Creating a Compelling Vision that Drives Results — Part 2

The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share it all with you. The good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show. Just real world tactics and strategies that get results.

You just gotta do the work. You know, I had like 10 or 12 agents in my world and my success was, was through them. Actually quite, quite selfish. You know, if I'm being honest, it was like, how can this provide me a level of freedom? But I saw my agents, my top agents, they were all successful, but they worked evenings and weekends. I mean, they were grinding all the time, you know, five, six years into, into my doing 100 transactions, but grinding, right. And they were okay with it because I provided stuff that they couldn't do on their own. So thinking I could like impact 10 or 12 lives, like, what could it look like? And just grinding them out and having agents leave and not really providing a big enough opportunity for them, like what it could. Now my vision is like, I will, because I've seen it modeled. I will have 6,000 agents in my direct organization that I'm improving their lives significantly. They have to show up, right? They have to do the work. But now I'm able to, like, quite realistically, I know that's going to happen, right? I know that I'll have 6,000 agents in Real Estate B School powered by Exp Realty. It's a subset of Game Changers Nation. And we're all sort of helping each other achieve that vision. And in a million years. I wouldn't have thought that way before, like thousands of agents that I'm partnered with versus like keeping, trying to corral 10 or 12 agents to stay in my world as long as they possibly could. And then when they leave, they're just gone forever. And you really don't help them or even talk to them, you know, after they give you years of their life. So that's kind of how my vision has shifted, is like this is an infinite game that we're playing now. There's just no shortage on it. You know, it's, it's, it's pretty wild.

And we're going to talk, you know, here on this show, like, what, what is our personal compelling vision for ourselves moving forward? You know, for the rest of our lives, and that will certainly change as life goes on. But I know that we all have one of those right now. One of the things that I've experienced as a. As a point of failure, if you will, when it comes to a compelling vision, is like you said earlier, Lars, these six. Five or six different areas of our life. And sometimes there's one area, maybe our business area of our life, where our compelling vision has massive traction, and it's going to the moon. And one of the failures that I've experienced is as my business was just growing and growing and doubling every year, I put too much emphasis on growing that vision at the expense of other areas of my life. So I remember in 2014, you know, we're crushing it. Our independent company is crushing it, and I'm like, oh, we're gonna go to another market, and I'm gonna go to Asheville. And I quit without even really, like, I'm just on that. That vision, right? Without even really discussing it with my family. Now I'm three days a week in a new market, two. Two hours away from my house. And I remember my wife coming to me and being like, hey, I always support you in whatever you want to do, but I've got a bad feeling about this for our family. And normally, you know, I'm one to, like, you know, kind of hold my position, and. And, you know, I'll like, okay, but, yeah, here's the reasons why we got to do this. And like, I'm like, immediately. She's never come to me like, that. I was like, wrong vision, because the family is more important than the business. The business is here to serve the family, not the other way around. So that was, like, a failure of mine to recognize that my business vision was taking over the other areas of my life. And I'm sure that happens to a lot of people. And we can. We can get tempted into, like, oh, this thing works. This compelling vision and. And setting a vision and goals, and, like you said, 90 day priorities. Lars, like, it really, really works. AJ, you. You have really impressed me with your ability to cast a vision. Personally. What's your framework around that? Like, when. If I was brand new and this is all new to me, and you were to lead me to, like, create a vision for myself personally, what would that look like? Like, how would somebody go about that?

Yeah, the biggest thing, and I was just thinking this as you guys are talking, is that I think where so many people struggle with vision is just. It's hard to break the Chains of what society has set on us in terms of what our vision should be. You know, with the real estate teams, it's like that's what your brokerage is telling a success. Telling you a successful agent looks like is you grow a team and you do as many transactions as possible. So the first step is just getting clear on what you want out of life and not what the expectations of society put on you. So a great exercise for this is just. And I like doing this when I, when, when I'm full of energy and I just went for a walk or I'm at a coffee shop, I try to never make any decisions when I'm low energy. I just got back from a trip, I'm kind of jet lagged and talking with John Lars behind the scenes. I'm a little low energy. So I'm like non committal on some topics we're discussing right now. Full transparency. Because I just know if you're in a low energy position, it's not a great place to make good decisions. So the first thing you want to do is just get your energy up peak state, deep breaths, whatever you need to do. You know what you need to do to get into your peak state. And once you're there, just take 10, 15 minutes, you know, put some headphones out, some, you know, nature sounds. You know, don't use anything with lyrics and just journal out what you want your ideal life to look like. To kind of simplify. It could just be your, your ideal average day. By ideal average day, what I mean is like where you live, like what does your ideal day look like? You know, it's not like you're out, you know, you're in Bora Bora for the next, you know, two years. You know, that'd probably get kind of boring too. But like, just what does your ideal life look like on a daily basis? Journal all that out, you know, what kind of, what kind of house are you living in, cars you're driving, you know, charities you're giving to, like who you want to become. All these things, just journal it out and then actually spreadsheet it out. Because what I discovered is it oftentimes it doesn't cost as much as you think it might. So once you write down the kind of car you want, say it's, you know, I put a Lamborghini here on my vision board. Actually the only thing on this entire vision board that I didn't accomplish. However, I don't know if you can see it right there. I do have that Lamborghini Right there. So I still did kind of accomplish the goal. But even a Lamborghini probably only costs like two grand a month. Like, that's just not a lot of money really. So. So price it all out. The house, if it's a $2 million house, your mortgage is probably going to be like 10 grand a month. So add it all up. And once you have that number, that's kind of like your, your dream financial freedom number. And, and once you have that, you just got to figure out, well, how do I start selling enough homes to provide for that lifestyle? Or how do I start selling enough homes and then saving half of the income that I'm earning to invest that half to then pay for that lifestyle? So you're paying for it on passive income. Even better. Or if you're in a model like ours, how do you create enough revenue share to pay for that model, that, that, that dream lifestyle? So, so that's the model I follow. I have a, A very specific kind of training that, that I train on when it comes to that, but it's getting very clear on what that number is. I, I know when most people go through that exercise, it's less than $15,000 a month is, is what they would need to live their dream lifestyle. So, so more than anything, just getting clear on, like, what is it that you want out of your life? Not what your broker wants out of your life, not what, you know, your parents want you to accomplish, not what society tells you to just break free from all of that. And, and that. That's where it starts.

That's good stuff, man. Yeah. I think that, you know, the intentionality behind the way that you do vision setting is very, is very important and sounds simple, but most of us don't do it. I know, me personally, I went through the whole, like, you know, I'm competitive, so I get into coaching. And then coaching, it would be like, okay, now build the team, and then now you build a team, and now you have to have a company, and then you have to get into like, these other affiliate things, and it just becomes like, what are we striving for? Like, at the end of the day, if running a real estate team and being in production and selling homes and being available 247 and being chaotic and not having time for your family, if that's really what you want at your core, there's no shame. Like, we all get this one journey called life, and we get to do with it what we please. But as I get older, I realize that maybe it, maybe it would have been helpful if I slowed down a little bit and I actually thought about what it was that I wanted more and got there quicker because time is precious. Lars, I know you've been coaching people for going on eight plus years now. You've talked to a lot of high performers across the real estate industry. What does that say to you? Like what do you see with people? Are they intentionally designing the lives they want? Are they following the herd or what do you see there?

Man, that's a good question. I think it's a complete crap show in, in this area. As much. As much as I try to slow and we've got a process for this. Like literally one of the first things we'll ask you to do is in like six or seven areas. I think it's actually eight or nine areas of your life and then also in your business, like what do you want it to look like three years from now and, and just kind of exactly what. What AJ said, just kind of write it down and then we break it down into year then 90 days and weekly and daily. So you can actually attach what you're doing today to where you want to be three years from now. Whether it's in your marriage or working out today or you know, getting in. In the word today or investing in, you know, relationship with a sibling or a friend or whatever it is. Like those are the things that go by the wayside because you're in the, in the, the tyranny of the urgent, right? There's the. This. Was it Winston Churchill or someone had the. You know, it's. It's like we're always giving away the today's time to the things that are urgent but not important. And so, and it's running rampant, right? So, so there's no shortage of distractions. Social media, 24 hour news cycle, Netflix, you know, being a husband or wife, being, you know, a mom or a dad, all this stuff, right? There's just too many things to get to fit into a day. And so. And it's just a lack of priorities, you know, is what I see. I will say one thing though. I think it's also. I forget who said it but you know, your, your broker, they really don't have an interest. If you're in the right economic model with your broker, they don't have an interest in you selling a lot of real estate, right, that there's hopefully you're at least if you're not in, in Game Changers or with us, hopefully you're in a model where you're not just paying unlimited, but there's no interest for you to sell 50, 60 homes a year and, and really sort of live a life of freedom. We just, I don't know if you guys saw it, but we just did. Every Tuesday in Game Changers Nation, we do a production mastermind call. And this guy who gave away all of his best stuff because that's how it works in, in our, in our brokerage in terms of collaborations, which will your mind, he's out of production, lives in Puerto Rico. So he's, he's not doing it. He's a teacher now. But he listed out of the gate 96 of his business in his career was listings. And he's like, I just see the, the stronger agents are listing agents, so I'm going to start my career on listings. He listed 21 homes in his first 74 days in the business.

Wow.

And he just decided to do it right. It wasn't like, you know, he was like, he didn't bring any sort of existing skill set. He wasn't like, okay, I'm five years in the business, I've got a little confidence. No, he came from a musician background and, and just decided he was going to kick ass in real estate. And he took like his first 10 years in the business, he took over a thousand listings and, and very little leverage on the buyer side, which, you know, you can monetize that side pretty easily. But, you know, and he didn't work more than 30 hours a week and he actually got it down to like three hours a day, four days a week through, through leverage with administrators and you know, other people running around town and putting up signs and, you know, him getting all of the lower dollar productive activities. But most agents would look at that and say like, not in my market. Or you know, it was the timing of the market. You know, there's no inventory now, like all the crap and just like take their own knees out before they even get started. They're just gonna, gonna end their dream of what their business could look like. And so the last thought on it is like, if you're not surrounding yourself with people that, that know people or they're doing things that you want to do, you've got to maybe end some relationships or at least distance yourself from, from some folks and get around folks that are, are, are living lives that encourage you and get you excited and maybe, you know, partner with folks that, that share that sort of growth mindset or, you know, what would it look like or what could it look like if I Quadrupled my production and work. Work half the hours. Right.

Darren Hardy's book Willpower Doesn't Work talks about that environment. And like I got to imagine that real estate agents that are listening to this right now, many of them are in an environment that is very fear based. It's very doubtful about the future. And it's like, man, when you understand like, and can get around people that are embracing their current reality towards their compelling vision, like that's a powerful place to be. And I know that's some of the, you know, amazingness that I get out of being in your guys lives and, and hopefully I'm not to somebody as well too. But what's, what's a maybe, you know, you guys are all, you know, readers, leaders, you know, what, what's maybe a book or a piece of material that you've come across, you know, in your journey that spoke to you and helped you kind of solidify the current vision that you have.

For me right now it's the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. And the concept that I really kind of honed in on with that book was just this idea of time buckets. You know, if you're to put your life on a timeline and there's just certain activities that you can only do during certain agents of ages of your life, whether it's because you're unmarried or you know, you have good health or whatever it might be and start feeling the timeline with those activities. So for me right now I'm just trying to load my life up with more physical type activities that I like that are more, more, a little more adrenaline induced, like snowboarding, mountain biking, I'm learning kiteboarding because when I'm 70, that's going to look a lot different. But when I'm 70, I can be an awesome cruiser. You know, I can take as many cruises as I want for, for example, or if you're unmarried, you know, you could probably travel Europe and stay in hostels with your buddy, but when you're married with kids, you probably can't leave your family for a month and do that. You could, however, your priorities probably have changed by then. You. And you wouldn't even want to. So, so that's been really awesome and that's driving a lot of the vision around my life and, and just, you know, having two little kids, seeing what I want that life to look like with them. So it's, it's.

We talked about that a little bit last week when we were skiing in Breckenridge, like hey, you know like all day on the slopes, like five days in a row. It takes a little bit of a toll on you, especially on those. Pow. Lars, when we were all snowmobiling in the backcountry in Jackson Hole, like, yeah, we're probably not going to be able to do that when we're 70. Right. Like, it's this idea that, like, this thing is. I mean, I think for me, like, books that are helping me now cast the vision aren't what you think they are. They're not like seven steps to a better vision. Like, that might have been helpful to me when I was a teenager, but we all have a certain lifestyle that's ongoing and that's happening right now. And the books that help me most with my vision are books that just take me from where I'm at and the path I'm on to get me to think about what could it look like if it was different. So, you know, when, when I look at like the financial section of my life, you know, my ideal lifestyle around that, my vision is like, how do I put it into a simple framework where I can set it and forget it and then I can. I can be more present in the things I'm doing because I'm not always thinking and re engineering that. One of the biggest mistakes I've made vision wise in growing teams is making too many changes. It's like our vision should be set and we should be going somewhere and the direction on how to get there should be simple things that we execute at a high level, not a million different things that we change all the time. Lars, what's maybe a tool or resource or book that you've come across that's helped you with your vision?

Yeah, I'm literally going through my audible, so there's like 20 of them and die with zero. Sort of pissed me off when I first read it, but then I read it again, I read it again and it really, it really sunk in.

But the.

The book Daring Greatly. Oh, this is Heavy by Brene Brown. And I'm going to read this. So this is the man in the arena. I think most folks don't even get in the arena like that. They're not even in the game of building a massive life for themselves. So this is from Theodore Roosevelt. And. And this is kind of the opening to. To the. The book Daring Greatly. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who. Who. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement? And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. And so I. I get emotional. I could cry reading that. Because you're, you're not. You've taken yourself out of the game before the game has even started, you know, and it's. Whatever whether it's like your freed agents are going to like, look at you differently because you do Facebook lives every day, you know, as a way to generate business. A girl, we just had another production mastermind, 30 listings in 90 days via Facebook Live. And she was not on video sort of previously. And. And a guy came on right afterwards and said, that's not predictable. I do circle prospecting and I get a listing every day. I'm like, you do you like. At least both of them are in the arena, right? To cold call, you're in the arena. You're for sure marred and bloody. But she put herself out there. So it's books like that, you know, if you struggle with, with not even like obvious confidence deficits, but you, you struggle to really get after it and really like, just lay it down like, I'm gonna produce at a level that I've never produced 10x more than I've ever produced before. You're literally the only thing that can hold your. It's you versus you.

That.

That's kind of the beauty of it is that it's you versus you. So you could do it. And the good thing in real estate is that most agents won't do it. So it's actually like, it's bad if you don't do it. But the good thing is that most won't do it. And so you can do it. You know, if every 90% of agents went out there and sold 30 homes a year, that'd be 27 million sales. And there's only four and a half million sales, you know, in available in. In the United States. So the math wouldn't even work. So it's books like that that really just challenge the way that you think and. And then just Getting around, you know, some of the events that, that we've gone to and you hear, get in an environment where you can hear all of the stories, like all of the stories, you know, that we've heard by going to just two events a year. These are sort of growth, we call them build events. And the stories, I don't technically need to go to these events, right. I've, I've sort of achieved some stuff where I could probably save on the travel, I could probably not be away from my routine and my family. But at the same time I'm inspired by these stories. You know, it's like, how did she do it? You know, I know the toil I went through to build a coaching company and then pivot it with your guys support, you know, two of the best guys I know to support me. So I know how I did it. It was super hard. But who is this person that has a thousand agents that she's leading? You know, like she had, she had no right to do that. She just decided she was going to do it. Right. So I love being encouraged and inspired by those stories and those are the things that really keep me going and keep me getting after it.

That's awesome, man. As we kind of come to a close on this show here today, I'll give you guys something to think about. I want to close it out by hearing each of your personal visions, like what's your vision for the rest of your life? And I know that's pretty big, but like just to give our audience kind of an idea of like what makes you guys tick. And I'll start to give you guys time to think about that. But I read this book called Halftime by Bob Berg and the oversimplification of this book is that we spend half our lives attaining and hopefully we do that to an extent that we can spend the second half of our lives giving and serving. And for me that was a very vision helpful book because it made me stop and think when is enough enough? I feel like I've been so blessed and exp is literally changed my life. Like giving me back time in a way that I never thought was possible. Giving me location and financial freedom like I never thought possible, but what am I going to do with that now? So my vision for the rest of my life is how do I take what I've been blessed to receive and now help other people achieve the same. And for me that looks like a sense of presence. So, you know, not letting the chaos and the turmoil of every day turn into just striving for more when more is not required or necessary. But how do I be present with people and be open to the adventure of what life is and what has to offer? So when I look at my. The rest of my life and what I want for my family and myself, it's that I want to. I want to slow time down and actually be intentional about what I'm doing. So, you know, that's going to go into my calendar, that's going to go into what I do with my family and the trips we take and how we operate in our household and, like, what we do for our health. So we can increase that time span. So that's just a little generally, like, how I look at the rest of my life. It's not about, you know, more sales for me at this point and a bigger team. It's about helping other people get that first half out of the way so that they can go be people that are going to serve an impact. Lars, you want to go next?

Yeah, for sure. So, funny story about that book. I was listening to halftime on my 44th birthday when I was going for a long run. I forget why I was running, but it was like a 20 mile run in Hilton Head, and I'm like, I'm gonna die when I'm 88. Like, this day is literally halftime. And I love even numbers. So I'm like, this is amazing. 22 is my first quarter. 44. This ends my second quarter. And what will I do in the third quarter? 44 to 66, where I've got the income, I've got, you know, a little bit of freedom that I didn't have in the second quarter. So that, that is an unbelievable resource. But I'm turning 50 this year, and I think I'm just going to reset it. And then when I turn 60, I'm gonna be like, okay, now it's really half time. I'm gonna live to 120 stem cells, baby. Yeah, for sure. We're all, we're all doing the, the Fountain Life deal where we could live essentially forever.

Yeah.

So to answer this question specifically, it's, it's, it's changed over time. I, I went through a process. It was a book. You guys know the book? It was Michael Hyatt. It's his life planning book. I forget the name of it. No, that. I'm obsessed with that one. That's what brought Brian Moran. But this one was Michael Hyatt and it's, it's his. Living Forward is the name of the book that, that's the book. And me and buddies of mine in a men's group went through this process. And so I wrote a life plan. And the personal vision now is it's to deliberately and strategically invest my God given time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in ways that truly glorify him. To deeply love and faithfully lead my wife, my kids and my business partners, which are you guys, in ways that draw them closer to Jesus Christ. Not that you guys don't know Jesus.

That sounds bad.

To live an unapologetic and wholehearted Christ centered life each and every day. So to me that has like a lot of meaning and depth and then there's a whole sort of, you know, life plan that will help me sort of live into that. But to not take a minute for granted, you know, to make really good decisions with my time, to get all my, my work done Tuesday through Thursday 12 to 5, so I can do all the stuff, you know, that I want to do outside of work, you know, because there's a lot of stuff to do and then to, to just help others be successful. And, and there's. Was it UAJ that said. Well, you definitely were the three mountains. But there's a book called the Second Mountain which like the first mountain, Jarrick Robbins hooked, hooked me onto it. The first mountain is sort of traditional success and the second mountain is impacting others. And now we, the three of us talk about elfie like we're only going to do things that are elfie, easy, lucrative, fun. And I, I swiped those from Joe Polish, who's a marketing warrior. But then we added the I, which is impactful. Right. So let's only do things together that are really impactful and they're easy, lucrative and fun and, and that's just going to be the way we roll for the rest of our time here.

And that's cool. And like, you know, you have that vision and that was cool what you shared with people. But I'll share something else that I know about you with the audience. Like when you have a vision like that, it causes you to take different actions and make different decisions. And I know for you, about a year and a half ago, one of those decisions was that you weren't going to drink alcohol anymore because that was going to get in the way of that vision. So it's like once you have the vision and you, and you feel it and it's inside of you, you'll do different things. And that's what pulls you. That's the magic of the vision. So you Know, I just thought that was worth sharing.

Yeah. Awesome. Last word. You got a minute? Because we got to jump on another. Another impactful call. We're doing. All right.

Cool. Yeah. So I'm kind of in the middle of this new vision for my life. What I discovered is, I don't know if it's the older you get or. Or the more money you make, so you just don't feel the need to. To prove yourself anymore. Because when I first started vision boards, it was like. It was like this. It was the Lamborghini, the house, you know, the watch, and, you know, all these things, these. What society told me success looked like. And it's probably a combination of both. I'm more. I'm wiser now, and also I'm financially free, so those trappings of wealth don't really appeal to me as much anymore, but it's just changed a lot. So I'm kind of in the middle of that. And reading From Success to Significance by Lloyd Reeb, who I believe was a student of the gentleman who wrote Halftime, Buford as a Bob Buford.

Yeah, so.

And Lloyd ironically lives in Charlotte, which is where we were all living, and Lars still lives there. But anyways, two of the quotes out of that book that I've been pondering on this last week. One is, our first half is about how to make a living, and our second half is about the promise of being how to make a life. And for me, when I think of Halftime, I think it's halftime for me right now, because I'm 36 and 72. I'm not going to be bombing the hill like I am right now at 72. So, like, I'm like, it's halftime now for my physical health. Sure, I might live to 120. That's my goal. But my physical body certainly isn't going to be the same. So that's part of what I've been thinking about. But more importantly, Lloyd says in the book, and this really resonated with me, he said, I came to realize that while my view of success felt exciting, God's view was far greater and much more fulfilling. So I'm doing my best right now to just kind of pray and meditate on what God wants from my life over these next 30, 40 years and how I can do my best to serve him, because I know that's where that's. That's where you want to be, man. That's where the most fulfillment will come and joy and all that good stuff. So. And one last thing, Lars, I know we gotta go if that's why your fingers up. But. But I heard someone say this past year, and they just said they want to be the most famous in their own house. And that's my goal. I have two little kids, and I just want to be the most famous in my own house. So that's. That's my vision right now.

All right, we will see you next week. All right, we'll see you guys.