✈️ Take Flight Weekly, Episode #305: The 10 Patterns That Separate the 3% From the 97%

About this episode

On this 305th episode of Take Flight Weekly, I pull back the curtain on the 10 lessons that shaped me the most in 2025. I'm the President of Jameson Sotheby's International Realty, I coach elite-level producers across dozens of markets, and I continue to build my own business. That combination gives me a front-row seat to what separates the 3% from the 97%.

These are the real patterns that separate the people who grow from the people who stay stuck.

The 10 Patterns That Separate the 3% From the 97% → Lesson 1: Vision Is an Emotional Destination A true vision is a feeling. It's the emotional state you want to experience three years from now—clarity, control, energy, confidence, margin. → Lesson 2: An Extra 0.25% on Every $10M in Production Is $25,000 Elite producers understand the compounding effect of precision. Micro improvements stack, scale, and matter. → Lesson 3: Is Planning Actually Procrastination? Too many advisors hide behind "planning" because it feels productive. But planning without execution is avoidance. Planning becomes procrastination the moment it delays action. → Lesson 4: The 3% Are Willing to Fail to Learn and Grow Failing in public is the entry fee to elite performance. The 3% don't fear failure. They fear stagnation. Most optimize for safety. The elite optimize for growth. → Lesson 5: The Basics Will Always Work. Less Is More. Top performers master the basics at a higher level. When business gets noisy, the elite simplify. Excellence is built through subtraction, not addition. → Lesson 6: The Next Frontier Is Marketing Your Hyper-Local Market Advisors who master hyper-local expertise will own the next decade. The buying public chooses location first. AI is indexing geography at a micro level. Build a brand tied directly to location. → Lesson 7: Only 4% of People Receive Two or More Handwritten Notes Per Year Authenticity stands out. A handwritten note has the highest open rate in the world. Low cost. High impact. Underutilized. → Lesson 8: If You Don't Plant, You Will Not Harvest Input always precedes output. You cannot take a season off from marketing, database management, and relationship nurturing and expect predictable revenue. Keep planting during your busiest months. → Lesson 9: The Top 1% Are Obsessed with Reaching Their Goals Not committed. Obsessed. The top 1% live in complete alignment with their outcomes. Their habits, calendars, and relationships match their goals. Elite performance is engineered. → Lesson 10: Rightsize Is My Word for 2026

Rightsizing is about stripping away clutter. It's about aligning your business, commitments, team, and inputs with your emotional destination. It's not about shrinking. It's about recalibrating to grow in the right direction.

Here's my promise heading into 2026: I'm going to keep doing the work, connecting the dots, and bringing you the truth about what separates elite producers from the 97%. You show up and do your part, and I'll show up and do mine.

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