5 Minute Success in Real Estate with Karen Briscoe

In this episode, I am joined by super-successful Karen Briscoe, who is the principal owner of the Huckaby Briscoe Conroy Group (HBC) with Keller Williams. The HBC Group has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 250 Top Realtor® teams in the United States. Since 1977, HBC Group has sold over 1,500 homes valued at over $1.5 billion. The team consistently sells over 100 residential properties annually ranging from multi-million dollar luxury estates to condominiums and townhomes. Primary market areas include Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, and Washington, DC.

Karen is the creator of the transformative "5 Minute Success" concept. Her books Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed and Commit to Get Leads: 66 Day Challenge offer a combination of information and inspiration delivered through memorable stories. Her most recent book, Flip Time / Love Life is a heroine’s journey tale about loving the life you have while you create and co-create the life of your dreams. Karen also hosts the highly-rated and immensely popular show 5 Minute Success - The Podcast.

Karen starts by telling us how she got into real estate and what led her to authoring books and becoming a podcaster. She initially got started in property developments, but then switched to the residential side of real estate after staying home with her children for many years. Her success in re-building her business after the housing market crisis in 2008 led her to share her methods through her books and podcast.

I asked Karen what she thought helped her to be so successful so early and she said it was her primary strategy of lead-generation that she covers in her Commit to Get Leads book. She said she consistently took a plain notebook, numbered a page from one to twenty-five, and when she had filled that up with people she had reached out to that week, she knew her work was done. She is a firm believer that this consistent effort and commitment is what has led to her continued success.

Karen then walks us through the 5 Minute Success principles. She is convinced success is achieved by getting into action immediately and applying lessons learned. Karen talks about how spending five minutes each day, especially attaching the reading of these principles coupled with an existing habit, like having your morning coffee, is very effective and makes the new habit effortless.

I then asked Karen to explain her 66 Day Challenge so we could dive a little deeper into lead generation because it is so vital to a profitable business. She pointed out that there has been a lot of research done on how long it actually takes to form a new habit. Many people say it takes 21 days, but during that period the person is really excited and, when that wears off, the habit can fail to fully form. If they continue, in the second 21 days, the person goes through a period of evaluation, determining whether they really want to continue developing this new habit. The remaining days in the 66 day period are when people actually start to experience the benefits, and so it is important to power through and create the energy for persistence. And then, of course, this is just the challenge to get you jump-started for forming a life-long habit.

Because Karen has had so much success for a long period of time in real estate, I asked her where she thought the market would be headed because of the impact of COVID-19. She said she thought the concept of home has actually changed because of the shelter-in-place directives, and people are going to be more mindful of their living space because of it. Karen described how where they were seeing a trend toward urbanization, it now seems to be shifting toward suburbanization, because people want more space and land. She said many agents from around the country are seeing demand, but many of the sellers are unsure about the ongoing situation and not pulling the trigger.

Karen then talked about her partnership with the Front Row Foundation which helps individuals and families braving critical health challenges live life in the Front Row. The hope of the foundation is to provide a Front Row experience that will allow the recipient to set aside any physical or emotional challenges while they attend the event of their dreams and create memories that last a lifetime.

Karen is an ultra-successful business person, but much more importantly, an incredibly generous and kind one as well, so you will definitely miss out if you don’t listen to this week’s episode!

Notable Quotes:

“The best system is the one you use.”