Can You Create Passive Income As A Real Estate Agent?

In the traditional world of being a real estate agent, is passive income even possible? You know, traditional methods in real estate are, you know, one person doing every single job in their real estate business. Is it possible to break up the job of real estate agents so you as the owner can generate passive income versus all the other agents in your market only being able to produce active income? You know, our business, this industry, is set up in a way that fundamentally in so many ways, is broken. And when I say it's broken, it's not that I don't love the industry as much as to say it's just challenging to be a traditional agent. You're working evenings and weekends. You're working way too many hours for one person to work. And so you have to begin to break down the business into, you know, what are things that only I can do in the business and then what are things that I can get others to do that I so that I can have some freedom and enjoy some time off and still make money while I'm not working? If you're looking to transform your real estate business and to go from the traditionally successful real estate agent to, you know, an entrepreneurial minded business owner, go to predictablerealestatesuccess.com or click on the link below and I'm going to give you training. It's a 15 minute training on the key drivers and the accelerators that you need to be successful as a business owner rather than just as a real estate agent. If you love the video, please hit the like button. Make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications and also leave a comment. I would love to interact with you and just go back and forth on what you think about today's topic. For most real estate agents, the only way that they know how to make money is doing every part of the job of a real estate agent. So whether it comes down to putting out a marketing piece to generate a buyer lead or a seller leading, you know, calling back that lead or emailing the lead or texting the lead to, you know, setting the consultation, meeting that buyer or seller, convincing them to do business with you, delivering on your promises in such a way that you're able to get referrals and this vicious or virtuous cycle continues. It is so much to do. And most of those parts are what we call the technical work of a real estate agent. So if you've ever read the book E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, he talks about three different people living inside of us. It's the technician, it is the manager, and the entrepreneur. And most of the time, most business owners, they're merely self employed in that. It's this e myth, the entrepreneurial myth, where they're doing only the technical work in their business and they're not spending any time as a manager. And, and they're not allowed to really live out their vision as the entrepreneur because they're just stuck in the grind of their business. And so for a real estate agent, the technical work is the job of a real estate agent. It's generating opportunities to sit down with buyers and sellers. Showing a buyer a home, listing a home for sale, getting that home in mls. All of these technical pieces that have to happen, they have to happen at a really high level. And you have to deliver an experience to clients that, that is unbelievable. So you can generate referrals. And yet if you want to have any chance at any less than active income from your real estate business, what we call passive income, or even a better way to define passive income for a real estate business is entrepreneurial income. You know, you can earn money by shifting more of your time to manager and then more of your time to entrepreneur. And when I talk about manager, it's, it is a manager builds systems and gets someone else to run those systems. And so that may be a part time administrator. You know, 85% of real estate agents don't even have an administrator. And 80% of the job of a real estate agent is administrative work. And so most of the industry is spending most of their time doing administrative tasks. Whether that's marketing, administrator tasks, whether that's listing coordination, whether, whether that's closing coordination, whether it's office coordination, whether it's running signs or taking pictures, or you can think of the dozens and dozens of activities that you can do as a real estate agent that is active income. You have to be doing the thing to make the money, right? One unit of, you know, work in yields a monetary output, right? We want to start to think about our business in a way where we're not attached to every piece of it. And here are a few things that you can consider if you want to make this shift. So first is to build a business rather than be a real estate agent. And to think with the end in mind. What I mean by this is like let's play a different game in business. Let's decide to build a business rather than be a real estate agent. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that we're not going to take care of our buyers or take care of our sellers, right? It just means that we're going to take a different view toward our business. And how can we build a system or get someone who's better at administrative tasks to run that system for us so that we can delegate and elevate not only with our time, but also with the amount of money we're able to make from our business. So I feel like if we begin with the end in mind and we know that even if I'm doing this task right now, I'm only doing it so I can build a system so that someone else can do it in the future. That's number one. Number two is that a business is simply a system of systems. And it's the craziest thing. Everyone that comes into our world, real estate, B school, they're like, I need systems. Like I heard you mention the word systems, and I need systems, and let's make systems. And I don't feel like anyone really has an idea when they come into our world what a system is. You know, I was ruthless and relentless in my early days where if I was going to show homes to buyers, I consider that to be an important task, not the highest dollar productive task in my business. And I would only do it with an eye toward building a system so I can hire someone to do it for me. And in my market, that's a $25 an hour job. I had committed to making $250 an hour with a simple calculation. I wanted to make $500,000. I wanted to work 2,000 hours a year. 500,000 divided by 2,000 was $250 an hour. So for me, systems had a lot of meaning and carried a lot of weight because that was the key for me to bring someone else in to do different parts of the business. So it's this mindset to view your business as simply a system of systems. And this goes for anything in your business. When you set a consultation, you know, how do you qualify that consultation? You know, your database. We have a 57 touch, you know, client for life marketing system. I don't do any of those touches. Actually, the only part I do those touches is video. So twice a month I'll record a video, and that's 24 of those 57 touches. Outside of that, that thing runs like clockwork and it's run by someone else. I don't need to run that system. Same thing with closings, right? I don't get involved in any closings. You know, my agents don't even get involved in closings. We have a closing coordinator who has a system to yield a result predictably, that yields referrals when we do it right, which is most of the time. So that's number two, is that your business is a system of systems. And then the third part is simply to take those systems, package them really nicely, create process documents around them, and they get someone else to run the system. You know, in 2007, I sold 27 homes in 10 months. I was the top producing agent in my small boutique real estate brokerage. And that next year, 2008, it was March of that year that I hired my first assistant. And I knew that most of the things I was doing, they were not high dollar productive activities. I knew that I can hire somebody else to do those things. And so my first assistant was my marketing coordinator, she was my listing coordinator, and she was my closing coordinator. She was my runner, she was the office coordinator. She was the person that did everything in the business where I was just solely focused on the front stage of the business, that is marketing and sales. And she did everything in client care and operations to the point where on more than one occasion I would show up at the closing table. And I hate to even say this to you, I feel like it's just me and you. I didn't know which side of the closing table was my client because I was so focused on growing the business. And I said, once I get them under contract, you just get me to the closing table. So much so that I didn't do a great job of maintaining that relationship. And I relied on her system and her running that system to be able to really love on the clients so that they would refer business to us. To us. I don't advise that. I definitely advise that when you go to the closing table, you know which client is yours, don't do what I did. So I think those are the three things you need to keep in mind. A business is a system of systems. People can run your systems. And you have to have this mindset of beginning with the end in mind and playing this long term game in your business. You know, our members aren't curing cancer. You know, we're not sending people to the moon. We're simply applying the right system at the right time. We have a clear plan about what we want in our businesses and we're willing to take the steps that maybe push us outside of our comfort zone to get there. Now, if you're at the point in your journey where you just need to know what that roadmap looks like, you know, I put together a 15 minute training predictable real estate. Or you could click on the link below and if you love the video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications and engage and leave comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic today. You know, passive entrepreneurial income is possible, you know, as long as you just look at your business a little differently. So much love and respect. We look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, be good.