The Not So Black and White Real Estate Podcast

Is it wrong for a

vegetarian to eat animal crackers?

Is there any animal

products in those crackers?

I'd say go for it, man.

You're listening to the Not So Black and

White Real Estate Podcast with your host,

Sir Colin Campbell and Gary A. McGowan.

Good day, good day, good day. It's your

host, Sir Colin Campbell

here with Gary A. McGowan,

and you're tuned into the Not So Black

and White Real Estate Podcast.

We have one of the number one agents in

Canada here, Michael McDougall.

And we're going to dive

into his secrets of success.

I know you've heard it many times that

success is 80% psychology and 20%.

The mechanics, we're going to really get

into the psychology

of a successful agent.

Take it away, Mike.

Take it away.

He's doing what?

We're good.

First of all, I need you to do all the

intros on my videos, man.

Seriously.

That voice.

Thank you.

Yeah, man. We were just chatting about

this marker right now.

I know there's a lot of people talking

negative, and clearly,

politics and stuff out there.

But I am so into just positive mindset.

This is like, get rid of the

distractions, get rid of all the noise.

As a team leader, I can't

have that stuff affect me, right?

And carry that into team

meetings and into my office.

So I am all about just like, you make

this market as good as you can.

And there's so much

opportunity out there still.

It's funny that you say that because it

reminds me of the Serenity Prayer.

God grant me the Serenity to accept the

things that I cannot change,

the courage to change the things that I

can, and the wisdom

to know the difference.

And in a market where there's terrorists,

there's Trump,

there's this, there's that.

How does one really zone in on, this is

all noise, and I just need

to focus on these five things.

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to

like, you know, when we all

struggle with limiting beliefs.

Right? And it's like, these are stories

that we make up in our own

heads that we are choosing to

believe. So I think it's like, you got to

remember that those are just lies, right?

That you're telling yourself, like your

own bottleneck, right?

You're doing this to yourself.

So to me, it's just like switching that

mindset into, you know,

and I do this every morning.

Just like wake up in the morning, don't

hit the snooze button, just

get up and go and say, you know,

what's it going to take to win today?

Right? And just, you know, get ready,

look in the mirror during your morning

routine and just stay

on a positive stride.

Don't turn on the TV. Don't listen to

politics. And just, it helps me

personally just get into

that positive mindset. Interesting.

There's, okay, we can go down a thousand

different roads here.

Talk to us about the practicality of

protecting that mindset,

because you as a leader, not only

for your business and for your team

members, but your family

too, right? With your partner

and things like that. Talk to us about

how you protect that.

I think it starts with yourself, right?

You're not going to be any good to

anybody else if you can't,

you know, start the day talking to

yourself the way you'd want to be

talk to by your friends. Right? So, and I

mean, I teach my stuff,

or I teach this stuff to my

kids all the time too, because you know,

you guys have kids, it's

like, you hear sometimes the way

they talk to themselves, right? Like, oh,

I'm so stupid when they do

something, right? Or I didn't

play well yesterday. And like, I just

don't think that's just a

non-negotiable in my house. Like,

you do not talk to yourself that way.

Right? And I know they're just doing it

out of, but I tell them,

man, the more you tell yourself those

things, like, your unconscious mind

starts believing it.

Right? So it's like, so you switch it,

you start telling

yourself how amazing you are.

Right? How you are just like relentless,

nothing's going to stop you today. And

you're training your

mind again, you're rewiring your brain

again to be the identity

that you're trying to create.

Right? So I share that same message to my

wife and I share the same

message to our kids, like just

positive talk. You know, it's hard,

obviously, they're at

school, right? They're hearing,

hearing about other things. But I think

as his parents, man, as

leaders in the household,

so important for us to just like steer

your kids in the right way. And it all

just starts with like,

you know, what they're listening to what

they're hearing every

day. And if it's positive,

then I, then I feel good about that. So

what advice do you give

to someone who's saying,

yeah, positive talks is all boo hoo and

you know, just creating a

good mindset is all boo hoo,

but it doesn't change the reality of the

situation. Yeah. Honestly, I was probably

one of those people at one point when I

was, you know, struggling

with some things, you know,

my upbringing, all those past traumas.

And I thought, you know,

someone told me to start

talking positive every day to myself, you

know, start meditating. And I was like,

how is this going to actually fix it? I

will tell you, man, anything

that you do consistently works.

And, you know, four years later, when I

started, you know, being really

relentless with these

systems, like 100%, it's rewired the

brain where it's like, I'm not waking up

anymore thinking like,

oh my gosh, here's another day, right?

What fires we're going

to have to put out today.

This home isn't selling today. This staff

member needs to go. It's

just right away positive,

right? Positive things, practicing

gratitude. So I would just say, man, you

just got to try it and

didn't stay consistent with it. Because I

am a perfect example that

I thought it was all BS,

like this is not going to work. How at

the age of 40 am I

going to change my brain?

Right? But it does, man. It's huge breath

work. All those things

just to reset, to reground,

right? All those things, man, we take on

a lot, right in our lives,

whether you're in real estate,

whether you're a nurse, whatever you do,

you take on a lot each day,

life is hard. So you owe it to

yourself to give yourself those moments

to just reground yourself,

right? Take a deep breath,

and then keep moving forward.

Where I want to go with this is our

programming, meaning how we

were brought up. We don't think

we have it, but it's entrenched, right?

And sometimes deeply

entrenched. And maybe we're

not even self-aware of it. I'd love to

talk a little bit about

how you're working with your

team members in a sense of sometimes we

often say, oh, we got

to change our program,

because what you think is completely

wrong, sometimes it's not

changing. It's just a new

perspective. Yeah. I'd love to share on

how are you showing your

team members a new or different

perspective? Well, I mean, I think like

it just starts with

attitude, right? And it's like,

it's infectious, right? So we're all

going to have those days that, you know,

you're down in the dumps

about a deal or something. But I think

the way our culture is

in our office, it's like,

it's modeled to just keep you amped up.

And the momentum just

goes from there. So,

you know, there's not, you know, I love

it when people's going

through something on my team,

like, I want them to tell me and stuff.

But I think we're such a

close group of people that like,

we just are vulnerable with each other,

which I think that is so

important. It's a safe,

safe space. So I think it's just that

that in itself just feels

like there's support there,

right? When you're in it, when you're

under a roof, that just feels like

everyone's got my back here.

Right? We, you know, it can sound cheesy

at times, but we seriously cheer

everybody on the other

agents. Don't get jealous of another

agent doing a deal. Like they're, they're

the thread, the text

threads I could show you guys are crazy,

right? Just like fire

emojis, excitement, like it's,

it's, it's awesome. So it's pretty cool,

you know, to be, you know, one of the

leaders of that. So,

it's inspiring to me. Here's, here's how

I know that's authentic, my friends.

Cause the moment he started talking about

the text thread, about his team,

I don't know if you notice, I hope you're

watching on camera. He lit

up. He let you like, you lit up,

Michael. I can tell that it's authentic.

And that comes out as

you being a leader as well,

which, which is amazing. Talk to us a

little bit about what, what

leadership looks like to you.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny cause I asked

this question to the

audience at another speaking

event I was doing and you know, some of

the objections were like, Oh, you know,

a lot of people don't want to join your

teams or other teams cause

commission splits. And I said,

okay, let's think about an awesome leader

you had in the past, you know, a mentor,

what were some of the qualities that

person had? And you know, everyone's put

up their hands saying

amazing things, right? Like just like,

you know, transparent, motivational,

strong-minded. I think

it's funny. No one, no one here said

anything about money or commission,

right? So leadership

to me, man, is someone that's just

guiding you in the right way. It's

somebody that you just,

you want to be in their world as well.

You want to be a part of

that. And that's truly what I feel

like we're doing, you know, on the

MacDougall team, but it

doesn't have to be about, yes,

everyone wants money. It's part of the

whole freedom, right?

But you can have both too.

So it doesn't have to be like, again,

that's a limiting belief,

right? Like I'm never going to

hire this person because they're going to

want more splits forever.

So it's just a story you

got in your head. Right? So with that,

and as one of the most

successful teams in Canada,

and as you continue to grow and build out

that team. Yeah. What is

your ideal business partner

look like that you were looking to bring

on to the team? Yes. It's

like somebody that I can

honestly help change their life. And

we're speaking with

agents right now that are doing

really good business 30 to 40 ends a year

that are just burnt out.

They don't have the systems

in place. They're sick of the overhead.

They're sick of staffing

issues. They're just fried.

Right? And they just don't have the same

systems that we have that

I've designed. So we don't get

burnt out because it's so easy in this

business to just keep

grinding. And a lot of these agents

are like 12 years in. And so I know, man,

you've been grinding for 12

years. So we set it up. So

it's like you come in here, man, you do

what you enjoy. The

rest is all supported.

So do you subscribe to that added where,

you know, for you to be

burnt out, you don't enjoy what

you're doing. I don't believe burnt out

is you're tired. I do

believe it has to do with you don't

enjoy what you're doing because you're

not winning anymore. Being

burnt out is you're not winning

thing about a day you guys worked 16

hours in a day, but you just

lit it up. Maybe sold a few

houses, whatever you did, you weren't

burnt out. You were on fire,

you probably couldn't sleep.

Right? Maybe you ended up with like

playing a baseball game

with your buddies or whatever,

watch the game. You weren't burnt out

because you won the day. So

it's people get burnt out,

in my opinion, and I'm definitely one of

those people where it's

happened to because I'm not

winning anymore. Right? So it's like we

got to find ways to keep

winning. And that doesn't mean

like you sold something that could be

like, man, my nighttime routine was on

fire last night. I was

in bed at 930. Like that one, like that

one the day, it's going to

win the day for the next day.

Right? Or I ate super clean today. Like

that's a win. Right? That

pumps you up. You had a great

workout. Or you know, network with some

amazing people. Those are

wins. It doesn't always have

to be a money making tasks. So I believe

if you're feeling fried

down in the dumps depressed,

it's not about it's about that you got

you got to find more ways to win.

Yeah, I love it's not about being tired.

I love the fact that you said

celebrating the wind is not always about

you know, closing that big

deal or getting this it's

I for five nights a row I went to bed at

9pm or whatever. Yeah,

that's a win. That's a win, man.

And I and we, we as kind of I don't in a

sense high achievers or realtors, we

think it's got to be

a number or this or that. And we forget

to we forget to

accelerate those wins along the way

that help us to get to that big but what

I also got from that Gary

and thanks for pointing that

out. Mike is like with our wins, we make

them so hard to achieve.

Yeah. And with our losses,

they're so easy to achieve. So by the end

of the day, we're like,

Oh, shit, I lost here. I lost

here and I lost here. Yeah. And you could

basically make your wins so

much easier to achieve. And

your loss is much harder. Yeah. And I

think reframing it as

not a loss, but like, Hey,

that was a learning experience today,

right? There was three

learning experiences today.

I'm going to learn from them. So

hopefully I don't recreate that again.

Yeah. Right. I don't

think calling it a loss. You know, it's

just going to negatively

impact your brain. So it's

like, man, those are learning

experiences, right? Any failures, boom,

get better the next time.

So why is mindset so important to you?

Oh, man, I think it's

just like, it's, it's,

it's what pushes me daily to just be in a

positive frame. I've been down, you know,

some lonely roads in the past with, you

know, past traumas and

stuff. And I know how much that

affects your brain. And I can tell you,

living in a positive mind is much better

than a negative one.

I think too, it's almost like real estate

too. Or I say, Hey, every

single day, if you have the same

skill level going into the appointment

that it went into yesterday,

like that's, that's sort of

embarrassing that you always need to be

getting better. And that's

the same thing with mindset,

man. It's a, it's a journey. It's a

process. It's never like

I'm done. Right? It's like,

it's a muscle. I'm constantly working it

out. And I just think

man, a healthy mindset,

healthy business, right? Like you just,

there's nothing you

cannot do. Like seriously,

someone on my team there today said, man,

that, that Thailand mansion

in white Lotus was insane.

I'm like, you can have that. They're

like, what? I'm like, you

can, you can have that one.

What makes that guy special? Like dream

big, man, think big, right? And then you

can invite me there.

Cause I would love to go to that. Think,

think big man. That's what

I got to encourage people

to keep doing. We play very small. It's

easy to play small, right?

We got to, we got to encourage

each other to think big. Yeah. Yeah. I

wish we had a little rewind

button cause you just dropped a

golden nugget there. Um, a healthy

mindset equals a healthy business. My

friends, that is a golden

nugget. I want to do something a little

bit different and, and

we're going to do a little

rapid fire questions, a little light and

lighten things up. Uh, not

that mindset needs to be dark

and deep and, and it's not dark and deep.

It needs to be enjoyable.

Right? Uh, there's, there's a,

there's a healthy, a healthy joy around

having a strong mindset and

being around like-minded people.

However, there are some questions that we

need to get deep, deep on,

and I'm going to ask you some

rapid fire questions. They will not be as

deep as we just got, but

they will be, they will be

telling. And I want you to say the first

thing that comes to mind.

So I'm going to play a little

music here. I'm not great at these, but

here we go. No, no, no,

you will be great at this.

Start easy. Favorite season of the year.

Summer. Summer. All right. First. Well,

this will be good. I think he may see my

V-neck. I'm already for some. Yeah.

The gas open. All right. You live summer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. With that V-neck,

first celebrity crush. Oh, Jessica Alba.

There you have it. Yeah. I

can't think of anything that

she's been in, but that's I'm sure

always, always a good

choice to go with a Jessica.

Jessica rabbit. I don't know. That's

where that went fast.

Uh, favorite junk food.

Oh my gosh, man. I'm going to go with

Skittles. Skittles. That's the first.

Yeah. Like that. Have

you tried those notes? The new Skittles

with like all the sprinkles on the

outside. I don't need them

anymore, man. They're, they're serving

well at my age anymore.

True. True. Wait till you young.

Michael would have been a bag of Skittles

at Mountain Dew. Yeah.

Wait till your kids get their

license and they come back with bags of

Skittles. That's the problem.

Okay. Junk food with Skittles

is double dipping at a party ever

acceptable. No, no. I'm a bit of a germ

freak. That would turn

me right off. Hard. No. Yeah. Stay away

my friends. Yeah. Uh,

speaking of food, is it wrong for a

vegetarian to eat animal crackers? Is

there any animal products in those

crackers? I'd say, I'd

say go for it, man. Yeah. It's a little

risky, a little risky, but do

it. Yeah. Yeah. Big dogs are

small dogs. Medium sized dogs. Medium.

Oh, you look like a small

size. I got a medium sized dog.

Okay. We'll take that. We'll take that.

Um, to wrap it up. Yeah.

And this is important. This is

made or broken future podcast

appearances, we'll say. Oh

wow. So the pressure is on.

Would you rather watch the Godfather or

Star Wars? Oh my gosh.

Either one of you guys,

the other one, maybe we're not saying.

Okay. Um, I'm going to go with,

this is based off my kids. I'm going to

Star Wars because of my kids. All right.

May the force be with you as we don't see

you on the next one.

But I got it with my kids.

It's actually more of this dude on the

end here. But damn it. Yeah.

Yeah. My kids are home 100%

the Godfather, but they're always around

me. I love it. I love it.

Thanks guys. That's awesome.

That's good. That's good. My friend, um,

as we kind of wrap up

your, uh, what's one thing that

you would love people to know about you

and you and not your team,

you, one thing about me that

I'd like people to know, um, I'm

honestly, man, I am approachable. I do

get it from time to time

that people don't find me super

approachable, like other realtors. And

it, I think I've been

cursed with arresting bitchface sometimes

or the language, but it's

more like I'm, it's a resting

focused face, but I am super

approachable, man. I, I love learning

from other people. I will sit

down with anybody and have a coffee with

them. It's just, yeah,

sometimes I am. So I got the horse

blinders on and I'm just like going

towards the finish line.

So I look very focused, but

I'm approachable. He is approachable. I

can attest to that. My friends, I

remember, uh, bumping into

Michael at an airport a few years ago and

you and I knew of each other.

We'll see at that point. I'm

like, I'm going to, I'm going up to talk

to him. He's got his RFP

face on and it doesn't matter.

Dude, you were, you, I tell you, you

were, you were so not only

helpful, but open about what you

were doing in your business, what you're

looking forward to do in your business

and more importantly,

who you're looking to forward, uh, who in

a sense, who you're

looking to do that with.

Yeah, man. Thanks so much. Yeah. I

appreciate that about you. And you're

always willing to help

when asked to speak or share about how

you got to where you are. Uh, you're,

you're an open door.

I love it. Thanks man. I appreciate that.

I appreciate you guys.

Excellent. How can people

get ahold of you at move with Michael?

That's the best spot on, on

Instagram at move with Michael.

There you have it. My friend, that's

moved with Michael. Of course. That's

your call in Campbell.

I'm Gary McGowan. We'll see everybody in

the next episode. Goodbye for now.

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