Episode 1: Mastering Yourself Before the Market

What really separates successful agents from everyone else? It’s not just skill, it’s self-leadership.

In this debut episode of One-on-One with Austin One, KT Temple sits down with Jennifer Lewis, General Manager for the KW Austin One, to reveal the habits, mindset, and tough truths behind building a thriving real estate career. From consistency and discipline to handling rejection and staying focused, this conversation gets real about what it actually takes to win.

🎧 If you want to level up your business and yourself, this is a must-listen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to one-on-one with Austin One. This is our first episode of our new podcast. We're doing it virtually, but we are building out a new podcast room. And so we'll be doing weekly episodes for you guys, highlighting agents, showing off what we have going at the office, making sure you're up to date. But I am your new host, KT Temple. I'm the new office nerd for KW Austin One. So the Northwest Market Center, Southwest Market Center, Lake Travis. I'm your new uh tech guy. And so I'll be on here every single week uh letting you know about what we've got going on for you guys. And uh I wanted to figure out who would be the best person to have as our introductory episode. And I didn't think there would be anybody better but Jen Lewis. So we have Jen on here to talk about self-leadership in real estate. So thank you for coming on, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

No, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be the first guest. I'm so excited about this new Endeavor for our first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

It's not just because you said when I hire you, you're gonna do a podcast for us. That's totally got nothing to do with it. So we're gonna talk about self-leadership. Before we get into that, Jen, who are you to the office and what have you done within Keller Williams?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Sure. So, KT, thank you for that. And uh I'm the general manager right now. What does that mean? I help uh lead our three main offices in our 11 total locations across all of KW Austin. As you said, that includes like Travis, Northwest, Southwest. We have an office called Cornerstone in Pflugerville. We have business centers in Dripping Springs and Butta and Bassdrop, and we have a ton of mega agent offices, those awesome big agents who decided to go get an office somewhere on their own that says Calerium's on the building. They're all still a part of our family here, about 1,300 agents in the Austin area.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Four days. So I don't know the Pflugervilles or or the names yet. So I'll get I'll know I'll have them down eventually.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, you got this. You got this. Well, and you asked, how did I end up here, right? Uh so I actually started my career, like many people who got into real estate, thinking, I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna get a job, I'm gonna go climb that corporate ladder. I didn't know any better. I had no entrepreneurs in my family, no 1099s, everyone in my family was a W-2, and many of them actually worked for IBM. So guess what I did? I went and worked for IBM too. I was at IBM for 13 years as a software development project manager. I thought I had a smart person's job. Uh, and then I realized very quickly, after about a decade in the roles, that climbing that ladder was really limiting who I was as a person, my financial freedom, my opportunities. And I started to question what I was doing and who was I doing it for. And luckily, I met an amazing human. Uh, his name is JP Lewis. He has been with Keller Williams for 21 years, and my husband convinced me that I should really consider getting a real estate license and that that would break open that ceiling of achievement for me when it came to financial freedom. And then I sat down with another amazing human named Wendy Papazan, who, if you recognize the name, her husband co-wrote a bunch of books with Gary Keller, you know, the one thing Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Hold, Shift, Your First Home, and now the rookie book. Um, but what that really did for me was sitting down with someone who explained the opportunity in real estate. And so I took it 13 years ago, almost to the day, really. It's uh in February, I got my license uh and I had the opportunity to help over 450 families buy, sell, or invest in real estate in about six years. So I hustled. I was a hustler for sure, right, Katie? Uh and and then I looked up and said, what else is what I want to do? What else do I want to do? I have kids at home. Could I sustain this lifestyle? And I looked up and thought, I really actually love watching other people succeed more than myself, which is part of why we're going to talk about the topic today. I I enjoy helping, watching, supporting other human beings get to their potential. And so I took a role in leadership about uh end of 2019, and I've been in a leadership capacity ever since then, some of which here at KW Austin, just at the Southwest. And then I went to our corporate headquarters and helped grow, train, and educate all of our leaders, our all of our team leaders across uh the US and Canada for Keller Williams, which was a really amazing uh opportunity, but I missed agents. Corporate is corporate. I missed agents, so I'm back uh now when I get to serve all of the agents here of KW Austin.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Well, we're lucky to have you here. So we're gonna go through, we got some questions set up for Jen to talk about uh self-leadership in real estate. And to really get us started, we we often hear about leadership in terms of managing a team, but how do you define self-leadership specifically within the high pressure context of real estate?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, especially as a 1099, right? I mentioned I was at W-2. You have to wake up, you have hours, you have a boss, they're telling you what to do, which sometimes we need that level of uh accountability. When you turn yourself into a 1099, all of that goes away. And all of the accountability is on you. You have to decide, I'm gonna wake up timely every day. I'm gonna go do the activities that I know will bring me the income I'm looking for. And for so many of us, that journey alone is a hugely difficult part of getting into this business we call real estate. So I've been very passionate about how do we help our folks really tune into what do they want? How do they tune into their personal why and use that as leverage to get you out of bed every day? Use that as leverage to say, I know I can, and here's what I'm willing to do, so that they can go out and get what they're looking for. We've talked a lot about Keller Williams as a training place. We are the place, I believe, strongly, that provides the training necessary to help any human go from I've never sold a house to being successful in real estate. But one of the things that Gary Keller teaches is the six personal perspectives. And the first one is self-mastery, which is self-leadership at its core. And that decision that I'm actually gonna do the things I know I should. Everybody knows what they should do. We go to training and sometimes we're like, yeah, I got this. I knew that. We all know that. So many of our folks that get into real estate, they're so smart. It's not about the I know I should. It's the what am I willing to do? What am I actually going to do every single day and get up and say, I'm willing to put the time, energy, and effort into these things so that I can go get what I want.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I got licensed when I was 21. And there's a reason why I was still delivering pizzas till I was 23. Because I knew there was a bunch of good stuff I could do. It just took me a while to get those habits. And I think it's that time, you know, the tasks over time that really get us to the point. It's building those habits. It took me a little longer than some, but but I got there. So, why do so many agents get trapped in the cycle of short-term wins, uh, the quick commission check at the expense of building a sustainable long-term business?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Oh man, Katie, this is such a great question because it is why our industry has such a fallout, high fallout rate, right? 85% of agents who get a license are back out doing something else, not selling real estate after about two and a half years. That's crazy high. And it is predicated on exactly what you just said. We go for the short-term win. Whatever came at the moment that it put itself in front of me, I'm gonna go take full advantage of, even when all signs are pointing to, is this really what you should be doing right now? And our opportunity, as again, 1099s and being accountable to ourselves is to question the reality of is that what I actually should be doing right now? What am I saying yes to that I'm also saying no to something else? And believe me, I've been there, I've done that. Man, I chased so many leads out into the boonies. I mean, I live in central Austin and I was chasing leads all the way up into Georgetown. And if people aren't familiar, that's 45 minutes to an hour and a half away, depending on traffic. Do I know Georgetown well? No, I didn't know it that well. Could I appropriately and adequately sell a house to someone who knew where they wanted to be? Yes. Should I have done that? Man, I don't know. By the time I got done adding up all the hours that I spent going back and forth to Georgetown, you have to sit back and look at did I do not only myself and my client the right thing, or did I do anyone in this opportunity a disservice by not realizing that if I had just referred that out to someone in Georgetown and taken a little bit of the opportunity financially and done more lead generation, more work, more open houses here in the central Austin area where I knew I could do more business and help more people more thoroughly. I had to learn that lesson the hard way. I just wish more people would learn it faster. And uh especially those agents out there right now who are taking every lease lead that they can get because that's low-hanging fruit. It's easy money. Is it easy money? Is the question, right? Is it really easy money? Because leases are honestly just as hard as a sale sometimes. And yet we go after that shiny object, the what's in front of us in the moment, instead of realizing that is that getting us to the future goal that we have, or is it putting the brakes on the future goal that we have? What's gonna get us to the income opportunity we signed up for?

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Something I decided that really stands out is whenever you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else, right? Our calendar isn't infinite. We only have so much time during the day. And when a new agent is starting out, I mean, you're an ignite, you might be in bold. You get command, and there's all these things. And I think it's great to have mentors like you and the other people in this office or coaching groups that can say, here's everything you should say no to. And here's where you should really isolate your efforts. Because it's not the same for everybody, right? If there was just a one sheet that says this is how you make money in real estate, we'd all be doing it. But everyone's got their own niche, their own lead generation strategy. And it's really about experimenting and finding out what we are going to say yes to.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Percent. And and look, I don't want anyone to think that that I'm saying don't go out and serve those lease leads. That's a huge opportunity to build a database for future business. And yet the most important part about I think what I'm saying that I may have missed here is one of the best opportunities for a real estate agent to hone in on their own personal self-leadership is to get better at asking great questions and get really clear on how we help people find and uncover the motivation of what they need in that moment and where and what are they looking for, so that instead of allowing a client to say uh minimal amounts of information and then you run around all over everywhere trying to find the things and they're constantly telling you that's not right, that's not what I wanted, and you show them 15 properties they could lease and they say no to all of those. It's usually also because we didn't ask enough great questions in the beginning of the conversation, which again leads us down a path of just we we shiny object, we've run after the thing that looks like great business in the moment, and we forget, man, it my role, my job is to be an advocate and educational arm of this person's life to help them make a great decision. And if I don't get really good at asking great questions about what exactly is it that they're looking for, what exactly is it that they need, and what would cause or compel them to say yes? Well, now I'm also setting myself up for failure and or a long set of days and hours that could be spent somewhere else because I just didn't ask the right questions.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Like we all know what we should be doing, you know, lead gen, follow-ups, networking. What is the self-leadership secret to actually doing it when the initial motivation wears off?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Oh, that's such a great question, too. I I think when we're really clear on the plan, right? Real estate, just like anything, there's math in the path to success. And we know that if you talk to enough people, that you will find business. And when I talk to real estate agents new or tenured that are not having enough conversations, that's always at the crux of why they do or don't have enough business. And those are people who have what we call cold leads. They meet strangers off the street that they uh build great trust with and go out and work with. And that goes for the people who have referral-based businesses. If you're not in front of your people talking to them often enough, they're going to forget that you exist. And someone else who comes in and reminds them, hey, I'm a realtor, hey, I'm a realtor, over and over and over again, they're the ones who will end up winning the business. It all really comes down to KT that uh people move on their time, not ours. People lease on their time, not ours. They buy on their time, not ours, they sell on their time, not ours. So we as real estate agents need to be there when the person is ready. And when they're ready, we don't know how to determine what that day or time is, right? I I can tell you so often I've talked to people who said, well, I'm thinking about it now, and my timeline is six to 12 months down the road. But then three months later, they want to look at a house. If I forget to stay in touch with them between now and six months from now, and I just wait until the six-month mark and say, Oh, you said six months from now, hi, I'm back. Somebody else is talking to them in the interim. They're going to an open house, they're meeting someone else who uh is personable and knowledgeable. And people get excited when they get excited and they move forward when they feel like it's the right moment in time. There's no strict set of rules here, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

The customer with the customer is always wrong if they tell you they're gonna move in a year. Because something might, you know, something might happen that happens in a month. And if you're not there, they're gonna find somebody who was or is.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

And it goes back to what I said to you earlier, right? With questions, we have to get really good at asking great questions. So, KT, if you said, I'm not gonna be ready for six months to a year, I would say, that's amazing. I'm so glad that you're giving yourself a runway of time to get prepared and be prepared for this. What's the one thing though that would cause or compel you to maybe speed up that timeline? Or is there anything? And at least then I've asked the question, right? Well, and and and honestly, typically the answer is huh, I don't know. Every once in a while, though, someone says, Well, I mean, I've been looking. If the right property came up, I might be interested in moving forward faster. Okay, now we have a clue. Oh, well, that's really interesting. Tell me more about what that perfect or right property would have to look like in order for you to say yes sooner than your timeline of six months to a year from now. Now I'm asking really great questions to unlock what's really going on in the head of that buyer or that seller because look, we we're all busy. We all have lots of stuff going on in our lives. We have family, we have friends, we have jobs, we have stuff. So what people say surface level when they don't know you that well, it's our job to go ask better and better and better questions to not only help that consumer learn to trust us as real estate agents, but to also unlock what's really going on in their head. And if we don't ask, here's another fun thing, right? All unasked questions go unanswered. So if you don't ask, you will not know. And let's go back to your first original point here, because I've I've kind of gone off on a tangent. This all makes sense, if you will, in the broader context of if you're not making calls, if you're not reaching out, if you're not texting, social media posting, sending emails to the people that you know are in your world that you want to remember that you're a real estate agent. When those circumstances change, that person moves on with someone else who was there in the moment that they needed them. So, man, I there's no easy answer here, Katie. I wish there was a magic spell I could give everybody uh to give you the motivation to get up every day and make those calls.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

You've got to ask great questions, not just of your clients, but of yourself, right? To figure that out.

unknown 16:32

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yes. Of yourself. And what do I really want? Do I want this? How important is the income to me, to my family? And if you know it's important, it will motivate you. That financial incentive, that I know I got into this for a reason for success for myself and success of the people that I'll serve, it will cause and compel you to get up. Will you like doing it every day? No, I'm not gonna lie to anybody and say you're gonna love lead generation every day. But when you know what it's good for and you say to yourself, okay, I know I should do three hours of lead generation, I'm willing to make 10 contacts today. And you play a game with yourself. And I had little diamonds. Uh, Wendy Papazan gave me these little diamonds that I had to pour out of the bowl every morning. And every time I made a contact, I'd put the little diamond back in the bowl. It was like a physical contextual thing that helped me remember I haven't finished all my calls yet. And when I finished making sure I hit those 10 contacts, that was helping me continually get better at this thing called lead generation that always led me down a path to at least talking to enough people who remembered me, who knew what I was there for, who could call me anytime they needed to ask a question, or otherwise they would forget about me. And if I hadn't done that, there's no way I would have sold the number of homes that I sold in those six years.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

I think this is a good time to talk about emotional regulation. So real estate is a roller coaster of crash deals, difficult clients. How does a self-leader manage their emotional state? So one bad phone call doesn't ruin a week of productivity.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Such a great question. Cause this is I I grew up a golfer. So uh your mindset in an individual a golfer, yes. So when you play an individual sport like golf, it's all on you, right? It's all in your mindset, it's all about how you talk to yourself. And I've definitely parlayed a lot of what I learned in that sport into real estate because how you talk to yourself is so important. Look, are people mean? Yeah, people are mean. Like people who don't know you and they don't want to talk to you right now, they might hang up on you. They might say something not nice, uh, they might say something rude to you in the middle of a transaction. People are messy and people have their own reasons why they might be having an emotional output that day. Our job is to keep our emotions between the lines. That's a bold law, right? Umotions between the lines means don't let anyone else control you. Your control, your emotions are literally under your control. Every time I hear somebody say, Well, they made me, or this is how they made me feel. Yes, and is what I would say. Yes, that situation, the way that that emotion came out of the other person, for sure, does it have an impact on you? Yes. How we respond to that, how we react to it, that is 100% under my control. 100% under my ability to say, I accept that or I push that away. And I, this is one of the hardest things I think about real estate. It's one of the hardest things about being a human in general. Relationships uh and uh with family, with friends, with spouses or partners. In real estate, when we don't help ourselves continually work on this emotional muscle of understanding that, man, they must be having a really bad day, maybe that's why they took that out on me, versus taking it internally and going, oh my gosh, that makes me bad or wrong or shameful. Man, if I could just shake so many people in the real estate industry and say, stop believing that that person's emotional output, the agent on the other side, the buyer, the seller, the person that you called that you thought was a friend that suddenly said, I went and worked with somebody else and now you're crushed. That's on them, right? It's it's only on us to just keep going, to say, you know what, that stinks. It does stink. I get it, it stinks. And how do I keep going and and do what's right for me and for my family? And that one thing doesn't make me who I am. So, man, this that whole emotional regulation self-leadership journey is such a big one. Yeah, can I give you one more thing? I know it kind of went on a little bit there. I've been divorced. Uh, and when I got divorced, I was really angry. I was very, very angry. And I read a book called The Practicing the Power of Now by Eckhart Tully. It's a very long book. It's a lot of woo-woo. There's a lot of Christian-based stuff in there. You may or may not love the book, but I want to give you the one piece of it that I think honestly KT changed my life and helped me in real estate as well. And that was when you're angry, you're drinking the poison meant for the other person. Your anger inside of you does nothing to the other person that you're angry at. Literally nothing. And I think when we really understand that at a deep level as a human, that my anger, my angst, my sadness about you and what you did to me doesn't hurt that other person. It only hurts us. So learning and practicing how to just let it go and move forward and keep showing up as the person you know you are and not let other people dictate who you are. That's a really important part of a self-leadership journey in real estate.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

And frankly, in I had a whole question called the power of no, but I guess I'm gonna skip that one now. You answered that. So let's get to the last question because this this has been so good. Uh, and and you're on a roll. So if you could go back to your first year in business, what is the one Self-leadership habit you would implement immediately to ensure you were still thriving 20 years later.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So I will tell you the one that I did that I didn't like doing that I wish every agent would would do on their own is uh practice and role play. This industry is about who says the right thing at the right time. Let's just be honest, right? It you can be the most wonderful person, the friendliest, the smartest, the best at the at the job. And if you don't know what to say appropriately in the right time, you could lose instantaneously. And what I mean by that is we oftentimes do things in conversation that we don't realize is either super off-putting, uh, creates dissonance immediately between you and the other person, or we go on too long and they're like, okay, I'm I don't really understand what you're saying and I'm out. We have to get really good at saying the things that need to be said in short versts, easily consumable, and something that someone who doesn't do real estate every day could understand. I give you one of my favorite examples here. So I practice and role-played uh objection handling with Wendy Papazan. She made, she made us every morning at 8:30. And I did this for five straight years, almost six years of my life. And I definitely know it made me the agent that I am today and the person that I am today. If I hadn't been made to do it, like many agents are not made to, they're not on a team, they don't have somebody holding them accountable. I would say, go do it because I was sitting at a dinner with one of my best friends, someone that I never thought would go seek out the help of another realtor, right? One of my best friends were sitting at dinner, my husband, she and her husband, and we're just we're eating and having a conversation, and she looks at me and says, So we've been looking at real estate, and I know you're so busy, I really didn't want to bother you. So I've been calling um one of those platform agents at Redfin, and they've been showing me houses. And I am my heart sank immediately. And if you're a real estate agent, you know this feeling. Like it this time goes.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

It's gonna happen to you. It happens to all of us.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

It happens to all of us, right? So my heart sank, and I could have done so many things there, right? I could have said so many things in that moment, but my training kicked in. My practice and role play kicked in, and I said, I turned and looked at my friend who is also oh, I think I lost KT.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Where'd you're back? I'm oh I my guy. All right, keep going, keep going. Let's hope we can. If if you're if we're cutting in right now, the internet just went down over here for like two seconds and and booted me out. So we're back. So you looked at your friend and said, what?

SPEAKER_01 24:40

So I looked at my friend and I said, because she's also a corporate busy person. I looked at her and I said, Julie, when you have a really important task that needs to get done or or a project that needs to get done, who do you go to? The person that's sitting around twiddling their thumbs always has time on their hands, or the busy person in the office that you know gets things done. I said something different than that, but you know what I mean. And she looked at me and she was like, uh yeah, I give it to the person that I know gets things done, even though they're busy. And I said, that's exactly why you need to tell me what you need. Like, I promise you, I'm gonna take care of you. I know I'm busy, and I'm never too busy for you. And that was it. I didn't have to cry or whine or oh my gosh, why? Oh, you should totally use me. I mean, I I'm not that busy, Julie. Like, I could have said so many things that wouldn't have gotten to the point.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Or you could have just been straight offended, which I I I'm sure you were, you know, you've had that emotion to have like, how dare you? You know, I mean Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Absolutely. She's one of my best friends. I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean you're using another realtor? I could have shown up in so shown up in so many different ways, and I chose to go back to what was in my head because I'd been practicing, and to be able to say something that succinct and that direct to get her to connect the dots like that, and then just go back to eating dinner and I never had to worry about it again. And we kicked off our relationship the next day as far as the real estate transaction is concerned. That is one of those moments where I went, okay, that's exactly what I do this for. Open houses as well. There's so many opportunities where we just don't say the right thing in the right moment, and it costs us clients or potential clients all the time, and we don't even realize it. So practice and role play.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

What do I say to my brother when he buys a house from my parents instead of me? Because that made me mad too. So, guys, thank you so much for listening, Jen. Thank you so much. Um, if you found this episode interesting, please subscribe to it, guys. We're gonna be doing this every single week and bringing you great guests, great stories, and and uh giving you some office updates. And on that note, Jen, is there anything that the uh agents should know about coming up in the next week or the next month that you want to share with them?

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Oh my gosh, yes. We have this.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Uh uh every Monday. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Yeah, we have two things. We have a great fundraiser next Wednesday, April 8th, uh and that's the Bingo Boots, Bingo and Barbecue, which is raising money for our uh local charity to help out our agents. So that's happening four to seven on April 8th. And then April 28th, we have a huge event going on at the Austin Board of Realtors, which is a do-not miss. We're gonna be going through three different panels. It's called Agent to Empire, and it's gonna be talking to those individual agents that have built really amazing empires, those team agents who've taken their team from Little Bitty to Amazing. And Jay Papazan is actually going to be our keynote speaker. It is a do not miss. If you need to know more about how to get into that fun, go to our kwaustin1.com calendar or reach out to one of your leaders and we will make sure you get connected.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jen. Guys, we'll see you again next week. Thanks for listening.