Ben Oosterveld became a, real estate agent, and a coach and said I would literally show the agents how to do sales using their, inner game. I convinced 12, real estate agents, to coach with me, and I said, I'm gonna really kill this. I'm going to destroy it. It's not going to be hard. I know how to do it, but I'm going to do it alongside you.
And it was the weirdest coaching program ever. I said only one group of people are ever going to see this and I became Rookie of the Year. My first year I did over 80 transactions. But I but I also hired an assistant within my first three weeks, because I was businessman.
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Bio
Ben Oosterveld, didn’t have an easy start. He lived on the streets from the age of 14, survived a failed suicide attempt at age 15, and later spent 365 days in rehab. Ben's, inner game, needed work. He was a pure-bred, people pleaser, manipulative & controlling man who always compared himself to others to the point of constant self-sabotage.
Ben has since coached entrepreneurs and national companies. Previously, he built a real estate investment company that held 61 properties with investors in 4 different cities. After getting his real estate license, he built a multimillion-dollar real estate business with an award winning top national team in 3 years.
Today, Ben helps business owners and, real estate agents, get clear about who they really are and what they really want. He helps them make the right changes in their business and life with the new goal of building a life they love. His focus is on coaching, speaking, and running personal growth retreats. Ben loves business but his real obsession is helping people break free of the old patterns that hold them back in life. The, inner game, is everything to him and he is on a mission to find his tribe, one extraordinary person at a time.
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How Ben found his inner game
Myrna; : Can you share your backstory, why you were suicidal and bridge the gap for us and how you went from there to here?
Ben: Sure, I grew up in a tough childhood. I had good parents, but my dad was not in a place to be a parent. He has his own backstory that shaped him. And yeah, just I started running away from home when I was 12 and lived on the streets. I was a very industrious kid, but still and I would find places to sleep and just honestly just got into drugs. Alcohol found a place of acceptance. I never felt accepted.
I got really good at doing drugs as a young kid, every day just getting go. I ended up trying to commit suicide and committed in a psychiatric ward. I broke out of the psychiatric ward as a kid and that was on the news. My parents told me the news it was a pretty crazy story. But there's lots of stories within all these stories, but I went to a place called Teen Challenge. I went to 365-day rehab center, my plan was I was gonna give this one last try. And I went and that helped me. It helped me a lot.
And then I went into the world. I got into sales. I got into selling. My dad was a salesman, so it's just ironic that I got into sales. I desperately wanted his approval and his love thinking that was the missing hole in my life, thinking that was the actual hole that I needed to fill was based around my father relationship. But it was a relationship with myself. I didn't realize that till later. And I figured, you know, we got to work on this relationship with my dad and, and he was really interested in to me when I was doing things that he was interested in.
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The performance mentality to crush real estate sales
I built the, performance mentality. You know, people pleasing, mentality where I felt loved when I worked hard, so became a workaholic. My dad was a salesman and a financial planner. I became a, salesman. But I'd be not just a, salesman, I became number one, salesman. I had this weird drive that but if I wasn't number one, I was nothing. I had this huge gap happiness was always based on my performance, and what other people would say about me. I knew I could control what other people say if I just become number one.
I became a, real estate investor, and the first year or so I bought 41 properties and ended up building a, real estate investment, company. I ended up coaching, real estate agents. We changed the investment company when the crash happened. That was a pretty huge hit in my psychology, because I was always winning, and I didn't know what it was like to not win. I cried at my desk. I went through a lot then I hired a, life coach. And I hired someone I thought he was a, business coach.
His name was Mr. McKernan and I worked with him for eight years. And he was the first guy to challenge me. I was a very strong, strong person. I could tell myself stories and I could convince you and me of these stories. And a lot of times we just got to identify some self-awareness around these people that are going on with their stories. I've really niched out in, real estate, to help the, real estate industry and, real estate agents.
Becoming an inner game coach
I actually became a, real estate agent, and a coach and I would literally show the agents how to do sales. So, I convinced 12, real estate agents, to coach with me, and I said, I'm gonna really kill this. I'm going to destroy it. It's not going to be hard. I know how to do it, but I'm going to do it alongside you. And it was the weirdest coaching program ever. I said only one group of people are ever going to see this and I became Rookie of the Year. My first year I did over 80 transactions. But I but I also hired an assistant within my first three weeks, because I was businessman.
Why would you buy a restaurant and try to cook and serve all at the same time? Real estate agents, all over the country are doing everything themselves. And I realize it's the thinking that's the problem. They think they can keep selling and selling, but they forget that you could build a, referral base, every single year bigger and bigger and eventually if you did 1000 deals in your lifetime and you have a 10% referral rate, you'd have 100 sales every single year without even spending $1 in marketing. So, no one's playing the long game. I coach now helping, real estate agents, put in the right systems in place, so they can buy back their time because a business is if you're a, salesman, you got to grind it out.
But if you're a business owner, what you're doing is designing your company to serve the life that you want. The question is what else do you want? And that's where I'm a blackbelt, because I can help people uncover what they want. Now we create that then we say how much does that cost? Cool. So, you only need 200 grand a year to have the life you want when you thought you needed a million.
People pleasing and the inner game
So, we do a lot of work regarding the, inner game, and figuring out what they want. Most people don't know. My journey has been this weird, obsessed with human behavior and psychology because I was broken and I hated myself. So, I just was I tried to fix myself along the way and then the, inner game, really changed me.
It's been many, many lessons. We could talk for long. I'm sure we could share stories. The thing is, though, the biggest one. The biggest one happened the last, say three years for me. I've done well. I've done been doing this for years now. But the thing is, I got to a place where I would see something in my life and I want to fix it. I want to fix, people pleasing, manipulative, anger, whatever you can choose, anxiety, and I looked at it and I say I don't want that in me.
So now I'm going to use my skill of attacking and my builder skill, which is like, let's figure out how to get it down. I would study and try to attack these ailments that I had that I didn't like. But the more I fixed them, I find more, fix more and find more, that's when I realized I knew I know a lot of knowledge and I can help a lot of people. But I realized I was digging myself into a hole of unsatisfied anxiety, depression, hatred, through the, Personal Growth Movement. Because I just found that I was still broken.
Then I would go into judgment and say I should feel better. I'm doing all these, personal growth tools, and affirmations and all this stuff. But it was judgment because I didn't feel better. I felt like I could get through stuff, but I had five more things in me that needed to be fixed. So that fixer in the builder just led me to more fixing and builder and what I realized is self-acceptance is enlightenment.
Why hiring an assistant is setting realtors up for success
Myrna: Yeah, you got so many nuggets in there. I got to remember which ones I want to circle back to. Okay. All right. Let me take let me let me test my memory here. So, the first thing I want to circle back on was and you hired an assistant right away. A lot of, real estate agents, wouldn't understand that because we know in, real estate, you don’t make enough money to hire and assistant when you just get started. I interviewed a guy a couple months ago on the on the show and he became a top, commercial Realtor, in in San Francisco. And he was talking that for the first two years he didn't get a paycheck because of course he was working on big deals.
We know as, Realtors, when you come in, you don't always get the 10 deals a month. You get a little bit of money. And you're not thinking of hiring someone. You said you went in and immediately hired someone because you understood sales.
Ben: I hired an assistant because I was planning to be successful. Are you planning to fail?
Myrna: Yeah, exactly. That's a good tagline. You know, don't plan to fail, you know, set your business up for success.
Ben: I'm dealing with hiring an assistant, it's my secret way to get to find out where you psychologically create emotional friction. So, watch this. Hey, why don't you hire an assistant? Well, I don't have money or time. I don't know what to do. Hold on. That's all emotional friction. Let me change your thinking for some of the people on the show right now that have a business or anything. I'll just do it really quickly.
Can you afford $20 a week? Of course, you can. So, what we need to do is not go to the black belt hire, I gotta get you to hire well white belt, because I need you to get a psychological win. I want for you to become a CEO or a boss. The learning curve is way too high. But if I can get someone to manage your birthday system to make sure that you send a birthday card to every single client, I call that project hiring. You can practice being a boss and the cost is 20 bucks, one hour a week. It's the only mindset first, real estate coaching, in the world. It's called the Richest Real Estate Agent Facebook group.
Definition of the inner game
Myrna: Okay, I love that. I will definitely join that. But you know in my defense, I focus a lot on my time on my podcast. Explain what you mean by the, inner game?
Ben: The, inner game, it's the relationship with yourself. When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel? It’s your, emotional intelligence. Let's talk about, people pleasers. If you're a, people pleaser, you are extremely selfish person. I can speak about it because I got the medal of honor. And so, here's the thing, let's play this game with the readers and even ourselves. If someone says something like this, “You let me down.” If you can really take a second, close your eyes and think about how that would make you feel with someone that mattered. People pleasers, only please the people that matter.
Myrna: I would feel pretty bad. I would feel that I let you down and since I'm a caring person, that would bother me.
Ben: Correct, you have this internal energy this chaos that says, I don't like this feeling that I get when someone lets me down. By the way I can manipulate anybody with that right now. All I got to do is say you let me down and I can pull the strings on people, that's manipulation. So, if you just be very careful, miss everyone wants to be an independent man, independent woman. Great. So, if you're a, people pleaser, super easy to control. FYI. That's how you give your power away. Second thing is this, if you are people pleasing, you act as if it's about the other person. And it's such a lie, because all I want is that feeling to go away.
So, I got to make sure you're not upset with me. That has nothing to do with the, is all about making sure I don't feel those emotions. Because it makes me feel bad. So, who are you really pleasing? Yourself. How do you like when someone says I'm doing something for you, but they're not using you so really, as a, people pleaser, you use people. No wonder there's no real deep connection.
Language and personality types
Myrna: That's true. That's a different way of looking at it. That's a different spin. Tell us about the 16 Psychological languages.
Ben: we're born with 16 personality types and we all are the same human. There are 16 through the study of 100 years of psychology, there's 16 combinations of personality. So, when we say that's just my personality, you're all personalities you just haven't visited say the organizing person, you're more of a winged person or you're more of a detailed person, you're more of this, so forth. So, this is years and years of studying humans is understanding myself as being my obsession, and now I understand the people and I'll give you an example.
Let's just do a practical example on a language understanding human language. So, let's say that, you're a real estate agent, and you go into a house, let's say I'm brand-new, real estate agent. I sit down and the client askes me, so how long you've been in the business, I'm thinking who says that? What if I'm brand new, you know? I'm gonna feel terrible.
And so here's the thing. I look at a guy like that. And so, speaking his language, he has the balls to hit me with a bat. That is a test on my credibility. Okay, we have to understand that we can stop being so self-centered, and observe how people talk to us. Here's the trick. Here's some tactical training. The guy says, how long you been in the business? You have to hit him with a sarcastic hit and you got to be direct, or you'll lose the guy's credibility. That's understanding his language.
So, I would say, you know what? I've only been in the business under a year. And I might not be your, real estate agent. Then I'd say to him, I'd say, but I do know someone 40 years in the business, her name's Betty. She has a walker. If that's how you're going to choose, let me give you her your number right now. And then guess what he says, I like this guy. I want to hire him. Because sarcasm is the language of the logical, but then later, they become loyal.
Using language to build connection and rapport
Myrna: So you're really pretty confident to do that. That's pretty good.
Ben: In my course I teach the psychology of all the languages and when someone teaches sales training, I think it's manipulative. What I do is it's like, I look at human connection.
So there's building connection and rapport through tactics or authenticity, and then one is rich, but people pleasing one is real. Like if I really understand you, I'll probably find out what makes you tick. What's your nostalgic value? That’s what I think of when I meet a client. So, this isn't this isn't mirroring, its building rapport. This is truly at a psychological level, making a connection.
Myrna: Tell us about your podcast is called the, Inner Game.
Ben: I am no longer doing the, Inner Game, Podcast. We're all in on bringing mindset and personal growth and business mindset versus worker mindset to, real estate. And so, I'm focused 100% of that in my podcast is called “The, Richest Real Estate Agent. The other thing is I have a book coming out called the real “The richest real estate agent: how to build a seven-figure business without sacrificing your relationships.” It's the first mindset book for, real estate agents, with full tactical training. Never ever has this been combined. We're going to be going after the, inner game, for, real estate agents, and that's our focus.
Conclusion
And so that's the book, the podcast and our group on Facebook is all The, Richest Real Estate Agent. I also run, personal growth, retreats that I do that once a year for people that want to bring up their teams or whatever, and I take them on a three-day kind of off grid or adventure retreats. And that's three days I can't even compare to the effectiveness of what three days away on one of my retreats does for the for the head and the heart. All these information can be found on my website www.benoosterveld.com
Additional Resources
http://blog.myhelps.us/create-a-freedom-lifestyle-with-investment-property/
