Busting 3 Common Myths in the Real Estate Industry

What are the three most common myths that I've seen in the real estate industry? You know, I've been at the real estate game since 2007 and I started Real Estate B School in 2013 and helped hundreds of clients across the country in all sorts of markets go from struggling, grinding, you know, just effort to sell homes to a more elegant approach, you know, and getting away from the blood and guts and this elegance and ease approach. You know, I got into real estate from corporate America and so I had a different sort of mindset when it came to building a real estate business. And I didn't have these preconceived notions. I didn't buy into the status quo or what traditional methods were telling me about, about real estate and being successful. I'm going to get into that. I wanted, there's really three sort of areas of myths that I've seen in my personal journey and also in our most successful members that I've been able to bust for them. So I want you to hang around, I want to invite you into our next challenge. And if you like the video, give me the thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, make sure you turn on notifications and leave me comments. And so when I think about my journey, and I use my journey a lot as an example because I do think it's a very thoughtful journey from, you know, I did the traditional things, the traditional methods, traditional coaching. When I first got into the industry, instantly I was selling a lot of homes. In my first 10 months I sold 27 homes. That was 1% of my market. My first full year I sold 44 homes with a part time assistant. Right. So I was instantly in the top of the top and I was not liking life. I was a new dad. I was married in 2006, October, and I was trying to be a good husband. I wanted to do something, you know, with my spiritual journey. I was still, I wasn't even a born again Christian until 2009, but I was sort of struggling with it. But I didn't have any margin in my day to really think about anything except real estate. So when I think about the common myths that I see in real estate, it's number one is the fact that we think the business has to all be generated by ourself, that we really are that important, that nobody else will work with us. Right? So that's the first thing, is that we have to be able to envision a world where the business provides the services and it's not us. And this is tough because real estate Is a personality driven business. When I ask people like a top agent selling 40, 50 homes a year, they're working seven days a week guaranteed. Even if they say they're not. Even if they say they have their freedom, they're working on every vacation. And I asked them, I said, so what's your plan to go from 70 hours a week to 40 hours a week? Like, what's your plan to turn this thing into something that's sustainable? Like, do you have a plan to get out of working with buyers or do you? And they look at me like, how could you possibly not work with buyers? You know, like, that's just like the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And so that's the number one myth, is that you have to be the one working with all the business. And I've served over 4,000 families in my career, and our members have made the shift from, you know, grinding it out. You're doing everything in your business to maybe you only work with listings and maybe only your sphere. And you're selling hundreds of homes per year and you're working less than 40 hours a week. Right? So detaching from this deeply held belief that only your clients will work with you, that's the first myth that I see. It's. And it's just not true. We proved it over and over and over again. The second myth that I love to bust is this. You know, traditional success requires that we work evenings and weekends. Every traditionally successful agent and most traditional coaching programs will teach you how to do more homes. They won't tell you how to work less hours. That's not the motivation. The motivation is money and deals and ego Versus, like, how do I do the job of a real estate agent, make the kind of money I want to make, but not have to work evenings and weekends and not have to endure the stress that comes along with selling a lot of real estate without any boundaries. So the mythbuster on this one is that even if you're in production, it's okay to have standards around your time. Think of the best attorney in your market or the best heart surgeon in your market, or the best whatever. Do you think you have free access to that person anytime you want? Zero chance. Zero chance. Do you think there's a process to book an appointment with the best surgeon in your market? Let's say you're having heart issues and you want to see the best of the best. Chances are you'll travel whatever distance is required, you'll take whatever appointment they have available, You'll Answer whatever questionnaire they send you ahead of time. You're going to do the things that they tell you to do because you're meeting with somebody that has standards and they played that game at a high level. So why is it as real estate agents, we have no standards for our time? So even if you're not going to build a real estate team to give you the leverage to not work with buyers evenings and weekends, what about just coming up with hours and standards with your time? And what about creating a system for showing homes and hiring a showing agent to show homes for you? Getting out of working evenings and weekends is not as challenging as we make it out to be. What about in your buyer consultation process, your buyer packets and your listing packets? What if you had a one page agreement with the standards of engagement, your rules of engagement in order to work with the best. Here's the rules we're going to follow. Which, which includes my hours, right? If something happens at 8:30pm on a Friday, I can't call the attorney, I can't get the lender on the phone. I can't, you know, nothing can happen until Monday morning. And so unless something is blowing up, literally, we're not going to work on something when it doesn't need to be worked on. And you need to trust me on that, right? What's wrong with having that conversation ahead of time? They'll respect you more and you'll earn more. Referral business because you're showing up as a pro and not an amateur. You think your client respects you when you're texting them 9:30 on a Friday night when you're watching TV with your spouse or you should be spending time with your children at night. I promise you, it lowers your credibility with your clients. The third myth that I love to bust is the myth around paying for leads. You know, every top agent and every team I see, you know, I come in and I look at their business, I look at where they're spending their money, where their business is coming from. Every one of those top agents and team leaders are spending money on lead sources. And that may even sound like a little bit weird to you, but like, where else are you going to get leads except, you know, giving someone else money to generate a lead for you. That just means that you're a crappy marketer. That means that you have bought into the lie that the industry is telling us that Zillow is the place you go to for leads. Realtor.com is the place you go to for leads, right? You've Just agreed to not become a good marketer. We got out of paying for leads years ago and we never even bought into like going to 10, 15, 20,000amonth like other teams our size. We just weren't willing to play that game. So where are you getting your leads? Are you becoming a like a high level marketer? You know, in my early days I studied direct response marketing. I studied everything from Dan Kennedy. What are the things that we can do to generate new business, new leads, new opportunities to call people without having to spend money to do it. And that's a, that's a big challenge. We have eight lead gen levers in real estate B school and, and they're all designed in a way for you to put in minimal, you know, there's effort there, you know, there's maybe learning something put, you know, installing a new capability or installing a system in your business. There's not a whole lot of money involved in our expire program, our FSBO program, our yard marketing open houses, our database social proof as a lead gen lever. Client care is a lead gen lever. Right. So are you just giving money to realtor.com and Zillow or Google pay per click? You think Google needs more money? I don't think they need more money. You need to figure out how to generate higher quality leads without spending money to have someone force register on your website. Right. Just shift your mindset on becoming a high level marketer. You know, direct response marketing. What's one thing you can put out there that's so valuable that someone's willing to give you their information to get that thing? And just, just think about what could you give a seller that's considering selling their home or inspire that came off the market or, or for sale by owner or in a neighborhood where you take a listing. Right. How could you compel neighbors to think that you may be the agent that they list with when they put their home on the market in the coming months? Right. There's all these systems we can put into place to make sure that you're going to be the top agent and not just the top person spending the most amount of money. There's a local team in our market here. I was actually on a panel. I don't do a lot of sort of top agent panels. This was a big one though in our local market and this guy was dubbed and someone told me that he was a master Internet marketer. I'm like that's cool. Like I would love to sit next to somebody and get to know someone who's a master Internet marketer. I sit next to the guy, I'm like, so, so what's your. What's your deal? Like, I hear you're awesome at Internet marketing. He's like, yeah, we spend about 70,000, $75,000 a month with Zillow. And I'm like, and I was spending 5,000amonth with Zillow. And our businesses are not too far apart. He does more business, but there's no way he does it profitably, because I know my Zillow numbers were in the same market. I'm like, 75,000amonth. I found out he has a lender paying for half of it, and he gave part of his business away to Zillow. That's like the prototypical, like, hey, look at all this business I'm doing. And he since went into business with Zillow, his commissions have dropped to, like, 1.4%. He still has to sell 100 homes a year to make a living. And so my point is, don't play the game the industry wants us to play. You think Zillow is our friend, you are sorely mistaken. Go down the path of learning how to become a marketer, and that's my advice to you. So if some of this stuff has your brain turning and you want to spend a little bit more time with me in an environment where I'm going to push you, I'm going to coach you, I'm going to train you, I'm going to challenge you to grow your business without giving your profit away, without giving your life away. Join us in our next challenge. Go to rebschallenge.com that's rebschallenge.com if you like the video, give me the thumbs up. Make sure you subscribe to our channel and turn on your notifications and also leave us comments. You know, this journey that I talk about, I'm obsessed with this agent to owner journey and, like, what it takes to do it the right way. It's not the easiest path. I would argue at the end of the day, beginning with the end in mind and envisioning a business that runs more like a business and less like you. Grinding it out every day is the hundred percent way to go. We'll see you in the next video.