How to Create a Compelling Vision that Drives Results

Welcome Real Estate Game.

Now we're live.

What's up guys? Welcome Real Estate Game changers. My name is John Mikish and I'm accompanied by Lars Hedinborg and AJ Maida. And excited to be here with you guys today. The sun is shining. It's an amazing day. And this call today is something near and dear to my heart as I know it is to these gentlemen. And we're going to get into what that is, but we're going to be talking all about how to create a compelling vision that drives results. And this is actually a call that came from last week's call where we started to, to dive in a little bit to vision. And we said oh no, no, that is such a good topic that we have to save it for its own episode. So without any further ado, I want to jump in and I'm going to kick it to you, Lars. First, what does casting a compelling vision, what does that mean to you.

Man? To me, my, my mind goes to how hard it was to, to sort of leave a cozy corporate job and, and get into the, just the, the belly of the beast in, in real estate and just grind. And, and the vision is the only. My personal vision was the only thing that kept me going. So it wasn't that I had a love of like working with buyers and sellers and my heart just, you know, was in the transaction. And like the lovey dovey part of, wasn't like that at all. It was the only thing that kept me going was a compelling vision for a future that was different than my present. And so I was like literally willing to do whatever it took to, to, to realize that vision, you know, and I did like a 3 and a 5 and a 10 year vision when I first got into real estate. And I think just most people that they literally are, are rudderless. Right, right. They're kind of just going through life with no vision at all. And so, and it could be a vision, it just doesn't have to be just in business. I mean, we'll talk about lifestyle and your personal finances and your physical body, your relationships, your marriage, your, you know, it's a vision for every area of your life that, that is meaningful to you. And that's the only thing that I think will, will have you make different decisions today. I was talking about this recently, like if, when I ate a donut, if I instantly gain like I saw my belly get fatter like that, that, that eating the donut does not align with my vision of where I want my physical body to be. And somehow, you know, agents kind of just, they. They cast a vote every day for, you know, for. For. For not being the person they want to be according to the vision, or at least mentally what they have in their mind. So that's kind of what. What the question brings up for me.

I think it's really going to have. I think we'll all have a different definition of what casting a compelling vision is to each of us. Because it's personal. Right? As. As Lars, you share that. Like, I know you personally, and that sounds exactly like you. AJ what does a compelling vision mean to you?

I was just thinking when Lars was saying about the. The belly expanding when you eat the donut. Like, like how simple and easy with success be. Like, whether it's your body or your business, if that actually happened, like, you don't make your prospecting calls that day and immediately, like, your bank account is empty. Like, you would be so on it with everything. That would be really, really cool. Or wouldn't it be that it would be crazy. Yeah. The vision, for me, man, is so important, and. And it's a place that I like to spend a lot of time. For me, it's really exciting to. To cast a vision for. For myself, for my. My life, my family. And one of the things that I personally like to do is. Is write everything down. I. I think the best when I'm writing them down, so. So casting a vision is really just spending time with yourself and getting super clear on. On what you want your future self, your future life to look like. And. And what I discovered. And I'm excited for today's calls or today's call as we pack. This is. Casting a vision for yourself is a lot different than casting a vision for your business or your team. And that's one thing that I learned over the years. So casting a vision is just getting really clear on what you want your future self, your future life to look like.

So good, man. Yeah. I know that this brings you a lot of joy, and it's fun to be around you when you're talking about your vision, because it makes me want to make my vision greater. And I think that's. That's a true sign of a leader, and I think something that we've all brought to our teams. When I think of a compelling vision, you know, I like to keep things really simple and synthesize the concept down. And for me, it means change. Because no matter where we are, no matter how great or not great our life is, when we talk about a Compelling vision. It has to involve change and that it has to be compelling enough to. And we have to make it compelling enough that we want to go through that change, because nobody likes change. I mean, the market's changing right now. We're all, we're all noticing that and feeling that to some extent or another. So what have you guys done in the past, maybe for yourself or with your teams that you have like actually done, tactfully done to incorporate vision?

Yeah, I'll jump on that. For me personally, I kind of develop a format that works really well for me. So this is going to be the answer for the personal side of it. So, so I created what I call a vision sheet. On one side it's all my goals broken down, my values, my mission statement. And on the back it's images of what I'd like to accomplish. So similar to maybe a dream board vision board, I like to call it a vision sheet or laminated two sided. They can go everywhere with me. So like Lars, I break it down into one year goals, one to three year goals, and then five to ten year goals. So I have personal and I have business. And then up top I have a mission statement, my values, affirmation. And this is just something that keeps me motivated. Like that compelling, that compelling future that you're talking about. I remember when I first started calling expired listings early in my real estate career, really the vision. And I think this is important for a lot of agents to hear because sometimes when you just have a 5, 10 year goal down here, it doesn't really feel real. So I like to, you know, people talk about what's your big why? You know, that could be your vision, your big why. And I kind of said, hey, what's your why right now? Because I think having a why right now puts agents into action faster than, you know, for me. When I started, I was 26, that was 10 years ago. I was like, I want to have a house on the lake one day. Like that was my compelling future. But it wasn't real enough, it wasn't tangible enough to really get me to pick up the phone day after day getting rejection. So when I discovered my why right now was simply pay the bills, I used to say, 20 contacts a day keeps the bill collectors away, man. That fired me up on a daily basis to make the calls. So I think it's having a nice blend of what is your why right now, what is your big buy in the future, and using those short term, midterm and long term goals. So that's that's my, my answer for, for that.

Yeah, it's awesome. And you know what's, what's funny is we all talk about this, the three of us, all the time. Like that sheet right there. There's so much power in writing it down and visually like it. And, and we've all talked about this, how we can go back and look at those journals and those one page goal sheets from years past and it's eerie how much of it has come to pass and, and we've accomplished those things. So, you know, you may be watching this and this may be a new concept for you and it's so simple, but the question is, will you do it? And if you will, you're going to find the power in it. Lars, you've run many different teams in business. You've been an advocate of this personally for as long as I've known you. What are some specific things that you've done to help cast the compelling vision and draw them into creating a vision of their own?

Yeah, so, so practically, I mean, when I think about the first, I don't even know what I called it at the time. I called it a business plan. But when you actually read it, it was more vision related. And I remember, I just, I just thought about like the five or six areas of my life and it was 2009, so this was before started my real estate team. I didn't have any sales background or anything like that. I was, I was new to real estate and I just, I knew. So I sold 27 homes in my first 10 months and then I was on track that year. I did 44 transactions my first full year. So I kind of knew I figured something out. It wasn't elegant. I was working all the out of bounds evenings, weekends, and all of it missing out on, you know, time with, with family and we had one kid and trying for our second and you know, just missing out on the stuff that I, I said really mattered. So I just decided that okay, this is going to be different in the future. And I had a. So it was a 2010, 2012, 2014, it was like a 1, 3, 5, 10. And, and I remember, which I don't, I don't actually do that today. I just do a three year vision, one year plan and I work inside 90 days and weekly and daily. But at the time, I remember it was 2009 and I wrote 2020 and I still have this plan and it was laminated and it was on a big version like 11 by 14, it was eight and a half by 11. And then I even had smaller versions that I can, you know, that are like sort of half, half pages. And it went everywhere with me. And the front side was my professional, my business vision and even some tactics in the back was, was personal. But I got really clear on what I wanted my life to look like. And I knew where I was was not it. Like, it was. I was doing 50, 60 hours probably as a real estate agent and you know, 10, 15 plus hours, like building the business, which was a separate sort of activity in the system side of it. But it did get me fired up. Like, it, it, the market was complete crap. So it was the Great Recession in our market and we're all sort of in similar market. Back in the day, we went from 15,000 agents to 5,000 agents, you know, and I just refused to participate in that recession. And the only reason, or probably the most important reason is that every day I read like, why am I doing this? Like, what's the reason I'm doing this? You know, to provide a lifestyle for my family that they never thought was possible. And that was like, first because me and my wife grew up super poor and jacked up. Chaotic childhoods. And, you know, I just didn't want it to be that way for, you know, for, for, for my kids and, but, but there's power in it and, and there will never be the right time to do it. Like, who, who has, like, oh, let me just block out, you know, 10 to 12 hours over the next few days to work on.

Did Lars freeze?

I got Lars frozen.

All right, cool.

Hey, while he's coming back online.

Can you, can you guys hear me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was weird, all the screens. I must have been throwing off too much heat with my, my power. So, so it was that document that. And every year since that got me through and, and it really just allowed me to do the things that suck and, and in building anything worth having, there are just parts of it that, that suck. And you gotta do them, you know, if, if you're gonna have a better lifestyle in the future. So. And then once I started bringing people into my world, you know, it was creating a vision for the business that, and, and showing how they can feed into the vision. So, you know, went from 44 sides my first full year, me just in production to, you know, 450 sides with 10 producing agents. And I was out of production, you know, so I showed them like, hey, you could come in and sell four, five, six homes a month. And we had agents selling over 100 homes in a year. So making their vision fit inside the overall vision of the company and having them go through the process, you know, they went through the personal and professional vision exercise as well. Because most people, you know, we're pretty high performers, or we love personal development, so we do it. But if you lined up a thousand real estate agents, I mean, five maybe, you know, it wouldn't be 1% that have. Have an actual vision.

Yeah, it's. I like what AJ Said about having a vision or having a. Like, what is your why right now? Like, I think that's super powerful because when I think back of, like, my journey and experiencing this and casting vision and coming up with my goals, like, it's so. I was so different 10, 15 years ago than I am now. Like, as you were sharing that, Lars, I was thinking back to when did I first start doing this? For me, it was 2008. I got involved with this guy who became my mentor, and he had me reading the book what to say when you talk to yourself by Chad Helmstetter. And I was writing out affirmations. I had, like, these, you know, those Moleskine, like, five by eight little journals. I had those journals, and I started writing in them, and I have tons of them now, like, a whole stack of them. I actually keep those in my safe because I love to go back and look at them and see. I remember in 2008, I was sitting in my bed, propped up with pillows because I didn't even have a headboard. I was in a townhouse that I could barely afford, and I was writing out, like, right, what do I want right now? Like, what would my idea of a perfect life look like right now? And it's kind of personal, but I'll share it. You know, I wanted a Craftsman house, and I specifically wanted a Craftsman house, like, that style built by Kenneth Beeler, who was a builder in my marketplace. I wanted a Mercedes black S550. I wanted a Breitling watch. Like, these were just, like, aspirational things to me at the time when I was broke, as a joke. Things that I thought I wanted, right? What's crazy is I create that book. I'm going through that. And then that book becomes last year's book and the year before his book and the year before that book. And by 2013, I had bought my. My Breitling watch because I had my first $100,000 profit month. Month. I was living in a Kenneth Beeler Craftsman house with a swimming pool, which is crazy because it wasn't like I saved up the money and sought him out and built it. I actually put an offer in on a foreclosure that had 30 plus offers on it and I won it. And it was a house built by him. So it's like these things have a eerie way of just like the power of the universe is real when you put it out there. And. And Lars, like you, I think what happened for me is I got excited about this and then I naturally want to share my excitement with others. The others happen to be my real estate team. And I said, hey, this is where I want the company to go to. Like, this is the vision I have for the company. And I think looking back, one of the things that I was able to do well was just bring the people into my vision for the company. So, like, if we're going to achieve this as a company, the only way we can achieve that is if we all hit our goals. And one of the things that, that we used to do, my wife used to lead this, and she was awesome at it, is we would bring all the agents in at night to our office, and we would have stacks and stacks of magazines and we would create vision boards together. So we do this like, you know, once a year. A couple times we did it twice a year because we were growing so fast. We had so many new people, and everybody in their desk area would have this huge poster board with all these cutouts of what they wanted. And we try to help them make that part of their daily practice too. And a proud daddy moment for me is when I hear about people that used to work for me doing these same parties at their teams and their companies now. I think it's really cool. But let's, let's switch gears for a minute because I think we'll serve the audience well if we can share with them maybe sometimes when we failed at casting vision and what were the consequences? So we, we haven't been perfect at this. None of us are. Can you think back either of you guys to specific times where, you know, you maybe went a direction with your company, your team, and you tried to cast a vision and it failed?

Yeah, I'll jump on that. I'm not sure if it was like necessarily be formally casting the vision to my team or maybe just informally casting it, by the way I live my life. But when I was running a real estate team, a traditional real estate team, the reason I got into real estate was for financial freedom. Time frame, location freedom. So as I was starting to build out this team because I saw that as the best way to live my life, having those freedoms. I wanted my team to also have that. And what I discovered through that was oftentimes maybe the agents that were on my team, some of them just didn't have the same maybe work ethic that I had other maybe things going on there. But it was almost like I was leading by example by having this freedom type lifestyle even as a real estate agent, a producing real estate agent. And it just didn't work for them because they weren't willing to put in the short term work that I put in. So I think by maybe informally casting a vision of hey, this is how a real estate agent can have this freedom type lifestyle, they saw it as well, I don't need to work that hard. But they didn't see the two years prior that I busted my butt to get to where I was. So it really didn't work that well. I tried to run my team where they didn't have to make a prospect kind of on their own times versus morning from 8 to 11, which is what it took me to build my business was having that set prospecting time. It's more like, hey, you know, you're your own boss, you, you make time for it. So I discovered through that process that, that I just didn't like managing people. I didn't like leading a team in a traditional sense because I, I somewhat felt, I don't know if guilty is the right word, but I had created this amazing lifestyle for myself and then I was hiring agents on my team to grind when I was already out of the grind phase and the thrive, thrive phase. So maybe I had some mindset stuff around that where it was like, well, I want them to have the same freedom that I have, but yet they didn't work for it yet. And essentially what it, what ended up happening was I ran a team that was successful in its own right, close to 100 transactions a year, but could have been a lot more profitable. So if I were to redo it, I would have been a lot more strict with, with casting the vision of where the team's heading and helping them like John did with the magazines, to find their own vision, own vision inside of a very clear structure of a team. But the solution to that was, what we're doing now with exps is I can now cast this vision of a freedom lifestyle to my now team of over 6,500 agents and, and they're able to do the activities that allow for that type of freedom. So it's been Cool to see how my, I guess, vision mindset failed in one model, at least in my mind, was kind of a failure in sense of how I felt about it and now has thrived beyond my wildest imagination in this different model. So that was cool. Kind of looking at the agenda for today and reflecting back on that five years ago, the last time I was running the team. So that's cool.

Yeah. Now I'll kind of pick up there, you know, answering your question, John, but tying in what, what AJ just said, you know, in, in a lot of ways, I think we're all limited a little bit, I think. John, I first heard this, this quote and it's not, it's not credited to anyone, but the most expensive thing you can own is a closed mind. And you and I shared that closed mindedness when it came to, you know, AJ's view or, or his experience, you know, building a different type of real estate organization. And so to answer the question, you know, you either you're listening and you just, you, you're not in the game yet, right? You haven't figured out how to sell 30, 40 homes and, and you're not sort of doubling down and just doing like, there's just no secret to being successful in real estate anymore. You could just go to YouTube and you know, follow us or follow others that, that have done it and they're teaching you how to sell 100 homes and, and you'll dismiss it and say like, you know, either you dismiss it or you're like, man, I could do that too. So you've gotta, you've got to figure that part out first. AJ was able to figure that, John was able to figure it out. I was able to figure out. We didn't know each other back in the day, so we all did it independently. And then once, once you get to that sort of traditional top producer level focus, that then really you have a decision to make the thing about AJ's vision and he's sort of the, the youngest OG probably that, that I'll ever, I'll ever know the thing that I didn't truly understand and this is maybe where I was thinking even smaller. So I was completely closed off to, to an opportunity because I thought it had to be a certain way. So if you're selling 25 homes a year now and you're like, that's top 1.51%, right? And you're not thinking bigger than that. I was at a point where like, no, a real estate team is the way to do it. I created Massive leverage. It is super hard. Right. And the type of freedom A.J. was looking for, I hadn't really contemplated. Well, two things really. I mean I thought I had financial freedom until I look at what we're doing now and just like holy, holy schnikes. But the other freedom was location freedom. You know, like never have I been able to, you know, I was out 22 of 31 days in March and you know, did a six figure month in just the revenue share opportunity, you know, which is just, it's wild when you think about it. So my miss on the vision side is like what, what could it look like? You know, is it possible instead of dismissing, you know, because so many people. And again we're like, we, we talk about EXP because we're freaking excited about it. It's not the EXP show. At the same time, if you're sort of like a little bit like you think you know what it is, I promise you don't know what it is. Right. John and I, we dismissed it. Super closed off to it. Yeah. And, and, and it was a lack of vision around it.

You know, what do they say you're. A lot of times your initial success prevents you from your ultimate success. So like you were really successful, right? Like, and, and you had a vision that got you there. That, that I think you were probably still holding on to. How is that? How has that changed?

Yeah, right. And now it's like, you know, I had like 10 or 12 agents in my world and my success was, was through them. Actually quite, quite selfish, you know, if I'm being honest. It was like, how can this provide me a level of freedom? But I saw my agents, my top agents, they were all successful, but they worked evenings and weekends. I mean they were grinding all the time, you know, five, six years into, into my doing 100 transactions, but grinding. Right. And they were okay with it because I provided stuff that they couldn't do on their own. What was my. I lost my train of thought. What was the question, John?

Like, like how has that changed? You know, we were close minded to something and then, you know, now you have.

Yeah, right, right, right.

So, so yeah, so thinking I could like impact 10 or 12 lives, like what could it look like? And just grinding them out and having agents leave and not really providing a big enough opportunity for them like what it could. Now my vision is like, I will, because I've seen it modeled, I will have 6, 000 agents in my direct organization that I'm improving their life significantly. They have to show up, right? They have to do the work. But now I'm able to, to, like, quite realistically, I, I know that's going to happen, right? I know that I'll have 6,000 agents in Real Estate B School. Powered by Exp Realty. It's a subset of Game Changer Nation. And we're all sort of helping each other achieve that vision. And in a million years, I wouldn't have thought that way before, like, thousands of agents that I'm partnered with versus, like, keeping, trying to corral 10 or 12 agents to stay in my world as long as they possibly could. And then when they leave, they're just gone forever. And you really don't help them or even talk to them, you know, after they give you years of their life. So that's kind of how my vision has shifted, is like, this is an infinite game that we're playing now. There's just no shortage on it. You know, it's, it's, it's pretty wild.

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

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

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

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

Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

But the.

The book Daring Greatly. Oh, this is Heavy by Brene Brown. And I'm going to read this. So this is the man in the arena. I think most folks don't even get in the arena like that. They're not even in the game of building a massive life for themselves. So this is from Theodore Roosevelt. And. And this is kind of the opening to. To the. The book Daring Greatly. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who. Who. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. And so I. I get emotional. I could cry reading that. Because you're. You're not. You've taken yourself out of the game before the game has even started, you know, and. And it's. Whatever. Whether it's like your freight agents are gonna, like, look at you differently because you do Facebook lives every day, you know, as a way to generate business. A girl. We just had another production mastermind, 30 listings in 90 days via Facebook Live. And she was not on video sort of previously. And, and. And a guy came on right afterwards and said, that's not predictable. I do circle prospecting and I get a listing every day. I'm like, you do you like. At least both of them are in the arena, right? To cold called. You're in the arena. You're for sure marred and bloody. But she put herself out there. So it's books like that, you know, if you struggle with, with not even like obvious confidence deficits, but you, you struggle to really get after it and really like just lay it down. Like I'm gonna produce at a level that I've never produced 10x more than I've ever produced before. You're literally the only thing that can hold your. It's you versus you. That, that's kind of the beauty of it is that it's you versus you. So you could do it. And the good thing in real estate is that most agents won't do it. So it's actually like it's bad if you don't do it. But the good thing is that most won't do it. And so you can do it. You know, if every 90% of agents went out there and sold 30 homes a year, that'd be 27 million sales. And there's only four and a half million sales, you know, in available in, in the United States. So the math wouldn't even work. So it's books like that that really just challenge the way that you think and, and then just getting around, you know, some of the events that, that we've gone to and you hear, get in an environment where you can hear all of the stories, like all of the stories, you know, that we've heard by going to just two events a year. These are sort of growth, we call them build events. And the stories, I don't technically need to go to these events, right. I've sort of achieved some stuff where I could probably save on the travel. I could probably not be away from my routine and my family. But at the same time I'm inspired by these stories. You know, it's like, how did she do it? You know, I know the toil I went through to build a coaching company and then pivot it with your guys support, you know, two of the best guys I know to support me. So I know how I did it. It was super hard. But who is this person that has a thousand agents that she's leading? You know, like she had, she had no right to do that. She just decided she was going to do it. Right. So I love being encouraged and inspired by those stories and those are the things that really keep me going and keep me getting after it.

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

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

Yeah, for sure.

We're all, we're all doing the, the fountain life deal where we could live essentially forever. Yeah. So to answer this question specifically, it's, it's, it's changed over time. I, I went through a process. It was a book. You guys know the book. It was Michael Hyatt. It's his life planning book. I forget the name of it.

Year.

No, that. I'm obsessed with that one. That's by Brian Moran. But this one was Michael Hyatt and it's, it's his. Living Forward is the name of the book that, that's the book. And me and buddies of mine in a men's group went through this process and so I wrote a life plan. And the personal vision now is it's to deliberately and strategically invest my God given time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in ways that truly glorify him. To deeply love and faithfully lead my wife, my kids and my business partners, which are you guys, in ways that draw them closer to Jesus Christ. Not that you guys don't know Jesus, that sounds bad. To live an unapologetic and wholehearted Christ centered life each and every day. So to, to me, that has like a lot of meaning and, and depth and, and then there's a whole sort of, you know, life plan that will help me sort of live into that. But to not take a minute for granted, you know, to make really good decisions with my time, to get all my, my work done Tuesday through Thursday, 12 to 5, so I can do all the stuff, you know, that I want to do outside of work, you know, because there's a lot of stuff to do and then to, to just help others be successful and, and there's. Was it you, AJ that said. Well, you definitely were the three mountains. But there's a book called the Second Mountain which like the first mountain, Jarrick Robbins hooked, hooked me onto it. The first mountain is sort of traditional success and the second mountain mountain is impacting others and now we, the three of us, talk about Elfie. Like, we're only going to do things that are elfie, easy, lucrative, fun, fun. And I, I, I swiped those from Joe Polish, who's a marketing warrior, but then we added the I, which is impactful. Right. So let's only do things together that are really impactful, and they're easy, lucrative, and fun, and. And that's just going to be the way we roll for the rest of our time here.

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

Awesome, guys. Yup. We gotta run. We gotta serve our crew. We got a mastermind call coming up right now.

Let's go.

One last thing you wanted to say, buddy.

No, we gotta go. All right, we will see you next week. All right, see you guys.

Bye.

Later.