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About Brian Coester

He has a broad base of experience in starting, running, expanding, and scaling businesses within real estate verticals. He is a trained Real Estate Appraiser and Real Estate agent and has direct experience in developing leadership teams across the globe. He has over 20 years of experience in starting and growing businesses from zero revenue to scale, developing technology systems, and running various real estate service companies across the United States.

 

In this episode Steve, Jason, and Brian Coester discuss:

  • You are who you are
  • Leaders must make good decisions
  • How to make quality decisions
  • Acknowledging the problem

 

Key Takeaways:

  • You are who you are. There’s no difference between you personally and professionally. The person you are outside of work also shows up when you are in the office and anywhere you go.
  • Leaders have the responsibility to make good decisions. It’s not always the most logical or most profitable decision, but what’s important is that you make the right decision.
  • A quality decision is not made, you have to put it through a process. Look at your decision-making process. It shouldn’t be impulse based, or fully emotionally-based. You have to put some distance between you and the problem.
  • Judge your bad decisions and bad habits. If you’re doing something stupid, call it out to yourself. Be brutally honest about your situation. The first step towards change is acknowledging that there’s a problem.


 

“Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. As a leader, you need influence in both the marketplace and people. It doesn’t necessarily matter the particular style of the leader - at the end of the day, the results are gonna come from your ability to influence the situation.” - Brian Coester

 

 

Connect with Brian Coester:


 

Connect with Steve and Jason

 

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Brian Coester: Quality Decisions Lead To A Quality Life

I've got a guest in this episode that, before we hit record, we had some interesting discussions. Not only on where we're from and those types of things, but things that interest you. First of all, let me introduce you. I have Brian Coester of Real Estate Connection. Brian, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jason. I’m glad to be on.

We're glad you're here. We're going to ask a question that you may or may not be ready for. We talked about leadership and things before we hit record, but the first question that we ask every guest is something that gets us facing in the right direction. What are you grateful for now?

I'm grateful for the opportunity. I try to look at things in a holistic way. I'm grateful for the opportunity to live my life, serve my family, serve our clients and customers, show up every day and do the best that I can. That alone is something that not everyone has, and that's important to remember that.

I'm thinking of eighteen questions right now in my head based on your answer. What types of opportunities are in front of you right now that you're particularly passionate about?

I've got three kids. That's fun and all the stuff that they have going on and being involved in that. I've got parents and a brother. Family stuff is always important. We also got Real Estate Connection. The Real Estate Connection has 1,000,001 things going on. Specifically, we have software that we're releasing. We have a real estate team that we're recruiting people for. We have an outsourced business process unit that we're getting going. I’m moving on with various lenders and buyers.

What we do is help people buy a house. At the end of the day, showing up to work, whether we help this person buy a house and they close on it, or whether it doesn't work out for a variety of reasons and they end up pulling the plug on a contract or pulling out of the deal. It’s helping people and getting the best work done every day that we can.

I appreciate that answer. Family first, and then going right into work. I do have a bunch of questions about Real Estate Connection. I've been on your website. I did my research ahead of time. It’s very impressive, but for people that don't know, you and I are both in Maryland, we’ve established that, but we've got listeners all over the country. I know that you do things not only regionally but globally. Tell me and our readers, what is Real Estate Connection? What's it all about? You do some unique things in the industry and I would love to hear you verbalize that for a minute or two.

In the real estate business, as they say, a lot of it is who you know, and that's true in the sense that there's a whole host of professionals, products, and services that these professionals provide to people when somebody's going through the home purchase process. What Real Estate Connection is, in its most simplistic definition, is designed around connecting consumers to those professionals and then also keeping those professionals in a team-like environment so they can work together.

TII Brian Coester | Quality Decisions

Quality Decisions: Real Estate Connection is designed around connecting consumers to home-buying professionals. The goal is to keep them in a team-like environment so both consumers and professionals can work together. 

 

If somebody goes online to Zillow and Realtor.com or somebody submits their information to get pre-approved for a loan, or they want to work that out or want to tour a home property, what happens after that? The answer is nothing. The lead aggregators and online websites don't have much in place for fulfillment. What Real Estate Connection does is simply take somebody who submitted their information, whether it's for a mortgage pre-approval request or a home tour request, and takes them all the way home.

Whether that's mortgage professional and real estate agent introductions that they need, title company, homeowners insurance, or the whole vertical we handle for them, we walk the buyers through the home purchase process with the idea that you want to have everything set up beforehand. If you're going to buy a house in Maryland, what do you need? You need a real estate agent. You need a mortgage company. You need a title company. You need homeowner insurance. You need a home inspector. You need them all working together and understanding what's going on.

What we do is we provide that for lenders, buyers, and realtors across the country. We walk them through the home purchase process. We ensure that they are connected with a local agent, a local lender, or a local title company, and then we ensure that those people work in a team-like fashion to help the buyer.

Thank you for that. It is like the name of the company. It's a real estate connection. Somebody smart named that company. Now, I'm super curious. From somebody who's been in the industry, and a lot of people are reading, “How do you do that?” I know that's probably a broad question. You can take that anywhere you want to. I know enough about the company. I know that has something to do with technology, but talk about how you do that.

We're just organized. It's like advanced basics. It's not anything that you couldn't do on your own, or it's not anything that somebody wouldn't come up with in a common sense way, but it's, “You want to do a loan in Maryland. You need a loan officer licensed in Maryland. You need a real estate agent who's licensed in Maryland and familiar with the areas that the buyers are looking into. You need a title company that's licensed and a good company. You need homeowners. You need it all lined up.

To do that across the country, you need that across the country and then to organize the buyers. Buyers take 3 to 6 months to buy a property. There's a whole host of things that need to happen. You need to have follow-up dates, dispositions, and stuff. It's simple. We collect the information for the buyer on where they're looking to buy a house or what type of property. We arrange the professionals that can do that fulfillment and then we manage the disposition of the buyer.

It means that specifically if you're moving in 3 months or 6 months if you're relocating and all of those things. If you need down payment assistance, if you already have the down payment, if you're paying cash, or whatever the scenario is, we capture that. We have a whole backend CRM, self-assignment, the whole kind of reporting, and stuff that organizes that so that things move orderly.

Is any realtor, lender, or title company eligible? In other words, if I'm a realtor or what I used to do. I used to originate. If I'm an originator and I want to be hooked up with Real Estate Connection, do I need to do anything to make that happen, or am I automatically in the system by virtue of the fact that I'm a licensed originator?

We have clients. It's not only random people. What we mainly do is work with people who are lending in multiple states. For instance, you're a loan officer in Maryland, but you can do loans anywhere in the state. You may not have a good real estate connection down in Salisbury, a couple of hours from you. For instance, you may not have one if you're in Virginia or down in Virginia Beach. Rather than saying, “I could spend a couple of hours a day chasing down title companies and realtors looking for people to do things or I can send it REC and Real Estate Connections is going to take care of it. We can take in the leads directly from the lead aggregator. We assign those local agents. The agent gets them out looking at homes.

You do the mortgage pre-approval. We have a title company line, and it doesn't matter if it's Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, or Virginia. It's all going to go through that same consistent process. As a loan originator, you're in a situation where you can self-assign the real estate agents so you can view it on a map. You can see which ones you want to use. You can use those. You can set up your own panel of real estate agents to do fulfillment.

If you're doing loans in a specific market area that you have those specific agents use, it's a tool that enables you to manage your pipeline but also, over time, what happens is you've got buyers who are out looking at homes with these local agents, and those buyers are connected to you. We have loan officers who have hundreds of buyers. I’m looking at homes with real estate agents in multiple states and moving things forward. It's a matter of your business model. We're working with anybody, but we do have a target clientele, which is mainly your lenders that are lending in multiple states.

That's super helpful and I'm sure there are all kinds of different vendors or pieces of the puzzle that you fulfill, but I'm assuming lending is one of the big ones. A realtor, a real estate agent, is probably another one of the bigger ones. What's the ideal for the realtors that tune in to our show? What's the ideal real estate agent look like that Real Estate Connection would be looking for?

We call them vibrant agents. It is essentially somebody who can pick up the phone, will call you back, and will work in a team-like fashion with the lender. Somebody who will make sure that things are moving forward in the right direction, knows how to work leads, and isn't afraid to handle situations effectively. It's not that complicated.

I would say most of your agents are in that category. Some of them don't like to pick up the phone and call leads. Some of them aren't that consistent, but we weed those people out. For people who work in a team-like fashion and understand it's a dynamic mortgage market. You're not going to have everything that you like and will update us on what's going on with their leads and work the leads. It’s not anything crazy, but consistency, respect for the client, respect for the process, and things move forward.

Thank you for talking about your company and what they do and answering those questions. It’s super helpful for me and for our readers. I'm going to move directions from talking about Real Estate Connection to talking about leadership. One of the things that I heard from you that attracted you to our show was the leadership aspect of it.

You've started companies. Real Estate Connection is vibrant and growing. I know that has different leadership challenges that come along with it, which I understand, but you've got some philosophies around some tenets around leadership that I've read about. When it comes to the topic of leadership, Brian, what are some things that are important to you?

I would say that leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. What I mean by that is specifically, as a leader running an organization, you need influence in both the marketplace people, your people, your clients, your vendors, your customers, and all those things. It doesn't necessarily matter this particular style of the leader, whether it's somebody who creates community, has a bunch of money, who's very technically capable, or is a heartless go-getter.

 

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.

 

At the end of the day, the results are going to come from your ability to influence the situation and that can come in a variety of tools. If you're somebody who's in the military, you're going to enforce a lot by the threat of force. If you're somebody in a volunteer organization, you're going to do everything through community because you can't threaten anybody with a volunteer.

Having a particular style is not as relevant, but focus on the ideas that, as a leader, I need influence and I need to be aware of that. I need to position myself, my company, my people, and everything to be accepted by whatever vertical or every situation I'm working in and not try to put a square peg through a round hole. Also, do not try to force something, but rather observe the obvious and go in that direction.

There are certain things in the real estate world or in the business world that are common sense and being a good leader. It's recognizing that, and then putting your people in a position to win, not coming up with some idealism or some philosophy that doesn't make any sense, and it’s just what you think. That's important. 1) it is influence and 2) the quality of your decisions makes a big difference.

What I mean is the quality of your decisions and the quality of all of your decisions, both personally and professionally. To me, there's no difference between you personally or professionally because you are who you are. If you smell like crap on the way to work, you're going to stink just the same when you get to the office. It’s because of that that you have to look at the quality of your decisions, both in that quality is not related to outcome.

For instance, if you have a situation and you're a loan officer. The appraisal comes in low. You think, “The appraisal came in low. My deal's not going to go through.” No, because if it's an accurate appraisal, that's the right thing to do and it's a quality decision. You can selfishly think about your commission. You can selfishly think about, “This buyer's not, or this seller's not, or this person's not refinancing,” but that's not a good decision. A good decision is accurate and it is regardless of the outcome. As a leader, you want to focus on saying, “I'm going to get influence and I'm going to make good decisions regardless of the outcome.

If I'm taking the win or if I'm taking the loss, I don't care. If I got to open up the business or shut it down, it is what it is. If I got to hire you or I got to fire you, it's going to be a tough conversation or an exciting conversation, but I am going to make the right decision and I am going to think it through. When the decision's made, good or bad, you will know it wasn't some hasty decision. It wasn't from selfish means. It wasn't from a place of selfish gain and it was the right decision to make.

If you do that consistently, or at least put the effort forward, then it doesn't have to be something that the Blue Angels don't have to fly over every decision that you make. It could be very simple considerations, but those two things are important. If you have influence and you're making the right decisions, and you have influence and you're making the tough decisions, and you have influence, and you're making good decisions, your organization's going to be on the solid ground regardless if it's only you or if it's a whole team. You're going to build on sustainable results.

TII Brian Coester | Quality Decisions

Quality Decisions: As a leader, you want to have influence but still make good decisions, regardless of the outcome. Whether that decision is good or bad, it must be the right decision.

 

A lot of times, what happens is and I think everyone's been guilty of this you get a business going. You get some clients. You get some customers, You're trying to make it work, and you try to make it work. Trying to make it work sometimes is counterproductive. It’s trying to win by any means. You then start cutting corners and paying attention. I can't tell you how many loan officers you worked with and say, “I want to only work with people with $600,000 or more.” “I only work with the jumbo buyers.”

That's not the attitude. That's like saying, “I only build skyscrapers.” It's like, “If you only build skyscrapers, you wouldn't be talking to me right now. You'd be on your jet building skyscrapers.” You're sitting in your house and you work from home, just do the loan and help the person. It's getting out of the mindset of outcome-based and what is the end result for me. It’s getting out of the impulsive decision-making and sitting down and saying, “What is in the best interest of everybody in this situation?”

As a leader, it's my responsibility to identify that and act upon that in the best way that I can, and then let it be known that my decisions are not based on my gain or on my personal outcome but are the best decisions to make. I'm willing to take the loss. “I don't care. Embarrass me. Go for it. It’s not going to happen.” That's the two things and it takes maturity to get there. That's not for the faint of heart either because it requires you to have some awkward conversations. It requires you to get ahead of things, say no, and take losses you would otherwise not have had or been able to hide, per se.

I'm intrigued by your quality decision remarks. You got me thinking in a million different directions right now because over the years, Brian, I've observed shitty decisions that have been made. I've probably been guilty of making some of those bad decisions myself. When you say quality decisions, I even wrote that down. I'm honing in on that and you gave a ton of examples about sometimes that's not the easiest thing to do or sometimes it may be detrimental to your personal gain, but it's the right decision.

You gave that examples. I have a couple of questions that come to mind. One is quality decisions sound like they need to be principle-based. If somebody's reading this and they go, “Quality decisions,” the way that I define that may be different than the way that Sally down the street or the CEO over Main Street defines that. How are you defining quality decisions? Is it principle-based? Are there some tenets that you hang onto when you are going through a decision filter? What makes up a quality decision?

It has to do with where your mental state is coming from. You can make the wrong decision and it'd still be a quality decision. You can make the right decision and it'd be a quality decision. You can also make the right decision and it'd be a poor decision. There are a lot of nuances to that. If your neighbor asked you to carry in your groceries because she needed help, you would help her do that. If your brother asked you, you would say no.

If your neighbor asked you to testify in court, you would say no. If your brother asked you, you would say yes. It’s like, “What is the right decision in that scenario?” Do you help everyone with their groceries and then you go to court for everybody? There are some gray areas there, but I do think this. A quality decision is not made. You have to put it through a process. What I would tell people is you got to look at your decision-making process in the sense that it shouldn't be something that's impulse-based or anger-based.

 

A quality decision is not made. It should be put through a process.

You should create some distance between yourself and the problem or whatever decision you're making and you should write it out so that you have clarity on the decision. There is no one answer to that and I don't think it's principle-based. As much as it is nice people say that, I don't think so. I think there are gray areas. It's like, “I've got kids and they ask me for money all the time.” They say, “It's principle-based.” No, it's not. I got a daughter and she is like, “Dad, get out my life,” but first take me and Becky to the mall and give me $100.”

It's not principle-based. It's love-based, which I guess you could say is a principle but at the same time, I know my kids. I know they go through different things and I know I have to be there for them as they go through different things. Some of them I'm going to disagree with and that's okay. Some of them are going to be in conflict with me and that's okay, but I can still make the right decision or I can still make the best decision.

What I would tell people is to slow down. You don't have to make the decision now. Be less responsive than more responsive. If you think about a microwave versus a crock pot or you want to take time. If you microwave something, it is really hot and explodes. If you crock-pot your oatmeal, it tastes right. You want to keep it in a slow, methodical state and keep the temperature low.

For instance, life is relatively simple and relatively easy. If it's not, you're probably putting too much aggression and too much anger into it. If you look at fighters like boxers, they first tell you that you have to calm down. It's a fight and you think, “Crank it up.” It’s like, “No, calm down.” You got to break it down.

TII Brian Coester | Quality Decisions

Quality Decisions: Life should be simple, if it's not, you're probably putting too much aggression into it. Make decisions that are sustainable and realistic. The quality of your life is going to be based on the quality of your decision.

 

It's the same thing with life. You think, “No, you got to crank it up.” “No.” You don't have a bunch of Navy SEALs working for you. You've got normal people. Most Navy SEALs are great heroes and warriors. They probably wouldn't work that well in an office. They're out there jumping off airplanes, killing terrorists, and protecting the world. Calm that down and let's make some good decisions that are sustainable and realistic that you can write out. Also, anyone would look at it and say, “That's common sense. That makes sense. That's intelligent.”

You can get there if you go through the process. Writing something out, taking the time to think about it, and having a couple of people to bounce the idea off of, you're probably going to make a good decision. It sounds like a lot of work, but what ends up happening is the quality of your life is going to be based on the quality of your decisions. Making a couple of good decisions and avoiding some problems is a big deal when it comes to whether you do something or don't do something.

Once you internalize it, you end up in a situation where if you can make 70% good decisions, that's a great place to be. Sometimes it's taking a loss too. Sometimes it's like, “Yes. We lost money on this. This was a bad situation. I got to walk away from this relationship. This wasn't a good relationship. I got to walk away from this person. They're not treating me the right way,” and that is still a good decision even though it didn't work out.

The final thing is to get ahead of stuff. For instance, if you think I'm a leader. My goal is to influence. I'm going to make good decisions and then I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to salt the driveway the night before. I'm going to make sure everything's lined up beforehand. If you get in that philosophy of like, “I'm going to make good decisions. I'm going to get ahead of it and not be considerate of the outcome. I'm not going to be considerate if it's a winner or loss. I got to make sure that I still have influence in this situation at the end of the day. It's a nice place to be. It’s a lot harder to do than me talking about it.

It’s easier said than done. Brian, you outlined your first book. The title of it is Quality Decisions by Brian Coester. I don't know about all the chapters, but the first six chapters are to distance yourself from the problem. Write it down. Have it be love-based because you corrected me on the principle-based piece and you explained that. Slow down and then get ahead of it. You used that example of being proactive. There are your first 5 or 6 chapters right there.

I need to repeat back to you something that you said. The way that it rolled off your tongue, I'm thinking that you've said this before and I've heard different iterations of this before, but it struck me with the way that you said it, is the quality of your life is made up of the quality of your decisions. The micro decisions and the macro decisions that we make. It sounds to me like you've thought about this quality decision idea and it also sounds to me like you've got a lot more to say about it. I'm betting that Real Estate Connection benefits from the way that you feel and your philosophy around the quality decision, that whole philosophy that you have.

It’s very common. Everything that we're talking about has been said 1,001 times, but it's a relevant rendition. It’s the updated translated version. It’s no different than if I physically went out and laid a brick on the ground and you would say, “That is a nice brick.” If I went and put a bunch of crap on the ground, you would say, “It’s a big pile of crap.”

Just because you can't physically see the results of your decisions, it doesn't mean that somewhere in the universe or somewhere in the world, there's not a brick or a pile of crap that's accumulating based on your decisions. For instance, if you were trying to lose weight and you went 7-Eleven and got three KitKats and a Baby Ruth and ate them, you said to yourself, “I look the same. It's not true that KitKats and Baby Ruths make you gain weight.”

 

Just because you don't see the results of your decisions, that doesn't mean that trash is accumulating somewhere because of your decisions.

Hold on, fat boy. A couple more months of that and you're going to be bald and you're going to be heavy. There are going to be some problems. With decisions like, “Am I going to call this person back or let them go to voicemail? Am I going to do the best I can for this $80,000 or $100,000 loan that nobody wanted to do but the person's buying a house, or am I going to give it to my assistant and not mess around with it? Am I going to be honorable to my spouse and my kids and my wife or am I going to be one of those weirdos at the conferences?”

You start framing those decisions and you say to yourself, “Am I making the best decision in every scenario?” If you consistently make good decisions, you consistently make good decisions. It builds off of each other and not that you have to be perfect. It's not about perfection. It's the opposite of that. It's about observing the reality of the situation and not trying to make it more or less than what it is.

If you have a situation where it's like, “I'm not perfect.” We're not even asking you to be perfect. We're asking you to be honest. We're asking you to be thoughtful. We're asking you to be caring and understanding. In consideration of all of those elements, it's very obvious what the decision is or isn't. If you do that with consistency over time, you end up in a situation where it's the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt. It's subtle, but if you got hit by a lightning bug, “Okay, fine.” If you get hit by a lightning bolt, you got a problem.

With people's decisions, it's the same thing but what happens is, I would say, 80% or 90%, and this is not even on their radar. They're like, “How can I get the most out of the situation?” They're not necessarily considerate of the whole picture and maybe a little more selfish. Everyone goes through those phases. I've gone through those phases.

Those aren't good decisions and what happens is you start to say, “I'm going in this direction. I'm starting to build up good decisions. Now, I'm starting to go down because I'm starting to make some bad decisions. I'm going to go back up because I'm making good decisions and I'm going to go back down because I’m making bad decisions.

Such as the nature of life. It’s that work-life balance elusiveness. It's never going to be perfect, but I think what I'm hearing from you, Brian, is trending and your decisions stack upon one another and are we going in the right direction, or have we made a bunch of bad decisions where we're going in the wrong direction? One of the messages I'm taking from you is to consistently analyze that because our decisions affect our lives. Really good quality decisions make up a really good quality of life and bad decisions, conversely, can make up a mediocre and not-so-great life.

The other thing I've realized is nobody gets away with anything. You think about that aspect. You almost have to go through that process because what happens is even the stuff you think you get away with, nobody gets out at 4:00 in the morning, “I need to call this person back,” or it's 3:30 in the morning and, “I shouldn't have texted this person.” Everyone's got a phone number in their phone that they need to delete.

You take that gamut all the way through and you say to yourself, “Am I fooling myself into thinking things should be better than they are?” I can make a list right now of two dozen things that are stupid that I could easily throw away. I could easily call that person back. I could easily delete that phone number. I could easily stop texting that person or drinking at the conference too much or whatever it is. Everyone has their own thing.

The point is to place judgment on those decisions. Everyone always says like, “Let people live.” That's stupid. Place judgment on those decisions. Write it out, “I'm so stupid because I keep doing this over and over again and this and this. I know it's bad. I'm 35 years old or 45 years old and I can't even have the self-control to not have more than three drinks at a conference and I tripped up the stairs and tore my pants.”

TII Brian Coester | Quality Decisions

Quality Decisions: Place judgment on your decisions. Let yourself feel the guilt and weight of your decisions, and then you correct it. Get into the habit of dealing with reaility.

 

You can write those out and let yourself feel the guilt of that. Let yourself feel the weight of that and then correct it. Slowly start doing that and getting in the habit of taking losses and slowly starting to deal with reality is probably the best way to put it. It's effectively dealing with reality and a positive attitude regarding the changes that are going to be made or the adjustments that need to take place based on your own limited thinking and observation of the situation.

It’s very interesting what you say about nobody getting away with anything. There can be these things that happen during the day where you think you're getting away with something and you gave some good examples, but you can never get away from yourself. That is something like those 3:30 in the morning sleepless nights or your conscience or whatever it is.

I think your sage advice of writing some of those things down for yourself starts to make it real and then you can do something about it. Conversely, when you talked about quality decisions, you can make the right decisions. Even writing those things down produces clarity for you. It goes both ways and I think that's what you were referring to good quality decisions lead to more good quality decisions and so on and then you're trending up. Even writing those things down is good because it starts to stack and build on one another, but then the opposite can be true too.

One–hundred percent but what happens too, and what people don't understand 100% is that when you start making quality decisions, the quality of your thinking changes. One principle I have is that these thoughts are not my thoughts. That's a weird mystical thing, but I do think that. If you say to yourself, you're driving down the road and you see a car. You start thinking about that car and thinking of a friend that had that car. You start thinking about the Washington Commanders and their horrible new name. You start thinking about how Tom Brady was the greatest quarterback of all time and how if your high school coach puts you, you'd have been the second-greatest quarterback.

 

When you start making quality decisions, the quality of your thinking changes.

You start having these thoughts and then you see when you're walking out of the store and you see something and you say, “I could steal that.” You then say, “No, I'm not going to steal that.” You think, “I could speed through this light,” and “No, I'm not going to speed through this light.” Your mind has all these random thoughts. Who knows where those are coming from? It's just there.

You then say to yourself, “If you were consistently making poor decisions, you're going to have thoughts that are consistently poor. That's going to be theft, cheating on your wife, doing malicious business practices, not being a good friend and doing drugs because you put yourself there. All your thoughts are centered on this hateful and painful environment.

As you make better and better decisions, your mind clears up. You think of things differently. You take time to look at the rainbow. You have more patience, which happens naturally based on the quality of your decisions. Taking a step back and saying, “I can think weird, but I'm not going to act it. I can have these weird impulsive ways of thinking about, ‘I'm not going to do this or I'm not going to do that.’”

Why does everyone not like going to the gym and then afterward be glad that they did? It’s because their thinking is not right. What ends up happening is when you consistently make good decisions, there's a point where your thinking gets behind your good decisions and you're motivated to make better and better decisions rather than motivated to do worse decisions.

You have a life working for you as opposed to you fighting life. A lot of people spend their whole life-fighting life, not realizing that it's because they're too gullible to their own individual thoughts. You're too impulsive to the idea that you shouldn't go to the gym because you don't feel like it. That's a reflection of you didn't make a call because you didn't feel like it. You didn't call your wife because you didn't feel like it. You didn't call your kids because you didn't feel like it. You don't have enough money to pay for anything because you didn't feel like it.

You can stack that into all other areas and at some level, it's a way towards a better life and lifestyle and more inner peace by literally thinking about the decisions that you're making and taking the time to at least be considerate. If you see a homeless person right on the street, you could say, “He's homeless. I can't help him. I can't buy a hotel. I can't buy him a house.” That's fair, but you could give him $2. If you gave him $2, you're considerate.

 

Quality decisions lead to a better lifestyle and inner peace.

It’s not solving the problem, but you're at least considerate. “I'm considerate of the idea that you need some money. I have some money to give you. I'm not going to give you all my money, but I'm going to give you $2 to be considerate. If every homeless person you saw, you gave $1 or $2, you would've been considerate of everybody that needed help. You wouldn't have been able to solve the problem, but it's not your job to solve the problem. It’s taking on that mindset of, “How can I be more considerate? How can I address things appropriately? How can I do the right thing? It's not a miracle, but just as much as you can.

You learned it here first. Quality decisions lead to inner peace and that's not just a tweetable. You explained it and you gave examples around that. Brian, I love how you're bringing it full circle because at the beginning of our conversation, you talked about the personal side of who you are and the professional side of who you are is all one person. There's no difference.

Even though I started asking you questions about quality decisions related to the professional side, we're talking about Real Estate Connection. We ended up in a place where we're talking about the same quality decisions leading to a quality of life or a piece that is either detrimental to you, not serving you, and challenging to you versus one that is serving you and giving you momentum to make better quality decisions to have a better life and to have more inner peace.

I liked how you brought the whole thing around there. It’s well done. There are lots and lots to ponder around the topic of quality decisions. I've got a feeling that people are going to want to know a little bit more about you and a little bit more about Real Estate Connection as a result of our time together. If I'm right about that, Brian, how do people reach you? What's the best way to find you?

Just @BrianCoester on all the platforms. It's all the same on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Are you active on all the socials, Brian?

I am very active.

There are a bunch of tweetables that I wrote down here based on some of the things that you said. Brian, any last thoughts as we wrap up our time? I told you ahead of time it'd be 20 or 30 minutes. I think we've gone almost an hour. It’s really good stuff.

The only thing I would say is everyone knows the right thing to do almost all the time. It is having the strength, courage, and wisdom to make those right decisions as well as taking the time to let those decisions gain some strength. Some of that's your inner strength. What I would always tell people is when it comes to your life and it comes to the outcome of your life, take the time and go through the struggle.

Go through the pain, anguish, and insecurity to come out on the other side as a better person making those better decisions. It's worth it. Go for the hard stuff. Don't let your life be easy all the time. Have hard and tough conversations. Have difficult situations happen and enforce your will because that’s what that is.

You’re enforcing your individual will that you know something could be better. You know the right thing to do and you're going to do it regardless of the outcome. If you can do that with consistency, you're going to put yourself in a completely different place than you would be a year ago, six months ago, or even a couple of months. Your whole life can change just with one decision based on that.

When people recognize that you make decisions like that, it's the kind of person that can be trusted. Very few people have real trust in people because they know that the decisions they make will be shortsighted or by the cuff or whatever feels right at the moment. You don't want to go through life like that. It's not healthy.

Thank you for that. Going for the hard stuff leads to trust. Isn't that something that we all want to earn? That trust of those around us, whether we're talking about our kids, our spouses, our partners, or in the business setting and everything else. I appreciate you bringing it back to trust. I also have a feeling we might do around two of these because as we dig in, as I ask more questions, there's more in there. There's good stuff in there.

I appreciate that, Jason. I'm around, so just let me know.

Thank you very much for your time, Brian. It's been better than expected, my friend, and I can't wait for the readers to read this. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a great day.

Thanks, Jason. I'm around. Thanks, buddy.

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