The Real Estate Ladder of Success: How to Show Up Extraordinary

In late 2016, I wrote a blog post entitled “5 Reasons You Are Not Scaling Your Business & 5 Keys to Push to the Next Level,” which was based on an interview I conducted with my business coach Trevor McGregor. Trevor has over 10,000 hours of business coaching under his belt. One of the five commonalities he found between entrepreneurs that don’t scale their businesses is a lack of consistent and persistent action. They take action for maybe a year, but are disappointed in the results, or lack thereof, and give up or just coast on by.

One of my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins that addresses this concept is “we overestimate what we can do in a year, but we underestimate what we can do in two, three, five, or ten years.” Since we are living in an instant gratification world, we expect to receive instant fruits from our labor. However, if we aren’t thinking in terms of multiple years or decades, we will continue to be disappointed with our results.

My personal journey is evidence that supports this concept. I recently released my 1000th podcast episode. If I expected instant results, I would have given up podcasting after a few episodes since my audience was only comprised of my parents, a few friends, and my dog. However, after consistently putting out podcasts for 1000 days in a row, I was able to create the world’s longest running daily podcast, and as a result, my company has achieved a portfolio of over $130 million in real estate in under 24 months.

Using this idea of consistent and persistent action, in combination with other Tony Robbins’ success principles, Trevor McGregor created the concept he calls The Real Estate Investor Ladder of Success. In our recent conversation, he outlined this ladder and explained how it can be used to gauge where you are showing up in your business and determine if you are putting forth the persistent and consistent action required to scale your business.

The Real Estate Investor Ladder of Success

Either draw out or visualize in your mind a vertical ladder with six rungs. Each rung on the ladder represents how you are showing up in different aspects of your business, or life in general. The higher up the ladder the ladder you are, the better you are showing up.

Rung #1 – Showing up POOR

The very first run of the ladder is what Trevor calls showing up POOR. He said, “We often say in real estate that if you show up poorly in something – let’s say it’s property management – what kind of results do you think that you get?” If you think the answers is poor, you are mistaken. The answer isn’t no results either. Trevor said, “Poor equals pain! You know that as a property manager if your property management isn’t good, poor doesn’t equal poor. It actually hurts. It’s like a kick in the teeth. It gives you pain.”

Poor = Pain

Hopefully, if you are a best ever reader or listener, you aren’t showing up POOR in any aspect of your business, so let’s move to the next rung of the ladder.

Rung #2 – Showing up GOOD

If you are on the second rung of the ladder, you are giving a little more effort and are showing up as GOOD. What kind of results do you think you’ll see when you show up GOOD?

POOR.

Trevor said, “GOOD isn’t enough anymore. There’s too many people out there looking for deals, vying for investors, so we often say that good these days equals poor results.”

If you’re just good at communicating with contractors, for example, yet you see poor results, that’s because you’re showing up on the second rung of the ladder of success. If you want better results, you need to climb to the next rung of the ladder.

Rung #3 – Showing up GREAT

The next rung up, number three, is showing up GREAT. “Imagine yourself if you’re a real estate investor that has efforts that are great, in today’s world, again, great isn’t great enough, because we say that GREAT equals [GOOD],” Trevor said. “If you’re just great at finding deals today, when there’s literally tons of other investors out there doing the same thing, being great at finding deals will give you good results.”

GREAT = GOOD

Three rungs up and you should start to see a pattern. Poor = pain, good = poor, and great = good. You must show up at a higher rung than the results you want to achieve.

Before moving to the next rung, draw – on paper or in your mind – a horizontal line between rung three and four. Because when you’re showing up at rung four or above, you start playing the game of real estate at what Trevor calls “above the line.” At the very least, you want to be showing up above the line.

Rung #4 – Showing up EXCELLENT

When you’ve reached rung number four, you are showing up as EXCELLENT. Based on the pattern thus far, what do you think your results will be when you are EXCELLENT?... GREAT.

“If you’re excellent at negotiating deals or negotiating terms, or finding anything like that in your toolkit, you’re going to get great results,” Trevor said.

EXCELLENT = GREAT

Rung #5 – Showing up OUTSTANDING

When you are one rung away from the top, you are showing up as outstanding, meaning you will see excellent results. Trevor said, “As an outstanding investor, if you’re outstanding at raising capital, you’re going to have excellent results and be able to rinse, then repeat it and do more deals.”

OUTSTANDING = EXCELLENT

Rung #6 – Showing up EXTRAORDINARY

If you are at the top of The Real Estate Ladder of Success, you are showing up extraordinary. At this level, you apply yourself and you wake up every day and show up extraordinary in everything you do. As an outcome, you will produce excellent results.

People who show up extraordinary have a unique selling proposition and are able to market who they are and what they do with an extraordinary elevator pitch. If you adopted this extraordinary mindset, do you think you’d attract more people to your real estate outcomes?... You bet!

EXTRAORDINARY = OUTSTANDING

Trevor asked, “Where are you showing up today? Are you poor? Are you good? Are you great? Or are you playing above the line and you’re excellent, outstanding or extraordinary?”

It’s a conscious choice.

A philosophy that I got from Tony Robbins is that there is no failure, there’s only feedback. Maybe you’re playing at level three right now and you want to go to level four; or maybe you’re playing at level four and you want to go to level five. You have to align your state, your story and your strategy each and every day, to be able to show up and do it at that level.

Something else interesting about the success ladder, Trevor said, is “it takes a massive jump to go from poor up to good. It’s massive. But to go from good to great is literally about one yard, or one meter. To go from good to excellent is about one foot; that means you’ve got to do things just a little bit better. To go from excellent to outstanding is almost six inches, and then, just like an Olympic athlete, to go from outstanding to extraordinary or extra-ordinary is what we call a two-millimeter shift. It’s the small things, it’s the subtle differences in how you show up and how you play full out] that are really going allow you to live at the highest level.”

How to Objectively Determine Where You’re Showing Up?

How can we have an objective evaluation of where we are at on the success ladder? Trevor said, “it’s really situation-specific. We’ve all got things that we’re really good at and that we love to do and we kind of default to that, and we know that there’s other areas in real estate that we need to seek outer advice. I think the categories that you would break down into is ‘Who are you? What is your X factor or your unique selling proposition? What is your platform? What are you really good at? Is it finding deals? Is it working with contractors? Is it raising capital? Is it property management?’ and literally go through each of those categories and give yourself a score. When you give yourself a score, you’re literally saying ‘Where am I showing up on the six levels? Am I good? Am I great? And if so, what would I have to do differently to go to excellent?’ … It’s not about having necessarily a quantum leap and going from good up to extraordinary; it’s starting to understand that it’s the little things that add up to the big things. Going to some networking events, putting in more offers, driving more neighborhoods, getting really good at asking investors for capital. And again, we always want to shine our shield and sharpen our sword so to speak, so that we know we’re getting better.”

The outcome of this exercise is to raise your standards. It’s changing yourself from saying “I should” to “I must.” When you make that shift, like I did a few short years ago, and you resolve to get better one small step at a time, that is how you exceed your expectations for how much you can achieve over the span of year/decades.

Conclusion

The Real Estate Ladder of Success has six stages. At each stage, you put forth a specific effort and receive a specific outcome:

• Rung #1 – Showing up poor equals painful results
• Rung #2 – Showing up good equals poor results
• Rung #3 – Showing up great equals good results
• Rung #4 – Showing up excellent equals great results
• Rung #5 – Showing up outstanding equals excellent results
• Rung #6 – Showing up extraordinary equals outstanding results

Your overall goal should be to wake up every day and show up extraordinary. However, your first goal, if you’re showing up poor, good, or great, should be to show up above the line, meaning reaching rung #4 at the very least.

Determine where you are currently showing up on the ladder of success and brainstorm ways to climb to the next rung. Once at the next rung, repeat the exercise until you are consistently showing up extraordinary, and as a result, you will see the outstanding results you’re striving for.

If you have any comments or questions, leave a comment below.