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This article is part of a Domain content series aimed at helping agents get more wins this Spring.
As if the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t enough of a blow this year, McGrath Central Coast principal Mat Steinwede is also dealing with changes in his personal life, including becoming a full-time single dad, while still managing the central coast’s largest real estate company.
It’s a load that could easily sink an unseasoned agent, but Steinwede is taking 2020 in his stride and remains focused on a “high performance” life.
“When you’re in the middle of a storm, you’ve got to maintain your steadiness,” he says. “You’ve got to remember that the storm will pass and there’s always a calm period ahead.”
Steinwede says over the past seven months he’s taken hundreds of calls from agents wanting to know what they should do in the face of this century’s biggest storm.
“I tell them just do what you can,” he says. “If you learn to do that – just what you need to survive – your resilience increases. Sure, your results might be less, but if you’re steady through the storm, you’ll be ready to thrive when the storm passes.”
Steinwede discovered his own equilibrium after a visit to the doctor four years ago.
“For 20 odd years I was just a workaholic,” he told Domain. “I went to the doctor one day and he said, ‘You’ve got no testosterone, your cortisol is through the roof, I don’t even know how you’re standing up.’ I walked out of there and thought, ‘I need to change things’.”
It was time to flip his priorities: fitness and health became Steinwede’s number one concern.
“I’d always been a fairly active person but I was very focused on work,” he says. “For the next 20 years, it’s all about how fit can I get? How can I sculpt my body so it’s an advertisement for who I am and what I commit to?”
Steinwede, 48, says he’s now the healthiest he’s ever been and he has cultivated a priceless awareness of the importance of nutrition and sleep, and an appreciation for the value of time.
“Now I think about whether I’m spending my time in line with my values of health and fitness, work, kids and wealth creation,” he says.
“I was always anxious before, I was saying yes to too many things and no to things I needed to be doing. Now I’m careful with saying yes and I’m attracting better people, better results and a better flow.”
Steinwede’s health epiphany led him to release his book 31 Mins: The secret to living your best life, about a year ago.
“It’s all about owning a bit of time,” he says.
“People get absorbed in life, usually over a certain age: they’ve got work and kids and they don’t actually fuel their tanks at all. So my advice is to pick a time slot in the day and give just 31 minutes to something. It could be running, the gym, walking: something that’s going to liven you up and make you feel great.
“If you’re in business it could be 31 minutes of prospecting or vendor management. It could be painting or surfing. It’s a commitment around moving yourself forward in something that’s important to you.”
Steinwede argues that if you don’t feel great, you “don’t do great”.
“People get disconnected,” he says. “When they get to that point they think about leaving what they do, when instead they could make small adjustments and learn to enjoy their job more and think ‘How can I improve myself?’”
It’s not a quick fix but Steinwede says the wellbeing effect definitely adds up over time.
“A lot of [real estate] people are walking around full of anxiety and stress and overwhelmed,” he says.
Steinwede speculates that most of the industry’s top performers are probably deeply unhappy. “It’s like a builder building all these great houses but he lives in the house that’s falling down,” he says.
And Steinwede’s house? As he says in a video pitch for 31 Mins: “Health is a currency. It aligns your energy so you can perform at your best. I’ve decided I want to be fit and it’s part of my brand.”
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