The question of the day: Is hiring a real estate coach worth it?
First, we want you to hold in your mind these questions. Number one: Where are you now in your real estate business? Number two: Where do you want to be in your real estate business?
And perhaps the most important question you must ask is this: When do you want to be there?
If you are okay with taking five, ten, or fifteen years to get to your goal and finally achieve some freedom to enjoy your life and give back to others, then be honest with yourself and just admit that you are in no hurry. OR, if you want your life to look different by this time next year, you need to know that, too.
Alrighty. Just hold those thoughts in your mind. And now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can begin answering the question of the day: Is Hiring a Real Estate Coach Worth It?
To start off, we’re going to build a practical list of so-called positives and negatives. We know that you may have recently delved into real estate and are feeling overwhelmed. All the more reason to get some more information under your belt.
The Positive Side of Hiring a Real Estate Coach
A real estate coach is able to offer you, impartial counsel. When it comes to business decisions, you may have already realized that family and friends can be pretty emotional in their reactions or responses. They tend to respond in fear with cautionary tales about taking any risks. This can feel like your legs are being cut from underneath you and remove any wind from your sails.
Positive transformation won’t typically come by making decisions rooted in fear and emotion. A coach has already waded into these waters and bases her decisions on personal experience and the experiences of other successful real estate professionals. They are not afraid to help you make decisions that involve risk.
Working with a real estate coach means having a more experienced partner to help you create a list of goals. Can you make a list of goals on your own? Sure. But a coach will help you write out goals that you might not have thought of without guidance. They should help you determine goals that challenge you, broaden your perspective, and ultimately improve your business and your life.
An experienced coach acts like a compass, keeping you focused on the goals or objectives you’ve laid out for yourself. Without the weight of being emotionally involved, a coach is not afraid to give you a push or to tell you when you’re getting off track.
Your coach will already have an understanding of where you need to go and what it takes to get there because they are at least one step ahead of you on the journey. This means you have someone pointing you in the right direction and even taking your hand to pull you along when you need it.
Just like so many other things in life, sometimes you just need a fresh perspective. The saying “two heads are better than one” often holds true! If you’re looking into a coach, then you may be stuck and want to move forward. You need help getting out of your rut and seeing a new way to move beyond this place you’ve found yourself at over and over.
Receiving a fresh perspective from a coach means having a more experienced person looking at how you are doing things and finding the kinks in your business that need to be revised. You will get valuable feedback with new ideas.
Successful agents have not reached this place in solitude. Wisdom is not gained alone, it is achieved by seeking accountability with others. That’s why many of these agents are meeting with coaches at least once every week for accountability and a reminder to stay focused.
Think about a bowling alley. Now imagine young kids who are bowling. Those kids know the basics. They know to aim at the pins with their ball. They’ve got the shoes, their lighter bowling ball, one of those slide things to push the ball down, and bumpers. Bumpers keep the ball in the lane and headed in the right direction. A real estate coach acts like a bumper, keeping you accountable and focused on your objective.
You receive complete attention from your real estate coach. It is their literal job to focus on you. Nobody else in your life may give you their total attention, but it is your coach’s job to listen to you and observe you.
When you join a real estate team, you are with other agents who are meant to show you the ropes. And while they are showing you the ropes, they also have to hit their own sales demands. You will be hiring a coach to be committed to the well-being and success of your business.
And how about that return on investment? What’s the point of hiring a real estate coach if you’re not going to get a pretty darn good ROI, right?! A good coach should help you improve your business to the point that it much more than pays for the cost of coaching.
In fact, if you read or listen to the testimonials of highly-recommended coaches, you will learn that a great coach can help you double your sales. Yes. Double. In some cases, it may be even better than that. That sure sounds good, doesn’t it?!
The Negative Side of Working With a Real Estate Coach
Money must be spent. A good real estate coach is not going to do the job for free. You will have to pay a fee and it will typically be a monthly rate. We know you have your own monthly expenses involved with starting out in real estate, so spending the money may feel daunting. It’s important that you take the time to consider if this is an investment you are willing to make.
Can you handle constructive criticism? A real estate coach will be looking at your business plan, your numbers, and your decisions with a magnifying glass of sorts. If you don’t like someone questioning your choices, this will be tough for you.
The purpose of scrutinizing your decisions is to figure out what isn’t working. It’s kind of like exploratory surgery for your business. It has to be done to determine what is going wrong … but surgery is not fun and you may not have the stomach for it. This “constructive criticism” may also cause you to lose confidence in your decisions which will hold you back from making big decisions and taking risks.
A real estate coach may have different ideas for your working hours. You might be pretty bent on working a forty-hour week … while a new coach may want you to put in sixty or seventy hours each week to hit your new goals. This might be totally fine with you. You may want to do whatever it takes to be successful.
Or you may not. Working that many hours may not be doable for you. You may not want to sacrifice time with your family or friends to hit numbers, but your coach may insist that you do it anyway.
You must be fully committed. You can’t go halfway when it comes to hiring a coach to help you. It requires a true commitment to receive the full benefit from it. So if you’re not willing to put the time in to meet with your coach regularly and practice what is being preached to you, then a coach probably isn’t the best idea for you.
Perhaps one of the biggest considerations is finding a good fit. If you’ve hired a real estate coach and you are avoiding them, it probably isn’t a great fit! You may have read all about your coach online and they checked the qualifying boxes … but then you started working together …
She’s rewriting all of your goals and telling you to wear a power suit. He’s getting out his Rolodex and checking his palm pilot for contacts. Social media is never mentioned or completely downplayed. Basically, these coaches don’t get you and they are behind the times. That is not what you need at all, right?
Do You Know What You Need From a Real Estate Coach?
You really can’t find a real estate coach that will be effective if you have no idea what you need. And that’s the rub. You can compare the pros and cons and do your research on agents that you think might fit the bill … but until you take the time to drill down what it is that you truly need, you will probably continue to be flustered in your business.
So, do you know what you need?
First, figure out exactly where you are in your business. By this we mean it’s time to take a good look at the nitty-gritty, the real numbers. This may not be your favorite thing to do, but it will be helpful and a coach will want to know these details.
Before you beat yourself up about anything, remind yourself this is an educational exercise. It’s a tool to find the cracks so you can repair them or determine if you need to start over and build again.
This may seem elementary, but we’re gonna get it all down on paper and out of your head. The more things that swim around in your brain, the more they can become tangled up in the mental weeds. So, get it all out of there and take the emotion out of it!
How much training have you had? Yep. Write down the courses you’ve completed. Determine the approximate number of hours someone with experience has spent with you giving you guidance. Think about how many articles or blogs you have read to increase your knowledge. Write every bit of that down.
How much time and money have you spent on marketing or advertising? This one might make you flinch a little. That’s okay. It’s just information. Information is a tool! Think about all of it. Facebook ads, Instagram, TikTok, magazine ads—all of it. Put it all on paper.
How many homes have you purchased and sold, and what was the price point? Be sure to include your percentage of commission. It’s important to know the percentage of the commission you received on each sale. You may notice how frequently you receive the full percentage versus how many you received a portion of your typical commission. There is no good or bad. This is just more information.
Now, we’re gonna get a little touchy-feely for a second. How did you feel during and after each of those sales or closings? Seriously. Think about your energy level. Were you drained or energized? Were you ready to keep going? Or did you want to quit?
Now that you have taken all of that information from your brain and put it down on paper (or a spreadsheet, whatever works!), you can see exactly where you are. Okay, enough of that.
Here is the fun part. Think about where you want to be. Dream big. The gap between where you are and the place where your dream lies is where a coach can step in and guide you.
The Bottom Line
Whether you hire a real estate coach or not is entirely up to you. The type of coach you hire is entirely up to you. And if you stick with the coach or not is also entirely up to you.
The truth is that deciding if hiring a coach is worth it can be seen as fairly subjective.
The people who hire a real estate coach that is the right fit with the right experience are going to tell you that a real estate coach is absolutely worth the investment. On the flip side, people who hire a coach that doesn’t fit and lacks the current training are not going to believe a coach is worth a penny.
So, if you’re seriously contemplating this, don’t mess around. Hire a coach who has been used by people who became successful through the lessons and insights gained from their coach. Krista’s results speak for themselves. Her coaching has been proven highly effective over and over again.
You want a coach like that. You want a coach like Krista Mashore. She’s worth it.
