Chris Prefontaine coaches a group on leaving W-2 jobs for full-time real estate. They use a diary exercise tracking 15-minute increments to cut low-value habits, and discuss needing two to four closed deals before fully committing. The group emphasizes time auditing, handling insurance fears, and matching each other's effort to build momentum.
Chapters
The things you need to stop doing to make room in your day. What can you stop doing? And that could be a habit, could be a bad discipline, could be an activity you just don't stop and have anyone check it on you. That's why the diary exercise, although very painful for us to review it for you, is a good exercise for you to go through. And if you're new, the diary exercise is you track in 15-minute increments for a whole week. And you stop and write down what you did. It's painful, but it's super eye-opening. Even if you didn't share it with us, I had to do it for my coach almost every year, Brett. So what can you stop doing? Not just do, right? Because all Jeffs would do, we didn't get them to stop anything. So Jeff, you're fairly newer. If you haven't done the diary exercise, any one of us could review that for you. And you'd want to do it in a normal work week, not Thanksgiving week, right? Yeah, during a normal work week, like W-2 blocked out. Okay. When I did my real estate, here's what I did, or mine work or whatever. Yeah.
And I think for me too, like, even at my W-2, I'm trying to shave things off that I don't have to be doing. It's like you can spend as much time as, you know, you have in the day.
It'll fill.
There are things that I can cut out in my W-2 even, you know, to make me more productive there, but to give me time for this.
Yep, 100%. Judy talks about all the time, she's just paying back more and more until she gets it. If you're watching this, you—
sorry.
Okay.
I feel like it's chicken or the egg. Like, you know how the W-2 just is preventing me from doing so much? We just had massive layoffs this week. A lot of people lost their job, and here I am sitting like, pick me, pick me, give me a package. And I'm like, God, just please do it for me. But yet I feel like I don't want to step over the edge until I have, you know, a couple of take-ins and sold, you know, because then, then I feel like I'll have proof of concept.
Okay, let me— I gotta jump in for everyone's sake, Judy, not just you. And you know 100% what I'm gonna say because I've said it to you, and that is, um, until you do it— and I'm gonna ask maybe Maverick and Rusty to talk about this— because until you do it, this won't make 100% sense. I want them to comment on this, and that is The feeling in the mental space that that frees up is mind-boggling. When I got fired from my father's company in the '90s, it bought— they get bought out. I left excited and scared at the same time because I had kids 2 and 1 with no income. Okay, so, but it was the breakthrough. But you couldn't have said, hey, in about a year we're just gonna like cut you off and you'll have no income. You're gonna be good with that? You say, no, I want to get some stuff going. I want to have 3 houses going. So trust me when I say that, but I don't want to put words in their mouth. Rick, uh, Russ, any comments on that during the transition? And if you didn't feel that way, it's okay. But just if you did, share that with Judy.
My plan to leave my W-2 was so dialed in, um, that I had, I had 4 deals under my belt, so I knew I could get more deals. And so I just projected that out over a year and just said, there's no question I get these deals. There was a little bit of apprehension, but nervousness with it, but not a whole lot.
Rick was caught up on his damn health insurance, and once we got him over that, he realized it was a non-issue. Rusty, same with you, or did you have the same feelings as Judy? I don't know the answer.
Just my mental hurdle was, you know, I was a, I was a teacher, which, you know, I could have been the worst teacher in the world and I couldn't get fired, right? So I had total security, and I have a pension behind it, right? So I could have just stayed there for 11 more years, but Mentally, I couldn't, right? So I just said, I have to get out. And because I was in this community and I knew how to do this now, right? I was like, screw it, right?
Mm-hmm.
Now, did I take a pay cut? And did I— now am I kind of insecure? And, you know, could something happen in my life where, you know, I could financially, you know, maybe crumble? Yes, but I took that risk because now I'm just more— I'm more free, right, on a daily basis.
So Judy, um, go, go ahead.
How many deals did you do, Rusty? I think Rick said he had 4.
Before he left?
His work. Yeah.
Uh, I have 4 as well with 2 sold. Okay.
Yeah, all I want is 2 proof of concept.
Okay, you do what's going to make you not be up at night, but at the same time stretch you, right? Find that happy medium. And then just know this, you guys, you know, on our wall in there, one of the values is matching effort for effort. I don't think anyone in the community, especially the High Six, would say, yeah, that doesn't happen. Because when people have deals, Rick or me or Rusty or Mike are stepping up. So I had said to Judy, and the offer is still on the table, When she makes a break, come to the office and let's get some deals done. Let's just dial, which she's already done once. Deb, we offered that because Deb's sprinting hard and wants to make a full-time effort. Well, Zach went on an appointment last week. I went on an appointment last week. So we're going to throw as much as we can at this, you guys, and not just Judy. So know that. Effort for effort.
