A top-1% real estate agent describes burning out despite high income, then shows how Dave Hook scaled from 80 to 250 transactions yearly while cutting his workweek from five days to four. The key: build systems and hire people to run them instead of doing everything yourself.
Questions this video answers
About 80 transactions while working ~80 hours per week (at the start of the engagement).
About 240–250 families served in one year while working on average four days per week.
Reportedly a 5x increase in income compared to the first year they started working together.
Business size increased ~3x and his hours were cut in half (per speaker's account).
The book 'ScaleOrDie' available at ScaleOrDieBook.com (linked in the video).
In an industry where, you know, evenings and weekends are the norm and it's what our clients expect of us, how can we have any freedom whatsoever? And what the heck do I mean when I even say business freedom? You know, my journey in real estate was a typical busy real estate agent. I was a top producer out of the gate. And I don't say that to brag. Actually, it was a miserable existence. And when I calculated the money I made As a top 1% agent, it was less than $20 an hour in those early days. And I just committed to doing business a different way. I wanted to have it all. I wanted to be a great dad, a great husband. I wanted to be physically fit. I wanted to be spiritually on point. You know, I had all these goals for my life, and the real estate business at the time occupied most of the my waking hours and something had to change. And so when I say business freedom, it's building a business in the real estate industry. So serving buyers and sellers and doing it in a way where you can have freedom from the business. So just looking at the opportunity to be a real estate agent the different way, how can I still serve buyers and clients at the highest level and have a life? Now, if you stick around to the end of the video, I'm going to show you how to get a copy of my book. I wrote a whole book on how to scale or die in the real estate space. And so stay tuned for that. If you like the video, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, make sure you turn on notifications, and as always, leave me a comment. It lets me know you're out there, lets me know you're listening. I can engage and we can challenge each other. So let's dive into today's topic where it's all about business freedom. And like I said, business freedom is think of it like a McDonald's franchise. How many times have you gone into McDonald's and you've seen the owner of that McDonald's sitting there behind the register, flipping the burgers, sweeping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms like never. And so what if we were to think about our real estate business and in that context, how would we have to think about our business a little differently with that franchise prototype mindset? And I'm going to go back to that a lot. It's the first book I read when I got into real estate. It was the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And it didn't teach you even one tool or system or tactic to apply to a real estate business. It shifted something in me forever to think about the opportunity in real estate differently. And I think about one of our members, Dave Hook, out of Central PA, he was doing 80 transactions, so he was serving 80 families a year himself personally, with an assistant at the time. He went from 80 sides, working 80 hours a week. His wife, Jenny, was pregnant with their first child. When I met him, we had this vision. He had the vision like, you know, what does business freedom look like? That's kind of the back and forth. You know, we agreed to disagree at the time, and I challenged him just to think about the business differently. He had a very traditional mindset about real estate where he had to be the one helping the buyer, he had to be the one helping the seller, he had to be the one working the paperwork, pushing paper, you know, all the different jobs of a real estate agent. He had to be the one doing it. And he went from 80 sides, 80 hours to, I think last year he did 240, 250 families served in a single year where he worked on average four days a week. And Jenny has blessed them with three children at this point. And he's able to show up as a husband and a dad that he couldn't even dream of showing up as before. And so let's break down his journey into a few simple things that you can do in your business to achieve a similar result. The first thing he did was to view the business as sort of a means to an end. And what I mean by that is to begin with the end in mind, he had a very clear vision of what he wanted for his business and how he wanted his business to serve his life. Many real estate agents have a business that enslaves them. It allows for no life. And so just by shifting his mindset and suspending disbelief and trusting me to help him along his way, he was able to 3x increase the size, size of his business, cut his hours in half. Last year, he 5x'd his income with respect to that first year that we started working together. So it started with just a different view of what was possible and having a vision for what was possible in the business. The second thing that he did, and he continues to do this better than any of our members, is to work on one thing at a time. I always call him. I call him Rain man, you know, because he's so methodical in how he approaches his business. And he's the Tortoise in the Tortoise and the Hare, where he is just constantly taking one step forward in his business. And he's constantly looking at what's the next right thing I need to do to move my business forward to the vision that I want to achieve. Right. So he's not running someone else's race, he's running his race. He is wanting to be a good dad and a good husband and a good man of God. And he doesn't want to get sidetracked by this business that can be all consuming. He's already been down that path, same as my journey. Right. He was working the hours and not getting the results and having no freedom. And he just wanted to do it a different way and to look at doing one thing at a time in the business. Then the last thing that he did was to look for opportunities to bring people into his world where he can give them an opportunity. I had a chance to interview his sales manager and his operations manager recently. And the operations manager, she started working with Dave when she was like in college. Their relationship started, you know, early on in her professional journey and he was just willing to invest in her over the years. And this is before he even started the concept of a real estate team. He was a solo agent for years before this where he had a part time administrator. And then I was able to talk to Drew, his sales manager, who was the first agent he ever hired and just being able to invest into her and to the people that he surrounded himself with. So to build the system and then have somebody run the system, which created opportunity for him. So he never thought of, you know, the fact that he would step out of doing something as business as lack of control. He saw it as an opportunity for someone to step up and fill the void that he created. So super inspirational. You know, he has pushed me and challenged me as his mentor and his coach to show up in areas of my life where I know that I could do better. And so where are you challenging your business right now? Where are you at the point where you need to take a different approach. That's what I want you to consider. So the journey isn't easy, and it's surprisingly simple. There's a predictable, you know, set of steps that we can take to get you from where you are today to where you want to get to. And that requires vision. Proverbs 29:18 tells that where there is no vision, the people perish. And even if you don't share my faith, it's the same concept. You have to have this vision for where you're headed in your business. Like I said earlier, I wrote a whole book on exactly what the journey looks like, what you need to focus on the right thing at the right time, doing those things in the right order. So go to ScaleOrDieBook.com or click on the link below. And as always, if you like the video, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, turn on the notifications, leave me comments so we can challenge each other to be better, you know, not only in real estate, but in our lives and the areas of our lives that matter most. So we'll see you on the next video.
