Karen Briscoe Reveals the 5 Minute Success System for Real Estate Agents

Karen Briscoe (00:00)
I already know what’s stopping it. It’s me. Because I was looking outside me at circumstances, you know, the business environment, my family commitments, my, you know, I had lots of reasons why I wasn’t doing it, but ultimately it was me that was stopping me. And the

the people that were there still remember seeing the light bulb go off over my head. I found it to be very empowering, though. I did not use that to beat myself up, though. I was like, well, if it’s me, then I could do something about me.

Dylan Silver (02:03)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Karen Briscoe is the creator of the 5 Minute Success concept and the nationally recognized real estate leader. She’s the principal owner at the HBC group at Serhant, a top performing residential real estate team that has sold over 1500 homes valued at more than 1.5 billion. She’s also the host of the 5 Minute Success podcast and author of multiple books where she shares proven frameworks for lead generation client conversion and consistent high performance.

Karen, thanks for taking the time today.

Karen Briscoe (02:34)
Well, I am really looking forward to making a contribution to your community and let’s do it.

Dylan Silver (02:40)
Let’s start off at the top. What is the 5 MinuteSuccess concept?

Karen Briscoe (02:44)
so the idea that you can achieve a higher level success by investing five minutes a day as a top real estate leader, gone through multiple market cycles. And what I found is that when coaching and mentoring people, many times agents didn’t have the time to invest in their personal and business development.

And so in order to break that limiting belief, I said, well, do you have five minutes a day? And everybody has, you know, pretty much says they have five minutes a day. that’s where the concept was born. The idea that by investing five minutes a day, you could make an impact on your personal and business development. And so then I went about writing the book, which is in the format of a daily reader. So every day has a topic on one of the key areas that you

mentioned. And it’s different every day. Because the other thing I’ve learned about salespeople and real estate professionals is that many of them often thrive in environments that are ever changing, right? Like, I think that’s what attracts. But it also can be the limiting belief for what holds them back. And that is every day, you know, they’re just so scattered and shiny object and squirrel phenomenon this way, it kind of

feeds into that while at the same time building these core knowledge over by investing five minutes a day.

Dylan Silver (04:04)
Now without giving away all of the gold, what can agents do in five minutes?

Karen Briscoe (04:56)
Well, you can change the way you look at things. It doesn’t even take five minutes. So the idea is to, you know, for any personal business development, right? So you invest in yourself and you are your greatest asset. And if you, you know, what often happens with a lot of people is that they start something and they don’t finish it. And this way you build the habit. And habits have been proven to what is more sustainable.

So you can go on and do more and some people do, but by building the habit and you’re feeding yourself every day this knowledge, this core knowledge, that over a year you have this breadth, this bench of, they’re almost all told in story format. So you have all these different concepts, but they’re in a framework which you mentioned. So you have.

the commit to get leads, which is business development prospecting lead generation, because really in any business or endeavor, until you have a lead or a person to work with, have nothing to do, right? Dentists have to have patients and churches have to have, you know, Congress members, people that come, same with, you know, salespeople, right? We have to have a, you know, a contact lead, a person to work with. And then there is that conversion. You talked about that. I call it consult a sell. So you take them through that process.

And then you have a transaction or an opportunity or something that happens on the other end by taking them through the process. And then what often happens is, you you’ve heard about the roller coaster, right? People are only as good as their next deal. They just ride this thing. And in order to get off the roller coaster, well, you may enjoy roller coasters, you know, and you’re along with the ride with people you enjoy being with. But that really is not sustainable for most people. Most people.

to connect, build and grow, create leverage systems, scale. And then those are the three core, but it’s all surrounded by this mindset motivation piece, which I call success thinking activities and vision. So every day is different based on those core concepts. And so again, it can have multiple effects. Sometimes it’s…

you know, domino effect, like it knocks a lot of thoughts over that build, right? Sometimes it’s a snowball, so it’s kind of, you know, rolling building. Sometimes it’s exponential, like you just have an epiphany and you’re like, my gosh, now I understand, I have to lead you, right? Like I have nothing to do until I, sometimes, you know, it’s, you know, everybody has their own experience from the material, but over time, the idea is to build a habit. And as you build a habit, you’re also growing your breadth of knowledge.

Dylan Silver (07:26)
Do you believe in failing forward? Is that something people can actually do as realtors or is it kind of like, do you have to have all your ducks in a row before you go do anything in this space?

Karen Briscoe (07:37)
Well, Hal Elrod is a mentor of mine who wrote the Miracle Morning and he says that if you learn, you grow, or you become better than before. So there really isn’t any failure because if you look at it from that lens, if you look at it like you’re gonna learn something, it’s an opportunity, right? Or it’s an opportunity to grow and to become better than before. So failing forward has…

Dylan Silver (07:56)
Yeah.

Karen Briscoe (08:05)
for many people kind of a negative connotation, like they’re looking like they did something wrong. And it could be just the circumstances presented themselves. like, you know, I’ve been in multiple markets. I’ve been, you know, in 2008, you know, financial market, real estate market crash, I was around in the dot com bust, I was around at the Texas savings a little crisis, I’ve seen multiple cycles, you know, and

things happen, that circumstances happen, and it’s how you look at it. You can look at circumstance, and then your thoughts about it and your feelings about it are going to inform your actions and your results. So I look at it as like all of them are opportunities. I have grown by all of these opportunities.

Dylan Silver (08:47)
I’d like to ask you about your approach to lead generation as a whole. How do you view the concept of lead generation and what types of activities are most important?

Karen Briscoe (09:32)
Well, I think whatever you’ll do. Because really, it can be a lot of ways. Like there’s so many ways to lead generate. I think that the main focus I would like to put on are two things. And one is the idea that it’s lead generation is active. It is an endeavor that is a one on one contact. If it’s in person, if it’s by phone, if it’s by

know, text becomes a little more passive, no writing, you know, open houses, it’s active. Okay. And that’s one thing it’s whereas like, social media is an attraction model, it really is advertising, like social media is print advertising, it is no longer printed, right. So the idea is, and really, social media has replaced websites. And so it is but it’s it’s an

it’s air cover, it attracts, and then you get into, you know, actual contact. So that’s the one thing. And then the other thing that I found is the consistency is key. And I, because I, I’ve got to become a time goober. Time is a created thing, and it’s going to pass whether you do anything or not.

And the value of time depends on your perspective of it and what you do with it. Because even Einstein says, you know, there’s a difference between time flying by when you’re with the one you love and time, you know, standing still when you’ve got your hand on a hot stove or in a Zoom meeting or on traffic, right? So it is not the time, in my view, that people should track. What you should track is the activities.

Because you can hold activities to accountable to results. Cannot hold time accountable to results. Right? So like you take that five minutes and you use it to grow. That is a very highly effective five minutes. Right? You take that five minutes and you make one really great contact. Then you’ve really effectively used that time. So I believe in instead of time and many people, know, time blocking is a

philosophy that many coaches recommend. And it’s good to block time to do your work. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is though, to really be effective, what I found is to track it. Because if you agree, I encourage agents to start with five a day. Do five good ones a day, right? Let’s just go for five a day. You do five a day, you have 25 a week. 25 a week grows to, you know,

and then you can track it so you will know what activities lead to what results and then whatever you have success with then you can repeat. You have a repeatable process.

Dylan Silver (12:17)
That’s absolutely true.

And I want to piggyback off something you said there. Having the consistency is so key because especially when you’re scaling, maybe you’ve got a small book of business, but you’re trying to get larger or build a team out, These can be uncomfortable transitionary periods, especially as you’re growing. And it’s easy to start thinking, well, why isn’t this happening now? Where’s the money, right? Where’s the money in my account?

when in actuality it’s the tasks and it’s the consistency of it that you really should be tracking. And I do think people get away from that. When agents are learning new skills, right, I think one of the bottlenecks that a lot of people have is they’re waiting for like that aha moment or they’re waiting for everything to come together so seamlessly. What feedback do you have for folks who are trying to do something new? And I think there’s a lot of people right now who

who find themselves in that place.

Karen Briscoe (13:53)
Well, I would liken it to exercise, right? You don’t see the results right away with exercise in most cases, and yet you experience the benefits over and over time. what I have found is one effective way is to look at your future self and where you want your business to be. And so then to backtrack on what that requires activity-wise, I see many times, and this is why the

progression of first you learn how to get leads and then you learn how to convert the leads and then you learn how to scale is that people get busy and they get distracted by things that are important but not, know, they’re urgent but they’re not important. And I look at in my business and lead generation can be beyond, you know, the contact for a sale like a buyer or seller in real estate or, you know, patients for dentists or whatever.

It can be for ideas. You can lead generate for people. You can lead generate for resources. There’s other forms of lead generation that can help you scale. And those might be ways to make an impact faster. And so I would caution people to just be more open-minded of what it means to lead generate. But the idea is that you commit to it.

you because it’s the commitment to it. It’s like the commitment to exercise like I know whether somebody’s exercise by you know, three months down the road, you don’t have to ask somebody I don’t even have to hold people accountable. I’m like, don’t know whether you’re lead generating by how much business you have in 90 days, because you your activities in and if in the event that your activities are not leading to converting to business.

Dylan Silver (15:23)
It’s true.

Karen Briscoe (15:32)
And that’s a story too. So maybe it’s coaching or mentoring on conversion strategies. If you really, if you can document and I’m, you know, old school, I’m like, I want to see what which five people you contacted every day. And yeah, show me, you know, and that I’m from Missouri. So I guess that’s where that comes from. But I’m like, I also can tell. And what I found is, you said, what, long does it take? I was like,

Dylan Silver (15:44)
Dope.

Karen Briscoe (15:55)
It can happen in an instant as soon as somebody gets it. I can tell when they get it that like it all is. And the good news is it’s very can be very empowering as soon as somebody understands what makes a difference. And that is actively generation. And soon as they commit to it, you can see their business take off. Because that’s what people usually are holding themselves back, is what I’m saying.

Dylan Silver (16:18)
Now when folks are making that pivot, I think one of the things that can be particularly challenging is they sometimes feel like they’re the only one doing it, even when of course there’s lots and lots and lots of other people who are doing the same thing. Walk me through a pivot that you’ve made in your business. What’s something that stands out to you?

Karen Briscoe (16:37)
Well, I think that when I talked about the epiphany, so when I, it’s been almost 10 years now when I wrote my first book, when I was holding on to the idea that I didn’t have enough time or money to write a book. And so I was in a coaching program and you can use this for any example, okay? But I’m just going to you an example of writing a book. And I was in this coaching program and we had gone on a weekend retreat to deep dive.

into what we would do or how we would go about achieving what we said we wanted to do. And you I tell people like you got into real estate voluntarily, like you said you wanted to be a real estate agent. Nobody is making you like you could go get a job. I mean, that’s a choice. Like everybody has a choice here. This is not forced labor. So I was at this retreat and the last day we were supposed to say what was stopping us from doing.

what we said we wanted to do. And everybody gave up, made their presentation. And when I made my presentation, I said, well,

I already know what’s stopping it. It’s me. Because I was looking outside me at circumstances, you know, the business environment, my family commitments, my, you know, I had lots of reasons why I wasn’t doing it, but ultimately it was me that was stopping me. And the

the people that were there still remember seeing the light bulb go off over my head. I found it to be very empowering, though. I did not use that to beat myself up, though. I was like, well, if it’s me, then I could do something about me.

I can’t change interest rates. I can’t change the market. I can’t change what other people do. You know, would want the DMV Washington, DC, or I cannot change politics. I cannot change government policy.

But I can change me. as soon as I think it’s Jim Rohn that says change the way you look at things and the way you look at things changes. As soon as I changed the way I looked at it, then I got into, well, first of all, I was empowered, but I got into how. Well, how can I do it? And so they can raise it out why I couldn’t do it. I thought about how could I do it? And then I had a couple of other epiphanies. But that was when I got to how then.

So when people say, I don’t know why, don’t like, well, let’s think about some hows, like, how could you lead generate that you would commit to do and be consistent and let’s do that for a period of time to see what your results are and coach to your results and conversions. because when people make that pivot, when they make that change, that’s where I almost always see success.

Dylan Silver (19:10)
We are coming up on time here, Karen. Any new projects that you’re working on and then what’s the best way for folks to get in contact with you or your team?

Karen Briscoe (19:19)
So to your community, if this is something that resonates with you, I do offer live coaching for mega agents and those who want to be. So if you find these what I’ve shared to be of value and something you’re like, yes, that’s what I need in order to go to the next level. I would love to reach out to you. So and well, first of all, you could Google make Karen Briscoe. I think I have the whole first page. But also the number 5 Minute Success is the website so you can go on there and reach out about how we could see if it’s a good fit. And then the book concepts, there’s four of them, but they’re all under the 5MinuteSuccess And pretty much if you go into Audible or Amazon, you’re gonna find the books. And the podcast that came about because I was being a guest on

other people’s podcast like yours. And I had this epiphany like, well, I could have a podcast that I could interview people and use the format. So if you listen to the 5 Minute Success podcast, you’ll hear lots of different ways people regenerate, convert, build, and keep the mindset motivation piece. So all of that is available to your community. And thank you for the opportunity to connect with you and them.