The 6 Fears That Keep You Working Nights and Weekends

by Steve Shull

Last week, I told you why agents always prioritize money over time…and why that’s a HUGE mistake that will keep you stuck and hustling forever.

I also told you I wasn’t done with this topic yet.

Because last week we focused on the false beliefs that keep you chasing money, but there’s a flip side to that coin…

FEAR. 😱

And it’s Halloween this week, so since fear is in the air anyway, let’s talk about it. 

What are you afraid will happen if you dare to protect your most precious asset—your time?

1. Fear of Missing Out on Deals 💸

I know what you’re thinking every time a potential deal shows up: I have to jump on it NOW. If I don’t, someone else will, and it will be gone. I don’t know when the next one is coming, so I have to make sure I grab this one.

One newer coaching client told me she was taking one of her kids shopping for clothes, just for an hour. As soon as they got in the car, the phone rang, and she answered.

As soon as she hung up, her kid looked at her and said, “Are you kidding me? You can’t stay off the phone for ONE HOUR to help me?” 

That cut deep…but as much as it hurt, the phone kept ringing, and she kept answering. That’s how strong the FOMO is. It causes you to compromise your values, your standards, your boundaries…everything.

Here’s the truth: if someone isn’t willing to work according to your schedule, they are BAD BUSINESS.

They don’t see your value, they don’t trust you, and they probably will not hire you. If they do, they will suck up all your time, make your life miserable, and probably cost you money in the end. 

NOT picking up the phone when those people call is the BEST thing you can do for yourself and your business. Then you’ll actually have time to find and serve the clients who are good business.

2. Fear of Losing Your Competitive Edge 🗡️

Truth: being busy doesn’t give you an “edge” or “momentum” or anything of the kind. There are a lot of agents who work really hard and make no money…because there’s a difference between working hard and doing hard work.

Working hard is chasing low-probability prospects. It’s mentally and emotionally easy to do—that’s why everyone does it—but it takes a LOT of effort to get any result because those people don’t really want to work with you.

It doesn’t matter how much of that you do…it will NEVER give you a competitive edge.

Hard work is the 6 Building Blocks: Practicing Mindfulness, Optimizing Time, Cultivating Relationships, Implementing Standards, Mastering Communication, and Acting Strategically.

No one wants to do those things…because they’re HARD. They make you uncomfortable. They don’t pay off right away. 

But you know what’s great about hard work? It builds up your skills and assets over time…and THAT’S your competitive edge. THAT’S your momentum.

So if you want to stay sharp, you HAVE to prioritize time over money. 

3. Fear of Instability and Unpredictability 📉

There’s no such thing as stability or predictability in real estate. The market will do what it does. The deals will come when they come. It’s feast or famine, and it always will be.

That’s what you signed up for…and that’s what you have to plan for financially.

One of my coaching clients closed $150M in sales 2 years ago. Since then, with the exact same level of effort on his part, he has closed almost nothing.

He told me that his lesson learned was that in the good times, he has to save, save, save…because it’s not going to be like that forever. If you keep adjusting your lifestyle up in the good times, you’ll just be under more pressure when the tough times come around again…and they WILL come around.

You can never expect consistency in your results…but with the 6 Building Blocks, you CAN bring consistency to everything you do.

4. Fear of Letting Clients Down 😞

What does this even mean? Did they hire you to answer every email, text, and phone call the moment it arrives? Is that what they’re paying you for?

No. They hired you to help them buy or sell a home.

Your value is not in responding to every call immediately. Anyone can do that. Your value is in your ability to guide your clients through this complicated process in the best way possible.

You’re allowed to have a day off every week. You’re allowed to turn off your phone for a while and get back to everyone later. You need personal time to recharge and do the things that are important to you in life.

As long as you say what you do and do what you say, you’re not letting anyone down.

But if you work with low-probability prospects and high-maintenance clients, you’ll feel like you are. Those are the people who will criticize you for not answering right away because they don’t value or trust you, and they’re looking for a reason to fire you. Working with those people stimulates this fear constantly.

But when you raise your standards of how you do business and who you do business with, that gives you the best chance to increase your productivity.

5. Fear of Letting Go of Control 🎛️

As I mentioned two weeks ago (and many times before that), you don’t control ANYTHING in the external world…including your results.

No matter how many hours you spend grinding away, you will never be in control of this. The idea that putting protective boundaries on your time will make you lose control in any way is a fantasy—you never had control to begin with.

Letting go of this illusion of control changes everything. 

6. Fear of Being Perceived as Unsuccessful 🧐

Agents LOVE to obsess over results and rankings. They love to brag in their marketing about their volume sold or being featured on some list of top agents.

Guess who cares? Only other agents.

One of my clients was ranked #12 in the nation in some category. That’s pretty great—#12 out of probably hundreds of thousands of people. But tell me, who is going to look at that and think, “Yes, I want to work with #12. That’s the agent for me.”

No one. Buyers and sellers do not sit there thinking they want to work with the agent who has sold the most in the past. They want an agent they TRUST to guide them and represent their interests.  

Just be who you are. Comparison is the thief of joy. As they say, the only people who criticize you are people below you…and why would you care about that?

These are all the traps waiting for you out there.

If you don’t understand and recognize them, you’ll fall in every single one.

Last week, a coaching client shared the story of someone she knew who was new to our community. This person listened to a coaching call that was focused on Practicing Mindfulness, and this was his response…

That’s not what I need. That’s for people who have already made it. I need to make money NOW—I don’t have time for all this mindset stuff. I need to learn how to get better at chasing, convincing, and closing deals.

That’s how everyone feels. Everyone thinks they have to prioritize money over all else. But if you start operating this way when you think you have no choice, you’re never gonna stop.  

Bottom line: be VERY CONSCIOUS of the choices you make.

Every choice has a consequence. Are you making your choices based on commitment to becoming excellent, or based on what feels good in the moment?

You are not going to achieve success or fulfillment without being committed. Part of being committed is saying no to almost everything and being very clear about what you say yes to: only good business, good prospects, and good clients.

Optimizing Time—prioritizing time over money—creates an automatic guardrail that helps you do exactly that.

In fact, every one of the 6 Building Blocks creates a guardrail to keep you on the right path. 

Your personal mindfulness practice is guardrail. Your CRM is a guardrail. Your process checklists, your Tactical Empathy frameworks, your strategic metrics—all are guardrails that help and support you.

Without those guardrails, you will default to operating based on fear, and you’ll veer off the road. Then your fear will kick in even harder, and it becomes a downward spiral. The more you chase bad business, the more you fear missing out. The harder you work, the harder you think you have to work.

If you want to start putting real guardrails in place, join us for Game Plan 2025 on December 3rd.

I know, the market is rough and money is tight. It’s hard to justify spending money on more coaching and training when business is so slow.

I had that same thought many years ago when I was thinking about going to a program around The Science of Getting Rich. The cost was $750, which felt like a huge expense.

But then I said to myself, If I’m not willing to spend $750 to make $1M, I’m not committed to making $1M.

Are you committed to what we’re teaching here at Performance Coaching?

Because we’re teaching a completely different way to show up as a real estate agent and human being. 

The rest of the industry is teaching you how to persuade and convince. We don’t do any of that. 

We understand that the prospect already knows who they want to work with. We’re on a mission of discovery to find out if they want to work with us or not. We know that how you do business is MUCH more important than how much business you do.

And at Game Plan 2025, we’re going to look through that lens at the three ways you can be more successful in the coming year: raising your fee, raising your price point, and being more productive.

Can you afford NOT to learn that?

Join us on Dec. 3rd!

Have a great week,

Steve