How to Win the Market When Rates Skyrocket | Outliers

Have you ever asked yourself, why is it that some people seem to constantly outperform their potential? Call them an outlier. While other people with the best of intentions fall dramatically below or just below their expectations. And listen, they're not bad people. They set big goals, but they don't align their behaviors with what it is they want to accomplish. The next 7 shows, this quick little series I'm doing where I'm interviewing the outliers. What's the psychology? What's the mindset? What do they do that cause them to outperform their potential? Enjoy the show. Hey, Chris Wolfe, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me.

So did your coach give you a little insight as to why you were asked to be on this show?

She said I was doing something right and might need to share it out there a little bit.

Okay. So this is what I was told by Coach Susan. She said, oh, you're looking for an outlier in performance. What if I told you I'm working with this guy who's 14 months in the business, he set a goal to do $250,000 in GCI, and he finished at $510,000 his first full year in the business?

Pretty accurate.

Pretty accurate. Yeah. So I know someone's listening right now and they're like, I'm 30 years in the business and I want that. But somebody might be brand new in the business and they want that. What we want to try and unpack is not necessarily did you do the work, because you clearly did the work. We want to unpack what's behind the scenes. And that's what we're doing with Revy. As you heard me say today, we've sort of mapped how people become outliers and how they become underperformers. Not bad, just they're underperforming their potential. So help us understand, are you married? Are you single? Do you have kids? Have you always lived in, you know, kind of outside of Sacramento? Like, give us a little backstory because something in there is going to be a kernel that we need to unpack that got you here.

Sure. Well, married for almost 10 years now. 2 small girls, 5 and 9. In that age, they still totally love me. So, absorbing that.

Hold on to that.

Yeah, for sure. Before they morph into teenagers. But no, great family. We actually moved to my part of California, Eldorado Hills, which is Northern California. We just moved there. 3, 4 years ago. So kind of new to my area.

Sure.

Uh, new in the business. And, you know, obviously with wife and kids, it's very motivating to make things happen quickly.

Right. What did you do professionally?

So my background was in, uh, construction, uh, house flipping, uh, home building. And I did that, you know, very successfully for 13, 14 years. And that all very much changed in 2022. Sure.

So talk about that. I'm assuming you're talking about like September of 2022 when the rates went from very inexpensive to extremely expensive on a Tuesday?

Pretty much, yeah. I was based out of Austin, Texas. Um, interesting. And Tampa, Florida. So doing a lot of traveling, again, doing very, very well. And I remember July of '22 putting a house on the market that we just finished, beautiful spec home, and like, we're gonna make a killing on this one. And it didn't sell the first weekend. I'm like, that's weird.

Yeah, what's going on? What's happening here?

Pretty much. So it was a very painful 2 years, learned a lot, um, but it gave— it did set me up with some like incredible attributes that I'm thankful for that I'm parlaying into obviously this business.

So, so I would say you had a lot of options. I had, I had friends that during the global financial crisis were home builders, you know, private companies, but you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and they literally said, yeah, I'm just going to go to Europe and take the next 3 offs, you know, let this thing said aloud.

Sure.

You opted to go from this monster business to creating a startup monster business. What was the thought process and decision-making? Did you, did you have like, maybe I'll go do mortgages, maybe I'll, you know, I don't know, do something else professionally?

Why real estate? Yeah, for sure. Um, kind of funny story on that. Uh, I was gonna try to start another business, but having a business before, I realized like how long that's going to take to start generating revenue and And you know, and I had a family, we were in the middle of building a home and you know, I don't have a college degree, I don't have any skillset per se. So I'm like, well, what the heck am I going to do? And my wife says, what were you going to do about the real estate license thing? And I'm like, yeah, I guess I'll do that. And so I just said, well, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to like really do this. And I didn't tell anybody I was doing it, none of my family. I think my first like 4 months, literally worked 7 days a week for 4 months.

Sure.

And the statistic I heard— I don't even know if the numbers are right now, but it was, it was like 84% of agents didn't sell a house last year, some variation of that.

Crazy number.

I think it was from one of your podcasts.

I, I actually have the number for 2025, but I'm going to, I'm going to disclose it tonight at 4:45, so you'll know later.

Uh, but yeah, I just remember telling myself, I am not going to be that statistic.

That's it.

You know, and I just kept repeating that in my head. I'm like, if I'm going to do this, I'm just— it's going to work. Like, I'm not going to do this and be like, I tried and it didn't work.

So are you saying that if I just have a spouse and kids, I'll be successful, or is there something else?

Uh, no, that's, uh, it helps, um, but it's definitely not the thing that really was able to get me, you know, volume quickly. You know, I, I came to a market where I literally didn't know anybody. I didn't have any kind of sphere. My previous business, I didn't need to be networked at all.

No.

And so it's just like, okay, how do I do this as quickly as possible to like get to be living comfortably? And then rebuilding.

So, so there's 6 questions I want to ask you to really understand your psychology, and then because of your very unique situation, I'd love to also unpack what did you do the first 4 months and when did it start to click. So let's get to all that.

Sure, sure.

So, so walk me through first, um, when was the last time you missed a goal, something you were focusing on, and then what did you change immediately and why?

Um, I mean, I've missed a lot of goals in my life, and I think a lot of them have just been like I lose focus of that specific thing and jump on to maybe another goal or some variation. So it's just kind of like, so I've missed a lot of goals in life. I think in this business what's helped me is it's, it's very public. Like, you know what people's volume are. It's very transactional. You can like really set target metrics and just kind of focus on that. So that I actually like that about the business. It's very simple in that way. Um, and so when I look at this year going forward, like, what did I miss last year? Why did I you know, why was I short on these different areas? And, and it's, it's a pretty easy system to plan out. Like, are you short on your systems? Are you short on your appointments? Are you short? And then just fill in those gaps, um, by obviously knowledge of what we're doing today.

Yes. So are you competitive?

Uh, I, I am very competitive. Yeah.

So when you said it's easy because I can look at what everyone else is doing and I could see their transactions, have you ever heard the, the phrase everyone needs a dragon to slay? —yeah, or a target. Yeah, sure, sure. Did that, did that help you? Does that, does that inspire you?

Um, yeah, no, it, it does. Um, I, I, you know, I look at numbers all the time, and actually I don't really care so much what other people are doing. I think it's just very, um, nobody can kind of BS their way through how successful they are. So it's easy to find people that are doing really well and, and distill down on what they're doing and model that. I love that, you know.

You know, just said the same exact thing. Who's Edna Kimball? Oh, okay. Your new buddy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she was just—

she's gonna follow me one day on Instagram.

Yeah, she literally just said to me, it was like one of my first Tom Ferry events, you, you kept saying if they can do it, you can do it. If they can do it, you can. She's like, I just realized he's right. Sure, you know, that knucklehead or that genius or whatever it is, they can do it. I can figure it out too. 100%. Let's go to question number 2. How do you decide if, if you think a strategy is not working? How do you decide to continue or to cut bait?

So because I'm newer in the business, I'm like just starting to see some of these strategies actually mature out, um, and I'm not really trying all these different fancy things. Like my business model is very, very simple. I'm only like focused on 2 or 3 pillars, you know? And so, um, I'm letting those mature out. I'm modeling those off of success I've seen. Honestly, like a lot of your podcast guests that are doing these monster numbers, it's like they're just focused on calling expireds, and so I'm just doing that. So yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's do the thing and adapt, notice if it's not working or not, and make changes then. But everything I've implemented honestly has been pretty simple, back to basics, and all of it is working. If anything, I'm gonna change, it's like, how do I get a little bit better or efficient at doing that?

Have you ever quit on something too soon?

Many times in my life. I don't think in this business. I've got that. That's a good thing that came from my business background is I do know what it takes. It does take a while. You have to spend money. Yes. Like you've just got to do it.

So time or money, right?

Time or, you know, you need one of them. Yeah, exactly.

So, so, so let's go a different direction. Is there a behavior in your business that you do even on the days you don't feel like it?

All the time. It's called cold calling and open houses and all everything.

So, but give us— to unpack that. So like, do you have days where you don't feel like doing it?

40% of the time. Yeah, 40%.

That's— could you be a little more precise? 39.7% of the time. So 40% of the time you don't feel like doing it. How do you get yourself to do it? Or do you, do you just do it?

No, most of the time I just do it. I mean, I'm— I know that if I'm not I'm not doing the call, if I'm not doing the thing, just statistically I'm not going to be where I'm going to be. And I'm not saying I'm perfect, and I don't want to ever portray that because everybody has bad days. But on the bad days when you do it, that's much more impactful. The day when you come home from Elite Retreat and you're all psyched up, it's, it's, you know, it's mid-September when your listings are falling apart, right? That it's important, right?

You know, for 14 months you still— you, you talk like a veteran. Oh good. Yeah, you know, it's September.

I had one September, it was a little rough.

So is there something you say to yourself? Is there something you do? Is there a trigger that you found worked? Um, is there an internal dialogue when you're like, oh, I gotta make my call, and then you somehow will yourself to do it?

The biggest thing is just to truly just start. A lot of my business comes from cold calling. I mean, that's just had to— that had to be a thing because I didn't know people in the area.

Exactly.

100%. Yeah, 100%. And And it took a while to build up. And honestly, my coach helped me a lot through that because, um, you know, I would be like, all right, if I can do 15-minute blocks, just do 15 minutes and you're not gonna die, you know. And then now it's pick up the phone, dial for 2 hours, and it doesn't faze me. So a lot of it's just been like, just get started. And then once you've started, just like going to the gym, putting your shoes on and getting in the car is the hardest part. Exactly.

You know, exactly. Um, what's something in your short career that you've stopped doing, either to scale yourself up or just, okay, I move beyond that. That's kind of scaling up, or just, you know, not doing that anymore.

Very quickly, I, uh, I hired an assistant, um, and that was kind of funny because I'm like month 2 in the business, I, I'm just working at one of the like Roamer cubicles, don't have an office, and then I bring in this full-time assistant. Everyone's like, who is this guy, you know? But I did know like that money was so worth all of the things she does. And that's been allowing me to— that's like completely freed me up to prospect, to do everything that makes money. Yes. You know, and one deal pays for a quarter of her time, you know.

Is that because in the— in your former life you had to hire GCs or subs to, to, you know, to manage your pro— you're living in California, you got projects in Austin, you got projects in Tampa. Yeah. You can't be at every project every day. So, so did—

were you already more comfortable with that leadership capacity, more comfortable with the investment in the business, you know, um, because some of the stuff I'm doing is so inexpensive to me because I've, you know, I used to spend in my previous business, we'd spend $70,000 a month mailing postcards. Of course. And people think that's insane. Yeah. Okay, well, if you're getting 7 deals a month and you're making $50,000, like, that's just— it costs you 10 cents to make a cheeseburger, you sell it for a dollar. It's that kind of mindset. Yeah. And I think a lot of agents, even just my experience has been, well, they're so afraid to spend $300 to make a nice little video. And it's just like, you're thinking about that too small. Exactly.

Exactly. We talked about it today. Like, what's the problem you're trying to solve? Do you want to lower your CAC? Do you want to increase, like, you know, lifetime value of clients? Sure. So you got all that and you're bringing all that in the business. So you're blessed. Let's, let's, let's back up. And I want to ask this sometime in the, in the last 14 months, things stalled. Sounds like September of last year. When things stall, what's the first thing you examine?

I think when things stall, it's only because of my lack of organization. Um, the challenge I have is obviously I'm getting busier, I'm doing these things, so how do I still continue to prospect even though I'm busy? And it's kind of sorting all those things out. Like, I'm doing enough transactions to be like, I'm making good money and doing good what I can, what I need to do, but, but how do I really scale it now? By like time blocking, giving everything the appropriate amount delegating 85% of things I shouldn't really do. And that's kind of where I'm at on my journey to get to the next level.

What do you say to the person— just kind of tangential thought— what do you say to the person that's listening right now and they're thinking to themselves, he's making this sound way too easy? For sure.

Um, because I would want to hear that too, because I've been listening to podcasts for years and like, what would I want to hear? And I mean, really what I can say, first of all, I'm a super normal person, didn't come from anywhere, came to a market I didn't know, First job was at Taco Bell, got promoted to shift manager. But I have a very normal background, no college. So what I'm doing, literally anybody could do. It's just, my thing is just focus on those ultra basic things. You know, Kobe Bryant still shot whatever, 4,000 free throws in the morning. Just focus on how many conversations are you having with people? Because I feel like in this industry, you can get so distracted by, picking around on the MLS or reading the next thing or posting on social. While important, uh, what's now business to fuel the rest of your, your business? And so, so I, I would just say really focus on those basics. It's not— it's truly not hard, right? Uh, it's just doing the hard things.

But Chris, it's just— I don't like doing it.

Yeah, I don't like lifting weights, but I don't like eating chicken and rice. But you know, mathematically they have a correlation, you know. I like—

I want to live a long time. I want to I'm going to be at my daughter's wedding. Right. Right. So there is this future benefit to some short-term maybe discomfort.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it never goes away. And I could say after cold calling thousands of people and building this in a short period of time, I can say I still don't like it all the time. Most of the time, in fact. Right. So you just have to accept that fact and keep moving ahead. Yes.

Coaching do for you that you can't do on your own, if anything?

I mean, a lot, honestly. Um, my coach specifically is very accountability-focused. You know, I, I requested somebody through the organization. I just want somebody really straight up. If you're screwing up, I need to know it. I don't mind getting a text about it at 8 in the morning. Yeah. And so that level of accountability— yeah, the perfect match. Yeah, love her. Um, but no, that, that she's willing to completely push me because she— you know what you need to do Why aren't you doing it? Yeah. And that's the conversation I have with myself. And it's just that accountability of that.

What if I told you when we're mapping now, like you heard me talk about today, like we can examine your first 6 coaching sessions and tell he's an outlier or he's going to, he's going to underperform his potential and he's going to be frustrated. And it doesn't mean that they're bad. I've said it multiple times. Of course. Yeah. It's like, it just means you set an expectation for yourself here, but your behaviors are falling below that. And at the end of the day, you don't get paid on expectations, right? Paid on behaviors. So, so when we looked at that, one of the key distinctions of all the outliers was this just— I mean, it was just over-the-top personal responsibility, right? There's no outside factor that's getting in the way. And for some of the people that are underperforming, they gave all their power away, right? You know, rates went up, this happened, you know, the mortgage company didn't the title company didn't. Have you always been kind of a, you know, if it's going to be, it's up to me? And when did that start? Where did it come from? For sure.

I think most of my life I really have been like that. Um, I don't— I won't get too far into it, but growing up, I grew up in Orange County, which is a very affluent area. Uh, my parents were not affluent. Wonderful, beautiful people. Um, but I saw that big disparity. And so I think from the good— it was as bad as it was growing up, What it gave me was realizing like that work ethic, you know. That's my first job was at Taco Bell, but I worked like 14-hour shifts, you know. I just wanted to like always like— I realized no one's going to do it for me. I have to do it. And that translates. I mean, and that's one of the benefits of growing up the way I did, because I did— I had that self-responsibility built into me. And that, that makes me more resilient when rates go up next year, robots start cold calling and beating us out of the business, you know, whatever. Like, well, I'm gonna figure it out. It doesn't matter, you know.

So when I say things like, no one's coming to rescue you, I think it resonates 100%. Yeah. What do you say to the person that maybe is just offended because I said that? And you know, I'm not trying to offend you if you're offended by that. Like it's, but that's, that's, that's an outlier thought. Like no one's coming to rescue me. What do you say to that person? It's like, but he doesn't understand.

As hard as anyone has had things in life or business failures or family failures or other personal tragedy, Um, somebody else has had it harder and they've risen beyond that. And I've just seen that too many times in my life to ignore that. Yeah. And so we have two options. We can, you know, uh, the Darwinism that you were talking about in the seminar, you know, we can change and adapt or we become a victim to Zillow, right? Can I say that? Can I say that? Okay. All right.

Sorry, Zillow. Yeah.

Paid for by Zillow.

So, so if I didn't ask you your first 120 days, your first 6 months, when did the business start to click? And then tell us, like, go as deep as you want for the person listening. Someone right now is going, okay man, so how— so $510,000 in GCI. Sure. How many listings did you take in the last 12 months that sold? How many buyer sales? Give us a sense of that. And then what did you do every day to find them?

Yeah, so I mean, as far as like numbers go, it's important to talk about that, that GCI or the commission. So my first half of last year, I made $130,000. I think that's the first 6 months, right? Okay. And so most of it was at the second half of the year, um, but I was doing that action over and over and over again. And then it just does take a minute. It's, it's getting out of orbit in the spacecraft, you know. You've got to push out, and it does become easier. You know, I walked into my office 2 days ago, I have an email I'm selling my house in Serrano, the neighborhood I'm targeting. Can you help me do it? Like the easiest one. Beautiful.

But the layup. Yeah, exactly. But it took 14 months. It took grinding 14 months to get that, to build the brand, to get trust, direct mail and everything else. Exactly.

Yeah. So, um, I can't remember where I was going with that, but, uh, it's just, it's just, you know, so how many listings, how many buyer sales?

Yeah.

So out of that, primarily listings, I did 34 transactions the first year. The First month I did zero. February I did two. March I did zero. And then from there it went up. And most of those are listings because, again, something I think I heard one time is you got to be a listing agent. So I was like, all right, I'm going to be a listing agent, you know. But then obviously worked in some buyers there just through, through the business. Of course. Yeah.

So, so break down— I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions. You say yes or no. Okay. Okay. Uh, geographic farm? Yes. Direct mail?

Yes.

Working your sphere of influence?

Trying to build a sphere of influence to work? Yes. But yes, absolutely, very powerful. Email marketing? No, I don't do it. Okay.

Texting? And I mean texting like, hey, what's up?

I mean texting for marketing, drip campaigning? No.

Okay, love it. Let's see. Cold calling? Yes. Expired listings? Yes. Open houses? Yes. Door knocking?

No.

Love it. Google Business Page? Trying. Trying. Uh, AI, so you show up because of geo? Yes.

Good for you. From one of your podcasts recently on the blogging.

Okay, good, good, good, good. What am I missing?

Uh, cold calling.

I was trying to do like a smattering.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's prospecting vehicles. That's, that's my business. It's— and I think I ran all my numbers out of all my transactions last year. Like 78% were from cold calls and open houses. Wow. And follow-up. Follow-up is so massive.

How do you— when you say cold call, do you, do you mean start at A in the alphabet? Or do you say you sit down with your title exec and you're like, I want to concentrate in this area, pull me all the numbers for this area, scrape out the do not call list, and I'm going to call this area? Or do you say Hey, you know what, there's all these transactions happening around here and I'm gonna circle dial around others' listings and sales. What is your— what is your cold call method?

Sure, primarily expired listings. I started with expired listings. Again, some YouTube video came up that I should do that, but definitely honing in more on circle prospecting. Also notice the default is another one. Interesting. That's— and some of these ponds are just not hit, so So it's really open water on— and, and cold calling is the thing that nobody likes to do. And so, uh, it's very lucrative because you're not competing with a lot of people. So you're—

so your version of cold calling is expireds, notice of defaults. You're, you're, you're basically— and I love this— you're like, who is the prob— who's the person that's raising their hand and they're saying, I've got a problem? Absolutely. So how do you solve that problem? You're 14 months in the business. How did you take your first— you know, did they not say to you, I was on Zillow and you're— you, you have an eggshell, there's no photo of you.

So I prayed all the time that they wouldn't look at Zillow. And but I've been saying, look, I'm the top agent in the area. I've been saying that since my first cold call. Now, fortunately, they didn't ask me, well, how many houses have you sold? Yeah, well, I'm the hardest working. I'm the only one calling you at 5:30 right now. You know, there's a lot of tops, you know. Yeah. Define number one. Exactly. Yeah. I'm the first one that called you. Exactly. Yeah. All right.

There's a definite swagger about you. Oh, thanks. But I also see a tremendous amount of humility. Yeah, I respect both those.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

So if somebody wanted to reach out to you because they wanted to connect, could they find you on Instagram? Can they find you? Like, what if somebody's like, okay, this guy, he's my jam. Yeah. You know, you've watched enough of my podcast and other podcasts. You're like, oh yeah, I— that one.

That's the one. That one.

Like, oh, he's— He's my spice for sure. If they want to connect with you, how do they find you?

Yeah, so big on Instagram, YouTube, Chris Wolf, Wolf with the knee, underscore real estate. And happy to— I'm an open book to anybody who wants to know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, for sure. Love it.

I got to introduce you to Erica Wolf, who's the Wolf of Real Estate in Florida, who's now one of our great clients forever.

I saw her name pop up in the registration. I was like, there's another wolf here.

And she is. Erica, if you're watching, she's a monster. Awesome. She is. A rock star. You're a lover. Hey, thank you. Thank you, first of all, for being a client.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for being so open and transparent on the show. Thank you in advance for answering questions, because people are going to reach out and be like, really? Do you— how do you— you know what I mean? And you know, by giving back, like, everybody, everybody gets risk. Everybody elevates.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, so just— I'm just really proud of you, man.

Yeah, grateful to be here. Thank you, Tom. Thank you.

And for you, make sure you follow Chris Wolfe. If this really resonates, absolutely reach out And if he's going to respond, he's going to let you know he has a little bit of time, not a lot of time, but a little bit of time. So thank you. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you on the next show. Take care. Hey, if you're listening to this in a podcast and you're saying to yourself, I might be underperforming my potential and I want to become an outlier, go back to the show notes, click that link, schedule a session with one of my teams. Let us help you become the outlier you deserve to be.