RMG Agent Podcast

Episode 68 - Identity Shift: Breaking Your Business Barriers

• Reed Moore • Season 3 • Episode 68

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Breaking through to your next level of business success requires more than just better tactics—it demands becoming the person capable of operating at that level. 💪 The challenge? We often elevate our current struggles to the status of fixed identity, creating concrete barriers that resist change. 

Your current identity is delivering precisely the results you're experiencing. Those identity statements like "I'm not good on the phone," 📞 "I'm not a morning person," ⏰ or "I'm just not organized" 📅 aren't harmless self-descriptions—they're self-imposed limitations that keep you tethered to your current reality. When challenged, we defend these limitations fiercely, as though they're fundamental truths rather than malleable characteristics.

True transformation begins when you recognize these statements for what they are: stories you've been telling yourself. 📣The path forward requires reframing these limitations as opportunities for growth.  Replace "I'm bad on the phone" with "I'm learning how to have better conversations with practice." This subtle shift moves the challenge from fixed identity (concrete) to malleable skills (wet clay).

The most actionable approach? "Act as if."  Begin structuring your day, conversations, and mindset as if you're already the successful agent you aspire to become. Through consistent practice, what initially feels disingenuous gradually becomes your authentic self. Your identity will catch up to your actions, and you'll discover you've become the person capable of achieving what once seemed impossible. 💫

Ready to shed the limiting identities holding back your business? Join Reed and Jake now to discover how to transform who you are to achieve what you want! 🚀

Get started breaking through those limitations NOW by using AreaPro! Visit areapro.com/rmg today for an exclusive discount and demonstrate your professionalism immediately 💥

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Speaker 1:

In real estate and in sales. There's such a need for personal growth, especially if you want your real estate business not just to thrive, as in you make more money, but you become who you're created to be. Anything that moves to the level of identity becomes so hard to move that it really keeps us from growth. Hard to move that it really keeps us from growth. Real estate agents welcome back. You're here on the RMG Agent Podcast. We're so thrilled that you're back here with us. We're here just to deliver value to you guys, help you out with your business, and it's going to be an awesome, awesome episode today, as always. Go to areaprocom forward slash rmg. Check out the product. We love it. We think every professional agent should have it. Welcome again to season three. Jake, here we go.

Speaker 2:

We are here and we are doing personal growth today. Yes, actually, we're doing personal growth for this season, and we did a part one last week of what we're calling Warning Breakthrough May Cause Discomfort, and we talked about awareness and self-awareness, and today we're doing part two, which is Identity Shift.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we talked about this kind of preparing for this season and just the reality that we, what we think is the reality is, you know the old saying that your business grows to the extent that you do, and for all intents and purposes, especially in real estate and in sales, there's such a need for personal growth, especially if you want your real estate business not just to thrive, as in you make more money, but you become who you're created to be right Like. You end up not hollow at the core. You build those internal structures that really help you, and so we're going to focus this season on on personal growth to be able to help underwrite the real estate professionals business.

Speaker 2:

Yep, yep, and we did so again. It's a triangle, with everything's a triangle, but this is going to be a base middle, top and we talked about the base, which was our awareness and our self-awareness. Do you want to give them a couple of quick bullet points?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So just kind of going back to our last episode, right, you know, something like 95% of people identify as self-aware and statistically, somewhere between like 12 and 15%, I think it is, uh, people are actually self-aware. And so there's there's this whole series of really hard things that actually goes into growing awareness, and I've just chosen in my life to identify as not self-aware. Right, and it's helpful, because if I start from this premise that I'm not aware and there's things that I can do about that, I've found that my growing process is a lot better. And so talking about that, that of course leads us into going. You know, identifying that way leads us into our second piece of breakthrough, which is actually identity shift.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so identity shift. And this isn't political, this isn't anything like that. This is going to be identity within your personal growth of your business. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I guess to start and maybe this even is a little bit political there there is maybe an identity crisis that we have in our culture right now and the thing that happens to us is we can elevate things to the level of identity.

Speaker 1:

We can elevate our behaviors, we can elevate our choices, we can elevate so many things all the way to this level of what we might call a primary identity, and then it really becomes a problem, because if I have a behavior that I need to change, right, that's going to be helpful for my life or helpful for my business, but I have kind of like enshrined that thing and I have put it in concrete and like you can't touch it and you can't talk to me about this, all of a sudden I've moved from from any chance of a growth mindset to a very, very fixed mindset, and anything that moves to the level of identity becomes so hard to move that it really keeps us from growth without really you know, maybe even some substantial, you know damage being done to us to be able to move us forward. And it's really important, I think, in this, in the space of personal growth, that we're careful about elevating things to this level of identity.

Speaker 2:

So we talked about in the pre-planning for this, that your identity is getting you your current results.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, so.

Speaker 1:

So if you look at your current results and whether that's the amount of business that you're doing or the amount of time it takes you to do that business, or you're on a leadership path and you constantly are having this problem with breakthrough around growing into becoming a leader, you know. The first one we talked about is self-awareness. Right, what am I bringing to the table here that's creating these negative results? And I want to sort that out and just get to reality. Right, what is actual reality around this? And so once I move from that and I establish reality, got it, I see it, I'm clear. Here's how I'm showing up. The next thing that we need to do is we need to take a look and say, okay, what is my current identity? And and not just what's my identity, but what are the different markers, specifically the language and the things that I say that that maybe tip my hat to the fact that I have some fixed identity things going on that, uh, that I need to be able to change if I want to break through, or grow, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So fix, fix mindset in your identity of, of, um the way that you're showing up on a daily basis.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so there's very few things. I'm I'm very careful with my language around this and, uh, there are very few things that are just really hard, fast, primary identity things. Uh, I think in general, that's, I think, a healthy way to live life, because so many other things, I want them to be opportunities for growth, right. And so, uh, we put together a list of just things that that you know they might be what you call identity statements and their identity statements that you might feel deeply and you might believe to be true. And the reality, going back to awareness and self-awareness, the reality is is that these things might be true in your current experience, but the question is, uh, do they have to be true? Do they have to be your reality? And if the answer is yes, then the conversation is done, right. And if it happens to be something that is holding you back and you hold it with this like this has to be true, or this has to be true for me, or this is 100 percent true, then you're just stuck Like this is a checkmate situation. I just tip over the king, walk away from the board, right. But if we operate from this idea of you know, a growth mindset and being able to challenge these things, then I want to be able to challenge the language, and you can even say the story that I'm telling myself.

Speaker 1:

So some of the things that I hear out of people's mouth very, very frequently are things like like um, I'm not good on the phone, right. And then they elevate that, like they bring it to a place like jake, I'm not good at the phone, and what they're really saying is don't talk to me about this. I have made up my mind who I am. Is somebody who's not good on the phone? Yeah, right, and it's just concrete, right? Another one might be I'm bad at sales. Uh, this one, this, this one drives me crazy. I'm not a morning person, right, okay. So so what does that mean? Does that mean currently I struggle with my level of energy and focus in the morning, or I struggle getting out of bed, or is it don't ever try to help me get better faster in the morning, right? I don't know what that means, because it can mean identity. Or it can mean here's my current state Now, just because something's your current state, and maybe it's something that that should be challenged, or growth doesn't mean it's the next logical thing to grow.

Speaker 1:

So the problem for people like me, who I'm just like an incessant challenger, is, anytime I hear one of these statements, I want to challenge it and I want to like, like you know, just just take that thing to the carpet.

Speaker 1:

The problem is is that if somebody's on a growth trajectory or a growth path, this might be three or four or twenty thousand items down the road in their growth. So so you have to be careful, because when you start seeing these things in other people, that's kind of not the point of this conversation. The point of this conversation is congratulations, you see things that need to be fixed in other people. Everybody, everybody has this gift right of seeing things that are wrong with other people. The issue is that this self-awareness of I need to be able to look in the mirror and I need to be able to grow me that's the primary thing that we're talking about this season is personal growth, not don't grow and fix everybody around you, yeah, and from personal experience, it's much easier to fix everybody outside of the mirror, but that person in the mirror is the hardest person to talk to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, everybody wants their spouse to grow and can probably list out the five things that they need to grow in. I was talking to a friend a while back and they were very clear on the three things that their spouse was not up to speed on or not at the level of their expectations on. And then we just started talking about you know, like well, hey, what about these things? And it was like, don't talk to me about that. So, okay, right, because it again, it's just, it's so difficult. And again, we wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't difficult.

Speaker 1:

Right, I'm not organized, I'm not a natural leader, I'm terrible at networking. I'm bad with technology. I'm not a numbers person, I'm an introvert, so I can't prospect. Right, I'm not confident enough. I'm not creative, I'm not disciplined, I'm no good at hiring or managing people. I'm too old. I'm too young to succeed in business. I'm just not a high achiever. All of these things can be currently true. The issue is have you elevated to the point where people cannot challenge you on it and you are unwilling to challenge yourself? If you're unwilling to be challenged and it's not impacting your life or your business, high five, right, you may not need to grow in that area right now, maybe ever right. But the issue is if I'm looking at my business and I'm dissatisfied with my results or I'm dissatisfied with the amount of time and energy I'm having to put in. Now we have to start asking these questions like, hey, is it reasonable to have an identity shift around this particular issue? And I think the answer is yes.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so let's talk about reframing identity. So you've decided that that is not a concrete identity. You need to grow in this area. And we've been telling ourselves let's say, let's go with the I'm not a morning person one, If we're going to reframe, I'm not a morning person. What are we going to do?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so. So we start with this idea of if we're going to shift our identity, then I I'm, my identity is current, giving me my current results, but I want different results. And so now I need to grow into the person who's going to be able to, over time, get different results. And so, if I'm not a morning person, I might say something like I'm training my body to have more energy in the mornings. So I'm not denying the reality that if you watch me, you're going to find that I am not, I'm not super activated in the morning. You might find that I'm currently, by way of behavior or mindset or action, not a morning person. But if I bring that out of identity into behavior or, we would say, into the area of skills, now all of a sudden it's not concrete. Now it's wet clay, right.

Speaker 1:

So I say this I say something like I'm training my body to have more energy in the morning. So I'm saying here's where I am and because I need an identity shift, I am doing something about it. Because, conversely, if we look and we elevate this thing to, to this level of identity, and it's negative and it's impacting me in a negative way. If I can break that down and I can turn that into wet clay. And then I can say something like you know, over the course of time and hard work, hard effort, maybe even years, I might say, oh my gosh, jake, I'm a morning person, I get stuff done, I have so much energy in the morning. Okay, if I re elevate that up to the point of like a secondary or tertiary identity, now I'm putting it back in concrete, but what I'm concreting is a really good building block for success in my life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And now, now mornings can become some of your most effective time during the day. Yes, because you've gone through that identity shift, okay, so let's see. Here's a couple other ones. I'm bad on the phone. I'm learning how to have better conversations with practice.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, that's amazing. You're bad on the phone, so is everybody that starts that right? It's funny because, you know, with kids, you know when our kids were younger, we would start making them call people and reach out to people and learn how to talk. And we realized that, especially if kids are more going to be more apt to text or things like that, that they actually didn't have this natural skill set to communicate their needs over the phone. And so this just shows up in these real practical ways, right, like they don't know how to talk to somebody at the DMV they don't know how to talk to like school administrators they don't know how to talk to people. And it's like, well, I guess you're stuck the rest of your life. You can't communicate with people because you're bad on the phone. Right, like as a parent, would you ever tell your kid that? Like, sorry, I guess your life's stuck, like you're doomed to be x? Like no, no, no, no. It's us as adults that decide that we can now do that without consequence, but it's just not true.

Speaker 2:

yeah, I would say this is one that I've. I don't know this was ever an identity, but there was definitely times where I was not good on the phone. And I'm going to tell you, if you're not good on the phone, like even as you get better, you're still going to have conversations that aren't good and you say things that are like what did? I just say yeah, or I get out and you, you're pretty close to me in our office and I'll get off the phone and look, you know, like what the heck just happened there. Yeah, that's just part of the practice in getting better. Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1:

So so when we, when we start having an identity shift, we I think it's important to recognize the power and limitations of story.

Speaker 1:

Story is one of the most powerful things that we have of story, story is one of the most powerful things that we have. When we start telling people a story, the brain actually like a compelling story one of the reasons you'll like sit on the edge of your seat to watch a compelling movie or you hear somebody who's a great storyteller telling about you know, whatever adventure they went on. Your brain actually kind of starts to sync with theirs and it becomes a little bit like, actually becomes exactly like you are in the story Right. So that's the power of stories. When we're telling ourselves or telling other people a story, it just creates this like new reality. For long enough that story starts to create realities and emotions that aren't necessarily true and aren't, like we talked about, like fixed in concrete, and so one of the best ways that we can start making an identity shift is simply to choose to tell a different story. Now, one of the biggest hurdles with this, jake, is it feels so disingenuine If all of my life I've been telling people I'm not a morning people or all of my life I've been telling people like, like I'm doing OK, as opposed to choosing a different story. Then any different story feels like I'm lying. But the problem is, the original story isn't true, it's your current reality, it's your current reality, it's your current framework, and so this, this idea, sometimes, as people is, I want to internally feel a certain way, and when I feel a certain way, then I will act out of that. It's awesome, right, like that's great, it's a really good process, like when, when something happens on the inside of you and then it comes out, we love that. That is just so great and so healthy. But the reality is, is your, your internal world and your external world are, are, are somewhat hardwired, and so what can also happen is that I can choose, uh, external actions and over time, it will rewire my internal stuff, right? So if, if I am somebody who's going through a really hard time and I'm just like life's hard, life's hard, life's hard, life's hard, I keep verbalizing life's hard, life's hard, okay, time out. What happens over time is this is hardening, right, and I'm telling, but, but it is. Is life hard? Sure, right, but welcome to like for everybody, right, your life might be extremely hard right now. Compared to what you've experienced, it might be not hard at all compared to somebody else's experience.

Speaker 1:

The issue is is that I feel that it's genuine for me to express this externally, but sometimes to my own detriment? I actually am creating this reality for myself that when I wake up in the morning, I go to the office in the morning, I do this stuff. The whole world I see through the lens of like the world's out to get me or whatever it is that my story is Right, because the internal feels that way, and so now I'm projecting that through the external and then it's hardening and elevating to identity, right, so I actually have the ability to do this. But I have to get through this. This feeling of like it's disingenuine, right, we, we, our story is the genuine thing. Be careful with that. The story is just the story.

Speaker 1:

So if I feel horrible and I feel like, you know, the whole world's out to get me, I feel like life is hard. There's always things I can find, always things I can find that are positive, that that are positive, that are encouraging, that are going right or have the potential to go right. So what happens is when I walk into a situation and life is currently hard. I'm going to choose to fight that clay hardening. I'm going to fight that turning into concrete, because it doesn't help me and it doesn't help anybody else around me, right, right. Which kind of goes back to the self-awareness. Like if I'm vomiting on people my story all the time, I'm actually impacting them in a negative way. So I might say something like life is full of opportunities. Like I'm stoked, I get to learn. Today, today's another day of growth, right, like I'm in it today, like I'm, I'm choosing this and we're saying it.

Speaker 1:

What happens is we feel disingenuine. Disingenuine maybe a little bit hopeful, a little bit more hopeful and over the course of time, actually we rewire the internal from the external Right. Now this feels like like manipulation Turns out all leadership is actually kind of a kissing cousin with manipulation. It just happens with your motives. Leadership is actually kind of a kissing cousin with manipulation. It just happens with your motives. So if my motive is to uh is to go from a place where my identity is fixed and it's not helping me to my identity being elevated to align with my new goals, I would say, yeah, manipulate your insides through your outsides and your outsides through your insides. Uh, by the way, this happens all the time, right?

Speaker 1:

So we tell kids you know, whatever you intake, whatever you input, that's going to affect you, right? Your friend group, all of this stuff. So we already know these external factors start to do this hard wiring. So what we have to take a look at is this idea of, of, of personal growth is a hard I would say, just a hard fact, and that fact is that I have to be a party to every conversation that I have. Every conversation with I have with another human being I am a part of and I'm part of wiring that, every conversation I have inside of my own head, every conversation that I have with myself, like I'm wiring myself. So if you're hanging out with like the coolest people, the best people, the most encouraging people, they're still only like maybe 10 or 20% of the influence on your life, because then you go away and you're stuck with a conversation with yourself and my question is always like, are you an abusive friend, right? Maybe not to your other friends, probably to the person in the mirror.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, sometimes that is true, yeah, so what I hear you saying is that if we're wanting to go to the next level in our personal growth, we have to become the person that can handle that next level.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, we have to become the person that can handle the next level of our growth, and so that's this idea of I'm going to be aware and I'm going to work on my awareness, and now I'm going to start taking a look at this and saying what type of identity, what type of conversations does somebody have that's at this next level?

Speaker 1:

And if I, if I, if I look at people who are at the next level of where I want to be, and I just think, inherently, this is how they are, this is how they think. Some of them, probably a lot of them, have actually just spent lots of years doing repetition to be able to get in that shape. I've seen people like in physical shape that, um, the reality is they just haven't had to work very much in their entire life and they look like, you know, an adonis, right? Yeah, I've seen more people that I thought that, and then I heard their stories and then I saw pictures of them 10 or 20 years ago and I realized what I'm actually seeing is a tremendous amount of hard work or a tremendous amount of time. Right, that's them Probably both, and probably both.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. So, when we're talking about this, we need to we have a model that starts with you know, the ultimate question is the who you're becoming and who you surround yourself with, and if you're struggling to get to that next level, you might need to really look at the people you surround yourself with, yes, as well as really focus on who you want to become in the long term and what are those steps that we have to take to become that next person.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you're going to run the risk of feeling disingenuine to yourself. But the people who are at the next level of wherever you're at, they're going to sniff out the language around somebody who is resisting that internally, somebody who has hardened the old person that they want to be around their identity. And so really, you start surrounding yourself with those people. You can start modeling their language, start modeling their behavior and all of a sudden, you start modeling new things. What happens? That starts remodeling your clay, starts remodeling who. You are right, and so the encouragement around this is that you're not fixed right.

Speaker 1:

The saying is you know you're not a tree and you don't have deep roots. If you want to move, get up and move Right, and this is talking about, like your future, right. If you are not the person that you want to be right now, then there's things that you can do about it. One of the ways to do this might be actually just having some rules around the conversations with yourself.

Speaker 1:

If I am talking to myself in a way that I would never let somebody else talk to my kids, that's not okay, right? So you ask yourself the question what makes it OK for me to wake up and say I'm not enough. I'm you know all of these, all these negative identity things where you wouldn't have, like a friend, come over and get down on one knee and look your kid in the eyes and say you're not enough, you're not a morning person, you're never going to be anything. What Right? Don't let the abusive friend that is yourself dictate this. Don't let the abusive friend that is yourself dictate this, and don't let the disingenuine feeling of telling yourself a different story keep you from moving forward.

Speaker 2:

So our last point in this is and this might come into the fake it until you make it kind of situation Act as if and then align everything else to that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so Dr Phil was the one who kind of like popularized that phrase fake it till you make it, and there's things I don't like about that, but I think, in the spirit that he meant, it was exactly this, and that is I am not yet this person who's making $500,000 a year or a million dollars a year, or I'm not yet this kind of a husband or this kind of a wife or whatever, and so I'm going to act like that kind of husband and I'm just going to act that way.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to act loving, I'm going to act kind, I'm going to act like I have a servant's heart. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to. Even if it's not deeply true inside of me turns out, if you fake really important things that are growth oriented long enough, you wake up one day and you actually realize I actually am that person. I think that's what he meant and that's the idea is like I want to. I want to act as if I am at this level of production or I'm at this level of connection with people, or this is actually how my mornings are, and if I do that for long enough, I'll rewire myself.

Speaker 2:

So I'm going to give Annie some credit on this one. She talked on a team call probably a month ago and she laid out this vision for all the things that we want to do personally and she said there's no reason why you can't step into the person that would be able to accomplish those things tomorrow. And that's basically what she's saying here. It's exactly as if it's there in the line everything else, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, so this is the second step here. Uh, we think to, to this model of personal growth. So I'm going to, I'm going to establish reality, I'm going to baseline where am I really? And I'm going to become aware of that. And then the next thing is is I'm going to look hard at shifting my identity?

Speaker 2:

Nice. Well, I know this was a great episode for me and I'm going to definitely go back and listen to this one, probably multiple times, cause I know you said a bunch of things that you know could impact me, and so hopefully you guys do the same thing and, as always, we are to impact, empower and encourage you in all things that you do, and specifically you yourself this year. Yes, Awesome.

Speaker 1:

Take care, guys, we'll see you next time.