that are always in relationships, they can't be alone. Why? Because when they're alone, that's when all of that stuff that they're trying to avoid, when they're in the relationship comes up. And it's the same thing when there's space, what happens? There's a narrative that plays in many people's heads, and that narrative is, I'm not good enough. I'm not doing enough. It's all a big ruse. I'm going to get found out. They're eventually going to figure out, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, and that narrative starts to spin. That, in essence, is where the first step of that driver of burnout comes from. So that would be the challenge to anybody listening to today's show is, can I sit and be comfortable with doing small, simple things when there's not much going On?

Lucy Edwards: Well, I disagree because I feel confident enough. I'm actually my ego trip is as big as Empire State Building, so I have no problem with that. Uh, but but my point is that I like being busy. I really enjoy projects, I enjoy creating. If I don't have a project, I create one. And, you know, hopefully it's helpful or I. But I just wanted to mention one story. I interviewed James Dwiggins the other day, and he is the co- founder of Next Home, and he just created a really cool app. And he he was talking about the same thing. He always wants to be busy. The one project is over before he even turns it in. He's already thinking, oh, what's next? I'm ready for the next one. And? And when I ask him, how do you balance your, you know, your traveling all over the all over the country? You are at every single conference I am at, which means that I am at quite a few of them as well. You're always talking. You, you know, and you fly. You fly all night, you work all day. You have a three year old beautiful daughter who you adore. How do you balance? And his answer was, something has to sacrifice. Either I'm going to see her at 6:00 in the morning and have breakfast with her, and then I won't see her for another 24 hours. Or and and I deprive myself sleep because I didn't sleep all night. So I'm, I'm, I went to bed at four. I got up at six to spend time with my daughter. So I kind of sacrifice that or I sacrifice my app that I love and I invented and I'm so proud of, but I still have to invest more energy in it, and I still have to meet with more it to create a better version of it. So I'm sacrificing something else. So there is no such thing as balance, because something will always be sacrificed. And I really admired him for. For sharing how he feels about it.

Lance Pendleton: I love when you name drop important real estate people because it just it's so it's so good. I was just yesterday talking to the CEO of X, Y and Z and I'm like, oh great. I was talking to the checkout person at Walmart and.

Multiple People: Well, I'm sorry, we can like we can remove it.

Lance Pendleton: No, it's fine. I just don't really talk to that many exciting and interesting people. I'm just out there talking to consumers all day long, but.

Multiple People: Well, I talk.

Lucy Edwards: To you, Lance, and we spend.

Lance Pendleton: I'm neither interesting nor exciting.

Multiple People: You are very.

Lucy Edwards: Interesting. And you are very exciting. And and and you, we challenge each other. Mostly you challenge mostly me. But that's okay, I enjoy it. That makes me think. It makes me think. And it makes me not to change my perspective and to change my views. But it helps either. Uh, either either understand that. Yes, what I'm doing is correct or understanding. Maybe I should review that. Maybe. Maybe I'm not on the right path. So thank you.

Lance Pendleton: Would you rather be spending time with your grandchild or interviewing the top CEO in real estate?

Lucy Edwards: Well, I've always been a bad mother because I always worked a lot. A lot. I worked like 100 hours a week. Nothing to be proud of. Thank God I have. You see, the team is important on my team. I have my husband, Peter, and because of him, Amy graduated and has a very successful career. So that is a good thing. The same thing with grandchild, I. I love spending time with him. He is in New York, I'm in Florida. We don't get to see each other. But but and I cherish every opportunity I have. Um, but I would not give up my interviews because I, I feed off that energy. So for me, it's important. I cannot be a full time grandmother, that's for sure.

Lance Pendleton: And I'm not here to judge and anything I think that we all, as you said, there are sacrifices that need to be made. And I know that for myself when I am 70 or 80 years old. Right. And I heard this one time, my, my, my brother does work in hospice care. And one of the things that he shared with me one time was he hears a lot about people at the very end of their life when they start talking about regrets they had. And one of the most common regrets is that they wish they had spent more time with people in their lives, more time with the people that they loved. It's the most common thing that people say. And when I heard that from him, it made me realize that a lot of the work that I do, and a lot of the things that I'm doing, is that I have really only two purposes. And again, back to the it ties directly to the point that we're talking about for burnout, that there's an appropriate amount of hustle that I can have in my work. But if the counterbalance to that isn't me being able to spend time with the people that I love, being present for them in their lives to the best of my ability, and at the same time, of being of useful purpose and service to consumers and clients and people out there at this time in their life when they're looking to buy and sell.

Lance Pendleton: Then for me, and I'm only speaking for me, I'm getting it wrong. I'm doing it wrong because I don't want to be somebody at 70 or 80 years old. And toward the end of my life, looking back and all I have is I'm looking at a video of my kid's dance recital through a phone of the eight seconds that I captured, or the the walk on the sunset beach that we had, because that's all I have left, because I wasn't there for it, or because those things happened while I was out building my empire. It's just for me. I need to have more than that. And I just, I think the average agent out there, the hustle and the burnout comes from distractibility, from a lack of dopamine, from this impulse to go make everyone happy. Right. There's a lot of that. I need to keep somebody happy, because if they're okay, I'm okay. That's how we self-regulate. It's not good, but that's how it happens. I though genuinely want to be aware of when those things are happening, so I can create that counterbalance to spend time with people that I love and doing things with people that I enjoy.

Lucy Edwards: And and yes, there is truth to it. In my previous life, my boss, we had a cemetery. You can see from the ninth floor. And he said, do you see this cemetery? Go there and take a look. If any of those, um, signs would say, oh, he worked 100 hours a week. Oh, he accomplished so much, and his company made an extra $20 million. Wow. He said, you go there, spend half a day. Spend a day you will never see anything like it. So stop spending 100 hours a week at work. So I agree with you. And I'm going I'm going to interrupt for just one second.

Lance Pendleton: Uh, what are you getting? Are you are you going to get something you're going to throw at me because we're on video and you actually can't strike me?

Lucy Edwards: I don't know if you can publish this or not, but this is my daughter's book. That's the book that she gave me to read.

Multiple People: Yes.

Lance Pendleton: Yes. That's like my my favorite book, which is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a fuck, but. That's a great book, by the way. Much more useful than the 12 hour workweek or the four hour work day, or fire in the John, or whatever other weird thing that people are reading now about, you know, self-improvement.

Lucy Edwards: Well, I find my happiness in scuba diving. So 3 or 4 times a year we go on short trips. And it did happen to me. We were in Mexico. I was on the phone with a client because I don't say no. I always pick up the phone. Even on vacation. We were late to the boat and the guy said, you are five minutes late, and if you think that your job is more important than mine, you are so wrong. And I felt that big, I thought, oh my God, he's right. You know, it's expensive trip. It was a very expensive diving experience, so I'm sure he can afford it. And I'm sure he's doing something for a living. That is, that is also very valuable. But he was on that boat on time and that was five minutes late, so I never, ever repeated that experience for sure.

Lance Pendleton: Well, I will I will close it with this, that I think that when I'm when I try to not get pulled into the waves too much, to not get sucked into the trying to be all things to all people at all times in the in the thing that happens with us in the industry. You know, I'm reminded that there are people out there that are able to do amazing, miraculous things, right? There are single moms with three kids who hold two jobs, who still find time to read to their kids at night, right. There are, uh, people out there who have severe limitations, physical limitations that still are able to have meaningful gainful employment in spite of those physical limitations, that these are all things that exist in the world and that people and we as human beings are far more adept and resilient into learning how to change. And that's why the topic for this and conversation of the hustle culture and all this stuff, I would reject the hustle culture. I would reject this notion that if I'm not out there hustling every day in the world of real estate and basically emulating the garbage you see on TV with, you know, Million Dollar Listing and Selling Sunset or whatever, you know, BS thing there is right now, which none of that's real, you know, that to me, is the thing that if you can begin to reject that and allow other people to understand what actually is that you do, you know, I, I, my client was late to our call yesterday.

Lance Pendleton: Why? Because they decided to hide the key that she needed. And it was supposed to be underneath the dumpster that was by the house. They had put it in the dumpster. And so she literally had to go dumpster diving to go fish this key out. Right. And I'm sitting there thinking like, you know, damn go you like, that is what you got to do to get this job done. But those are the parts that nobody sees. And that's the hustle culture, because I also know that after all of that, right, she still made it to her kid's soccer game. And she said, I smelled terrible when I was at that soccer game, but I knew that being there was more important than me going home and changing and getting ready for another listing that I had later on that I had to go prep for the next day, right? That's what matters, I think, more than anything else, if we lose sight of that, that's problematic.

Lucy Edwards: And I agree with you, it's problematic, but it's it's easier said than done. It's so easy for me. It's also very easy to say, I so want to spend more time with Alexander. My mom is 95 years old. God knows how many days, years or months she has left, and I don't spend enough time with her. And, you know, but I don't want to dwell on it either, because if I start dwelling on my God, I'm depriving my grandson. My my mother misses me. I will also be miserable and I will get nowhere, and I priorities are important, and I do my best to fit everything into my life.

Multiple People: So what if.

Lance Pendleton: You actually switched that up though, and went forward with the idea that once a month you were going to spend one weekend a month with your grandson.

Lucy Edwards: He wouldn't be able to handle me. Are you kidding me? I cannot handle him. He has so much energy. You will bury me in in probably a month. Multiple People: That kid. That's hilarious.

Lance Pendleton: Well, I think it was. I think that again, for all the folks that are that are listening to us, it is. You know, it is the old adage that it's a hustler's Paradise. And I know many of us are, you know, just a squirrel trying to get a nut. I understand that, but if you do find yourself feeling burnout, rather than thinking of the next big dopamine hit, the next thing that you're going to drive to push to go do, and the next great topic and idea. It's okay to spend time in that burnout, and it's okay to realize that you're not going to get stuck in it. And what can you do to spend more quality time with the people you care about most? In order to have a reason and understand the reason for why you got to move forward and go through that process.

Lucy Edwards: And on that note, I agree with you and take a vacation and go diving.

Lance Pendleton: So how do we fix the problem of being overly engaged, overly stressed out, overly frenetic in the business? Well, there's two things. One is going to be the very first thing that agents are terrible at, and that is saying no. It's unheard of in this business, in this industry, that any agent would say no. So what do I commonly see? One of the key problems is we say yes to everything. Oh, there's going to be a sales meeting tomorrow or where there's a guest speaker coming. Yes, I'll be there. Well, who's the speaker? You don't know if that's someone that you know. Roast goats for a living. Like you have no clue what that is, right? But I'm going to say yes to it anyway. We've got to learn to say no. So the very first thing that I recommend is practice the art of saying no. Look at your calendar for the week and pick one thing that you committed to that you said you were going to do that you're not going to do. It could be personal. It could be business. It doesn't matter. Practice saying no.

Lucy Edwards: I would say it is very important when you build your relationships with your clients that you pick and choose your clients as well. You don't just take everybody and anybody. Back when I just started our our business with my husband, we did floor plans in Manhattan and the seller would not let us up upstairs to go upstairs to do the floor plan. Keep saying, I'm on a conference call. Oh, I just got another call and we had to wait and wait and wait. And the agent said, I'm going to fire that seller, because if I bring important client to this $5.5 million apartment, and that was 20 plus years ago, and he will make us wait and wait and wait. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to lose the buyer. I do not want to ruin my reputation. And we left. And she fired the seller of a $5.5 million condo. So I took that as a lesson. And it happened to me and my clients. So I was very proud of letting some go, because they took so much of my energy that I couldn't really help people who really needed me the most.

Lance Pendleton: That's, and saying no is an essential part of what we do, right? We're just not practice at it and getting comfortable with it. Now the second thing is that when we go about our business, our level of self-care in the industry is abysmal. We don't really focus and practice on self-care. Why? Because we're in this perpetual state of trying to be all things to all people at all times. So, um, we're going to have a handout available for you. But here's what I want you to think about. There's a sheet that I use that I love, and there's four key areas of my life that I have to make sure that I'm being effective in, one of which is this idea of my mental health. The other one is my physical health, the other one is my intellectual health. What am I learning? And the last one is spirituality in whatever form that comes for you. And with those four things, you need to have something with each one of those four things that you're doing, either daily, weekly or monthly. And what I can do is we're going to give you a sheet that you can use so that you can begin to practice having and identifying what those things are that you're doing. Because if you look at that and you realize, I don't have something that I'm doing daily, weekly or monthly when it comes to my mental health, my physical health, my intellectual health and my spiritual health, you have a major problem and that needs to be resolved, and it needs to be fixed very, very quickly because your business and your personal life is going to suffer tremendously if you are not taking care of yourself. And it's the old, uh, oxygen mask on a plane thing, right? They tell you to put yours on first because guess what? If you're dead, you're no good to anybody else. So thank you so much for joining us. All of the information on this week's show is in the show notes. And please make sure that you give us a like smash the follow button or whatever it is that kids are doing these days.