Ep 84: Become a Top Producer by Being Your Authentic Self (with Bubba Mills)

Bubba Mills is the owner and CEO of Corcoran Consulting & Coaching, an international small business, mortgage, and real estate coaching company, whose clients are recognized as some of the most successful professionals in their respective fields.

Today on Stay Paid, Bubba discusses the strategies he uses to help his clients become top producers.

Key Points

• The key to success in sales is being your authentic self.
• Reciprocity will help you build relationships and reach new clients.
• In order for your marketing to be effective, you need to first build brand awareness.

Q: Introduce yourself to your audience.

My journey began out of necessity. My mom was attacked when I was 14 years old. She was a single parent working in the finance industry, where dogs were treated better than women. To make ends meet, I stole avocados from my neighbor and sold them on the street corner. As punishment, I had to mow his lawn all summer. So, I started doing more of that to make money. And then I started bagging at the grocery store. My entrepreneurial spirit started then. Before I started coaching, I worked in fields including collections and identity theft protection.

So many real estate agents think they’re amazing salespeople. The mistake they’re making is not realizing they’re the owner of a company. They just do sales. It drives me nuts. And that’s why I’m in the coaching and consulting business today.

Q: How did you find your niche in real estate?

I was horrible my first year in business, but the next year I grew about 400 percent. That’s how I found my philosophy: “I’ll be me, and you be you.”

I tried to copy what everyone else was doing, and then I just decided to be Bubba. When I did that, I found success almost overnight.

Q: How do you help people find their authentic nature and build something around it?

We coach many industries, even though everyone knows us for real estate. I did a segment for Military Mom Talk Radio, where I basically said, “Find out what you love, and put two or three asterisks next to it. Figure out how someone will pay you to do it.”

Every business starts by taking a passion and turning it into a job. Every business is focused on pain resolution or pleasure. What I do is teach people how they can create an unbeatable business by staying true and authentic to themselves.

I’ve gotten most of my jobs in life by accident. Option One Mortgage was the biggest mortgage company in the US. They asked me to interview for the High-Risk Loss Mitigation Manager position. They asked why I felt I was qualified. I said I wasn’t, but that a friend had referred me. I told them I’ve learned more by working harder and staying true to myself.

I drove down the coast, and I didn’t get 20 miles away before my cell phone rang. They asked me if I could start on Monday.

Q: What are the things that you see people struggling with, and which solutions should they be implementing?

We’re business coaches, and so we teach business. Most successful people in business are salespeople who are horrible at operations. They lose so much money because they’re horrible at operations. You need to measure return on financial investment and return on time investment. You might sell a single 1.5 million-dollar home when you could’ve sold 10 homes at $400,000 each.

We look at the profit and loss (P&L) The number one problem we have with new clients is they don’t use QuickBooks, or anything else to keep track of your accounting. It’s $10 a month. We can almost offset our coaching fees just by what we save you in terms of operational expenses.

Q: How do you help people build their business in a sustainable way?

In every company, no matter the industry, there are free leads (referrals, past clients), rented leads, and then lead sources that you own. The number one way to generate leads in your community is to promote other small businesses in your community.

I promote the art of reciprocity. When someone posts a video of me, then I need to share that video of me. This might get that person 10 new people in their database.

Download a PDF sample of American Lifestyle to stay in touch with past clients.

Agents need to go to their local small businesses and interview one per week. Record a video or do a Facebook Live and put it up. You’ve grown your database, and it cost you nothing.

Q: How do you get people to commit to strategies? And which strategies do you see working from a consistency standpoint?

There is a clear difference between marketing and advertising. Advertising has zero ROI. It is brand awareness, and brand awareness alone. Billboards are advertising—they won’t call you based on the billboard. Consumers need to see a brand at least three times before awareness has been built. Its take 2–3 mediums of communication. As long as your brand is solid, this approach works.

Once you’ve got brand awareness, then you start doing marketing. That gets 8–10 percent ROI. Get your brand messaging out there—we’ll call it your voice. Be direct.

People want to work with people they know, so you should work with people where you are. People don’t care what you know—they want to know that you care.

Q: What ways do you teach your clients to build relationships?

We teach reciprocity to all of our clients. They need to interview a small business once a week. We have a charitable program to get together supplies for local schools. We collect those supplies and let people know they’re going to local schools. When those teachers want to buy or sell a house, who are they going to call?

Q: What routines have driven success for you?

I am a firm believer in morning huddles. I don’t care if it lasts three minutes, but it can never last more than seven. I know CEOs of multimillion dollar companies who still have morning huddles. I coach thousands of clients a month, but I still want to be grounded. I will clean toilets if I have to. Nothing is beneath me.

I walk around to what I call the “Four Corners” of my office, and I speak to someone at each one. People in my office see me every single day—usually 2–3 times.

The third thing is that you should never leave your office with emails in your inbox. It’s the worst thing you can do for your business. Go to your Inbox and create tabs. Sort your emails by the day you need to give a response.

Q: What advice would you give to your younger self?

I would go back and tell my original self, “You have to be you from the beginning.” It took me years to figure out that I was running in somebody else’s footsteps. If I would’ve been true to myself from the beginning, I probably would’ve been more successful.

To me, success means I can leave the office and go spend time at the lake with my wife. It’s spending time with my grandkids. The money in the bank, the car I drive, or the size of my house—that’s not success to me. When I started, I wanted those things, and I did not focus on what the true meaning of success was to me.

You should be what you want to be, and not try to be who somebody else is.

Action Items:

• Do a Facebook Live from your local grocery store or coffee shop and give them a great review. Get their branding out there along with your own.
• Be you instead of being someone else. Find your passion, and figure out who you can help with that passion.

Connect with Bubba:

Corcorancoaching.com

Email