Episode 59: Rough Days as a Realtor with Kenny & Bran
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Hello and welcome to the Thoughtful Realtor podcast. I'm Kenny Gong, one of the founders and partners of Willowmar Real Estate. This is a real estate podcast where we get real personal. Every episode we sit down for insights, stories, and conversations about things in the market today. And today, we have a very, very special guest. We have Brandea Bunnag, who is one of our Willowmar agents, joining us. Welcome Bran!
Thank you, Kenny. Excited to be here.
And we are talking about challenging days as a realtor. We all have them. And as realtors, we wear all kinds of hats and, truly, every day is a little different. So, days that are challenging are kind of inevitable for us. And so we wanted to give you all, dear listeners, a little glimpse into our challenging days–our “bad days” perhaps–and how we get through them.
And I am very excited to have Bran here with us to talk this through. Bran and I have had so many conversations one-on-one about how to navigate through some of these challenging days. And it's been so wonderful to see how Bran has changed and has evolved in how she navigates some of these challenging days. And so very excited to have this conversation and here's some of Bran’s experiences.
So yes, yes, yes! Shall we get started, Bran? Let's do it. Let's start with what could happen in a day for us as realtors that can transform them from a regular boring day to a perhaps zestier, more challenging day. What are some things that could happen?
I think there are maybe two different buckets. I think there are the heavier things that just create a lot of stress as independent scenarios on their own. And then I think that the second bucket is smaller things that are maybe a little less stressful on their own, but when they add up together, a lot of it is happening at the same time; or maybe something else is happening in your personal life that just completely pushes you off the edge.
In the first bucket, I think that this for me personally has changed over time and it kind of ebbs and flows and it comes and goes. This could be, for example, like losing a deal, or a lead or something falls out of escrow.
For the smaller items, it could be that you accidentally broke a key while you were trying to lock a door and now the listing agent is upset with you.
Or that you couldn't open a door and then you had to cancel a tour because you couldn't unlock the door. A lot of it has to do with locks and keys.
Keys are the bane of our existence as realtors.
Or like you're late for an appointment and that didn't set the right tone with the client. So just little things like that, that can add up. And especially if you're not having a good day personally or there's other time constraints that you have, then I imagine that they can lead to you feeling like you're having a bad day.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's almost like objectively hard things that are going on with our job – with a transaction, with a client – and then there's all of those small little moments that just become our own personal triggers.
And it is interesting because they're both going to happen. They're both inevitable. Would you say that the way that you handle in the beginning of your career, did you handle them the same way?
They hit differently. So in the beginning of my career, I think that the heavy items hit the most. And so because of that, they were just such big boulders that I couldn't even process the smaller grains. So I think, in a way, it was a blessing in disguise because the smaller things, I [was] just like “okay, I can't even deal with this right now”, because the big items are just weighing on me so heavily.
Nowadays, those big items actually weigh on me less. And so the smaller items, I notice them more prominently, but luckily I have the wherewithal to laugh them off at times.
But in the beginning of my career, I think that talking about those bigger items. There were two things that really led to those challenging bad days: losing a lead and losing a deal. And I can talk about an example of losing a deal.
I think at the beginning of my career, there were more instances of losing a deal than losing a lead just because of the state of my business at the time. And there's one specific example that is seared in my brain forever and ever that was so early on that I think that the way that I felt it was such that I will never forget it; although I would feel it differently today. The context is that I was working with these buyer clients, and it's important to understand the nature of these clients. They were so delightful, incredibly high performing in their roles and their careers, super intelligent, and not only that, but have the strongest of morals, really immensely grateful for everything and just like the summa cum laude of clients. You know what I mean by that. Sometimes you have those clients that just trust you and will follow your guidance to the T, will do everything that you say, does everything excellently.
Because of that, within two weeks of touring, they found the home of their dreams. I could tell it was the home of their dreams, because not only did they tour it three times, but on the third tour, they stayed there for almost an hour. And they were imagining life in the home, like every single bedroom, and [as] a young couple, no children had yet been conceived, but they were also imagining their children's lives from now, and how they would use the home.
So while we're going through that tour, of course I am sweating like, “Okay, it seems like they like it, seems like they want to make an offer, and it seems like I better get them this home.”
So there's just a lot of pressure and fast forward, we end up making an offer and it was late evening and then the next morning we heard back from the seller that they wanted to make a multiple counteroffer. There were six offers. They decided to make a multiple counter offer at a specific price and then my clients decided to accept at that price. And then two hours later, we learned that another party won the bid.
Two reasons. One, because the other party had a lender that the seller liked more and they were $10,000 more. Who's to say whether they were actually $10,000 more or they became $10,000 more. This is a 3.4 million dollar property so a $10,000 difference is heart-breaking, earth shattering.
Absolutely.
And so I think at the time I, of course, related to the clients and really felt for them. And that was really hard on its own. But then not only that, throughout the experience I was incredibly anxious, paralyzed; I couldn't do anything else. I was checking my phone every minute. If I went to the bathroom, I would bring my phone.
There was a moment where I was thinking about taping my phone to the shower glass door so that I could watch my phone while taking a shower, like I'm just a ball of stress, a ball of anxiety. And then of course, when we get the bad news, yes it is hard for the client. It is hard for the client, period. But I also took it upon myself to think that it was also hard for me. And [I] spiraled. It didn't just become a challenging day, it became a challenging week, because I was diminishing my own self confidence. I did not have any self belief.
And so for five days, any client that I interacted with or any experience that I had was just like in a place of “I'm not worthy.” I think I hosted an open house that weekend. It was a shot. It was like a waste of time. I was extremely reticent. I just dug myself into a hole and that is a really challenging place to be in. That was probably at the beginning of my career that is what a challenging day looked like. It was either I was anxious about an offer that was submitted, or I was putting myself down because of a result that didn't go my way or my client's way.
In that situation, how did you eventually lift out of the spiral?
Distraction by other things, which is not a healthy way, and so I would do that very differently today. In the past or in the early days, I didn't have a way to process it and that was very unhealthy because then it would just dissipate and there's no reflection. And suddenly your mind and body think that that's an okay way to go about a situation.
Oh my gosh. And it's so tough because this is part of our job, right? Like these situations, the more reps you have, the more that you realize how part of the job this really is–how normal and how ordinary and how expected it is. So now that you have had so many more reps from that situation, take me through how the Bran of today would react to that same situation.
Well, it would still suck.
Yes. Still devastation.
It would still suck, and I think that is because I care and that is an element that I would never want to get rid of because that would mean that I don't care anymore and I think that the caring piece is what makes us such good agents.
Yep.
But I think that, first of all, on the anxiety piece, I wouldn't be as anxious leading up to receiving the decision because of what you mentioned, which is having the reps and having built up the confidence. I'm very thankful for that. So in a way, it's just like over time, believing that whatever happens, happens and as long as I'm doing my best in the moment, there's nothing that I can really do. So there's no value to be provided by being anxious.
When you say that, how do you embody, remember that, remind yourself of that when you're in that moment? Like how can you remind yourself that “no, you do have the reps, you do have the confidence and that this is part of a natural cycle of this industry”? How do you remind yourself of those things in that moment?
That's a good question, Kenny. I don't know if I do that well. I don't know if I'm reminding myself or if it's just purely the fact that I have those reps and I don't even think about it anymore which is awesome to think about in reflection–that I don't need to snap myself out of this, like “don't be anxious! You got this,” because it's just more innate. But I do think–maybe to answer this question in a different way– for when I do receive a decision that didn't go my way, instead of spiraling out of control and feeling that it's my fault–what did I do wrong? If only I were more experienced, it is asking myself, did I do everything that I could within my control at the time with the information that I had?
And secondly, did I uphold my values? I think that oftentimes in these situations, if you're anxious or if you're stressed, then you might feel like acting in a way that's not right for you.
And I think there's just so much pressure that sometimes you forget about how you want to show up to a conversation. And so whether that is actual frustration that is surfaced to the other side, or it could be as simple as when you're in a conversation with your client, you're thinking about what to do next, as opposed to listening and empathizing and thinking about the big picture.
So I think that as long as I feel and answering that question for myself of “did I do everything that I could and did I uphold my values?” Sometimes the answer is no. So then what can I do? I can think about, okay, what would I do differently? How would I have shown up to that conversation better?
If the answer is yes, there's still an opportunity to grow and learn. And that's how I try to see it now is that it might be a challenging moment. It might still suck, but I think that now I have a better ability to remind myself, the sooner I can rebound, the more effective I will be to make the next shot.
Yeah. You know, it's so interesting what I am thinking about when you talk about this values alignment is that is what integrity is. As you're talking, you know [that] we in our industry talk a lot about integrity. What makes a good agent is someone who has integrity. Fiduciary duty, integrity is part of it.
But what I don't think is actually talked about is what does integrity look like? How do we actually define it? How does it show up in our interactions with our clients, with our colleagues, with each other? And I think this is exactly what integrity is. It's actually saying, “Am I behaving, am I acting in the way that is in alignment with the person that I want to be–the best version of me?”
Yes. And I think that that is easier to do when you're in a calm state–less stress, less things, fewer things going on. And where that really gets put to the test is if you're under a state of stress.
Before I want to get to this calm state–I want to talk a little bit about that–but before I do, I think also one thing that I wanted to mention is that snap out period when you have a truly devastating hit in the gut, right? Like you lose a deal, whatever it is.
And this I think is the skillfulness where instead of five days of spiraling, you go from five days to five minutes. And it doesn't take away your whole day and you still feel it, but you have metabolized it and you've processed it in a way where you can feel the disappointment and then immediately say, okay, I'm moving on. And that is the skillfulness of navigating through a challenging day as a realtor.
And of course that's everything, right? Like that's just life. How do we deal with life? We, as realtors just happen to deal with massive, large, disappointments on a daily basis.
Well, it's everybody else's life that's condensed into your workday.
Yeah, which I think is the most wonderful thing to me is what an incredibly special thing that we get to do every single day. We get to hold people's most thrilling wins and their most crushing disappointments every single day.
It is a privilege and a responsibility.
I hope that this is also illuminating to why, yes, realtors can have very challenging days.
Okay. Let's come back to this calmness that I love. Why is calmness so important in helping you navigate challenging days?
You never know what you’re going to get on any given day and what’s happening in your life. And because there are so many exterior factors that are out of your control, I think that this is especially hard for type A who want everything to be in your control. In this business that is not the case. And in order to be able to process those external factors and in a way that's going to be productive for yourself and for your clients–and everything that we do is in service of our clients –, so if we're in a mental state that prevents us from making a logical decision or helping our clients through making a logical decision, that's not going to be productive. And so being in that calm state is how you're going to be able to have the clarity and the strength to do that.
And I think of it kind of like a battery pack of like you need to build that battery up and you need to constantly have it at an 80-90% because you have no idea when something's gonna come along and take up a lot of juice.
When it comes to calmness, I also think that there's something about calmness giving you a way to access the range of emotions, because I think that sometimes you need to get a little bit zesty.
Sometimes you need to get a little bit fiery in a negotiation to hold the other side accountable or to communicate the urgency or the seriousness of the matter to the other side, whatever the case may be. Sometimes you need a little bit of extra spice.
And what I'm now realizing about calmness is that it allows you to access whatever emotion or whatever appropriate reaction you need in that situation.
Yes, in an intentional way because otherwise you’re doing so reactively and that's not the place that you want to be in.
Right. So when you're calm, you can be zesty and inspire, and [be] spicy if you need to, but it also allows you to be like, “Oh, I actually don't need any of that right now.”
And the most appropriate reaction response is cool as a cucumber. And that's what's actually going to impact the negotiation as positively as possible. And being calm allows you to intentionally make that choice of where you're going to be.
Okay. I love that. Let's talk about that battery pack–the calm battery pack that you need to charge up and keep at 80-90%. What's your practice to ensure that that is charged up?
Great question. I think that there are multiple pillars. Firstly, sleep and as soon as you wake up, sunlight. There is nutrition. For me, I need to stay away from sugar and alcohol because they really deplete my energy, physical and mental. There is, of course, exercise–and that looks like different things to different people, social connection and for me, it's mental stimulation. I don't know if this is something that is a pillar that everybody needs, but personally, I have felt that if I, if I have all these other pillars regulated and I don't have enough mental stimulation outside of the work scenario, then I still feel anxious for some reason.
And so for mental stimulation, that could look like listening to a podcast or playing card games or playing board games or doing a puzzle.
Let's dig into all of these, because I love all of these pillars. Okay. Sleep was your first one. Ideal sleep situation, what does that look like for you? Eight hours?
Eight to ten hours? I don't know if I've ever gotten 10 hours before, but that would be fantastic. And I think that it's consistency too, so being able to sleep and wake up at the same time almost every day, maybe not as much on the weekends, but the consistency because I think otherwise your cycle–your circadian [rhythm]– is out of whack. So I try to go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6.
And do you have a night time routine, like a shutting down, slowing down routine?
Absolutely. No screens past 9 if I'm trying to actually be asleep by 10. So I put my phone outside of the bedroom and just trying not to stimulate my eyes or my brain in any way.
So a little bit of reading, screens off at nine. Try to get to bed at 10, wake up at six. Okay. Sunlight.
I don't do this well enough. It does not happen through the window, so you actually need to go outside. And so this is a lot of the reason why I want to move, because we have an elevator in our building, and that is just inhibiting me from getting as much sunlight.
So you can't open the, can you open the window?
Not enough. So the most that I probably get is when I'm walking to Pilates, or walking from my car to someone else's house.
Wait, I just also had this image. So your window probably opens like what? Four inches.
Probably, and I can't open it more because of the cats.
Oh my gosh, I just had this image of you turn vertical trying to get as much window or like with sunlight without the wind
In a single eyeball…
In a single eyeball through your four inches.
It’s like I live in a prison.
Okay. So sunlight as much as you can. Sometimes you get it through pilates on the walk to pilates. Okay. Nutrition. You said no sugar.
No alcohol.
No alcohol? Okay. What other things in nutrition do you think really help you charge up that battery?
There are things that I should be doing and there are things that I am doing!
What are you doing and what would you like to be doing?
I am doing not enough. It's essentially no sugar and no alcohol as much as I can. And then otherwise, I have free reign to do whatever I want as long as those two things are in place.
But what I should be doing is just having a more balanced diet with multivitamins. And I would prefer to do that naturally, as opposed to through supplements. But you know, just making sure that I'm getting enough greens and fiber and protein. What I have tried to do recently is to only have savory breakfast. So not spiking up my insulin in the morning with sugars or carbs.
Sure, okay. Then you've got social connection as also a pillar. Tell us more about what that looks like for you.
So social connection, for some reason I just like to think about this visual of oxytocin like flying between people and pets. You actually get oxytocin stimulation through your relationship with your pets and I think that they do too!
So I just imagine every time, for example, you and I were sitting here and we're creating this lovely connection and I just see the oxytocin circulating between us and within us. And so anytime you have an opportunity to do that… I think that a lot of that comes from one on one interaction, so it's not necessarily going to be if you're going to a networking event and you're just surrounded by people. I don't think that that is strong enough. So a lot of like one on one connection, also like interaction with pets if you have them,
Okay. And then you talked a little bit about mental stimulation too. So podcasts, what podcasts are you listening to? What kinds? Genres?
I really like Diary of a CEO, Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab.
I saw him on a flight recently.
You did? Is he giant?
Enormous. He could barely fit in the aisle.
Yeah, he's a hard one to miss, I imagine. That's cool. That's really cool. So those are the two that I am capitalizing on now.
Okay. Then of those, are there specific kinds of conversations or episodes – because especially both of those are interview shows – that you found inspiring?
I think that it ebbs and flows depending on what's happening in my life so right now what I'm really interested specifically with Andrew Huberman is just everything around therapy, so talk therapy and also psychedelic therapy. I think that's a thread that I'm pulling on now that is really interesting, not necessarily inspiring, [or] maybe inspiring in a way that it's like so different to how I operate day to day that if anything it’s just like, “Oh, there's like these things out there that exist and so many ways that people can heal themselves” and also other mental states and disorders that people have that it's also like a reminder of gratitude of… I think that I have all of these problems, but I really don't. So yeah, inspiring in that way.
So I love that you had talked about these pillars as helping you recharge that battery so that it's almost organic how you're recovering from challenging days right? Like it sounds like there's some reflection in there, but a lot of times you're able to metabolize and process that challenging day as it comes. Are there other things that you do to help you recover from challenging situations, stressful situations, or that you would hope to aspire to?
Well, first of all, I want to say that [it is] easier said than done. I think that I'm like saying this in the state of a podcast as if I am this enlightened Buddha who has found a way to be calm at all times.
And that is not the case. Many people can attest to that. So it's a journey and I'm grateful to have progressed. This podcast has been really awesome to be able to reflect on the progress that I've made and I hope to continue that. But yeah, when it comes to more reactively trying to regulate myself I think there's three buckets.
So firstly, environment. The buckets are environment, body, and brain for me. So environment: I am a clean freak; I need my environment to be clean. For some other people, it could be that you just need a different environment, like you should go outside or if you're in the office, you need to go home. But for me, I usually work from home and so I just need to clean. I clean and I just do an overhaul.
Second is body, so making sure that I am sleeping enough. So maybe I just need to sleep in the next day in order to come back to a normal state, or I need to go and do a flow state exercise like running or walking.
And then brain again, just feeling like I am getting that connection, social connection.
A lot of times when I'm in those states of stress, you ask me how I'm doing. And then we have a conversation, a 10 minute conversation, and all of a sudden I feel better. And it's not because I've resolved the situation. But that social connection and that feeling of support and knowing that I have that behind me, that in itself is helpful. So just have a conversation with someone about it. And another [idea is] doing a puzzle, for example.
And I think what you have taught me is for all of those things, making sure that all of those things are accessible to you. So whatever you need to do to prepare for that and that goes back into the preventative proactive, that's important because it's inevitable that that's going to arise.
Yeah, and sometimes you need the path of least resistance. Frictionless, easy access yeah, it is huge, especially because when you're… I mean, I can also speak for myself when I'm in that moment and I'm spiraling or my mind is going somewhere, it's so easy to get lost, so easy for that challenging day to become more challenging or that day to become challenging. And so having things that are very, very easily accessible it's super helpful.
Bran, is there anything else that you would like to share about how you navigate challenging days? Anything else?
The last thing or just one final thing that I'll share is that I would love to do this again in a year and to reflect on [it] because I shared about the challenges that I had at the beginning of my career. They look very different today and I hope that the challenges that I face today are completely gone and there's no challenges ever, but that's not going to be the case!
So I'm very curious to see how that changes over time. And this has been so eye-opening. And so maybe just to tie all of that together, it would be that I think that's the beauty of this business and that's a huge part of why I wanted to get into real estate is because I felt that the sky was the limit and the sky's the limit on how much you can learn, how much you can do, how much you can succeed in your business, but also like how many challenges you can face and overcome and therefore how much you can learn. And so I do actually hope that there never comes a day where there's no challenges because then that means that I'm bored. And, and so it will be very interesting to see how that has changed over time and, and really an awesome opportunity to reflect on what has surpassed in the last year.
Well, you know, the flight up to the sky is bumpy.
Oh yes.
You can get on the plane, but it's still going to be a bumpy ride!
Not good for those who have motion sickness.
Well then it's a date. We'll do this conversation again in a year.
All right! Okay.
And maybe the year after that and the year after that! It'll just be annual. Well I have absolutely loved this conversation. Every human, of course, has those challenging days and I know that we, especially as realtors, have challenging days and these kinds of conversations always feel really enlightening and therapeutic. And I hope that our stories about bad days as realtors have been reassuring to you, dear listeners, that realtors also have bad days!
And that those bad days can look pretty similar to yours.
And Bran, I just thank you so, so, so much for joining us on this episode and for sharing your experiences and your insight and your wisdom.
Bran, where can folks find you?
You can find me on Instagram, @branbunnag.
@branbunnag, excellent. And as always, you can find us also at willowmar.com or on Instagram @thoughtfulrealtor. And we would love to hear from you. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and leave us for review. We read each one of them and always appreciate when you share the love.
Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, bye!
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