What’s up, everyone? Chris Kennedy here. And in this video, I’m going to share with you the single biggest struggle or obstacle that I faced in my real estate career and how I overcame it. And the reason I’m going to share that with you is because I know it’s the same thing a lot of people deal with day-to-day and you may not even realize that this is what is holding you back. So just real quick, I won’t go into a ton of detail on my background, but I got my real estate license in 2012. Prior to that, I was self-employed. I was an owner-operator of a small printing business, which I had started a few years prior to that. No employees, just worked for myself, was not feeling very personally fulfilled doing that, so got my real estate license and jumped into the real estate business part-time while still running my printing business full-time because it was paying my bills at the time.
So I got into the real estate business in 2012. Now, what happened is, I joined a brokerage not far from where I lived. I would attend the sales meetings and I read a few books, I went to multiple training classes, learned as much as I could at the board of realtors, and I started implementing what I learned. Now, the problem is, anyone who gets into real estate as an agent and makes it through years one and two can attest to this, but you get in and you think it’s going to be maybe relatively easy, and it is a very challenging business. It’s very hard to get started, especially down here in South Florida where it’s extremely competitive and every other person that you run into has a real estate license. So I got started, but then quickly realized that I was struggling. I couldn’t get listings and I was having a really hard time getting buyers and closing deals, a myriad of reasons, but it was not for lack of hard work.
So I realized in the office during sales meetings, a lot of the agents in the office were not very successful at all. They were not closing deals. And I noticed they were all kind of using the same tactics. And I asked myself, “Okay, what can I do that is different from these people that maybe I can get a bit more traction than they are getting and build some momentum as an agent? How can I separate myself out from the rest of these people?” And what I ended up landing on, which is in retrospect, probably not the smartest way to do things, but I realized nobody was going door-to-door to introduce themselves to buyers and sellers. Now, before you knock that, I ended up putting together my first sale through that strategy. But I do not recommend it as an efficient way of building your business. However, what happened is I decided, “Okay, I’m going to pick an area that I’m going to market to, and I’m going to go knock door-to-door every week and I’m going to try and knock between 100 and 200 doors.”
And I did for an entire six months, more or less. And part of that six months was in the middle of the Florida summer. Down here in South Florida it’s super hot. I was getting a little bit of a reputation in the office for being the guy that goes and knocks on doors. I would show up at the office in the afternoon after knocking on 50 doors and I would be dripping with sweat and I would have nothing to show for it. So I did this for months. I ended up putting a couple of deals together, actually, because I did this. So I felt it was good, but the point is not to go into this strategy. The reason I’m telling you about this is, I basically was doing everything that I knew and everything that I read about as much as I possibly could to try and get my business going, to become successful as an agent. And I just couldn’t do it. I kept failing and it was really, really frustrating. And I just couldn’t get my head around why. And it finally dawned on me that it was completely a mindset thing.
So the single biggest challenge in my business, growing my business, getting started, becoming successful in this business, was my mindset. I had a lot of things running around in my head telling me that I could not be successful in this business. And the reason for that is not because I’m not generally successful in the things that I do. I had a good family. I had a good education growing up. I was relatively popular at school. I had no problems making friends all this good stuff. But I was really struggling with believing that I could make a living for myself in real estate or as a successful entrepreneur. And the reason for that is that no one in my family had started and run their own business. I come from a medical background. I had no real estate family or friends. And in the back of my head, I didn’t realize this, but my head was wired to say, “Hey, you’re supposed to have a career, a job, all this stuff. Go through college, get your job.”
And I had quit medical school and basically wound up in real estate, right? That’s the shortened version. So what I realized was that I had all of this stuff going through my head, subconsciously, in my mind telling me that I could not be successful. And I realized, this became really clear when I picked up one of the most influential books that I have ever read and it was massively impactful on me. The book is called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker. And I read that book at the beginning of 2013. And in short, he talks about how your mind is wired from a young age based on the experiences we’ve gone through, the things people have told us, parents and teachers, the experiences we’ve had. And then we start having this blueprint in our mind, that these blueprints, we’re wired a certain way and our brain has thoughts automatically without us even realizing it. So subconsciously, before we even realize we’re thinking, your brain is wired so fast that you’re starting to immediately make decisions before you’re even really aware of it. So you can self-sabotage.
So I was reading this book and I realized, this is entirely what I was doing. I could not get my head around the belief that I could earn good commissions making real estate sales. I just kept thinking that, that was out of my realm of possibility. So the solution that he gave in his book was affirmations. Now there’s a lot of criticism of affirmations. People say it’s a waste of time, whatever, but I’ll tell you, I was kind of desperate at that point. I had been struggling in real estate for a year. I had not really made much money whatsoever. I will tell you, in my first year, I made $18,000 as a real estate agent, which is next to nothing in this business. And it’s extremely hard to make a living, to pay your bills off that amount. Now I said, I had a business on the side, so it was doing okay, but it was a challenging first year. So at the end of that first year, I was feeling pretty beat and I decided, “Hey, I’m just going to go ahead and start doing these affirmations in his book.”
So for the next, approximately, I don’t know, three to six months, I would get up early every single day. I would go down to my local Starbucks, get a tall cup of coffee, and I would sit there and I would go through these affirmations for 30 minutes every single morning as soon as Starbucks opened. It was 6:00 AM, I would just be quietly in the corner going through these affirmations. And I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is struggling in dealing with making money or growing a business, or just having a hard time getting their mind around being successful. So I did this and whether it’s the universe or fate or whatever, things started to click into place once I started doing this. And the whole idea behind affirmations is that you rewire your subconscious mind to start playing the right story to yourself in your thoughts. So I was religiously doing these affirmations and I can tell you to this day, they have made an impact in my life and they opened the door to so much more for me and my business.
So within a couple of months of doing these affirmations, I’m really grinding them into my skull, I ended up putting together a deal which was so much bigger than anyone in my office, my real estate office, had ever put together before. In short, within a few months, I closed this deal which made me a commission, not a purchase price, this was a commission of over $180,000. Okay. I put together a deal on an 80 unit multifamily building that I found off market for somebody that I’ve connected with through other marketing that I had done. Put the deal together and I never would have believed that I could put that together and make that amount of money in one deal. And since then, I’ve put multiple deals together of that size or greater. And thankfully, I’ve been extremely successful in this business.
So the whole point of this is whether you’re a real estate agent or you’re an investor, or you’re just trying to get into real estate investing, or you’re thinking about getting your license, or you’re in something else entirely different, you’re an entrepreneur running your business and you’re just feeling you’re hitting your head against a wall, take a step back and breathe. And just take a moment and try to think to yourself, what is it that is really, really stopping you? It’s probably not any of the things that at first appears, and probably at the end of the day, it is something deep within your mind that is preventing you from being successful. I know this is way out there from the other videos that I’ve made, but it was such an influential time in my life, such a game-changing moment to realize this. And now, anytime that I feel that I’ve hit a plateau, that I’m stuck somewhere, the first thing I tend to look at now is, “Okay, what beliefs am I holding that are not allowing me to grow?” Right? Because it’s all in what we believe.
There’s a great saying by Napoleon Hill and the saying is, “Whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve.” So whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve. And that has held so true for me since I realized how powerful the mind is in achieving success. So you can conceive of something, I can conceive of myself putting a $10 million deal together, but unless I can believe deep down inside, right deep down in my spirit, in my mind, that I can put that together, it’s probably not going to happen because it’s just the way the universe seems to work. That until you believe that it is possible for you, personally, it’s very hard for things to come together. So that which you can conceive and believe, you can achieve. I’ll just leave you with that. This was the biggest obstacle I faced. It’s something that you deal with on a day-to-day basis, your mindset, your beliefs that are holding you back from being more successful.
So just thought I’d share that with you. Hopefully, it’s helpful. If you’ve liked this content, if you like the other videos we’re putting out there, I’d love it if you’d go ahead and subscribe to my channel because I’m going to be putting out more content and really appreciate you guys checking this out. Thanks.