Mastering Communication in a Changing Market | Brenden Kumarasamy

FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:

Justin Stoddart 0:01
Welcome back to the Think bigger real estate Show. I’m your host Justin Stoddart, excited today to help you master communication. We are in a market where buyers and sellers are needing leadership, and they need you to not only understand the market, but to understand how to communicate with them. Today’s episode, I have a master of communication. And he is going to teach us how to better communicate and how to bid more effectively lead our prospective and our current clients join us it’s gonna be a great episode. So the big question is this, how do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously seek success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart. And this is the Think bigger real estate show. get very excited to be back with you today. Thank you for joining us, we’re going to talk about communication folks. And this is something that you will always need to be good at. But especially in times like these where there is uncertainty in the marketplace. When the market is consistently trending up or consistently trending down, people can kind of guess what to expect. But when the market is up and down, people need leadership. Now is such an opportunity for those of us in the real estate industry to step up and lead. But we can only do that when we communicate and we know how to communicate. Well, today’s guests name is Brandon. He is from Master talk. He is a public speaking and communications coach. And he’s here for this exact reason to teach us how to be better communicators. Brennan, such a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for joining us on the Think bigger real estate show.

Brenden Kumarasamy 1:44
Just in the pleasures. Absolutely. Mind. That’s right.

Justin Stoddart 1:47
Yes. Let me share just some of my perspective of what I’m seeing right from a systemic problem. We are faced with such media overload, that people don’t read articles, they read headlines, right, they’re faced with so much coming at them, that they read headlines. And you and I both know that headlines are designed to be the most sensational portion of that article brought to life in one or two sentences, and is not designed to properly give people the entire information. Yet when they don’t have all the information. They don’t. They don’t have the right information or enough information to make great decisions. So today, I’m really gonna be leaning heavily on you, Brandon to help us navigate through this at a time when people are misinformed. And we have sellers who are not willing to bring their price down buyers who are not willing to pull the trigger, large in part because they are not dealing with personalized information. They’re dealing very much with sound bites and headlines. So this is gonna be a great episode. Before we jump into that, tell us a little bit of your background. Brandon, we’re excited to get to know you meet you give some context as to how you can help us.

Brenden Kumarasamy 3:01
Yeah, for sure. Justin happy to talk about that. Thanks for having me. So it all started when I was in business school, Justin, I went to college and and I thought that I was going to be an executive at a company not really an entrepreneur. So I started doing these things called case competitions. Think of it like professional sports, but for nerds. So while they’re guys my age just for playing football, or basketball, or baseball or some other sport, you probably wouldn’t see be playing. I was doing professional sports for nerds, which was presentations. And that’s how I learned how to speak. But then as I got older Justin I started coaching a lot of students, and much today on how to communicate ideas, and I got really good at teaching other people the art of communication. And that’s what led to the YouTube channel. I started making videos on comms and one thing led to another and here we are today.

Justin Stoddart 3:55
Love it. Professional sports for nerds. I love it. This is gonna be such an exciting episode. Brendon, talk to us quickly direct us to where people can find more about you. I know we’re streaming live on my YouTube channels where as well as many other kinds of platforms. But how can people find you before I forget to ask?

Brenden Kumarasamy 4:13
Yeah, absolutely. Justin happy to. So two ways. The first one is definitely my YouTube channel, which is called Master talk. So you’ll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to speak there. And the second one is they do a free workshop just in a resume on communication every two weeks. And if you want to jump in on that call, which is absolutely free. It’s Rockstar communicator.com

Justin Stoddart 4:34
I love it. You made it so easy for us what a great communication. And I honestly believe that, Brandon is that we have so many people that understand the real estate market is such a deep level. But if they can’t make it simple for people to find if they can’t make it simple for people to understand, it really does. Nobody any good. And I love that you lead by example by making it very easy for us to find you. Which should be a great lesson first and foremost for All of us that are in the business of leading through communication, have one thing that we must do is make it very easy for people to access and get the right information. So this concept of, of, of communicating with people who are maybe misled or not, not properly led, because they’re, they’re simply reading sound bites, not news articles. I’d love to hear your perspective on that. Do you see that? As I see it as a, a systemic problem throughout our society?

Brenden Kumarasamy 5:29
Well, I think for me, Justin, it’s really the incentive system that’s changed, right. So let’s say we take 5070 years ago, there used to be three news channels. And the goal was really to tell the truth, and people would get paid to tell the truth, that’s been tough. But today, media outlets have or news companies have entertainment businesses. And the reason is because the fight for competition for attention has gotten so fierce, that the news can no longer get paid to simply tell the truth, you have to tell stories, whether those stories are 100%, genuine or disingenuous. They do it to make money. So it’s not really about right or wrong. It’s about how is the incentive, overtime change, and how of news outlets and media companies adapt to those changes of reality, the same way we need to adapt with the changing market trends here in real estate.

Justin Stoddart 6:21
Fascinating, it would be nice to be able to trust all the news sources that are out there. But you and I both know that that’s not possible, as each has their own agenda. So obviously, you and I are not going to fix that today. So it’s a world that we have to live amongst. And many of the people that were leading in the real estate industry, are very much led by, I won’t say half truths, sometimes it is, but it’s not the complete picture. What’s what’s a great tip Brennan that you can share with us right away when you have people who are holding on very tightly to what they know to be true. Yet. Those of us that are in a position of leadership in that industry know that it’s not the whole story, or it’s maybe it’s not, the story doesn’t completely apply to their personalized situation. What’s what’s a way to kind of release people, or help them to let go of a high of a tightly held reality that may not be totally applicable to them.

Brenden Kumarasamy 7:17
Yeah, for sure, Justin, you know, for me, the advice is always the same. And I tell my real estate guys and gals this all the time, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a real estate agent, whether you’re raising funds for multifamily properties on the investment side, or any of the above the answers the same focus on yourself, what are some aspects that you can work on, that creates a differential, because I think it’s shocking, Justin, there’s so many people in the space that can easily make way more money if they just worked on their communication and way more impact, but they don’t actually spend the time consciously to work on. So let’s go through a couple of tips here. Communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time, Justin. And if we try and juggle all of them at the same time, like body language, storytelling, smiling, vocal variety, we’re going to be confused. So instead, the key is focus on what I call my easy threes. And I’ll share one and I’m happy to share all three, I just want to let’s do pauses in between. So the first one is called the random word exercise, just pick a random word, like trophy case, like Master talk, like hairdo, like wall and create random presentations out of thin air. And the reason this is so effective is because it helps us think on our feet. If we can make sense out of nonsense, we can make sense out of anything. And that’s what I would encourage your real estate audience to do every single day for a few times a day.

Justin Stoddart 8:35
Interesting. I do believe that, more so than in times past. Real estate agents have to be good communicators, not just in a one on one setting. But oftentimes to get into that one on one setting. They need to be very good at presenting to audiences, whether it be a social media audience, whether it be to a small group, that some of the principles that you just shared with us right there will help them to show up better in a one on one setting and be able to get more one on one settings right if you can, as you said, master the presentation of thing that makes no sense, instead of them is something that does make sense that that the ability to do that will only allow you to be a better presenter in front of a group which will then give you more opportunities to be in a one on one setting. Is that am I reading that accurate? You

Brenden Kumarasamy 9:21
got the 100% accurate, Justin because when we learn to deal with uncertainty, especially the times that we’re entering now, there’s a lot more uncertainty. Like last year, houses used to sell like hotcakes. And now we’re seeing inventory pickup and multiple states in the US. How are we dealing with these changing times? The random word acts just helps us prepare for the worst and deal with the best communication situations we can’t the market so that’s number one. Number two is an exercise I teach called question drills. We get asked questions all the time just at work at school, from our prospects from our clients in real estate, but a lot of us are reactive to those Questions. We’re not proactive. We wait for the question to appear. And then when the question appears, we’re kind of caught off guard. Whereas my perspective has always been Wait a second. How do we be more proactive to this? I remember a few years ago, when I wasn’t that great at guessing on podcasts, somebody asked me, Justin, you know, where does the fear of communication come from? And I looked at him and I said, I don’t know man, Los Angeles, San Diego, you tell me. So I don’t really know how to answer that question. But then I became more practice. So what’s the advice? The advice is every day for five minutes? Ask yourself one question that you think the world will ask you about your expertise. One question about your, what you’re selling, who you’re selling, for what your product is. And if you do that everyday, for a year, Justin, you’ll have answer 365 questions about your product, your services and your expertise, and you’ll be unbeatable in real estate.

Justin Stoddart 10:58
But that’s absolutely beautiful advice. What would it look like? Right, I think I’m phrasing this question as if you didn’t already give the answer. But just to give some context to that. What would it be like to really be a master of communication? What would your How is your daily activities look different? I think you give us a great clue there is you to really be seeking out rather than reactively waiting for people to hot see you and make you uncomfortable of why not lead. And I’m a strong believer that the those that are in sales professions are the best when they are leading. It’s really a leadership role. When done at its finest. In its finest fashion, you’re really leading people to help them discover what it is that they need out of a life out of life business or a situation and then guiding them to make the best decision for themselves. That’s where sales really takes on a very altruistic, very noble position in our societies, you’re just helping to lead people. Again, it’s very much a leadership role. And it’s hard to lead when you aren’t practicing leading, right? And what you just shared with us right there. I’ve actually been intentional at being able to lead people that when they ask a question, you’ve thought that before I think about my family, I just got back from a vacation. And there were, we actually had some friends join up with us. And they had been to this particular spot before. And I’ll tell you what we learned in our hurry how much we’d been missing out on, because we didn’t have all the information that when somebody was there to lead us to say, Hey, you’re gonna like this, Hey, you’re not gonna like that, Hey, we should go over here, we should be here. It was amazing how much better of an experience it was. And when you can not have hazard li show up to lead clients when you haven’t actually been there before. And actually show up having lead. But because you’ve actually been there before, as you described, right? Where you actually think through what they could be asking what could they need? And actually think through that. But what a what a way to really position yourself as being a great leader, and be prepared to truly lead people right, which is fantastic. Please keep going share with us your other your other tips. This is so so beneficial.

Brenden Kumarasamy 13:13
And I completely agree with everything you shared. Justin, it’s really about how do you bring that leadership so that we can help our clients make better decisions for themselves? I think it’s really well said in terms of the number the third tip that I would give. So simple, Justin, nobody does this. Make a list of all your existing and past clients. And ask yourself a simple question. When was the last time you sent them a video message just to say, Hey, Justin, thinking about you. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. Thanks again, for for working with us this year was super fun getting to know you, your family and everyone else in your community. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. If you just send these video messages for fun, when it’s their birthday, when it’s something special is happening in their life, or just in general show appreciation. That’s the best way to get business. And the reason is because 10% of those people always will say, You know what, Brendan, I’m so glad I got your video message, I totally forgot to introduce you to one of my VP friends that you should have lunch with boom, new client the next day. That’s really the key is we need to practice the idea of outbound you need to get after the business that are waiting for the business to happen for us. That means sending those video messages, getting in touch with the people around us so that we can get the results. And those are the three things right, you asked it so Well, Justin, the awesome question you did what differentiates the best in real estate than everyone else from a communication perspective? And the answer is consistency. It’s not rocket science to do the random word exercise to do the question drill to the video message all it takes it’s 50 minutes total a day to do all three. But the problem is nobody’s booking time in their calendar right now to do any of those things. And that’s what the people who do ultimately when

Justin Stoddart 14:54
you really show up at a severe disadvantage in any setting, if you know But one haven’t thought through what might come up? And how do I help them solve that and be prepared for that in advance. And number two, where you haven’t actually paid the price to be in a relationship where you can influence people, right? Where, where you’ve actually paid the price to stay in contact with people, as you described, in a very personal way a personal video, and music number one, how much people are endearing to you feel obligated to you, and want to be led by you. Right, you can be a great leader. But if nobody wants to follow you, then you’re probably not a great leader. Right? Another thing that came to mind, as you were saying that Brandon, was that we can practice this stuff in our head all day long. But until you actually go do the reps of communicating, even before you’re great, like Brendan’s great, you’ll never actually get there, like, repetitions are such a part of getting mastery over anything. And if we’re wanting to master communication, it’s really hard to get good at it when you’re having a couple conversations a day. Right? But when you’re having conversations all day long, you’re just going to get better, especially when you can overlay that with a deep sense of intentionality of what did I learn from that past conversation? How can I be prepared for the next conversation, when you start to, to overlay that on top of repetitions, you’re just going to get better than anybody else out there, people are going to be want to, they’re going to want to be led by you. I actually read a quote this past week, I was at a fantastic event. And it said in times of uncertainty, people look to be led by this by those that are certain. And it’s hard to be really certain when you’re not that confident when you’re not that good when you haven’t paid the price, whether in relationships and in just doing enough reps, that you that you’re actually good at it. Right. It just takes time and effort and consistency as as you describe Brandon. So I loved I loved that point.

Brenden Kumarasamy 16:53
Absolutely, Justin, and your point is so valid, I completely agree. It’s the whole idea that when you bleed more in practice, you bleed less than the roar, right? And a war is about to hit us right. From a recession perspective, the markets are changing really quickly. So if we take advantage and be the athlete that gets the Headstart, we will get the rewards that come with it, except a lot of us just sit on our feet, we wait for the tsunami to hit and sort of just going okay, what can I do it and I can give you a couple of easy things to do. This is what a lot of my real estate CEOs do with their employees is every time they start a meeting Justin, they start with the random word exercise. Hey, guys, we’re all just going to do the random word exercise. Or before they started meeting everyone, pull out your phones before we start today’s meeting, and just send a video message to your favorite client wishing them a wonderful day. Those are the things that really integrate with a lot of what we’re teaching Justin easily in seamlessly into an organization structure. And then when we start to do that, that’s when we really start to see the ROI of not just listening to this podcast, but also implementing a lot of the the action steps that we’re recommending here.

Justin Stoddart 18:03
Brandon, you and I think a lot of like one of the major transitions we’ve made in the coaching space at Think bigger real estate, is that we found that we can give people ideas all day long. But as soon as they leave our ideas session, they get thrown back into a full inbox, a full voicemail box, a full text message, thread, series of threads, and they quickly lose the idea and the ambition to want to implement it, they get in defensive mode, or defense mode where they’re simply on everyone else’s errand who had reached out to them. So we’ve implemented our workshop times, where whether in a small group or individual settings, we’re working directly with people to get the work done while we’re together. Instead of leaving with a a to do list, you’re leaving with a done list. And I love what you’re talking about here. As a leader, we ought not just be an idea session, we ought to actually have integrated into our practices, the activities that will actually lead us and lead our people to having work done and not work to do. It’s a great idea you’ve implemented there that you’ve shared. I want to just make a quick plug for anybody here that’s listening on the podcast, and is not yet a member of the successful real estate agents Facebook group. Let me just let you know that there are some opportunities that you’re missing out on. One of the things is what I call your referral score. So what we’ve done is we’ve created a diagnostic tool that allows you to go in and identify how much untapped commissions are sitting on the table waiting for you. It’s a 92nd exercise for you. We then go deep to personalize the report that gives you the ability to identify how big are those opportunities number one, and number two, what’s the very first thing you should do to capitalize on those opportunities. So anyway, great stuff there. Brendan. I Got one more question for you that I want to share with you. Before we wrap up. I want to ask you, you are a big thinker again, you coach and train some of the top minds in business about communication. What is it that Brendon does to continue to be a big thinker? Since you’re on the Think bigger real estate show? You’re gonna get this one? What is it that Brendon does to continue to expand your possibilities to continue to grow? What does that look like for you?

Brenden Kumarasamy 20:25
Absolutely. Justin, I love that question. You know, for me, what I would say from the perspective of communication, is to always have a bigger vision for our communication skills, not just our life, because a lot of us have goals with our health, or relationships or businesses, but very few of us have goals with our communication skills. So allow me to introduce a question to help us think bigger that helps me think bigger all the time. How would your life change? If you were an exceptional communicator? Or better? How would the world change? If you were an exceptional communicator? These are the questions that helped create an expansive mindset around communication specifically, because a lot of us, we attach it to fear to anxiety. And that’s really the magic of this question. Because communication is so much more than just getting an extra sale, selling an extra home, raising a few more dollars for multifamily homes. It’s the way we talk to our families. It’s the way that we make new friends. It’s the way that we lead a more fulfilling life. And once we realize, Justin, that communication is about leaving a more fulfilling life, then we’ll definitely take it more seriously.

Justin Stoddart 21:35
Brendon, you did not disappoint today’s No wonder you lead the master talk. I want to thank you so much for your time for committing of your precious resource and sharing and your skill of being a masterful communicator in helping us to better do that today. Thank you so much for being here. And for everybody that’s tuning in today. My final request is this. Go Think bigger Britain. Appreciate you so much. Thanks for helping us do that today. Look forward to continuing to collaborate together. Likewise. If you enjoy this episode that I have a very special invitation for you. I have created a private Facebook community called successful real estate agents where the focus is going beyond success having both a successful business and a significant life. If you’re not yet a member. Go sign up now.