How to Break Out of the Technician Role & Maintain a Ruthless Commitment to Prospecting

On the podcast today, we have Lee Marcus out of Chicago. He'll do 225 million of volume this year with him, his personal production and his team's production. And we're going to break down today really how someone goes through a series of delegations and elevations in their business. And it's really straight up e myth in terms of focusing on the things in your business that make you the most amount of money, things that are most dollar productive looking. Lee, give us a quick intro about you and your journey in real estate so that we will keep listening.

Sure. Absolutely, Lars. So I started in 2007. I was in technology sales before that for like IBM and other technology companies. So when I started in 2007, the only thing I really knew how to do was smile, dial, and make a pile, right, like grind every single day. And I started to realize that that's not the normal tactic for everyone. And so once, once I started prospecting in 2007 into 2008, and then as the market started to crash in 2008, by continuing to call expired listings for sale by owners, our past clients, we were moving up dramatically in the rankings of real estate agents just because we never took our foot off the gas. So 2009, 2010, 2011, we had our first baby, which was awesome. Actually took a little bit of time off. And then really 2012 was, as the market started to pick back up, was really our breakout year. We doubled our business that year. We had gone from maybe 50 deals a year to over 100 deals a year in 2012, 2013, and then just continued to grow since then.

That's awesome. Our journeys are similar personally. And I got into real estate in 2007, like from a really good corporate job, and watched the market sort of disintegrate and watch a lot of agents just totally fear get out of the industry, not know what to do, and just kind of keep your head down and kind of just keep grinding it out. Let's talk. Let's break down the journey a little bit. So when, you know, we talked before we hit record and we talked about most agents, you know, they think they're doing the job of a real estate agent. And if you were actually to follow them around for a couple of weeks, you would notice that they're essentially running errands and they're. They're doing courier activities or dropping a sign off here or lockbox, they're attending a closing. Talk about your mindset when it comes, when it came to business. And how did you go from you know, 50 deals to 100 deals to 200 deals to, you know, this year you'll do 350 deals or so. Talk about the mindset. How did you identify the things that were the most dollar productive activities? What was the process that you went through for that?

Sure. So I think it's basic business 101, where you start to think about your dollar productive activities or what you make per hour. Right. And so you start to think about how much are showings worth, how much are errands worth. Right. And you know, but then how much is prospecting worth? And we started to track what our dollar per hour income generated from prospecting was. Just, you know, picking up the phone and I think we had averaged maybe $750 to $1,200 an hour during those prospecting sessions. And so you start to get real clear on, wait a minute, if I just do more of that and delegate the $25 to $50 an hour activities and instead do something that is 10 to 20 times more income producing, that's the way to more income. And so that was the first real light bulb of like, if I can generate at that income level during prospecting and just delegate everything else, not only it's the best thing for me and it's the best thing for our clients.

So let's talk about the support systems that you used during, during that transition. So when you realize that, man, I can make a thousand bucks an hour on the phone. And then I get off the phone and I'm like, I'm looking in a listing file or I'm commenting on like MLS remarks or a photo, like what was the actual break down, the actual process and what the support systems looked like as you were navigating those stages.

Sure. So starting off with, we had an assistant pretty much right away, I think we had some business coming in. And so we, we had hired a just one assistant that did everything right, Listing management, just one assistant at a time at that point. And to handle all, like you said, the MLS input, the. And we were mostly a buyer, buyer focused business back then. Right. Just as new agents, we were focusing on more buyer business. And then with one assistant. And then around 2011 or 12, when the growth, when we started to double our business, we realized instead of going from one assistant to two, two, we went from one assistant to three at that point. And that was a key time to grow in terms of adding more staff. And so then we started to break out. Okay, now we can have a listing manager, we can have a closing manager. And we can have a runner.

Awesome. So Those were your three people in 2013?

Yeah, and we had a buyer's agent before that as well. So we had a buyer just as based on a referral basis. I needed somebody to take out our buyers.

And you mentioned that you started in the business work focusing on buyers, which I actually didn't know. I would have assumed that you focused on listings from the get go. But when did you shift heavy into listing lead gen?

Right around 2008, I think. For my first year in the business, I had done a couple of open houses and worked with a few buyers that didn't end up buying. And I said, that's it, I'm not doing that again.

Right. Where you can get a listing, you can sit down with the seller, you can know the market, influence them to choose the right list price and get.

A listing sign and get it sold. Yes, yes.

So from, from then on, you've been almost exclusively focusing on the listing side, right?

Exactly. Right, yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah. At some points I probably did one to three buyer deals a year myself personally. But that, you know, that was few and far between.

Okay, so a listing manager and a closing manager, who's building the system. Did you hire folks that already knew what they were doing, or did you actually have to sit them down and say, okay, this is the way I want a listing to go from when I take the listing all the way through, you know, getting it active on the, on the market to getting under contract, to closing. Like, talk about like the process to build those systems. Did you meet with, meet with those administrators regularly? What was the process?

Right. So very clunky at first. As you can imagine. The people we had hired, I think had some interest originally in real estate. And so we just taught them kind of how we, how I do things, how we do things in terms of writing the remarks and all of that and just have them sit with us while we did it. And that was probably the best training that we did was just, here's how we, here's how we do it. And just watch.

Yeah. So it's, it's the journey of I do it, which is, you know, your first few years in real estate, then we do it is like if you're effectively going to delegate something, you need to sit with them. And that's the part I'm horrible at. Like, I can, I can teach somebody anything in three minutes and it's, you.

Know, it's the worst.

And then as they do it, you know, so how did you discipline yourself if you're like me. It those. The we do it is the hardest part. How did you discipline yourself? Because I want to talk about even you transitioning recently out of listing appointments, but on the admin side, how did you discipline yourself to take the time to sit with them?

Sure. Well, so I think Grant Cardone says, you know, if you want to meet the devil, have white space on your calendar. Right. And so I just made it so that I didn't have the time to do any of that because I was prospecting as much as I was. It was between four and eight hours a day of prospecting. Right. So there was no. I couldn't just do it anymore. I couldn't do the admin. It wouldn't get done. I didn't have the time of the day. So I limited. I limited the amount of time I had for admin at all so that it just became a necessity that I had to have somebody do it because otherwise it wouldn't get done. I wasn't available to do it.

Yeah. And were you the one sitting down with them and sort of teaching them how to do the certain things or did you have someone else do it?

My wife Lindsey, who's also in our business, she was a real estate agent first at the time for about two years before I got in. She was amazing at sitting down with people. She's a high I expressive. And so she did an amazing job of training her, training our assistant at the time on how to do those things while I was out going to get listings.

And so did you, naturally, is your personality naturally. Because four to eight hours, you say four hours to an agent and some days you would do eight hours if you had no appointments, which is. I mean, that's like in. Every top salesperson in every industry is filling their calendar with the. The dollar productive activity of lead generation. What is it about you that allows you to do that? Because most agents, I mean, they don't even think that's the job of a salesperson.

I think it goes back to my first job out of college. I was in a call center. I was tech support, right. For IBM first at the time. Eight hours a day, headset on your head. At that point, it was inbound, calls coming in. And they tracked exactly how many calls you took, how many your talk time, all that. My first inside sales job after that with IBM, they did the same thing. How many hours were you prospecting, how many hours were you talking? And every day they sent out the rankings, right, of who was the top salesperson yesterday for all of the different categories, how many calls, I mean they track dials, the amount of talk time and a couple other things. And so the minimum that they said was okay, you have to have four hours of talk time and 80 dials. And so what I did originally was I'm like, okay, well the average person makes 100 grand. If I want to make 200 or 300,000, I'm just going to double that. The minimum standard. So what I did was I took the minimum standard, I added 50 to 100% to that. And so instead of 80 dials a day, my minimum standard was 120. And then instead of four hours a day, it was six hours of talk time. Right. So then every day that was just the minimum standard. I got in 6:30am and so I was the last one to leave at 7:30 or 8pm and so I just had a 14 hour day every day. And then what? You know, within the first month I was the number one salesperson by just, you know, adding that to my minimum standard.

And then let's talk about, you know, so as, as you get more reps in you get, I mean your conversions can 2, 3, 4x. Right? So talk about like how, how do you endure the process of really sucking at first, let's, let's say in real estate and then, you know, a year or two or three years later you're lethal on the phones and you can make any amount of money that you want to make. What's the, are there any, I don't want to say hacks, but are there any mindset tricks that you used to, to endure where most agents will sort of opt out and they're like yeah.

I would say the foundation for this house, the foundation that you're going to have to lay down and the legs on the table. Whatever analogy you want to use is creating a mindset routine every single day. I don't know of anybody that can do that, can do this type of activity with that much rejection, four, six, eight hours a day without doing their gratitudes, writing out exactly what their goals are, spending time in contemplation, meditation and silence every single morning. Going to the gym every day. All of the mindset activities that will help keep your mindset strong are the whole foundation for that. So everything that all of the great teachers teach, right of gratitude and being attached to your goals and being connected to your goals and writing your goals out and visualizing and all of that we did every single day at a high level.

And so does that routine follow you to today. What's your morning routine like now?

Yeah, absolutely. So we still. We have a trainer that comes around 4:30am to the house. No, 5:30am sorry, we're up at 4:30am, trainer at 5:30. And then I'm at the office meeting with my sales team around 8:00am it used to be around 7:15am and now it's about 8:00'. Clock.

And so what happens between. So 5:30 to break it down?

5:30, 5:30, about 6:45 exercise. Right. But 4:30. But between 4:30 and 5:30, we do the miracle morning.

Awesome. So you guys are journaling, you're reviewing your goals, you're spending time, quiet time, all that.

And that's with me and my wife Lindsay as well.

Awesome. And then 5:30, you're both working out together with a trainer.

Yep. And then 45, get ready.

And then, and then when, when are the kids getting in the mix? Are they sleeping until 6, 45, 7?

Uh, they are. No, they are. They were current. They were homeschooled this year, so they were sleeping till eight something. So I was already at the office before that.

Oh, nice. So you had that whole morning from 4:30 to like three and a half hours.

But otherwise we had nanny and our nanny was coming in the morning to help or we would do it sometimes if it's a day I didn't exercise and I got. Sometimes I get up around 3:30, get to the office around 4:30am, do work for three or four hours and then go home and get the kids up as well. So that's worked really well, is get to the office earlier and then go get the help, man.

I feel like we can restart the whole podcast and just dive deep on the. There isn't anyone that I know that's massively successful in multiple areas of their life that doesn't really own their day, you know. So when. When I hear you say, like, yeah, this is just the way. I mean, you could choose to be marginally successful in business, in marriage, as a parent, in your faith in your physical body, or you can choose to just control your calendar and make decisions on. You're probably not staying up till one in the morning watching Netflix and snacking on Cheetos. Right.

There is zero Netflix and chill.

Yeah.

So but you make up.

Yeah, that's really, really good. Let's shift gears a little bit because I want to talk a little bit about the technician versus the entrepreneur. So E. Myth, It's a book you're currently reading. It's the first book I ever read. So I never really got down the path of, you know, eight hours a day of prospecting. I'm like, I'm going to go e myth and I just hired people that are really good at that stuff. But talk about even if you're willing to open up about your struggles with getting so good at the technical work of headset on, nobody can convert. Like, you can convert, I would imagine. I remember hearing you in our boardroom. Even the houses you call like, I know that house. I'm like, I'm prospecting 12 houses today. And it's like this corner, because I took the. I mean, the whole game you play is a different game. But talk about the mindset shift, because I think you're in it right now where you're going through the technician like, you're the highest surgeon.

Right.

You're the top surgeon that nobody else can make that one cut like you can. But now you're deciding, like, maybe I want to own the hospital, maybe I don't want to cut anymore. And it doesn't mean you're getting out of production necessarily, but you're trying to elevate out of it. So talk about just mindset around that.

So the mindset, I mean, it was definitely a big shift. I've always. The whole way we've grown our business for the last 15 minutes, 15 years was really just to service the business we have. Right. So all along the way, we were generating enough business or business to a certain level that we needed people to service. And that was our whole. That didn't. That wasn't such a hard mindset shift. Although, like I said, that took a little bit, but just, okay, we have too much business to be able to service personally. That was the first mindset shift because otherwise my prospecting is going to suffer, and that's not an option. So which one's it going to be? Either hiring someone or letting the prospecting suffer. And that was not an option. So that was the first mindset shift was okay. Instead of giving up any prospecting, we're going to hire somebody to do those other tasks. The second mindset shift came in more recently with, wait a minute now. Customer service and growing. The business can actually be better utilized and our clients can receive even better service by having more people in place and the right people in place. So that was the second shift, was that it's not just about hiring people. It's about delivering great value and service to the marketplace through other people.

Yeah.

And how much you can do yourself.

Because most of Your business is built either on lead gen, where you're having conversations, as many as possible, and being an expert in those conversations, or past business and referrals, right?

Correct.

There's not a bunch of. You're not spending a bunch of money on paid leads or anything?

No, we really. We just started paying for, you know, any online leads maybe in the last six to nine months. That's it.

Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I want to spend a little bit.

I don't know if that answers your question, but in terms of the mindset shift, it was. Our clients are actually better served with other people providing the service than I could on my own.

Yeah. I remember there was a church sermon that I was sitting in on, and it probably was when I was in the midst of making the shift from being in production to what the business could look like with me not selling homes. And I remember the title of the sermon, and I have no idea what the sermon was about, so I obviously was not present. It did not impact me in the way that the pastor intended. But the title of the service was, you're not that important. You know, so I feel like a lot of real estate team leaders and these, these big players are so, you know, ego driven. And even if it's for a season, you've made the shift where, like, it doesn't have to be that way forever. So I want to talk a little bit about the challenges that you're experiencing, or maybe that's not the right word.

If we can go back just one more moment to what you're talking about, because the other shift was implementing eos that you had mentioned years ago to us. And once you get the core values right on who you're hiring, it changes the whole game. So I just want to put that in there as well, that this whole system can't run unless you're hiring based on core values.

Yeah, yeah. So let's touch on that a little bit. That's a really, really good point. A lot of teams, they're essentially a glorified brokerage. They've got the wrong economic model. They'll let anyone on the team. Like, it's essentially like walking into any real estate brokerage, and if you have a license and you sell a few homes, they'll take you in. So talk a little bit more about that. Did you feel any pain because you weren't abiding to some core values early on? You put them in place and then. And then things sort of got better.

Because you're exactly right that once you start learning about the core values and you start running the people analyzer. You're seeing where people fit and you notice the people don't. But then you know that there's a lot of pain right there because you realize what the actions you'd have to take to fix that. But then once you start hiring based on the core values, it's amazing that the sum is great. What is it? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That it's amazing what you can accomplish when you have people that share common values can achieve together.

What's the number one core value? That's like non negotiable. Like if you even smell that this person in front of you doesn't have this, what's the one?

I mean, work hard, right? Work hard. That's number one, of course.

But hustle and work hard.

Hustle and work hard. But be humble. So humble, like you can kind of tell. I would say the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is the lack. If there's any lack of humility or any lack of humble. Because if there's no work hard, they're gone before they even get here or they're gone quickly. But being humble, sometimes that can hide a little bit. And so that's probably the one that sticks out like a sore thumb.

If that's not happening, that's awesome because I mean, you're investing heavily into folks and you just don't want to be around people that are going to suck the life out of you. It's just not worth it. No, no, no, no. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the challenges in, you know, where you are now. You know, you're selling a ridiculous amount of real estate, $225 million worth of real estate. You've got how many administrators? Four or so.

We're up now we're up to nine.

Okay, nine administrators and how many agents?

Nine agents as well.

Okay, nine agents, nine admin. That tells you a lot right there. The amount of. We've, we found a very similar. Like, you know, there's a, there's a, there's just as much as minimum. There's almost a one to one ratio. It's all divided. And, and you know, there's a lot of how you slice really is like if, if you're really ruthless about getting stuff off your plate that's not sales related. Everybody needs a full time administrator.

Because once you know your value, right, Once you know that you're making $1,000 an hour or $2,000 an hour prospecting. Well, then it's not, you know, hiring to help. That is not a hard decision.

Yeah. Awesome. Let's talk about. I want to hear your current challenges. Where are you challenged right now? What are some of the hurdles to growth or your time or what you're passionate about? Just open up as much as you want about some of the challenges you're having.

I think some of the basic business fundamentals, like in terms of tracking. So let's say just understanding tracking for a moment. I've always tracked just my number of contacts, my listing appointments, so I knew my sales ratios. But the business ratios, when it was just me, an assistant, and maybe a buyer's agent or a few assistants, a lot of that stuff didn't matter as much. And now being able to really get granular on those key metrics is one of our biggest challenges. Awesome.

What else are you finding any challenges in? You know, getting out of the technical work or aspects of it or financial model or anything like that?

Yeah. And then this, you know, transitioning to out, you know, out of the technician role is still taking time. I mean, I still get a lot of satisfaction out of being involved. It's been a big habit for the past 15 years. So just transitioning out of that, you know, has definitely been more of a challenge.

Yeah. I know others that are very prospecting focused, and I always joke with them, like, one day y' all are just going to reach, like, over your face and, like, pull back your skin, and there's just a robot there. There's just like the ability to go in and just focus on one thing that is. It's almost like when I first started with Craig Proctor back in 2007. He's like, I'm better than anyone on the phone and I can make all the money I want being on the phone. And yet everyone gets into real estate and it's the number one thing they don't want to do. So it's awesome just to develop those.

Habits because then now training our sales team on it, like, I think, like you said, it's. You're not as. You're not as important as you think you are. Right. I think that's the. But you are as good as your transferable skills are. And so how can I expect to train somebody on how to make 30 or 40 contacts a day and what to say and how to convert leads if I never did it myself? And so obviously not knowing that from the beginning, but that's been the main value of the transferable skills and training. A team of what I went through the last 15 years.

That's awesome. Tell me real quick a newer agent that joins your team. What are, I'm sure you're tracking contacts to appointments set.

Yeah.

What do they start at and what does it look like? 6, 12, 18 months in, depending who they're calling.

If they're just calling around listings like just listed or just sold calls, it could be 100 to 200 contacts per listing taken. Maybe 200 and something depending on if they're on a team with a reputation or not. Right. If you're just an agent starting out with no rep, I don't know, I don't know what it would be. Right. But 250 contacts for listing taken might not be bad. That could be in line. But then as you track, you start to notice it goes to 180 contacts for listing and then 120 and last like two years ago, I think I was at about 25 contacts per listing taken. Now I'm at like five contacts.

Context, man. So you, so you were starting out at 2:50.

Yeah.

And it took you probably almost a straight line, I bet, to get down to. You said 25. And now, now you're probably able to really pick who you want to call.

Exactly. Right.

So you're, you're, you're 10 times more efficient on the phone 15 years in than you were when you first started. Potentially.

And I think part of that, like you said, is people. Why aren't people great prospectors is because they're not willing to be bad prospectors first. And it takes a lot of humility to get that much rejection. But then when you're clear on your goals and it's not really a no, it's a next, what are you moving towards? And you just constantly have energy and enthusiasm. Right. You're progressively moving towards your goal without a loss of enthusiasm. And you're like one step closer because you know, you know that it takes 120 contacts and what there was 98. Now I just got to talk to another 30 something, 20 something people. Good to go. Right. Like you just knowing your numbers, your prospecting numbers takes a lot of the anxiety and rejection out of it because it's not rejection. You're just, it takes 120 people. So you're going to get all those notes. So just knowing your numbers really helps as you move along.

What advice would you have for someone out there that's listening that, that wants to build a big business and they struggle with, you know, there seems to be a Lot of folks that, that want a thing, but they're not willing to do the thing. Like the.

Well, then do you really want the thing?

Yeah, so, so what, what advice?

So I would check that. I would check that your check yourself. Like, are you willing to do whatever it takes to get there? And real estate is not a great industry for people that are not committed. I don't know if you found that as well. Right. But like if you're, you know, part time is a no time agent. Right. And so I would check that first of, like, what are you committed to? What are you willing to do? And you and I might have a little different answers. Right. Because I didn't read e Myth until more recently than you did. Right. But I knew the sales fundamentals and put myself through that. So I would say if you're not willing to get on the phone four, six, eight hours, if you're new, I can't imagine two hours is enough. I just can't imagine. Because what else are you doing with your day? Let's say you have 14 hours, 10 hours, whatever it is, what else are you doing? You don't have many deals going. Right. And like, could you, could you say, okay, I am going to not check email or text messages or anything until 11:30am okay, that's it. And then from 7:30am to 11:30am you get four hours of prospecting and you just do it. And then you get back on the phones at 1:30 till about 4pm 4:30pm there's your eight hours right there. Like, what else do you have to do? What else do you have to do during the day?

Yeah. And it's. And the bigger question is, what could possibly be more productive? Or what's the most effective use of my time right now for the stage of the business that I'm in?

That's it. Well, I got to clean my house. Okay. $100 an hour to hire somebody. 150, whatever it is. Okay, next. What else is getting in the way? Well, I have to go get food. Okay, well, there's something called grubhub, right? You get your food delivered every day. All right, done. What else is getting in the way? What else is getting in the way from that big rock called prospecting and lead generation, whatever you want to call it, and just solve for X, just solve for that. Okay. What is going to get in the way? Solve for that and then you have your eight hours. So again, I would just say probably two hours. I mean, unless you said somebody wants to get a big Big business. Right. If you want to do, you know, a smaller business, then probably two hours is enough. Is enough. Maybe.

Yeah. And you mentioned it earlier in the conversation where you need to do the thing that you're going to invite others into your world to do. And so if you haven't spent the time. I mean, I only spent about. I feel like a loser compared to you. I only spent about 15 hours. And this is just an interesting conversation because I think I called one expired and he was mean and I'm like, definitely not doing that. And so I figured out a way to market to expires where they would.

Call me, which is great, but, you know, which is. I mean, that's a great system as well. I just, I figured when I heard that the grumbly expired, I thought, this is awesome, because you're going to be mean to everyone else and nobody's going to want to call them. The obstacle is the way. Right. The more ornery they are.

Yeah. The reason people don't do things that are hard is because they're hard.

Because they're hard. And so you look for what is, you know, what are those hard things. Right. But now I would also spend an equal or greater amount of time honing your skills. I wouldn't just cut your teeth on the phone eight hours a day without working on your skills, that you should spend an equal amount of time per week, if possible. So if you have eight hours on the phone or whatever is realistic, four to six hours. Do a couple hours a day of role play and practice and script practice and listening to the people that are doing the calls the way you should want to be doing them. There's enough material out there that you can hear it and implement that as well. So I would just say that's the other part of it is skills. Skills practice as well.

Yeah. And our most successful members that have achieved, like, the full progression where they're, you know, I've got a guy working like 90 minutes a week. He'll sell 325 homes this year. You know, he. All he needs to do at this point. I mean, he has people that are coaching even one step backwards. The only thing he would do is coach his agents to stay on task. You know, so it's like it's going from working, working like 10 men to teaching 10 men how to work. And that's. That's the ultimate, you know, transition. And that's where. And you and I had a conversation about this the other day. That's where there. There's more impact in that, you know, to, to. To. To just be the guy that's going to just crush it all day long alone. There's only so much impact you can have in terms of teaching other people and enriching.

That's what I wanted to ask you also is do you think an agent can be really good at the end of the day if they haven't gone through all these things we're talking about that it takes to be great, like sticking to a schedule if you just provide your team with a certain amount of leads?

No, all of those teams, in my experience, that come up from a loose accountability with spending money or with their time, they're very low profit margins. And the team leaders end up selling half the homes themselves so that they can make less money than their net profit. You know, so I've coached guys doing 6 million GCI making 750,000, and their own GCI is a million. And it's like.

So they're losing money on the team.

Yeah. So it's like this whole.

So, you know, that's what I would invite all the team leaders to think about of, like, who do we have to grow into? Who do we have to become to be able to make that sort of impact with our agents?

Awesome. That's a good. A good end off point. Thank you, Lee, for your time. This is really, really good. And I would say for anyone that's struggling out there with, you know, how do I do more? How do I make more money, experience more freedom, you know, have more impact? Just join the conversation@realestatebschool.com and Lee, I appreciate your time, brother, and I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with you.

Awesome.

All right, see you soon.