How do you stay ahead in real estate when you feel like you have to keep everything you do a secret because the minute you do it, someone steals it?

Does it irk you when your stuff is stolen and people say “you should be flattered” when this happens? It irks me!

So let’s dive into, today, right now, into how you can stay ahead of the game, even when unethical thieves, because that’s what they are, unethical thieves steal off of your back!

Today we are going to dive into what to do, and why, why am I talking about this?

Well, we are talking about this because this has happened to me, all the time, in multiple businesses, and even more so, with Leads and Leverage.

So what do you do? How do you deal with it, etc?

Do you feel that you have to keep everything you do a secret, because I know that we talk about growth mindset and abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset.

We talked about that, and not worrying so much about what people copy of yours, so we have kind of two things going on here.

On the one hand, yes, we feel like we have to keep everything we are doing a secret, because people do copy us. On the other hand, we don’t want to get into the scarcity mindset, and keep stuff super secret, because that’s a scarcity mindset.

We want to help people who want to be helped. So how do you help other people -pull them up with you- and how do you prevent that theft? How do you prevent those unethical hooligans from doing what they are doing?

Here’s the reality – when people say “oh, you should be flattered when people steal your stuff,” no, you shouldn’t be flattered because it’s not flattering, it’s theft.

First things first, there will always be copycats. Always. There is nothing you can do to stop the copycats. Okay? There is nothing you can do.

Unless, let me give you an example, thirty years ago, when we had our retail stores, I’m telling you, the minute we got something in the store, a similar store got it right away.

They would always be looking at us as competitors to figure out what to get in their stores. So, there was always copying. We were never truly unique in that sense, because of the products that we had. It happened in retail- it happens in our real estate business.

I don’t want to dwell on how that made me feel, but the truth is, this happens in the real estate business.  Everytime we rent and lease, in fact, this is hilarious, in 2009, when we opened our own brokerage, we got our logo and our signs made, no other signs looked like ours and no other logos looked like ours.

Now, it’s nine years later, 2018, when I drive around, it blows my mind at how many signs look like ours and how many logos look like ours. It’s just interesting how people copy what other people are doing instead of doing their own stuff.

Everyone looks the same again. In real estate, when that does happen, you want your sign to stand out, you want people to see what’s going on. But again, there will always be copycats.

For Leads and Leverage, this happens all the time, and recently- it just blows me away that people still do this- there are people who not just harvest the idea, but we are going to talk about harvesting an idea and making it your own versus actually stealing it.

I’m talking about people who actually steal it, who follow me on Leads and Leverage, and they are literally taking all the notes that I give you guys, the downloads I give you, they are taking those, they are just repackaging them (and by that I mean putting them on a different colored document and different icons on there.)

They are using the same words, like exact same words, what I call my ads… words I created and invented, they are using those. The fact that they are trying to teach the process, the different processes that I’m teaching you, they are trying to do that too. So there is constantly copying, I have people doing that all the time, constantly, constantly.

Here’s the truth: they are going to fail. They are absolutely going to fail.

Now why are they going to fail? They are going to fail because for a number of reasons, which I’m going to highlight down here, but they are going to fail because they are always looking for what someone else is doing, but they have no idea if what that someone else is doing is working.

They see the surface of success, but they don’t see what is getting you there. So they don’t see what is getting you there.

Number one- now you also are so far ahead of them, if they are copying you, then they are copying what you already did, what you already created.

You are so far ahead of them that they aren’t going to catch up. They are seriously not going to catch up. You need to keep moving forward and not look back.

That is the key.

You gotta keep moving forward and not look back.

You need to not be reactionary, because what you focus on, expands. If you are focused on your frustration and your anger, and trying to go after them, they’ve won. You know why they have won?

Because you just put your time, and your energy, and possibly your money in chasing them down, instead of keeping on moving forward.

Also, they don’t understand YOU. You, your focus, your goals. So they have no idea how the pieces apply to your business. They might get the surface idea, but they don’t know how that applies to your business.

I’m going to give you examples from my business, in all of this.

Here’s the biggest one – they don’t have your superpower.

What do I mean? Well, each one of us has a superpower. Each of us comes with something that is unique to us, that we are really good at.

And I’m not talking about “negotiating,” and “selling ice to an eskimo.” I’m talking about what are you really good at? Are you really good at hearing what people need and helping them with that? Are you really good at energizing people?

That tends to be my superpower, I tend to put energy into people, and I love doing that.

There are people who are great encouragers, there are people who are good at all kinds of different things.

So these copycats don’t have your superpowers- they can say your same message but it’s going to fall flat, which means they are going to fail, because they can’t replicate you.

That is why your unique selling proposition in real estate is not “I work in real estate, I help people do this and do that”- your unique selling proposition is YOU.

So you have got to figure out what you bring to the table.

I know I bring energy, I bring encouragement, I bring passion, and I bring people to see the ability that yes, they do it. That’s my superpower. What’s yours? No one else can copy you. You have to wear blinders and you have to focus on your end goal.

Here’s the thing- when I was watching the videos that this person was sharing using my templates, my checklists, etc, I’m watching the videos and I’m going “they don’t even understand what they are teaching!

Like, they are reading through this, but they don’t understand it. They don’t get it, they don’t know.” So yeah, okay, they might get some business from it, and whatever, but they don’t actually understand what’s the writing behind it.

Here’s what I have found in real estate – when I was doing videos for real estate, we were getting a lot of “come list me” calls, and doing a lot of videos on how to list your property, and I’ll be frank, most of y’all don’t know how to price a piece of property. You gotta learn this!

A lot of times, we think it’s all about, you know, the comps, but the comps, once they have closed, are an additional thirty to sixty days older, because in closing price, that’s the price that the offer was made thirty, forty, sixty-five days before, sometimes longer.

And so we have to take that into effect, we have to take into effect how fast is the market is going up, and going down?

How many days is our market expanding? It may be by one or two days. All of these elements are “what’s the competition?” If everything’s going flat, and there is literally nothing in your price range, and it’s a popular price range, it’s a totally different story.

There are all kinds of different elements there for pricing, and that is what I focused on for teaching people, and why we dominated on expires. That’s why we got all of the expires that we ever pursued, because they knew that if they priced it the way we said to price it, then we are getting 99.8% of the list-to-sell price.

They weren’t having to reduce their prices, and they were making more money then the people who priced high, then had to go down.

We were able to show that through data, etc. We had other people try to copy it, but they didn’t understand it, and you could tell based on how they were presenting the ideas.

Everything I teach you, everything, is stuff that I know, use, and believe in intimately.

I do not go and curate information from other people and paired it back out to you. That is what your competitors are doing when they copy you, when they pull from your stuff and they try to pass it off as their own, they don’t know what they are doing.

They don’t understand! They are going to fail.

I have had people join our membership, and try to copy everything we do, and then sell it as their own- they failed.

I’ve had people try to use our stuff as lead magnets- they failed! They don’t have a long game in mind. They don’t have the passion, and the drive for it that I do, they want the money, they don’t understand why I’m doing this, and why I’m willing to push through the dirt, so they can’t copy me.

They don’t understand, they don’t have a passion for you guys. They don’t actually care if you are own your own brokerage business or not.

They don’t care if the pieces that you are using are autonomous and can be moved if something happens in your brokerage. They don’t actually understand how to build as business because they are not actually building one.

They are just trying to copy and make a quick buck!

That is the same thing with real estate agents when they try to copy you, when they see someone who they think is trying to have success, or they know that they are having success (this is why we got copied), but the funny thing was, no one fully copied it.

Direct mail- they would see on the surface that we had all of these transactions, and we were doing direct mail. They would get one, or two, of our pieces of direct mail, and try to duplicate it! Not realizing that those one or two pieces were just a few out of twenty-four that happened that year.

So they don’t get it, they don’t understand the strategy.

Here’s the thing – when people copy you like this, there is a couple of different things, when people copy you, you just need to ignore them. You have to ignore them, literally let them go.

Do what you can to ban and block them, from your page, from your email list, etc, but that’s it.

Let no more thought go into that. In fact, you should use it as fuel to go, “Ah! They are not going to make a business because they aren’t actually building a business.” They are just copying you!

So use that as fuel for you to keep going.

Always remember… you are way ahead of them. You are so far ahead of them, that’s why they steal from you and don’t want to put in the work, they don’t want to put in all the years you have put into the business.

I watch people now, I started on July 30th of 2014, is when I started building up the domain of Leads and Leverage, and I didn’t actually start building up content and teaching until September of that year.

It’s been five years now since we bought the domain, four years since we actually launched the business, and it’s been really interesting to watch the people come and go, come and go, and copy my stuff, and then just go. There are other people that they copied, but for whatever reason, they have copied this.

So now, I know why some people copy me, because they like the energy, they like the stuff, they look and see “oh, I want that money!” But, again, they don’t have the passion.

They don’t have the understanding of where I’m coming from. And the “why” as to why I’m teaching what I’m teaching.

It’s the exact same thing with you. People who try to copy you when you have created something that you want to use for your prospects, for your clients, etc, you are doing it because you have had people ask that question and struggle with that problem, and you want to solve it.

So you have an intimate knowledge as to why you are using something.

Now what’s the difference between harvesting ideas and stealing?

Harvesting ideas, when you see someone posting an article or a video on pricing, we will just use pricing, and maybe you spend the time watching it – don’t spend a lot of time watching your competitors stuff.

I do not watch anyone’s stuff who may be possibly perceived as a competitor to me. I do not. I do not want to be influenced by them. I do not want their opinions.

Every once in a while, I will read a headline, or a couple of things, and I’ll either agree with it or disagree with it. If I disagree with it, then I read more so that I can come out with “no, this person is teaching you this and that is wrong.”

But as for everything else, I don’t want to know what they are doing. I don’t. Because I don’t want to be influenced by them.

I have MY reasons for doing Leads and Leverage, it’s MY business focus, and that is to empower YOU. To empower you as a business owner, as a business builder, so that you can have the life that you want AND build a business.

Create more time, make more money and LOVE the journey. That is why I’m doing this.

So when you are in real estate, why are you doing it?

Now my underlying reason, I LOVE this business, I love helping you guys, but my underlying reason is the flexibility, my most important thing is my husband and my kids. That is my most important thing. And then my sister, and her husband and my parents.

My family is most important to me and so every business that I have ever had, I have made sure that my priority is still my family. So that I could build my business around my family.

That’s what I want for you. So, what do you want? You don’t have to love all of the people that you are working with, but you do need to love the journey. So you need to figure out what that is.

For me, in real estate, I didn’t actually love real estate. What I loved about real estate was that I was getting people into what they enjoyed, like getting them into their house, because that’s exciting and people like that.

And I loved the fact that I could be at home and be with my kids, for the most part. I did the listings, Chuck  did the buyers. If you have to do both, you can schedule it around your schedule, and have that flexibility.

But this is the key- when you are looking up people who are copying what you are doing, you have to actually wear blinders. You have to wear blinders and you have to keep moving forward.

You have to remind yourself “yes, they are going to fail.” People who are constantly trying to do what other people are doing instead of doing their path- they fail. They do!

They are one of the 86% that fails because they have never identified what is in it for them- except that “I want to copy that,” and “I want to have that” with money. That’s it.

There is no compelling passion behind it.

And it’s not necessarily finding your “why,” but you do need to understand your motivations. It’s really, really important that you put blinders on and ignore those people.

When we had our photos stolen, we actually had an attorney because a lot of agents think that they can just “borrow” somebody’s photos. We set it up with our attorney whenever there was a copyright theft, etc.

Now with me, and this national business and stuff, at this point, I have it set up, but I haven’t enacted it. So we will see what happens with that. It depends on how far it goes, before I’m actually going to put real energy to it, because, again, I want to keep moving forward. They will never be where I’m at, they will never have the passion for what I’m doing, or the why.

It’s the exact same with you. People will try to copy our email campaigns, people will try to copy our expire campaigns, people will try to copy our fiscal campaigns, people will try to copy our investor campaigns.

They will try to copy all this stuff but they will never get it. They don’t understand our goal, they don’t understand our passion, they didn’t have the knowledge.

So as far as working with investors, or 1-4 unit properties, we had a lot of knowledge in that. And we had a team that had a lot of knowledge in that. And so when people were trying to copy it, they couldn’t answer the questions that investors ultimately had, so they would fail.

Just be aware, when people copy you, they are only copying what they see on the surface. They cannot be you! They don’t have your experience, they don’t have your knowledge, they don’t have your reputation, they just don’t.

They don’t have your education, they cannot be you.  

So have I said it enough that it doesn’t matter, so long as people are copying you, that you need to just focus on your path, and the people that follow you, and put your energy towards them. You keep your energy on your path.

Keep your energy on what you are doing, and keep doing what you need to do.

So if you want to make sure that you stay ahead, that you are going to sneak past your colleagues, they are not going to know what happens, because, yes, you can sneak past them.

Facebook is changing constantly- that’s why I am laughing at these people who are trying to teach what I taught six months ago…because Facebook has changed!

Some things are the same, but they don’t understand the overall strategy so they are just looking at the tactics.

If you have questions that you want me to answer, post them in the comments below,