About

What do you believe? You can never truly know yourself if you don’t take time to figure out the answer to this question. As Joe discussed in Episode 1, you can’t achieve fulfillment without knowing your core values and aligning them with your purpose. Core values and beliefs also build your personal and business culture. If you don’t know what you believe, how can you attract other people that believe the same things you do? Clearly defined core values allow you to attract the kind of people you want around you, and they repel the kind of people you don’t want around you. That’s the beauty of it.   The journey of self-knowledge begins with a single list Back in 2008, Joe had one of the greatest honors of his career. One of his mentors was Howard Brinton, a fantastic sales trainer, well known in real estate, whose company called Star Power Systems inspired thousands of real estate agents to get better at what they do. He invited people at the top of their business to be the ‘Star of the Month’, where they would share what they were doing that was successful in a recorded interview for others to learn from their story. In May 2008, Joe had the honor of being chosen as a Star Power Star. On the way to the interview, Joe realized that as well as real estate wisdom, he wanted to share other things he knew to be true. He knew this information about life and leadership could be helpful to others, because it was part of what had made him a success.   Joe’s 18 rules of life and leadership. Always remember that one day you will stand before God and answer for all you’ve done and all you’ve failed to do. At the end of the day, all you really have is your integrity and your good name; compromise either one and you have nothing. Your true character is revealed by how you treat people who can do nothing for you—when no one is watching. There is no such thing as menial labor; there is honor and dignity in any task done with excellence and a good attitude. Greatness is impossible without discipline and sacrifice. Talk less; listen more. Respect and popularity do not always go hand-in-hand; if you seek both, you will ultimately have neither. You can treat people differently and still treat them fairly; treating everyone exactly the same is not necessarily fair. Expect to learn something new from each person with whom you come in contact. Being able to gracefully admit you are wrong is a sign of strength. Ultimately, people appreciate the truth delivered with love even when it upsets them. One of the most valuable team members is someone to whom you can assign a task, and then remove that task from your mind, sure in the knowledge that it will get done. Demonstrate you are willing to do yourself any job you assign to them and people will do anything for you. The best way to teach is by personal testimony: if you share how you successfully persevered through a difficult situation or dealt with a problem, it gives others hope they can do the same. Take advantage of teachable moments—especially when they are inconvenient to you. When people understand how their job fits into the big picture and affects the success or failure of the whole team, they are much more likely to do their job with pride, passion and excellence. In a successful sales-driven business, there will always be a certain amount of chaos; if you want order, become an accountant. The very qualities that make someone a great salesperson also makes him or her difficult to manage. When Joe returned from his Star Power trip, he spent some of his quiet time thinking about the list and boiling it down into something he could share with people more widely. Eventually, the list of 18 was distilled down to 5 core values. To this day, Joe carries this list with him and looks at it on a daily basis. It’s his personal constitution, a list of values he holds dear, who he is and wants to be.   Joe’s core values: I always do the right thing. If things aren’t right at home, you can’t be awesome at work. Family comes first whenever it needs to come first. Everyone is fighting an epic battle you can’t see. I treat everyone with kindness and compassion. Making a difference. I always seek to have a positive impact on the world and the people I serve. The best. I do whatever it takes to be the best in whatever endeavor I choose to pursue.   Living by core values Sometimes God has a plan for your life that you don’t realize. Joe began working on this list in 2008, which was the year the market crashed and the recession began. You can hear more about his story during the recession and how it shaped his character in episode 2. During this time, Joe made the decision he was going to build his business and filter his decisions according to that list of core values. He wanted to make who he was in business the same as who he was personally, and wanted to share that with others so they knew who he was and what he was doing. It made a huge difference to his life, and had a bigger impact than he ever dreamed possible. In choosing to live by his core values, Joe had a road map to filter all of his decisions through some very difficult recession years.   Using core values in business When he became a listing agent for HUD in 2011, Joe knew his core value of ‘the best’ had played a part. His small team had a near perfect scorecard for HUD, which wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t all applying things through the core beliefs and values. Having his team on board with the core values from the beginning helped them know how to filter decisions and allowed everyone to go full steam ahead in the same direction. The core values provided clarity about who they were and what they believed as a team. It also meant Joe didn’t have to be involved in every single decision, and become a bottle-neck in the business, because his team knew his beliefs, and could make decisions on their own. Articulating his core values to other people had immense value.  Ultimately, this led to the best production years of Joe’s career occurring during the recession.   When Joe moved to his current company, Elam Real Estate, having those core values again played a huge role. When he met with the man starting the firm, articulating his values meant they were both able to determine quickly they had similar values and beliefs about how to operate in business. This made it easier to move forward with him and help him build his company. Joe knew that sharing his core values had worked to build an incredible culture with his little team of 3 people, and soon learned it could work the same way when building a company. The team at Elam Real Estate spent several months coming up with a constitution of core values for the company.   The Elam Real Estate Non-Negotiables We have the right people, who do it the right way, in the right culture. We do the right thing for our clients. Right now. Right people: our passionate real estate experts relentlessly pursue self-improvement and system refinement. Right way: we aggressively protect our clients’ interests so they save money or make more of it. Right culture: faith, family, fun and financial independence and words are describe our family and our people. Right thing: we do the right thing, especially when the right thing is hard to do. Right now: we attack problems. They are one of the few things in life you can attack with impunity.   Shared values build a strong culture Spending time to put that in place and filter all the staff and decisions through those core values gave Elam Real Estate an advantage over a lot of firms. When hiring, the people who had similar values got excited to work there. Even better, those who didn’t have the same belief system removed themselves from consideration. A really strong culture began to develop, centered around shared values and beliefs. Most cultures occur organically and nobody ever gives much thought to whether or not they’re building the culture the way they want to. Many people think that if you hire great people, you’ll automatically have a great culture but this is not always true. If you have core values, your culture will grow purposefully, not accidentally. The next step was sharing the core values with clients. Every client meeting begins with explaining who Elam Real Estate is and what the team believes. This had had a 100% positive response from clients and has also generated a reputation that brings clients in through word-of-mouth. The benefits of having these core values in place have been numerous for Elam Real Estate. As the culture gets stronger and stronger, it starts to police itself and team members correct each other. It’s amazing because the culture holds people in line. It begins to feed itself, which eliminates a lot of problems that can show up in your team and client relationships. There are fewer conflicts because having core values gives you permission to call people out when they’re acting contrary to your company’s core values. Or, you can gently tell your clients that you won’t do things because it’s not in concert with what you believe.   How to do it for yourself Not only has Joe seen all of this work in his small team of 3 people and the bigger team of Elam Real Estate, but he has also seen it work in larger companies and helped both real-estate and non real-estate entrepreneurs implement it into their businesses. This stuff works, and if you do it, you will have positive results. The actions steps you need to take are: Understand that building out your core values is a process, and you can’t fast track it. You have to slow down, think it through and allow time for reflection and development. You need quiet time, fully unplugged, with no interruptions of any knd. If you aren’t having quiet time on a regular basis to think and reflect, you’re really cheating yourself out of opportunities to be successful. Start by writing a list of what you believe about life and business. Think about what the fundamental truths are upon which you’ve built your life and business. Live with that list for a while. Go back with your quiet time, add to the list, read it, reflect on it and edit it. Rank the list in order of priority and whittle it down until you get to the essence of who you are and what you believe. Keep repeating step three until you believe you have a strong list you can own and be proud to share with the world. - Boil it down to 3 – 5 overriding principles and make sure you have complete clarity on those, so you can talk about them backwards and forwards. Know exactly what you mean by them and have a single word or phrase that you can repeat and verbalize easily. - Do you really believe them? Is the proof evident in your life that you’re living them out. When people will look at your life, if it doesn’t match up to what you say your core values are, they’re not going to believe a word you say. Create a final core values document. Articulate everything very clearly in writing. Create a single word or statement you and your business can operate by and easily explain to others. Start giving your core values away to other people. Don’t compromise what you believe.   Important points Sometimes the people you’re closest to are going to be the ones who push back on you the hardest. That’s why you have to spend quiet time and make sure you really believe, so when you do get push back, you can stand strong against it. If you have a team and you give this away, you’re probably going to lose people, even key people. In the long run, if you lose people because their values and beliefs are not in alignment with yours, you will have a stronger team. As you go forward, you use your core values to filter new team members and clients, and in everything you do. It’s all about the power of why, just like Simon Sinek outlines in his book. People don’t do business with you because of what you do, they do business with you because of why you do it. People do business with people they have commonality and connection with. Knowing why you do what you do and being able to articulate it—that’s when you can really build a business and customer base that stays with you.   Share the core values with your team, your clients, and everyone you meet, and make sure you’re actually living them out.   Resources mentioned in this episode: Episode 2 where Joe shares his story Joe’s Facebook show: Short Attention Span Wisdom Start with Why by Simon Sinek.