How Kerby and Cristina Sold 549 Homes in a Single Year - Part 2

All right, welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. This is gonna be part two of an interview I did with Kirby Skurat. And this is, it's just an awesome story. And it's a guy that started out, you know, slinging homes by himself, you know, 10, 12, 15, 25 homes. His wife joined up with them and they built an amazing business that went up to 549 transactions last year. They're on track to crush it this year, even with all the craziness in the world with COVID and racial tensions and all of that. So just an amazing, amazing success story. And so this is part two. The only thing I asked. Since this is a member only event, I want to ask you to share this episode with your friends on social media and leave us a five star review. That is all I ask. There is so much goodness in here. Even though they're at the point where they've achieved, you know, the 500 plus transactions with a highly leveraged real estate team, there is still nuggets in here. They're nuggets that you will absolutely be able to take, take away and implement into your business no matter where you are in your journey. If you're coming into the Business Freedom Podcast, this is your first episode. Back up one episode and actually back up two episodes. The episode I did before part one is pretty powerful as well. It goes into some of my motivations for doing what I do. So much love and respect. Stay tuned for part two of Kirby Screwrap.

All right, so I'm getting into just some of the more paid traffic that we do. So Facebook, we just kind of have come up this billboard. We're actually not on a billboard, but it looks like it's. So that's one way to kind of steal some mind share with people. This is our kids. We got some likes on this, but just enjoying the beautiful spring weather. Using some message of hope. This was Covid. Bingo. Our marketing lead came up with this kind of a cool way to engage people. So that's kind of the ways that amidst the crisis, we're doing some trying to do some creative stuff with marketing and then for more of our. Can you guys see my PDF now? Yep. Okay, so you maybe already have put a lot of this stuff together, Lars, but I'd be happy to share this with you guys, but it's just basically talking. This is right off of the KCM blog, which is if you have a membership you can use. So we put these graphs together for people that are freaking out about the market. It's a really good way to just have our agents want educated. And then secondly, having our agents be able to educate their clients on kind of some of the things that are out there and happening in the marketplace. So this one's for buyers or sellers that are freaking out. We also have this homeowner preparedness thing. So what to expect, you know, and I'm sure I've ripped this. I know one of the things we stole was right from Tara Lindbergh, who she's like, hey, this is a great thing. And we just made it one of our things. But this is another thing that we're using just listing protocol, you know, putting this stuff together. It's just really a great way to look professional. Shelter in place guidelines. So amidst Covid, we're definitely Tara, this is what I stole from you, by the way.

But just we don't call it stealing. It's just, it's R and D. R and D. Yeah.

Sorry, Tara. R and D with permission, of course. So there's that. And then this is our total business, like I said. So Commissions Inc. We've seen an increase over the last couple years in Commissions Inc. This is a consistent pillar for us. 5.7 lead to met and 19.6 met to written. So not as high of a conversion, but it just shows if we meet with 10 people, we're going to sell about two of them a house. And if we get 100 leads, we're going to meet with five of them. So I can reverse engineer everything based on our leads and our sets and our Mets and we look at the profitability. This one paid us six bucks for every dollar we spent last year. Zillow. Some are really in love with Zillow, some aren't. We're actually scaling back from Zillow significantly. I was spending way, way, way more money than I needed to back here. And through some good coaching and advice from Lars, I've scaled that down significantly. So we're still making money with Zillow. It's probably a 2, maybe 3 to 1 ROI, but it's definitely not as good as the commission's Inc. Pillar radio. This is more mass media. And I'm sure like the rest of you guys are seeing a decrease. We're seeing a decrease as well in overall sales. And the nice thing is that I think, you know, over the last couple years we've started spending a bit and we're seeing an increase there and then our farm campaign. So this is something we've been running since 2014 and it just Shows the sales trajectory. And we've actually cut a couple of issues annually to be more profitable because we got such a market share there now. But this kind of shows the penetration of that campaign over the last five years. But the moral of the story on all this is that the cold marketing is secondary to the warm marketing or the sphere of influence stuff. And all of these cold sellers that work with us or cold buyers that work with us, they go into our database and now they're our sales engine because they're referring us. And so if you don't have like you have to think about this. One thing that I think a lot of people miss is that if you don't have a newsletter or past client follow up program in place, all these cold leads that you're paying for, they have no opportunity to refer you or they may remember to refer you, but it's much, much less likely that they will. And so just remember that as you're spending money on mass media, you're spending money on paid stuff, you want to make sure that you're making sure all those sales and all those leads are invited to all your events and are in your newsletters and stuff like that. Because that's just increasing the bandwidth of your sales force. Your sales force gets bigger as your newsletter list gets bigger. So something to think about. Do you want to stop for questions now or should we go until the end?

No, we'll just roll to the end. You can keep putting questions in there, just remember them. If I forget to touch on, we'll take questions at the end.

Okay, so this is the agent productivity tracker that we kind of came up with. And it really helps people understand how much they need to sell in order to make what they want to make and sell. So agents, ultimately they want to grow. And it's our job as leaders to help our agents grow and to really help them see the path that they can get to within our team. We have a gal on our team. It's our third year and she sold. She's 27 years old. Her name's Allie and she started when she was 25 on her team and last year she sold 71 homes and she made almost $200,000 in income for a 27 year old. That's crazy. And she just came after it and made it happen. But it was our job, Christina and my job to help her see the path, to get there. And she bought a new house last year and was raising her family in a new home. And I just really have a passion for helping Our agents get to the income levels that they want to get to. And so that's one thing that we've really tried to help develop over the last year for sure. So my wife and I, for our 10 year anniversary, I was able to talk her into going to Life and Wealth Mastery in Fiji. And she went, we stayed at Tony's resort. It was amazing. But one of the big takeaways from Tony's event was the focus that he has on money. And so Tony says either master money or on some level, money masters you. And I think that agents for sure that work for us or with us, they don't have as quite of a big of a grasp as those that are being trained by Stacey and Lars and others within the real estate B school community. And this is just practical base level stuff that some of us get. But the more we break it down for our agents and help them see the path they are on to get there, the better it's going to be. The fact is you're not a manager of circumstance, you're the architect of your life's experience. And then the last one here, let's face it, we're not about to earn our way to wealth. That's a mistake millions of Americans make. We think if we work harder, smarter, longer, we'll achieve our financial dreams. But our paycheck alone, no matter how big, isn't the answer. And so in the event at Life and Wealth Mastery, in the wealth mastery portion, Tony talks about, he has four levels. I just broke it down to three levels to keep it even simpler. But he talks about your financial security, your financial vitality and your financial independence. And so your security is the basics, like your roof, your utilities, your groceries, your car, your insurance, kind of the basic business expenses. An agent that you would have, that's like, what do I need to survive? I'm not going to go out to eat, I'm not going to do anything. Kind of like we're living in right now, like what do I need base level to survive? That's security. Vitality is your clothing, your eating out, your entertainment, your travel and a few indulgences. And then independence. This is where your investments and your dreams and your charity and your big extra indulgences come in. And so at the event he has you sit down for about a half a day and really think about this stuff and you start to do some formulas and whatnot. And this is like big picture type of stuff. And so what I did after the event is I took that and I broke it down into a spreadsheet that I help our agents kind of work through. And so I can share this with you guys and you can give it out if you think this is helpful, but hoping that maybe somebody wants to just kind of work through this. Otherwise, I can just give an example of how this spreadsheet works to. To show you the power of it. So, Lars, do you want to pretend that you're an agent maybe, and we can talk it over?

Let's role play it. Let's do it.

All right, so, Lars, what's your sale price in your market? Your average sale price?

280.

280. Okay, and then what's your average commission?

Probably about 3%.

Okay, so 3%. So your gross commission income on that is gonna be about 8,400 bucks. Now, what's the split that your team pays you on that $8,400 commission?

Average blended? Probably about 30.

Okay, so 30. So your average net per sale is $2,500. So in order to get to financial security, Lars, we want to make sure that you understand all these pieces and your mortgage, your rent, your utilities, your grocery, your transportation. What we do is we just basically go through this and fill out these blue boxes here. And so does 1500 bucks for mortgage rent seem about right for you?

Let's pretend it is.

Yep. Okay, and then utilities, about 250. Yep. And then how much do you spend on groceries for your family every month?

Probably about 500.

500. Okay, and then how about transportation?

Let's say 100 bucks a week.

So 400 bucks. And then how about insurance for health and life?

Health and life? Probably more than that. Probably about 600.

Okay, and then how about kids expenses, if you have.

Yeah, we just lock them in their rooms. Put 200 there.

Okay, and then how about. Do you want to add any miscellaneous fluff to this, or do you just want to kind of see what your security is on a monthly basis?

Just security.

Okay, and then how about your business expenses? How much you spend on your phone and stuff like that?

Phone? Yeah. Probably about 125 bucks.

Okay, and then do you have a. Do you have a spouse, Lars?

I do.

How much after taxes and everything? Well, if she's working, will she bring home annually? Like that actually hits your bank account?

Let's say probably about 60.

Right. So, Lars, the nice thing is if you just plan on living off of Julie's income, you actually don't need to sell any houses to hit your financial security. If you budget effectively.

Beautiful.

So you can just Quit working now if you wanted to, if you could afford to live off of Julie's take home income. All right, let's put a zero there.

Let's pretend. Let's put a zero. My goal is to keep my wife at home.

Okay? So let's put it not in a.

Sexist kind of way. Everybody just in a like.

Yeah, we understand. So, so, so, Lars, in order to meet your security needs, you need to sell 21 homes on this team. In order to do that, is that something that you commit, can commit to next year?

Yeah, for sure.

All right, well, let's look at your financial vitality. So let's say for instance, you wanted to, you know, spend three grand a year on clothing. Does that seem about right for you? Okay, how about dining out monthly?

Yeah, probably about that.

Entertainment and travel annually. How much you think you're going to spend?

Let's. Per month. Let's call it about 400 per month.

Okay, and then how about some indulgences like you like to go to Starbucks, you like to, you know, 50 bucks.

A week, 200 bucks.

Okay, and then let's put 200 there. 200. Yep. All right, so in order to get to vitality, Lars, you need to sell 31 homes a year.

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's talk about your investment and getting into financial independence. What, what would you want to put away every year for college?

Thousand. Sounds, sounds good.

Okay, how about dreams? Like you have a dream to buy a cabin or something like that?

Yeah, let's do, let's do a thousand on that too.

And then how about charity or giving? How much do you plan to give away?

Yeah, that sounds good.

500. Okay, so in order to hit $114,000 in this team, which is $9,500 a month, you have to sell 45 homes. So as you're scaling, if you think about this, you know, you really need to sell 22 homes as a family if you want Julie to continue working. But if you don't want her to work, you can kind of see that it's going to be 45 homes. Is that something you can commit to this year, Lars?

With your coaching and accountability, I'm sure I can get to four homes a month.

Awesome. So the power of this tool, and it was so eye opening for our agents as they went through it. We did this as an off site and they sat down and literally put together the budget and they started to plug in the numbers and people were having like, amazing revelation from this exercise because of how powerful it was for them to see the security, the vitality and the independence and what they needed to do to get there. And then after we did this exercise, we actually sat down as a team and said, okay, what's our goal for the year? And that's how we came up with that 650 number for 2020. And so I think that a lot of agents, what ends up happening is they tend to over, you know, as Tony says, they over commit to what they can do in a year and they under commit to what they can do in a decade. In this case, I think it's a lot easier to really get a sense of what you need to do on an annual basis to hit your goals. And so we put this together just to be able to give people that. So I'll share this with you and Lars and then you guys can, if you want to make a Google sheet or whatever, you can do that.

But yeah, that'd be awesome.

It was a pretty cool, cool process.

Yeah. So Kirby, just so everyone, you don't have to keep asking, he is like one of the most giving folks that I know, so he'll, I'm sure he'll share some of this stuff that's not proprietary.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for listening to the Business Freedom Podcast. If you're getting value from the podcast, would you please leave us a five star review and share it with others who might benefit from the content I'm sharing? And if you're ready to scale your real estate business sustainably and profitably, there are a couple options for you. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual GCI, our business foundations program is for you head over to get businessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from over overwhelmed real estate agent to true business owner. If you're doing more than 500,000 in annual Team GCI, there's our graduate program designed for top producers and team leaders who want to grow their team and scale their business. If that's you, go to realestatebschool.com and apply for a free business growth strategy session. No matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tools, system, strategies, training, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future. So take action now.