Relationships Are Your Superpower!

Relationships Are Your Superpower! Barb Betts, Real Estate Expert and Keynote Speaker – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taEAtxRzDPs

Transcript:
(00:00) by showing up as who you are uniquely designed to be you actually get more business so the sales people and people obviously I want to scream this to everybody but specifically my message and who I really connect with are people in business and yes I talk about it with real estate professionals but my passion is taking it into all other areas of business right there’s no reason financial advisors and attorneys and anybody in a sales driven business who’s whose main uh clients is is a human on the other
(00:31) side the more authentic you are the more you show up as you and understand your true gifts and abilities the more business you’re going to get period hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they
(01:08) Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hello everyone and welcome to flow over fear thank you so much for being here I have an amazing guest today her name is Barb Betts and she is a sought after keynote speaker a seasoned real estate expert passionate educator and the CEO of re Collective a thriving Boutique Brokerage in Southern California Barb has delighted countless stages including Inman connect women up and the National Association of Realtors annual
(01:44) conference so she spoken at all of those events and whether she’s teaching on social media or real estate by relationship Barb brings an honest compassionate and transparent approach to every single stage one of the things that shines out here is authenticity and we’re going to be talking a lot about that and as a real estate professional with over 20 years of experience Barb has mastered the ever-changing real estate landscape which is of course ever changing now and the balance of running a vibrant brokerage through her
(02:13) signature course real estate by relationship Barbara educates business builders on the exact systems processes and knowledge necessary to succeed in any Market known to wow an audience impactful and high energy Barb can can help any audience tap into their greatness and leave feeling empowered and with an action plan so thanks Barb for being here I really appreciate it thanks for having me Adam this is such a treat well it’s it’s uh I’m glad I’m glad this came up because we we shared some time together recently in North
(02:46) Carolina on the stage and I got the chance to see you speak and share your story and I was I was wowed immediately and um and it’s just so so empowering to see the uh the vulnerability and the authenticity you’ve brought to the world um you know and to to develop a successful business but also share with the world your you know your passion for for that authenticity can uh I’d love to take a step back and just kind of get into who Barb is and maybe take a step into that can you tell me how you got to
(03:16) where you’re at today that’s a loaded question the person I can because actually it starts at 17 years old so uh the story you haven’t heard yet is that um how my journey in really my adult life started was 17 years old and Pregnant and you talk about that moment in your life or you know everything’s changed and you don’t know what you’re going to do with your life and what you’re going to become and if you just literally ruined your life forever um that was me so my husband and I yes I’m still
(03:46) married to him 26 years later um we found ourselves 17 years old and Pregnant um had my son at 18 years old um and I put College on the back burner um because clearly our life had taken a turn that we didn’t expect my husband pursued his college baseball career um went to play college at a division one um School I moved to Oklahoma and followed him with the baby and then we moved to Las Vegas and then we moved home and he had a very short professional baseball career blew out his knee twice and was woken up one day and told to get a job
(04:20) and so then that pursued my career in education or taking something further even more on the back burner because now we have to just wake up and be adults and we’re 20 you know one years old and and don’t know what we’re gonna do with our lives and so I got a job and I got into accounting and I was really good at it and I hated every minute of it and uh by then we had eventually had a second child and I was like I gotta do something else with my life like I I don’t want to be a glorified bookkeeper the rest of my life
(04:50) and please don’t take that personally if you are a bookkeeper but what my mindset was was I don’t have a degree I didn’t go to college all of my friends that are going to college are going to come into the workforce and pass me by it’s just it’s a it’s a fact right I do believe now where we are at now in the world college degrees are less valued in the workspace and I’m happy for that because I’m proof that you can be very successful without one but I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my
(05:14) life and I knew I wanted to have ownership of something and so I wanted to do I wanted a certificate or a license or something to you know have authority in the world and so I went I decided to go to real estate school and get my real estate license because we had just gone through a terrible real estate transaction of our own and I did what most professional real estate agents do which is they have an experience and they think if they can do that terrible of a job and make that kind of money I can do much better and I
(05:41) wanted something that allowed me to have balance as a mom and be involved with my children and so I did I got my real estate license lots of stories there never looked back um I am now a 20-year vet in the real estate industry I’m a real estate broker I own my husband and I own a boutique brokerage um in the real estate space but my passion for what I always wanted to do as a little girl never went away I always wanted to be a teacher when I was little they always say go back to what you wanted to do when you were five
(06:04) years old and that’s actually what you are most designed to do and that’s the truth and so I found myself teaching in the real estate space I found offices asking me to present and that blossomed into more of a speaking and training career where I now run a real estate brokerage and I also sell real estate and I also speak and train in keynote in the real estate industry and then through that and through some personal Journeys um I kind of came out publicly about the fact that I have a severe hair loss
(06:32) problem at a very young age I started losing my hair at 18 didn’t know why lots of reasons for that we can get into that and I decided at 40 years old I don’t want to be bald and I don’t think women without hair at least me without hair was attractive and so I decided to explore human hair Alternatives ended up wearing wigs full-time for the last two years and from that has turned into this authenticity Journey where I now am feel like I’m pulled and Drawn to help in the real estate industry and out of
(07:03) it help people uncover the power of being authentically who they are and owning their stuff and realizing that the more authentic you are the more people want to work with you and the more authentic you are and the more real you are about your faults and your hurts and your pains the more attractive people are and then you end up doing more business and so that’s where we’ve landed today um and that’s really my journey and there’s obviously pivots and twists and turns in there but um that’s that’s who I am and and why
(07:31) I’m sitting here doing what I love which is you know helping others learn and grow that’s such a it’s such a great great summary of uh and and it is absolutely a summary because I know that there’s so much more we can impact there of course um and I I love to go back to you know that 17 and Pregnant moment because I know that that was definitely a life-shifting move for a part for you yes so before that where would what was your life trajectory where did you want to go and and I and I know that that
(07:59) changed it but what what did it look like for that yeah before that it was I was going to be a teacher I was going to graduate high school I was going to go get a Liberal Liberal Arts degree um and I was going to be a teacher I was going to be an elementary school teacher period end of story that’s what I was going to do and excuse me quite transparently I probably would have ended up being a principal right and I look back now and I’m so grateful that that moment happened in my life because I don’t think I would I
(08:26) would have been a great teacher and I would have been a great principal but I don’t think I would be enjoying life at the capacity I am and impacting the lives that I’m impacting if I had been stuck back in that you know what that 17 year old girl turned 18 year old girl thought she was gonna do yeah I really don’t but um you talk about that moment and the fear um there is no other fear that I’ve ever felt in my life than that moment what did I just accidentally of course do and how is this going to change my
(08:57) life my husband’s life and more importantly this little guy’s life that we were going to birth into the world at 18 years old when we had no freaking idea what we were doing yeah so what was your attitude about that when when you found out like was it was you know were you just all in were you like okay my life has changed we’ve gotta you know we’ve got to make this baby the central Focus or how did your life change at that point first it was shame and embarrassment sure you know to be quite
(09:23) transparent it was shame and embarrassment of being clearly very young and clearly very pregnant and um walking around the world carrying around that who’s looking at me who’s talking about me I’m friends that of course had opinions about it um so there was that but once we I would say once we had him and once we decided to get married and we did get married three months after he was born because it wasn’t that wasn’t the reason we were getting married um but once we kind of took ownership of
(09:53) that it was like we woke up overnight and became adults yeah people tell me I have an old soul they’re right I I have a much different mindset than most of my 40 year old friends have I would say as I get into my 40s the Gap is growing closer but let’s just call it in my 20s and my 30s oh my goodness I was so far ahead of all my friends because I had experienced so much life so it was this mindset of we’re going to figure this out we’re not going to be a statistic and how do we do that and um I think that really our relationship
(10:25) and our marriage clearly if we’re still married after you know some people can’t even get through marriage with no challenges and we’ve had severe challenges and I think the biggest thing I tell people is we grew up together we we’ve always been each other’s best friend we have just figured out life together neither of us knew how to do anything we didn’t even know how to open up a bank account yeah we just had to figure it out together we didn’t know how to raise this kid um and we just became a team became a
(10:50) partnership and decided we’re I’m not going to fail at this mm-hmm period I’m not going to fail and what do we have to do to ensure that we provide for him we create a life for him and we create a life for ourselves yeah well I I love and and we we chatted about that a little bit at dinner when we were when we were together last uh couple weeks or a few weeks ago um and when we were with the group uh you know somebody had asked I don’t remember how this came out but mentioned how did you stay married for 26 years
(11:19) that’s a long time especially when you’re young you met and you you said something amazing and I really really connected with this part because I think you said something along the lines of correct me from wrong but uh that that you evolved together you grew up together and you grew together yeah and that resonated with me because my wife and I have been through our fair share of challenges too with uh you know with our kids and with I I I had addiction and yeah there’s a lot of Journeys but yeah they the um but we grew but I I
(11:47) found the same thing we just grew together is that so that was your experience can you kind of elaborate on that a little bit yeah you know I really believe in relationship you either grow together or you grow apart um a couple things number one I mentioned it we’ve always been each other’s best friends we’ve always had trusts with each other and I think the third aspect of why we work really well is the respect we have for each other um I just had this conversation with a bunch of friends out at dinner the other
(12:12) night we don’t like hanging around couples that don’t respect each other there’s been plenty of times at a dinner he has said something that has made me very upset I wait till I get in the car and then I turn and look at him and say what the heck were you saying why’d you do that I don’t embarrass him at the table in front of my friends right right we respect each other um at work we definitely have to respect each other right because we have staff that looks up to us um and uh so it’s being each other’s best
(12:39) friends it’s always respecting each other it’s growing with each other and then I think probably you know the best thing about my relationship with my husband is that we are Polar Opposites I mean we really are when they say yin and yang we couldn’t be more yin and yang where he is strange strong I am not as strong and where I am strong he is not as strong and that’s come across in our family that’s come across in relationships with extended family and so we just work really well together as
(13:04) a partnership because marriage or not it’s still a partnership yeah yeah any relationship has to be a partnership yeah so that that’s and that’s an important point I mean even even though you’re you’re polar opposite how how would you say that that works like how how are you able to make that work with you is it just that opposite to tract or do you believe that that’s the case would it not work if you were the same if we were the same person well if we were if we were the same me yeah uh we
(13:31) would kill each other if we were the same hymn I think we’d be okay but if we were the same me we would kill each other we would absolutely kill each other we’d go off on emotional roller coasters we would um be really really loud we would not stop talking we wouldn’t I mean we if you saw us together you would definitely see the difference in energy um but the good news is where we are similar is in goals and dreams and desires and doing things the right way and ethics and morals right so as much as we are different we have the same
(14:06) values and I think that’s another key piece to this is you and your partner whether in business and in life in marriage in relationship have to have the same values and we definitely have the same values and I think that’s super helpful in our relationship and why we’re so strong yeah that’s that’s uh that’s that’s a great great point and distinction there that you can be Polar Opposites but as long as you have the same values then you can make it work so let’s tell my friends you have to be in
(14:33) the same book and you have to at least be on the same page you don’t have to be in the same paragraph or the same line but you gotta at least be in the same chapter yeah some people are not um like my husband and I have different although we have the same political views he’s extreme on one side that I am not like right so even there we’re different but we still value the same thing he just has more tolerance for certain things than I do sure so I think that’s another space where it’s like you
(15:01) just have to have an agreement to not agree on certain things which is okay yeah but at the end of the day you both want the same result for your life yeah and that’s I think that’s that’s a great point because I I’m sitting here thinking about like well what if what if I were in a relationship where everything was agreeable and I’m just thinking of how miserable it would be conversations wouldn’t go deep and and because we’re different because we don’t always agree we help each other come to
(15:30) different decisions right like I help him work through things he helps me work through things and if we both saw the world the same way I wouldn’t give him that other perspective yeah yeah I mean we haven’t even mentioned the fact that I’m technically his boss so that’s a whole nother layer but I have to correct my husband a lot and you can imagine doing that in a relationship if he didn’t respect my knowledge level and if I didn’t help him get to a different opinion on something we could have some
(15:57) real problems yeah well that’s a great segue into kind of the business world because you you know saying saying that you know getting having that your life kind of turned upside down when you’re early and then you know leaning into that becoming adults early uh when did Real Estate officially get into the picture for me officially got in the picture in 2003 and then um he actually was a land surveyor he had got thankfully got an opportunity for a very good career with it with a union um you know aspect to it in land
(16:29) surveying he was very good at it he’s very analytical numbers are his gift they are not my gift um and he was really good at it and then the housing crash happened right the great inconvenience the Great Recession happened and all he did was new construction because he was a surveyor so and he was always out on job sites when they were dirt to build homes that obviously came to a screeching halt um and he had always said to me um hey if I get my real estate license I could help you when it’s slow because
(16:59) rainy Seasons you know construction goes through its own flows and so he had already had his real estate license and he was helping me well helping me was like going on a home inspection when I was busy doing two different things it was opening a door I never envisioned that he would be my business partner and then he had an unfortunate actual accident um water skiing and almost ripped his arm off he did it but it was a very bad accident and he called his job from the hospital the emergency room in Las Vegas and said I’m gonna need some time off
(17:30) I’m gonna have to go on disability and they said well that might actually work well because we were going to lay you off when you got back and he was the last surveyor they kept before it got to the people that had been there like 20 years and so um he got laid off and he turned and looked at me in the emergency room let’s argue he was on a lot of medication at the moment he turned and looked at me and he said guess I’m going into real estate full time and I looked at him like no no do you know what real estate’s
(18:00) doing right now and that was June of 2008. yeah what was going on at that point yeah well and we will bore your audience with what was going on in real estate just Google it right and so he did he came into real estate full-time immediately with me and we’ve never looked back that’s awesome and we’ve built a phenomenal team and partnership and now brokerage and I will say that we I would not be where I’m at in real estate if it wasn’t for him because when I talked about all those differences we have
(18:28) they really show up in our business every place I was weak he was strong so we go on these appointments and transparently I wanted to make everyone happy on appointments So Adam if you and your wife tell me that you think your home’s worth you know eight hundred thousand dollars and I know it’s only worth 7.
(18:48) 50 and I’m like sure sure over a thousand dollars my husband will sit there and go no it’s worth 7.50. and he’s just stops talking like sorry like he goes in with like you hired me because I’m an expert I’m an expert at numbers this is what I do for a living right so all these areas where I kind of struggled he strengthened me that’s great conversely he’s not great at details he’s not great at um sometimes communicating complicated things so I give him the words and so we really have built this company that
(19:18) people admire because they’re like wow yeah you guys do it all and you do it well and raising our children through both parents being independent contractors and owning their own business that’s a whole other conversation of why my children are what I believe my children who were born from teenage parents are the rock stars and amazing humans that they are is because of our real estate business because we were able to be present and that’s a whole other conversation but being present with your children there is nothing more
(19:48) important in life than making your children a priority and being present and that really shows now as they are 26 and 22 years old the amazing kids that they grew in to being young adults yeah well I think I think you’re a perfect example of someone who can you know have have something that many people would see as as a significant like destroying challenge I mean some people look at that as perspective and right right away that perspective is is negative but immediately I could see the by your story you you shifted it into something
(20:20) like you know how are we going to overcome this how are we going to make this work and it’s like look at you today and I want to screen this from the rooftops because when when people say like oh my gosh this is such an overwhelming damage I can’t do it it’s like yeah but what if you could right a thousand percent what if you’re not what you know it was kind of we didn’t I don’t think I knew how to articulate it then yeah now I am proud to say we were not a statistic yeah we are not divorced
(20:48) our children are amazing kids in fact one of Chris’s baseball coaches um in his teenage years he was very talented and played professional baseball and was on the you know highest level of amateur baseball you can play in the United States for years and one of his Academy coaches said to him one day Chris do you realize you should be a screw-up like statistically you had teenage parents you should be a train wreck and you’re one of the best kids I’ve ever coached and that is probably my biggest accomplishment in life right right but
(21:21) it was like we’re not going to be I’m not going to be a statistic I’m not going to be The Stereotype teenage mom like I don’t have to be I don’t care if you had a child at 18. I don’t have to own that label that Society puts on us now would I ever tell a teenager to have a child like oh it’s a good idea it works for me it’ll work for you absolutely not the world was stacked up against us but what I would say to a teenage mom is your life isn’t over you can do this it’s unfortunate you’re here
(21:54) but you’ll get through this if you just have the right mindset and and put some goals in front of you yeah so it doesn’t we didn’t have to be a statistic stick and then we didn’t really know obviously what the future looked like but we we wouldn’t change it for anything now our friends die laughing at us because we’re the you know 40 year old retired couple that can you know go on vacation whenever we want and doesn’t have to get a babysitter for anything and you know I mean all the goodness and we get to
(22:20) enjoy life with our 20 year old children like we drink with them we hang out with them we we can do all these fun things with them that not all parents can do with their 22 year old so right we’re pretty happy with where we’re at but I would I would never change it but I would never go back and repeat it yeah oh of course yeah yeah and then there’s situation I mean I I don’t know if people can understand that until they go through a situation like that I went through it too though right yeah we’re
(22:43) grateful for your your recovery you had to do but you would never go and tell someone yeah don’t go out and get a DUI you’re right yeah you don’t want to do that yeah I mean but but if you if you’re gonna look back with shame throughout your whole life you’re never going to change and appreciate the gifts that come from it and that’s why I love your story here is because it’s it’s exactly that representation of yeah I mean you don’t want to tell teenagers to get pregnant but you turned it into
(23:10) something that was so beautiful it’s not the end of the world yeah you didn’t you didn’t ruin your life forever like you feel like you did in the moment right yeah so that’s that’s so powerful and I thank you for sharing that authentically and the uh and so with your real estate business and working with uh uh I know that you know working through 26 years of marriage that’s kind of a unicorn thing especially and then but partnering with a husband too um is a unicorn day so there’s a power
(23:36) couple element there um there is what what works like what are maybe like the two top two or three things that help it to your that relationship to work uh at work it’s it’s separating work and home so the number one thing that we do is when we are in the office or when we are on appointments we’re not holding hands we’re not you know acting like husband and wife we’re acting like business partners so that’s number one we really separate the roles uh number two would be we know each other’s strength and
(24:02) weaknesses and we let each other go with them so my team I own a brokerage I am the broker of record my husband just has a when I say just doesn’t have a broker’s license so I am the boss when people people joke with us on appointments all the time they’re like so who’s really the boss and he’ll be like she is and people like no no no really he’s like no really like she is like she is required by the state of California to supervise me yeah um so our team knows our strengths and weaknesses you come to Barb for contract
(24:31) questions and and problems and challenges you come to my husband for inspections and numbers and and all the stuff like we people very clearly know our roles in our company and our staff does too they know who to come to and we also he specifically will be strong enough to tell our staff this is what I think but you need to clear that with Barb because she’s the broker um and then the third thing would be are was our ability when our children were younger to separate business from home and we kind of had this Unwritten Rule
(25:01) and I would give this advice to any spouse that works with each other or quite frankly any spouse in general because this can happen even if you don’t work together it’s that concept of mom and dad are always talking about work at home and it can be that you work together or it can be just that you want to catch each other up on your day and everything that’s always talked about through dinner time is work and what you did for the day and so what we did was accidentally is we would come home and
(25:27) one of us will be cooking dinner and the kids will be doing homework or they’re at their various different activities and we would be catching each other up on our day because quite frankly you think we see each other all day long and we’re going in two different directions all day yeah and so we would be catching each other up on what happened during the day and for whatever reason when we would sit down to dinner we would stop talking about work and then what I found myself doing is even after dinner if
(25:50) something came up that I wanted to tell him about work I text or I email him or I put it on his calendar even though I’m sitting across the living room on the couch watching TV we had this artificial off time that was called dinner time it didn’t matter if dinner was at five or at eight once dinner happened no more work talk it was all about the kids or just relaxing together as a couple we didn’t do that on purpose it naturally happened but I can look back and tell you it’s probably the number one thing we ever did because
(26:22) even to this day we don’t talk about business after dinner I email him or I put something on his calendar or I Leave myself a note like hey talk to Harold tomorrow about whatever and it really allowed because being business partners you can lose the relationship in it right yeah yeah so that’s probably one of the best things that we did and then the last thing is when you work together and you live together life can get very Blended and so I would say scheduling intentional time away for Mom and Dad time
(26:50) um we were lucky and very involved in real estate so we had all these conferences and trips to go to and what was great is our kids never looked at it as Mom and Dad are going on a vacation yeah they looked at it as Mom and Dad are going to work because we were but naturally it’s a vacation so those things I would say are what have really kept us grounded and and honestly kept our kids happy because you know they didn’t have to hear about real estate 24 7.
(27:12) they definitely heard about it a lot because that was their life but they didn’t it didn’t encroach on their time with us yeah no this is so good I’m glad we’re touching on this because uh I mean in addition to the other things that you’re an expert in you’re right you’re you’re an expert in relationships that’s for sure this is which is great um and and what uh do you have any advice as far as are there ever times where you feel like you just need to get to be alone like like away from the husband or or you the either one of you
(27:39) need to be alone funny enough I am so I’ve taken all different kinds but my favorite one is one that actually is more uh adjective like not uh pigeonholing you into a box and so like a d a letter and I’m known as Perpetual which means I can go and go and go and go and go and go and go and I’m very gregarious as you probably saw I can handle people in conversations all day long my husband is not he needs quiet time and processing time and I know that about him so that’s number one we know to leave each other alone and and Garner
(28:14) to each other’s strengths he has to work in the office in a quiet environment where it’s business and real estate I can work in Starbucks so we know that about each other and then lastly though as far as I’m wired it’s part of the reason why you if you’re watching the video you see me sitting at home in my home office right now I am not in my real estate office he is at our real estate office I can work independently at home and need that time or I just have the background TV on it’s just me
(28:41) my staff isn’t coming in from 15 different directions at me with something he has to be in that environment or can’t get anything done yeah so we work in our our environments and I schedule myself purposely time at home and then I have to schedule myself in the office as well because otherwise I can naturally lose a disconnect with my team so I do both of us have different work environments and we just make sure it works for both of us but during the pandemic he went crazy at home yeah during the pandemic thankfully we owned
(29:11) obviously our own space and so he would go sit in the office even though he was doing the same thing he would have been doing at the kitchen table here he just couldn’t work in the home environment or to me it doesn’t matter right yeah that that’s uh that’s great great advice and just knowing knowing where your uh you know how you’re wired knowing how your spouse is wired we get that we have that same Dynamic with my wife and I uh because I think we share the same kind of dynamic as you two have which is
(29:37) she’s kind of the go go can always be around people I need that energy break where I just have to get off by myself so that’s that’s huge and you mentioned kind of kind of shifting into the business part of it uh you mentioned that you always had a sense of ownership that you always wanted to own something so uh where did that come from like what part of you came that come from and how did that lead you to owning your own business so I think where it came from is I’m very free-spirited person I don’t like
(30:07) to be told what to do I don’t like to be suffocated into a desk or a role or feel like you’re chained to that desk or chained to someone else’s goals and vision that always bothered me and so I didn’t know I wanted to own my own business honestly I didn’t even know when I got my real estate license that I would be owning my own business what I thought was I would have a free schedule when I as I create my own schedule so if I pick up my kids at three o’clock and don’t want to work the rest of the day I can
(30:40) do that if I want to go to the Halloween parade at 10 o’clock in the morning at preschool I can do that if I want to work from home in the summer with my kids playing in the front yard I can do that like that was what I was looking for was Freedom now you learned very quickly in the real estate business you don’t got no Freedom at all right you do create your own schedule and you can create your own destiny so I didn’t look at it as ownership I looked at it as freedom to control my own life quickly
(31:07) learning I’m a business owner and all the things that come along with that but it didn’t really come into when I say ownership I more wanted to feel like I have a title not just an employee I wanted to have a title I wanted to be an expert I wanted to have ownership of something in my life in control um so wanting to have freedom and control is hard I don’t know any other space you know this very well that you can have freedom and control it’s called owning business yeah there’s no other place you can have freedom and control
(31:39) you can’t have freedom and control as an employee it’s impossible unless you own the company right yeah and so yeah that’s so so true and and and freedom often like I mean that’s often misinterpreted too I mean people would think about Freedom laying on a beach somewhere you know able to just keep collecting money so that’s not what you’re saying right now I’m gonna get there don’t get me wrong but you are absolutely correct I’m talking in Freedom to design my life the way I want
(32:05) to design it yeah and freedom to um it was really it started out as freedom to be the mom that I wanted to be and nothing against working moms I actually you know coach and train a lot of working moms that are all real estate agents in the industry and you still have responsibilities but I just wanted that ability to be there for my children when they needed me and when I wanted to be there and that’s really what I think the gift I was given in becoming a full-time you know real estate business owner yeah and you say you know as a
(32:37) gift and and that’s that’s beautifully put but I also think you worked really really hard to get that too of course yes of course you know nights and weekends people ask me what time moms ask me all the time how do you get how do you get through nights and weekends I’m like well you set boundaries there were certain nights I would set appointments I wouldn’t set more than three nights of appointments so two nights I was home uh weekends I have a philosophy and I believe this in any uh business or
(33:05) um frankly job uh you’ve got to make your children a priority if you’re going to have children and they got to be a priority and so I teach real estate agents specifically moms and dads that if your child has a three o’clock baseball game you don’t do an open house at three o’clock on Saturday you do it from 10 to 12.
(33:22) if if your child has an activity and a client calls for an appointment if that activity is important to your child you tell the client I have another appointment you have to put your kids before your business or you will lose and in real estate it’s a really really easy to become a slave to the clients and I always teach real estate agents you don’t call your doctor’s office and pick the day and time you want to come in they give you options so start giving your clients options around your calendar and I’m proud to say I have
(33:51) never my daughter was a very competitive dancer we never miss a dance recital we never miss a dance competition I don’t even care if she had Dance all weekend long we never missed it I would block myself out for the entire weekend and my husband will work his schedule around her performances because there would be a couple hour lag before Awards he didn’t need to be there for awards but he was always there for the performance right with my son he played thousands upon thousands upon thousands of baseball games but you know what I’d be
(34:18) standing there in my work clothes maybe sometimes on the phone in between at bats behind the you know stands taking care of business or doing my business on my phone but I was always there for all of the important tournaments and games and things like that did I ever miss a few here and there yes he played thousands and he traveled the world and I still had a daughter in high school who needed my attention but the the whole point of that is when you ask my kids and I will tell you if you ask a lot of real estate agents kids they will
(34:45) not say this if you ask my kids if they ever regret their mom and dad sold real estate they will tell you no and when you ask them why they will say because they were always there there and we always got to do what we wanted to do so that was a gift yeah it had worked a nine to five job or if my husband had still been been a land surveyor that worked till three o’clock every day in South Orange County he would have missed a lot of our City baseball games yeah yeah wow that’s uh there’s nothing else
(35:11) and and that’s okay a lot of parents are put in that position but what I say is if you’re given the gift of owning your own business if you’re given the gift of having Freedom then don’t ruin it by putting your clients before what you worked so hard for yeah yeah that’s so true and so I see so many people do that they do see so many people do it I mean yeah especially those on their businesses their businesses become their babies come up to me when I’m done speaking about priorities and priority
(35:36) management I’ll have usually Moms come up to you on the side of the stage and they’ll stop they’ll start crying and they’ll start telling me when you said I shouldn’t Miss soccer games for open houses I started crying and I’m like well stop it today forward stop it right like but we get caught up in this serving mentality which is great that’s what we’re here to do as real estate professionals is to serve but you can’t serve at the expense of your family because time will come now where I can
(36:07) do whatever the heck I want whenever I want right like but for a period of time your children are only going to be young for so long and if you want them to be great adults and you want to have a loving family and a connected family my son bought a house across the street from me two years ago like him and his fiance purposely bought our listing happened to be divine intervention he lives across the street from me I find that so cool you want that I’m proud of that I’m proud of my son and my future daughter-in-law want
(36:36) to live across the street from their parents yeah yeah no kids want that so I’m proud of that and that all comes from having this like super close knit family that we had that only came because of what we chose to do in life and how we chose to live our life yeah and that’s that’s such a powerful point because you’re you’re able to do things but if you’re going to generate that freedom what are you doing it for make sure it’s for your family you know make sure you know what you’re doing for
(37:01) there’s not there’s nothing job where you where you get a three o’clock baseball game but if you have the freedom and flexibility to do so do not let that time be carved up with your clients yeah great great point a great reminder and thank you for reminding me yeah yeah because that’s important we get trapped in that sometimes but it’s hard it’s really hard yeah and and and I and and that kind of does transition us into uh you know the the what you’re doing now which is you know you are doing that teaching you’re doing
(37:32) what you wanted to do since you were five years old uh so you’re teaching people you’re you’re you know and prioritization is one of those things um and and your authenticity journey I want to get into that but I also want to share because you know we haven’t touched on all the challenges you faced because when I first met you you know I mean there there’s you know I I would have never guessed that you you were struggling with hair loss and that’s been a big part of what you were sharing
(37:58) in your speech and it blew me away um could you touch on that a little bit and and how you overcome yeah um you know I started losing my hair when I was 18. I had no idea I only know now because I look back at photos I’m like oh I see it and I had hairdressers that lied to me or didn’t want to tell me the truth of what they saw they wanted to of course just make me feel good so I kept cutting my hair shorter and shorter trying to put more volume in it and all the things the reality is and I have I have kind of three strikes in
(38:24) the hair Department I have genetic hair loss my dad was bald at 25 don’t and let anybody tell you your hair follows your mother that is not true um number two I have a thyroid problem and then I found out I had a van autoimmune disease in my mid-30s and so as the hair transplant surgeon that I went to told me very eloquently you have a three strikes in the hair Department like your the reality is this isn’t going to go away and it just kept getting progressively worse and worse and worse and worse and in my late 20s
(38:54) early 30s I started wearing a powder in my hair um to mask the hair loss to where you couldn’t really tell I mean I knew I would spray it in my hair every day I would hair spray it down it would fall into my face sometimes with little black specks all over my face that were really embarrassing when someone would be like you have something black on your face what is that and I’d be like oh my God oh my God you know I try to get it off my face real quick I hated going out in the rain because water would make it
(39:19) roll down my face like wet mascara sure all the things and my friends close friends knew I had a problem but I would never talk about it with other people I would go to the pool and never get in the water like all these things and um it progressed and progressed and progressed and finally it got to a point where I’m like this isn’t gonna stop and the hair transplant surgeon you know told me the reality I had had a medical procedure that did work really well PRP that where they inject these tiny nails
(39:46) needles into your scalp with the platelets that they take from you that worked and then it all fell out and my dermatologist finally looked at me and said I can’t keep charging you money for this like it’s not working and so I went to the hair transplant surgeon he gave me the reality check that I didn’t want to hear and the reality is I had secretly quietly on my couch without even telling my husband or my daughter who I you know are with me more here at home my son was playing baseball still professionally on the
(40:11) road and I would secretly search science and I would secretly watch YouTube videos and I would secretly follow people that have hair loss and think maybe there’s another solution what can I do and so I did I made an appointment for a hair consultation at a human hair company and I thought I was going in for you know one solution which was um full length extensions otherwise known as a Topper um and then when I got there Ashley my consultant gave me the reality check I didn’t want to hear which was you don’t have enough hair on your head
(40:44) to hold in those clips we call it bio hair in the hair loss industry and she said I think you should try a wig and I looked at her like you’ve lost your mind I said I’m 40 years old I’m too young to wear wigs there’s a stigma behind Wigs Wigs look fake I gave her every single reason and my daughter who was 20 at the time she looked at me and she was like Mom like you just need help in a different area do you know how many women wear full length fake extensions like if you admire their hair and yet
(41:15) it’s fake and so you’re worried because you need to put it on top of your head versus just from the middle down she’s like I think you should try the wig and I’m like looking at her like you you have three heads right now child I don’t know what language you’re talking to me right now but and my daughter’s pretty black and white she is very much her father my son is me and I did I tried on the wig and I was like wow and the rest you know the rest is history Lots has happened since then but
(41:42) that’s really what happened I and then through that process how this authenticity Journey came out is I decided while the time period I ordered it so for when I ordered it so when I received it was about six weeks through a lot of self-reflection in that period of time I did a lot of reading and and talking to very very close confidants in my life saying I think I’m I think not ever asking just telling people I think I’m going to be real about this like I think I’m gonna not hide behind this and of
(42:12) course my friends told me you don’t have to you don’t have to it can be your story you don’t have to tell anybody I’m like yeah but number one people are gonna notice and they’re like no nobody will notice like you guys you you they’re gonna notice and number two maybe I can help someone else like maybe this could be my gift to the world and it’s obviously turned into so much more than that but that’s really how I got there why I decided to do it and why I decided to be transparent about it
(42:38) because number one I’m a pretty honest transparent person and secondly I didn’t want to hide behind it I wanted to see if it could help others yeah yeah well that’s that’s such a beautiful story and I’d love to I’d love to hear from from that authenticity from that vulnerability standpoint that you’ve had um you know having like kind of had the courage to come out and say this kind of stuff how has that uh has that led to you feeling how has that led to you feeling what is that what is that led
(43:06) for you yeah so you know the number one thing I hear all the time now is is Barb you’re so confident like I hear that all the time and I have friends that have known me since high school or know me since frankly I was very young who tell me you’re a completely different person and what I always say is that I did not put a piece of hair on my head and all of a sudden wake up one day and become a different person that person and the person in you after addiction and the person and all these people that go through
(43:39) vulnerable and hard things in life just like that 17 year old girl that got pregnant that person was always inside of me yeah for me it was these walls I had up of I’m not good enough I’m not pretty enough I don’t have enough hair why does my husband have a head full of hair and I don’t you talk about you know comparison yeah why does my best friend who’s eight years older than me have 10 times more hair than I do why me why me why me like that confident person of like I am enough I am special
(44:17) I am beautiful I do have everything I need inside of me was always inside of me it’s just I broke down the walls around me and finally made it was like I drew a line in the sand it was like I put the hair on my head and I said enough’s enough I’m not hiding anymore I’m not gonna pretend to be someone I’m not and then it’s like you unravel all the areas in life where you were being a people pleaser all the areas in life where you were comparing yourself all the areas in life where you weren’t
(44:40) being honest and truthful with others about how you really felt and now that I’ve Unleashed all of that I am a more confident person I am stronger people do see me differently and then what you realize inside is people were craving that person in you the whole time wow so so it was the at so the the authenticity really was a reflection of the the act of putting the wig on I mean letting go you know of all of the treatments all of this stuff and all of that letting go yeah yeah it’s so beautiful um well it was off here right it was all
(45:12) feared I was scared of what people were gonna say I was scared of judgment I was scared of are people gonna laugh are people gonna talk about me and you realize and I do think it helps becoming older right like in your 40s I think a lot of us start to get this realization you understand that nobody was really worrying about you anyways like you were so worried about what people were worried about and they’re worrying about themselves yes yes we just all think they’re worrying about us and you kind of get this humbleness of like who cares
(45:40) if you’re not in my world you’re not my world if you’re not my people you’re not my people I got plenty of people that are my people and through the authenticity journey I think what I uncovered is who the real people are and then you figure out who your real cheerleaders are and the people that are really proud of you um and that’s pretty freeing when you get to that point yeah I I agree wholeheartedly I mean is this this idea I I felt the same way when I got sober and and it was like this you know
(46:05) through AAA which was a great program for me to get sober I mean that and and for anybody getting but the the second a part always got to me like the anonymous part because that was always the thing that seemed to in my opinion and I don’t want to dissuade anyone from doing this because it is a very very powerful program and it helped me but it seemed to reinforce that shame I knew that eventually like I I had to be comfortable with who I was and that this this ism is part of who I am and um and to embrace that that’s so
(46:36) that’s so great I you know when I grow up um I I I so I I bought into the idea of my you know of the of your mother’s father being the influence of going bald right so my my grandfather had a full head of hair uh until the day he died and I was like that’s not gonna be my problem but if I ever started to go bald I would just shave it off you know still confidently said when it wasn’t happening but I realized like later on when it started actually happening that it’s like there’s so much shame I
(47:05) mean even for you know especially for it well even for men I can’t imagine for you know you know for women there it must be yeah it is it that that is what I’m most proud of is finding a community and tribe through this hair loss community that I’m now a part of where there’s a handful of us women who are like being the beacons of hope that we women can talk openly about their hair loss and there are solutions and we don’t have to hide behind it because you are absolutely cracked there is a stigma
(47:33) with female going bald and there’s not a stigma with males going bald and let’s face it from what I’ve learned in all the hair research and science that I’ve done is that where all of our hair is pre-programmed to fall out and you introduced me to a 90 year old male or female who still has a full head of hair and I’ll give you a lot of money because you’re not going to be able to find very few yeah yeah and everyone’s hair thins over time it’s a matter of the acceleration of it and I was on the
(48:01) acceleration path that I didn’t want to be on my mom has a full head of hair in her 70s so the whole mom Jean I always laugh with people I’m like you guys like do your jeans pick your fingers and your toes too no think about that for a second it’s like come on people we all know the genes that are pre-programmed they are not hair skin nails feet hand size body everything and um but I think that’s what people want to hide behind it’s like oh but my mom has a full hat of hair so I’ll be fine yeah until you
(48:30) lose it and your mom still has it so then tell me where that formula or I’ve heard it skips a generation I’m like oh my God you guys yeah no it doesn’t yep it’s all it’s all uh myths and stories that we want to tell ourselves and stories yeah well uh and and so now you’re kind of taking that you’re well you are taking that authenticity story to the stage which is really really cool and and so what does that look like going forward to you are you speaking in more events are you sharing it any other way yeah so what
(49:02) what’s happening is that you know what I’ve learned is the message is that as who you are uniquely designed to be you actually get more business so the sales people and people obviously I want to scream this to everybody but my message and who I really connect with are people in business and yes I talk about it with real estate professionals but my passion is taking it into all other areas of business right there’s no reason financial advisors and attorneys and anybody in a sales driven business who’s whose main uh clients is is a
(49:36) human on the other side the more authentic you are the more you show up as you and understand your true gifts and abilities the more business you’re going to get period my husband and I as real estate business has blown open because of my authenticity Journey do I have any concrete absolute proof no but can I tell you the amount of conversations that actually are said to my husband even more than me where our clients will say to him we love the way Barb’s showing up online we love how authentic she’s being it
(50:05) just gives us this understanding that we can trust you guys like if you’re gonna show up like that and tell your story that way you’re certainly not going to show up to my appointment and lie to me and that really is what was the eye opener to me and I I watched some friends who I know are hiding behind things and I see the way that they hold themselves back I see the way that they’re they don’t show up as brightly as they can and that’s affecting their business so it all comes back to being
(50:28) who we are understanding who we are understanding that we have faults and you don’t have to share every single thing in your life for goodness sakes and there are some things that like when you were going through your addiction it probably wasn’t something you talked about you talk about these things would come out on the other side from and that’s really my message and yes I want to get it out to as many people as I can because I know what it does for people and I know the um process people have to go through it
(50:53) doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes you dig deep you have to hear it a couple times you have to realize that you are enough and then when you do and you have all this other business and you have your business is so much better and stronger and you are a happier person you know it’s a win-win all around yeah that’s so powerful and one of the most powerful phrases I’ve heard on that’s very subject because you summed it up very well there is you know show your scars not necessarily your wounds like
(51:17) your open wounds or you know they you need to heal okay um yeah so that that’s huge yeah your loss wasn’t you know hair loss was something I I went through quietly quietly and silently and there was a lot of wounds and nights crying and frustrations same thing with you with addiction and it could be losing a loved one it could be so many different things and I love the saying when they always say um so for me with the pregnancy Journey um I couldn’t tell that story for a really long time without crying and once
(51:46) I heard that you’re only ready to tell the story when you can emotionally when you can get through it without being emotional yeah cry through to like if you cried through telling your addiction stories you probably used to get emotional saying it and you’re not ready to tell that story but once you can say it and you can say it in a way that is like I’m recovered I’m here or I’m still working on myself but I I’m I’m at peace with whatever happened then you’re ready to share it with others because for a
(52:15) very long time I even hid behind the 17 year old story and I looked at the 17 year old stories of failure and now I look at it as a success there was nothing of there was we didn’t fail at all in that area yeah we made a mistake and then we got through it so um huge growing points when you can tell your story without being emotional and really tell it to help others yeah that’s that’s a powerful point and a great great place to end it getting full circle here um and I I want to be respectful of your
(52:44) time thank you so much Barb where can people find you where can people reach out for speaking or anything else Instagram is my favorite place to connect my my handle is just my name barbets um I have a website barbets.com you know I you can find me pretty much anywhere DM me let me know you’re interested we can have a conversation um I would love to just Inspire and educate um as many sales audiences as I can yeah well well Barb has some amazing content on her Instagram and uh and I follow her please follow her get that
(53:18) inspiration get that authenticity and and uh and I hope you enjoyed this episode everybody thank you Barb for being here today this has been amazing and thank you everybody for joining us yeah hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordhill.
(53:45) com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us