How Subconscious Patterns Are Hurting Your Real Estate Business: Tips to Think More Consciously

Episode Summary
In 95% of the decisions you make, your subconscious mind plays an influential role - which means you are making immediate decisions and acting immediately, but you aren't actually thinking through scenarios and their impacts.

When you don't pay attention to your subconscious thoughts and habits, you run the risk of issues negatively affecting your real estate business.

As Cari Briner, Global Real Estate Leader and Holistic Business Coach at eXp Realty explains, almost all our subconscious thoughts are based on what other people think of us. As a result, we have a hard time being transparent and honest, as well as achieving a healthy work-life balance.

Cari discusses how developing emotional intelligence is just as essential as developing logical thinking in this episode of Curb Appeal. She and our host Rachel Gombosch discuss work-life balance, subconscious and conscious thinking patterns, and how to separate yourself from your work.

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Cari Briner

💡 What she does: Cari is a global real estate leader and holistic business coach at eXp Realty.

💡 Company: eXp Realty

💡 Noteworthy: For the past 20 years, Cari has been a top real estate agent, and as the CEO of a brokerage in MN, she grew it to the #1 real estate office in the entire state. Over the past ten years, Cari has helped over 100 real estate entrepreneurs grow their businesses and teams. In addition, over the past two years, she has built a national business and life coaching company, Achieve Freedom Coaching. Business Insider has featured Cari as one of the most innovative business coaches in the country.

💡 Where to find Cari: LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Website

Key Insights

⚡ Balancing work and life. Many agents cannot balance work and life, and they often struggle with making conscious decisions. This stems from the fact that people have difficulty developing EQ versus IQ. As she says, we understand everything logically but lack emotional intelligence. "We spend 95% of our lives making decisions subconsciously — meaning we're making the decisions and we're doing things, and we're not even thinking about it. We don't even know what we're doing. We don't move into a conscious state to make an actual decision if we should do that or not; we just do it. And then we live with the consequences."

⚡ Move out of your subconscious thinking pattern. The ego part of our mind developed in the early stages of evolution to protect us from physical danger, but it has further evolved to protect us from emotional danger. According to Cari, almost all our subconscious thoughts come from what other people think about us, and that's why we have a hard time being transparent and honest. "We can either allow that cycle of thought process and then react subconsciously to it, or we can immediately stop and move ourselves out of this subconscious thought pattern into consciousness. And it's an actual skill you can learn to immediately. But you have to be dedicated to it; you have to learn about it. And that becomes a part of self-leadership and personal growth."

⚡Make a distinction between who you are and what you do. Throughout our lives, we take on various roles — student, parent, real estate agent (or any professional role), etc. We take all these roles too personally, in the sense that we observe and value ourselves through them. Cari advises that we should start taking care of ourselves and love ourselves more as actual human beings, not through a job or a role. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Cari Briner: Being willing to fail forward as a human being will always directly relate to our business failing forward, which means succeeding at a higher level, and our limits to who we are, are growth, how we think, how we feel, what we do is the limit of our business.

[00:00:16] Rachel Gombosch: All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of Curb Appeal. I am here with Cari Briner, she is, has been a top-producing real estate agent, was a broker in Minnesota, growing that brokerage to be the top real estate office in the entire state, which is incredibly phenomenal.

[00:01:06] She is an expansion team, trailblazer, and connoisseur, and additionally, she's been featured in Business Insider as one of the most innovative business coaches in the country. Cari, how are you?

[00:01:17] Cari Briner: I'm great. How are you? Thanks for having me.

[00:01:19] Rachel Gombosch: I'm good. Thank you for joining us today. I'm incredibly excited about the conversation that we have, I think you're gonna provide so much value to all real estate professionals out there, and you're just gonna give them such a different perspective on how they approach their business. So, I'm really excited to get into it, and what we're gonna capture today in today's episode. So, Cari, I'm gonna open the floor up to you and just, honestly, open up and ask what brought you into the space of real estate, expansion, and holistic business coaching.

[00:01:49] Cari Briner: Yeah, well, it's a, it's an interesting thing because I never, you know, aspired to be a real estate agent, and yet I found myself one, and selling at a high level at a very young age. So, I graduated from college and realized I didn't wanna work for someone else and had quite a bit of college debt and decided to go into business for myself.

[00:02:07] I hadn't even bought a home yet, yet I was going to help other people do it, and it was an interesting and lofty, you know, goal, and yet there was something in me that was just I just knew that this was what I was supposed to do. And I think it really was, first and foremost, coming from a place of just really being deep down an entrepreneur and knowing that I had a potential that I could not potentially reach inside of somebody else's world,

[00:02:33] and I had a small, short stint in Corporate America, and I made that assessment quickly. I don't believe in, you know, coincidences, though, and so I could have picked any industry really at that point, coming fresh out of college, and for whatever reason, real estate was what called to me, you know, if I fast forward now, 11, you know, years after I sold real estate, and beyond, now I've been in the business for 23 years,

[00:02:56] I do realize that I was meant to come into this industry and not to necessarily sell real estate forever, but to use, I believe, my God-given talent and strengths and just natural abilities to help inspire and motivate people, and to be able to kind of coach them through a better quality of life and business.

[00:03:15] And it just happened that real estate was my conduit to be able to find my space. And so, after selling real estate and raising my two boys for 11 years in Minnesota, I did move into a leadership role, I grew a large brokerage, we were very successful. I really used my painful experiences, really, in real estate, not having a great quality of life while I was selling so much business, you know, so many homes and doing so much business to really fuel my passion for helping other people in the industry.

[00:03:42] And that's really, I believe, because I had no experience leading others or recruiting talent, and yet we were able to recruit, you know, a hundred agents a year to our market center and help them build real estate teams, and how did I do that? I just really came from a place of authenticity and not wanting other people to go through the 11 years I had.

[00:04:02] And so, I learned, and I grew, and I shared that, and that led me to, you know, the next growth opportunity, which was to grow a real estate team across the country, and we were pioneering that, that space. It was such a great education failing forward and learning a lot of leadership skills that I would not have had, uh, access to learn, which I'm really grateful for.

[00:04:21] And throughout all of those things, coaching was kind of a, a theme, you know, to really get people, to do what they knew they needed to do, and to remove these limiting beliefs and to understand their true potential, and to recognize why they weren't doing those things that they had written down as their goals, or, you know, maybe some limiting leadership qualities that were just because they had to change their perspective.

[00:04:44] And a lot of it at first was self-taught, and then I really invested in getting a great coach myself and learning a lot of skills. And so, that's really what brought me ultimately to the holistic approach of coaching. Why holistic? Is simply because I don't believe having been in this industry, as long as I have, that as real estate entrepreneur we can compartmentalize our business in our life.

[00:05:06] We are the business, most of us, as real estate entrepreneurs. And so, how are we com, how are we separating ourselves from the business when we are the business? It's very difficult. I tried for 11 years, very unsuccessfully to do it, and instead of trying to, you know, reject something that is true, I find it is a much better option to accept what is reality,

[00:05:27] and then move forward in the best way that we can. And so, that is growing ourselves will always grow our business. Being willing to fail forward as a human being will always directly relate to our business failing forward, which means succeeding at a higher level, and our limits to who we are, are growth,

[00:05:44] how we think, how we feel, what we do is the limit of our business, and also where our life is very intertwined. So, how can we integrate work in life so that we feel good about being a parent, and a spouse, and a friend, and a, a colleague, at the same time, we were working really, really hard and spending a lot of hours in our business?

[00:06:03] And it was just a personal passion because I believe the 11 years I spent struggling through that and really, quite frankly, not doing a great job of it, was meant for a reason, and if I use it to pay it forward and help other people, then it, it was for good, it wasn't something that I regret, it wasn't something I look back on, and say, "Gosh, that was really a, a huge failure.

[00:06:25] I wish I was a better, more present mom. I wish I would've had a better quality of life." At the end of the day, it is what it was, it was what it was, and if I use it to help other people, and be a better version of myself today because of it, then that changes everything, and that's what I decided to do, and that's what led me to the holistic coaching approach.

[00:06:45] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah, that's incredible. And I wanna touch back on, you know, just in general, the pain point of agents not being able to balance work and life because I think this is, it's a universal issue, you see it across the entire board, I think just about any agent you talk to is gonna say, "Well, sometimes I struggle with, you know, making it to my son's baseball game, and also making it to that showing appointment, and balancing." Which is more of a priority, right?

[00:07:10] And so, I wanna dive into that just a little bit, and just discuss with you, why do you think that is? Why do you think it's such an issue and so problematic for agents, real estate professionals, anyone in the industry to really find that balance between work and life?

[00:07:24] Cari Briner: Yeah, this is a perfect start to our, our conversation between IQ and EQ because we understand logically that we should time block our personal and our business appointments. We understand logically that we should be able to go to our son's baseball game, and work around that with our clients and get everything that we need to get done in business.

[00:07:48] We logically and consciously understand that as a human being and as a business owner. And that would be we've learned that, we've seen strategies on how to time block, we understand it's possible. That's the IQ. And we could actually go to hours of time blocking classes, we could have somebody time block our calendar for us and tell us exactly what to do.

[00:08:10] The problem is we don't do it, we don't follow the calendar, we don't go to the baseball game, we don't protect our time, and then we get ourselves into these positions where we feel bad about ourselves because we're not showing up to the baseball game, or we can't manage our time, and it becomes a self-trust and a self-confidence issue,

[00:08:27] and it is a never-ending battle. This is the difference between EQ and IQ. EQ is your emotional intelligence, and so the first thing I would say is, why is this an issue? Because 95% of our lives, we spend making decisions subconsciously, meaning we're making the decisions and we're doing things and we're not even thinking about it,

[00:08:45] we don't even know what we're doing. So, we subconsciously make the decision to say yes to the buyer that calls us and says, "I think this is the one we have to see it tonight at 6:00 PM." Even though we already told our family we were gonna go to the baseball game at 6:00 PM. We don't move into a conscious state to make an actual decision

[00:09:03] if we should do that or not, we just do it. And then, we, we live with the consequences, and the consequences could be small, and they could be large, but even if they're small, they build up over time. And one of the things that I know was true for me is that it wasn't just the one baseball game, it was just all these small, very micro-decisions I made that were not actually conscious decisions.

[00:09:25] If I would've been in a conscious state, logical, just thinking about this, I wouldn't have made them because it would've been obvious to me that that was more important and that my son is growing up, and I'm not gonna get a chance at these baseball games forever, and that my client isn't going to pay, you know, leave me as, as an agent, because I tell them I have to meet them earlier, later, or in the morning, they just aren't, 99% of the time

[00:09:49] they will not say, "Oh my gosh, you're not the agent for me." You just tell 'em you have another appointment, I mean, that's just what it is, and people will be okay with that, but here's what happens. We react, and we make these decisions in a subconscious manner, and what is happening is it is our, the ego part of our mind that is, drives most of our subconscious thought patterns.

[00:10:11] So, a subconscious thought pattern, there is the client is going to fire me, I need to make money for my family, making the money is more important, if I don't show up, we can't pay the bills. They're just gonna have to understand I'm doing this for them, you know, I said I was going to do everything I could to get these people under contract,

[00:10:29] what are they gonna think of me if I don't? If I lose this client, what are my colleagues going to think about me? If I don't sell enough homes this year, what is my spouse gonna think about me? If I don't show up, these are all of the things all based on one decision that was, do I say yes to this buyer, or go to the baseball?

[00:10:46] But what we don't know is those subconscious thoughts are coming at us a mile a minute, almost as fast as I talk, right? And they're doing that, and we don't even know that we're listening to it. So, we make those decisions in a really irrational manner, in a subconscious manner, and that is why we don't have good work-life integration.

[00:11:06] And that is why we need to hone the skill of our emotional intelligence, as a business owner and an entrepreneur, if we wanna take true control of our lives and we wanna have a good quality of life, and we wanna build a bigger business, which you and I will go into, because why we're not reaching our fullest potential, why we're not growing the business we want to, is for the exact same reason I just mentioned, but I wanna make a quick distinction before we move on because I lived by the myth of a work-life at balance for 11 years.

[00:11:36] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah.

[00:11:36] Cari Briner: And I felt like a failure because I could never achieve it, and the reason I could never achieve it is because it doesn't exist, but nobody ever told me that, right? So, I need people to listen here now and say it that is non-existent, there is no such thing as balance, in general, balance is going back and forth, a ballerina balances, but their feet are constantly moving, you balance when you're on a bike, but you have to be moving in order to balance, and you're going back and forth, and it's a cyclical situation.

[00:12:06] So, I'd like to use the word work-life integration because I do believe, and I have been able to change my thinking around this, change my calendar, and change my life in business because of this thought process, which is "We can be a great business owner and have a great quality of life. If we realize not every day is gonna be equal, not every week is gonna be equal, and not every month or year is gonna be equal,

[00:12:33] however, we have to have the priorities in the different areas of our business and life, and we just have to make sure we're touching back on those at different points, just like a ballerina is doing that, we're touching back quickly." So, that was one thing I had to understand is it's not balance, Cari, you haven't achieved it 'cause you can't, but it is integration,

[00:12:52] and that is in your control. That is in your power to make that decision if you want to. So, pick your priorities and make sure throughout the days, weeks, months, and years, there are moments of time where you're touching back with all of the things that are important to you and you have to be okay with realizing sometimes your child needs you more, and business is going to be on the back burner.

[00:13:13] Sometimes business needs you more, and your family has to understand that for a period of time, but you don't do it for too long that you lose those relationships or priorities, you go back and forth as rapidly, really, as you can. And so, that has been a fundamental change. The second mindset shift that you have to make, and again, this is EQ versus IQ.

[00:13:34] It's not rational, necessarily. We all equate time to value. I need to work more to get more business. I need to spend more time with my kids to have a better relationship. I need more alone time with my spouse to make sure our marriage is good, and I need to work out a whole lot more hours to get back in shape.

[00:13:56] And the reality is it is always going to be consistency over intensity. It is not the amount of time. It is the consistent time that you spend with a person or on something that gets you the long-term result. So, this was a life-changing moment for me when I realized I didn't have to be with my kids for half the day to be a good mom, sitting with them on their bed before they went to sleep, spending one on one time, not distracted, no phones, absolutely 110% present with them,

[00:14:30] would move the needle forward in that relationship, then anything else I could do ever would. A walk around the block for 15 minutes with my spouse would be all that I needed to do, again, present time, intentional time to make sure that we were connected. And if I was focused, intentional, purposeful, and not distracted, it doesn't take me three hours to lead generate,

[00:14:54] it might only take me a half an hour, 45 minutes, or an hour. So, now all of a sudden, our excuse of we need more time is no longer an excuse, we can do all the things, but we're not doing them consistently. We're thinking about them incorrectly. We're putting way too much power on the amount of time, which we then reject and don't do, use it as an excuse,

[00:15:17] and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, we have to back away from these limiting beliefs and the egoic part of our brain that tells us these things. And we've gotta challenge our thinking, and we've gotta move into a subconscious thought pattern, and do what we know is right, not what our mind is telling us, not easy, but if we do it, we will make the right decisions, and then we're gonna get a different result in our life.

[00:15:40] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah. Oh my gosh. So many good nuggets right there. Holy moly. Phenomenal. I wanna go back real quick on your analogy of just the, you know, riding a bike, or being a ballerina, and let's just stick with a ballerina for right now, and I mean, you're talking about these, almost micro activities, where a ballerina is trying to be up on, on one toe, right?

[00:16:02] For her entirety per, the entirety of her performance, she's not necessarily good at that when she first starts, right? Like, it's not something that comes to her easily at the very beginning, but with all of those tight, tiny micro-movements, right, slowly but surely, she gets the hang of it, and she obtains that balance or integration in this case. 

[00:16:27] But I think something really important to note is if you don't train yourself in the correct way, you're not gonna be able to maintain that, right? Which is speaking to exactly what you just brought up, in the sense of you don't have to be spending hours upon hours with your children,

[00:16:44] it doesn't have to be that way, it just needs to be intentional and it needs to be focus. Those tiny micro activities, same with your business, you don't have to spend two hours doing lead generation, but if you have one good, focused hour, or one focused half hour of lead gen, that's gonna be more impactful, right? 

[00:16:59] So, how can you incorporate these tiny micro activities to help you maintain that work life integration that you're speaking of? So, just truly incredible, I love that analogy.

[00:17:09] Cari Briner: And, and, well, you brought up a very good point. So, a strategy behind that, which, you know, we can dive into later, but just so people understand, taking those micro-decisions and actions, very small bursts, and actually putting those in your calendar, erasing all of those big chunks that you think you need to have, erasing those expectations of I'm lead generating for three hours,

[00:17:30] because if you're really true with yourself, you're not doing that every day, anyway, it's just in your calendar because you think you're supposed to do it. I have met thousands of real estate professionals, and there are only a few that actually do it. Um, they're putting it in their calendar because they think they should do it,

[00:17:46] and they want to get to that place they do it, and though it's not happening. And so, when you put something in your calendar that you don't do, and you don't show up to actually stick to it, you're actually, every single time looking at your calendar, not doing something, creating a feeling of distrust.

[00:18:01] You're basically telling yourself subconsciously that you don't do what you say you're going to do. It's actually a very vicious cycle, an extremely, um, unmotivating for most human beings, and they don't know that they're creating this lack of motivation through their own activities because this is a very subconscious thing that happens in your mind.

[00:18:17] You don't realize it. It's just what you think about yourself. How you think about yourself is how you're gonna show up, and you don't realize that you are creating the way you're showing up. So, I would encourage you all to erase everything from your calendar if you've got these big lofty goals and time blocks, and that's not because I don't want you to achieve big goals, it's because you're gonna have to have micro-movements to create

[00:18:38] the, the muscle memory, like the ballerina does, to create the endurance, to create the consistent habit, and the, the movements become almost natural, and you just start doing it subconsciously, a ballerina, eventually, is doing this subconsciously, doesn't even know what he or she is doing. We can get to that place in our life, but we've gotta start very purposefully with really tiny changes.

[00:19:00] So, just put a couple small things that are important to you in your calendar and start to allow yourself to accept that you're going to do small things intentionally for a while to build something much greater. This brings me to the reason people don't do that. People will tell me, I, they will literally tell me in coaching conversations,

[00:19:20] "I don't wanna erase all these things on my calendar, there is no reason I should not be doing the things that I should be doing for three hours every morning, there's no reason I shouldn't be working out for an hour," but the question keeps coming back, "But are you doing it?"

[00:19:32] "No, I'm not." Doesn't matter if there's a reason or not, you're not doing it. So, every time you don't do it, you're creating a challenge for yourself and making it harder for you to get into a better state of action because of what you're putting in your mind, and they'll say to me, "I feel like a loser if I erase all this from my calendar, and I put lead generation for 20 minutes, like, I literally feel like a loser."

[00:19:53] This is also something that the egoic part of our mind is going to tell us. You should be able to work out for an hour a day, you should be able to lead generate for three hours a day, why can't you do that? Somebody else down this, the road here, or this other agent over here does this, this other mom, she seems to have all the integration.

[00:20:11] And so, what happens is we listen to our mind who tells us we should, therefore we say we're going to, but we aren't. So, we have to just stop thinking about what other people do because most of what we think other people do, isn't the truth anyways, and we have to stop with the ego telling us what we should feel about ourselves because the actual forming of a habit is a psychological event, and

[00:20:37] we have to understand the mind and move into that consciousness and go, it doesn't matter what my mind's telling me, logically, and in reality, this is how I'm actually going to build a habit. Small micro changes in movements and wins and consistency is what's gonna get me to my goal, hands down. 

[00:20:55] And that is, what I want to really go into with you now is this constant challenging of our thinking, and the battle with our own mind. When I was working 24/7 for 11 years, and had two young children, and was trying to be a mom and felt very bad about the balance that I wasn't achieving, I didn't have great health,

[00:21:16] I didn't see my family members, my extended family members, very much because I never had time. I had a failing marriage, I didn't feel good about myself. People thought I was very confident because in business I was, business was where he could go to, to hide from all the other things, and it was the thing I did the most.

[00:21:32] And so, I would go there because I would feel valuable and I would feel confident in those areas, but in every other area of my life, I had no confidence and no self-trust, and I felt horrible about myself and guilty all the time. And I find that a lot of entrepreneurs feel the same way. And the reason is, is because we aren't waking up

[00:21:49] being ready to battle our mind every single day, and move into conscious decisions, we're just letting our mind tell us what to do, and it's not good for us. Our mind is not going to tell us the things that are good for us, it's gonna tell us the things that it thinks is going to keep us safe. Um, it's going to keep us in a mindset of scarcity.

[00:22:08] It's gonna tell us the things that we, we are listening to, and we believe them to be real. We believe our thoughts to be real things, we believe them to be the reality of our life, but what we have to realize is thoughts are absolutely not real things, and if we start challenging the thinking, and we wake up with the first mindset, which is

[00:22:29] I'm gonna be in charge of my life, not my mind, I'm gonna be in charge of my life, but it isn't gonna be easy, and so I have to wake up ready to take on that battle and win that battle in the morning, and first thing, and throughout the day, and it's a training, it's just like a ballerina, every single day you do it, and it gets easier and easier. The beginning it's really hard, and that's why most people don't stick with it.

[00:22:51] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah, and I actually, you know, you reminded me of something I would forget what I was listening to, but I would, it might have been a podcast, um, and they were talking about how, just how our mind works, in general, and I think this is really gonna resonate with just what you were saying. Our mind can't perceive the distance or the difference between what is an actual threat and what is a perceived threat.

[00:23:13] Cari Briner: Yes.

[00:23:14] Rachel Gombosch: And I think this plays a huge role in what you're speaking to right now because we think of those big tasks, right? Let's put lead gen on the calendar for the first five hours of the day because I need to get my leads up, and the only way I can do that is if I am cold calling for either five to eight hours a day, and that's, that it is what it is. But then, when you say that, your mind perceives that as a threat. And so, a lot of people, they, they flee from that, right? AKA, they don't do it. 

[00:23:43] Cari Briner: Yeah.

[00:23:43] Rachel Gombosch: And so, we have to move, again, just, as you were saying, we have to move from that subconscious thinking into that conscious thinking, to then get our minds to flip back, and say, "No, this is not an actual threat, like, you are not in immediate danger from this. 

[00:23:59] Cari Briner: No. 

[00:23:59] Rachel Gombosch: Your mind is trying to trick you." And so, it is, it's this constant cycle, back and forth, of you consciously making decisions for yourself throughout the day versus what your mind is subconsciously thinking you should be doing.

[00:24:11] be doing. 

[00:24:12] Cari Briner: I mean, the, part of our mind was developed originally when, you know, in the early times of the human being to protect us from actual physical danger 'cause we had to go hunt and gather, and there was actual, uh, we were in threat for our life on a minute-by-minute basis, thankfully most of us today are not in that danger.

[00:24:30] And so, what has happened is it has evolved, and our ego part of our mind has actually evolved to protecting us from emotional danger. And so, almost all of our reactions, subconscious come from what do other people think about us? Will people still like us? Will we be right? Will people love us? Will we be rejected?

[00:24:47] Um, will we be successful? What would happen to our relationships if something wasn't successful? What would it look like if I failed? You know, that's why we have a hard time being authentic. It's why we have a hard time being transparent and honest. It's why we have a hard time failing forward. It's great to say I'm gonna fail forward,

[00:25:04] but then when people start failing, they freeze, and they don't fail forward. They don't move forward at all because they don't wanna fail because it sounds good, but when we're in the moment, oh, what are people thinking about me? What if, what if, what if, and so this ties greatly into, we get into those scarcity moments.

[00:25:22] We say yes to the buyer for the showing instead of going to the baseball game because we come from a place of scarcity that if we lose that client then we're gonna lose that money, and then we can't pay our bills, and then our wife won't like us anymore, and, I mean, it goes down this entire trail over literally asking somebody to just, you know, move the appointment by an hour. Literally, that is what our brain does.

[00:25:45] Rachel Gombosch: Right.

[00:25:45] Cari Briner: So, we can either allow that cycle of thought process, and then react subconsciously to it, or we can immediately stop, and move ourselves out of this subconscious thought pattern into consciousness. And it's an actual, it's an actual skill you can learn to immediately realize I am,

[00:26:01] I'm in a subconscious, uh, state, I need to move into a conscious state, and I need to make an actual decision for myself, I can't let my mind make this decision, it's not natural. And if you practice it, it can become very easy, but you have to be dedicated to it, you have to learn about it. And that becomes a part of self-leadership and self and personal growth.

[00:26:21] If you're not growing as a human being, if you're not leading yourself, if you're not learning about these things, and realizing why you're not achieving your goals in business and life, then you won't achieve your goals in business and life because you are your limits, 

[00:26:35] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah.

[00:26:35] Cari Briner: you are the extent that your business will grow, you are the extent that your relationships will grow, or your health will get better or not. And so, you know, we've got to realize that we can go to all of these webinars, and we can learn all of these tactics and strategies, and we can learn another lead generation to, and we can buy another CRM, or we can spend a little bit of time leading ourselves

[00:26:58] first and learning about the things that are actually gonna get us to do the things that we are learning because we can learn all day long, but if we don't do them on a consistent basis, it was not helpful to us. And so, yeah, so this is a very interesting thing, I mean, the mind doesn't differentiate,

[00:27:18] so you, you just made a great comment, the perceived threat versus a real threat. The perceived threat is that I'm gonna lose this buyer because they aren't gonna like that I tell them I can't meet with them today. It's not a real threat, 99.9% chance they are not gonna do that, right? But we will react on the 0.1% that it might because that's what our mind tells us, and we're listening to it.

[00:27:41] That's that difference. But here's another thing that shows up, when we focus on things that we don't want, which is what our mind is going to make us do, by the way, because it's trying to protect us. Cari, keep thinking about that one time that you were rejected, you do not wanna go through that again,

[00:27:57] that was horrible, that was painful, so let's not even put yourself in that position. It's going to continue to make us think about what we don't want or what we don't have, but if we allow that space in our brain, it's actually what our brain now looks more for. Our brain is extremely powerful. We don't actually, if you haven't studied the brain or psychology, the egoic part of the mind, it is fascinating how unbelievably strong it is, and how unbelievably

[00:28:28] impactful it is if you can actually change it and use it for good. These are the people that you just see, like, wow, how do all of these things just keep falling into place? How do they keep getting themselves to make these moves? They just seem to have this, like, positive, lucky streak. And then, you see these people that it's like, how does that, all of those bad things just keep happening to these poor people over and over again,

[00:28:52] like, I can't even imagine, like, you know, what is going on there? I feel so bad, and I'm not here to say that a hundred percent of the time we are in control of what happens to us, because we're not. And yet, if we focus on the things that are not good, we will get more of them because our mind is looking for it because we're telling it to. So, we have to, EQ is learning, what am I focusing on, subconsciously and consciously? What do I need to fill my brain with opposite of that? Because I've gotta be super careful what I'm thinking about and focusing on here because it will absolutely lead to the results of my life or my business because there is 110% chance that your thinking begins

[00:29:38] everything, your thinking starts here, it leads to a feeling, it leads to an action, or a lack of, and then it leads to a result. Even if it's something you're not trying to do, even if you don't want it to happen again. And so, the, the awareness of this is very, very critical, and then doing things that change that internal dialogue, and you have to do that consciously.

[00:30:02] And that, that's really important. The, the last thing, and then I'll have you ask some more questions that I really think I don't wanna miss talking about is the attachment to business, or to the roles that.

[00:30:14] Rachel Gombosch: That's what I was gonna bring up. Yep. We're on the same page.

[00:30:17] Cari Briner: All right. I would say this is probably one of the most detrimental and powerful things that you can become aware of, and a lot of you listening today might not even be aware of this, so I hope this creates a new awareness for you, and a change in your thinking, which will absolutely get you into some different action.

[00:30:35] It is so impactful, but we are a human being, okay, that's how we're born, we're born a human being, we have no role, we're, we're a person, we are a spiritual being in some way, shape, or form, however you believe that. And yes, we have a mind, and yes, we can start thinking, and yes, we learn and grow. And as we become older, we start to take on roles.

[00:30:56] We're a daughter or a son, a brother or sister, cousin, friend, a student, to a teacher. And then, all of a sudden, we are a parent and a spouse, and maybe a community member, and we are whatever we are in our career, for the purposes of today, we're a real estate agent, maybe we're a real estate leader, maybe we are a broker-owner, whatever we might be, but we are those people,

[00:31:19] and we have to make a very conscious effort to create a distinction because we say we are those things. And so, we're playing those roles, remember words matter, when we're constantly saying to ourself, we're a parent, we're a mom, I'm a mom, I'm a mom of two boys, this is who I am, it defines me. I'm a real estate agent,

[00:31:42] it's my career, I'm the number one agent in this market. I'm a broker-owner, I own my own business. This is what you're doing. It's not who you're being, it's not who you are, it's what you're doing. So, what happens to people in real estate because it because real estate, a lot of times, starts off with one person.

[00:32:04] When I got my real estate license, I was a real estate agent, and I was my business, there's nobody else in it.

[00:32:08] Rachel Gombosch: Yep. Yep.

[00:32:10] Cari Briner: Um, and so, that becomes, I think why in our industry it's so prevalent that we get so over-identified with our business. It's so personal, like, you say something about my business, you are cutting right through me as a human being because I am my business.

[00:32:27] If my business fails, I'm a failure. If it succeeds, I'm a success. If, you know, it makes money, I'm making all the money. If I'm losing money, I suck, and I'm, I'm, I'm a loser. And, you know, if I make a mistake, now I am a mistake, I don't know what I'm doing. And these are really, really challenging thought processes because here's what happens.

[00:32:52] We will never take the risks that we need to take, or try something new, or fail forward to grow in our business if we are too attached to it, and it is a direct reflection of who we are as a human being because that is far too risky. The egoic part of our mind is not going to let us do that. It's gonna say, "Oh, stop right here

[00:33:12] because what if you fail, that's gonna look ridiculous, and you're gonna be a failure." It's also not gonna let you do the things that you need to do, you don't wake up every day and make a call because you're afraid that you're gonna get rejected because people aren't rejecting your service, they're rejecting you.

[00:33:25] No, they're not, they don't really care about you, they're rejecting the service 'cause they don't need it right now, but we can't create a distinction. So, this is also why we say no to the baseball game, and we say yes to the appointment because if we don't make the money if we don't succeed, if the client fires us, this is a direct reflection of who we are.

[00:33:46] Interestingly, that will take over the direct reflection of who we are as a parent. And it doesn't, mostly because we're coming from scarcity, and money creates that, image creates that, and business ownership kind of creates that. So, um, I would just say, if you feel very defined, if you were, if you feel like your business is you, there's a moment for you to start

[00:34:09] detaching from that and learning a little bit about what needs to happen for me to not feel that way. And oftentimes, you've gotta start putting some more influence on the other roles you play and just who you are that makes you worthy, that makes you successful, that makes you valuable, that makes you a great person, all outside of the roles, just who you were born.

[00:34:35] And so, that means self-reflection, that means, maybe journaling, that means some belief in yourself, that maybe means pouring into yourself, stepping up for yourself, working out more. I've seen people just start taking care of themselves, and caring about themselves, more loving themselves, more as an actual human being, and the joy that they got from that relationship,

[00:34:55] the most important relationship you have with yourself that leaks into everything else. Now, actually, makes them feel so good about themselves. They don't care about what happens to their business, I mean, they do, but they know that they're gonna be okay, no matter what, they're still gonna be successful.

[00:35:10] People are still gonna love them. They'll re, rebuild it 'cause they have confidence, and they feel good about themselves, they have self-trust, and they've got something in them that says, "This isn't my end all be all, this isn't what, I wasn't put on the earth to be a real estate agent, I was put on the earth to be

[00:35:27] this human being that contributes to other people in various ways. This is just what I get to do, and this is just how I make money to, to, to make sure that I can, you know, provide for my family, but this isn't me. And when that can happen, I have seen people completely change the entire face of their real estate business because they are no longer afraid to do things that they were afraid to do.

[00:35:51] They no longer are worried. They don't care what people think anymore. They just go be themselves and do the best that they can, and always more success follows. This is probably the most fundamental move you could make, and I guess change from focusing on how great you are at selling real estate, your IQ to your EQ, which is understanding how you operate, why you operate the way you do, and what you need to change to make yourself have a better life and an exponentially better business.

[00:36:24] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah, no, this is fantastic. And I wanna bring up something that we had talked about in one of our previous conversations 'cause I think it applies directly to this. And then, I wanna talk about just some tangibles that people can walk away with next action steps, but, previously, you brought up there aren't business problems, there are personal problems. And I think what you just said speaks to this, but I would love for you to really elaborate on, again, this essence of how much your personal, your EQ, can really bleed into the rest of your business, and that, what do you mean there's not personal problems, but there's, or there's not business problems, but there's only personal problems, and how that affects your business. I'd love for you to go into detail on that.

[00:37:09] Cari Briner: Yeah, absolutely. I always say the quote, which is "There are no per, there are no business problems, there's just personal problems showing up in your business," especially if you are the business and you're the entrepreneur. So, you know, it could be anything from your communication style that you learned growing up,

[00:37:25] to a parent rejecting you that makes you feel not worthy, to, you know, a situation that you grew up in that you didn't feel safe, to growing up with parents that said money doesn't grow on trees, and, you know, we're gonna pinch pennies because, and there's nothing wrong with that, but what it all is is it's conditioning, it's environment,

[00:37:44] it's how we think, it's how we feel about things, and if we don't challenge those thoughts and thinking, then we're just gonna subscribe to them for the rest of our lives, and they're gonna have us make choices in our business that are gonna create problems. So, we think it's a business problem, we try to, to throw a bunch of business solutions at a problem that is stemming from a personal place.

[00:38:06] And so, what I found over the years is if people work on themselves, they're limiting beliefs, their thought processes, their weird thoughts about money 'cause we all have them, their insecurities, their lack of worthiness, their lack of self-love, um, maybe, you know, I see a lot of relationship challenges

[00:38:25] people have absolutely show up in their leadership on a daily basis. They take the rejection of a past relationship, and they project it into their business, and they come from a scarcity mindset of rejection, and they make all the wrong decisions for their business when it comes to the people that they're recruiting or bringing into their world, and it implodes, and this is not, and it wasn't because there was a business problem.

[00:38:49] They brought great people into their world, they had a great business, it's because as a human being they didn't realize what they were doing because it was subconscious, and it was stemming from something in their life. And the other thing is, is that if you give all of your attention, and another example of this is if you give pretty much all of your attention to your business, you could be the best at the best in the business.

[00:39:10] But if you aren't taking care of your health, if you don't feel good about yourself, or don't feel good at, you know, it affects the way you can perform in business, it, you, you don't do the best that you can do. If you have a tumultuous relationship at home, it creates a lot of stress, you do bring it into your relationships at work, you bring it into your energy levels at work,

[00:39:33] you bring it into your confidence at work. You know, if you've got money challenges, it absolutely leaks into your business because you come constantly from a place of scarcity and having to make more. And so, you make decisions that aren't always the right decisions, and they backfire. And so, when I have a list of these challenges that people are facing in business, oftentimes I want them to ask themselves some really great questions because I also have another great quote, which is "The quality of the questions you ask yourself is gonna be into direct correlation to the quality of your life or your business."

[00:40:06] It just is. Problem is we don't know what kinds of questions to ask ourselves oftentimes. So, we don't ask ourselves great questions. That's the power of having a coach, or a colleague, or somebody who can challenge you and get you to think differently and ask yourself some questions, but instead of immediately asking questions about what could you change in your business,

[00:40:25] I tend to go, how might this be showing up in your life, or how might this challenge in business be coming from something in your life that you've experienced, or that you believe some thought patterns, maybe how you were raised, just challenge them a little bit because, for most people they don't, they don't have awareness of that.

[00:40:44] They don't think, they don't think that way, they have no idea that there's a correlation, but the second I ask the question, they almost always know the answer. And so, now they can actually self-reflect. And when you become aware of something, it's the best gift because you can't do anything about something you don't realize, but the second you become aware, you will now have the power to make a change,

[00:41:07] if you want to. So, now you're aware, you have to accept it, not judge yourself, that's not gonna do you any good. It just is what it is, by the way, anything that happens in our life, it's just a circumstance. There's no emotion to it until we put emotion to it. There's no judgment to it until we judge it, which by the way, is our own ego telling us we should judge it or feel a certain way that isn't even true.

[00:41:33] So, it just is what it is. Now we know what it is, how do we actually want it to be? Great, that also doesn't have to have emotion, we just don't necessarily care for it this way, it would be better if it was this way. So then, what do we need to do? Usually, we have to change our thinking. So, we dive into that, and then maybe we make some steps in our personal life that it will automatically leak into our business.

[00:41:56] So, when I tell people, "Don't keep working at your business to get a better business result." What I mean by it is if you really work on yourself, I promise you your business will always grow. It's personal growth through business success. Also, your business is awesome because it gives you challenges every day to work on yourself, right?

[00:42:15] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah.

[00:42:15] Cari Briner: If you embrace it and you look at it that way. So, most of us think of ourselves as a failure, like, I have a business problem again, I can never find the right talent, I obviously am not a good leader, and we're just frustrated we wanna give up, instead why don't we think of it like this, this challenge in business is showing something about me

[00:42:34] that is probably leaking into a whole bunch of relationships in my life that it gives me an opportunity to work on to be, to be a better human being. It'll probably make my marriage better or my relationship with my son, and I'm gonna get this darn admin situation correct. But you won't do it that way,

[00:42:52] and you won't work at your, on yourself in the right ways if you don't think about it that way. So, just change the way you think about it, and then start finding some support around you, or people around you that will help you to ask those great questions and figure out what's going on so that you can become a better version of yourself.

[00:43:07] You're gonna find so much joy because, you know, an innate human need is growth, it's growth, if we are stagnant and we don't feel like we're getting better, we're achieving, we are not gaining confidence in ourselves, if we have a lack of confidence, we feel really bad about ourselves, then it actually creates depression, anxiety, and a bunch of things.

[00:43:25] So, there's a whole book on psychology of pushing yourself to grow, get yourself into weird uncomfortable positions, do something new, all the time, you will be happier than you've ever been in your entire life. And I will ask every listener out there today, when is a time you can remember that you just felt the best about yourself, and you just had this innate, like, joy, and just pride, and like, like, just felt amazing.

[00:43:52] It's always going to be after overcoming something that was really challenging, really difficult, scary, you come on the other side, and you're just like, "Wow, that was amazing." You cannot become happy through relationships, you cannot become happy through success in business. You cannot become happy from money and material things.

[00:44:11] The only thing that's gonna make you happy is by loving yourself, believing in yourself, and doing things that make you feel good, joyful, and confident internally. And then, you'll go out there, and you will not be afraid of business challenges anymore, you'll not hold yourself back, you won't be afraid of the growth, you will embrace it,

[00:44:31] and all of a sudden, you're growing, and you're happier, and your business is growing, you're growing, and you're happier, and your business is going, and you realize you don't even have to spend as much, uh, time in business, which is pretty amazing because we should not re, wait to retire for our life, right? That's a whole other lesson, and we'll talk about that on a different day.

[00:44:48] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah. Oh my gosh, no, so incredible. And thank you so much for just providing so much value, especially on a topic that I think a lot of real estate professionals really need to be aware on because you're right, as you had mentioned previously, you can't fix a problem that you're not aware of, 

[00:45:07] Cari Briner: That's right.

[00:45:08] Rachel Gombosch: right? If you don't know, you don't know, but once you know, it's your job, and your opportunities to, to fix issues in your life.

[00:45:15] And so, I just think you brought up so many incredible points today that I just wanna thank you on, and I just wanna ask one more quick question in this last minute, or so, but if there's three action steps that you could say, okay, you're done listening to this episode, what can I do right now to walk away, to really start developing my EQ versus IQ? What are three quick action steps that professionals can take?

[00:45:40] Cari Briner: I would, first and foremost, do some self-reflection. So, hopefully, this got you kind of excited, you're like, it's a little bit of an off-topic, but I think this is what's holding me back, I need to dig into this a little bit more, take that energy and that interest and go do something with it, and that would be, uh, reflect, ask yourself some really great questions, like, how do I feel about myself as a human being?

[00:46:02] What's valuable about me as a human being, not as a real estate agent, not as a mom, as a human being? What strengths and traits, what God-given talents have I, was I born with that make this earth a better place for other people to live in? What am I proud of? How do I show up for myself every day? How do I feel about myself?

[00:46:22] And you're gonna not always get the right answers, or the answers that you want, that's okay, because that gives you opportunity to work on them. So, in the answers that you're not loving, then what do you need to do? How do you love yourself more? What are you missing? Why aren't you showing up for yourself?

[00:46:38] How could you show up for yourself in a way that would make you feel better? How could you mend the relationship with yourself? How could you feel valuable no matter what is happening around you? What does that look like in a perfect world? And I would start to just reflect, do some journaling, I know people don't like journaling,

[00:46:56] you don't have to do it forever; I'm just asking you to do it for one time. But what will happen is it's gonna create some awareness, and you're not gonna have all of the questions, and you don't have to solve the world's problems, but you probably have never asked yourself any of those questions, and it's a start.

[00:47:10] And when you start to realize that I would also like you to ask some questions about your identity. Like, what do you believe about yourself? How do you see yourself, and how do you feel about the roles you play, and how important are they to your identity? There's a great book that I always, um, I always tell people about, and it is called Personality

[00:47:28] Isn't Permanent, and it's by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I had a great opportunity to interview him once on Facebook live, and we just had a phenomenal discussion. He's a psychologist, and he thinks, um, in ways that I just am very intrigued about when it comes to this idea of EQ. But in that book, he shares with us that our identity is not permanent,

[00:47:46] neither is our personality. Many of us feel like these things are what they are, and it locks us into being what we are today and doesn't give us room to change or grow, it's not true, in fact, we change all the time, we just don't realize it. So, why don't we make some conscious decisions to change our identity?

[00:48:05] And the identity is well, how we, what we believe about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves. So, you may be stuck in an identity that you say I'm just not very detail oriented. I'm just not a great leader, et cetera, et cetera. These things are holding you back. So, that's a great book to take a look at.

[00:48:19] The other thing I would say is just start challenging your thinking and be aware that 95% of the time the decisions you make, you're not making on your own. If you just simply have that awareness, it'll be fascinating for you because you'll make a decision, you'll realize, wait, I don't think I even made that decision because now you're just aware of it.

[00:48:35] That's good. And then, just start slowly, but surely, moving yourself out of that and changing the decision you made, or making a different decision, it's just being aware of it, um, and so, those are a few small steps. The other thing is to change your thinking around work-life balance integration. And to start actually looking at your calendar as a tool, a tool to empower you to have a great life, you have to have discipline at, to some degree as an entrepreneur, to have freedom.

[00:49:04] We all got into real estate entrepreneurship for freedom, freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom to do whatever we want it to do whenever and wherever we want to, and freedom of the future, freedom to make our own decisions, and yet it's oftentimes that freedom that makes us not successful. So, we have to have some amount of discipline, but it doesn't have to be astronomical.

[00:49:26] It just has to be some consistent small moves in the areas of life that are important to us to create a consistent effort, so we can have the results that we want. And so, what I would tell you is erase your calendar, start from scratch, and start having some, you know, micro changes, and these little, tiny things in our calendar that make us have wins.

[00:49:46] Because when we have a short, a small win like that, and we have a win every day, I did that, I got one more call in, i, you know, I moved my body for another 15 minutes, I'm starting to feel confident. These wins build upon each other, I trust myself, I show up for myself, I'm doing those things. 

[00:50:02] So, please, remove the limiting belief that you are an overachiever, and you have to go all out and do everything, and do it for hours. It's not reality. It's not how our brain works. You have to start small. So, just embrace it. Don't feel bad about yourself, and just rethink your calendar, and really, use it as the tool to create some discipline and some consistency in your life,

[00:50:23] and I promise you, you'll have all the freedom that you want. I think if you did that one thing along with just now, moving the awareness that you have around a couple things happening in your mind, you really will wake up feeling differently about yourself, and realizing some of the things that you're doing to self-sabotage that you didn't even know you were before.

[00:50:41] Rachel Gombosch: Yeah, just incredible. Cari, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can our audience find you? What social channels are you on? What's your website? Let us know how our audience can connect with you?

[00:50:52] Cari Briner: Yeah. So, you can find me on all the socials. Actually, if you just type my name in, I have a YouTube channel, I put a lot of shorts in there that might get you guys back into some of this thinking. So, that's a great place. If you just search for Cari Briner on YouTube, of course, on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, I'm very active on all of those

[00:51:09] social medias, you can DM me. If you go to www.levelupwithcari.com, you can see a little bit more about myself, my testimonials, you can schedule a free call. I do do free calls, and there is no obligation, there is no cost, but I love to meet people who really feel inspired by this and feel like this is the time that they need to change

[00:51:29] 'cause there was a time in my life, you know, years ago where I literally, my life was in shambles, and I needed this, hear this message, and I needed to make a change. And I did, and it was because somebody was willing to give me that time, and I was able to find somebody that was willing to guide me through this.

[00:51:44] And so, I do still have a coaching practice. I also have some other people who are very much in alignment with this idea of holistic coaching, and we're here to help, and we also are here to make coaching a little bit more available to the masses. So, we tend to have some pretty affordable opportunities, both one-on-one and group coaching,

[00:52:03] and that's just because we wanna make this stuff accessible because if you are there saying, "I need this, and I want this, and I'm ready to do the work," we would really like to support you. So, hopefully, I'll hear from some of you, and if not, just, you know, like, take me on Facebook, say hi, let me know in Aha!

[00:52:17] I hope that you guys learned something today, and hopefully, I'll see you back on some future sessions here and in other places, as well. And I really appreciate you guys giving me the space to talk about this because I really believe this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and if it, if it made somebody think differently today, that's gonna change the trajectory of their life, or business,

[00:52:35] then I feel I've lived out my purpose today. So, I thank you for allowing me to do that. 

[00:52:40] Rachel Gombosch: Of course, of course, absolutely. And thank you for sharing your passion and, and all of your values and nuggets. I think it's gonna help so many agents out there who are listening, and real quick before we sign off, be on the lookout, since we've been talking about coaching and accessibility to Cari's phenomenal insight and expertise, we are going to be hosting a webinar

[00:52:58] where we are gonna be talking about really the tangible how-tos on developing your EQ versus IQ. So, be on the lookout for that webinar, until then, everyone, have a fantastic rest of your day. Cari, thank you so much again for joining us. We all really appreciate it. 

[00:53:11] Cari Briner: Thank you.