Do More Deals and Still Have a Life in Real Estate

I feel honored to be in this room. You know, some of you who here has seen me speak and cry on stage and cry, okay, it's going to happen again. And John told me he did it really good yesterday, too. I hate that I missed it. Some of you are at a point in your journey where things aren't clicking yet. And so sometimes it's hard to see someone that might be a few steps ahead of you in the journey and get discouraged. So part of my message today is to don't do that. God has you exactly where he wants you, I promise you. And the work you might need to do today to make that next step possible, you won't have to do it forever if you do it right. So we're going to talk today about there's only a few things we can actually control that can help us achieve this massive growth. We're after a story, my story. I can't tell it without telling the story of my parents. They came to the US From Sweden to chase the American dream. My dad had this dream of. He was like the LeBron James of here, Color and design in Sweden. Like, I'm not joking, like up here with like the models and the crazy hair in the 60s. And so he was a hairstylist and moved to the states in the 60s. And they started this business and they were doing successful business, my mom and my dad, but they were doing everything in the business. You know, they were cutting the hair, they were sweeping and ordering supplies. And it was, it was a tough goal. Who here has read the book E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber? Yeah, so it was the entrepreneurial myth. There was no freedom in this business. And my first memory as a kid was, I remember like it was yesterday. I was 4 years old and they were just at each other, yelling at each other. And I remember I took this bar stool and I climbed up on the barstool and I put my hands over their mouths to stop fighting. That's my first memory as a kid. And so these businesses that we give our lives to, it has all sorts of collateral damage. In the divorce, my mom got custody of my sister and I and we actually moved out of the house into horrible situation, just low income housing. Not too far away though. And I used to come visit my dad. The cool thing about that was on the weekends I got to see my best friend. So my best friend in the world lived right across the street from my dad. So that was like the motivation. And I remember on Friday nights, you know, my dad would come pick us up. And he had this way that he honked the horn. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Could still hear it. There was this one time, though, in the third grade, so we were. So I was at my friend's house across the street from my dad's house. And I remember I was playing behind this bush that was, like, right in front of their house. And Joe, who was my best friend, big Italian family. All the kids. Who's Italian in here? Anyone? Yeah. So multi generations living in the same house, and grandmother doesn't speak English. You know, every time I come in, she's like, how do you say eat in Italian? Mangia. So always I'm eating, and this is my family, the Rota family. But one time, and this was in either the third or fourth grade. So how old is a third or fourth grader? Like, eight or nine years old. And so parents divorced at four. I'm eight or nine years old, and I remember her asking me, where's your dad this weekend? And so right across the street, like, I could see the house. My dad is passed out drunk in that house. And so I thought everyone knew he was an alcoholic. And the amount of shame that I carried in my life and just all the chaos that came from that, it was a lot to bear. And ultimately, it ended up being a really unfair advantage for me in business and just my drive. He drank until I was 15 years old, so I really didn't have much of a father figure. Luckily, my mom was successful. She owned a business, and she went after it on her own. Right, there's my boy Anders, on the left there. My dad made some really bad choices with his health and ended up having a severe stroke in 2009. And essentially, it took him five years to die. Did anybody experience that? Like, someone has a really bad medical event, and then you just see them die. It's, like, so hard. It's so hard. And every week I would bring my kids to see my dad, and I have all this baggage still with my dad, you know? So it's like, if there's anything I've resented in my life, it's the way that even in my mind, I treated my dad in those moments where I had to bring my kids to see him. Although a funny story, my daughter, there, he was in a facility where these people are not well. Some of them are older, and they're just on their way out. And one time, Kendall, she saw this lady in a wheelchair not moving, and she said, zombie. And it was like, talk about, these are the kinds of facilities, anyone ever been in a facility like that where everyone's just like, they're near death's bed, right? Or whatever the expression is. And every one of the workers was just like, oh my Lord, did that just happen? And then she ran. And me and Julie were like, what the heck is going on right now? The saddest day of my life was when my dad passed away. I was not there with him, but I visited shortly after and I just sat with him for a little bit of time. So he had passed away. I'm sitting with him and I'm walking out and I'm just crying and I'm carrying all of his possessions in a very small box, including like a VHS player. I don't know why he had a VHS player, but he didn't have anything. Not that money's everything. He just had nothing to show for his time on earth. And there was only two people that I needed to call to let them know that he had passed away. So, you know, my motivation around all this stuff is like, I just knew I didn't want to be like my dad. I knew I wanted to be a great husband, a great dad. And real estate, raise your hand if it's. If you think it's easy and you have time and money, freedom, it's not. It's hard. And so we're in this industry that requires so much of us and the risks are that we give too much to it and there's collateral damage as a result of it. So I chose this path of achievement, got an engineering degree, ended up working for, I remember him as clear as day, Don the engineer. Curly hair, glasses, pocket protector, and I was counting light bulbs. My first job out of college. I got straight A's in college and I'm like, this is not the life I was looking for, of freedom. And then I went on to work for Bear Stearns as a Wall street, kind of like a grunt analyst. I worked 138 hours in a single week. Does anyone know how many hours are in a week? 168. So I worked 138. I slept twice underneath my desk at the office. So that definitely wasn't. And I remember right when I was leaving, we had got our bonus checks and it was a $50,000 at the time, $50,000 bonus check. I received a guy there, Fred, got a million dollar bonus. He was the youngest vp, the youngest person in the firm to ever get a seven figure bonus. And Fred was like massively overweight, had no life whatsoever. He Lived in the office and I quit that day. I'm like, this is not a life that I want. Like, the money was double what I was making as an engineer. But this was not a life of freedom. Then I worked six months as a carpenter and that was pretty cool, but there's no money in it. I literally opened up the newspaper and I responded to an ad to be a carpenter's apprentice after leaving the 138 and that you're like getting donuts in the middle of the day and drinking coffee. And it's like, this does not fit my hard charging personality. Then I worked for a company, Curtis Wright, and that was a cool job. I got to travel, I think like 30 or 35 countries. We acquired 42 businesses around the world. I traveled as close as you could. I traveled so much. I was like, as close as you could get to the pilot. You know, I was like in that first class seat there. And the guy that recruited me from New Jersey to Charlotte, he was with the company for 33 years and he had just announced his retirement. He bought like a $3 million property in Hilton Head, South Carolina. We got to see it. It was beautiful. He did all the right moves you could do in the whole corporate politicking and all that nonsense. Finds out that he has pancreatic cancer. Four months later, he's dead. And I'm like, this is not the life that I'm going to live. This is not freedom. And so people thought I was crazy. I left this and I was really good friends with the guy that ultimately ended up becoming the chairman of that company. So I knew my path in that company was going to be a straight path to do whatever I wanted to do. But I knew that I was looking for a level of freedom that that would not give me. So I chose real estate. My first broker, he has three offices and he's the top producer at about 50 agents. He's the top producer and he has three brick and mortar offices and he's working every evening and every weekend. And I'm like, oh, crap. Like, I left this corporate, cozy corporate job too. Like, if that's what I need to do, I don't want to do it. And so I just chose this different path of, you know, these commission checks we get have so much margin in them that if there's one thing I can help you, and we'll go into some of it today, you need to get leverage around the stuff that you shouldn't be doing. There's just enough margin there. 80% of what a real estate agent does is just not highly productive. So my journey, you know, 5,000 plus families served, 44 families in my first full year. 10x that business got down to one one day a week, almost a seven figure net income. We've helped a bunch of agents at this point. Love God, love my family. And I love everything about business, even when it's a complete shit show. And I just realized that I think it's growing up in chaos. I almost thrive when like something hits the fan. And it's kind of a. Kind of an odd dynamic. But I remember this is back in 2007, such a special time. It was Thanksgiving Day, 2007, Anders was born. And I literally said to Anders, like, I'm not going to let you down. You know, I just had so much. I just knew I didn't want to take this path of, you know, of not being the husband, not being the dad. And I'd already committed to real estate. So this is, you know, I sold 27 homes my first 10 months. So I already realized that this thing is. I'm out producing all the agents on my first brokerage and it wasn't working. Raise your hand if you ever worked a deal when you should probably be focusing on the other thing, please. Every hand up. Luckily, Anders at this point, like, he doesn't even know. Look at the BlackBerry there. He's like, this BlackBerry is a toy and he's like smiling. He's like, I just got my. He was a monster. He had low blood sugar when he was born, so he had to go in the NICU, but he was like 12 pounds, so he was in there with all the 1 pound babies. And then Anders was this giant and the nurses would hold him and be like, he's fun to hold, but it was really, really hard. You know those early days where, you know, you're conflicted and your spouse needs you and you probably know you should be spending time with your kids. It was super, super hard. The thing that I realize even now, so more than ever. Who's not with Exp here? Anyone not with exp. Okay. The thing that I realize now though is that there is not a pot of gold at the end of the production rainbow. There's just not a lot of freedom unless you're able to really build a business and build it to the level that I built it, which is it's really hard in its own right. There's just not a pot of gold at the end of it. So there's not the freedom that we're all looking for, which just get in a brokerage where there's multiple streams of income is my best advice. And if someone invited you from exp, Definitely sit down and look at it with them. You will not find a harder no than me on the model. I remember when John called me. He called me. So I have already let a coach go from my coaching organization because he joined Exposure. I had shut down a really good friend of mine to the point where I almost lost a friendship over trying to recruit me to exp. John calls me on September 5, 2020, and he asked me, are you sitting down? Instantly, I said, jen and John are getting a divorce or you have terminal cancer. I'm not even joking. The severity, like, the seriousness of your tone, and it was almost just as worse. He said, I'm moving to EXP And I'm like. Instantly my palms sweat and I'm just like, what? I thought we both. Like this was a thing that we both were united on. Like, it was not the thing. And we had given. What. Do you remember what you said? I think I'm going to throw up in my mouth. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure I did. And so that was on a Saturday, and I was licensed with EXP six days later. Right. So for those of you that are on this platform and you're having conversations with. They're all coming over. And so it's just a question of just being there for them, inviting them to events that might help them and just adding more value over time. That is how this model thrives. It's just add more value than anyone else that they know. All right, so let's get into it. So we're going to kind of workshop some of this. I gave this talk in 18 minutes. I've only ever given this talk one other time, and it took me 18 minutes. But now we have some time to actually, I'm going to get some feedback from you guys, and we're going to do some work here together. So here's the thing. It's the double win, right? In an increasingly competitive industry and unpredictable world, how can we win the game of business and live a life without regrets? I can only imagine the amount of regret that my dad felt at the end of his life. And I just. You can't get to that point where it's too late. What's the Sam Walton like? On his deathbed, he's been known to say, like, he got it all wrong. Like, just focusing so much on one thing and letting everything else go. So we don't want to do that. This quote in the context of all this with my dad and you know, like really, what do we have control over? I love this quote by Tim Tebow. So don't worry about what you can't control. Our focus and energy needs to be on the things we can control. Attitude, effort, focus. These are the things that we can control. So what can we do about it? Let's dig in here. This is an awkward embrace with me and Tony Robbins, but it's the only picture I have. It's the coolest picture I have of the over million dollars I've spent on masterminds and coaching. I think like 1.5 at this point. This is the coolest picture. This is in Fiji. And Julie got it. He's like, okay, you're really close. I don't know what we're doing here. The only thing that's keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself. Live every day with an attitude of gratitude. You can't always control the wind, but you can control your sales. What we focus on determines how we feel. There are a few things. I've got kind of three general points. Attitude, effort, focus to cover. And there's a few things as I look back on my journey, thinking about where others might be in their journey that I think will be valuable for you. And we're going to interact on this. So for me, the reason I was able to do things that others were not willing to do because there will be things that you'll need to do to achieve a result that others won't achieve, is I always had a vision of what was coming. I was making sure my future was bigger than my past. And back then it was, you know, in the first time I wrote down like where I wanted to be in the future was the end of 2009. So I think I sold 58 homes that year. And it was kind of like all over the place. And I wasn't showing up the way that I wanted at home as a husband or a father. But I wrote down very specifically. So I want you guys to take a minute here in a few areas of your life, business being one of them. Maybe your finances or maybe your family. What do you want it to be like three years from now? And I want you to write it down right now. So just think of, don't over complicate this. I do this every year still. Right? Just think business, you know, X number of transactions, finances, paid off that credit card debt. Maybe your physical body isn't where you want it to be. So let's just take a couple minutes. The first time I did this, I declared in when it was just me that three years from then I was only going to be doing listings and I was not going to be working with buyers and we would sell. I think I decided then it was going to be 180 transactions and I was going to work a 40 hour work week. Once I had that vision, it was easier for me to do whatever I need to do today because I'm like, man, this thing is baked in. It's already done. But I think a lot of times we're just working with no idea why we're doing what we're doing. And so if that's you, and maybe you spend more time with this exercise, make sure same thing in your finances, same thing in your physical body, you can achieve anything for the most part, three years from now. All right, so number two is adopt a growth mindset. Never stop learning. Just hearing Aaron talk and just knowing a bit about Aaron and Carla personally and their financial situation and what they've achieved. If you ever get a chance to be closer to them and participate in anything that they're doing, I would advise you to do so. The way and Aaron challenges. There was one coaching call where I think I fired Aaron after that because he asked me a question. I'm like, that's not how this works. You don't get to coach me. And then I think I fired him. But he plays the game of media and content at a next level. He plays the game of production at the next level, the game of investing at the next level. And so who are you surrounding you with? Who are you surrounding yourself with and what are you listening to when you're in the car or in terms of consumption, kind of look at those things. It's amazing that we can pick up audible and in eight hours you can like get to a mastery level on a single topic. Yet like the nonsense that we're consuming. That's not that this isn't great. I'm not a big sports fan, but I didn't watch a single play of the Super Bowl. I'm like, I didn't get my workout done that day, so I had to work out. I had to get my sauna in and I just didn't. And it's not. I'm not judging you if you, you know, watch six football games a weekend. I'm judging you a little bit. But. But if you're the kind of guy that like, you've got to get your college football in on Saturdays and then your, your NFL on Thursdays and Sundays and like your ESPN the whole week. And you say you want to be a good husband and you say you want to produce at a high level and you've got 25 hours into sports in a week. You don't get to do both. You can do that other stuff. You can be the sports guy, but then you can't deliver at a high level in business. You just can't do it. I would say it's 100% impossible. And so just take that. And for women it might be, what do you guys do? That's social media. I don't know what you do. You do some equivalent of it, but just kind of like be honest with yourself. We'll get to a little bit more about that and then be grateful for what you do have in your life. So here's the challenge. When you do that through your exercise and you kind of like cast this vision for where you want to be, it's hard, it's easy to get discouraged about where you are. And so anyone ever read the book? Benjamin Hardy redid this book with Dan Sullivan called the Gap in the Gain. Really, really powerful. I would highly recommend reading that book. Basically, the gap is when you're constantly looking into the future and you're never feeling like you're getting there. So you're always in this, like, oh, man, I'm just not where I'm supposed to be. The gain is when you just take, and I recommend it daily when you just take a little bit of time. Look where you've come from. You know, like, look where you've come from. So I dare everybody to anyone using the 5 Minute Journal app. And it doesn't have to be that complicated, but yeah, the best. So I challenge everyone. Even if you don't download that app every morning, you write down three things you're grateful for, three things you're grateful for, and you end the day on three amazing things that happened that day. And it could just be in a journal. Like, just write them down. If you did that for 30 days, the way you look at the world, you will be a different person. I promise you. Who's not gonna take that 30 day challenge? Oh, you're all in. Oh, one person raised their hand. They're not gonna do it. Boo is right. All right, so for me, back in this, in these days, here, this is April, May 2010. I was going to provide a life for my family that we never thought was possible. You know, my wife came from an even more jacked up childhood than I. I don't even know how she's, like, normal at this point. I said, oh, she might see this. Son of a gun, honey. Okay, let me do this. Can everyone do me a favor? And my wife has a podcast, Everyday Miracles podcast, and she just wrote a book, and she has like, gazillions of views. You know, my videos get like 13 views. Hers get like hundreds of thousands. Can everyone go and subscribe to her YouTube channel? Just write it down. You could do it later. Everyday Miracles podcast. That'll make up for that comment. If she. She. She is tearing it up with her, her ministry. She. She spoke to students in. At a high school yesterday. Yeah, just awesome. She's infinitely my better half. How many of you are your spouse's better half? No guys should raise their hand. Okay, so here's the challenge. So in terms of your attitude, I want you to write down one thing you can start doing and one thing you can stop doing. So in terms of your attitude and outlook. So let's get into effort. Anybody know Mike Michalowicz, the book I recommend? Of course, Kathleen does his. Probably his. The Modern Day E Myth is a book called Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz. I highly recommend that. His whole mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. So we're all like, I'm an entrepreneur. It's like, yeah, but you're poor, you know, and you have no time. You know, you don't have much. You can go far on hard work and big dreams, often a hell of a lot farther and faster than people with more education and experience. So I don't know where we got this, but I got it From John, from A.J. marry the process, divorce the result. This is a big one. So what's the process? We need to marry every day in real estate prospecting? How many conversations do you guys commit to every day? Minimum 25. Minimum 25? Yeah. Our outside sales, they were at 25, and our inside sales were at 50 every day, Monday through Friday. And if you did that, if that was the only thing you did in your production business, you would not have a problem with money. And then you would earn the right to buy back your time in the future. And that's what you need to. You need to be able to get that first licensed administration to buy back your time and get some semblance of a normal life. What's the process to marry in Rev Share? For me, it's just like talk to two agents every day. About their business. It could be something simple, you know, just have a conversation with a couple agents every day like, how's business? You know, and you guys have access to so many resources inside this community and real estate b school that you can solve anyone's problem. There is not a problem that we haven't solved in real estate production at this point. And you guys have access to all of it. How many have ever been a point where, you know, you're in just a comfort zone and you're not pushing yourself? Yeah, John and I were talking, that was like last year for us. It's just that there are, there are seasons of your life where it doesn't matter what level you're at, you kind of just get into a comfort zone. So just know that if you're, if you're uncomfortable, you're probably doing something right. Like I remember the first time I held a team meeting, you know, and I had never let anybody before, I had never sold anything before I got into real estate and I just had to come up with like, how do I inspire others? You know, or the first time I was on video, I'm still not that great on video, but I still do it, you know, and it's very uncomfortable. So there are things that you're going to need to do that are like really, really uncomfortable. And if you're not doing those things then you're not, you're not moving forward. So that's a good thing if you're feeling uncomfortable. This one is probably, I think this is 90% of the game right here. If, if I could sit on every one of your shoulders for a two week period and you told me your goals and then I can just kind of see where you spend your time. I would know if you're on the. I could probably guess with almost 100% certainty that you're going to get there or not get there. And it's the decisions you make on a moment by moment basis that will predict your success. I was working with, I think actually we had a coaching client and he, I forget how it ended up where I was his coach because I haven't coached one on one in a while. I think he was just pissed off at everybody. But I'm like, give him to me, I'll coach him. And he shared with me that he had spent, he had like $45,000 that he had saved for his kids college fund and he had just gone through all that money to live. And I said, let's just open up your calendar, let's Just start this thing. And his calendar looked fine. He wasn't honoring his time blocks. I said, let's pull out your phone. He had an Apple phone. I don't know if other phones track where you spend your time, but on Apple, I'm just like, click into the thing where it does screen time, right? And he was like three or four hours a day on Instagram. And I'm like, you must be floating in deals from social media. Like, if you're like dming all those buyers and sellers. And I'm like, how much business do you generate from social media? He said, none. And I'm like, dude, I'm like, you are, you're spending your kids college money and there's a whole bunch of reasons why we can slip into that comfort. And, you know, so I'm not qualified to necessarily unpack all of that with him, but just to shine a light on the fact that you're not actually. You don't get to do those things if you have goals that are beyond. Right. We were, we were talking earlier, you know, closed 30 homes last year, right. And you think, you know, you're in a room where people are closing like 130 in a year, but 30 homes a year is. That's. That's the 1%, not even 1% of agents closed 25 homes last year. Right? So if you want to do even more than that, and if you're not at 25 homes, you just have to cut out all this stuff. Unfortunately. You don't get to do sports, you don't get to do social media. You don't get to do any of those things because if you have a spouse or if you have kids, you just can't. You don't have extra time. It just doesn't work out that way. And you need to take care of your physical body and you need to slow down and spend time with your creator and do all those things. Anybody ruin a family vacation on a deal? Ah, this one was hard. Julie still remembers this. Julie still remembers this like it was yesterday. Of course, the in laws are with us in the mountains and my sister and my mom are there and, you know, our kids are little and I promised her this was gonna be the vacation I didn't work. And where, you know, where you gotta go, anyone have to go, like go down to the bottom of the mountain to get reception. And like, that was this deal. The irony of this is that it's in. It was a short sale in the neighborhood I live now, and it fell apart and it was just the biggest prick of a client. I never take the low road in deals. Like, if a client's difficult and they went out of agreement, I just let them out. I don't know what came over me. I'm like. He's like, I just want out of the buyer agency agreement. I just want to move on. I'm like, give me $2,000. He's like, what? Give me $2,000 and I'll let you out of it. So I made him pay me $2,000. It made me feel, like, just a little bit better. But I remember back in that day, every day I told myself, nobody can tell me I can't sell a home today. So that's the coolest thing about real estate. We can sell as many homes as we want, right? Super. Super awesome. All right, so your effort and results. This is going to be a hard one for some of you. I want you to write down a couple things that you're going to start doing, a couple things that you're going to stop doing when it comes to the effort you're putting into your business and the results you're getting out. And be honest with yourself. All right? So focus. All right, so I studied under Bruce Lee for a little bit. I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. So who here feels like they're all over the place in their business? Like, I'm trying this one day and this one day and this. The thing is, it all works. It all works. So the only way you can get successful is to focus on one thing long enough until it works, you know, so look. Look at the last year. What have you been doing in your business where you haven't picked up the momentum and you've just changed, you know, you've changed too much. That's kind of the story here. I'm part of a Christian business owners group called C12. And this is kind of the guiding principle of the group. Priorities are what we do. Everything else is just talk. So let me ask you guys, what are your top priorities? Just blurt them out. Family. What else? Health. Make money. Walk with God. Organizing my calendar. Your calendar? Organizing your calendar. For me, it's, you know, it's easy to say God, family, business. Right? So that should be the priority. And then you look at my calendar sometimes, and it has nothing to do with that. I've gone through seasons where I spend no time with God and I'm just sideways. Even recently in the Last couple years I've had to just jump back into things in the business and work long hours and kind of do the things that I know I need to do to get something back on track and, and it falls out of priority. So just make sure that your calendar reflects the things that you know to be priorities. That's the key. And when and when you say you're going to do something, do it. You know the only time, it's that morning time every Monday through Friday. Those three hours, 8 to 11. If you honor that time and you do not negotiate with yourself, your business will change forever. How many can get distracted by anything in those time blocks and be like, meh, let me open up email or what's more important than prospecting? Like an offer coming in. Is that more important? No, but we think it is. Like we make anything more important than the thing. Another good book. I'm throwing a lot of books at you guys, but Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy. Like the frog you have to eat every. There's two frogs to eat every day. It's new business development. Well, it's the category's new business. So prospecting that's first time conversations with would be buyer and sellers and then it's follow up a short break and then follow up Monday through Friday. You spend the first four and a half hours of your day doing just those two activities. It's game over. And if you're not used to doing that and you're just not a good time blocker and you're really all over with your time, just start with smaller time blocks. Just kind of build the muscle. This is a big one. Quiet my world. So, so I realized when I set these big goals for myself, which you know, my, my big goal from a money perspective, I didn't actually want to make multiple million dollars per year. I wanted to make a million dollars take home working a thousand hours. So a thousand hours is only 20 hours a week. So I wanted to make was it was the math on that $1,000 an hour so it was easy for me to see. Like you know, look back and where I spend my time was that a thousand dollar an hour activity? And if you haven't done that math, you know, an aspirational income that you want to be at and an aspirational amount of hours you want to work. If it's my numbers or if it's 500,000 working a normal work week, that was actually my first time I did that calculation. 500,000 divided by 2,000 hours which is a 40 hour work week. What's the math on that? $250 per hour. How much of your time is spent during the day doing crap? That is not $250 per hour. A lot. It's like if you break down the job of a real estate agent, it's 80% of the stuff that we do. It's administrative in nature, and it's important stuff that has to happen. But if you're doing all those things all the time, you've got no shot at making the kind of money that you want to make. So then, yeah, your workweek is going to stretch until you can afford to hire that first admin, but you've got to commit to doing it. Got off on a tangent there. So is the world chaotic right now? Yeah. How easy is it to get caught up in everything else that's going on around you? So easy. You guys ever see the horses when they run the horse races? Do you guys know why? They have those blinders on. They can lock in, they can focus and run their own race. And so I feel like if there's one thing we all can do and I struggle with it, the reason I don't go on Instagram a lot is everyone is better looking than me, everyone is more fit than me, and everyone's on vacation and they're eating great food and they're skinny. But you're looking at the best of like 500 people. So if 500 people have one good thing happen to them in a year, you're gonna look at it every time you go on there. And that's true of most platforms. And so you really have to limit the exposure there. So you should utilize social platforms in your business. Right. Aaron is the. The best at how to do that, but you don't need to sit. You don't want to be consuming it. And it happens so easily. I've struggled with the YouTube thing and sometimes on the shorts, I'll be like, freaking half hour has gone. And it's been like, so entertaining and there's no value in any of it. And it's like, what's going on? Stuff works. This one is big too. So stop comparing my insides to other people's outsides. Who here is dealing with something or in last year dealing something with. Really? That's really hard. Raise your hand. Yeah, you just don't know what people are going through, the chances that they are advertising that or, you know, putting that out online. It's very low. So when you're comparing your hard stuff to someone else's highlight reel. It's going to leave you feeling less than. So just guard yourself against that. This is. So my wife has this thing. She has, like 50 of these pictures now, an album on her phone. When I'm on a plane, I just fall asleep. It's what happens. But the one in the middle is the best one. So this is. We're on our honeymoon trip, and she got me this shirt. I never dreamed I grew up to be the world's hottest husband. And then in my fat roll, but here I am crushing it. You can't see that part of the shirt. And guess what I said to her when she showed me this picture? She's like, you know, giggling and she. And I said, do not post that on Facebook. Right? Have you guys ever done that to your spouse? Like, do not post that. And you know what the funny thing is? This exact collage here was my best performing post when I used it once for my coaching company. Because nobody is putting their real self out there. And that's, like, the tough part of it. So as you're having conversations with people or even other agents in rev share conversations, they're going to start with all the good stuff. There's this simple model. What is it called? They're going to start with their positive present. So this will be helpful for you guys. Write this down. So everyone, if I ask you how you are, you know, how's life? It's great. Okay, Positive present. You're gonna say, wife is good, or I don't know if you have wife. Wife is good. Kids are good. You know, everything's good. Positive present. So what challenges are you having right now? Negative present. So I can pretty easily take someone there. I want to go right to positive future. So I want to tell people, like, hey, at exp, it's going to be awesome because of this, this, this. But you got to connect with them on positive present, negative. What's your biggest challenge? Hey, what's going to happen? Negative future. What's going to happen if you stay where you are right now and you're only doing about a deal a month and you don't crack the code on getting to 3, 4 deals per month, what's it going to look like? You're 12 years into real estate and you just told me you have no. The challenge is you can't afford to send your kids to that private school. So let's see what happens. Let's draw out this negative presentation and what happens in the future if you don't solve it? What if what if what I'm telling you about what we're doing over at elite builders or real estate, what if it is different and what if we can get you to that next level of production? Positive future. I used to go from, you know, you would tell me everything's great. I'm like, everything will be greater, positive present to positive future. But people don't think that way. So you got to bring them into the negative presence. What challenges are you having now in your business? And then just kind of let them sit in that and be like, man, that sounds tough. What if that were to continue? And then you bring them up. What if what I'm telling you and what I've been telling you for years is right and we can build something amazing together, and then it'll unlock a different level of conversation. All right, so in terms of focus and clarity, you know, looking back on those three things there, what can you start with or stop doing to increase your focus and clarity? Just write a few things down there. So I'm gonna end with this here. I was reading this last night, and it actually made me cry in my hotel room. This is Dan Sullivan. I actually just went back to strategic coach after having taken seven years off. This quote, though, is like, you know, just hit me. Someone once told me the definition of hell. The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become. Just. Just think about that. You know, there's no. There's no shame in where you're at right now. There's no blame. There's no, I wish I would. Like, you are where you are right now, and you get to make a decision today and tomorrow and the next day on, like, what are the things you're going to do to become that person that you can ultimately become? And it's a daily, even, moment by moment choice. So it never goes away. Dan said this one time too, and it really gave me a lot of peace. I was having just a conversation with him about his business, and I think at the time, he was about 35 million in revenue. Strategic coach. And a couple things struck me at the conversation. You know, I said, what, what. What few things or advice would you give me? You know, I own coaching business, and he owns strategic coach. And I said that, that. That had you achieve the level of success. He said, first of all, no one sticks with it long enough. He's like, nobody was asking me for my advice when I bankrupted twice or, you know, got the divorce or, you know, but he's 30 years into doing this, this one thing, and nobody sticks with anything long enough to build something amazing. Aaron challenged me once. How do you say it? The whole decade thing. Oh, if it's not worth doing for a decade, it's not worth doing for a day. Yeah. And that was my hesitation with media. I'm like, I don't want to do it for a decade. And then it really. And this is where Aaron challenged me. If I'm going to have the impact that I know that I can have, that God put me here to have, I can't do it without media. Like, it's so stupid. And when I framed it like that, I'm like, well, of course I gotta figure it out. My stuff's awful still, but I'm doing it. I'm figuring it out. Somebody else had to tell him it was cool. And then he was like, okay, I'll do it. Well, I don't think Aaron thinks he's cooler than he really is. So this is the thing here. Everything you've experienced up to this point is he would say R and D. It's research and development for what's coming next, and it's the fuel for future growth. So you may have stuff that is, like, heavy and you're shameful about, or you may have even things from your past and growing up, you know that that sits heavy on you. Use all of that as fuel for your growth and don't sit in that. Don't, don't. Don't let it take over your actions and anyone else. Have a parent that's an alcoholic that was in aa. So as a kid, this was tough. So my dad drank until I was 15 and then was sober his whole life after that. And he was actually, even though he was not a great dad, for me, he was like a phenomenal member of the AA Alcoholics Anonymous community. And he just had friends that loved him and all of that. So in that box I was holding as I was leaving, you know, just had to say goodbye to my dad after he died were 25 years of sobriety coins. You know, where it says the year and it says the Serenity Prayer on it. And growing up, you know, after he became sober and got anyone's parents, like, give them advice and AA slogans, it's really like, you know, screw guilt or One day at a time, or easy does it. It's like, no, thank you. But this is probably his biggest gift to me. And I say this prayer every morning. And I think there's just. Even regardless of your faith, I think there's so much power in it. And this is. I just want to leave us with this. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thank you.