Spend five minutes with Josh Phegan and you quickly realise why he has coached thousands of high performers across real estate and beyond. He doesn’t just talk leadership. He lives it, in his energy, his curiosity, and his relentless belief that confidence, like skill, can be built and renewed.
In our latest Future Fit Leadership podcast, Josh takes us inside the mindset of high performance. From his childhood car rides filled with Zig Ziglar tapes to shaping his own leadership DNA, Josh shares how learning became less of a choice and more of a way of life.
One of the big themes we explored was energy versus time. For leaders in real estate, juggling clients, appraisals, late-night calls, and a calendar that never seems to stop, the temptation is to measure everything in hours. Josh flips this. It is not time you need to manage, it is energy. Whether it is renewal between appointments or knowing what restores rather than drains you, energy is the true currency of leadership.
Josh also believes the best leaders are not “know-it-alls” but “learn-it-alls.” In an industry that changes daily, from shifting markets to evolving client expectations, the ability to stay open, curious, and adaptive is what keeps leaders relevant. He reminded me that you can learn from anyone: a colleague, a competitor, or even a three-year-old. The moment you think you have learnt it all, you are perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists.
We also spoke about feedback. Not the kind that gets dropped in performance reviews once a year, but the everyday kind, in the car on the way to an appointment. Josh argues that the best leaders don’t just give feedback, they ask how people want to receive it. That one shift can change whether your team absorbs coaching or recoils from it.
And then there is resilience. When things go wrong, and in real estate they often do, Josh leans into what he calls the “of course” mindset. Lose a listing? Of course. A deal falls through? Of course. Not to shrug off the setback, but to normalise the bumps and recover faster. In fact, one of his biggest leadership reflections was wishing he had learnt to recover more quickly from setbacks earlier in his career. What might have taken a year to bounce back from could have been a day with the right mentoring and support.
It is why he says you will learn more from losing than from winning. Winning can feel good, but losing, if you are willing to examine it, is where the deeper lessons live. For real estate leaders dealing with tough markets, tricky negotiations, or failed campaigns, that insight is worth its weight in gold.
His hardest leadership lesson? Realising that not everyone in your business is on the journey with you for life. As he put it, people are with you for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, and that is okay. What matters is helping people feel a sense of progression while they are with you. Forget that, and you risk losing not just staff, but trust.
We covered change too. AI, shifting consumer expectations, generational turnover in the workforce, all of it is shaking up the way we lead. Josh reminds us that people hate change when it happens to them, but they love it when they are part of it. For principals and business owners, that means involving your team in the problem, the vision, and the solution, not just dictating it from above.
What I love about Josh is that he doesn’t shy away from the hard truths of leadership. It can be lonely. It can be messy. But if you approach it with curiosity, generosity, and discipline, it can also be the most rewarding part of your career.
For anyone in real estate who wants to future-proof their leadership, whether you are leading a sales team, running a business, or just leading yourself, this conversation is a masterclass.
Listen to the podcast here Josh Phegan Podcast