Category: Blog Posts

This DIY Menorah is the ultimate Hanukkah gift and holiday craft idea!

What You’ll Need:

2 pieces of 18″ x 4″ wood
Wood glue
Painter’s tape
Wood stain
Rag or paintbrush
Acrylic paint
Drill
Candleholders
Candles

How To Create A Menorah:

To create an L-shaped base for your menorah, glue the long edge of one piece of wood to the bottom face of the other piece.
Once the glue is dry, use painter’s tape to section off a 3⁄4″ strip at the bottom.
Using a rag or paintbrush, apply wood stain to the top portion. (You may need to apply 2 or 3 coats to achieve your desired shade.) Let the stain dry, then carefully remove the tape.
Now, tape off the unstained portion and paint it with acrylic paint.
Once the paint is dry, carefully remove the painter’s tape.
With a drill outfitted with a bit the size of your candleholders, drill 9 holes into the top edge of the menorah: one for each night of Hanukkah, plus the shammash.
Set the candleholders into the holes (they should fit snugly) and add your candles.

The post DIY: Create Your Own Rustic Menorah appeared first on House & Home.

Erin Davis: Hi, I’m Erin Davis, your host of REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® by REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. We’ve an amazing episode in store for you today. Fotini Iconomopoulos is an internationally recognized high-stakes negotiator and instructor of MBA positions at the Schulich School for Business, and the author of the book, Say Less, Get More, Unconventional Negotiation Techniques to Get What You Want.

Throughout her career, she’s inspired Fortune 500 leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to achieve their business goals, increase profitability, and gain a competitive edge using the principles of persuasion. On this episode of Real Time, Fotini shares tips and strategies to help realtors do the same, and yes, there’s even an exercise we get to do together. Let’s go. Oh, thank you so much for joining us today, Fotini, and I love even your backstory. As a kid, you were known for being a negotiator. Can you set the table for us here today? That’s a wonderful tale.

Fotini Iconomopoulos: It was my dad who sort of foreshadowed an entire career unknowingly, and so as a kid when you grow up in the big fat Greek wedding household, so strict Greek father, and as a child I wanted to do all the things I was told I couldn’t do, or the patriarchal society told me I couldn’t do, so you have to negotiate your way out of the house. It got to the point where he would say to me, we don’t need to hear from your negotiator.

It was cousins and sisters and all these other people who would push me to the front and go, you ask them. Maybe it was because I’m a little more assertive, or maybe I was the youngest and the cute one. For some reason, I was always at the forefront of whatever needed to get done in order to work our way out of the house. Here we are today.

Erin: Yes. It’s so amazing how so often as a child, your personality or your traits or your habits then can portend who you are going to be. Here you are now, as I mentioned in the intro, you’re recognized worldwide as the high-stakes negotiator and instructor, and of course, author of the amazing book, Say Less, Get More. I’m just wondering, how did you get from that child to where you are now? We’re going to have to do the X-length version, or Twitter as we used to know it. Just how does one become a negotiator?

Fotini: It was a little bit of nature and a little bit of nurture. I think I was probably born with a little fire under my belly. Then part of it was also just wanting more. When you are constantly pursuing what is that next big achievement, you don’t want anything to hold you back. I ended up pursuing a degree in arts and science because I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Then I ended up getting an MBA in organizational behavior because I thought, well, I don’t have the formal business education yet.

I was recruited into companies like L’Oreal, where I was negotiating with Walmart on a regular basis. That was an amazing training ground because they’re known to be some of the toughest buyers in the industry. Eventually a consulting company that was hired to train me to be a better negotiator went, you should really be doing what we do. I was like, yes, sure, someday when I’ve got more experience because I hadn’t even hit 30 yet.

They said, no, seriously, you should be doing what we do. I joined this British company, and I was traveling all over the world. All of a sudden, I was training everybody from CEOs of massive oil and gas companies to junior account managers and some of my former employers. Then clients kept going, well, it’s great that you trained our team, but we have a billion dollars on the line or we have a hundred million on the line. What do we do? What do we say?

It sort of evolved into this practice within the practice. I found myself really enjoying it and getting even more immersed in the research behind what makes people do what they do. Then that led to teaching at the Schulich School of Business where I teach MBA negotiations occasionally and guest lecturing everywhere else. Then Harper-Collins going, we think you have a book in you. I went, okay. I just kept saying yes to these things because people started to recognize some of the skills that I had. I also kept nurturing a lot of those skills just because it was a big passion and interest for me.

Erin: Let me just backtrack a little bit before we talk about the present and the future. You mentioned international negotiations and we will find out what a negotiation actually is, Fotini, but do Canadians negotiate differently? Does that stereotype of us being more polite actually show up at the table?

Fotini: I wish I had formal statistics to back this up, but anecdotally, I can tell you that there’s a difference when I train or consult folks in Canada versus in other parts of the world, particularly when I compare to our US neighbors. I find that negotiators in Canada are less assertive. We are very polite as a society. I think that’s pretty stereotypical of Canadians. We say I’m sorry a lot, which doesn’t help in negotiations because we also know that when people are conciliatory in negotiations, that makes the other party just more aggressive and it can put us into a position of weakness. A lot of times I see Canadians backing off of stuff where there is a different appetite when I’m working with folks outside of Canada.

Erin: That is interesting. How do you define negotiation? What is negotiation? Let’s get down to basics here.

Fotini: I’d say most people assume that negotiation is two people beating each other up, yet that is a common misconception. All it is two people trying to reach an agreement. It’s two people who actually want to find a solution together, whether they realize it consciously or subconsciously. If we didn’t have to have this conversation, we’d already be in agreement. It doesn’t have to be combative, it’s just a conversation full of curiosity and hopefully some empathy in the mix as well.

Erin: When you talk to groups, you have an exercise. We’re all warmed up. Would you take us into one of your exercises?

Fotini: Yes. This is one where I wish I could see your face right now, Erin, because all I want is all of the listeners to take their dominant index finger and then I want you to draw the capital letter E for empathy on your forehead. Draw the capital letter E on your forehead. Then once you’ve done that, there’s no right or wrong answer here, by the way. This is just a little exercise about where your brain tends to go first. This is your autopilot mode. You either drew it one of two ways. Either you drew it so that if I was looking at you, I could read it perfectly, it would make total sense to my eyes. Or you drew it so that your own eyeballs would make sense of it, but the observer would see it looking backwards to them. Now, one of these E’s is associated with higher levels of power in the workplace. One of these two E’s is associated with people who are more powerful, more senior in the workplace. If you think it through, the E that is written for your own eyes means you are most likely automatically primed to think about your own objectives. That’s what gets people to the top of their fields. Those who draw the E for their own eyes tend to be more senior in the workplace.

Now that doesn’t mean that if you’re drawing the E for me and others who are reading it that you’re never going to be a success. That’s totally not true. I did tell you that there’s no right or wrong answer here. What it simply means is this is your autopilot mode. We’re all intelligent enough. We’re all in control enough to be able to override that mode. If you are drawing the E for me and others who are reading it, then you need to pause to ask yourself, “Hey, am I putting my needs on the back burner for the sake of others?”

If you are drawing the E for your own eyes, this is not a guarantee that you’re going to be super successful in negotiations. Because I have seen so many people, I’ve done this exercise for thousands and thousands of people. I even included it in the book. I’ve seen plenty of folks over the years draw the E for themselves, but still never become the senior leaders they wish to be. Never become those massive successes they want to be.

The reason being, they have forgotten what the reflection of that E is like. They’re forgetting about what’s in it for the other person. What is that other person going through? Why would they care to listen to me? If you are the person listening to this and drawing the E for yourself, congratulations, you have the ability to consider your own objectives, but you need to pause and consider what’s in it for them. Otherwise, why would they bother listening to you? Why would they even engage in this conversation with you?

Again, if you’re the person who is drawing the E for the observer, for others before yourself, then it’s time to make sure you pause and make sure that you don’t become what I call a victim of your own empathy. You have to pause and ask yourself such an important question, which is, what can they afford to do for me? You’re not asking them to go bankrupt. You’re not asking them to do something that’s going to get them into massive trouble. You’re just asking, what is in the realm of possibility that these people can do for me? How can we make this a collaborative exchange rather than making it all about them? If you’re the other E, then making it all about yourself.

In order to be an effective negotiator, you need to make sure you’re keeping both of those E’s in balance. That’s what makes for a great negotiator.

Erin: That was incredible. Thanks for sharing that with us. My E was facing outward. This is the thing about talking with you and about your book. It does not only encompass the world of negotiation. It encompasses so many parts of our lives, because when you think about it, whether you’re a realtor and you’re trying to get your clients to be happy, or whether you’re having interpersonal relationships in your own life, or you’re trying to maybe get the best price on a refrigerator, negotiation is so much a part of our everyday lives. I don’t know how much people realize that, Fotini.

Fotini: I hope they’re starting to realize it because I meet so many people all the time who say, oh, I don’t negotiate. I’m not a salesperson, but do you have children? Do you talk to people? Do you have a dog even? Are you interacting with people? Even if you’re getting on a streetcar or a subway, you’re negotiating for your physical space without even opening your mouth. We have these interactions all the time, but we need to make sure that we’re balancing the needs of others as well as our own needs in these processes.

Erin: I love, too, that a lot of your message is about putting yourself in the shoes of others, which of course is a great life motto anyway, but how that works in negotiation. I think it goes back to the E and the empathy and what’s in it for them while keeping in mind what’s in it for you at the same time. It’s so important.

Fotini: Yes. No one’s going to want to work with you if you’re not considering what’s in it for them. You’re not going to hit all the records of being the world’s greatest realtor and selling everything and listing everything if you’re not wondering, well, why would they want to, why would they want to work with me? Why would they want to list it at this price at this time and so on and so forth. You really have to consider everybody’s needs, not just your own, in order to be successful.

Erin: Back to Fotini Iconomopoulos in a moment. We all want to be liked, right? She’ll point out where that may be tripping us up. We’re glad you’re liking our podcast and we have 43 other insightful episodes just waiting for you to dig in and be inspired. There’s a new one every month and we’re grateful to have you joining us here in our REAL TIME podcast community. Now back to Fotini Iconomopoulos, world-renowned speaker and author of the fantastic book, Say Less, Get More. Unconventional negotiation techniques to get what you want on REAL TIME.

You have said that being likable during a negotiation can be an advantage. Now can you unpack for us the correlation between likability and influence?

Fotini: Likability is a piece of influencing. If I don’t like you, I’m not going to want to work with you. I’m not going to allow you to influence my decision maker. In fact, I’m going to actively resist trying to work with you or trying to allow you to influence my decision-making process. The fact of the matter is, though, every single one of us at some subconscious level, we all want to be liked. This goes back to our primitive cave person ancestry. We were meant to travel the world in packs. That’s why we were not surviving as lone rangers. Because of that, we have this innate need to be liked.

One of the things that I see happening, the big mistake that I see happening when it comes to negotiation and influencing, is we try to buy that ability. I’ll just do that little thing because I don’t want them to hate me. I’ll just let them have this extra little bit that they’re going after because I want to protect the relationship. I want to be able to influence them in the long term, so I’ll let them have this one win now, but that can get really dangerous because it can set a very dangerous precedent for us.

It’s the same reason why if you spend time around children, the world’s greatest negotiators, they will be relentless about getting what they want. If you set a dangerous precedent and trying to buy their likeability, you end up with a really spoiled kid. There’s a really cool study that was done specifically around likeability and negotiation where they took two different groups of Ivy League MBA students and they put them into two different groups with two different sets of instructions. They told the first group, I want you to get down to negotiating right away. Time is money. They told the second group, I want you to spend a few minutes just getting to know each other first.

In that first group who got down to negotiating immediately, 55% of them managed to close a deal. Now that’s not too shabby. That is the majority, but in the group that got to know each other first, 90, that’s nine zero percent managed to close deals. Some people are probably thinking, sure, they made friends. They probably wanted to be liked so much that they sweetened the deal in some way. We know that’s not true because of that 90% group, they ended up closing deals that were 12% greater in value. They ended up closing more deals and they ended up closing better deals all because they spent a few minutes before the negotiation even started just getting to know each other.

When I get to know you, you have more influence over how I want to steer my dollars, how I want to steer my energy, my decision making, and so on. According to persuasion theory, there’s a few things that really stand out in terms of being able to influence people. It’s not by giving them everything that they want. It’s not by sweetening the deal. It is by doing simple things like finding something in common, building a bridge between you, removing some of that fear of the unknown from people’s brain. It is finding a compliment, a genuine compliment for people because we in our subconscious brain can suss out the slimy, fake compliments that are out there, we can sense those things. Then the last thing is we like cooperative people. We don’t want to be pushed around by someone who says it’s my way or the highway. We don’t like aggressive negotiators. We like working with people who seem familiar to us and who seem genuine in how they handle themselves. That’s why I’ve always taken a collaborative approach to negotiation wherever possible. That is going to gain you far more influence. That’s the likability factor that many of us find ourselves in the crux of being stuck between being likable enough and not being so likable that we get taken advantage of. It’s that buying likability factor that’s going to land you in the taken advantage of category.

Erin: You want to be the person people want to work with. You, I imagine you’ve talked about living around or working around the world. Do you do your own negotiations like in, say, real estate transactions?

Fotini: Happily, I do not. I say this as somebody who I’m very comfortable negotiating. I know, however, that when it comes to negotiating, information is power. I know that when it comes to specifically real estate, there’s going to be stuff I don’t know. I’m not an expert in that industry. I’m an expert in the principles of negotiation, but I’m not an expert in the specifics around what is required in order to create a really great deal. I know, just like everybody else does, that you need to have an expert who’s going to be able to represent you.

That being said, I am a tough customer. I have an agent that I’ve been working with for years. We’ve done at least five transactions together. I trust that he knows what he needs to know about the geographies that I’m going into about what’s going on in the market and all that kind of stuff that I don’t have the time or energy to be an expert at because I’m too busy doing other things for a living.

We get on the same page about what should the strategy be. Should it be listing at a certain price and trying to get somewhere else? Should there be a decision about when to time it and how to do it? Those are all things that we need to get on the same page about because I’m an expert in strategy. He’s going to have the information required in order to make it a super successful negotiation.

I would make sure that all of the listeners who are paying attention are also making sure that they can communicate that to the folks that they’re dealing with. That you’re not insulting people by saying, hey, I’m an expert at this. I know you’re really great at this other stuff. I want to make sure I help you get to the best possible deal based on these unique circumstances we find ourselves in.

Erin: Let’s talk about high stakes negotiations, Fotini, which, of course, are very relatable for realtors. What are some of the best ways to prepare before a big negotiation?

Fotini: There’s two ways of going about it. First is preparing mentally, and the other is making sure you prepare tactically. The mental piece is, you can have as much preparation as you want, all of the research in the world and all of that kind of stuff. You can be the best at preparing and having all the market data and analysis. If your head is not in the game, then things are going to fall apart. Because you have the ability to either psych yourself up or psych yourself out.

When it comes to getting there in the moment, when you’re about to talk to a client for the first time, or you’re about to talk to the other agent for a first time, or you’re about to come up with what is that listing price that I’m going to put on paper, or that proposal, that’s when I need everybody to just take a relaxing breath. Maybe it’s breathing in for four, holding for six, and out for eight. That meditative breath is going to make a world of difference in terms of the clarity that you have. Because when we’re really anxious, and negotiation makes a lot of people anxious, all the rational energy leaves our brain, and it goes to our limbs, and that’s what makes our heart start to beat a little bit faster, and our palms start to get a bit sweaty, and our breathing starts to get a bit more shallow.

That’s what makes you have those moments that go, oh my God, is that what I just said? Why didn’t I say this other thing? Why couldn’t I think of that in the moment? In the moment, we need to clear our heads and make sure we collect our thoughts and give our brain the space to do its job. Now in order to get there, we need to prepare. We need to prepare what is that market data? What is that analysis I have to have done? What else is going on in this neighborhood? All of the wonderful things that I’m sure everybody in the audience knows how to do, as well as maybe even rehearsing what is going to come out of our mouths.

If you’re pitching a client for the first time, if you’re going to say something to a client that they’re not going to like, maybe you want to practice that in the car before you get out of the car. Say it in front of a mirror or something like that to make sure you’re giving yourself some of that muscle memory that is going to make it a little bit more comfortable when it’s coming out of your mouth for the very first time and a little less foreign to your brain in the moment so that you don’t have that moment of fight or flight kicking in when it’s time to speak to that client.

Erin: The sound of silence. You could write a song about it, but it’s something we often try to avoid and it can be used to your advantage. We’ll dig into that in just a moment. In talking with Fotini, not only was I grateful to have read her book, but I just wanted to tell everyone I know about it. That’s how everybody at the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, feels about REAL TIME. We invite you to like and share this podcast with everyone, among your realtor community and elsewhere. Anybody you think might also gain some wisdom from the words of Fotini Iconomopoulos, and thank you. Now back to our guest, educator, negotiator, renowned speaker, and author of Say Less, Get More on REAL TIME. When you say less, get more, which is a great book title, one of the things a lot of people are uncomfortable with is silence. That can be perceived in many different ways. Let’s talk about the silence between the notes in the concerto of negotiation. Let’s talk about that and how important it can be and how you can use silence as a power tool.

Fotini: I have such a big smile on my face because I’ve never heard anybody describe it so eloquently like the notes in a concerto before. I love that.

Erin: Thank you.

Fotini: I’m going to steal that. The beauty of silence is we all feel uncomfortable, or at least most people feel very uncomfortable with silence until you get used to it. Now if you’re somebody who’s listened to this podcast or read the book or seen the research around what silence can do for you, you will notice that they’re going to be far more uncomfortable with it than you are, because at least you’re familiar with this concept of saying less and getting more.

Now most of the people that I interact with go, but if I don’t say something, if I’m not quick on my feet, then people are going to think I’m stupid. That is not true. They’re going to think you’re stupid if you’re thinking and talking at the same time and having this verbal nonsense come out of your mouth because you’re trying to get through this garbled mess of what is my brain even trying to spit out right now. You’re going to look far more confident when you can say something like, I need a moment to think that through, or give me a second to make sure I’m giving you the right information, or I want to make sure I’m as crystal clear as possible.

Let me just think through what it is that you need from me right now. Any one of those phrases is a way to frame the silence. If you’re super uncomfortable and you are worried about looking stupid because you’re too quiet, then take ownership of that pause. Show up and say, I need some time. You’re not asking for permission. You’re not going to say, can I have a minute? You’re going to say, you know what? I need a minute to think that through.

Now all of a sudden you look so confident, you look so credible and so sure of yourself. At the same time, the person on the receiving end of that statement is waiting on the edge of their seat to go, ooh, whatever comes out of her mouth next is going to be super good because she’s taking the time to listen to me and consider my needs. Man, is that going to be great. I’m going to challenge her a lot less. All because you took that quiet, confident moment and you framed it as something that you own versus asking for permission or feeling conciliatory in that moment.

Erin: I think it projects a respect as well. It’s like, I hear you and we all want to be heard. I hear you and I want to contemplate that. It is to me, it’s a sign of respect.

Fotini: Absolutely. It’s also a sign of acknowledgement, right? You are acknowledging the other person. You’re not ignoring them. It’s not, hey, did you hear what I said? Are you going to answer me? It’s just saying, I need a moment to think this through. You’re commanding that space rather than allowing them to steamroll all over you either.

Erin: Can you do it physically? Again, putting to use the suggestion that you just made where you don’t say, could I please leave the room and get some water? Or can my client and I discuss this? Just say, we’re going to need a moment to go and have some refreshments and we’ll reconvene in 10, 15 minutes or whatever. Is it okay to actually physically leave the room if that comes to that?

Fotini: Absolutely. I think if you’re framing it in a collaborative, polite way, then why not? Why would it be impolite? If you were to be in the other person’s shoes, would they see it as impolite to move things forward a little bit faster simply by having a private conversation? Because I think it would look more rude if you’re whispering back and forth at one another sitting at the table. It looks more suspicious and furtive if you’re doing that versus saying, you know what, we’re going to have a quick conversation so we can speed this up. We’re just going to step out of the room for a moment and figure out what needs to happen next in order to help move us forward.

I don’t see there being anything suspicious about that. I think it looks a lot more furtive when you’re just trying desperately to speak in code at the same table or in the same room.

Erin: All right. We’ve talked about physically removing our bodies from the room, but let’s talk about the language of the body and the physical presence while you’re in the room. I think you’ve got some great ideas on this, Fotini.

Fotini: Yes. We communicate in a number of different ways without even opening our mouth. According to communication theory, a third of our message comes in the words that we choose, a third comes in the sound of our voices, and a third comes in your body language. What are you saying before you’re actually physically saying it? When it comes to taking up space, there’s a really fantastic book and accompanying TED Talk by Dr. Amy Cuddy called Presence. She talks a lot about power poses. I’m sure folks out there listening are familiar with the Wonder Woman pose, my personal favorite. If you’ve ever run a race, the first thing you want to do when you cross the finish line is put your hands in the air in a big V for victory. Any of those types of poses that take up more physical space are going to not only send a message to the other party that you deserve to be there and that you own that space, but also it gives your brain a chance to catch up to what your body is telling others.

Then what happens is, according to research on this, within two minutes, anybody who adopts one of those power poses feels much more confident. As a result of feeling much more confident, there’s plenty of research out there that tells us you get better results. If you are sitting across from them, it could feel adversarial versus sitting adjacent to them, like on a corner, it could feel like you’re working together.

Maybe when you’re sitting with a client, you want to sit next to them instead of across from them so they know that you’re on the same team. Maybe if you’re sitting across from someone with whom you’re entering into this more competitive negotiation, you want them to sit across from you so that they can see the look on your face when you look shocked and appalled at what number is going to come out of their mouth. Or you want to make sure that you are clearly in their line of sight when you are delivering a crystal clear, incredible message.

Where you sit, how you sit, how much physical space you take up, all of these things make a world of difference in terms of how you are received and also how your brain is ready to catch up to it too.

Erin: Does it differ when you’re negotiating on someone’s behalf?

Fotini: It does and it doesn’t. The principles remain the same. However, the benefit of negotiating on behalf of someone else is that you get to take the emotional piece out of it. It is much easier to negotiate on behalf of someone else than it is to negotiate for yourself. In fact, there’s a lot of research out there that says women will negotiate harder for others than they will for themselves because there’s no fear of repercussion. There’s no fear of looking greedy. You know that you’re doing it for someone else. It’s a selfless thing. When you are not as closely linked to that outcome, then you can have more clarity. The fight or flight response isn’t nearly as strong.

One of the reasons why I am brought in by so many corporations, I work with a lot of Fortune 500 types of companies. They’re full of very bright people. I know because I trained many of them. Yet they bring me in to help them on these high stakes negotiations because sometimes they just need that objective clarity because they’re too close to whatever’s going on and it’s hard to disentangle their emotions from the outcome.

I can be that voice of reason that goes, hey, remember when you said this is what you want to accomplish? Here’s how it looks like you can do that based on the facts as opposed to based on my emotional outcome tied to this. The same is true for anybody who’s representing a client in negotiation. Now, maybe if you’re good friends with your client, you’re a little tighter connected to the outcome. The truth of the matter is, you’re still not nearly as connected as if they were doing it for themselves.

Erin: It sounds like you want empathy, but not to get too emotionally invested. That also sounds like a really good reason to have a negotiator like you on your side, because as we know, the real estate transaction can be steeped in emotions because it’s not just the biggest purchase most people will make in their lives, but there’s the emotion. This is the house where I raised my kids. We put so much work into that kitchen and you aren’t able to step back and have the perspective. Really, that’s where a good realtor comes in too. They know their clients’ needs and wants and feelings but are able to have that little bit of stepping back as well.

Fotini: Yes. That’s a critical piece is that you need to look like that objective, credible person. It’s okay to acknowledge that they have invested a lot of time and energy and years into this home, but you have to be really careful of acknowledging without necessarily agreeing with them. You have to also be careful of the fact that they’re going to be very defensive because they are so emotionally involved in this.

If you go in there and say, I think your kitchen is not worth that much, they’re going to go, yes, well, I’ll tell you what I think. The second you’re perceived as giving a feeling or opinion about something, now all of a sudden they’re going to get really defensive and they’re going to mirror that behavior right back. If you can come in with these two magic words, instead of I think, if they were to be replaced with something as simple as based on, based on the comparables in this neighborhood, based on similar kitchens, based on my experience in the last 10 houses that I have listed, now, all of a sudden, you’re coming across as credible and not personally attacking them with just an opinion.

It’s much harder for them to argue with based on. It sounds like, hey, this is set in stone third party stuff, as opposed to I’m personally attacking you. It’s not personal when you say based on. When you say, I think, now that’s a personal opinion, and I’m going to fire right back with my own personal opinion. If you want to make sure you avoid arguing with your client or even the folks across the table, that based on is going to be critical.

Erin: That’s brilliant. Thank you for that. When realtors are talking with their clients, you make a clear delineation between being curious and being condescending. Is that where based on comes in as well? Is that sort of a subtopic?

Fotini: I think it could come in very handy right there as well. Because no one wants to be talked down to. We have so much information at our fingertips. In Google now, you can Google a million different people and reviews are out there and so on. What you say and do is going to be out there forever. People will give you a review, they will talk about you, they will be on chat boards and Reddit threads and so on and so forth. That condescension is going to be something that we have to be very careful to avoid.

That being said, you also want to be perceived as this expert, this person who they’re not going to push back every single idea. They’re not going to overlook you for someone else who’s a family friend who may not actually be getting them the best possible deal because they’re doing this friendly thing that is not necessarily going to be in their best interest. This person doesn’t have anything to gain if they’re a family friend. If they’re leaving that commission on the table, well, then they’re not as invested in it and they’re probably not going to get them the best rate. They just want to get this done.

There’s all of these things to juggle and that based on can help remove some of that opinion. That likability factor is going to be really important here too that I mentioned earlier. Are you finding something in common with them? Are you paying them a genuine compliment? Are you doing something like that before you start negotiating with them, before you get into business to put them at ease and make them think that, hey, this is someone I enjoy spending this much time with, that I trust to put this biggest transaction of my life into their hands. Because for most people, that’s what this is.

Erin: What to do when the temperature is rising just a little too high in a negotiating situation. Some great tips are just ahead. For more great tips, whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned veteran, there’s always information to add to your professional toolbox at CREA Cafe. From legal matters to navigating technology, it’s all there for you simply by clicking CREACafe.ca.

Now back to our author and guest, Fotini Iconopoulos, on Real Time. How do you manage things when emotions start to get high during a negotiation? Fotini, I know you’ve seen this on the regular. How do you manage emotions? Say for your client, for example, you can’t control what people across the table are doing unless you say, we’re going to need a minute or take down the temperature or whatever. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so tell us.

Fotini: That’s really the most obvious answer is just taking that pause, that moment to say less, giving people a timeout. It’s like when you’re dealing with a toddler, and I use a lot of children’s analogies in my work because adults have just as bad temper tantrums, if not worse than children. We need to give adults a timeout the same way we have with kids too. Just saying, hey, let’s take a minute to think about this, and maybe stepping out of the room, or maybe going, well, let’s work this out. Let’s see what those numbers mean to us. Something as simple as that can make a world of difference for folks.

Sometimes you may have to do that for yourself too. Sometimes it’s because maybe that person across the table is so antagonistic and condescending that you’re like, I want to strangle them on behalf of my client. Maybe you need to take that meditative breath in the moment before you say something you might regret. I also tell people to write it down. Maybe you need a moment to think it through, have it physically come out of your hand, write it down, and then look at it visually and go, is that really the thing that I want to say? That can slow down your brain, your tongue, and what comes out of your mouth, rather than tripping all over yourself or tripping all over your tongue.

Erin: Yes, it’s a good idea because we don’t all need the Aaron Sorkin walking, talking script in order to be successful. One of the tips in Say Less, Get More, unconventional ways to get what you want, is that you don’t have to talk or be fast. What are some of the standout or unconventional strategies, Fotini, that most people, we just don’t consider?

Fotini: One of the silliest ones that we don’t think about, and the most obvious to me, but maybe not obvious to everybody else, is ask a question. Even if the answer, if you need that time to calm your brain down, to buy you some time to think, ask the other party a question, get them to do the talking. Not only is that you saying less, but it’s you getting more. It’s more information and if information is power where else are you going to get it but straight from them? Ask them a question about what are some of their motivators? Ask them a question about where does that number come from? Ask them a question about why is it that they want to do these things in this particular way or what is it that led them to that conclusion?

That will start to create a change in the environment. You’re going to be coming forth with more curiosity. It’s going to seem less adversarial, it’s going to buy your brain a lot more time to think and also process this information that’s coming across the table.

Even though it feels like you’re giving the microphone to the other party, the truth is the person who asks the questions is in charge of the conversation. Because you’re steering the conversation in the direction that you want it to go. You’re digging up the information that you want, that power that you want by asking appropriate questions that can give you everything that you need in order to be successful.

Erin: Are there strategies for both parties getting what they want? What tips can you use if it comes to encourage a compromise? Like especially as it applies to the real estate world, Fotini.

Fotini: Well, there’s a lot of things that are going to require compromise at some point in our world, but the more you can create value, the more creative and complex you can make things. Again, it sounds a little counterintuitive. Like why would we invite complexity? But it’s because the more creative you get, that’s not simple. That is creating value. It’s like the cliche value pie. The bigger we make the pie, the more value there is to go around and divide up, but what else can we put in the pie? Can we get creative with things like closing dates? Can we get creative with things like payment terms? Can we get creative about other ways to incorporate what would be important to one party or to another?

I remember the last time I sought a house, it was a quaint little neighborhood and I bought it from a woman who was twice my age and it was a very emotional thing for her to let go of. I told her she could come by for tea whenever she wanted and see the house and ask questions about it and so on. That was so reassuring to her. She wanted to make sure she sold the house to me.

I know this sounds perverse to all these people who are listening in the audience right now. It seemed bizarre to me too. I wrote about it in the book because it seems so crazy to me that this would actually happen, but this is an emotional security that this person wanted. It cost me nothing. It was no dollars in her pocket. It was just what is valuable to this individual, and we got creative about it.

Erin: Did she come by for tea?

Fotini: We exchanged some emails. She asked me some questions about it and then in the end she never came by. I had that house for four and a half years and it just never happened.

Erin: Well, she just needed to know that the door was open. Really that’s an important part of negotiation as well, but what happens, Fotini, if it looks like the door has closed? How do you wake up a negotiation if a little bit of time has gone by? Do you text and go, “Hey, we’re still here.” What do you do? How do you kind of reignite a talk that seems to have stalled?

Fotini: Well, hopefully, you’ve prevented it from getting down that path using some of these techniques, but inevitably it’s going to happen from time to time. This is one of the only instances where I will encourage people to ask a yes or no question. In fact, I will encourage them to ask a no-question, because, usually, I’m telling people ask a question that’s going to open up a conversation, but if they’re not open to having the conversation, maybe there’s a different way to trigger their subconscious brain. You might want to email them or call them, hopefully. I prefer to do things not over email.

I know it sounds super unconventional to everybody who’s listening because we do everything over text and email, but hopefully, you can ask them a question like, “Hey, did you move on? Did you find another house?” If they say, no, I didn’t, they’re going to go, “Oh, no, we didn’t.” We haven’t had a chance to, or things got away from us, or we were just really busy with this other offer or whatever it is. If they say, yes, we did, well, then now your curiosity is done.

You can case close and move on, but usually when you get that no response, that’s going to provoke the conversation to start all over again. This is the type of stuff I even use with my own clients when, or people use with me because I get so busy and it’s so hard to read all of the emails that are coming in and someone says, “Hey, did you forget about me? No, no, I didn’t. I’ve just been really busy and now, all of a sudden, I’m kick-starting that conversation again.

Erin: When you talk about your reticence to use digital communications, is that partly because it’s so hard to gauge somebody’s tone of voice or body language? Do these tools work against us when we’re trying to negotiate?

Fotini: Absolutely. I mentioned earlier that a third of your message comes through in your words. If you are doing something over text or email, that means there’s a 67% chance you could be misinterpreted. If you’re doing it on the phone, there still leaves a 33% chance that you could be misinterpreted. If you have a dry sense of humor, if you are somebody who is sarcastic, those things do translate well over email and text. That is the reason why we have emojis. Even those are often misinterpreted.

What do those two hands together mean? Some people think it’s prayer hands, apparently the origin of it is a high five. What are you sending to people? Do they even know? Those are the things that I don’t want to be misinterpreted. That condescension that we mentioned earlier, is that what’s coming across in your emails? Is it coming across as cold and aloof? Is it coming across as super eager and desperate? Those are the things that are difficult to read. You don’t want to leave them up to chance and misinterpretation if possible.

Erin: You have a rule of thumb about Post-it.

Fotini: I do. One of the things that I tell my high stakes clients, the folks I’m helping through these really intense negotiations where they’re sitting in these boardrooms, is you can send a really quick message to somebody across the table or under the table with a post-it note that says, “Pause, we need a time out,” or whatever. If you find yourself having to fill a Post-it with a paragraph’s worth of words, this is the time to take a time out.

Take a breather, think it through, because by the time you write it and by the time they interpret what the heck you’ve just written, there’s miscommunication galore even on your own team, between you and your client, or between you and your colleague. Take that time out to have the conversation before you get wrapped up in some more misinterpretation, even on your own side of the table.

Erin: Great advice. I would have the Post-its just so that I could mark parts of your book that I want to go back to because this has been an amazing conversation. As we wrap it up finally, Fortini, what are some of the most effective ways to be persuasive as a leader? What strategies can you use to help inspire and influence your team?

Fotini: Well, this is one of my favorite pieces of advice to give folks who are influencing others on a daily basis. It starts with a piece of research that I came across that came from Dr. Kelly McGonigal. Her book is called The Upside of Stress. They did this study at Harvard where, in 2013, they took a bunch of people and they made them sing in front of a group. Now, you and I are no stranger to a microphone, so I think we would have a good time if we went out for karaoke.

Not everybody feels that way. I believe microphones are the number two fear in America after death. I’m told it’s number three in Australia after spiders. What that means for people is that evokes a lot of anxiety the same way negotiation does. What they found in this study is they separated everybody into three groups with three different sets of instructions. They told the first group, regardless of how you’re feeling, I want you to tell yourself, “I am anxious.” They told the second group, “I want you to tell yourself I am excited,” and they told the third group nothing at all. That was our control group.

What they found was the group who told themselves, I am excited, outperformed the other two groups. We know it wasn’t because they were better singers, because they also outperformed them on a math test and a speech test in addition to the pitch test measured by a computer. Overall, they had a better performance. They changed their brains, they psyched themselves up, all because they told themselves, I’m excited. They gave themselves this little pep talk.

Now imagine what that can do for the people around you. If you are a leader, if you have people reporting into you, if you have people on your team, or maybe even with your own clients, if you want to lead them to a successful outcome, what if you were to say to them, “I am so excited for you.” “I am so excited for what the sale of your home is going to open up for you in terms of your future and what else that’s going to unlock.” “I am so excited for how this client is going to respond to all of this hard work you put into this proposal.” “I am so excited to see you flourish in your new home when we get this other party to accept this proposal.”

Now, all of a sudden, those other folks are going to perform differently. They’re going to respond differently to you and your leadership, all because you got their brains performing at a much better rate. They’re now not allowing all that crazy, irrational energy to take over because you just created that excitement for them. You can do it for yourself and improve your own performance, but you can also improve it for others. You can create a lot less resistance just by getting them excited about what is at the forefront of this transaction.

Erin: Well, we were so excited to be talking with you today and it was amazing. Thank you so much for your time, your insight, your wisdom, and just for a great conversation. Do you ever lose an argument at home?

Fotini: If you ask my dad, he might have a different response. Generally speaking, I try not to argue at home. In fact, people usually say to me, “Oh, your life must be so exciting. It must be like that show Suits.” I’m like, “Actually, the whole point of my life is to not have arguments.” Negotiations don’t have to be arguments. They can just be really simple conversations between two people.

It takes a lot of meditative breaths, depending on who I’m talking to.

Erin: That’s right. Thanks so much. We are so grateful for you today.

Fotini: Thank you for the wonderful questions. I certainly hope that this was helpful for everybody listening.

Erin: Oh, it absolutely was. Read more of Fotini Iconomopoulos’ wisdom in her amazing book about negotiation, not just in business, but in life. It’s called Say Less, Get More: Unconventional Negotiation Techniques to Get What You Want. REAL TIME is a production of Alphabet® Creative, with technical magic and, yes, very little silence by Rob Whitehead. I’m Erin Davis, and we invite you to subscribe and download all of our REAL TIME episodes. Every single one of them holds the keys to our understanding and success in business and in life. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis, proud to be your host, as today, we’re delving into information, disinformation, misinformation with a person who knows whereof he speaks. For more than five decades, Canadians have trusted Peter Mansbridge to guide them through the political, economic, and cultural events that have shaped our nation.

He’s one of Canada’s most respected and recognizable figures, having spent 30 years as CBC News chief correspondent and anchor of The National. On this episode of REAL TIME, Peter, through his unique journalistic lens, helps us understand why, how, and where we’ve deviated from trust and truth and how leaders can respond. Thank you so much for joining us, Peter. It is such a pleasure to have you on REAL TIME. Thank you for being here today.

Peter Mansbridge: Hey, Erin. It’s always good to talk to you, and it’s especially great to talk to you today.

Erin: We’re here to talk about trust and truth, and of course, you are someone who has earned the trust of Canadians for decades. When I told people that I was getting up to record this podcast with Peter Mansbridge to a person, they all said, “Say hi to him for me,” because you are someone who was in their living room, their bedrooms in their homes on the regular and you really do feel like a family member in so many ways.

Peter: It’s funny like that. You have the same experience over your time in broadcasting as well, but I can be in an airport or a hotel lobby or a shopping center, and somebody will come up, and they give you that look like they know you and they’ve known you a long time, and they don’t quite understand why you don’t recognize them, right?

Erin: Yes.

Peter: There’s a thing about our business that lends toward that kind of familiarity on the one hand and a degree of trust on the other hand.

Erin: It’s true because in so many cases, as I did in mornings when people were just waking up and you when people are ending their day, winding down whatever kind of day they’ve had, there is a trust. There is a bond that you form with people because you are there for them. As someone who’s earned the trust of Canadians for decades, how have you seen, Peter, the perception of these values change?

Peter: It’s a really good question, and the thing about it is, trust is a delicate quality and quantity in terms of how much there is out there. You have to earn it for one, and then you have to maintain that trust, and that’s not as easy as it sounds. There are times, and there certainly were times in my career when there was an issue about trust when people wondered about whether or not what you were telling them was accurate, was the truth or not, and you had to earn it.

You had to earn that faith that what you were delivering to them was the accurate sense of what had happened in a day or a week or what have you. I’ve monitored the trust factor for literally decades. For a long time, the journalism business was up there near the top, not at the top, the top is doctors and nurses, firefighters. The bottom was, you remember it used to be used car salespeople, right?

Erin: Yes.

Peter: They were the least trusted. It’s changed over time. The doctors and nurses, et cetera, are still at the top. Journalism, which had been near the top, has dropped down to– when you look in percentage terms, it is around 50% now. That’s a terrible number for journalism. Journalism is one of the pillars of democracy. You got to have it to believe that you have a democratic system, and to have it, you got to believe in journalism. When you start doubting it, then everything falls into some doubt.

That has taken place over the– I’d like to say, gee, it started the day after I retired, but it had already started before then. People were doubting what they read, what they heard, what they saw on newscasts, television, radio, digital, what have you. The more the business has exploded through social media, the more doubt has crept into it. To earn that back, journalists have to, first of all, be aware that it’s an issue and work at trying to bring it back, and bringing it back means ensuring that you’re telling the truth and that you’re transparent about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Erin: How much has the loss of the fairness doctrine back when Reagan scrubbed it in, I’m going to say the ’80s, and basically just allowed whatever anyone who called themselves a journalist to go on the air and say, “How much did that start to muddy the waters?” Because I’m guessing that that was where it maybe if not begun, then that was the blossoming, and then the internet just was the fertilizer.

Peter: You may have a point there. We tend to blame a lot of things on Reagan or especially so on Trump of late. Listen, part of the issue here, it’s not just the responsibility of journalists. It’s also the responsibility of the public. You’ve got to be prepared to challenge when you don’t believe something. Now, I’m out of the daily news business. I’ve been seven years out of the CBC, but I do a daily podcast and I get a tremendous amount of mail and reaction to it. In many cases, there’s the crazies out there, but not mainly on podcasts.

Podcasts seem to have a different kind of audience. They’re thoughtful, they’re constructive. When they challenge, they do so in a constructive way, not in a kind of ignorant way. That’s all good. That’s the way it should be. Journalists have to be prepared to answer them. A lot of the questions are around this issue of transparency. How do we do our job? How do we make a decision on what’s news and what isn’t news? What should be the top of a newscast? What doesn’t make it in a newscast?

All of that stuff is all part of the transparency issue, and we have to be more upfront about how we make decisions. Sure, it may well have started back in the ’80s, maybe even before then, but it has taken on a whole new dynamic in terms of trust, and journalists and their news organizations are not used in the way they used to be used. Decline in newspapers, the decline in network television, the move towards streaming, all of that stuff. Some of it is part of this issue. Not all of it, but some of it.

Erin: Whatever is out there, the idea that somewhere there is a Minister of Information who is sitting there overseeing everything that a news operation puts out so that it goes along with the government voice, which you and I know is insane. That there is a Trudeau or somebody sitting in the newsroom saying, “You are going to tell the story this way.” That’s just simply not true.

Where does the decision-making begin? The buck stops at your desk, but not everyone is a Peter Mansbridge. How does the decision to prioritize which stories, how they’re going to be covered, how is that done, Peter? Take it down to basics for us.

Peter: Sure. It is one of the misconceptions. You’re absolutely right that there is this hidden hand somewhere that directs journalism. Now, I can talk specifically about the CBC and the time that I was there. Once again, I left seven years ago, so I’m not sure how things are handled there now, but I assume and I certainly hope that they’re handled the same way as they were when I was there.

I can tell you that I was at the CBC for 50 years, five-oh, five decades, and only once in that whole period of time, and I was at a senior level in the news organization, the news structure, so I would’ve known, but there was only once in those 50 years where the government of the day ordered something up and said, “You got to do this.” The CBC folded like a cheap suit and did it. That was in 1970 during the October Crisis, 1970, so over 50 years ago, when they agreed to broadcast the manifesto of the FLQ.

It was part of the negotiating package that was going on behind the scenes. There was a great kerfuffle about that, understandably so, within the journalistic organization that that was a decision made by the government, not by journalists. I never saw anything remotely like that happen again. Now, do politicians no matter their stripe; liberal, conservative, do they cry out and say, “You’re biased. You’re this, you’re that. Why don’t you cover this? You should cover that”?

They all do that. That’s normal. That’s just part of the package that goes on in the background. Meanwhile, journalists do their job. You can argue about how well they do that and that’s a legitimate discussion to have, but move this stuff about political interference aside because it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at the journalism level. Maybe it happens at the bureaucratic level, but that’s different.

That doesn’t affect the journalism. The journalism, the decisions that are made in a newsroom, and I’m assuming most newsrooms are like this, but they certainly were at the CBC in all the newsrooms I worked in, including The National newsroom where I was the chief correspondent for 30 years, our decisions are made on a daily basis by a group of individuals who are very diverse in their backgrounds, both geographic, gender, culture, ideology. We have a mix. We deliberately have a mix and we move people around the country.

I started in Churchill, Manitoba then I went to Winnipeg, then I went to Regina, then I went to Ottawa, then I went to Toronto, overseas a couple of times. That is typical. Then you end up in this room where decisions are made on a daily basis about what’s going to make the program, what order things are going to go in, what we’re going to say, all of that stuff. Scripts are approved and debated by reporters as far away as the Middle East, covering stories. That all happens by this group of people.

Do we have arguments every day? Absolutely. I used to say, if you end up in a newsroom and there are no debates or discussions going on about what you’re doing, then you’re in a really bad newsroom. You want that kind of discussion, hopefully, on a daily basis about what you’re doing. That’s how decisions are made. They’re not made by some directive from above. That doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen where I worked.

Erin: Thank you for that clarification. Sometimes we need to hear that again.

Erin: The American author and futurist John Naisbitt said that we are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Coming up with Peter Mansbridge, the common misconception about the way newsrooms are directed, plus the crucial difference between mis and disinformation. Hey, have you heard? The Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, has launched a new national login experience. That new experience, REALTOR.ca Single Sign-On or SSO, offers you password security and self-serve management, personal data protection, and a mobile-first experience.

It’s up and ready for you to start using your new REALTOR.ca SSO username and password to access CREA’s products and services. Got questions? We are ready. Go to the FAQs at crea.ca/sso/ and away you go, and away we go back to Peter Mansbridge, our very special guest on REAL TIME. Misinformation, Peter, can lead to polarization, which seems to breed more misinformation.

We get into our camps, our tribes, and we decide, “No, no, I’ve got my fingers in my ears. I’m not going to listen to what you have to say because I’ve made up my mind.” What steps can we take to avoid falling into this cycle of misinformation, polarization, and more misinformation do you think?

Peter: Well, it is a bigger issue these days than it’s been for a long time, and I don’t want to dump on social media all the time, but that’s a lot of how it’s created in terms of misinformation. Disinformation is stuff that’s deliberately put out there to affect the news pool and the understanding of people. That’s a different manipulative way of doing stuff, but how do you challenge that twofold?

As journalists, you challenge it by demanding the truth, demanding the facts, checking the story. Too much ends up on the air, and especially in social media, without anybody checking anything. It just gets repeated, and at a certain point on the repetition factor, it scores its original purpose, which was to disinform, and it gets out there so much that people start to buy it.

The journalists have to check, but so do the people. There is an obligation on the public. When something doesn’t seem right to you, demand to know more, demand a better understanding of the story that’s being pushed on you. Whether it’s on social media or whether it’s on legacy media, it doesn’t matter. You can still make that demand. If you don’t hear back, then you know, well, it probably isn’t true. We all have obligations here to try and prevent this from happening, but we live in a world, and we’ve got to be realistic, we live in a world where there is so much information out there.

I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess on how much is real and how much is untrue, but let’s say it’s 50-50, which is possible. We live in this world where there is more information available at our fingertips than has ever existed before in the history of the planet. Our kids, they can get information to back up their essays or their exams at the touch of a finger. That wasn’t the case for us. It’s a challenge, and the monitoring of it is only going to get more challenging.

As we move into a world of artificial intelligence, I shudder to think the direction a lot of this is going in, what the world is going to look like, not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now, a year from now. Things are moving at such a rapid pace on the movement of information and the creation of information, but we got to put guardrails in. We have to be very careful or the polarized world will only get more polarized and more challenging and more difficult for us to maneuver in.

Erin: It’s almost as though critical thinking should be in the curriculum now for even elementary school, never mind high school and post-secondary, but being able to look at something– We’re with our nine-year-old grandson and he’ll be watching a video about the world’s oldest man and I’ll say, “Okay, Colin, you know this isn’t true, right? You know it can’t be true.” Because they’re saying he’s 160 or whatever. Well, why isn’t it? Just because someone has put something on YouTube. It has to start so young that you start going, “Is this real?”

It’s unfortunate because here we are needing to instill, not only in ourselves as adults, but as our children and grandchildren as well a healthy skepticism that didn’t have to be there before anymore. It was all Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and all those good things, but now it’s like, “Well, okay, wait a second, the Tooth Fairy does what now?” You know what I mean?

Peter: I do. I hear you. The other thing about critical thinking is it can be fun. Good for you that you’re teaching your grandkids that at a young age to be critical in their thinking, to be asking those questions. “Is that really true? Tell me more. Why should I believe that?” Looking for the facts. That can be fun. There’s nothing like leaving somebody stumped who is trying to force an idea on you that simply isn’t true and they can’t back it up. That idea should exist and parents should be able to answer it, which can be an even greater challenge.

Erin: Oh, yes, absolutely. It’s like when someone is having the argument with you about let’s say, I don’t know, I don’t want to say vaccines because that’s too hot a topic for whatever reason, but when someone will say, “Well, you know they want you to get this because they blah, blah, blah,” it’s just simply asking the question, “Well, who are they? Who’s this great cabal who is trying to do this to us all?” It does come down to critical thinking so that we may get back to your subject of trust and breaking the cycle and working together to change it.

Peter: It absolutely comes back to the trust issue because in those questions where somebody who’s critically thinking can’t get the answer from whoever’s foisting the idea on them, then they’ve got to go to somewhere they do trust. If it’s a health issue, they go to their doctor, or they go to a clinic, or they go to a nurse, or whoever they can go to, who they trust with their assessment of things, and that can lead them to a safer place on that issue.

My parents used to teach us as a young family. We’d sit around the dinner– We had the luxury of being able to have dinner together every night because of the hours my parents worked, but we’d have dinner every night and we’d usually have a topic of discussion that was borne out of the day’s news. It wasn’t a formal discussion or anything, we just ended up talking about something. Opinions would form and my dad would encourage us, “Okay, take the opposite view now. Let me hear you argue it from the other side.”

That was a really interesting exercise because it forced you to think more. It forced you to seek out other opinions on issues. It sets you up for a better way to handle issues of consequence that you may be suddenly confronted by. That was one of the ways we went about things when we were tired of just challenging for more facts to back up an assessment or an opinion. Information is everything. That’s how we move forward in life. It’s based on the information we gather.

If we reach a point where we’re all going, “I don’t trust any of this,” we’re in trouble, we’re in big trouble. We have to find the ways to be more confident about the facts we have and the facts we use to make decisions about whatever the issue may be each day.

Erin: Where do you get your facts, Peter? Where do you get your news from?

Peter: Oh, I just go on social media and say, “Hey, what about this?” No, you’ve got to read. We’re caught in the middle of a time bubble right now where the major issue, the international issue, is surrounding the Middle East. Well, you and I have been around long enough, Erin, to know that there are so many opinions and sides to the story that you can have a hard time trying to come up with what you believe to be the truth. How do you do that? You do it by checking out of social media, and you do it by reading through trusted sources and understanding the background.

Middle East is a complicated historic issue but so are many others. There’s a history to most of them, and you want to understand the history before you try to make decisions about the present on these issues because the old saying, “If you ignore history, you’re bound to repeat it in some fashion.” That’s not always a good thing. Reading and studying and understanding it is a good part of it.

In my job, I was not an expert in anything. I’m still not an expert in anything, but I’m a generalist, so I know a little about a lot which is, as my dad used to say, “Knowing a little about a lot is a dangerous place to be because you basically only know a little.” Right?

Erin: Yes. An inch deep and a mile wide, right?

Peter: Yes, exactly. What I found that I could do was get into a discussion about a subject and ask questions based on a reasonable degree of knowledge, limited but still reasonable to the point where I could ask questions which were probably similar to what a lot of people were asking at home. That’s where you want to be. As the questioner, you don’t want to be trying to be smarter than the guest. What’s the point?

Erin: Yes, you’re no longer the common man, and that’s who you’re supposed to be, but you’re also supposed to know what you’re talking about. You are in a very interesting foot-in-both-camps sort of position. Yes, please go on.

Peter: Yes. The audience can see that and they don’t like it if you’re trying to be more than you are. It’s like questions that go on forever and in fact, have an implied answer in the question. We all do that. I do it. I imagine you do it at times. It’s not where you want to be. You want to just get to the question, right?

Erin: Right.

Peter: That nobody cares exactly what your opinion is. They want to know what the opinion of the person you brought into the discussion because they’re an expert of some degree on whatever the issue is. That’s where I am on that.

Erin: When we return with Peter Mansbridge, applying the principles of trust and truth in your life and your work and leadership. We’ve been talking about social media today, and we know that Instagram has become such a huge part of our daily lives. Of course, that includes reaching out to your clients. Be sure and follow CREA, @crea_aci, on Instagram so you know when a new episode of REAL TIME is being released and for important updates from stats to our blog, CREA Café. Now, back to renowned journalist and broadcaster and our very special guest, Peter Mansbridge, on REAL TIME.

When we talk about trust and truth, many people, of course, think we’re talking about with the media or with the government, but how do these principles apply to, say, modern business leaders?

Peter: Well, exactly the same way.

Erin: I had more to that question, but I decided to cut it off because I didn’t want to ask more. No, I didn’t want to go on too long.

Peter: Correct. When I talked earlier about those trust listings, there was a whole list of professions in there-

Erin: Yes. Teachers.

Peter: -including bankers and real estate agents, you name it. They’re all in there, and they’ve all taken a hit as well, just like everybody else has taken a hit on trust. The same thing applies to them as well to ensure that what they’re dealing with when they’re talking, whether it’s to a client or a colleague, that what they’re saying is real, that it’s accurate, and that it can help others understand their business and the implications that they’re going to face in that business by being a part of it in some fashion, even just as a customer or a client.

Trust is just as important, and the truth is what trust is built on. You’ve got to have both of those no matter what your profession is.

Erin: What steps can businesses take to develop a culture of honesty, integrity, and transparency? We’ve seen companies that when they’ve screwed up, they’ve stepped up right away. Then we’ve seen other companies, an automaker comes to mind, that kept things on the down low about emissions for so long and lost so much trust as a result of that, and it’s taken a better part of a decade to build that back up. What steps can businesses take, Peter, to develop that culture?

Peter: Well, you’ve got to stay ahead of the story. What’s the term that most people use in terms of crisis management? What’s the best way to manage a crisis? Well, the best way to manage a crisis is to realize how it’s going to end and get there as quickly as possible. Don’t play it out. Don’t fudge. Don’t try to cover it up. If you know it’s going to end a certain way, get there. Get there right away.

It’s kind of the same just on a basic way of instilling that sense within a profession, is that, tell the truth, admit when you’re wrong, get there quickly, because every minute you take getting there is impacting your trust factor with your clients or your colleagues. We see so often a situation where a company or some business of some kind is caught in a problem, and you know that those early denials don’t seem to make a lot of sense. You know where this is going. It’s just a matter of how long it’s going to get there, and the longer it takes to get there, the less trust you have in them.

If you’ve got a problem, deal with it. Deal with it right away. If you’re lucky, you can deal with it behind closed doors before it ever gets public. Clean up the issue you have within. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that it’s going to go public. Somebody’s going to say something, or somebody’s going to find out something, and then you’re really dealing with a situation that’s damaged everything about your operation. That would be, to me, the basic thing. You’ve got a problem, deal with it. Deal with it right away.

Erin: That goes back to what you said at the beginning; your reputation, your trust. The trust that people have in you takes a lifetime to build and can be shattered overnight, and so you want to mitigate or get in front of that right away.

Peter: It’s so true. I’m talking from personal experience too. In my time at the CBC, there were times where bad things happened, stupid things. Stupid decisions were made, not crooked or anything, but just dumb decisions.

Erin: Human decisions.

Peter: Yes. You knew it was going to backfire. You knew your audience was going to say, “This is crazy, I’m not watching this.” There were times you had that, and you’re absolutely right, you can make a mistake. You can lose your audience or your customer base overnight and it takes a long time to earn it back if ever. Whether it’s journalism or selling widgets, these same kind of lessons apply. If you’ve got a problem, deal with it. Deal with it as soon as you can.

Erin: How can Canadians feel empowered to respond to the challenges that we’ve talked about today, Peter?

Peter: Well, in many ways, they hold a key to making a better world in this kind of world we’re talking about because if Canadians, generally, clients, customers, don’t buy in, that business is going to have a problem. The first thing Canadians have got to understand is they do have power. Consumer power is an amazing thing. It’s a wonderful thing. It can be a decision-maker on the way companies and professions end up on that trust factor scale. Don’t be shy. When you don’t like something and you feel empowered to say something, say it because they will listen. Eventually, they will listen.

Don’t be shy. They’re there to serve you. They’re there to make a profit, but they’re there to serve you. If you don’t feel served, make sure they know. Make sure they understand why you don’t feel that way. Whether you’re calling the local grocery store to say, “You sold me chicken, and you had it dated, but when I got it home, it was bad. That’s just not acceptable.”

No is an answer that, “Hey, listen, that’s the way it was dated. That’s the way it was dated” The only thing that’s acceptable at that point is, “Bring it back, we will replace it immediately,” or better still, “We’ll come to your house and replace it.” You’ve got some power. Don’t just dump the chicken or whatever it may be in the garbage and move on and say, “I learned my lesson, I won’t shop there anymore,” or, “I’ll look closer at the date or whatever.” Call them, tell them.

Erin: I appreciate that, we all do, and everything that you’ve shared with us here today as you have with your keynote in Ottawa at CREA. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your expertise, and we’ll remember when we see you in the airport, “Hey, it’s that guy. It’s Peter Mansbridge.” Don’t you love when they say, “Should I know you?”

Peter: Yes, it’s crazy.

Erin: I’ve gotten that, but it’s like, “I don’t know, should you?”

Erin: Tell us the most bizarre thing someone has said when they’ve met you and not known what else to say because fans get gobsmacked, Peter?

Peter: Actually, I can tell you when that happened, and this has happened a few times. It was just a couple of weeks ago. I was flying back from somewhere, got in the car at the airport, a taxi or Uber or something, and we’re driving into Toronto. The guy was very talkative, and we were talking away about different things. He’d recognized me. We were talking about– it could have been sports or world events or something. Anyway, he was very, very talkative.

He kept looking at me in the rearview mirror. We had a great conversation. It was very enjoyable. I get to where we were going, I said, “That’s great. Thanks so much.” I get out of the car, and before I close the door, he says, “I just want you to know I really miss you, Mr Robertson. You were great all those years.”

Erin: I knew it.

Peter: It’s funny because Lloyd says the same thing has happened to him. He remembered picking up somebody at the side of the road during a rainstorm. Him and his wife picked this woman up, and she got in the back seat, and he said, “I couldn’t leave you standing there. I’m happy to take you to your home,” which was, it turned out it was right along the way. He takes her home, they have all those discussions, she gets out of the car, she says, “You’re great, Mr. Mansbridge. I just love the fact that I got this opportunity to meet you.” Those things happen, and it keeps you honest too, right?

Erin: Oh, don’t they, though?

Peter: Oh, yes. Just when you think everybody knows who you are, they don’t.

Erin: Exactly. If I had a dollar for every time it was, “Hey, it’s Marilyn Denis,” I’d be flying off with you somewhere. Peter, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your perspective. We so appreciate all of it, and it was great talking to you.

Peter: Thanks, Erin. It was great talking to you, as always.

Erin: Catch more Peter Mansbridge whenever you like, simply by downloading his podcast, The Bridge. Informative and entertaining, you’ll stay up to date on all the latest developments in the world around us from someone you can trust. We trust you are enjoying REAL TIME, and please do let all of your associates and friends know we’re here. Catch every episode, past and future, simply by subscribing wherever you download the best podcasts.

REAL TIME is produced by Alphabet® Creative, with sound magic by Rob Whitehead and Real Family Productions. I’m Erin Davis, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode just as much as we did bringing it to you. Thanks for being here, and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis. We are so ready to take a deep breath and just be as we listen to the wisdom of our guests today. As a REALTOR®, you know success is tied to performance, but good things take work, and building a business in real estate is no different.

Performance, however, can sometimes feel like a synonym for stress. Fortunately, mindfulness can help bring balance. Today in Episode 42, we are joined by George Mumford, also known as the Performance Whisperer. George is a pioneer in sports psychology and performance, having worked with legendary athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Today, George is renowned globally for his groundbreaking approach to mindfulness which he brings to us to help REALTORS®, to help you along your path to enduring success. Do I have to whisper, George? You are the whisperer. Can I just talk normally?

George Mumford: Yes.

Erin: We’re going to do this our way. Welcome to REAL TIME, George.

George: Thank you. It’s great to be here with you, Erin.

Erin: Well, you have such an inspirational story. We are going to get to all of that. First off, let’s talk mindfulness. In the big picture here, we all have an idea of what mindfulness is to each of us. To me, it’s reading Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are. I know that that’s one of your mottos. Meditating and just breathing, being conscious of the breath, but you, what is mindfulness to you, as we begin what’s going to be a great chat here today on REAL TIME?

George: Thank you for asking. Mindfulness to me is just mirror mind. What that means is that mindfulness is just a mirror and it allows us to see what’s in front of the mirror. The idea of developing mindfulness is so that we make sure that the mirror doesn’t have any dust on it. We just clear it off. It just reflects what’s in front of it, everything that’s in front of it. Not just one thing, a little thing. It’s like mirror mind.

When you’re mindful of something, you’re just noticing it. You’re letting whatever it is that you’re mindful of speak to you in its own language. When you’re being mindful of it, you’re not pushing it away or pulling it towards you. This means the data or the object is in front of the mirror. You’re not pushing it away or pulling it towards you. You’re not even interpreting it. Not initially. You’re allowing it to speak for itself in its own language. Does that make sense?

Erin: Yes, it does because we all do it in our busy lives or many of us do. In telling your story, you have, as I’ve mentioned off the top, an inspirational story, George, but can you tell us how you went from aspiring basketball player to one of the most sought-after sports psychologists?

George: Yes. I went to UMass Amherst. I was a walker and I wasn’t recruited to play basketball. I had an academic scholarship, and at that time, I was rooming with Julius Irving or Dr. J. He’s a Hall of Famer, and one of the– He was my roommate in college. I used to play with him. We were roommates and we were playing on the team, but we were– It was right about this time, I guess, and we were playing pickup.

What happens is right now, because basketball hasn’t started, the varsity players or the people who are going to play, they would play against each other. During the pickup, we were playing, and when I went up for a shot layup or something, one of the guys undercut me. Cut my legs from underneath me and I injured my ankle. That was pretty much the end of my career in college.

I struggled with that. Initially, I got addicted to pain meds and then I got addicted to illegal drugs, specifically heroin and alcohol. I was a very functional substance abuser. I was able to graduate from college and work in corporate world for a while, but then at some point, I couldn’t keep doing it and I couldn’t stop. Then I got into recovery. When I got into recovery, I noticed that I had– First thing that was clear is that I had chronic pain, but I had to embrace and say, “My life is unmanageable by me. I have a problem.”

Once I admitted I had a problem, went into detox, got counseling, and got out of it. In the process of getting clean, I realized I had chronic pain. I couldn’t really take pain meds, so I had to figure out a way of relating to the pain without using substances because my addiction doesn’t know if it’s prescribed or not. It would just kick that addiction up.

Anyway, I was in this experimental program and it was called Stress Management, so I learned how to manage stress. It was really more about me changing my lifestyle and taking a more active role in my healthcare. I learned meditation and yoga, and I got exposed to Tai Chi, but the main thing it did was it opened up this idea that I had to learn. We had a syllabus, a book, a list of the books to read, and the things– so that we start to learn about the mind-body system, and the process, and realize the mind and body are connected, and that through self-regulation, I could regulate my stress or manage my pain in a certain way.

I got into this stress management course, which was taught by this woman, amazing doctor, Dr. Joan Borysenko. At the time, she was one of three psycho-neuroimmunologists. I learned about the mind-body system. Being the recovering perfectionist I am, I read every book on that syllabus, and then it gave me other books, so here I am in my 40th year of sobriety, and I’ve averaged over a book a week during that whole time.

Erin: Oh. Congratulations.

George: Thank you. It’s interesting because once I got clean and I started listening to myself, I noticed that I needed to be intellectually stimulated; ergo, I started learning things. Then I realized the best way to keep it was to give it away, and if I wanted to learn something, to teach it. I started working. I worked as a financial analyst during the day and then at nights and weekends, I would work in a detox helping people in recovery.

I started using this not only for my recovery, but for my well-being and teaching it to others. That’s how I got into it. Fast forwarding to 1990s, and I’m working with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Center for Mindfulness at the UMass Medical Center. He knew Phil Jackson, and they were teaching in the summer at this place called Omega. This is 30 years ago. Chicago Bulls had just won three NBA championships in a row, and Phil wanted somebody to come in to help the players deal with the stress of success.

I ended up going to training camp and working with the Bulls, and of course, they had a full-blown crisis because Michael Jordan’s father was murdered and Michael retired. That’s how I got started. It was really more about me just going there and just wanting to serve, wanting to share my experience, strength, and hope. That’s how I got there, and then it just took off obviously. The Bulls won championships.

Then Phil went to the Lakers, and the Lakers won championships, and he took me with him. Then I started working with other folks. I left the medical center and I started freelancing, and that’s how I got here, but it was really more about the adversity. It’s interesting because I’ve written two books, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, and then my current book, Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success.

The interesting thing is people would say, “Well, why did you write about the substance abuse and whatnot?” I said, “No, without that, I wouldn’t be here.” The gift of desperation, what I call the AOF method of motivation. It’s like a lot of people I work with, I know they say yes, they want to change, but they don’t change. Well, what helped me change was my butt was on fire or ass on fire. That’s what I mean by–

Erin: Oh, that’s the AOF. Thank you.

George: Ass on fire. I got eaten. Then it was the sense of urgency, but I got to a place because I had a friend of mine who got clean. He was an inspiration. I got triggered, my ignition got lit because I’d seen what was possible for him. Then once I got clean, it was like, “This is an amazing life.” Living on life’s terms but without substances, and actually getting to know myself better. I got to know myself, so I could be myself, so I could express myself, so I could share myself.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Two books, I continue to work with people. It doesn’t matter where they are. As long as you got a mind, I could probably work with you or help you work with yourself. That’s how I got there. It was through adversity, but saying yes to it and using it as a stepping stone, having the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset, knowing it’s all about learning, growing, and developing. Over these 40 years, I’ve reinvented myself multiplicity at times as well as getting to know myself more and more because I change, everything changes. It’s been a wonderful journey of self-discovery.

Erin: Next up as we talk with performance coach George Mumford, one amazing guest, two kinds of mindsets. Which one is yours? CREA Café is your place to take a break. Grab a pumpkin spice or whatever you like, and catch up on the latest trends and topics affecting you and your clients. Find it all at creacafe.ca. Now, we return to our conversation with George Mumford, and I urge you just google some of his quotes because we’re hearing them from the man himself today. Words of wisdom that apply to you both every day and especially in your life as a REALTOR® on REAL TIME.

You talk about fixed mindset versus growth mindset. I think that really, among all of the things that you’ve said so far, like the term recovering perfectionist, everybody raises your hand, unless you’re driving, keep both hands on the wheel. I think that that really resonates too, my friend. Let us talk about fixed mindset versus growth mindset, can we?

George: Yes. Back in my youth, I would read something and I’d say, “Okay, either I get it or I don’t get it.” That’s it. A fixed mindset says you can’t learn, you can’t grow, you can’t develop, you are what you are and you can’t change. The growth mindset is the opposite, which says, we all have this masterpiece inside, or a divine spark, or Buddha-nature, Christ consciousness, Quan Yin energy, whatever it is. There’s greatness within us, and in all of us, not just one, some of us, but all of us have it.

It’s really a matter of embracing it, developing it, and accessing it. The challenge is it can only be accessed by us. It’s an inside job. To the degree that I embrace my greatness, I’m able to find my flow and discover success. It’s just me being who I’m supposed to be. It’s being my authentic self, giving myself permission to go inside and follow my strongest passion.

Joseph Campbell would say, “Follow your bliss.” To me, I want everybody to have that experience. I want everybody to have the opportunity, like I said, to get to know themselves, to realize that you have a masterpiece within, you can access it. Only you can do it. The bad news is we lock ourselves up. The good news is because we lock ourselves up, we can let ourselves out. We can unlock ourselves.

Erin: Okay. We are all open to the message here that you’re sharing, George. In terms of business, how are the concepts of mindfulness and performance related in a business context? How do you make the two co-exist peacefully within– you’ve described yourself as a Type A, which again, many of us are, and recovering perfectionists, but you say you’re a Type A without the hostility. Let us go back to the business concept or context, and I’ll ask you again, how do you marry the two and can they coexist?

George: Yes. I was in business for four or five years before I left business, and while I was on this journey, and it’s really about having a way of being, realizing that you can compete in a way where you don’t lose your humanity. I say this to people all the time. When I’m competing, I’m not competing against anybody out there.

I’m competing against my previous best self, and I will say with grace and ease, which came decades afterward, but it is like you can love yourself and you can have the tough love, but it’s really more about understanding that no matter what you’re doing, wherever you go, there you are. Whether you’re a business person or whatever role you’re in, you can learn how to be in the moment and live in alignment with the way things work.

We live in a network of relationships, so it’s about mutual benefit, mutual respect, and seeing the greatness in others. I see masterpieces all over the place. Even if people don’t see them, I see it. That’s how I’m relating to myself and others. Mostly to others, it’s challenging to do it for myself, but through doing it to others, I can do it for myself, but it’s really more about having a way of being where you say yes to life and you embrace it and you learn from it.

Whatever it’s there, it’s like, what’s the lesson? It’s that simple. You see things as challenges, not as curses or burdens, or instead of seeing the enemy, seeing somebody who is suffering, just like I am suffering. It just may be they don’t understand that they can be an infinity. They can come from goodwill rather than feeling like they’re in survival mode where they got to destroy or deny anybody who’s a threat. Everything’s a threat when you’re in survival mode.

Erin: Exactly. That’s how it often feels in business, in changing economies and changing situations. Again, of course, since we’re talking to REALTORS®, in changes in the markets all the time. George, how do we get into the zone to maximize our potential?

George: Yes. How do we get into the zone? That’s perfect because I live a lot of my life in the zone. You don’t have to just be an athlete, but you do have to have clear goals. You have to have an ability to observe your goals and know when you have to keep make adjustments on the fly. Under the conditions, you’ll be in flow, but if you try to get in the flow, you won’t.

I know if your challenges are high and your skills, knowledge, and experience is high, and you are just out of your comfort zone, it’s hard to do, but doable. In other words, you’re out of your comfort zone, you have access to flow. It’s something that once you get the flow, then it becomes normalized. It’s like a step function. You have to challenge yourself some more. You have to learn more skills if that’s what you want to do.

You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. We know what the flow triggers are. We know that you have to have clear goals and get immediate feedback or feedback loops. In that loop, you got to keep adjusting, adapting so that you stay on task. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to feel uncomfortable, you’re going to experience some level of anxiety.

Anytime we change anything, we’re going to mobilize anxieties, but anxiety is the other side of freedom. It comes, but if you could say yes to it and just keep moving with it– The best example I can give is that you watch improv.

Erin: Oh, yes. Yes-and.

George: When somebody’s doing improv and someone says there’s a pink elephant in the bathroom, if you don’t accept that and you say, “No, I’m not going to go with that,” then there’s no flow. If you say, “Oh, just make sure he doesn’t use all the toilet paper,” or something like that, then– See what I’m saying?

Erin: Yes.

George: Whatever life throws us, we have to say yes to it and see there’s an opportunity to step up. To get in the flow, but you have to train for it. You have to be able to challenge– that’s why it’s got to be inter-directed. We got to set clear goals and get immediate feedback, but we have to be clear about the feedback we’re getting, the error corrections, what we attribute the errors to.

If we attribute it to not being big enough or fast enough or the right size, or have the right here or any of that, that’s not what gets us there. What gets us there is we make choices and we can learn from our mistakes. We attribute the mistake to not making the right effort or not getting the right understanding of how things work. Once we align with that, then you’re rolling.

It’s this ability to make mistakes and to learn from them, is this ability– and it’s interesting because Winston Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” What I’m really talking about is this idea of being a learner, learning to learn, and just realizing that it’s a lesson. What’s the lesson? You learn a lesson, and you keep it moving.

You have to say yes to stuff, embrace it, generate the hope, and then figure it out because that’s the other thing about us being these masterpieces. We figure stuff out. We are wired for success, but we have to be willing to get comfortable being uncomfortable and be willing to be honest with what we are getting and then stop blaming and denying. We have to say, “I am responsible. Even if something happens to me, I get to choose my response and my reaction to it.” In that space between stimulus and response, we get to choose in alignment with our goals and our core values.

I know it’s challenging, but we got to go inside and know what do I want and what am I willing to do, or who am I willing to be to do what I want to do. It’s that simple and that challenging. It’s easy in terms of, it sounds easy, but it’s challenging because it’s going against the stream. It’s going against everything we probably learned, that if you make a mistake, you don’t have to beat yourself up. All you got to do is see this feedback and then make the adjustment. You can do it with joy.

Whether you’re in business or not, it’s like, okay, you got core values, you have a worthy cause, and you have rules for engagement. You want to have your integrity, but you also want to keep your kindness and be able to have goodwill. Nobody wants to be around somebody who looks at them as a thing. Everybody wants to be seen as a whole person, not as a thing. If I don’t relate to you as a person with a body, with a mind, with a heart, and a soul or spirit, if I leave any one of those dimensions out from my interaction with you, then I’m relating to a thing, not a person.

The same with myself. I can embrace all of that, my body, the way it is, my mind, I can make my mind my best friend, my heart, I can manage my emotions. I can have emotional intelligence and the spirit. The other one about contribution and meaning, the meaning is to relate to people in a way that I want to be related, to see myself and others as one. We see that every once in a while when we have a catastrophe like 9/11, or when the young man, American football, Damar Hamlin, he was making a tackle. After he had the contact with the person, he just stood up and he fell down on his back and he had a heart attack.

Everybody came over and the game stopped. Everybody just was concerned about this young man. The NFL never cancels games or any of that stuff. At that moment, everybody’s individual selves melded into us, and what’s happening to him is happening to us, and we want him to be the best. Every once in a while we get through beyond this illusion of separateness. That’s helpful.

I would say that there’s a way of relating with integrity, with compassion, and with goodwill. You can do amazing things. Not only that, where you’re able to share the market, grow your business, and create an environment where people will work there because they’re able to be themselves. They’re able to grow professionally and personally. I know some people might say, “Okay, this guy has never been–” I’ve been in business, I work with CEOs. I know how this works. I know if you want to perform at an elite level, you got to be genuine. You got to be real. You got to have integrity.

You got to do the work. You have to not lose your humanity and know that I’m the other one. Even if you compete against somebody, you don’t make them a thing. You see them as a person. You relate in that way. It begins with me. It begins with me relating to myself as a whole person and taking care of myself.

Erin: We return to George Mumford, gatherer and sharer, and more about the importance of listening, especially when things are swirling around you, both in business and in life. We are glad you are following our podcast. We have 41 insightful episodes just waiting for you to dig in and be inspired. There’s a new one every month, and we’re grateful to have you joining us here in our REAL TIME podcast community. Now, back to the Performance Whisperer himself, George Mumford on REAL TIME.

Going back to so much that you’ve said, and honestly, you are preaching to the choir here, George, from man’s search for meaning to the stoics. That happened. Now what are you going to do about it? Als,o the aspect, the image of improv, and the yes-and, but the most important part of improv besides having a really good mind is listening. Listening is part of what you have given as a message to people who are in the– it’s chaos around them. As a leader, what do you do? What is the thing that is most necessary for you in order to not control chaos, but to ride it?

George: Yes. Be the eye of the hurricane. In the hurricane, the eye is calm, peaceful, it’s quiet, the blue skies. There’s no turmoil there. There’s just silence, spaciousness. I would even say love, compassion, openness, there’s an ease of being. You’re in a place of rest. When you’re in the eye of the hurricane, you can be aware of the hurricane without being identified or pulled into the whirlwinds. You’re not trying to make the hurricane go away. You’re trying to just– your intention is to let it be the hurricane. You be the eye, and like everything else, it’s going to rise and fade away.

Hurricanes don’t last forever, they end at some point. You need to stay in the eye and realize you’re in the eye from this place of rest. Joseph Campbell talked about it in The Power of Myth. This is anybody, but he said that when the athlete is in championship form, they come from this place of rest. They come from their center, so that they’re not compelled by desire or fear, they hold their center.

Now, you get to a place where you can be alert and relaxed at the same time, and notice things, and then the question is, “How can I help? How can I serve? Or what’s the win? What’s important now?” or make the next play. Just holding the space and having it calm makes a big difference.

I’ll share with you a story, the experience of the first year I was working with the Lakers, it was 2000, and the Lakers were playing the Portland Trail Blazers, and my buddy Scotty had a team and they had an amazing team. It was fourth quarter, Game 7, whoever won that game was going on to the NBA championship. It was 10 minutes and 28 seconds left in the quarter, this 12-minute quarter. They were trailing by 15 points.

Phil called a timeout when I was sitting behind the bench. Obviously, I got up when the team came over, and the team came to the bench and he said, “We have them just where we want them. One stop, one score. That’s how we’re going to win.” That’s all he said, we’ve been practicing mindfulness and this ability to be the eye of the hurricane or just make the next play, what’s important now, and won that game. It was a tremendous comeback, we won by seven.

That’s because he held the space, and he changed how things occurred to them. We can do this. I imagine Tom Brady did the same thing when they were down even more, when he came back and beat the Atlanta Falcons. It was the same thing. “Okay, man, we got this. Just got to make the next play, we ain’t got to get them all at once,” but that’s what it is. It’s being in the moment because, in the moment, you can manage the moment, and then the next moment, and the next moment.

All things are possible when we can be in the moment, and be clear about what our intentions are, and be able to execute them. It’s not about the other team, it’s about you, it’s about us. As a manager, there’s this idea of knowing what the rules are, and what’s important now. We got to begin from now and then, “Okay, stay calm, and then just focus on the next thing. Do what you know to do, and the next step will be given to you.”

That’s how you do it, but you have to program yourself because we’re programmed to overreact and curse and to feel like we got to be in there and we got to look like we’re angry or we got to look like it’s serious, we got to have a scowl face instead of a smile and say, “Hey, this is going to be awesome, we got this.” You just got to make the next play, and even if you don’t achieve everything, you still have changed your state, and you’re at ease. You’re having fun, you’re having joy, and then you realize that that can be a way of being.

Even if you’re challenged by a difficult task, or having a balanced workload and play, and you have somebody who’s sick, or something happens, if you stay in the eye of the hurricane, and then you ask, “Okay, what’s the next play?” You got to embrace, “Yes, this is happening, I don’t like it, but if I can say yes to it and generate hope, I can learn the lesson, I can relate to it in a way where it’s going to take me forward, and it’s going to transform not only me but the whole situation, people that are engaged in it and whatnot.”

That’s what’s possible, just being able to find that place of rest, that still point, that eye of the hurricane and observe experience in a way– There’s something I’ll say about that. From my own experience, when I come from that place of rest, when I come from the eye of the hurricane, there’s wisdom and creativity that comes out of that, that is beyond description.

That’s what flow is; you’re in flow, and you just know things. There’s no self-consciousness. You’re fully engaged in what you’re doing, not on how you’re doing, or seeing it as a personal self, you’re just in the flow. We have the capacity to do that, no matter what we’re doing. We can have access to that, but the best way to have access to it is not to have access to it. Just to create the condition in which that happens.

Erin: Can I ask you, George, if you’re in the center of the eye of the hurricane, the calm, and you’re talking about your teammates, your Phil Jackson, and you tell your bench that this is what’s going to happen, and glory be it does, what about in terms of REALTORS® and their clients? Because the clients are spinning sometimes. Buying a house, selling a property is so, so stressful. How do you help external forces or external beings who may not be on your bench?

George: By holding space, by staying calm and serving, just recognizing that they’re– asking them questions. People, they have their own way of doing it. It’s just focusing on the person that’s in front of you, focusing on making the connection and being a service. That’s the best way. I’ve had this experience where in between my jobs, when I wasn’t making enough money, and I’d be worried about paying the mortgage and all that stuff, and I’d be eager, maybe even people that are needy because there’s a different energy, but once I could just relax and just focus on serving, the money comes.

The idea is when you have a client, there’s a whole person in front of you. Can we just relate to them and deal with what’s there? By not trying to make the sale, we’ll make the sale because we’re serving, but just creating a space for them to be at ease so that they’ll be relaxed, and they’ll be able to do things because it doesn’t matter where you are, but our emotions are contagious.

It’s just really understanding that you’re serving the person. It’s just like you calm yourself down, and then it’s easy for you to relate to them, and that energy is going to affect their ability to calm down and just do the next thing. Ask them questions, get them to focus on the here and now and what they’re focused on. Not denying and say, “Oh, don’t worry about–” whatever. Just say you need a minute and you breathe.

These folks already know how to do it. I think once you come out of that eye of the hurricane, you know what to do. There’s an intuition, there’s a wisdom. These folks have to– some of them might even just be new. Being new, if you just be still in the deep listening, listening is not just what the person is saying, it’s their energy, the nonverbal communication. You see they’re at ease or not at ease, or there’s some distress there or whatever.

You just make space for it, and they know how to do that. It’s just like if you met a young kid or a little child that was lost, and even though you have a meeting or sell a house or something, or you got to be at a recital, your main thing is to be there with that child and to make sure that they’re safe and that they feel cared for. It’s the same thing.

Erin: George Mumford is author of Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success as well as The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance. We’ll be back with George in a sec. First, a reminder. Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned veteran, there’s always information to add to your professional toolbox at CREA.ca. From legal matters to navigating technology, it’s all there simply by clicking CREACafe.ca.

Now, if you’re like me, the lines are blurred between work you and real-life you. I think that’s okay. When we are our work, how do you make space in your life just for you, for rest, for peace? George Mumford has some answers that we hope will help on REAL TIME.

You’ve used a beautiful phrase, fight, flight, and freeze, but you got to rest and digest. Before we let you rest, and we digest all of this wisdom, George, I do have to ask you that because working in real estate can be high stress and REALTORS® or entrepreneurs with a lot resting on their ability to actively build their business, it’s not a job where, say, you can leave the stadium, or you can leave the office, and when you come home, and you close the front door, you are in a different space. Your work is with you. You are your work in a lot of cases, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

How do you keep that lava flow from coming in your front door? What can you recommend as a takeaway tip for us, George? Just to have that space, make that space. For some of us, it has to be a physical thing, whether it’s a candle or incense or just a certain mood. What do you recommend?

George: If you have a place in your house or a place where you can be alone, I was one of 13 children and my refuge was in the morning. I get up early before anybody else, and I could just be with myself. Just be there, be quiet, and be with myself. Joseph Campbell talked about that as well. He said you have to have a room or a place, a sacred space, where you could just be in a room and be alone and not be around anybody else. You could be with yourself and torture yourself, but be with yourself and just be kind and just be at ease.

Prayer, meditation, maybe you read Scripture or you read something that reminds you that you are a masterpiece and that you’re going to go through struggles, you’re going to go through difficulties, but it’s those difficulties that allow your latent abilities to manifest if you are willing to say yes to it and willing to know that you need your me time. You just have to do it.

You have to have some time when you can– maybe it’s in the morning or at night, or maybe you just go for a walk, but you have to have time where you can recover and just be aware of how you’re feeling, but just really having the me time. Some of us, like I used to like to run, I’d go on a run or something, but it’s really more about just sitting and breathing and knowing it.

Even now, if people are not driving and I’m talking and sitting, I can just be aware of just being in my body and breathing in, breathing out. Some people do different kinds of breathing, but just stopping and smelling the roses, or like you said, you might have a room or you might have a place. I like to walk along the beach, the ocean, but you have to have a time, what Joseph Campbell called creative incubation. That’s where your thoughts and everything come.

You just be with yourself and you’re just relaxing and just being there and just breathing and being in the moment and there’s a lot of different things to do. Some of us have spaces that allow us to do that, but we can create this ability to do that, where we just spend time every moment– I talk about– well, actually, Maria Popova, she has a thing called the Marginalian. It used to be Brain Pickings. She talked about what she’s done over the 10 years.

She talks about having these pockets of stillness where there’s times when you just pause and you just stop, and you see it in a commercial where they’re selling a certain car. I used to work in a stress reduction clinic in the medical center. Before you go in the house, you just sit there instead of just running right in the house. You just sit there and you just breathe and you just relax and calm yourself and say, “Okay, you’re about to do your most important work of the day.” You have to be able to let go of what went on before and what’s going to go on before it, so you can just be in the moment just being it now.

Even though we feel like we got so much to do, we have to think about it all the time, well, that’s how we get burnt out, or that’s how we get to a place of diminishing returns, I like to call it. We have to exercise, it’s called the relaxation response is what Dr. Herbert Benson framed it, is that we have this ability, when we focus on one thing, it could be a mantra of prayer, or just sitting and watching our breath. We allow ourselves to get into that rest and digest, where actually, we’re able to just recover the spent energy, especially the psychic energy.

There’s a lot we can do, but having a practice where we’re praying and meditating, or even having a gratitude practice or a loving-kindness practice or a compassion practice, any of these things where we focus on these emotions and we can feel them is ways we can train ourselves to be in the moment. Shawn Achor has a whole thing. He wrote The Happiness Advantage. He has these five research habits that one could do. For instance, saying out loud or writing down three new things every 24 hours each day. Three things we can be grateful for, just writing somebody a supportive note or something, or we live in a experience we really liked. Three conscious smiles, just smiling.

It’s interesting, it takes 13 muscles to smile and 72 to frown. Just smiling, it changes your whole physiology. Just looking at it in a way where, “Oh, okay, this is an opportunity. This is a stepping stone. This is not a roadblock.” That’s what we have this ability to do. Is the glass half empty or half full? Both are right, but if it’s half empty, you’re coming from scarcity. Your ability to access your mental capacity is diminished by 40%. You got to be able to stay open.

How do I do it? How do I need to recover? How do I know when I’m stressed out? I have self-observable signs. For me, when I was in recovery, and I had this, “I’m too cool, I don’t get stressed out.” My body would say, “Yo, man, this is stressing here because your shoulders are up around your ears, and you got a migraine headache.” When the migraine started coming on, I know I was trying too hard. We have these self-observable signs of distress. For some of us, it’s eating too much, not sleeping enough. Just really being worried about things, awfulizing. That’s what I learned. Awfulizing, focusing on all the things that go wrong or focusing on what you’re not doing instead of catching yourself doing something right or catching somebody else doing something right, and trying to balance that equation of that negative self-talk and changing it into positive, supportive, or directed thought.

There’s many, many things we could do to what I would call having self-awareness, this ability to have mirror mind, and then just generate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are in alignment with us regulating ourselves, so we can be in the moment, be at ease, and still be serious about what we’re doing, but have this compassion, this likeness, this confidence that we can generate from that by just noticing that it’s better to be in a growth mindset and see things as challenges versus seeing them as curses or things that shouldn’t be happening.

Erin: Amazing. Simply amazing. Thank you. You say we are all masterpieces, but boy, you sir are. We are so grateful to have had this talk with you today, and who knows how many people will be taking in your message as we rest and digest. Thanks to you, George, for making time to be with us here today on REAL TIME.

George: Well, thank you. Let me just point out something-

Erin: Sure.

George: -that what you can see is what you are. If you can see it in me, that’s because it’s in you.

Erin: Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure.

George: You’re welcome.

Erin: I’m Erin Davis. We invite you to like and share this podcast with everyone among your REALTOR® community and elsewhere, anyone you think that might also gain some wisdom from the words of George Mumford. Thanks for that. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association and is a production of Alphabet Creative®. Sound Tech by Rob Whitehead. Thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS®. I’m your host, Erin Davis, and I’m proud to bring you a trio of experts today who share with you their wisdom and hard-earned perspective. Settle in, because there’s a lot to enjoy in episode 41 of REAL TIME.

You’re starting to build your name as a REALTOR®, but how do you keep up the momentum or add an extra boost to the foundation you’ve already built? While it won’t happen overnight, with the right advice, and dedication, you can open new doors and grow your practice into one that measures up to the goals you’re striving to achieve. Continuing our Working REALTOR® series, this episode shares tips, strategies, and lessons learned to help you continue building your real estate career at any phase. Hear from three REALTORS® from across the country. Here we go.

Well, what a stellar lineup we have here today, and it’s just an honor to speak with each of you. Let’s start with a quick round of introductions. Who you are, where you’re from, and what you or your clients and colleagues would say sets you apart in the business. We’re going to start with Nene from Oakville.

Nene Judy Akintan: Thank you for having me today. My name is Nene Judy Akintan, and my family and I are immigrants from Nigeria. Now, I wear many hats in my life. I’m a wife, mother, mentor, speaker, author, REALTOR®, and more importantly, I recognize myself as God’s unique creation.

As the owner of Oakville Living With Nene, a real estate business in Oakville, Ontario, I also co-manage a non-profit foundation, I AM. I CAN. I WILL, alongside my adult children, Temi, Tife, and my niece, Olympia. Empowering minority women and youth is a cause I’m deeply passionate about, and this commitment is reflected in my previous role as a vice-chair of the Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce, and as a current board member of the Black REALTORS® Association of Canada. Once again, thank you for having me.

Erin: Our pleasure. It’s an honor to have you here, Nene. Ruth Alexander, tell us about yourself, please.

Ruth Alexander: Hi there, and thank you so much for having me. Nene is a tough act to follow. I definitely am so proud to be here as a REALTOR® representing Calgary, Alberta, and surrounding areas. I live in Strathmore, Alberta, a small town outside of Calgary, and I put about 98,000 kilometers on my car last year. I have a team that encompasses four other amazing, talented, passionate real estate agents. Young Mi, Kirsten, Diana, and Olivia joined me on this incredible platform of real estate and offering amazing guidance and raising the bar really of what being a real estate agent means. I’m so proud to be their leader, and mentor, and of course, I do all of it for my family, my kids, and I’m just totally pleased to be here today. Thanks so much for having me.

Erin: Thank you, Ruth. It is an honor to have you here today as well, and Steve. Steve, tell us about yourself.

Steve Saretsky: Yes. Born and raised in Vancouver, just run a pretty lean, mean team here. Very active on social media, run a newsletter to all sorts of real estate professionals, policymakers, et cetera. I also run a podcast called The Loonie Hour, which is a national podcast that focuses on macroeconomics, finance, and of course, real estate. I really spend a lot of my time on that, and try to expand the conversation and the educational piece, and it certainly helps drive a lot of my business as well.

Erin: I have to ask you, Loonie Hour, you spell loonie with an E or without, if people are looking for it?

Steve: Yes. No, it’s loonie like the Canadian dollar, so a play on words.

Erin: Yes, it is, and I love that. I just love it. For any of our listeners who are early in their career, tell us some common mistakes that anybody can make at this stage or mistakes that you’ve made yourself. Ruth, we’re going to start with you. Are there any mistakes that you made that you might avoid if you could turn back the clock?

Ruth: I think that’s a two-tiered question, and the first thing I would say is to avoid being attracted, as a new REALTOR®, to a brokerage – really, your business is going to be based on you and your guiding principles, who you are. You really have to align yourself with a real estate brokerage that shares or mirrors your branding and your goals. I made the mistake early on of joining a brokerage that really didn’t offer any of that mentorship or coaching or negotiating skills that were really, really important. It did waste three or four months of my time, and I had to start all over again, so I definitely think choosing the right brokerage is important, and the right broker who has your back and gives you that incredible training. That is going to be so important because as a new REALTOR®, your course does not teach you any of the day-to-day skills and talents that you’re going to need. Be sure to surround yourself by really experienced coaching and advisors, which starts with your brokerage.

Erin: That’s excellent advice. Steve, does any of this resonate with you, and what is your take? Mistakes you made, things you’d like to do over, any of that?

Steve: Yes. I think it’s just surrounding yourself with people that you can learn from, that are willing to be helpful. I think I went to a couple brokerages early on and maybe didn’t have the best support or mentorship, people trying to withhold information, and I feel like that’s the old school mentality. I always tell a lot of new agents, even if it’s your first year, just try to get on a team, learn from someone that’s successful, and I think it’ll speed up your growth.

Erin: Okay. Nene, how about you?

Nene: I think this is a great question. In addition to what Ruth and Steve have said, one thing I’ll say is do not be a secret agent. What do I mean? I mean, let everybody in your sphere of influence know that you are a REALTOR®. The nail technician, the grocery store clerk, your dry cleaner, the doctor’s office, family, friends, parents in your kids’ school, let them know you’re a REALTOR®. Now, don’t be annoying with this. Do it in a classy way, but do not keep your REALTOR® skills under wraps. Let everybody know how much of a great REALTOR® that you are.

Another thing I would say to new REALTORS® is, join a committee. We belong to different boards, and each board has different committees that you can volunteer on. I did that when I started, and I met an amazing lady REALTOR® who actually became my mentor. My very first deal came through that lady. Join a committee, put your name out there, get to know the older REALTORS® in the business.

Ruth: If I may follow up on that, Nene, that’s such great advice.

Erin: Yes.

Ruth: Speaking to not being annoying, I think it’s really important as a REALTOR® to be very proud of your position. You are a really important piece of what people need when they are trading in their biggest investment in their life, so be really loud, and proud, and have no shame in being a REALTOR®.

Nene: Yes, I agree.

Erin: Steve, would you like a chance to add anything to this at all?

Steve: Yes, just on the educational side of things. My biggest thing I think when I tell agents and stuff is just learn your markets, know your product inside and out. It’s going to make you more confident, and then that confident will come through to the client on the other end.

Erin: Up next, sharing what you know to help build your brand. When’s the last time you visited CREA Café? It’s your place to take a break and catch up on the latest trends and topics affecting you and your clients. Find it all at CREACafe.ca. Now let’s get back to tips, strategies, and lessons learned in three successful lives as REALTORS® with our guests, Ruth Alexander from Calgary, Oakville’s Nene Akintan, and from Vancouver, Steve Saretsky on REAL TIME.

In our first Working REALTOR® episode, we talked to REALTORS® about building your name. Now Steve, you run one of Vancouver’s most popular real estate blogs. How has being a go-to source for market insights helped you to grow your brand and your business?

Steve: I think that it creates a level of trust that people that are already following your work, they feel like they know you, and so when you go in to meet a client for the first time, they already feel like they’ve known you for two years because they’ve been following your work for that long. It doesn’t feel like you’re having to hard sell or close anybody. The relationship feels like it’s already there, as weird as that may sound. You have to think about a lead source that comes through where it’s like if you just send a pamphlet in the mail saying, “Just sell with us,” there’s not really any relationship there. They don’t know anything about you, they don’t know who you are other than you sold real estate. Whereas when you write consistently or you’re doing a video consistently on the internet, people feel like they start to know your personality and how you think about the market, and what you’re seeing, and your stories. I just think it creates a relationship ahead of actually meeting somebody.

Erin: An important part about writing a blog, as I speak here from experience, and you will know this, Steve, too, is to not make it all about you, but to turn it outwards and make it about them. Make it things like, what’s in it for the reader? What makes them want to come back and see, “Okay, what’s Steve got to say today?”? Would that apply to you as well?

Steve: I can tell you I’ve never had a call to action on any of my content. It’s never like, “Hey, by the way, call me if you need to buy or sell.” It’s just like, “Here’s the information. It’s not that hard. If you want to track me down, it’s very easy to do.” It comes off as non-salesy and you’re out there. You’re putting the reader first, which is I’m going to try to educate and give all the best insights that I have available. I’m going to document that in writing and put it out there, and I’m going to put it out there consistently. I think people appreciate that, as opposed to.

I think the wrong way I look at it is, you get a lot of REALTORS® and people say, “I should do social media. Are you getting leads from that? Does it work? What’s in it for me?” I think it’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s like, give first, and over time, the more you give, the more you’ll receive back. I think it’s just you have to frame your mindset a little bit differently around content. Everybody’s always looking for the instant gratification that if you put out two videos, you’re going to get a new listing out of it. I think that’s just the wrong way to look at it.

Erin: I love that. It takes time to build that kind of loyalty and connection with people. Steve, what strategies help you balance the creation and promotion of so much content? You’ve mentioned a podcast as well. With your day-to-day responsibilities as a REALTOR®, how do you do it?

Steve: I think it’s just prioritizing. I look at it and say I’m a media company first, and then I’m a REALTOR® second. I genuinely believe that because I think creating the media side of it actually ends up driving the entire real estate business. It’s the content first. It’s really just taking the time and prioritizing the content and the media side. I think it creates this platform that you have that you can then leverage into so many different other things as well. People are willing to spend an hour, an hour and a half, two hours a day cold calling, or door knocking, or prospecting, and open houses, but they’re not willing to spend an hour a day producing content. I just find it interesting.

Erin: There will be people who wonder, “Well, should I outsource this?” because there are people who do this for a living. How do you feel about outsourcing? I’ll ask you this, Ruth, as well in just a moment, and Nene. Steve?

Steve: I think that for the most part, you can’t outsource your direct social media. I think that you can get help with it. I think that you can have people that edit videos for you, that maybe you write the blog and have somebody else actually post the blog for you. In terms of being active on Twitter, or on Instagram, posting it and responding to comments, that should be you. You should be responding to people, not some assisted social media – it’s a people-first business, and so you have to be actively involved. You can’t outsource that.

Erin: Ruth, you have said that you are all about building awareness. Let’s talk about that and how you do it, how you fit it into your life, as Steve has talked about here, too.

Ruth: I will mirror Steve in saying it’s really difficult. I have tried to “outsource” some social media to take off some of the burden, because social media is not an easy task. It’s very time consuming. I have the wrists and the social media elbow to prove it. It’s like a sport, and you really definitely have to be all in. It has definitely built my brand from the ground up, and it’s about storytelling.

I do have a call to action almost everything I do, because I’m half hunter and half gatherer, and I can’t help myself. It’s just my personality. Again, I’m just being my true authentic self, and everyone knows that about me. I cannot go to an event without shamelessly promoting or handing out a card, and overhearing conversations about homes, I’m all over it. I do try not to be annoying, but back to social media – thanks for the reminder, Nene. I do have a good sense of humor around it, and I think that helps break the ice. Back to social media, the content – I don’t have a blog, and I commend you, Steve, because that is a tremendous amount of work. I have to say I started my career without much knowledge whatsoever, like most REALTORS®, of any stats and the importance of the stats. I really started using my passion for marketing. I used that first to get my name out there, and I just rolled with it, and I have now – it’s my fifth year only in the business, but I’m addicted to the stats and the numbers. It’s also very important for anyone listening that’s a new REALTOR®, or anyone in the business, understands that the public get one version of the stats. We all know as REALTORS® that if it’s a seller’s market by 197% in Calgary, for example, every single seller in the entire city and surrounding areas believe it’s a seller’s market. We know very well all over Canada and in every province in every city, there are microcosms of economics going on in various different neighborhoods. One next door to the other can be very different. One can be an extreme seller’s market, while the other’s not the case. I do find it fascinating, and building your reputation on a storytelling basis is a nice combination of getting people to know you, to like you, and then they trust you. Much like Steve mentioned, when I show up to a listing agreement, to complete strangers, I am not a stranger to them. They feel like they know me, and they’ve asked me to come to their home because they like what I’m putting out there. Our combination of tips, showing the passion we have for our work, and educating clients is really what we do on that platform.

Erin: I’m so glad you mentioned education, because I know that, Nene, you are a huge fan of educating yourself and of training. Let’s talk about how you stay on top of it all, working, not just putting out, but also taking in. It’s so important.

Nene: Yes. It’s very interesting when Ruth. Just to digress a bit, when she said two property on the same street are not the same. There are economics attached to each one. Clients come and they say, “Oh, we saw that this sold for gazillion dollars. Why are we not listing mine at ” I’m like, “Okay.” We need to drill it down, so it’s very important. Educating ourselves as REALTORS® is critical to success in the industry. Knowing your statistics, knowing what is happening in different communities. Not only your community, but different communities so that you’re able to knowledgeably – because it’s very important to give the right information. I hear some interesting things sometimes, and I’m like, “Oh, where did that come from?”

Anyway, being able to give clients timely information, helpful, and relevant information is very key. I do a lot of training, self-development. I’m listening to two or three podcasts or training for my brokerage every week. There’s one thing I also do, which is time blocking. I keep that time for myself every day to learn something new happening in the market. Knowing your stats, training is very important. If you’re a new REALTOR® listening to this, just be mindful of the fact that you need to train and develop every single day. Not just new REALTORS®, even tenured REALTORS®. You need to keep on top of the market.

Erin: When we return, where to go when you need to know. Our guests share their sources. CREA Learning Hub is a source, too. If you like learning about all things Canadian real estate on REAL TIME, visit the CREA Learning Hub. It’s newly refreshed to be more interactive, user-friendly, and even easier to navigate. Now back to REAL TIME with our REALTOR® guests, Nene Akintan from Oakville, Ontario, Ruth Alexander of Calgary, and Steve Saretsky of Vancouver.

We all know that CREA is a fantastic resource for stats, and insights, a national authority, but it never hurts to get insight on other sources for information. Steve, where else do you source your information? We’re not just talking straight numbers that are constantly changing. How do you mine that information?

Steve: I’m definitely a – I almost call myself a professional curator, which is like, there’s so much information out there and so many different news sources. I almost go and round it all up and then summarize it in notes, basically, for people, whether it’s a – Twitter I found is a great place. You can follow some of the best mortgage brokers there, best REALTORS®, best housing developers, politicians, economists, et cetera. You can really curate your own feed to have incredible information from all these individuals, and then be able to source it for yourself. That’s probably one of my main go-tos. On the data front, in Vancouver, I’ve gone and actually spent money and built out a platform where we’re able to actually take the aggregate data from our MLS system and run it through some platforms where we can basically create charts, and tables, and graphs to figure out how the housing market’s performing.

Erin: Ruth, is there anything you’d like to add on this before we move on about how you curate where you get information from?

Ruth: Much like Steve, we have a variety of tools. I invest in a lot of tools not all REALTORS® invest in, that gives me the charts. People are very visual. It’s important to read CREB’s monthly market report, but it’s great to dial it down into visual charts so that our clients can easily understand and see the trends. For example, we have three neighborhoods in Calgary that are just right up against one another. When you print out an actual graph and chart, much like Steve is mentioning, it’s really easy to see how very different they all are, even though they’re neighboring communities.

I think it’s important to always invest in tools that are visual so that you can break it down. Often, even though a lot of our clients are MBAs, and engineers, and PhDs, they really need to see it. It’s important as a REALTOR® to invest in those tools so that your clients understand all of this jargon that we are very comfortable with.

Nene: Actually, Ruth and Steve said this. It’s very important to capture the data in a way that people can understand it. To her point, I have a lot of physician clients who they’re investors, but when I drill it down to the numbers and the graphs, it makes a whole lot of sense to them as to why they should invest in this versus this. Those are some of the important things that REALTORS® bring to the table that sometimes people don’t really understand. Just investing your time in getting that training, getting the tools, mining the data, like Steve said, to be able to present it to your client in a holistic way, but also very – it’s instant. They see this and it makes sense to them immediately.

Erin: That’s so important at a time when we have so little time. I’m going to do something really quick here, a lightning round. We’ve seen massive changes in Twitter over the last little bit. Of course, Elon is now calling it X, whatever you call it. I’ve heard, Steve, you refer to it as Twitter, and I still do, too. Are you staying with that platform? Are you diversifying to Mastodon or Post or any of the other upstarts? I’m loving Threads, for example. Any of the other upstarts that are trying to take a run at Elon’s discontented customers. Start with you, Steve.

Steve: I’m personally not. I think that Twitter is the water cooler for especially investing, investors. Finance is a huge community there. Obviously, I’ve spent so much time, I’ve been on that platform for a decade now. I think we’re getting close to 50,000 followers. That’s hard to replicate and take to a different platform. With that being said, I could definitely invest my time. We’ve got a YouTube channel, run the podcast there, and I write a Substack, which is where I do my newsletter. Definitely feel like I’m spread out across different platforms, but the reality is, I don’t have a big enough team here where I can be on every single platform, but yes, we’re certainly doing our best.

Erin: Ruth, how about you?

Ruth: Exactly, Steve. I think it’s really hard to be really good at everything unless you have a massive staff, I guess. The problem with the massive staff doing your social media is you lose that authenticity. I think that is our trademark. Twitter, I’ve never been a huge fan of because I have a channel, I never use it. I’ve built mainly, surprisingly, on LinkedIn. That is my best channel. I’ve worked really hard on that. Instagram is more of an entertainment vessel in my opinion. I use it to entertain and to go back to that know you, like you, trust you. We use it more as an attractant versus anything too, too serious. Then Facebook, we just repost. If I have any advice for REALTORS® who want to get involved in social media, pick one or two and become really good at it, without becoming a dinosaur, of course. You have to be really conscious of new things coming up. TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, or Threads, whatever it is, take the time to be really good and get really in tune with one before you start the other. It’s often overwhelming for REALTORS® to think, “Oh my God, I have to post three times a day. What am I going to post?” Believe me, it’s taken me years to become just a natural at it. If you’re just starting out in social media, you want to grow a following, remember, it’s social. It’s not just about posting, it’s about commenting on other people’s posts, sending them messages, giving them kudos. It’s a give and take. It’s called social networking. A lot of people forget that and they get really, really bogged down into what they’re posting every day. They forget that they’re supposed to be interacting. Having said that, it’s a very time-consuming art. Be cautious to try to be everything to everyone and use every channel. Pick one or two that resonates with you and that you’re enjoying posting on and go from there.

Erin: Wow, that’s some great advice. We’re hearing words and terms here that, 10 years ago, people would have gone, “What did she just say?” We’re talking TikTok, and Insta, and Mastodon, and Post. Okay, Nene, what’s your go-to?

Nene: My go-to is actually Instagram because I’m a goofy person. Just like Ruth said, Instagram is entertainment. Everything for me is content, so Instagram is my go-to. My following is not as much as Ruth’s. However, what I find out is I have people who come up to me in the streets who don’t follow me, but they see my Instagram posts, and then we start to talk real estate, and they become my clients. Like Steve, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still on my Instagram, but I’ve learned something from you, Steve. Twitter, investors, I love that. Also from Ruth, I just learned LinkedIn. I love doing this because I’m also learning as I’m going along, so thank you for sharing.

Erin: Coming up, we’ve all heard the lyric that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. For one of our guests, that’s exactly how she fell in love with being a REALTOR®. Now, whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned veteran, there’s always information to add to your professional toolbox at CREA Café. From legal matters to navigating technology, it’s all there, simply by clicking on creacafe.ca.

We return now to episode 41 of REAL TIME, as we enjoy the wisdom and perspective of three experienced REALTORS® with vastly different backgrounds, starting with Ruth Alexander from Calgary. Well, Ruth, as we touch on social media and drill down, as you all say, you’ve worked as a social media strategist for a number of years and built a big following for your own business. You’ve already given us some really good tips and stuff, but I think it’s interesting to note that you actually started on social media a long time ago, and even before you became a REALTOR®. Was that your ace up your sleeve?

Ruth: I do think it was an ace up my sleeve, and I’ll tell you, becoming a REALTOR® just happened almost by mistake. I guess all the best things that happen to you in your life sometimes stem out of hard times in your life. If you go back 10 years ago, I had a cottage and a property in Mexico that had to be rented out in order for me to make any type of income. Of course, that’s when VRBO – I don’t even think Airbnb was out then. It was VRBO. I had to rent those properties out in order to put groceries in the fridge for my kids.

I had lots of great photos. I just happened to know how to take a picture. I had lots of great photos of these properties, and I quickly pivoted to putting them on VRBO, writing about them. Then, of course, I just had Instagram and Facebook when they first came out. I learned how to copy a link and post pictures. I learned that pictures worked better than videos back at that time. I started to learn about algorithms, and I really was very successful at getting renters.

That translated into, “How do I use this skill to make more money?” I approached some REALTORS® that I knew, home builders, various different companies, because it was so fresh. I really did know how to quickly copy and paste photos, write a description, copy a link, put it in the post, what hashtags were, in a very basic way, when no one else was doing it. I basically did it to survive. The light went off in my head to use my marketing knowledge and this online knowledge and get my license. That’s how I put them all together and it worked.

Erin: There’s a lot of power in having nothing to lose, isn’t there?

Ruth: Definitely.

Erin: As we learned earlier, Nene knew you and felt like she knew you already before we all sat down for this chat here today. That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Ruth: Nene, you’re in Oakville, Ontario. I have no idea how you learned about me, but it is through my use of hashtags I can bet. Through hashtags and boosting my followers. It is called a bandwagon effect, and it really has worked. A lot of people that I run into all over the province and the country, when I’m visiting different cities – one of the members on my team called me one day and said, “Oh, my gosh, I was at the farmers’ market and someone came up to me and said, ‘Oh, I know you. You’re with RARE Group. I follow all of you on social media.’” Just a complete stranger. It does work, but it only works if you’re consistent, and committed, and creative. The three C’s. You have to keep on doing it. Like Steve said, you have to spend the hours it takes to find your groove, and nothing comes easy. That’s so true of social media, isn’t it, Steve, and Nene?

Nene: Yes.

Steve: Yes.

Nene: It is.

Steve: I think everything works, right? It’s like door knocking works, cold calling works, open houses work. You have to do them a lot and do them very consistently to actually see the results. I think that’s the same thing for social media. You can’t post two pictures on Instagram and think you’re going to get three sales out of it. I did a YouTube channel.

Ruth: We’re laughing because it’s true.

Steve: Yes, it’s crazy. Anyways, I did a YouTube channel where I did a video every Saturday just covering the Vancouver housing market and Canadian real estate. I don’t think I got my first lead or deal out of it for about 12 months, maybe 18 months. Then as you got into year two and a half, year three, it just started compounding, and compounding, and compounding.

Ruth: Isn’t that the way with any business? You are a business owner, you are an entrepreneur in this business, so you cannot expect a quick fix. New REALTORS®, often I see this mistake a lot, they become a REALTOR® and they do the big, “I’m a REALTOR®,” post. I think they’re disappointed when they don’t get business from that post, and they don’t understand that repeating it is not a sin. You have to repeat, repeat, repeat because of the way algorithms work on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I think people think that 700 people see their posts, but truthfully, just a small percentage ever see your post. Having that no fear attitude of continuity and doing it over, and over, and over, and not having any shame associated with it. “Oh, I shouldn’t post that I’m a REALTOR®. Everybody knows I’m a REALTOR®.” That’s not true. They may not have seen that post. You’re looking at your page every minute of every day, but remember, when you’re browsing, you’re browsing, and you see thousands of posts. There’s no shame in continuing to post the same thing. Maybe just do a different image or select a different frame in that video that you posted last week. Select a different frame. It shows up differently on everyone’s feed.

Erin: That is so important. So many of us have trouble with self-promotion. Not everybody, and certainly not among REALTORS®, but those of us who produce content have difficulty because it looks like, “Well, I’m doing this again. I’m putting out this message again.” You’re so right. It’s different eyes, different attitudes, different times. I’d like to go back to something that you said, Ruth, that Steve said, and that I’m sure Nene was nodding in agreement, the three C’s of consistent, creative, committed. I’d like to add something that Nene truly believes in, too, which is connected and being the same person on and off social media. Would you like to expand on that a little bit, please, Nene?

Nene: Yes. That is very important because when people meet you, they feel like they know you. Like Steve and Ruth said, they feel like they know you. If you show up differently, they’re going to be like, “Huh.” I know we’ve heard stories about some celebrities who, when people meet them, they’re like, “Oh my God, that’s not the person I thought it was.” For me, I’m very goofy. I’m goofy on social media, I’m goofy at home, I’m goofy when I meet people on the street. It’s very important to be consistent in your posts. You have to be authentic in who you are, so be yourself. Don’t be somebody else on social media, pretending that you love real estate or this, and that, and the other, and then when they meet you. You know what I’m saying, Ruth. When people meet you, you’re totally different. It’s important to be consistent in every aspect of it, so that way you’re as relatable when they meet you in person as they see you online.

Erin: Steve, anything you want to add?

Steve: Yes. I think just have fun with it. Give more than you take. I think you should always have your end audience in mind, so you’re not bombarding them with your sales pitch. You’re out there, you’re providing good educational content or entertaining content, and then if you want to throw in the odd post where it says, “Hey, guys, just reminding you this is what I do,” of course. It’s always finding that healthy balance because you’re not going to grow a large following by just self-promoting yourself. I think it’s, like I say, you just have to – I always say this, and it’s like, think about all of the accounts that you follow on social media. Let’s say you’re on Instagram. Think about the accounts you follow on Instagram.

Why are you following those accounts? Usually, it’s because they entertain you or they educate you. I think your social media should, in general, be doing one of those two things.

Erin: We are glad you’re following our podcast, and we have 40 more insightful episodes just waiting for you to dig in and be inspired. There’s a new one every month, and we’re grateful to have you joining us here in our REAL TIME podcast community. As we wrap up today, using your passions outside of your life as a REALTOR® to fuel your business. Back to Steve Saretsky of Vancouver, Ruth Alexander of Calgary, and Nene Akintan of Oakville.

Nene, you’re very active in your community, whether it’s volunteering, as you mentioned off the top, or mentoring new REALTORS®, and you’ve even founded a non-profit with your kids, I AM. I CAN. I WILL. We love that. How has building other people up helped you build your own career? Which of course we know was not the motivation behind it, but look how it’s worked.

Nene: I’m very active in the community and I learned that growing up. My father was a physician and my mother is an educationist. I saw them volunteering in the community, whether it was going to an orphanage or receiving people, just having a potluck for people who couldn’t afford to have a meal.

I saw the joy it brought my parents. Now we were 12, my father had 12 children. I just believe that my personality and my character is as a result of what I experienced as a child. It comes very naturally to me. I was saying earlier how during COVID when businesses were closing down, shutting down, I would go from one business to the other, recording videos with them, just making appeals to the community to support the businesses. I didn’t do it because I was expecting to get something out of it. The interesting thing is those same business owners promoted my businesses for free. I’ll share a very quick story. Just when COVID hit, I was now like, “Okay, what am I going to do? What am I going to do about – Nobody’s buying houses,” or so we thought anyway. Like Ruth said earlier, so we thought. We thought real estate was gone. Then I remember that I had approached a marketing company to market my brand. When they gave me the numbers, it was ridiculously expensive. During COVID, something – I’m a believer, I’m a Christian. During COVID, I would say the Holy Spirit prompted me to go back and approach this company, and I did. I got a 70% reduction in the cost of the marketing on the buses in Oakville and the community that I’m in because a lot of REALTORS® and businesses were dropping off. Nobody was putting anything on buses because who’s going to see them anyway? I took that leap of faith believing that something good will come out of it. This same marketing company, which happens to be a Canadian company, now promoted me for free shortly after that, because somehow, I don’t know, somewhere along the line, I had talked about how much I’d benefited from them, and how much discount they gave me. Those community things that you do without expecting anything in return seems to – Steve had said it earlier. You put out good and you get good in return, even though you’re not expecting that. The act of doing that, the act of helping people in the community build, the act of helping REALTORS®, mentoring them, and doing things like that actually has made my business expand exponentially. Sometimes I marvel, I’m like, “Wow.”

Erin: You mentioned the joy that you witnessed as a child in Nigeria. Is it that same kind of joy when you mentor someone and see the beginnings of success, Nene?

Nene: Yes, it is that kind of joy. It’s a joy that I wish I could bottle and sell. When I mentor a REALTOR® or mentor somebody who is trying to get their real estate license, I wait for that call. The call that says, “Oh, my God, I got my first deal.” or “Oh, my God, I just got my license.” You hear the joy in their voice of having achieved something. It’s that same kind of joy, and that makes it all worthwhile for me.

Erin: Absolutely. We’ll start with you, Steve. How can you be intentional about where you volunteer your time, because there aren’t enough hours in the day?

Steve: I think on the community side, I would argue that your community now is online. I look at it a lot of times that I’m volunteering my time online. I’m responding to people’s questions. People that are sending me a DM in my inbox there, I’m taking the time to respond to their question. Sometimes someone says, “Hey, I’ve got a mortgage,” or a question, or “I don’t necessarily work in your market, so it’s not going to lead to a business opportunity, but I’ve got this investment property in this part of Canada. Can I pick your brain on what you would do?” It’s like, “Okay, well, I’m happy to jump on a 10-minute phone call.” I think it’s always just like, I look at it and say, online, you’re building a brand, you’re building a community, and you’re servicing that community. It’s a different mindset of what we’re used to, which is when we think about community, you think about just your local vicinity.

Nene: That is so true, what Steve just said. I say it’s so true because we do get a lot of those calls or text messages or inbox messages asking us questions. My mantra is, “Information is free.” I’m going to give you the information I have, I’m going to educate you, not because I’m expecting you to use me as your REALTOR®, but because that would help you make the right decision when you choose to buy or sell that property. Whether you use me or not, and I always say to people, it’s not whether you use me or not, I just want – because I’m big on building generational wealth, I work a lot in the Black community. I’m big on empowering people in the Black community to own homes. I always say to them, “It doesn’t matter whether you use me or not, but this is the path you should take.” To Steve’s point, community is not just physical community, it’s also online community.

Erin: A light went on for me there. What Steve said about, yes, but – there was an implied but there. “Yes, I’ll answer your questions, but I’m giving you 10 minutes.” I really like that because you’re setting limits, you’re setting parameters. It’s something that, Ruth, you said you had to learn as well after being yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Tell us about that shift that you had to make and you have made successfully.

Ruth: I think the hustle is real when you’re starting a new business. In my case, I was starting from nothing, building a business and being a sole provider for my children. It was the total inspiration, but with that came saying yes to everything and being everything to everyone. I think that the shift happened for me when I stepped out of that survival brain, just always trying to survive, and moving into more of a thrive mindset. That took a lot of coaching and mentoring. I have a great broker who met me that first day when I – even that first day when I walked in, I was offered a plan, a certain split plan where I would pay less every month and give a bigger split, or I could pay more and have no split. I was so determined that I definitely chose the no-split option and took a big risk because I really didn’t have a lot at that point in my life. I really believed that I was going to make something of myself and make this business work. When your back is against the wall, you will do anything, I think, especially as a parent, or just an individual. If that’s not where you want to be or stay, you’ll do anything. I really did build those first few years upon the premise of saying yes to any property at any price. Like I said earlier, I wasn’t an expert in the stats, but I did know that I had a no fear, no lose attitude, and I was going to be consistent, and committed, and creative like no one else. That’s how I built a foundation, but there’s a real thing called burnout that comes from that. I did find myself at the end of last year more successful than I ever dreamed of, but I was depressed, exhausted. Physically, I didn’t even know how to spell the word gym anymore. I woke up in the morning and rolled out of bed onto my laptop and finished my day by shutting my laptop 12 to 15 hours later. It just wasn’t and isn’t sustainable. I have definitely worked really hard in the last year to learn the power of no, and put up those boundaries, ask for help, building a team of people that I can really rely on, and learning to delegate and let go. It’s not easy to let go when you’ve built something from scratch. You have a lot of passion, and dedication, and you really do want to build a reputation of being detail-oriented and getting things done better than anyone else. I really had to let go of a lot of those belief systems I had in place that were all based on surviving. They were not based on thriving. I know that’s kind of a cliche saying, but the hustle is real when you need to provide and build a career from scratch. I’m 52 years old, so I started this business later in life, and that means I have a smaller window to succeed and build wealth. I have really taken away the shame of talking about that and I think that has really positioned me for a brighter future. Just the ability to say no and time block, like Steve said. It’s the way to be, and I’m super happy to be on that new path as of about a year ago. It’s opened up a whole lot of opportunity, and you start attracting more, and more people to your business that type of calmness brings.

Erin: Good for you in every possible meaning of that phrase. Absolutely. As we reluctantly wrap up here, how about the future for each of you? Steve, what excites you now?

Steve: I just think the trend of the REALTOR® job or position changing. I think we’re becoming more advisors and less about hoarding sales prices and data, but sharing. I think the role’s changing. I think that everything’s shifting online, and obviously, you got AI and stuff coming out. I just think the role is going to change. I think there’s going to be a huge opportunity and a land grab for people that are willing to adapt and embrace these technologies.

Erin: Nene, we’re talking technologies and embracing. What excites you now?

Nene: I’m excited about the future of AI in real estate. I’m also scared about it because I like to write. I create a lot of my content, and I feel like while AI makes it more effective, and makes me more efficient, it’s taking away some of my creativity. In that regard, I’m a little bit worried about that and worried about what my role will be in real estate going forward, but I’m also excited about the possibility. I’m excited with meeting Steve and Ruth today, and just hearing Ruth speak about certain things that usually people won’t speak about, I’m excited. I’m honestly really – I feel privileged. I think that’s the word.

Ruth: Thank you so much, Nene. If you don’t mind me hopping in really quick about AI, I would like every REALTOR® to think about it in terms of, like Steve said in the beginning, outsourcing to an automated social media platform posting company is the same thing as relying on AI for everything. There is no substitute for human creativity, human passion, human education, and the other so many innuendos. Real estate is very complex. There is no robot on the planet that can replace a quality, educated, passionate REALTOR®. There is no robot out there that could replace us, so you should have no fear, and in fact, embrace it for the menial tasks that it can do, which is maybe get you started on a listing remark, and then use your creative writing skills to make it your own. It is saving you time on that level. Use it as a tool, as an assistant to your already very talented writing skills. Use AI, and then you jump in and make it your own and customize it. Use it as a tool and not as anything to be feared, because nothing can replace you and who you are and how you do your business.

Nene: Thank you.

Erin: So sorry to see this conversation coming to an end, but let’s pretend you’re giving a keynote on growing your business, and, oh, I would love to be in the audience for any one of you. What would the last line of your presentation be? Steve?

Steve: Give more than you take.

Ruth: Good one.

Erin: All right. That’s where the applause would kick in. Thank you. All right. Nene, what would you say?

Nene: Over the years, I’ve told my children, “Do everything with a spirit of excellence.” When I say, they roll their eyes, but I know that when I’m long gone, they will pass on that statement to their children and grandchildren as part of what I believe is generational wealth. Generational wealth is not just material wealth, but things we learn. My statement would be, do everything with a spirit of excellence and gratitude.

Erin: Amen. Ruth?

Ruth: I would say two things. One, stay on your own mat. There are a lot of REALTORS®. Yes. There’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of ways to do your business. Stop looking around at everyone else and just be you. Be your true authentic self and have no fear. Just go for it.

Erin: I love that. I’m on my own mat, and thanks to you all, I’m in the warrior pose. Thank you oh so much. Ruth, Nene, Steve, we are so grateful for your wisdom and your openness today, and your authenticity. Amazing.

Nene: Thank you.

Ruth: Thank you so much.

Steve: Thank you. Awesome.

Erin: It was, and we thank you for listening, for sharing part of your busy life here with us at REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS®. Hey, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Feel free to spread the word about what we hope is helpful to you in countless ways. Thanks for that. REAL TIME is a production of Alphabet® Creative, technical magic by Rob Whitehead and Real Family Productions. I’m Erin Davis, and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

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Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS® brought to you by CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis, and in this episode, we delve into the present and look to the future. Artificial intelligence, AI, isn’t new, right? But with the growing popularity of generative tools which seemingly develop endless streams of content, it’s all anyone can talk about, so how might AI positively or negatively impact your business as a REALTOR®? On this episode of REAL TIME, we’re going to ask those questions. We have the privilege of hearing from data and machine learning product leader, Sharon Tehrani of the CBC.

We look at the opportunities and risks of incorporating AI into your business, specifically as they relate to creating and distributing content and how to use AI responsibly and productively. Here we go. Welcome to REAL TIME, Sharon. AI is such a hot topic right now, but presumably overwhelming for a lot of people, so can we start with a quick 101 on a few things, like for example, what is artificial intelligence?

Sharon Tehrani: Absolutely, Erin. Artificial intelligence, which is commonly referred to as AI in a short form, aims to develop intelligent machines that can accomplish tasks typically require the human intelligence. The main object is to replicate human cognitive abilities, enabling machines to think, learn, and make decisions. There are two primary types of AI. One is called narrow or weak AI, and the other one is general or strong AI. The narrow AI operates within a certain boundaries, and it cannot be generalized beyond the specific domain that it’s being trained on.

As an example, the chatbots that answer the customer questions, the autonomous vehicles, order recommendation systems, they are considered as narrow AI. On the other hand, we have the general AI, which is focused on highly autonomous systems that literally possess the human intelligence. They can learn, understand, and apply the knowledge to different contexts and problems.

Erin: I think I’m following you, you’re a good teacher. Now, my next question is out of left field, but is ChatGPT the same as AI? Or is it a brand name like Kleenex is to tissues? What is ChatGPT?

Sharon: ChatGPT is a sub-branch of the AI technology. They are the predictive language models that using the deep learning architecture to learn from the statistical patterns and relationships within the language. When they are trained and they gain the knowledge, they can be used to generate responses for us. You use just the input prompt to put some requests, provide enough context for those. Then based on the data that the models trained on, they can provide you with impressive and coherent responses.

Erin: Now, before we get in a bit later about how this can affect and impact, and improve life for REALTORS®, what’s the difference among terms like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and machine intelligence?

Sharon: When it comes to this field of technology, there are so many terminologies. Let’s start with the artificial intelligence or AI. This is the broadest terms. It encompasses the entire field that try to create intelligent machines. The machines that can perform the tasks such reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, understanding natural language, literally what we are doing right now, as humans. Then we can go to the machine learning, or in short form we call it ML, which is a subset of the broader field of AI. In this field, we are trying to come up with the algorithms and statistical models that can learn and improve from the data, and provide us with some predictions and decisions.

If I want to give you a practical example in machine learning, I can mention the housing price prediction, which is very relevant to their real estates and REALTORS® for sure. We can use the features about the house, for example, the number of the bedrooms, of where is the location is, in order to provide the optimal price for that house in the future. Finally, machine intelligence, which is a more comprehensive term that includes both artificial intelligence and machine learning. It is referring the machine’s ability to exhibit intelligence and perform the tasks that humans are doing these days.

Erin: Let’s focus on ChatGPT, if we can, for a moment. It’s of course just one of many AI language tools that have gained so much attention lately. It’s certainly the one that I see the most. Can you tell us how these predictive language models work, Sharon?

Sharon: Absolutely. Predictive language models, ChatGPT or GPT-3, which is the model behind the scenes. We have BERT, T5, these are all technical terms that’s being used in this area. They’re working based on deep learning architectures or transformer models. As I mentioned, the whole idea that we use vast amount of textual data that is available in the public to learn the statistical pattern and relationship in the language, and these models using the inputs that the user provide with them and the context, and the knowledge that they gain from the training data in order to provide those responses and original content for the end users of them.

Something that I would add with these technologies, that none of these models have a true understanding or consciousness about the responses that they are providing. It is the responsibility of the humans to provide enough supervision and critical evaluations to make sure the accuracy, relevance, and ethical use cases of these models when it’s come to the real-world applications, because the outcome of these models can negatively impact the users and the businesses.

Erin: I can only imagine that it’s not something that you can set and forget. It could send out an email, for example, that might not have the human touch, so it still does require that supervision and evaluation. Humans aren’t out to the picture by any means here.

Sharon: Absolutely. All of those outcomes from these generative models needs to be evaluated by the human. You need to do the fact-check if the information that being produced by these models are correct or not. I never suggested blindly just copy-pasting what’s being created by these generative models. We need that creativity of the human to make sure that we build that deeper level connection with the audience of our content. It’s only can happen through the creativity that human brings to content creation.

Erin: Next up on REAL TIME, more on ChatGPT and how it’s being used, plus the opportunities, the what’s in it for you and your business. Real intelligence means you never stop learning. CREA’s learning hub covers all things Canadian real estate, newly re-upped to be more interactive, user-friendly, and super easy to navigate. That’s the learning hub. Now, back to Sharon Tehrani, who’s on the top 10 list of women in AI in Canada, on REAL TIME. How are businesses using this technology, Sharon?

Sharon: If I want to focus more on the predictive language models, the businesses start to leverage them in order to enhance their operations and deliver the value to their customers. Some of the practical examples is customer supports, which can be provided through chatbots and virtual assistance. You can handle the customer inquiries, provide the information to them, and assist them with common support request. Because these models are capable of understanding the natural language, so they can generate human-like responses, which leads to improving your customer service and the response time.

Another main application of them is content generation. These models are capable of creating articles, blog posts, product descriptions, social media posts, so you can leverage them in order to automate your content creations mainly when it comes to the large volume of tasks that you have. Another area can be language translation. If you are a business which requires multilingual support, you can leverage these models in order to just input a text in one language, and these models can create and generate translation in other languages for you.

The final piece, we know that all of the businesses try to move towards data-driven decision-making, so you need the analysis and reporting to make more informed decision. These models are capable of analyzing the unstructured data such as your document, your textual reports, and they can extract the valuable information for you, and then you can use those insights in order to make the decision for the next steps in your business. By this way, you are saving time and efforts that you are right now putting into the manual analysis.

Erin: What are the biggest opportunities, Sharon, for the future of how we work? What do you see are the really bright lights here for AI?

Sharon: The opportunities that I can see by leveraging the AI tools are, I would say, endless, but they can be used to foster efficiency, personalization, and innovation in work processes. If I want to provide some examples when it comes to the employees, it can help with collaboration and teamwork by providing the ideas, helping in problem solving so the teams can work together more effectively when it comes to collaborative tasks. It can help with personal productivity and organization of each individual person as well, because they can serve as a tool for assisting you with your task management.

Setting the reminders, providing you with the recommendations, and how to prioritize your tasks, so you, at the end, of the day optimize your workflow and it’s going to lead to increase the productivity. Another part when it comes to a more user end, we can have intelligence customer service. You can leverage these technologies to resolve the common issues, providing support in a conversational manners for your end users, and tailor the conversation based on their needs, and provide with more relevant and personalized experience for them.

Erin: Do customers generally know that they’re conversing with a virtual assistant? Like, do you make that transparent and say, “Hi, I’m your–” You wouldn’t say chatbot, but we see this on websites and that sort of thing, Sharon. Is it something that you put out there and say, “Hello, I’m Steve’s virtual assistant, and here are some listings that would be great for you”? Or do you just do it on the down low and put out the responses there? Because I know REALTORS® like so many of us, there aren’t enough hours in the day when there’s so much you want to accomplish. What is your experience in this in terms of communicating as a virtual assistant?

Sharon: From my perspective, the best approach is to be transparent with your customers and end users, mainly when you are leveraging any AI applications into your businesses. When it comes to the chatbots, the best approach to let them know ahead of time that they are talking to a virtual assistant and a chatbot, and not the human behind the scenes. That transparency helps you to build the trust and more authentic relationship with the customers that you’re serving. When it comes to the chatbots and have them as part of your business, first of all, you should see what kind of chatbots that you are looking for.

Do you just looking for some typical answers or question, or are you looking for a more conversational base? Because based on the application that you are looking for, the implementation, the cost, time, energy in order to incorporate that is going to be different. Again, I will add that transparency with the customers is a key in incorporating the chatbots into your business.

Erin: You’ve worked so hard to build these relationships, human to human, that it is important to remind people that there is still a human behind it, you’re just getting a little help, if I understand correctly.

Sharon: Exactly. For example, if there are so much typical questions that the customers have, so you can use chatbots in order to address them in a stuff like having a human behind the scenes to answer those questions. At the same time, you can provide this support 24/7 meaning that whenever the end users feels that they have a question, so they can reach out to the chatbot and get the information that they are looking for. In this way you can increase the productivity and your employees or the REALTORS® in this specific case can focus on more high-valuable task in the workplace rather than just doing these repetitive assignments and questions.

Erin: Let’s drill a little deeper in now on generative AI now that we know where we’re going, what we’re talking about. Sharon, tell us how is AI transforming the way businesses can create and publish content? You touched on that and that it can be such a beast to keep putting out relevant information all the time and coming up with new ideas, and that sort of thing. Tell us how it’s transforming the business.

Sharon: Very good question. When it comes to the generating content, AI made a significant advancement in this fields. Now we can see that these tools can be leveraged into the business, mainly a productive tool for content creators to help them with brainstorming ideas, generating the drafts, providing real time feedback and suggestion. It can be a huge assistant in copywriting, editing, proofreading, and even enhancing the efficiency and quality of the content that’s being created. From my POV, it is very unlikely that it’s going to be fully replaced by the human.

The reason being because when it comes to the content creation, the human inputs, creativity, judgment, emotion, empathy and cultural context, they are not something that AI systems at the current state can fully replicate. In order to create a content that on a deeper level resonate with the audience, we still requires that human piece in content creation streamline. I will see the generative AI just as a productive tool and collaborative tool for the content creations. That being said, this fold is evolving on daily basis. We may see some changes in the future, but I don’t think so something is going to happen or fully replace in the near future.

Erin: Is there an opportunity to use AI to make your content even more relevant or, in an oxymoron kind of way, more personal?

Sharon: Absolutely. When it comes to using AI in order to make content more relevant and personalized, there are huge opportunities there. The first one coming with content recommendation. These AI algorithms have the capability to analyze user data, what they prefer to consume, how they are consuming the content. Based on this information, they can understand the individual interest and start to suggest relevant articles, videos, products, and services to them. The other one, even they are capable to customize how the content is presented to the audience.

What is the layout should be, what is the design based on the user preferences. Other things that can be leveraged is, we can do sentiment analysis, analyzing the feedback and comments of the audiences on the social media posts and interactions, and then based on their opinions and sentiments, we can incorporate those insights to provide them more relevant content in the future, adjusting our marketing messages, and see which areas we can improve with the audiences.

Erin: When it comes to REALTORS® though, and I don’t think we can stress this enough, and you’ve certainly touched on it, again, this is a tool that would be complementary. It would go with and not replace the personal relationship with your client, because if I understand correctly, other than catching on to certain words and responses, it has no sense of empathy or understanding human interactions. Right?

Sharon: That’s absolutely correct. It’s just going to act as a complementary role when it comes to the real estate. That authentic relationship that you have with the clients is going to be essential. This is not something that can be replaced by artificial intelligence. It can just leverage to add values to your business. For example, you can enhance your efficiency, you can provide more personalized insight and recommendations and improve your customer experience by leveraging the chatbots into your business. At the end of the day, that human interaction, that empathy, the insight that you are gaining from your face-to-face interaction needs to be prioritized even when you’re using the AI technologies as a REALTOR®.

Erin: Back to Sharon Tehrani in a moment as she lays out some of the risks that come with using AI. Loving REAL TIME? So are we? In fact, we have 40 episodes for you to delve into. Hear from experts from world-renowned architects to TV designers, marketing geniuses, and of course leaders from your Canadian Real Estate Association. It’s all just waiting for you at REAL TIME, the podcast for and about Canadian REALTORS®, from CREA.

Now we’re back to our conversation with data and machine learning product developer for the CBC, Sharon Tehrani, on REAL TIME. Let’s fly into the danger zone here. What are some of the top risks or considerations, Sharon, around using AI? You’ve been doing this a number of years, probably from the jump. How can businesses use AI, specifically generative AI responsibly?

Sharon: When it comes to applying AI, again, including degenerative AI that we were talking about it a lot in this conversation, it comes with lots of risk and considerations. I’m going to name few of them, but the list can be endless sometimes. The first one I would talk is bias and fairness. All of the artificial intelligence systems highly depends on the data in order to provide us with the outcome. If the data is biased, then it can provide some discriminatory outcomes which can impact the business and the end users of our products.

In order to minimize that and make sure we have enough fairness into our data, we need to make sure that we using the subject matter expert to de-bias the data as much as possible and make sure we have a diverse and representative data. Another factor I would say, we need to use our human judgment as well to make sure that these datas are unbiased as possible. That being said, at the end of the day, there is going to be a certain level of bias in all the models and the data because we are humans. We have some biases, and we are going to incorporate them when we are working with these new technologies.

The other point is lack of transparency. The artificial intelligence model are very complex. We call them that they’re operating as a black box. Literally, we don’t know what’s happening inside them, and it’s very difficult to say how they are reaching to certain decisions. This lack of transparency can impact the trust of you and the stakeholders or end users of the AI products. We need to work and provide more explanation of what’s happening behind the scenes for the end user to build that trust with the stakeholders and end users of these AI systems.

Another huge area is data privacy and security. When it comes to the data collections, we know that there’s lots of data including sensitive information, so we need to prioritize data privacy making sure we have enough measures to protect the user’s data and company data from breaches and unauthorized access. For example, not everyone in the company requires access to all the data, so we can create the levels to make sure only certain people access to the information when it is needed. Again, if someone like hackers access to the data, they may use it unethically and it can have so much negative outcome and impacts on both business and the users.

The final point I will add, again, this list can be endless, is the ethical considerations. For example, they’re talking about surveillance, autonomous weapons, or even manipulating the public opinion. As businesses and as people who wants to leverage AI, we want to make sure to establish ethical guidelines and frameworks to ensure AI is used for valuable purposes, and it is aligns with our business values and our social norms. These are the points that I will edit. I can continue talking in this, but I know we want to go over other topics as well here.

Erin: It does sound like a lot, and it’s all valuable, but tell me, Sharon, how can those inputting the data make sure that it’s staying in line with the values of your company? Because if you’re hired to come into a company and this company has been here for 20, 30 years, how are you expected to just step in and know that, oh, this company, this REALTOR® stands for this? How do you get that?

Sharon: When you join to a new company as a new employee, and you are a newbie and a newcomer, first of all, you need to learn about the business, learn about the values that this business is functioning on. Then when you learn, as I imagine you’re a technical person, you are a data scientist, when you learn about all of those business values, and now you’re trying to incorporate the AI in solving the business problem, in every stage of your decision-making, you need to consider those values. When it comes to selecting the data that you want to use for training the model, when it comes to decision-making, when it comes to the outcome of your model.

You have to consider the business value from end-to-end. Again, I do suggest that always talking with the people who are working in that organization for a while, talking even with the leaders, what they are looking for. Because at the end of the day, the outcome of these models that you are putting out there, you are responsible and accountable for them. You have to make sure that they are aligned with what you’re looking for and what your business is looking for and wants to achieve. We need to, again, educate ourselves around the business value ahead of time and make sure they are applying into our end-to-end decision-making when it comes to leveraging any AI systems.

Erin: When we return to our discussion of AI with Sharon Tehrani, tips to get started with artificial intelligence, around 250,000, that’s how many listings you and potential clients find simply by clicking on REALTOR.ca. There’s so much more than properties. They’ll find design trends for the future, how to narrow down needs and wants for the place of your dreams, all at your and your client’s fingertips.

REALTOR.ca, no wonder it’s the most popular and trusted real estate website in Canada. Now, to dollars and financial cents. When it comes to implementing AI in your day to day, here again, Sharon Tehrani, data and machine learning product developer for the CBC and expert on artificial intelligence on REAL TIME. Is it best to start with free tools? Would that be the dipping your toes into AI step that you would recommend, Sharon?

Sharon: My answer would be yes, because when you comes to applying the AI systems into your business, the best practice is to start small with some small projects and prototypes and see how it’s going to help your business in order to solve the problems that you are facing right now. Validate the concept before you want to commit to something bigger. When you start small, it provides you with this opportunity to iterate later.

To learn from this POC that you built, to observe the potential risks that we mentioned about the data privacy and the things that can go wrong. Then when you validate all of those aspects and see what are the potential risks, then you can think about, now maybe this is something that my business can value from. Then you can start thinking about committing to a more enterprise plan that, again, provides some benefits that the free tools may not be able to give you.

Erin: You miss out on the free AI downtime. That’s a thing to consider as well, yes?

Sharon: Exactly. When your businesses heavily rely on AI system, you literally leverage that to solve your problem, so it’s very hard to afford extended periods of downtime. The free tools doesn’t have enough support and maintenance in place to address them. That is one of the main criteria you may want to consider invest more money and time, and go with those enterprise tools out there because they can provide you with the assistance and support, and technical troubleshooting that you require when you’re leveraging AI. Again, when it comes to the performance, they are better and more reliable, for sure.

Because the free tools doesn’t have the processing capabilities as compared to the enterprise one. Again, there are so many other benefits such as data privacy and security. You can customize the tools more relevant to your business. They are more sustainable when it comes to the long-term using them. Again, there’s so much features that comes with the enterprise tools compared to the free tools. That being said, the free tools are going to be the amazing starting point to gain some insights before you want to commit to something bigger.

Erin: I am so glad you mentioned money there, Sharon, because it’s burning a hole, not in my pocket, but in my head here. What are we looking at for a financial outlay? Are we talking tens and tens of thousands of dollars or– I don’t even know. How much does it cost? Can you ballpark us?

Sharon: That’s a very good question. I don’t have any specific number on top of my head, but it really goes back to the problem that you have and what solution you’re looking for. Yes, sometimes it can be costly, but one thing that I can comment on is that you can always invest on your employees to start building and incorporating those AI system into your business. That’s actually what I’m doing within my team.

We are building everything from the data pipelines to the end product that we are providing for the content creators. If you invest in your employees, that’s, I would say, the money that you need to spend in order to leverage these systems for your own business. I would say that’s going to pay off at the end of the day, mainly when you do that internal investment, because they can bring that creativity and innovation that comes with the AI in order to come up even with the other new ideas and think out of the box to help your business to stay ahead of game in these competitive markets.

Erin: It does seem like AI is here to stay. There’s no question about that, and it’s only getting more advanced. As you said, it’s changing day by day. How do you foresee it changing the workforce?

Sharon: AI is here and for sure it’s going to stay. It makes so much significant impact even so far. There are some key areas that I can mention about how it’s going to change the workforce. The first one is automation of repetitive tasks, so we can use this technology to just automate the routing tasks, and then the workforce can focus more on complex and creative aspects of their jobs, and this will lead into efficiency and productivity because we are freeing up the times of the humans so they can focus on more high-value activities. The other one is it’s going to lead to creation of new jobs.

When you leverage those AI technology, you need new jobs and functionalities. The people who will be able to develop, maintain, and oversee these AI systems. Their roles can be AI specialists, data scientists, AI trainers, and so many more. It’s going to transfer the existing job roles as well. Right now, we are having these traditional roles. When you bring the AI, it’s going to transform the current job titles and the employees need to start learning new skill sets.

Then they are able to work alongside the AI systems and relevance to their jobs and adding value based on the roles that they have within the organization. The final one I will add is it is going to augment human capabilities, so it can help with decision-making, problem-solving, and information processing. At the end of the day, it will improve the accuracy and efficiency when it comes to tasks, and we can see better outcomes both for the businesses and the employees as well because they can put their focus on more high valuable activities in the workforce.

Erin: In a moment, seamlessly incorporating AI in your business. Catch past episodes of REAL TIME where we talk intelligent design and green planning, marketing and promotion, home design ideas, and everything you need to help you be the best. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our monthly episodes and download wherever you get the best podcasts. Now back to Sharon Tehrani who’s listed among the top 10 women in AI in Canada. She’s with us on REAL TIME. How will businesses need to pivot in terms of leaders and teams focusing on developing to effectively work alongside AI? What skills should they be focusing on?

Sharon: A very good question. The first one I will add is AI and data literacy. In order to be an effective leader and making informed decisions, or being an employee that can work alongside with the AI, you need to gain an understanding about the foundational artificial intelligence concept, the terminology, the potential applications. You need to learn about the data types, how they are collected, what is the quality of them, knowing how to do some specific analysis around the data. Then based on that, you are going to become a better leader when it comes to informed decision-making of how to incorporate AI.

Again, as an employee, you can work alongside with AI and bring the high value in your role. Another area and skills that needs to be worked on is creativity and innovation. The leaders should foster a culture of creativity and problem-solving, and ideation, because when you combining the AI, AI is mainly focused on thinking out of the box. If you combine the AI capabilities with creative thinkings, that’s where you can gain the most value out of these new technologies and stay ahead in the market. Everyone on the business needs to be educated on the ethical and social awareness, because this is one of the main challenges with applying AI.

Developing the skills when it comes to ethical decision-making, privacy protection, bias identification, mitigation, and ensuring that the outcome of AI system are fair and accountable, these are the essential skills that needs to be learned. Finally, it goes to continuous learning. I don’t know how many businesses, but if you consider the agile mindset, we know that the AI field is dynamic. It’s changing every day. The leaders and their teams should embrace this adaptive mindset. They need to have this culture of continuous learning. They can attend the conferences, the training programs, and making sure they know the latest changes in the market and they can leverage those technology into their businesses.

Erin: Lastly, Sharon, how can businesses make smart decisions around implementing AI? How do you determine the best use cases while still protecting your personal and company data?

Sharon: Very, very great question. The first step is to identify the relevant use cases. Not all the business problem requires the AI in order to solve them. When you find your use cases that AI can help to solve it, then you can start to build your AI implementation strategies, which is going to be aligned with your objectives that you want to gain as your industry. Now you identify your business objective, the next step to prioritize the transparency and accountability. As I mentioned, you need to make sure you are transparent with all the stakeholders because at the end of the day, you are accountable for the outcomes of these AI-driven decisions.

Always start small… begin with a very small-scale AI project. Validate your concept, learn from implementation process. See what is the impact on data privacy and security. This attractive approach is going to help you to come up with the better implementation of your AI strategy and minimize the potential risk that you may find along this journey of implementing AI. Make sure you’re implementing data protection measuring place like encryption, access control. You need to have regular security audits because again, privacy practices are very important when it comes to leveraging any AI into your business.

Make sure that you are continuously monitoring and evaluating the models. These models, again, can have sometimes unintended outcomes, which may negatively impact your users and business, so you have to monitor their performance all the time to make sure that their decisions are relevant to your problem. Finally, which is, I personally experienced it as well, involve the stakeholders, early stages. Try to make sure that they are part of your process. The stakeholders can be your employees, your customers, or partners.

Make sure they are part of the conversation when you want to implement the AI in your business and solve a problem, because you can value from their expertise, again, based on the roles and functions that they have in the organization. It will help with the transparency and building trust with them, and addressing the concerns early stages rather than being at the final stage and then try to get the bind from them. I personally experienced that, and I would highly recommend to have those conversations and involvement in early stage of your AI implementation.

Erin: Finally, how do you think REALTORS® can use AI today?

Sharon: REALTORS®. The first one is the customer service. We mentioned about the chatbots and virtual assistant in our conversation today. When it comes to real estate, you can have these customer service improvements and response time, and ensuring that your clients receiving the timely assistance in a very human interaction because they are capable of providing very human-like responses to the clients.

The other one I would add is the power of natural language processing and sentiment analysis. You can leverage these AI technologies to do the sentiment analysis on your customers, the social media posts, and gain an insight what the client’s preferences are and what is the market perceptions are, and then you can tailor your services and marketing strategies based on those insights.

Erin: Do you have any website or any place that you recommend people go to to get more information or to take another step into these deep waters? What do you think?

Sharon: When it comes to learning, I personally suggest the LinkedIn Learning.

Erin: You said LinkedIn Learning?

Sharon: Yes. It provides lots of high-level courses in order to gain an overall understanding about the AI, machine learning, and what’s happening in the market. I highly recommend that as a learning tool for anyone who wants to expand their knowledge and try to see the applications of the AI for their own businesses. Don’t afraid of the AI. It is just a new technology. To be honest, it’s not that new, it’s been here for a while. It’s just now it’s publicly available to the end users. Now it triggers a conversation in the public, but it’s been here for a while.

I do suggest just embrace the AI, start to work on your literacy around both the data and the AI, and see how you can gain the most value out of it. As I mentioned before, this is the responsibility of each individuals that use this technology for valuable use cases, use it in a ethical way. Being transparent about how they are leveraging it into their businesses. For sure, do not afraid of it. The goal is to make the life of human easier, not more difficult. I know it comes with risks and problems as well, but we can work on it together and solve it to make sure everyone can benefit from it.

Erin: Thank you. What a great optimistic note to end on, and we so appreciate your insight and wisdom today, Sharon. We’re very grateful.

Sharon: No worries. Thank you, Erin. Thank you for having me. It’s awesome.

Erin: REAL TIME is the podcast for and about REALTORS® brought to you by CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association, production by Alphabet Creative, with technical engineering by Rob Whitehead of Real Family Productions. I’m your host, Erin Davis. Thank you so much for joining us, and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.