Goals, attitude and discipline ‘key’ to withstanding tough times

Mr Stewart noted that people don’t actually lack time, they lack direction.

“Goals give you a sense of direction. Once you know where you’re headed, it’s not as challenging to get inspired to get up and make the phone calls and persist, which are all the things that great brokers do,” he said.

The founder of Niik Stewart Empowerment recommended that brokers set both short-term goals (30 days to 12 months) and long-term ones (two to five years).

“So you start with, ‘What is the outcome that I want to accomplish? Where do I want to be?’ And then you reverse engineer it and work backwards to today and go, ‘What are the things I need to do this week that’s going to help me to move forward within my business and get out in front of more people?’” Mr Stewart said.

Attitude also plays an important role when it comes to reaching or not reaching goals, he said, even if it may come across as cliche advice.

“Attitude doesn’t sound like it’s vastly important until you have a negative one, and you can feel the difference in business when you have a positive perspective and a negative perspective,” Mr Stewart said.

He added that people sometimes forget that the purpose of positive thinking is to keep them “solution-oriented”.

“The reality of it is when things need to change within your business, you need to make those shifts and hire and fire and expand and grow. That means you’re going to need to stay in the solution frame of mind,” he noted.

“Positive thinking just means that I’m going to find a solution to the problem.”

One way to stay positive is to establish routines around it and stick to them, according to Mr Stewart, who transitioned from professional sportsman into sales and coaching, working with brokers, real estate agents and athletes, among other clients.

“If you have some routines around being positive, it won’t be hard to be positive because being positive is a practice,” he said.

This is where discipline comes in.

“Here’s what I found: The people who succeed in spite of the economy, and in spite of the marketplace, know what their goals are, they have the right attitude, which is positive, and they’re disciplined in what they do. They follow a routine every single day of the week,” Mr Stewart said.

“Successful people form the habit of doing things every single day that unsuccessful people just don’t feel like doing.”

He added that the best brokers are the most disciplined, rather than the smartest or the most experienced.

“That discipline might be, ‘I’m going to contact and communicate on the phone to [a certain number of] people every single day... in spite of the royal commission, in spite of anything that happens in the government or the economy’,” Mr Stewart said.

According to the Niik Stewart Empowerment founder, businesses are reflections of the owner, pointing to the importance of personal growth.  

“If your business is growing, that means you are [growing], [and] if your business is not growing, that means you aren’t growing,” he said.

Noting that people’s daily attitudes and disciplines determine who they are habitually, Mr Stewart said that, ultimately, “life, business, being a broker [are] a mind game”.

“You feel great one day, terrible the next, and sometimes you feel great and then you feel terrible in the same day. That’s the mental roller coaster that everyone in sales goes through. Professional athletes go through it. I’ve worked with celebrities who’ve gone through it,” he added.

“It’s a matter of having some foundation. And the foundation is understanding that it’s not what happens outside, it’s what’s going on inside your head.”

[PODCAST: In Focus: Shifting your mindset to propel you to the top]