Habits that Shape Your Life. You’ve Been Building Habits Wrong — Here’s How Great Leaders Do It

You're listening to No Broke Months for Sales People Podcast.

In this episode of The No Broke Months for Sales People Podcast, Dan Rochon explores

how habits define every part of your success, in business, relationships, and life.

From handling stress before it strikes to leading with empathy and courage, Dan breaks down

why the road to success is built one consistent step at a time.

All right, so what do we do when there's a bumpy road?

Why do people leave you?

People are only going to leave you because there's not enough money or the culture is not

aligning with their values and what do you do to be able to prevent that?

As you prepare, you have courage, you have empathy, and you bring out the best and others.

And these are true of a team, but they're also true of a relationship with a client.

What do you do when you have a bumpy road with a client?

The one piece that I didn't say, where I didn't necessarily leave it out, but I didn't

say it, which is when do you deal with stress?

What do you guys think?

When do you deal with a stressful situation with a bumpy road?

These are the best time to deal with a stressful situation.

It's about caring for people before they need to know that you care for them.

So let's talk about, for example, your real estate clients.

Your real estate clients, when do they need to know that you care for them?

As they know that you care for them now all the time, then you would be in a position

such that you're able to maintain the trust.

And so what I want you to really consider is the being proactive in your relationships.

As a leader or as a person in leadership positions throughout most of my life, I can tell you

sort of interesting.

I just had like a recognition, I've been in a leadership position most of my life and

I can tell you that my biggest opportunities and growth, my biggest opportunities and

screwing things up, my biggest opportunities and pretty much everything in my life have

come through my lapses in leadership.

And so here's a place that I'm consistently finding myself yet it's also the place that

I tend to have the biggest mistakes.

So if that's the case, then what do you have to do about it?

We talk about who you got to surround yourself with.

And when you surround yourself with people that are going to be aligned with your values,

with your beliefs, with your perspective, when you set the expectations of the relationships,

when you give them the tools that they need to survive to succeed and you get to hell

out the way, then you're able to, then leadership becomes relatively easy.

And I'm not suggesting that I'm not suggesting that you can't lead anybody, but I am suggesting

that there are some people that you're going to be able to lead easier than others.

And those people for me that are easier to lead than others are the people that understand

that we control our lives.

And so we had a client not too long ago and that's still sort of a client because we're still

cleaning up things.

Terry was leading and there was always a reason for not doing the activity.

It's hard to lead somebody that always has a reason.

And is it impossible now, but it is hard.

I will tell you how you lead somebody with that, that always has a good excuse.

They're always good excuses, by the way.

And then they focus on, well, they don't you care about my excuses?

And sometimes my inside voice gets outside, not very often, but no, sometimes my inside

voice gets outside.

And then the reality is I do care about life, I do care about challenges, I do care about

setbacks, I do care about all that, yet our habits create our outcomes, our habits create

our lives.

If you want to live the most successful life in the world, then you have to do the work

to do it.

And that's whether that be in your relationships with your kids, your relationship with your

spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, your relationship with your business, whatever it is,

you've got to put the work in.

Some challenges with my daughter for the first time ever, in 15 years, first time ever.

And she's such a beautiful young lady.

And I recognize that I have to be able to understand her point of view, her world.

I sent her a message on snap, snapchat the other day, and I recognize she hasn't been

going to school.

And I acknowledge her for the reason why she's not going to school, which is that she was

in a very, very small school previously, lab school and DC, and it was a private school

and had 30 kids in the entire class.

Well, last year, not this year, but last year she went to Robinson.

Robinson's a public school.

It has between seventh to 12th grade, 5,000 kids.

So I recognize my daughter for the reality of what she's experiencing, which is she feels

unseen.

She feels unimportant.

She feels as though if she's just lost in the system.

So does that mean that she's not going to school because she's lazy now?

She's not going to school because she doesn't know how to cope with those feelings.

So that's an instance where you have somebody that's doing something that's not to her

own benefit, but can still be led.

That's not a habitual, that's not habits.

Habits, if those would have been her habits over 15 years, then it's a different conversation.

That's a coping mechanism.

So do I care for others absolutely?

I definitely care for them when they have something that they're dealing with.

Do I accept reasons instead of results if the reasons are consistent?

We're probably going to have to take a look at changing something, changing the circumstance,

changing the environment, changing the mindset, which is most likely what it is, or changing

the perspective to understand that we, human beings, all of us have shit.

We all have stuff that happens.

All of us, myself included.

And then it becomes, is it there to say, well, is the stuff that's happening more important

to my perspective, or is me creating healthy habits to achieve my goals in life more

important?

And we're not just talking about business, by the way.

We're talking about fitness, physical health, well-being, relationships, and business,

many more, spiritual relationships.

We let take a look at what are the important things in your life, and those important

things are the things that I recommend that you choose to be able to have habits with.

I recommend that you choose to be able to say, if I know that my life is created through

my habits, and if I want a happy life, then what habits would I like to choose?

So I'm going to ask for you to consider that for yourself.

If I know my life is created through habits, it's that simple.

The habits that I have create the life that I have, and I want a happy life, what habits

will I embrace?

Now when I say that to people, a lot of times what they do is they come up with a great

idea and they say, I'm going to do, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to take a walk,

I'm going to drink more water, I got to drink more water, I'm going to, I'm going

to be, I'm going to spend more time with my daughter, I'm going to do this, I'm going

to do that.

And it's easy to say it, but then something comes and distracts you.

Then what do you do?

That's when the road gets bumpy.

So you got to have a pre-decision compass to say, what will I do when a challenge arises?

You got to decide that right now, because challenges will arise.

For me, my pre-decision compass says, when a challenge arises, I will let it interfere

with my, you know, not interfere, but I'll let it interject with my life.

I'll let it interject with whatever's going on, if it's a true problem, to fix it, to

evaluate, to analyze it, but I will not let that problem dominate my life.

So you may know that I, I'm a diabetic, I have, I live off of insulin, this is my insulin

pump right here, and I have had diabetes since 30 years now, I've been dependent on insulin.

I got it when I was in the United States Army, when I was getting deployed over to the Middle

East, they gave us a bunch of inoculations, my parents stopped working, and I had to

start taking insulin to live and survive.

Why do I bring that up?

Well, that's a, beyond a minor inconvenience sometimes in my life, beyond.

Now here's the thing, I respect that disease so much, but I don't give it power, and

I never will, and I never have.

I will never give that disease power over my life, ever.

There's only one disease in my life that I allowed to have power in my life, and that's

my alcoholism, and I've been sober for 20 more than 20 years.

So I allowed that disease to have, have, uh, a 40 over my life for way too long.

And when I became sober, I said, I will never again allow anything to dominate my, my thoughts,

my feelings, my beliefs, my habits, my life.

I'll never do it again.

I'll respect it.

I respect my alcoholism.

I will never drink again, ever.

I respect my diabetes, but I don't give either of them power.

If something tragic happens in my life, I'm going to respect it.

I'm going to deal with it.

I'm going to honor it.

My mom was sitting there.

I see you last week.

I took a couple days off from work.

I went and I spent with her, but guess what, what caused me to have the ability to do

that?

By the way, without any, I mean, without any care to my other areas of my life, so I can

only care for my, for my mom, because my habits, just that your business is doing so well

that you have the financial wherewithal to be able to take the time off to be with your

mom.

Uh, that's correct, but it's still an out, it's an outcome, right?

Yeah.

So my question of better answer, not to stick a critique answer, right?

No.

Sorry, Terry, but a better question would be, what causes that to happen?

What causes me to have a business that's sustainable that, that, that is doing, you know,

relatively well.

That's the habits.

That's the habits, okay?

So I took off Monday, I took off Friday, I took off Monday, I was able to spend four

days with my mom, because I'm already taking off Saturdays and Sundays.

He's getting out of the hospital on Tuesday and I'm back to work.

So did I have a break in my habits now?

But did I also spend my time where it was, where it was needed, or where I was, where

I was choosing to spend my time, yes.

So what I want you to do is I want you to think about today's conversation is two full.

Number one is I want you to think about this as a leader, um, because we all need somebody

in our lives.

We need our spouses, we lead ourselves, at the very least, we lead ourselves, at least

we should.

We lead our, um, the people that we love, we lead our clients, we lead our staffs, if

we have staff, encourage for you to recognize is that as you're leading, you're teaching

others how to have habits that are going to serve their goals, which always go back to

the conversation we had on Friday, which got by the way you have to understand what

their goals are for us, you have to understand what their strengths are, because you can't

ask somebody to go in, um, in exercise every single day if they don't have the physical

ability to do so.

You can encourage for them to do more.

My mom, for example, she's, uh, she's like, I guess I got to take Ellie out for a walk

now, right?

My dog.

And I'm like, no, my, I was like, why don't you just go to the mailbox and go check

the mail every day, right?

And that seems like it is a sort of a long walk, right?

It's not a long, long walk, but for her it's a long walk.

And so it's about taking baby steps.

So as a leader, understanding what, and why do I, why do I lead her on that?

Because I know what she wants to say, a healthy life.

I know she wants to lose a little bit of weight.

I know that she wants to be happy and healthy.

And I know that physical exercise will help in some ways to be able to get her that.

So focus on this as a perspective of, of, of how you lead others, but then also focus

on a perspective of how you lead yourself.

So ask yourself, what type of life do I want?

Then what habits will get me there?

And if I know what habits will get me there, will I actually embrace those habits?

Will I actually do the activity?

Because if you will, then now you do it.

If you won't, maybe you got to think of different habits.

There could be more than one way to be able to create results.

There certainly is in real estate sales.

And real estate sales is there more than one way to lead generate.

Absolutely.

There are, there are agents who have the habits of doing client appreciation events all

the time, doing pop buys.

I have an agent that I coach, she has the habits of embracing her VIP people.

And she's doing like maybe 40 million in sales a year.

And a market that is probably about 50 to 60% of a price.

And she's got to do almost almost twice as many sales as she would if she was in my market

to do that, that level of volume.

Her habits are different than my habits in regards to real estate sales, yet I have the

habits.

At least the habits that serve me, the habits that I'm willing to embrace.

Let's say, let's just use this, this may not be right.

But let's say there's a hundred steps, let's say there's ten steps to be able to get

you from where you are to where you want to be.

My suggestion is to take one step today.

One step tomorrow and one step the next day.

Sometimes when you look at something and if it seems like it's too big of a task, then

you just avoid it all together.

And so if you're looking to say, I got to go from here to there, zero to ten in one day,

that may be overwhelming and maybe intimidating and maybe something where you're like, I'm

not so sure about that.

But if you just say, man, I got a whole heck of a lot of steps that I've got to walk

to be able to get from here to there, what's the first step?

Take that today.

What's the second step?

Take that tomorrow.

So once you start the first step, you got to continue the first step.

That's where we struggle.

That's where we screw things up.

So you sit there and say, I got to go and find how to meet more people and talk to more

people.

And I did that.

Well, if you did that, you're not doing it today, then you're starting back over to zero.

Okay?

So you want to do it and continue doing it.

You know, my relationship with the gym is interesting because I recognize that I can

go to the gym every day for a year and get relatively physically fit and stop going to

the gym for two weeks and eat apple pie.

It's all gone.

It's like that freaking simple, right?

It's like you have to continue the journey.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your feedback today.

Thank you for your attention.

I want to wish that you have the best day of your life.

Be grateful.

Make a choice.

Go help somebody.

And if you've not yet received or ordered your copy of Teach to Sell, it's coming

out March of 2026 by Simon and Schuster, which goes through and teaches you about

leadership.

Also teaches you about belief and habits and lead generation and converting the leads

to meet with you and building an organization and it brings you step by step through the

process.

Terry read the book.

Terry, I know it's been a little bit since you read it, but any feedback on it?

It put a lot of different things into perspective for me.

And I come up with one specific one, no, but there's a, there's a, and it might be a

bold saying that you teach people how to treat you.

Well, you teach people how to do business with you.

You teach people and if you're always teaching, you're never selling because I'm, I'm not

a salesperson.

I'm a teacher.

I wind up selling a lot of property.

If that makes sense.

I love it.

And if you want to get a copy, www.TeachToSellbook.com, teach to sellbook.com.

And you'll get $10,000 of training when you get that in the pre sale.

All right, guys, have the best day of your life.

I'll see you all next time.

This is Dan Rochand.

Who's the No Broke Months?

Do you want consistent and predictable income with No Broke Months?

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