From Pro-Skier to Top 1% Real Estate Agent • Leah Canfield

Leah Canfield a 30 under 30 laureate for 2022 from Breckenridge Colorado talks about how she transitioned from her skiing career into in real estate. Leah discusses her approach to the real estate market and how she got her name to be quoted in local newspapers. Next, Leah describes how she started working in the new development world early in her career. Leah also discusses gut instinct and how she manifests it in her business. Last, Leah describes why she believes the grind culture kills your creativity. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Leah Canfield can be reached at leah@mountainhomesgroup.com and 970.485.1571 . This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss . Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00 How does one of the top skiers in the country transition to real estate and become one of the top Realtors in the country all before the age of 30? Will stay tuned we’re going to find out this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment. We’re going to be speaking with 30 under 30 Winner Lea Canfield. But before we get to Leah just a couple of quick announcements as always, thank you for listening to our show. The best way you can help us continue to do more episodes is by telling a friend so think of one other realtor that you know maybe someone in your office or a Realtor you meet out there in the field that needs to hear from conversations like the one you’re about to hear from Lea telling you how to become a top agent. So tell a friend that’s the always the best way you can help us continue to grow and now on to my conversation with Leah Canfield. Today on the show we have Lea Winfield from Mountain homes group with Coldwell Banker mountain properties in Breckenridge and all of Summit County in Colorado. Let me tell you more about Lia. Lia Canfield is a real estate agent in her hometown of Breckenridge, Colorado and she grew up ski racing, and was at the peak of her career, the fastest Junior Super G skier in the country. Now she is now one of the top selling Coldwell Banker agents not only in the country, but actually in the entire world. She ranks in the top point 4% of all Coldwell Banker agents worldwide. She has been named to both Coldwell bankers and realtor magazine’s 30 under 30 She loves to ski mountain bike and travel, I want you to visit Leah at her group’s a homepage, which is mountain homes group.com Again, mountain homes group.com That link will be in our show notes. Leah, welcome to the show. Leah Canfield 3:31 Thank you what what an intro? D.J. Paris 3:34 Well, I am I will tell you the intro doesn’t even begin to really explain how excited I am. Because, you know, we’ve done I think, I don’t know what number episode this will be some 400 the low four hundreds. And you know I oftentimes this is a little embarrassing, I sometimes don’t get to do the prep for the show until pretty close to to the show. I have people that that helped put together notes for me and I was really excited this morning when I got to the office and started reading about you because not only of course, you know you have this sort of impressive background with with you know, competitive skiing and being an athlete, but also having a tremendous success pretty early on in the business career of being a real estate agent. And you also gave us a some talking points that we’re going to get into about grind culture and your thoughts on that. So I am really, really excited to chat with you. So thank you for coming on the show. I don’t always get to say that or don’t always even feel that sometimes with with all of the guests that we have as much as I love our guests. This one really speaks to me this topic of Brian culture. So I would love to start all the way at the beginning of of sort of where you entered. I’d love to start really at the beginning of competitive skiing and move our way into real estate because I think there’s probably some parallels and some disciplines that that translate it over. But tell us about this. How did Have you been skiing your entire life starting out very young or did you get it? Yeah. When you were Leah Canfield 5:04 okay. Now Yeah, I started very young. I learned to ski when I was two, my dad actually a whole different story. But he’s an amputee above the knee. He was a big skier. And he was apparently a Paralympian. So he really got me into the sport. And I ski race through my whole childhood, through being a young adult, I got to travel internationally to series, which was very cool. I don’t think I even realized how cool it was until now. And I started to get some really good success. But I was one of those people that was always going like 120%. So that led to actually quite a bit of injury in my career, I had five knee surgeries before I turned 20. And those are really, they have quite a long recovery time period. So sure, like five or six years, I was just under the knife and in physical therapy, and just always trying to get back into sport and then re injuring myself. So that D.J. Paris 5:57 was where the injuries were the injuries due to like, falling, or were they like wearing out the cartilage or? Leah Canfield 6:05 Yeah, it was a little bit of both. It was some like coming back to sport too soon or too aggressively. Some certainly crashing. Some actually were due, I think, to some procedures that in the medical field, they thought were going to be very successful and actually had a pretty high failure rate. So some failed kind of installations of, you know, ligaments and so forth. But But yeah, it was it was a lot. So ultimately, that was going to be my career path. I had decided for myself. D.J. Paris 6:35 Were you thinking like were you looking at Olympics was that? Leah Canfield 6:38 Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was going to be this was my life. But I decided, hey, look, this is my body’s not designed for this. And this is too much I quit. Yeah, which was tough. But then after that, I wasn’t sure what to do. I worked at a coffee shop down, which is still here and record plants for a few years. And I was like, Okay, I got to, I got to do something. I felt like I had to do something. So I went to a local community college just for like a summer and went to a few classes. I had an economics teacher who says hey, like buy these books, buy these business books. So I bought them. And my now husband at the time was like, what a waste of money like those are going to put you to sleep. You’re never going to read those. I like to tell that story now. Because they literally changed our lives. We just started our journey into learning about, like financial freedom and personal finance, and how real estate can have such a huge role in this developing net worth and like freedom of your own life really had, yeah, all those great topics so D.J. Paris 7:46 that you mind sharing one of one or more titles. If they changed your life I want to hear about Leah Canfield 7:52 they did and there’s so many good ones. But like some of the real basics learning, like what an asset is what a liability is. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I read that, like lightbulb. You know, some people love that book. Some people hate it, but I felt like it was life changing for me. D.J. Paris 8:06 No question about that book, because I always want to ask someone do is a primary residence and asset. I know this is a debatable topic, you know, what Leah Canfield 8:15 is your? I? I think it depends. I can’t just say yes or no, because the definition of an asset in my mind, and probably from reading verbatim from the book is something that makes you money, right? Something which this does D.J. Paris 8:29 not only on the day you sell it possibly could make you money. Yeah, Leah Canfield 8:33 exactly. And we’ve taken this approach with our primary residence at least that we’ve decided to build this and build it as an investment. But, you know, the fact that we didn’t sell it after a couple years, and we’re still living here, it’s questionable, you know, so it’s a lifestyle someday. It’s a lifestyle investment. But I will say that we were very intentional about the equity we had in our house, the location, making sure that we were treating it not just as a primary residence, but also as an investment. So we had our multiple hat on when we pursued our home. And I think we always kind of will, but it depends. And that’s D.J. Paris 9:10 the only reason I’m bringing that up is I feel that oftentimes I’ll ask Realtors not so much on the show, but just in my day to day understanding, and sometimes they’ve never been asked that question. And I’ve always thought it’s a really important thing to have a position on whether it’s yes, it’s an asset. No, it’s not or it depends. Yeah, I have an answer, because there are a lot of people who will be having questions like that. And anyway, so I’m sorry, I don’t want to get us in what’s just because you mentioned that I wanted to hear your perspective. Yeah, Leah Canfield 9:40 I would say that it’s a really important savings account, especially for people who maybe aren’t very actively investing. Having equity built in your home is some of the it’s the only way for some people that they can actually successfully retire. So if you’re not an active investor and you’re not happy buying, you know, cash flowing investment properties and building up your 401k or your retirement plan. Sometimes a home is your only real worth when it comes to net worth. So I think it’s extremely important for a lot of people. D.J. Paris 10:07 So anyway, you read, read books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad that can change your life. And then how did you decide to get into to get into real estate as not just maybe an investor or somebody who’s going to be selling it? Leah Canfield 10:20 Yeah. So we started on the investment side, I actually then went to CU Boulder got my degree in finance and real estate, during which time we’ve picked started a very small investment company, like a few people and bought a little house and fix it up and rented it out and then sold it and then did that a handful of times. And after the first time, we bought that house, I was like, we bought this, and I have absolutely no idea what just happened, right? You know, I went to school to study this. And I’m like, what, you know. So then I realized I need to get my real estate license to learn what I’m doing in order to be a real investor who takes herself seriously. So I started and just got my license to support the investment side. And then it really grew from there. And I realized just how, number one, it was much more challenging than I thought it was gonna be. And number two is more lucrative than I thought it could ever be. And more fun. So yeah. D.J. Paris 11:12 grew and how long have you been practicing as as a realtor? Leah Canfield 11:16 It’s been almost seven years. So 2015. Yeah. Yeah. D.J. Paris 11:21 So you got it, you really got into it pretty quickly after. So you say your your ski career sort of came to a conclusion. Then it was college and then right into sort of investing in real estate. Yeah. And being being a realtor. So let’s go back seven years only because seven years doing the quick math on that. Okay. So, yeah, yeah, 2015 ish. I’m just trying to think of what the market conditions were at that time. What was it like starting a career in real estate now? Yes, you you I imagine you have some sort of public notoriety being from Breckenridge being, being a competitive skier that that’s probably been in the newspapers a lot and sort of the, you know, whatever publications, people there read, so I’m sure you’re known to some degree in your community, although there’s probably a lot of competitive skiers there too. Leah Canfield 12:14 incredible athletes. D.J. Paris 12:16 But did you know but making a pivot? Oh, I’m sure making a pivot from professional being a professional athlete to then selling real estate in a person in their early 20s. What was that? Like? I imagine that couldn’t have been necessarily an easy thing. Leah Canfield 12:33 No, it really wasn’t. People did know me for sure. But they weren’t. They knew me as like someone’s kid. They knew my parents, they know me, because I have been here since I was like mine. Right? And so they weren’t, you know, when it comes time for them to sell their multimillion dollar home, they’re not like, Yeah, let’s hire, let’s hire a friend’s kid. That was certainly tough. And not only that, but our market is extremely saturated with agents. There’s like this running joke that, you know, if you are at a dinner party, the cast people that are real estate agents. And so it was highly competitive as well. So my initial strategy actually wasn’t to go after clientele, of local people that I knew because they also already knew a dozen or more agents that have done in a business much longer than me. So that wasn’t my initial approach. I, I started really focusing on one of our our number one feeder market, which is the Denver Front Range area and working on getting those people as they come into town and stroll Main Street, and also making really good connections with the agents that work in Denver that have clients who say, Hey, we’re thinking about buying something in the mountains. So that was my approach. And I think that that really helped me get a foothold in the industry instead of you know, it’s another one of those books that I read. It’s great as the Blue Ocean Strategy, D.J. Paris 13:47 I felt, I don’t know this. Let’s say that one more time blue ocean. Leah Canfield 13:50 Yeah, it’s what a blue ocean and it’s just in a nutshell, it’s like, you know, you have your red ocean, which is highly competitive. You know, I think it’s like the D.J. Paris 13:59 big a local Breckinridge agent is red ocean, competing with Leah Canfield 14:03 the, you know, for the same clients that everyone is competing for. And the blue ocean strategy is like, hey, what’s a way that you can look at your business a little differently, where you have a lot less competition, and that was the way that I did that was say, Hey, I’m not going to compete for this one client that has, you know, a dozen realtor friends. I’m going to go after this person who doesn’t know anybody and Breck D.J. Paris 14:22 Yeah, I love that. So you made you made friends with with realtors in the Denver area. Yeah. Because you don’t support the Denver area personally or no. And they don’t support Breckenridge. So this is this is that makes boy that makes so much sense really a great opportunity for any of our listeners who either you know, live in areas where people buy vacation homes, or maybe where they retired to, or in the flip side, you have people that are leaving to go elsewhere and in Illinois, Florida is a place where a lot of for tax purposes people retire for, obviously the weather and you know, whatever other reasons are Um, they might go there. And so that would be, you know, anyone who’s a Florida agent, you should be just calling every realtor, you know, in the country and saying, Hey, if they’re thinking of moving here, so that’s very interesting. So how so? So you then you was more about building relationships. And you also said something also as, as the people from Denver were coming into town, how were you sort of intercepting? Leah Canfield 15:23 Well, so I don’t know if all offices have like a floor agent. Right. So I was working on floor lot. I was at the end, we have an office right on Main Street. And that was extremely difficult for me because I had to overcome this sense that there was like something wrong with salespeople that they were like, bad people. And I had that somehow ingrained in me that like, if I was going to sell something to someone, I was like, doing a bad thing, right. So I was not a natural born salesperson. And so it was very awkward. The first few times I interacted with people, I like locked up, or someone walked in, they walked out, I was like, what was up and but you know, everything takes practice. And eventually I got the competence to just be personable, and be myself and chat with these guys. And it also took me acknowledging that, hey, I’m not just like, I’m not trying to take advantage of someone I’m trying to, you know, help them because I am and a resource for them. So once I kind of shifted my mindset that a salesperson is not like a parasite, but instead a, you know, a source of wealth of information, and you know, a friend, and someone who can help you with something that you need. Once I made that shift, it was a lot easier for me. Yeah, I D.J. Paris 16:31 so agree with that. And for anyone out there who’s struggling with what Leah was talking about this idea of, I’m bothering people, they don’t want to talk to me, they think I’m gross, because I’m a salesperson. And nobody likes salespeople and all of that. Yes, there’s truth and all of that, of course. But if you’re not a gross, slimy salesperson, you don’t have to worry about coming off as slimy and gross. It’s what I say to guys all the time who go, I wonder if that girl thinks I’m a creep. I’m like, Are you a creep? If you’re not, you don’t, you can go ask her out, it’s okay. If you’re not a creep, you’re don’t have to worry about being perceived as creepy. And the same thing to salespeople. If you’re not a horrible human being, then you can go ahead and talk to people who by the way, 99% chance they’re going to use a realtor anyway. So this isn’t even something like hey, you really need to get into this bizarre insurance that you don’t even know about. But I’m going to try to convince you you need, which, by the way, is a perfectly fine industry as well. I love insurance agents. But that’s a much tougher sale sometimes because it’s selling things that people don’t even know they need. But in your case, they’re going to use a realtor. So I just wanted to really honor you for saying that. Because I think it’s so easy to forget that everybody, when they when everybody starts out in this business, it’s it’s it’s a little nerve wracking to have your first open house to sit. And I love the fact that you live in an area where people still walk into the offices that is not as common in the country. But it’s a little bit of a trial by fire because they’re coming in and or, you know, they’re walking by and you’re not having to strike up a conversation. Leah Canfield 18:09 Yeah. Or at the end of it, I would be walking out onto Main Street like, Hey, what are you looking at in this window? Well, let’s talk about it. So yeah, took a little confidence boost. D.J. Paris 18:19 I love that. So So you, you really jumped in. And again, you’re still a young person. But I guess I guess it too. Makes sense. Because you talked about everybody in town knows me. As you know, I’m a skier, I’m my father’s daughter. I am you know, I’m a kid, you know, and I’m a kid in my early 20s, I’m an adult technically, but people in town, maybe not only do they maybe see me a certain way, they also have, you know, a handful of other agents that maybe they’re best friends with, who are probably going to get the listings, you know, above you just because that’s how things work. So let’s talk about so So you started working at, you know, in the office, and you know, dealing with floor time and sort of trial by fire, I sort of would say is having direct one on one conversations. And then how did you grow from there? Leah Canfield 19:09 Yeah, so, um, you know, I, I started pretty early on coming up with a business plan. And I think that those two words together cause people some a lot of anxiety. But I don’t remember who said this, it might have been Mark Cuban, but he’s like, Hey, if you can’t come up with a business plan, in the amount of time that it takes you to drink a can of soda, like you’re doing it wrong, and that stuck with me because it was like, okay, don’t overcomplicate it, I get a small piece of paper or a post it note or whatever. And I write down what I want to do in sales. You know, how does that translate? What’s my average sales price? What do I think is attainable? How many sales is that? How many appointments do I need to do? Do I need to make and then I also did some really crude math of how approximately how many people do I think I needed my database? I went to a ninja class. I think they said something like, you know, every person your database translates to something like $10,000 of it. and come or something something along those lines, I might be misquoting. But I, I said look, I need to start building my database like nobody, I need to start putting my name like I can’t feel next to luxury real estate in as many instances as I can. So I started putting more and more people in my database, and coming up with a plan that they saw my face and heard my name next to real estate. I also started doing some, like, something I learned from Barbara Corcoran, which is reach out to your local newspaper like these, these people are just usually young and hungry and overworked and have to come up with content for the newspaper. And they don’t know like, they have to do it every single day. And so if you help them and say, hey, look, this is super interesting. This is happening in our market, nine times out of 10, they’re gonna call you back and say, Hey, can you explain this to me? And can I quote you on this, and then all of a sudden, your name is in the newspaper next to luxury, real estate or whatever you decide, that’s D.J. Paris 20:54 really, I’m gonna pause you that is incredibly interesting. Nobody has ever, ever made that suggestion on this podcast. So super exclusive for us. So I want to I want to just just sort of unwind that a little bit so that our audience really hits, I thought you were gonna go a different way with it, which is, I do have this kind of cool story about my background as a, you know, a junior skier who was, you know, headed to Olympics and now I’ve pivoted because of injuries. And like, that’s a very interesting story just in and of itself that a newspaper might be interested in. But that’s a one off. And so I thought you were gonna say, Well, I just wanted to sort of trade in a little bit on my notoriety and get some publicity, which that would have made all the sense in the world to me too. But you actually want a totally different way was, I want their their reporters to call me when they need a quote, or or they need help with definitions, or that is beyond brilliant, because you’re absolutely right. These are people that work on incredible deadlines. They’re underworked, they are certain they’re overworked and underpaid. Yeah, sorry. They’re very overworked and underpaid. And it’s a stressful position, and you have can help actually make their lives a little easier. And so people, the reporter started using you in stories, I guess. Leah Canfield 22:13 Yes. Yeah. And I still try at least once a month to send them something interesting that’s happening because I, you know, pull data for my newsletter every month, I’m looking at, you know, what’s happening this month in our market? What are some, you know, sales that are very interesting, or what, you know, we’ve seen some really crazy stuff in our market, right, like 200% appreciation of this and, you know, this story. Yeah, right. And it’s a headline, so anything anytime I see something, and I’m like, this would be a good headline I send so D.J. Paris 22:39 often, how often do they ended up using your, your ideas, I’m just probably Leah Canfield 22:45 70% of the time, you know, everyone’s thing, but most of the time, they’re like, they call me back from it two weeks or three weeks later, and they’re like, hey, just circling back to this. Can you tell me more about that? And then it ends up yeah, D.J. Paris 23:00 that is that is so incredibly smart. I I’m a little bit sort of gobsmacked with that. I really apps which is a great word that I’m just starting to incorporate more into my it’s one of those words that sort of makes you seem smarter than saying I’m stunned. But But I am I am gobsmacked and or stunned because that that is an absolutely brilliant strategy. So thank you for that. So okay, you started. Yeah, so you started doing that that helped I imagine get your name out there. Leah Canfield 23:29 It did. Yeah, it helps with more of that. Like my sometimes my older clientele maybe I would get a referral to someone wanted to sell. And they’re like, we keep seeing your name in the newspaper. And so that gives you credibility. So my struggle was credibility. Right? I was maybe they knew my parents. You know, maybe they knew that I grew up here but they certainly didn’t trust me to sell their luxury home and so I had to kind of chip away at that credibility. And my goal is when someone thinks of luxury real estate they think of me so anytime I could put my name next to luxury real estate in people’s minds then that’s a win D.J. Paris 24:08 because it really what you what you could really do it for those of us thinking well what kind of stories I mean you literally just can look at data and the MLS find it really interesting statistic that is like a little shocking even you send that over go guys, I have an idea for you. Leah Canfield 24:23 Yeah, and don’t get don’t get in too much. I mean, like I said, these guys are overworked. Don’t put more than five sentences in your email, right? Give them a give them a clip, give them a taste and see if they’re interested. They’ll call you love it. Yeah. So yeah, I did that. I started. You know, I also realized pretty early on that I I was very interested in new construction and developments. And I learned that when a town or a county wants to hire a contractor, they have to go through a very The transparent process because the last thing a municipality wants to be accused of is, you know, like taking kickbacks and hiring their friend for for a job. And so when a town wants to hire a real estate agent to sell a town built project, they have to go through an RFP request for proposal process. And I learned about this pretty early on in my career, like, a year, and year and a half. And maybe, and I had a friend who just got her got her license, and we were like, Should we put a proposal in for this project? We’re total longshot, but it was for a local project, still pretty big $25 million project. And we ended up winning the bid. Because people felt we just went in and created a very professional looking proposal, we took it very seriously. And they felt that we would be a good face for the project, and we got it. So that is also something that’s interesting for people to know is that oftentimes your like towns and counties have are doing some of their own real estate development. Because in so many areas, there’s a lack of employee or locals housing, and they’re trying to address that themselves. Anyone can apply for those for those sales jobs. So that’s how I really got started in the development world and that I learned a ton during that project. And it was a really great experience. And then I faced kind of another challenge after that, which was okay, now people kind of know me as the like employee housing person, how do I pivot, and become, you know, a luxury salesperson, which was more of the area that I was interested in at the time. And so I just kept, kept doing what I was talking about earlier, which is, hey, put my name next to luxury, real estate, we’re sending the newsletter, we have luxury listings in there, right, we make comments, we’re talking about the luxury market, because that’s where you want to be you kind of like Manifest Your, your goals. D.J. Paris 26:48 That way. Yeah, that makes sense, is you you, you really I think what we’re really talking about is branding. It sounds like you very, very early on, you know sort of developed your brand, you were clear about what you wanted your brand to represent. And yes, you’re not going to turn down a $25 million development deal from a local municipality, simply because it doesn’t necessarily fit the the brand, you know, ideal. But it’s a great opportunity, a great learning experience, and how awesome to be chosen. So you’re going to do that. And then you’re going to you’re going to still return to your North Star, which is luxury. And then your North Star is is. And I want to mention too that a lot of times, Agents, I’m curious to get your thoughts on this. And you see this as well with other agents, I’m sure in your market is a lot of times the way agents think about branding is it’s all about the visual. So they’re doing a lot on social, Instagram, Facebook, there’s a lot of, you know, but you don’t really, that’s not really your path. And that’s a very, that’s a very unique way. So talk about is social a part of your marketing strategy, or I’m just curious what the importance of it is, Leah Canfield 28:00 I think it’s more important than we give it credit for, we could certainly improve on it. We’re always talking about it, and everyone I’ve sent to build a team, which we can talk about, but everyone on my team is like, we need to do better at this. So certainly, like anyone we’re not perfect. And social media is one of those things that we can really improve on. But we, you know, you don’t have to be good at everything, you have to do everything. Great to be great, you just have to be great at a few things. And so I think we’re kind of leaning into the things that we’re really good at. And, and it kind of makes up for some of our things that we’re not so great at, which is like social media promotion. But D.J. Paris 28:36 I’m not saying that to identify something that’s that’s you’re not strong. And I was and I hope hopefully you didn’t get that impression that’s like that, no good because I really was saying it as as a huge differentiator, that that that obviously you could always, you know, get good at social if you want to, but that’s not how you built your luxury brand. And really sort of avoided that. Which Which again, you could have traded in a lot of your previous success as a skier as as you could have really leaned into some of these accolades that you’ve you’ve received and made that a big push on social but you didn’t do that. And I think that’s particularly interesting. Again, it it sort of creates a more of a red ocean opportunity for you to find other opportunities to find other than Yeah, yeah, red ocean. Leah Canfield 29:26 No, we have so yeah, I think branding can be very simple. Honestly, for me, like I said, my, my, my, my mountain to climb was a credibility mountain, right? Because I was young. I was a girl a lot of people knew me as someone’s kid. So I had to, I had to convince people that I was legit. Something I actually haven’t really told anyone which is that when I first started, I didn’t every cent I had was like going towards some investment because we were so into investing. And so I didn’t really ever save up to like buy a nice car. And so I drove this kind of beat up. Little Subaru and I certainly couldn’t You know, with a straight face, bring the luxury client into it and tour them on these luxury homes. So I my parents live in Breckenridge and, and anytime I would have a client or a walk in, I told my mom who drove a Lexus. And I was like, Can I use your best mom ever? She’s like, yes, you can. And so it’s coming right down to just like how, how you present you’re not I’m not trying to say that anyone who wants to become a luxury realtor needs to drive a Lexus or a luxury car, but but presenting yourself in the most professional way that you can, anytime you can, the way that you dress, the way that you speak, that you know, how you arrive, all of that makes an impact. And all of that does a tribute to your branding. It’s not just who you are online, because even though social media has exploded so much, I’m I’m still in the generation where I was here before, you know, the energy and, and your brand really is who you are when you’re standing in front of your client. And so how can you be the person that you want to be in, you know, if you want to be a luxury real estate agent, what does that look like and if you have to fake it until you make it the time to drive your mom’s Lexus or, or, or your friend, you know, you pay your friend 50 bucks every time she lends you her BMW, because you drive a beat up Subaru duel, you know, find ways that you can present yourself as the brand you want to be. And that helped me as well with even it also helps with confidence, you know, dress to impress until you feel more competent. So D.J. Paris 31:32 yeah, yeah, I agree. That’s, I think that’s, that’s really, really great advice. And so let’s talk about grind culture. Because before we get into this, I want to hear your, your more you are firmly in the anti grind culture camp. And I love that because so often, we hear about out working our competition, working more hours, especially in real estate, where so much happens outside of the traditional business hours. You know, our our listeners are getting text messages, voicemails, you know, all sorts of things late into the evening. Boundaries are hard to set. They’re hard to follow. It’s also an unstructured job from the realtor side. So it’s, it’s, it’s tough. And it’s easy to just keep going and going and going because the text thread really never ends until they get the keys. And then you forget to respond until you forget to respond. Yeah, yeah. And that’s, yeah, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about Brian culture and, and what, what, why you’ve taken sort of a stance against it. Leah Canfield 32:40 Okay, so I live in Breckenridge. I don’t know if the listeners are familiar. But it’s a gorgeous mountain town in Colorado known for skiing, biking, outdoor activities. And when I first started in real estate, I, I was a one one woman show, as most people are, and I really wanted to be successful. And I’m a competitive person, right. So I threw everything at it, just like I did with with ski racing. And I remember, we went on this vacation, my now husband and I, and I just worked the entire time. And we were at the beach, and I was on my computer when I was going back to the room and I was taking calls. And I was and I was just, I was just running. And I was on vacation. And I came back and I was like, that was not a vacation. That was That wasn’t relaxing at all, you know. And then I also really realized, I just did a little bit of reflection and said, like, what do I really want my life to look like? Because I only get one life. And there’s no point in living a life that I’m not excited about? Because like there’s no kickbacks, right? And so I live here in this gorgeous place. Because I love to go skiing, I love to go mountain biking, I love to go for hikes, I love to be outside. And I can’t do all of that if I’m on all the time. And so I decided that this job, you know, there’s multiple things can be true at the same time. Yes, number one, I want to provide a really high level of service to my clients. Right? Number two, i i One of my very first deals I like completely dropped the ball on this thing. And I was like, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I suck at this. And it helped me realize that I am the person who’s going to do everything at all times. Otherwise my life is not going to be what I want it to be. And so D.J. Paris 34:27 we should mention that some people can somehow eat that out some people can seemingly do are designed for that. Some people are designed for it. I think the majority of us probably I’m not either. Leah Canfield 34:40 No. And so and I you know, when I’m out on a mountain bike ride, and I get a call from a client, I want to be able to help them but I also don’t want to take the call because I’m on a mountain bike ride and that’s my time to you know, clear my head and, and so what I settled on was I need help, and I will plug another book that changed my life, called the E Myth. So, yeah, the entrepreneurship myth, I recommend, if you haven’t read it, every realtor should read it. It’s about the importance of building a business, like a real business and recognizing what roles you play. Because if you are a one man show, you are the CEO, you are the CEO, you’re all the whole executive suite. You’re also the receptionist, and you’re the marketing, customer service. You’re the social media per sales team, right? So write it down, say, like, Hey, I’m all these people. Am I good at all? Plus, am I a good receptionist? Or am I bad at answering the phone, if I’m bad at answering the phone, or if I don’t like it, then hire someone helped me with it. And so going back to that project that we did with a ton of brag that, that project, having that almost a guaranteed future income of that development gave me the confidence to bring on my first assistant. And that was a game changer, because I realized that I can provide the level of service that I want to my clients, while also enjoying my life. And not only that, I could provide a better level of service to my clients than if I was just grinding it up alone. Because I started, I think a lot of realtors become a victim of their own success. They’re like, Okay, if only I can reach this sales number. If only I could have a few more contracts, or a few more clients, and then they get there. And we’re like, whoa, I’ve got 10 things under contract, holy moly, and they’re like, going crazy. And then they’re like, I don’t have time to put together a monthly newsletter this month. Like I have 10 contracts, right? I don’t have time to prospect sometimes send these, whatever mailers, whatever your strategy is. And so they start dropping the ball on the things that are not urgent, because you have to, you’re gonna, you’re not gonna drop the ball on your contract, right, hopefully. And so having that assistant, having a team built around you helps so that when you do get busy, your monthly newsletter still goes out on the first of the month, right, and you can have a more consistent, reliable level of service to your clients. Because you have built a system and you understood that, hey, I cannot do it all by myself. And I’m actually I’m doing a disservice to my client trying to do everything myself, because I also get sick, and I also get burnt out. And I also want vacation. D.J. Paris 37:13 Well, and that that probably is a lesson a lot of a lot of that you probably learned as a teenager being a competitive, you know, Super G skier, because you can pardon the pun, get to the top of the mountain and be on that Olympic team or even when when you know, whatever event of the Olympics you were going for, and then you can I mean, all of those are possible. They certainly were possible in your life. And yet, how happy you know, the happiness that you’re that, that you’re sort of wanting, or the fulfillment you’re wanting, may come at a significant cost. Because yeah, the level of of sort of output that that requires to get to the top of the mountain as a singular person is is well, you know, it’s incredible amount of demand on your body, on your mind, on your time. And so I have a question about texting a very specific question. So you were talking about, you know, you get the phone call, you’re mountain biking now you’re like, Okay, assistants gonna grab that I get it, you’ll you’ll have that routed to the assistant. What about text messages? Leah Canfield 38:16 Yeah, text messages are tough. They are really tough. I would say that if it’s something that I either don’t have the mental space for, or I have something else going on right now. I will just screen grab that and send it to my send it to my assistant and say, Can you help me with this? Or, you know, I’ll say, Hey, Mike, this this person reached out to me about this, can you help me because and I like to recognize it. I’ve learned at the beginning of the correspondence, because if you’re really busy and you start communicating with your client, and then you try and leave someone in, then they’re like, No, I’m talking to you about this. But if they start asking you about something right away, and you can say, you know, you lose someone and immediately then that person is the point person. So I don’t have a perfect answer. Texting is really tricky. And I would be lying if I said that, you know, haven’t forgotten about a text and woken up in the middle of the night like, oh, never responded to that text, right. But I do love that the new iPhone I think you can like mark them as unread. I don’t have the newest iPhone, so I’m excited to get that so that I can like if I open up a text and I’m not prepared to deal with it, I can mark it as unread and treat it more like a email. I D.J. Paris 39:25 want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast. Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests? 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But only if you use this special link, visit, follow up boss.com forward slash real, that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial, follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. But that I think that’s helpful because it also too, we know when you start communicating, you’re setting via text, you’re also setting in motion, like a response time that now there’s an expectation there and you set sort of clear boundaries around. Leah Canfield 41:03 I do. I do in my own way, I’m not I don’t do it upfront, I’m not like, Hey, these are my business hours. Some people do that, I I really respect that. But I do it. Sometimes you meet if you have a client or you meet someone who you kind of can tell is like a pusher, you know, they’re gonna kind of push you and push you to kind of see what your limit is. And when I have a client or someone like that, I, I make an effort to not respond like it, let’s say someone who’s whose duck personality type text me, I had a client, and I’ll just give you an example. I had a client who I showed them a property, followed up with them. They kind of ghosted me for like a week. And then a week later, I like 10pm. They texted me and they were like, Hey, we’re ready for an offer. If we could, you know, my husband has work in the morning. But if you could have it ready, you know, before he leaves for work than we can by the morning. And I was like, You know what, I’m not responding to this, because that is in my way, how I’m going to set my boundaries. And if I don’t respond to this, it’s not going to set a precedent that for the whole contract period, I’m available to do work for you during the night hours, right? Because D.J. Paris 42:07 because you’re in a position, when that text comes in, you’re in a position to either defend why you can’t do it, which is a lose situation, or, or you’re going to grind it out and try to get it done at the cost of sleep and energy and other things. And now also reinforcing their behavior. Now they’re going to they’re going to, it’s not like they’re magically going to snap to going forward, we’re going to, you know, not text you past five o’clock know, you’ve just told them, it’s perfectly okay, what you just did. Leah Canfield 42:35 So yes, that’s you’re exactly right. I don’t want to reinforce that behavior. And there’s, with some clients, in certain instances, you know, I have a client who is at a surgeon, and his hours are super tough, and you wanted to have a call with me like 830. And it’s like, okay, I get it. And I can tell, he’s not that personality, who’s gonna start calling me every night at 830. So I feel like I can read people. And I don’t set exact hours, I respect the people who do. But I think that it’s important before you, you know, if you don’t feel like you want to respond to someone, because of the time of day or because of, you know, mostly it’s a time of data, right? If you’re on vacation, hopefully you have coverage from someone. But if it’s an in the middle of the night thing, don’t do it. If it’s that person who’s going to just keep, because you work, sometimes you work with these clients for like years, if they don’t find anything, or they can’t sell their house. And so then all of a sudden, it’s a lot harder to reel back. Once you’ve opened those floodgates of yeah, let me get that done for you at 11pm. D.J. Paris 43:33 I am I I agree wholeheartedly. I just think it’s such a it’s a conversation I like to have because text community text communication really is very complicated in sort of what it what it represents, in different different side parts of the business. And so it’s something that every agent really needs to think through what’s my policy around x y&z And yes, when I have the, you know, the guy who’s the surgeon who, who’s who just got out of a 16 hour surgery and, and he needs to talk to me at eight o’clock at night, I get it, he’s not trying to push my buttons or pushing. He’s just, that’s when he’s available. Of course, we get that. But but we also understand that, you know, there’s certain ways we can set, you know, temporary boundaries around around sort of our general behavior. I also really, and I don’t talk about this enough, but I think we have a lot of women who come on our show, and I oftentimes forget as a guy, I don’t think as much about this, and I should, but I’m going to talk about sort of gut feelings and I know you’re meant to tell me a little bit about the importance of trusting your gut. It I mean, I imagine as an athlete, you have to know, you know, your you have to listen to signals to be a competitive athlete. But um, you know, I’m curious about sort of gut instinct and how that’s you know, manifested in your real estate practice. Leah Canfield 44:53 Yeah, I’m I’m not a very I would say I’m a more logical person than any else, I don’t know if they call it left brained, I’m more logical. And so it’s easy for me. And I think people like me to dismiss certain feelings that they have, because they’re just contradictory, maybe to the logic, yeah, like, hey, this client is prepared to spend $10 million. And then your, your feeling is like, walk away, right? But your head is like, want me to have that commission before I’ve earned it, right. And so sometimes when you have those conflicting feelings, it can be tough, especially if you’re more of a logical person, because you can dismiss these feelings as just that, right? People have feelings, D.J. Paris 45:32 the facts, the facts aren’t in yet. But the facts say everything looks okay. But something inside of me that’s more intangible, and, and and invisible, is is giving me pause, and my logical brain is going Shut up other part of you, you don’t you don’t have any facts. This is just, you know, whatever you’re getting scared or whatever it might be. And so the and by the way, this is this happens all the time. So I’m so glad we’re talking about Go ahead. I’m sorry. Leah Canfield 45:59 Yeah, no, no, that’s, that’s good. So I think there’s a lot of us not to get into biology. But there’s a lot of the human body that I think we don’t totally understand most of us at least. And we are hardwired, with certain instincts, right for eating and registering. And yeah, for all sorts of things that have helped protect us over however many. However long in history, we’ve been a species, right. And so I think, once I recognize that, hey, sometimes that that gut feeling is a culmination of various instincts that my body has, those are legitimate, actually, those are just as legitimate as, as, you know, my logical part of my brain, potentially even more, more so because they’re older. D.J. Paris 46:44 They’re older, they’re older, and they’re bypassing consciousness which consciousness, consciousness can can steer us wrong, right? As consciousness can tell us, you know, things are not the way they appear. Because we are imperfect. Our brains are imperfect instincts, however, tend tend to once you’re able to identify what an instinct is, and, and what and the difference between instinct and, you know, maybe things, you know, fears and things that may be getting in the way. Yeah, so I’m sorry, I don’t mean to, to Oh, yeah, Leah Canfield 47:15 you’re right, you’re right. They’re, they’re there to protect you, your instincts are there to protect you, for the most part, so listen to them. Um, you know, being, being a woman in the business, I think, maybe comes at a little bit higher risk. I don’t generally really ever feel unsafe in the business. But I have had instances where it’s become clear to me after working with a client that they’re, they’re really trying to just spend time with me. And not, they’re not a real client. And there was one instance in particular where that happened, I was working with someone for a local selling season, and we ended up putting in an offer on something and and, you know, I referred him to some local lenders that he could call and one of the lenders called me and he’s like, this guy has no has nothing right. And the whole time, he’s of course, hyping himself up like, you know, I just sold this business I have all this money, I believe houses and and so there’s a lot that I learned from that because, you know, the lenders like doesn’t have money for downpayment doesn’t have a job, can’t get a loan, no assets, no one’s gonna loan him anything. And I realized, over the years, I’ve realized that people with real wealth, first of all, don’t flaunt it like that. The people who do that’s an immediate red flag to me, you know, people who will come in the office, and they start talking about how rich and successful they are. There’s very few of those people who actually have the means to become a real client of yours. And, and maybe that’s just our market, I know different parts, different areas are different, right? Have different people. But in our laid back mountain market, the people who can afford a $5 million house aren’t, aren’t talking to you about their net worth, you know, in the first conversation you have with them, and how they how successful they are. So anyways, it turns out this guy that I was working with had like a criminal history, and I should have done a background check on him. And certainly had no means to buy a house. And I had that gut feeling right at the beginning. And I didn’t listen to it. And so I said, Look, I’m just going to, I spent a lot of time with this guy. Who I think was D.J. Paris 49:08 Yeah, it’s hard to accept something like that. Because, because because it could it could affect your reputation, meaning it could go online and scorched earth. This realtor dropped me as a client, I was a serious buyer blah, blah, blah, they you know, men do weird things when women when they feel rejected. Leah Canfield 49:26 Oh, yeah. So I was, you know, I ultimately did have to drop him because he came back and wanted to work for me again and I said, Hey, you know, we need to get pre qualified this time. He’s like, Well, you don’t trust me you don’t believe in the money. I’m like, I’m when D.J. Paris 49:38 people say, Trust me as a question. You can just not trust them. That’s Leah Canfield 49:42 yeah, so you know, a couple of things I learned from that. Number one, we have a really good resource with our MLS, where you can do like free background checks on people. Yeah, and I think a lot of MLS is have that are working on that. So especially if you’re going to be you know, we have a lot of remote areas with like no cell service and we’re out Showing property, you know, mean, some guy that I met 20 minutes ago. So that’s something that’s key, I think we’re just looking up, I could have found this out by doing a Google search on this guy, and I just didn’t do it. And then, you know, find ways to, yes, you can ask all of your clients for a pre qualification letter, proof of funds prior to looking at homes. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But there’s also just another layer of, you know, I had a bad gut feeling when I met this guy, and I just didn’t listen to it. And, and there have been instances since then, where I’ve had a similar feeling, and I have listened to it. And I’ve never regretted it, even no matter how much because usually, with these clients, they’re waving, you know, money in your face, which is the first red flag. But you know, it’s become a lot easier for me, as I’ve become more successful to realize, I don’t need this, you know, and it’s not just about that sort of instance, there’s also a lot of people who aren’t respectable, right, or they don’t respect you, as a professional or the industry. You know, I was just going to listing appointment where the guys like, Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I think real estate professionals are overpaid. And I think it’s a whole thing is a racket, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I just, you know, I said, you know, to beat you on that I’m going to change your mind. D.J. Paris 51:12 What are the what are the odds that you’re going to change that person? Yeah, Leah Canfield 51:15 yeah. And also, I’m not going to, I’m not going to grovel for your business, if you think that I, you know, my place in the industry is unwarranted, because I don’t actually need I don’t need this I, I can find success working with people who are like me, who see the bigger picture and who are respectful. You know, and, and that’s also just been a lifestyle decision for me is like, hey, not only do I want to respect my own boundaries of when I when I want to be working, and when I don’t want to be working. But I also want to set my own boundaries of like, Who do I want to work with, because this is my life, you know, and, and work is a big part of my life. And so I would rather sell 80% of, of what I could sell and just work with, good, you know, honest people. And I’m not saying you know, any, to anyone in the luxury field knows that not every client, not a religious client is easy. I’m not trying to say, hey, this guy’s gonna be hard. Let’s ditch it. Because we work with our fair share of difficult clients. And I can be difficult myself. So we all have our own things, right. But when you get the feeling that someone is, you know, not trustworthy, or trying to trying to lie about who knows what, or just like, not a good person, you get that feeling? I think you should listen to it. Because why spend your time working with bad people? D.J. Paris 52:37 Question has your gut. Ever since you’ve become a realtor? Has your gut ever steered you wrong? Leah Canfield 52:43 No, honestly, it hasn’t. And it’s been so hard for me because that’s not my personality. To D.J. Paris 52:48 Yes, your logical, yeah, oriented look at the data. Leah Canfield 52:54 And it’s so hard because I can’t explain, you know, I can’t explain, like, why you D.J. Paris 52:59 can’t walk it back and say, Oh, the reason I had that feeling was because XY and Z, it’s like, no, the feeling showed up before I was aware of anything. Leah Canfield 53:07 Yeah, and I’m still not perfect. Like, I just, I still have instances where I have this, this gut feeling of like, this isn’t gonna end well, you know, maybe I should decline this. And then I kind of bug work, work past it, and work through it. And then sure enough, my gut was right. And I’m like, okay, so it’s not like I have, you know, just the perfect, you know, instincts that I’m always listening to, sometimes I’m like, that up, I should have listened to, should have listened to how I felt. But, um, I think that’s an important thing that, that we don’t really talk about enough. It just in general is that it’s, listen, listen to how you feel. Because also if, if for nothing less than when, when someone calls you, if you immediately get a pit in your stomach, I mean, you’re gonna get a pit in your stomach every single time you need to talk to this person. And you need to, you need to figure out whether or not you want to live with the pit in your stomach, because that’s not a way to live. Right? So try and find a way try and find a way to, to be at peace with the people that you work with. And it’s okay to say no, sometimes, you know, D.J. Paris 54:11 so as you’ve stepped away from sort of grinding it out, which I imagine, you know, as the athlete, part of you understands, grinding it out. And that’s achieved. And it really is, you know, in many ways, such a significant part of an athlete’s life, sort of dropping that and trusting that that you can still progress and achieve and scale the mountain without necessarily burning the candle at both ends. What does your life look like now? Is it more balanced? You know, and how are you able to still achieve more which, you know, you’re still in the early early phase of your real estate career where you’re doing more and more and more and obviously, you know, this year is kind of, you know, a different year for most realtors, but you’re still moving forward and achieving. How do you do that? While maintaining balance, what what does that look like for you? Leah Canfield 55:03 Yeah, well, so. So I will kind of like, there’s this, I’ll mention this adage that I have heard that I really appreciate. I think it’s an old African average. Hopefully, I’m not misquoting it. But it says, If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far go as a team. And I think what they meant it very literally, like, if you need to get somewhere fast, you better start running by yourself. And if you need to cross a great distance, you better go with a group of people. And I, I really liked that saying, because I am kind of a lone wolf in my by nature, like I only did. I didn’t do team sports, I did individual sports, right. And I was extremely competitive as an individual. And I burnt myself out and was plagued with injury. And the thing that meant most to me at that time, which was ski racing, and I did, I did get to a pretty high level, but I didn’t my career didn’t last very long. You know, I retired when I was like, before I turned 20, I think. And so I realized that, you know, I should take something away from that, which is, life, hopefully, for for most of us is quite long. And if you want to have success in something, and you want to have elongated success, then it’s important that you work with a team, whatever that looks like for you. I’m not saying every single person needs to start a real estate team. But it’s important that you recognize that going at it alone, it’s it’s tough to you know, it’s tough to do stuff alone. So if that just means you have a support group or group of agents that you meet with to like, you know, talks about your, your highs and lows together, whatever that may be. So that wasn’t really the answer to your question. So to answer your question, what my life kind of looks like now is it certainly and my business, it’s not perfect, there’s always things where I’m like, oh, I need to improve on this, or we should be doing this. And, and so, it’s I think it’s always gonna be like that, though. So I’ve just kind of become comfortable with that feeling of this is not perfect, and I don’t love that I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, so but that’s okay. Right. I’m, I have to tell myself, it’s okay that my business is not perfect, because it’s improving. And D.J. Paris 57:19 you you said something at the beginning that probably skated by a lot of us, but you said, two things can be true, right. And that’s, I think that’s called like dialectical thinking this idea of two things that could be in opposition can also be true, right? We we all know, if we have a romantic partner, we can love that person with all our heart and really be annoyed at something they did at the exact same time. And and letting one of those emotions totally take over is probably not not the healthiest thing is understanding. Yes, there’s times I’m annoyed with you. And there’s times I love you more than anything. And those can be true at the exact moment. Yeah, and so a life can be out of balance. And by the way, I don’t think balance I’m not even sure balance is possible. But the striving to sort of balance is is very, you know, important. And this idea that you can be because you are good at things and also not good at things simultaneously. Right, like, Leah Canfield 58:16 wow. Right. So So yeah, I would agree. I think finding, I think I’ve heard of it. Maybe it’s like a false dichotomy, where it’s like, well, it has to be this or that. Right? I have to either enjoy my life or have a successful career. D.J. Paris 58:29 I happy until Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Right. I Leah Canfield 58:33 can either enjoy my life, or I can save up money, right? And it’s like, well, you can do both, right. So I think, I think it’s extremely important for people in our profession. They take their real estate class, if you’re new in the industry, or if you’ve been doing it forever. There’s no like you said earlier, it’s not really defined, you know, no one gives you like a manual and says, Here’s your job description. They’re like, hey, go, good luck, you know, sell stuff, because that’s how you get paid. So it’s really important to have the headspace to be able to be a little bit introspective, and figure out what you want your life to look like. Because it’s one of the best careers in the world, to be able to design your own life around it. You could say, hey, look, I’m, I don’t really feel that competitive. I only really want to sell enough to pay my rent, and go surfing every day. And you can do that, right? Or you can say like, Hey, I want to become the top agent in this market. You know, let’s start coming up with some ways that you can do that. And also go on for vacations a year, or whatever you want to do. Because the most successful people aren’t going out alone. You know, the most successful businesses aren’t one person. And every single one of us runs a business. So I think we’re just, I think, the grind, you know, grind till you die, lifestyle. It doesn’t take that into consider ERATION that you’re, you’re cutting yourself short, and you’re doing a disservice to your clients, because you really can’t. Like we are human, we have to sleep, right? And we have to take a rest. And if we really want to develop a good business, we need to sometimes take days off so that we can have a creative thought, so that we’re not just like, when’s their earnest money deadline? When it Okay, did I review that title commitment, and oh, God, I gotta get to this appointment. Because if you’re, if your mind is constantly on to do lists, you can’t operate in a creative space, that way, you can’t come up with new ways to do things better than other people. So you know, give yourself some space headspace by taking a few things off your plate. So you’re not just like running around like a chicken with your head cut off. And you can actually have an original thought, like, this is something no one else in my market is doing. What if we did that? Right. And I think that’s only possible if you if you can get some help, D.J. Paris 1:01:02 and make and make space, right. And getting help oftentimes makes that space as as you were saying, and, and you know, to for those of us listening, who are solo practitioners who are thinking, Well, I can’t afford to hire, you know, a an assistant, well, there as you know, there are websites, where you can post jobs that all over the world, people will bid for your business, and they don’t have to live in your immediate market for for certain tasks. And there’s, you know, there’s lots of things that these are, can be highly skilled people that live in, in in areas where the compensation is much different than it is here, and oftentimes much lower, and you’re offering them an opportunity to make a good living for them, and also get the help that you need, where maybe you can’t afford to get a full time, you know, local assistant, right away. Leah Canfield 1:01:51 And yeah, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of creative solutions like that. I mean, you can, if you live there College, people need to intern and they don’t, they don’t necessarily even need to be paid. Right? And, or if you have a group of agents in your office, and you guys don’t even work together, but you’re like, Hey, I can’t afford someone salary, but I could afford 1/5 of someone’s salary. What about you? Right? So there’s a lot of different ways you can accomplish this. But I, I do think that if you’re going to take your business seriously, you know, and you pick up the E Myth and you read it, and you realize that you’re both the CEO and the receptionist of your business and everything in between. There’s a better way. Yeah, better for you for your life. D.J. Paris 1:02:32 I just want to circle back in this last thing I’ll mention because I think it’s really important. And you said this, and it’s quite profound. This idea of making space for ideas to emerge. So you’re talking about it reminded me of of the saying, which is technically a, it’s not even a saying it’s just true, is that the music that we enjoy? It’s not actually the notes that that are that we’re sort of interpreting, we’re actually interpreting the silence between the notes, because otherwise, it’s just one continuous sound, right? Yeah. So we all okay, yeah, we get that. But the point of it is, is that in order for us to appreciate things, we really do have to give it our attention, which means making space, which means putting down maybe the phone or the TV, and blocking out some actual time to sit alone and think for a few minutes here and there. About let’s let’s brainstorm some ideas of making, you know, x better or, or changing y. And, and if you don’t spend that time, it’s unlikely to emerge. Because we do live in this culture of cons. I mean, we have a device in our pocket that is unlimited. It’s unlimited, and its ability to entertain us. It’s completely unlimited. It’s the most powerful thing that we could have ever imagined now sits in our pocket, and you can give us any sort of feeling we wanted any given time, we just can dial it up. So it’s, it’s almost quite, it’s actually quite dangerous, in a sense. So extremely Leah Canfield 1:03:57 difficult. Thanks a lot, Steve Jobs. D.J. Paris 1:04:01 It’s all his fault. Leah Canfield 1:04:03 But I mean, I struggle with it. I will mindlessly open apps on my phone. And I’m like, What am I doing? You know? And I will say that, if it sounds overwhelming to set everything aside and have a brainstorming session, some people are like, what does that even mean? It you don’t have to go forward with always having a purpose to something. And that is something that I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older because you know what, when I was younger, when I was a ski racer, I couldn’t just like go for a stroll, right? I’d have to do like intervals, right? Sprinting for 30 seconds and then recovering and sprinting and recovering and all my friends were like, You’re crazy. Can you just come on a walk with us? I’m like, No, actually, I can’t have to train. And so now it’s okay to just be great if you can figure out a way to just be so if you if you don’t want to turn your phone off and do a brainstorming session for your job, or you know, for your business, turn your phone off and just go for a walk or take a shower or, or, you know, if you’d like to paint paint just make space for you not to be so turned on all the time because all of a sudden, you will be on that walk with no intention of coming up with any ideas for your business. And you will be like, Hey, how did I not think of this sooner, because all of a sudden, your mind has the capacity to actually problem solve. And that’s just burnout, the grind culture doesn’t allow don’t have that space. So you gotta make it. D.J. Paris 1:05:33 I think that’s perfectly said and great place for us to wrap what I what I would like to say for everyone listening is that Breckenridge is a town where people oftentimes have, you know, a condo that they go to visit and ski it or maybe they have a second home, because they enjoy, you know, everything about that part of the country, which it’s like such a perfect sort of plays. And so this is an opportunity for anyone listening, if you do have clients that love to ski or love to be outdoors and are looking in areas to maybe retire to or even have a second home. You know, Leah and her team would love the opportunity to connect with you, Leah. Or, and of course, if anyone’s listening out there who is looking to purchase or list a property in the Breckenridge and Summit County area. I mean, Leah and her team, obviously are a great choice. They are not only one of the top teams in the area, they’re Leah and her team is literally one of the top agents in all of Coldwell Banker, including not just this country, but the entire world. So if somebody out there is looking to connect with you, and in some way, Leah, what’s the best way that they should do that? Leah Canfield 1:06:39 Oh, man, you know, here’s the thing about being a realtor, you could just look up my name, and you will find all of my personal information. So you use pretty easy to find my phone number, my website, my email, D.J. Paris 1:06:51 but what we’ll do is, yeah, we can send everyone right over to the website, which is mountain homes group.com. Again, mountain homes, plural group.com, the link will be in our show notes and you can find all things Leah there, you can connect with her. It should you you know, want to you know, set up a referral system. And by the way, Leah also has I’m sure clients that move from the area as well. So probably a good person to connect with. So and So Leah, we are so excited. Congratulations again on the nar 30 under 30 What a huge, huge honor not surprising for what you’ve accomplished thus far. But also, I’m glad that I’m glad that National Association of REALTORS recognized you because of course, seeming seems very well deserved. And we wish you the very best as you’re, you know, again, you’re sort of going up the mountain as opposed to traditionally in the past always going down the mountain. In your in your other career. But so part part in the silly pun there but but the but but I’m very excited to continue to watch your your ascent and and as you build your business, you know, we want to check back in with you and see how it’s going and what new lessons you’ve learned. Because, you know, your business will continue to evolve, continually evolve. And you’ll have better ideas as well as as things change. So we are excited to keep that keep that conversation going for. So everyone who’s made it all the way to the end. We appreciate you our listeners or viewers. On behalf of Leah and I, we thank you for sitting and listening to us talk. Hopefully this was helpful to you. I trust that it was it was for me. And I know we’ll get a lot of great feedback from our audience. And speaking of feedback, let us know what you think of the show. So best way to do that. If you’re listening through a podcast app, leave us a review, let us know whether it’s Apple podcasts or Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts anywhere. Just let us know what you think of the show. We read every comment and on. So on behalf of Leah and I we say thank you. And of course on behalf of the audience, we say thank you to Leah for coming on and really giving us her perspective of what’s been working for her. And there’s been so many great tips in here that I know our audience is going to be thrilled to share this episode with another realtor. So best way to do that just send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com We have every episode we’ve ever done, you can stream it right online. If the person you’re sending over isn’t a podcast person, just send them to our website keeping it real pod.com And thank you again to everyone Lea thanks again and we will see everybody on the next episode.