The Readiness Brief
Where is your phone when you walk into a showing?
It sounds too small to matter. It isn't. The single most common thing an agent does wrong in an unfamiliar property has nothing to do with the client — it's that their phone is buried in a bag or a back pocket, two seconds and a zipper away when two seconds is the whole margin.
Here's the move for the next two weeks: before you walk into any showing, put your phone somewhere you can reach it without looking — a jacket pocket, a lanyard, your hand. Then take it one step further. As you enter, clock your exit before you clock the countertops. You're not being paranoid; you're building a reflex, so that if a showing ever does turn, you're operating from a plan instead of a scramble.
That's the whole principle behind Predict. Prevail. Persist.™ — you don't rise to the moment, you fall to your training. A habit this small, run twenty times, becomes automatic. And automatic is what holds when your heart rate doesn't.
Every agent working under low-grade, unaddressed unease pays what we call the Anxiety Tax: the hidden performance cost of operating in sustained threat vigilance. It doesn't show up as fear. It shows up as the showing you rushed, the client you didn't quite read, the discount you gave a little too fast to end an interaction that felt “off.”
Untrained awareness creates anxiety. Trained awareness creates control. The difference isn't nerve — it's preparation. An agent who has rehearsed the exit, verified the client, and built the habit isn't distracted by the what-ifs, because the what-ifs are already handled. That agent operates at their ceiling. The taxed agent never gets there.
The point of readiness training isn't only to keep you safe. It's to give you back the performance the tax has been quietly draining.
Two weeks ago I certified a room of agents in Williamsburg. One of them told me afterward that in fifteen years, no one had ever taught her what to actually do in the ninety seconds after something feels wrong — only to “be aware.”
That's the gap this whole thing exists to close. Awareness tells you the water's cold. It doesn't teach you to swim. We train the ninety seconds most programs skip: the decision, the boundary, the exit, and the reset afterward.
— Carmen "The Momba" Gulliksen
Before your next solo appointment, tell one person: where you'll be, who you're meeting, and when you'll check back in. Three seconds. It's the cheapest insurance in real estate, and almost nobody does it.
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A new brief twice a month — one practical readiness move, the Anxiety Tax™ cost it removes, and a field note you can use the same day. Delivered straight to your inbox, and added to your Safety Playbook.
Just $9.95 a month — or free for two full years when you complete a Momba CE course.
Bring This Training to Your Team
Momba delivers live, hands-on safety and situational-awareness training — workshops, multi-session series, and keynotes — built around performance and liability, not fear. Available to brokerages, teams, and organizations anywhere in the U.S.
Looking for DPOR continuing-education credit? Our CE-certified course (2 elective hours) is currently available in Virginia — with additional states coming soon. Everything else, we bring to you nationwide.
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