How to Add a Zero to Your Net Worth During This Economic Shift (Kurt Uhlir podcast interview)

All right, welcome back. Real estate business builders. It's going to be a fun episode. I've got Kurt Euler on with me and I'm going to let him explain his background, but it's going to weave in nicely to, you know, how I think the industry is changing right now, especially from a tech and marketing perspective. And then we're sort of start out there and then maybe we'll go into more, you know, some of your passion around leadership and we'll maybe end there. But Kurt, give us a little bit on your background, maybe a couple of minutes on why would we sort of lean into this conversation? Yeah.

So I'm a business builder to the point that When I was 14, I started two legal entities because I had enough employees. The government was going to make me file taxes that year, but that's gone all the way up through helping been part of a small team that raised a $880 million IPO. Later sold that company for 8.1 billion. Great return for investors. We've sold a number of companies. I've worked in a dozen, plus usually high growth technology industries. But I always have a passion for helping solo entrepreneurs and smaller businesses. And by smaller, I'm usually meaning like 1 to 10 million dollars. And how do they add a zero to that? Whether they're real estate agents? I've been an angel investor and then strangely enough, I was on sabbatical for 18 months and I had to come off because a president of the United States called me to advise them on parts of the national economy, which is as weird as it sounds. But I have a lot of background, mainly because I've been a lot, had a lot of people around me that have taught me a lot and shown me where I've been screwing things up. And so that's gravitated to change how I lead and how I grow companies.

Ma', am, talk about me wanting to give you sort of like a blank canvas for this interview. Like, I feel like I just don't want to not get all of the goodness out of you. Let's, let's start with a question, you know, for every agent out there. You know, we are increasingly bombarded with like the here's the marketing solution that you need to focus on or this bit of bolt on tech or whatever. What should agents. Maybe a few things that agents, if they want to grow and scale their real estate business on the tech and marketing side, you know, where would you point them?

I think there's three things just for agents. And the first is to realize no matter how much you love your brokerage, you are your business. Whether you are with ReMax or Coldwell or Keller or Exp. According to NAR, the average agent changes brokerages every five years. Which means if you have built your brand, your database, your marketing stack on only what your brokerage provides you. God, what happens, what happens when you choose to change your wear your shingle hauls and most agents don't think like that. With that, I'd say the two biggest assets that agents when they make that shift, where they sit with is saying, look, your, your two biggest assets are one, your brand. And that's not Kurt with Keller or Kurt with ReMax, that's Kurt Euler. If I was an agent and I'm not, and the second thing is my database, my relationships, my sphere and all of my technology should be around all of my marketing. Whether I'm really good at pay per click or Google Organic or doing content marketing, everything I should do should be both focused on that personal brand and my database.

Awesome.

I have to ask it just because I'm in a mastermind where it's like the topic of the hour thoughts about AI as it might impact real estate.

It's going to be a little bit wavy I think at first, but I think what, what most people are excited about when you're seeing or they're writing articles about chat GPT and whatnot, it's not, it's going to fall out really. I think you could retitle most of what we see articles on chat gbt which I think is going to be really helpful. It's no different than the content spinners we saw in 1995 where somebody would take an article and rewrite and spit it out. The other side we see from Google search results like people don't go to just one article or one like write up on a neighborhood. They hit five sites because they're wanting to make their own decision, not just have a single answer given to them, whether it's on health or real estate or something. With that said, man, there's so much opportunities for AI like to like. It's hard for agents to get all the knowledge out of their head. So if you go to one of these AI systems like Jasper AI or ChatGPT and say hey, what are the five bullets that I should have in an article about Roswell, Georgia if I'm writing about the real estate market? That's a great list to seed your creativity and then to put out everything that you actually know about.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I love that. Seed, seed your creativity instead of just plagiarize. Let me ask you this. As you know, you look at the big players that want to get in the way of the agent and the buyer or seller looking to hire an agent. So the lead aggregators, the Zillows and the ideal agents and whatnot, how could an agent even remotely compete? And I think you said some of it, your brand, your database, that sort of.

Well, there's a lot of that. So I think there's two ways to compete. So one is there, you can do this with a modern IDX and good organic SEO. Go to Nashville home dot guru, a gentleman named Patrick Higgins. Patrick Higgins. Every agent could be him. He, he get. This is a testimonial he gave to showcase IDX. He gets like 50 to 60,000 organic visitors from Google every month in the Nashville market. It's not New York, it's not Atlanta, it's not a small market. But because he and his team now they give it off to VAs, but they create these community pages. They use a modern IDX that doesn't have home search and they know the local content that a Zillow could never do. Because Zillow is trying to do this cheapest kind of get out everything there. And so he has write ups on condos or townhomes in Brentwood, Tennessee south, the south suburb. Like that's data that he can have. I mean 50,000 organic visitors, basically free. I mean he invested in the front, but, but by doing the work, that's one of the ways you compete. The other way to compete is I would say agents need to become really good friends with a fee based financial advisor like somebody at Ron Blue and Trust and just freaking copy their marketing. And I say that because there's those percentage based people like Ameril lynch and then there's a fee based advisor that I go to and I write them a $2,000 check and they do my, they do my financial plan for my wife and I and then even if I have them manage my money, they get a percent. But they have a contractual obligation that says they cannot receive any referral fees or things in the backside. So when they recommend a product, they don't get any money on the backside. That's just the best product for me. Well, that's the same thing for me from an agent. If I was an agent, I'd be taking. And I see agents do this, they go to their, they go to their spear and go, did you know Zillow made $2 billion last year selling your contact info you can go through their public statement says on average, from the number of leads that they connect with agents, they make about $1,000, $997 going to their 20, 21 financial statements. By giving a lead to an agent, well, that's different than go, what do I do? I only get paid if I do. If you think I add value and you actually close a transaction with me, you choose not to work with me to go to another agent, I don't get paid, I don't get that thousand dollars for collecting your info and giving it to somebody else. And that resonates with people. And so you stop trying to play just hey, the same game as Zillow. And you point out Zillow's in a different environment than the average agent is.

That's awesome.

So, so coming from, from your background and growing and scaling, you know, bigger businesses, being in the real estate space, I mean are, do you just go crazy out how agents, you know, have no ability to scale their businesses? I mean, what do you think when that, you know, doing the, it's kind of like e myth Michael Gerber, right? They're just doing the thing, the technical work and they don't realize that that's not the game. Other people are scaling big businesses off the back of real estate agents. So what advice would you give to an agent looking to grow and scale?

I mean, I'd say yes, I do feel that way sometimes some agents, but it's not any different than when a 10 million dollar a year software comes in comes to me, or 100 million dollars a year software company comes to me. And they're not able to scale a business for the same reason that the individual agent isn't. They're distracted with other things. They're working in the business versus on the business. Like you see this, it's the same outcomes in both places. And so I mean part of it is just like it's, it's letting people know whether you're at a big company or an individual agent, you always need to be focused on short term things and segmenting out and firewall part of your time for medium and long term growth and doing those things. I don't mean, I don't care whether you and I were executives at a quarter million dollar a year software company or were individual agents that we want to figure out how we go build a team together. It's all about standard operating procedures. Even if you're an individual person, you need to be documenting what your steps are. So that you can say, this is what I do to get a listing out. Now do I go get a coordinator to help me with that? I'm doing social media or newsletters. I want to document all that out so that I can say, do I, do I go find somebody on hiremymom.com or somebody in the Philippines that I can use as a VA to be able to start saying, hey, now here's how I need you to post about things for me. You just need to document it yourself. And then you also go, wow, you know what? I always get distracted. I'm doing this list because I'm distractible. How do I change my life so that I don't do that? Some cases you write a check to somebody. Other times you lock the door and I lock the door to the basement so that my kid can't come down here and disturb me.

Yeah, let's. Since you brought it up, I mean, I think it's probably one of the number. Let me see if I have my squirrel here.

Yep.

So my team gave me this back in the day.

Love it.

You're listening to the podcast. It's like a bronze gold looking squirrel on top of a big acorn. And it constantly reminds me there's all these things that can distract us, you know, away from anything. If it's like to be a better dad or husband and it's your phone and the ESPN or Netflix or news or like there's all these things and it's, it's crazy. Now, what are some of the things that, that you do personally to guard yourself against being distracted and focusing on the things that are going to lead you closer to where you want to go.

I do a weekly review about how did my week go and where did I not get it right this last week. I don't, I don't, I don't let myself shame myself. I always wish I could do better, but like too many people, again, same thing. I look back and every Sunday afternoon I go, hey, what was I trying to do from last Monday on that? And why did I not get it right? And so that helps me realize how either I'm distracting myself or how I'm allowing other things in the business or my family. I love my family, but I. And part of the reason is that because of that they can distract me. We have a one year old, we have an almost four year old, and, and I have a wife I love. And so I know at the end of the day when I go upstairs, as much as I might want to come back down and work. When I put them down, I just, that used to be me, but it's not me anymore. So now I've slowly moved my alarm clock back to 3am I'm up by 3:30 every day just because I know I can get some quiet time done and then I can get into some writing, which I do a lot of right now. And if I don't do it then there's no way I'll get it done in the evening. And so those weekly reviews allow me to realize how have I not got it right? And then I can just pivot and iterate and realize there's no shame. Just acknowledge what's real and then work from there.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I love that comment A little bit on, you know, in, there's a lot of folks out there sort of getting views and eyeballs that don't have anything to add a value in my opinion. Right there was, I think There was a 24 hour live stream from like one of the, one of the biggest influencers. I don't know their name. I didn't know it when someone told me, but they sold $1.2 billion of cosmetics in a 24 hour period simply because they had these eyeballs. How does that translate and what advice would you give for an agent? You know, so for, you know, I'm not going to say the website again, but for an agent, how can they become sort of, you know, micro famous or an influencer in the world they need to influence in their local market.

That's a great question. I think the first thing is just realize you're already an influencer and so you don't need to be Kim Kardashian or Ryan Reynolds or something to have a big audience yet you will hear those stories where they have a, you know, somebody will do kind of that kind of revenue side. But also think about like if Ryan Reynolds comes out like he claims. Like I see, I see one more ad about Ryan Reynolds saying he's the owner of mint mobile on YouTube. Like I'm, I'm going to just jump out the window. But it's like whether it's the owner or not, like what do I think his real connection is to it? Like I don't know who he, I mean I don't have any relationship with him. If on the other hand, my aunt who is like 78 years old posts about some diner in, you know, in Huntsville, Alabama that she goes to unequivocally, I believe there's trust there. I, I, you know, she's been there, she's talking about it. Well, that's the same thing as a local agent. And so realizing you have a stronger influence with a, maybe a smaller number of people, but you have just 50 people that follow you. That's, that's great. Talk to those 50 people and love on them in a way that you never could if you had 50,000. And you'll quickly get 52 people and 75 people and it'll grow from there. And even if you never have this massive audience, you can do way more revenue. Heck, I've number of friends who have these membership sites that they, they've started these like, membership sites where people pay $19 or $39 a month. And they started with like seven people in their initial membership and now they're, they're banking like $30,000 a month, like, because they started where they were and they didn't try to be somebody they weren't.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So you mentioned SOPs and playbooks and sort of documenting, delegating, elevating all of that stuff. Talk about bringing that first person into your world, you know, the first administrator or buyer, agent or in whatever makes sense to you. And then let's talk a little bit about like leadership styles and managing and how, how you certainly, like all of us failed through some of that. You know, give us some lessons on, on leading and managing others.

I'd say first, before you bring somebody in. I mean, if there, there's cases where people, you know, they, they start and they're just growing well enough, they have to bring somebody in. But I'm really big fan of go slow to go fast. I was raised by a special forces father. He taught me to shoot from the youngest of ages. And like, if you want to be really accurate and shoot well, you go really slow when you're learning things. And so I literally just did this with my team. I have a very large content team for the, for the company that I work with. And so I worked for about five months on a new process for all of them. And we've been able to somewhere between 5x and 8x the amount of content we were creating on a monthly basis before, that's a big increase. So for five months I literally did this myself as if I was explaining to a va. I said, so I'm writing an SOP myself and I'm trying to pick topics, research a size, write a content brief, write the content and review it. And I started managing it in Trello as if I was going to Explain it to you Lars to come and do. And I thought I had it about two months in and I started to like go back there and review it before I would hand it off. It wasn't right. So I did that three times before I got it there and I ran it for 30 days myself. So this is five, five and a half months into when I wanted to kind of like want to have it out but, but now we're cranking on stuff because it works. And now, now I've handed that off to women that lead my internal content team and operations manager. They're running these, these two large outside teams for me. But I now mad scientist thing what I think is going to be the next version. So I have this new production flow running. I've handed it off. You can do that with your first VA and then when they're working well for you, you get to be the mad scientist that tries the next thing and don't, don't, don't mess up the horse in the cart. And so I think that's a really good thing for everybody is maybe you're not quite ready to bring on the VA yet. And then it's also a good thing a lot of times vas they're people that have you can bring on a true va. And what I also find, like I mentioned it before, there's this website that I know the woman Leslie started hiremymom.com it's a lot of, a lot of people who have chosen to be stay at home parents or they're work. They're starting to transition from being a stay at home parent back into work. And so you like. I've hired VPs of marketing before that say look, I just have eight to 12 hours a week and they're wanting to add value. Man, they have helped me so much because they've been in some cases where I was trying to go at that time and they were able to say yeah, let's perfect some of these things going forward.

That's crazy. I heard you say that before. I almost asked about it.

By hiremymom.com it is Leslie has built by far the number one site for exactly what it says full time, part time. I've hired full time people from it. I've heard a bunch of part time people and I can say I'm not sure there's anything I've ever recommended where I get so many people proactively come back to me and go thank you so much for that recommendation.

That is awesome.

I put a little star Next to that one, I'm always looking for good, good talent. So let's, let's end on a conversation about, you know, you're growing, you're scaling, you're bringing people into your world. It's not just about you anymore. You know, you have this, I think one of your passions is, you know, this high achieving sort of servant leadership, something around that. So unpack that a little bit and tell us what that, what that means to you.

Yeah, the. So, so traditionally, I mean, the term servant leadership was coined in the 70s by, by a gentleman. But, but it's been around for history. It's just most people lead through authority. So at some level, you know, there's, I'm the boss. If you don't do what I say, you're going to be fired. And so it tends to lead to micromanagement. It leads to people reacting out of fear. You told me to do this, even though I know it's not the best thing for the outcomes you' to achieve. But, but you told me to do it this way. And, and servant leadership flips all of that on the head and says, yeah, yeah, I still want to hit outcomes, but, but my best, the best way to grow the company. And now there are people that approach servant leadership because I'm a, I'm a strong Jesus follower. There are people that approach it from a faith of different faith perspective and they think it just morally the right way to do. And I do think that's true. But, but, but by far, if I'm going to grow something faster and higher than I ever could, I know that the best way I can do that is not trying to grow something by 5 or 10% per year. It's serving the people to do what they're best capable of doing. Find out that maybe different roles, but, but helping them grow. Because I don't want, I don't want to grow a company by 10% a year. I want to grow by 10x a year, which means I need you to not just show up for the 40 hours I paid you for. I need you to want to go to war with me and go, gosh, you're sick, Kurt. I mean, I've had employees and I did not always lead this way. That's a lot we could talk about. But I've had employees when I've been sick or my family's been sick, like drive an hour to drop off food for me without me asking for it because they, they, they care about us as a family in a company and they're like, we want you back at work. If we can, we can take something off your plate. Here's some, here's some barbecue. And that's, that's. No authoritative leader will ever have that happen.

Yeah, and it's, it's. You know, I've talked a lot about this, this subject where it seems like, and this was my journey and it could, could be part of my faith journey too. I was only saved in 2009, and that's just as my business was starting to scale a little bit. And people are coming to my world, but they were coming into my world to make my life easier because my life, like, it was very lopsided, but it was more like really reactive, you know, where I was just, I was selling a ton of homes and there was too many leads and I was building the systems and I was working, you know, 70, 80 hours. What advice would you give to someone, you know, that's looking to bring. I mean, the only way to succeed in a, in a large scale way is to succeed through, obviously, SOPs and systems. I mean, people need resources to succeed, but at the same time, they need to be led in a certain way. So what advice would you give someone that's just starting out this journey of, of leading others?

Talk to your, Talk to the people that you're bringing on the team or the people that are already in your team about the outcomes you're trying to achieve and why those are the outcomes and why you believe what you're telling them to do or why you're, you're the, the direction you're giving the team to do, why you think that's the right, the best way to reach those outcomes and be, be humble with them by saying, I might have this wrong. I mean, that's, that's kind of the little ethereal thing. You want to get really tactical. Every single morning for probably the last, I don't know, maybe 15 years, I asked myself, what three things am I maybe wrong about today? And I realized both in work and in my personal life, like with my wife, I know that there's got to be at least three things I'm doing wrong in each ways. Because when I go back historically, how often have you done something you think about in your business where you didn't you. I mean, you never do anything when you think because you think it's wrong, feeling wrong, being wrong about something, and being right about something feels the exact same until you realize you're Wile E. Coyote out over the, over the cliff. And this thing that you've been trying to do for six months. Not only was it not a little wrong, it was completely the wrong thing to do. I mean, I've written angel investment checks where I look back afterwards and I go, oh, my gosh. Like, I knew day one that I shouldn't have wrote. Wrote this person a check, but I thought it was the right thing to do. And so I humble enough to realize there's got to be at least three things that I'm doing wrong right now that I think's right. What are they? And then I ask my team that sometimes, too. What am I missing?

I think the thing that's moved most in me, just letting down my ego, you know, and just being way more humble. Yeah, that's not my natural. You know, when I'm triggered and I'm stressed, my natural. The way Lars shows up in the world is not. Is not great. You know, and I'm. I'm short with.

I'm shorter with my wife.

I have less patience for my kids. And, you know, so I know we. We suffer from some of that. Anything more to add on leadership?

Well, I love you use the term how you show up. So, like, I have everybody on my team take something called the Berkman assessment. It's not really a personality exam. It's more about how you show up. And I have a woman who literally rolled this out through mailchimp and some other large companies, but she'll work with small teams as well. So, Berkman, what I like about it is it gives, like, these seven big categories about how you show up, including what you. What you actually need, which may be different, how you show up and what your stress reactions are. I have everybody that comes on the team do it, and they get a copy of my assessment and everybody else's, because, well, I think there. I generally agree with that. I don't like anything that's a true label. But it gives us a common terminology to say, hey, Lars, how you're showing up, it's triggering me. And this is my stress reaction, which sometimes might be that, you know, trigger you in different ways. And so it gives us a common terminology that takes the shame out of it, because I don't just say, hey, this is what. This is what you're doing. Says, this is how I see you showing up. And like, an example, I. I can make really good, fast decisions because that's how most of us have grown. Things we can do. The faster I can make. We can make a decision even if it's a little bit off. The better. But the more important the decision is from my Berkman and this is real, the more time I actually want to think about it. So when my boss comes and pushes down that he needs an answer in seven minutes, if I think it's a really important thing, he's going to get some stress out of me if I. And I might not always be able to control it because I need to be able to go do I need to at least tomorrow morning, I need to next Thursday to talk about it or I'll make the decision now, but I'm not comfortable with it. And so because of Berkman, we can have that conversation and then negotiate. Maybe we actually do need to make the. But he needs to know why I might be short if I'm showing up that way.

Awesome.

All right, cool. So I'm going to do. I haven't done this in a little, little bit, but I'm curious because I've learned a little bit about you and your background. I want to kind of do some rapid fire questions. So kind of first come to mind sort of answers and then we'll. We'll see how this goes. And if you have any parting thoughts, we'll kind of end with that. Let me ask you this. What keeps you up at night when it comes to business?

What I could be wrong about? It really does.

Awesome.

What were you most afraid of when it comes to, you know, building a business, what are you most afraid of?

I'm most afraid of failing. And I actually billed it as saying as a. As a fear. I was scared of being too successful. But no, it was. I was scared of failing.

Okay. What's the best advice you've ever received about business?

Be nice. There's no reason not to be.

Can you share a daily or weekly habit that contributes to your success?

I try for once a day, if not twice a day, is I just take two to three minutes to be still with God. I do a true quiet time where I don't try to ingest what other people are saying. Some cases I read scripture. I literally just try to refocus.

Awesome.

Any app or resource you know, that you could not live without.

I have an app called Streaks which is all about building small atomic habits.

That's awesome.

Could be the book. What book would you recommend for our listeners?

Profit first.

Profit first.

Awesome.

And let me end with this. What should you have shared with us that you haven't?

Great question. Why do I show up every day? I don't have to work and so I just. I show up because I believe in growing people. And so you can't do that so much as just a mentor. You have to pull up alongside somebody shoulder to shoulder and. And work with them to be able to actually truly grow people, in my opinion.

Awesome.

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Not be an. That's a good one.

That's my answer too. Oh, that's so horrible.

It is so true.

A lot of agents are struggling. Right. The market is squirrely. You know, there's a ton of agents still and there's less inventory and less sales. What advice or even words of encouragement would you give someone that is looking to grow their real estate business right now?

This time period, for the next six to 18 months, there will be a ton of agents that add one to two zeros to their net worth because they don't give up. I don't. You don't have to know what three months looks like. You just need to take one step and the lantern is only going to show you what the next step is you need to take.

Man, that's awesome.

I love it.

Is there any where you want to send our listeners?

Come to Kurt Euler.com partially. I write a lot now about high achieving servant leadership, what that looks like in different areas. And literally so many of my topics are coming because I need people's help. I read my definitive guide to serving leadership and tell me what, what I didn't answer that you have questions about and I'll write an article about it or I'll interview somebody about it.

That's amazing. Is there. Is that the guy that you're probably writing the book on now?

Yes, although I have turned down two book offers, so I'm trying to put out as much free content. So I put out about 50,000 words on the website since January. So.

Man, that is awesome. Good for you, man. Well, if there's anything I can never do for you, do, you just let me know.

Sounds good. Thank you, Lars.

Yeah, I appreciate your time.