Finding Your Why: Clarifying Your Purpose in Real Estate and Life

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. — Mark Twain

April 1, 2003, is the day I left my corporate job to embark on a career as an entrepreneur. Yep, April Fool’s Day! (I’m not really sure what to read into that. LOL!) And like so many others who have done the same, I really had no idea what I was in for. I knew I wanted to have more flexibility with my time – to be my own boss. I also knew that I wanted to break free from the income limits that come with working for someone else. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the reality that “time flexibility” often translated into a complete lack of structure for my daily activities. And “unlimited income opportunity” frequently meant that my income became unpredictable and inconsistent. At least, that’s how things started out for me.

Simon SInek, the motivational speaker and business consultant who may be best known for his 2009 TED Talk titled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” introduced the Golden Circle framework. The concept here is that most people, in organizations and in sales settings, are less inspired by what you do and how you do it. What they want to know from you is WHY? Why do you do what you do, and why should it matter to them?

I was asked by countless people in the beginning, why I left my secure job as a VP in a large healthcare system – a job with a comfortable salary & a solid benefits package – to start all over again as a real estate agent. It was a pretty good question!  Sometimes we’re motivated to make change because we’re running towards something we want. Other times, we’re simply running away from something that doesn’t feel right anymore. For me, leaving healthcare was probably a mixture of both. What became clear pretty quickly was that escaping the corporate grind happened pretty quickly. Achieving the success, I wanted as a real estate entrepreneur took a lot more time. And that was harder on me than I expected. 

The truth in our industry is that sustaining that initial passion and finding the resilience & grit needed to survive is harder than most agents expect. According to the National Association of Realtors, 87% of all new agent licensees leave the industry within 5 years. And of that group, 75% leave after year one. That’s a staggering statistic, and it hasn’t changed much over the years. 

Knowing why you put yourself into this position is one of the most important clarifying exercises that any entrepreneur can undertake. Let me outline a few reasons why I believe it matters so much.

Why Your “Why” Matters More Than Ever

1. Purpose Drives Resilience
   • Failure is inevitable when starting something new. And as adults, we don’t do well with that. Think about it – when a toddler is learning to walk, she stands up & falls down. Over, and over again. Falling down doesn’t discourage her, and it doesn’t stop her from standing up again. She wants to do this! Toddlers are resilient! And yet as adults, we can easily lose that kind of grit. We try something new, and we totally mess it up. We see that as evidence that maybe we’re not as good as we thought, or not cut out for this after all. All too often, the fear of making a mistake holds us back from even trying new things in the first place. The difference between us and that toddler is being driven by a big enough WHY – that unquenchable desire to achieve the goal. I think this is why so many agents leave the industry so quickly.
2. Purpose Creates Focus
   • It’s been said that if you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll fall for anything. I think that can be true. Knowing what you want out of life and why you want it acts like your “north star.” It gives you a reference point to measure whether what you’re doing at the moment is helping you stay on track, or getting you lost in the weeds. Gaining this kind of clarity and focus is a critical first part of the ThriveActive framework.
3. Purpose Fuels Long-Term Motivation
   • Let’s face it, it’s hard to stay motivated to achieve long-term goals. How many times have we made a New Year’s resolution, only to have our motivation disappear by mid-January? Leadership guru John Maxwell is fond of saying “everything worthwhile is uphill.” That’s true, but uphill is hard. In those moments when things are no longer fun or what we expected, it’s easy to throw in the towel and give up. What I’ve found from personal experience, as well as the experience of hundreds of agents that I’ve coached through the years is this: when our purpose for succeeding – our why – is based in achieving not only for ourselves but for others, we’ll hang in there. 
   • Here’s how it played out for me: When I left healthcare, my daughter was in 2nd grade. I made a promise to her that I would send her to any college she could get into, and that she would not take out any student loans. It was that promise that pushed me on the days things got hard. And believe me, things got hard. I simply couldn’t live with myself if I broke that promise. So, what are you playing for? What is it that will keep you on the course when you’d much rather throw in the towel? That’s what you have to figure out. Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.    

How to Find Your Purpose in Life & Real Estate 

Here are a few steps that you can take to find your core purpose in both life & in your real estate business.

1. Identify Your Core Values
   • What are the values and virtues that define who you are and what you’re about? Please don’t rush this exercise. Take some time to really think this through. It can help to think about some of the people you admire most, and then think about the characteristics you admire most about them. Think about values that define you today, and others that you aspire to, even if you’re not fully there yet.
   • List as many of these values as you can. This is a big VALUE DUMP exercise. Be as exhaustive as you can.
2. Sort & Rank Order Your List
   • Now comes the fun part: Rank order these values and identify your Top 3. Yep, this might be hard. What you’ll find is that some of them naturally fall into similar groups. It’s the exercise of really thinking this through for yourself that brings the clarity needed for this to become meaningful.  Sort your list and leave it alone for a day. Come back to it and look it over again. Did anything change? If so, great! If not, great! You’ll walk away with a clear list of what drives you – and which 3 values matter most. 
3. Write Your Life Purpose Statement
   • The words “purpose & goal” can often be used interchangeably. And that’s a mistake. A life purpose statement is based on those 3 core values that you identified earlier. It’s what some psychologists refer to as the “ultimate concern” – a person’s most deeply held value or belief that gives their life meaning and purpose. It’s the central guiding principle that drives an individual’s thoughts, behaviors, and decisions. 
   • Take the 3 core values that you identified, and craft them into a statement that captures the essence of how you define meaning & purpose in your life. Do your best to get it down to 15 words or less. I’m not kidding! This isn’t a time to write 3 paragraphs explaining your core value decisions. It’s about taking those values and crafting a statement that becomes your anchor. Everything you do is measured against that statement to see if it fits or doesn’t fit. As an example, here’s my current Life Purpose Statement: “Live courageously, laugh often and discover the greatness in others.”  These 10 words that have become my mantra. You’ll even see them displayed as the intro to my Facebook page. 

Connect Your Purpose to Your Daily Work

Now that you’ve identified your core values and written your Life Purpose Statement, it’s time to assess how the things you’re doing either support or don’t support your purpose. Does the time you spend in your business align with your life purpose or not? Does the way you show up as a real estate agent align with your life purpose or not? What changes could you make to get things into a better alignment? Remember – there are no wrong answers here. These are YOUR values and YOUR decisions. What causes people to burn out is when they find themselves living out of alignment with the values they hold dear. And it’s easy to slip out of alignment. 

One thing that I’ve found helpful is to set up a prompt in my phone to alert me twice a day – once in the morning, and once in the evening. In the morning, the prompt asks me to think about how I will live out my life purpose statement that day. In the evening, it asks me to reflect back on my day and think about how I DID live out my life purpose. Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Jim Rohn once famously said “what you focus on expands!” By setting these reminder prompts, you’ll bring consistent focus to your life purpose. And over time, filtering your daily activities in this way will simply become your habit. And that’s the kind of habit we’d all do well to adopt!

Some Final Thoughts

I want to share a word of caution about searching for your “WHY” and crafting a Life Purpose Statement. Sometimes, we get too caught up in our heads. We worry that we can’t find anything that feels “meaningful enough”. Stay out of judgment here. This is your life and your business. It’s not the time to compare yourself with others. And remember, your “WHY” doesn’t need to be something that is huge like curing cancer or inspiring world peace. It simply needs to be big enough to nudge you back into the game when things get hard, and you want to quit. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once observed: “”He who has a why to live for can endure almost any how.”

Make it a great day, everyone. Embrace the Journey!