Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and this topic today is very meaningful to me. Even having this guest on today is an exciting thing for me. I'll introduce her here in just a second. But here's the problem that I want this episode to help you solve, which is: There's endless amounts of tactics and strategies and ideas for real estate agents to grow their business. And the opportunity is most of them will work if you grow into being the right person. The challenge is if you don't grow as a person, none of them will work. So I have with me today, Sarita Dua. Let me first of all say Sarita thank you for coming on the show today.
Thanks so much Justin, for having me.
I'm excited to have you here. For those of you that don't know Sarita, let me give a little background on her and I know many of you do. Over the past two years, her team, a very small team, has produced over $130 million in real estate volume. Pretty impressive for a small team. In addition to that, she has entered into the executive MBA program at MIT. For those of you who are familiar with MIT, it's a very prestigious university and to be accepted in means a lot. She loves teaching and training. It's really a passion of hers. Maybe some of you have seen her on some of the biggest stages including Keller Williams big annual event, Inman Connect, the big event that they have multiple times a year. And all over the place on podcasts and other places. So I'm, again, fortunate to have you here today, Sarita, pouring into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for again for your attention and your time.
Of course. I appreciate it.
So let's, let's dive into how are we going to solve this now. I know Sarita, you have developed and followed a growth plan and you say that that is an essential component of helping you to produce at the level that you have and I want to talk through some of the things for you that are a part of this growth plan? And, uh, maybe let's start with something that you put into the growth plan first, which is your fascination with travel. Talk to us about that because most people think that has nothing to do with real estate. That's what you do when you're not doing real estate. But for you, that's been an essential component of helping you produce at the highest level. True?
Yeah, absolutely. And if somebody asked me like what are the three things that mean the most to me and I can't put individual people in my family, then it would be honestly my family, education and travel. And one of the things I love about travel is that it's a perfect intersection between family and education because anytime we go anywhere, we're learning and we're together. And so it isn't this, you know, a quest to fill my passport, although I do love that part of it. What I found is as my kids were young and active and I was working quite a few nights and weekends, we realized that when we connect, the few times we have, let's say we had an hour here or like 30 minutes between appointments, I would try to connect with my family and guess what, they were busy. They'd have soccer games or lacrosse or birthday parties or whatever.
So if it was a good time for me, it may not have been a good time for them. And what we realized is anytime we went anywhere, the four of us, and we reconnected, whether it was a long weekend or for a week, we would just come back synchronized and recharged. And then, my husband especially, he's a bit of a nerd and he loves like these educational field trips. So anytime we go on a trip, he's going to make us go see the largest ball of twine or how cashews are made. And we always, you know, the kids, especially "Daddy," and they roll their eyes. But the funny thing is we started playing this game called Trivia. We were at a restaurant, we were waiting for a two hour wait and I was trying to keep them awake. They were jet lagged. So I was like, "Hey guys, we visited Google today. What were the colors of their logo?" I didn't even know most of the answers. I was asking questions and I didn't even know the answers. Or, "What gate were we at?" Or, "What seats were we in?" Or, "Who was our flight attendant?" And it was so funny because my son was like maybe six or seven, "Momma ask me another question." And since we started doing that too, we've become very observant when we travel. And you're always learning when you're just looking around and your present. Right? So it really did bring our family together. So, one of the best coaches I've had in my career said, "Hey, you don't always have to have a goal of how many houses and what's your production. It could be [for me] how many days, how can you maintain your production and how many days out can you take?" So every year I start with what are all the days I'm going to take out and then I cram all my real estate in in those days that I'm not out of the office.
Which typically is not how it works. If I have time this year we'll go on a vacation. What you're saying is "This is a big rock. Put the big rocks in first and then business will happen around it."
Absolutely.
And the cool thing is is that you have enviable production, Sarita. You would think that someone that started with that, "Let's go play first," they wouldn't have produced. What you're telling us is that actually helps fuel your ability to produce at a high level.
Yeah. I mean I don't know if you guys remember when you were in school or when you have a deadline, the more you have to do, like if you have something due every night, you're going to have to time block and get it done. If you have a month to do it, like let's say taxes, right? There's a lot of us that are going to, probably on the 14th, "Shoot, I got to get these done." But if you don't have time and you have to slot a bunch of other things and you just get it done, right?! So I did find that it actually made me more efficient and more productive.
I love it. An enticing deadline is what you've created. Let's talk about your speaking and teaching. This is part of your growth plan. Obviously you've agreed to come on today to really benefit this audience. You are on stages. You've been a MAPS coach in the past and that's really become a part of your passion in your life. Talk to us about why that's an essential part of agents becoming the person, growing into being the person, that can then grow a business to the level that they want it to.
Okay, sure. I mean, everyone has a different reason. I'm not going to sit here and say, "Golly shucks." You know, I, you know, at the end of the day, like we all have reasons for doing things. Some people want the visibility, some people want referrals. For me, I'm focusing on getting comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable, right? So the more uncomfortable you can be and start being okay with it, then you always learn. So for me, teaching and coaching has just, you know, there's that phrase, the teacher becomes the student. You actually get way more than you give. Even when I coach a client one on one who might be a newer agent and I'm talking to them about systems and models. I mean, who do you think is learning that? Like for me, it's very difficult to talk about how you should make your contacts and work your database and then I hang up and I don't do that? Then I would feel like a fraud. So for me, it's just another way to sharpen the pencil. I'm not the greatest public speaker. In fact, I do quite a few educational videos to my clients. And I used to really get nervous about, "Well, does my hair look okay?" and "I just flubbed this up," and I should retake it 10 times so that I sound like, you know, like an anchor woman or like the weather person" or whatever. And you know the more authentic, like when you actually screw up and you say, wait, I like lost my train of thought, let me rephrase and you're actual...
