Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

What is it about adulthood that makes us expect life to be comfortable? Rebecca Halton from one of LJ Hooker’s biggest offices discusses how to manage anxiety, empower your team and avoid complacency to deliver growth that has strong foundations.

---

Rebecca Halton:

Thank you. Thank you. Well, I was really worried. I was going to cry while I was on stage, but I cried before I got on stage. So thank you for that very humbling to be up here today. I usually get asked to speak about our business, but today I've been asked to speak about a story that I will get emotional about. It's starting already.

So today's been a lot about looking after yourself. And we all talk about, you know, making sure our cup is full, and the oxygen and all the things that go with it but one of the things I don't even know what button to press is the green one.

Sorry, one of the things that you know. I think we are conditioned to be in our situation. So our business is quite large. We've got 107 staff. 3 offices, 4,000 properties under management, 30 something salespeople. It's a big energy business, and I don't have any leaders that sit under me. We're a Flat line leadership. Everyone's a leader in our business, and that's how we work but about 2 years ago we were at 2,000 properties under management. 20 something salespeople and I broke.

I had 2 massive acquisitions. Sorry I didn't want to start like there was my mum, who's my closest confidant, had a massive stroke and became one of my dependents. I was diagnosed with melanoma, not once, but twice in the year while I had 2 very small children. Sorry. And I had massive office renovation. So at the time for 6 months we moved all our staff off site. We worked remotely from home, and so it was a very lonely 6 months for me, my 2 tiny humans and one broken boss and mum.

I was on the floor of the bathroom, and I couldn't get up. So burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human. And today's the 1st time I've told this story and I'm telling it to be vulnerable. And today, I've been through a myriad of emotion states been fantastic. But I want to tell it from that point on.

It's okay to not be okay.

Rebecca Halton:

And I think if I'd reach out for help, thank you. Thank you. If I'd reached out for help before this, I don't think this would have happened but I want to take you through my learnings of the last 2 years, and how that moment on the bathroom floor. I was ready to sell the business and get out. But then I saw my 2 kids and realized that wasn't the right thing for me. For my children. I've been in the business for 23 years. The business has given me this industry. It has given me so much and I wanted to give back.

So I had to look at it. Why, why was I in this jungle? And I kept thinking, you know, who told me that life would be comfortable as I got into adulthood? Was it Disney? Was it Pinterest? Was it the influencer that you see on those highlight reels constantly, and compare yourself to. So these are 3 things I learned to grow the business, not just grow it, but double it and do it in a way that I wasn't going to burn out again. So these are my sexy and sanity saving tips to my anxiety that helped me get through. So, I had to have mini missions. I had to break it down. I was very clear that my goal was 10,000 properties under management in 10 years with a 10 million dollars net profit. I've never, ever changed that goal.

What I had to change is me being alive at the end of it. So I talk about mini missions with our team. We break it right down. We don't look at a project that's going to take us over 3 months. So we focus on something for 3 months. We get it right and we move to the next Mini Mission. Feel your feelings. I think I'm showing you that I'm doing that right now and then file them and learn from them.

And then we want to talk about the chaos, laugh about it and bond over it as a team. So whilst I was having this breakdown, none of my team we weren't together physically weren't together, and I had to show up. We built this brand new office, and I had to go in there with the energy that the office needed to be. But tell my story of how dark I was in the place I was in. So we talked about rest not being the reward. And it's a requirement. Now I'm really big on rest.

Rebecca Halton:

I think what we just saw before about the 90 min and the 20 min, we have a rule in our business that you must go out and get some sunshine every 20 min. 90 min. There is an alarm that goes off in the office. It means everyone gets up and goes out and gets some sunshine, has a coffee, and has a hug. So empowerment does not equal overwhelm. So for me, it's how do we light fires without burning out? So it's to give our team challenges. But with cheat codes. And I talk about cheat codes all the time. I'm not afraid to say there's an easy shortcut. If it gets to the goal in an easier way, we celebrate the hustle. We don't just celebrate results. I think Ewan and the team up here spoke about it before. We have the Frank Newton Award, who is a business partner of mine, who's been in the industry for 45 years. He's retired, and we celebrate his values, which are the people who give without expecting anything back. And they're generous in what they do.

We make the vision so clear that the people can taste it. We're obsessed with growth. Everyone in our business knows what we're working towards and why we're working towards it, and what the outcome will be for them and we need to make sure that our business is the safety net and not the launch pad. So it's where people can make mistakes and fall, and we'll catch them and I often say that you can't hustle your way out of burnout, but you can pace your way to brilliance, and that is our culture in our business. So when I think about the lessons I've learned in the last 2 years, and how I've learned them.

This is the guy that taught me. This is my 4 year old. That's Grayson; Grayson Francis and he often tells me things that I don't listen to, and the last 4 or 5 weeks I've really paid attention to what this person has told me and I'm going to share a couple of 6 of those lessons that he shared with me, that, I think, has made me become a better leader, a better mum, better wife, a better friend, and I'm still an okay snowboarder.

So lessons from Grayson, who I call the world's wisest 4 year old. This kid has been through so many things at his very small age that I think no 4 year old should go through. So he says to me, I'm bored. And I said, Well, only boring people get bored, and he goes. Well, if it's boring, I'm just going to make it louder, and he'll bang the drum louder. And I take that as you don't have to stay in situations that suck your joy.

Rebecca Halton:

Don't stay in the situation that is sucking the life out of you without changing something and he always says to me. Why are you looking at your phone when my face is here, mum? 2? You want to talk about parenting. So presence is your eye contact. It's the giggles. It's the getting down to their level talking about the picture they just drew. But in your team it's talking about everything they're going through and acknowledging that you understand where they're at. It's that I don't want to go tomorrow. I want to stay in today. How beautiful is that because we put so much pressure on the future that we're not staying in today, and he just says, I don't want to go to school, that's all he's saying to me. But I'm saying, why are we looking at what's happening tomorrow? If we can't stay in the present today, why are we getting anxious about something that hasn't happened if we can't be present today, and I love that about him.

He then says to me, Let's play until I get hungry and I think, Wow, that is your body telling you what you should do. Listen to your body. It's your calendar. If only I knew that 2 years ago I wouldn't have been on the bathroom floor. And he says to me, It's okay, mum, I cried for 2 min. But now I'm okay. I think. Wow! Feel your feelings. He feels them fully. He's so aware of his feelings. He's got no emotional baggage after he has a good cry and then my favorite one is I'm not tired, and he falls asleep as he says it. So even the most stubborn of people need rest and those 6 things that I was able to articulate and listen to what he says to me, has allowed me to really live a better life around the balance of being a mum. Being a wife, being a CEO of a company managing 107 staff onshore but still enjoying the day-to-day stuff.

Rebecca Halton:

One of my biggest lessons for me came when I was about. I was about 17. I was a Matilda. I was playing in the Matildas, and this is well before the Matildas are what they are today we were fundraising to go on our trips. We certainly weren't sponsored. We were. I think it was the year after I left. They did a very provocative calendar. So I'm not in that but I was one of the only straight girls on the team, and I learned a lot as a 17 year old straight girl travelling with that team.

But one of the things I did learn was when you get taken away from a, you know, I was 17, so I was still living at home with my parents, and I got taken away to travel and to represent our country. I found a family around me that was probably a bunch of girls and women at the time that they took me under their wing, and they really allowed me to be a natural leader, and I was the youngest, straightest person on the team, where they just allowed me to be who I was. And then I came home, and I remember my mum and dad as soon as I got off the plane, didn't ask me how we went.

There was no Internet back then. The 1st question they asked was, Well, what are you going to study at Uni now? I thought, Oh, my goodness! Like I've just represented the country. And now you want me to go and be a doctor or a lawyer. So I said, I'm going to be a real estate agent and you can imagine what that response got. So I decided to be the best real estate agent I could be, and I've been doing it ever since I went to Uni. Worked in a real estate agency on the weekends, and then went into sales when I was about 18 or 19, and the biggest lesson I've learned from that representing my country feeling like I was letting a lot of people down along the way, my parents being one to now being a mum and feeling like I'm letting my children down is, I have to get out of my own way.

Rebecca Halton:

I have to be able to reflect on where we've come from. And I said to someone before. I never allow my problems to get in the way of the business. Yet I take everyone else's problems on and let that get in the way of our business. So why aren't my problems allowed to be in the way?

Why aren't I allowed to share with my team what I'm actually going through and when I did we doubled our business in 2 years, and we did it with complete harmony and understanding that even as a leader you're allowed to not be okay.

Thank you.