The Right Room Changes You

The past couple of years have been a journey for me.

A journey of understanding what it really means to be healthy, awake, and fully engaged in life and in business.

When your husband is diagnosed with cancer, when you watch dementia look back at you through your mother’s eyes, when you start seeing the telltale signs of your own aging, something shifts.

Cancer, dementia, and death have a way of making you prioritize your life. In a hard way, yes. But also in a good way.

We have all heard the saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.” And honestly, it really is. Most of it is small stuff.

But when you are in the middle of life, kids, marriage, grief, stress, aging, real estate, clients, leadership, building a business, building a dream, and still trying to have enough energy to actually enjoy the dream you are building, it can be easy to just get by.

I did not want to just get by.

I wanted to be awake for my life.

I wanted to notice the small conversations, the looks between people, the calm after the storm, both literally and figuratively. I wanted to feel healthy, not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and in my relationships. I could feel that desire sitting on the tip of my tongue, but I could not always name it.

Then one day, on one of those hard days where I was honestly just getting by, my phone rang.

Being in sales, I do not really get the luxury of ignoring unknown numbers. I answer the phone because I never know who is on the other end. Sometimes my intuition says, “Spam call. Let it go.” Other times, something tells me, “Answer that.”

So I answered.

It was Brendon Burchard’s coaching group calling because I was a PLACE Operator. They wanted to ask what I thought about a recent call Brendon had done with us and whether I had ever considered high performance coaching as part of a beta group for a new program.

My first thought was, “Me? You want to ask me?”

My second thought was, “I am not in a good headspace to be coached right now. My mother just passed away three weeks ago. Maybe next time.”

But that short intro call turned into a much longer conversation, and somehow, through the grief, the exhaustion, and the uncertainty, I said yes.

Today, as I type this, I have renewed my contract three times.

I have never been through a coaching program that has changed my life the way this one has. It has helped me understand what it means to be healthy, awake, and fully engaged. Not in theory. In real life.

In my grief.

In my leadership.

In my marriage.

In my business.

In the way I show up for myself and for the people I lead.

Through PLACE, we have the privilege of being coached monthly by Brendon Burchard, and his work has challenged me in ways I did not expect. One of the frameworks that stayed with me is what he calls the five A’s:

Awakeness: Am I present, or am I just checking boxes?

Ambition: Am I still connected to the bigger goal?

Assertiveness: Am I leading with clarity and confidence?

Affection: Am I staying connected to people, not just performance?

Amplification: What energy am I bringing into the room?

During this season, three of those stood out the most to me: awakeness, assertiveness, and amplification.

Those three tied directly to the leadership work I have been doing in myself.

Am I awake and engaged, or am I moving through the motions?

Am I being clear enough with the vision, the standards, the goals, and the consequences?

Am I willing to have the hard conversations with care?

Am I bringing energy into the room that helps people rise, or am I carrying exhaustion, frustration, and fear into spaces where people are looking to me for leadership?

That kind of coaching will hold up a mirror. And if you let it, it will change you.

At the end of April, I was in Anaheim, California, in a room with more than 1,000 PLACE agents and team members who had earned their way there.

And I had a moment.

A real pinch-me moment.

Do I belong here?

I cannot believe I am here.

I qualified to be in this room just like the person sitting beside me.

I remember dreaming on day one of being in rooms like that. And there I was.

The energy in that room was hard to describe. It was not just excitement. It was earned energy. It was a room full of people who had done the work, pushed themselves, built businesses, faced hard things, kept going, and still wanted more.

It reminded me again that environment matters.

The right room raises your standard.

The right people normalize growth.

The right systems create momentum.

It is not just about the five people you surround yourself with. It is also about the environments you choose to place yourself in. And I do believe you should be selfish here.

Be choosy about who gets access to your energy.

Be choosy about who influences your thinking.

Be choosy about the rooms you sit in.

You know in your heart what you want, and you usually know who can help you get there.

For me, choosing to partner with Ben, Chris, and PLACE has truly been one of the best business decisions I have ever made. Zero regrets.

It has been a true power partnership rooted in the same principles I have been learning through coaching: be healthy, be awake, and be fully engaged.

And that partnership does not just impact me. It gives me more power behind me for the agents who have chosen to partner with me.

I want my agents to feel supported, challenged, seen, heard, and stretched.

I want them in rooms they could not create for themselves.

I want them connected to conversations, contests, coaching, and community that help them grow beyond what they would do alone.

Because growth is hard enough. Doing it alone makes it heavier than it has to be.

When I think about the agents I want to partner with, I am not just looking for people who want more training.

Training matters, of course. We all need to learn skills.

But sometimes the answer is not more training.

Sometimes the answer is more clarity.

More structure.

More support.

More accountability.

More community.

More belief.

More of the right room.

If you are doing business alone and wondering why it feels heavier than it should, maybe the missing piece is not more hustle.

Maybe it is not another script, another checklist, or another webinar.

Maybe it is the right environment.

The right structure.

The right people around you.

It was for me.

I am still growing. I am still being coached. I am still learning how to lead better. And I am committed to building a place where agents can do the same.

And because life is not just business, Bruno and I also snuck in a long weekend in Santa Monica while we were there.

We fully enjoyed the beauty of the Pacific Coast Highway, California food and drinks, and some much-needed quality time together.

That is the point, right?

Build the business. Do the work. Stay coachable. Get in the right rooms.

But do not miss the life you are building along the way.


xo,
Crystal