Increase Your Net Worth While Decreasing Your Hours Worked

Have you ever wondered, you know, how some folks can make a seven figure income even in real estate and other agents are working, you know, the same or even more hours and they're not making a whole lot of money? You know, it's a tricky subject to talk about and it's rarely talked about in our industry. You know, our industry sort of puts guys and girls on a pedestal that do a lot of transactions and nobody really talks about net worth. And are those folks systematically increasing their net worth? And if you struggle with this concept of, you know, turning your efforts, the thing you do every day, all day long, and the stress that that brings to your life and the things you sacrifice to do it, if you struggle to turn that into money in the bank and real net worth and to just watch your net worth increase over time? I want to dig into how I've done it in my business and how I've done it with real estate. You know, I went from making no money per hour as a lowly new real estate agent to in a single year, I made over $2,000 an hour as a real estate team leader. And the process to get there wasn't an easy process and it was super rewarding and super fun. So if you're at the point in your journey where you struggle to sort of put these dots together, I've got a special training for you that I'll let you know about at the end of the video. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up, hit the like button, make sure you subscribe and turn notifications on so you're going to be the first to know about new videos and leave me comments so we can have a back and forth and challenge each other to live bigger and better lives through our businesses. What does the process look like? You know, no matter where your net worth is today, what does it look like to go from, let's say your net worth is $50,000. How can it go from $50,000 net worth to $500,000 to 5 million? What does that process look like? You know, since I've been in real estate, I've more than 10x'd my net worth. And I don't say that to impress you more, just to make the point that I didn't bring any special skill into real estate. I had never sold. Well, I'll take that back. I sold newspapers door to door for two weeks in high school. I was miserable at it. So I didn't bring this like amazing salesperson skill set into real estate. I had never built a Business before, I had never come up with any marketing techniques or hired people or, you know, managed salespeople. I had done none of that. I was committed to figuring out a way to get out of the corporate grind where I couldn't detach time and money and getting into a world where I could put system systems together. I could bring people into the world, you know, into my business world, and help them help me build a business that gave them what they wanted. And at the same time, it allowed me to have some freedom of time and freedom of money. So when I break down the journey of like a struggling real estate agent to someone who's financially, financially free, it starts with a calculation that's super simple, might be tough to do. Not tough, because it's hard math. It might be tough to look at the number that it will reveal. And so let me run it by you. I read a book, and I don't even know if the book is worth reading because I remember nothing about the book except this single calculation. This was back in 2008, and I remember it because I used my 2000 income and hours to do the calculation. The challenge was to be honest with yourself about the money you made versus the hours that you worked. And so at the time, this was 2007. I grossed like 240k. I sold 27 homes. I gave a good $65,000 to my broker, which was like, he didn't give me a single deal. So that relationship ended pretty quickly. So I took about 175 and I netted about 36. So 175. I spent about 140 on who the heck knows what. I was spending money like a drunken sailor. And the net result was 36,000 of income. And I worked 70 hours a week for 10 months that year. And so the calculation ended up being $14 an hour. I didn't know it then. I now call that my Business Freedom Index. Not real free, but it's called the Business Freedom Index. And there are six phases of growth that you'll go through as a business builder, you know, in your business growth journey, if you're going to sort of have a chance of generating net worth as a real estate agent, you have to consider these different phases of growth. And so I want to challenge you right now. Maybe it's pausing the video to do that calculation. What did you make last year? I take my adjusted gross income AGI for my tax return. I run super clean books. I've got a few businesses and interests that all feed into a single number on my tax return. Then I literally go through my calendar to calculate the number of hours that I worked. And what does that calculation look like for you? There's six phases. While you're doing that calculation, I'm going to tell you the six phases. There's the start phase. This is where most of the industry lives. It's zero to $25 an hour. That's where I was in 2007. Then there's 25 to $50 an hour is what we call the ramp phase. This is doing a little bit better. 50 bucks an hour is really good money, right? It's not 500 an hour. It's really good money. So that's the ramp phase. That's where you're doing, you know, between 100,000 GCI and 500,000 GCI. Then we've got the build phase, which is 500 to a million GCI. You can make 500 or 50 to $100 an hour. Then we go into the lead phase, where you're bringing some team members on, you're learning how to coach and lead and manage, and you can go from 100 to $250 an hour. Then if you decide to exit production, you can go from 250 to $500 an hour. And then if you make the shift to ownership, which is the shift that I made, you can go from 500 to 1,000 plus dollars per hour, which in 2014, I made $2,300 an hour. So the journey for me was about one year at every phase of this. And I knew my business freedom index along the way. Here's the second part of the calculation and what I want to challenge you right now. Don't get discouraged about the number as it exists today. Somehow I glossed over that part of it. I instantly went to. I'm going to make $500,000 and I'm going to work 2,000 hours. So I ignored the fact that I made 36,000 working way too many hours. I simply ignored it. I'm like, okay, that's the past. It's already happened. I can learn from it. I'm going to make this kind of money working these kinds of hours. I remember that's $250 an hour. I remember I wrote that number everywhere. I was obsessed with this $250 an hour to the point where I was so frustrated. If I was touching things, anything in my business that I knew I could hire someone for less than 50 bucks an hour. So if I could hire you for less than 50 bucks, an hour, and I wanted to make 250. If I was doing any of those $50 or less hours activities, I was losing $200 an hour. So if I did activities all day long that I could hire someone to do for 50 or less, I lost, let's say, 10 hours a day, times 200, the Delta, $200 per hour. I would lose $2,000 a day if I did anything that I could hire someone else to do. Going from a solo agent and having this mindset, it wasn't like an instant overnight thing. I had to just determine what pieces of the business could I hire out right away to somebody that can come in and do those things better than me. My first administrator I hired part time for $14 an hour. She had worked seven years for another busy agent in our market. And she, that person retired and she found me on Craigslist. And 20 hours a week at 14 bucks an hour didn't last long because she instantly told me she needed to make $20 an hour and she needed to work full time. I was like, game on. Let's do this. Because I knew 20 was a whole lot less than 50. And she was willing to work 40 to 50 hours a week and do the things that I knew I couldn't do if I wanted to be successful and live a bigger life. And so I challenge you to think about, like, what is your number right now? What's your business freedom index? You know, are you one one through six? Right. One is zero to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 to 250, 250 to 500. 500,000 plus 500. The phase six of this is possible. And I'll have to take you through some other trainings. You'll have to find other videos where I get more specific about the steps there. And just trust now, suspend disbelief, just to know that it's possible. But look at all the things you're doing all day long. You know, when I think about someone that saw this from a few perspectives, it's Dan Jones who's in my market. He was on my real estate team. So he moved from Hilton Head, South Carolina to join my real estate team. His mom was in the process. She was ill and she was, you know, he knew she was going to pass away. He wanted to spend time with her and support her. And so he's on my real estate team, got licensed to join my team. He started out as inside sales, moved to outside sales, did really well. He was a top producing agent on my team. I knew he had a business in him and he was real open with me. He launched his own business a couple years in a row on his own. He did 60 to 65 units. And so that's probably at the time was probably, you know, 400,000 top line GCI. I think he took home 80 to 100,000. He was working 70 hours a week. I do the quick calculation, about 35 bucks an hour. He was stuck in that ramp phase. That's where most busy agents get stuck. They get stuck making somewhere between 20 to 50. Some are lucky enough to get a really good administrator, maybe a showing agent and hit that 50 to 100. He was stuck though two years in a row. I launched Real Estate Beat School. I said, let me show you how to do it right. You saw this from the inside. Let me show you. Like the step by step process. He went from 65. So he agreed reluctantly. Went from 65 to 105 to 175 families served to 225 families served to 275 to over 300 this year. And when I think about his part of that journey, it was just a constant little bit of uncomfortableness, just letting go of the pieces of the job that he couldn't do that great. You know, so bringing on a showing agent, bringing in a second administrator using leverage through marketing systems or you know, lead conversion systems. Right. The stuff that I teach and I preach in real estate B school, just doing those things step by step fashion. Two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, he, it was time for him to get out of production. He wanted to make that final shift to owner status in his business. The motivation was that his daughter was going to be here and he wanted to take off two months straight to be with his wife and his new daughter. And he was able to do it and he's never looked back. And so he continues to run a multi million dollar business working less than 40 hours a week. He went from 70 hours to around 35 hours. And he's 5x his income. So his business freedom index has gone from about 25 to over $500 an hour. And so it's not only possible, it's predictable. If you're struggling to put it together and your time isn't your own, come spend 21 days with me. It's our time freedom challenge. I'm a train coach. You hold you accountable, push you and it's going to be awesome. I'll do live Q and A and I'll give you tools that you can actually use to make the shift to delink time and money. That's what I want most for you and to look at your business a little differently. Thetimefreedomchallenge.com or click on the link below. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up. Give me a like on the video. Subscribe to the channel, turn notifications on and make sure you leave comments. We will see you in the next video.