Learn How to Take Your 'Unfair' Share of Deals in the Current Market — Part 1

The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share it all with you. The good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results. You just got to do the work. All right, welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. So I'm going to dig in today with our coaches and we're going to do two parts here on how to take your unfair share of deals in the current market. And there's lots of fear, uncertainty and doubt. The FUD that is rampant with the NAR changes and the buyer side and you know, even NAR, our association, National association of Realtors is estimating like 600,000 agents are going to leave the business. And there's only like two, a little over 2 million in the U.S. so that's like a third that they're estimating will go away with some of the changes. We do not want that to happen to you. You are not here digging in to this training on a weekly basis. So you are just another byproduct of the changes that are occurring. The, the, the mastermind. This is actually a mastermind with our coaches, I think three or four of our coaches where I just guide them through some questions that are really kind of pressing our industry right now. And they have just this experience. They've each built businesses out of being a solo agent and adding leverage and building systems and having time and money freedom. And now they're helping others do it within the real estate B school ecosystem and specifically our million dollar agent method. So if you know you need another kind of step in your journey and you know, doing these free trainings is not quite getting you the results that you want. The million dollar agent method is only 90 days that we work together, so it's not this long term obligation. But the return is massive. I would estimate easily over a 10x return and I even guarantee $40,000 of additional gross commission income generated within the 90 days that we work together. Go to milliondollaragentmethod.com if you know that's you enjoy this part one in terms of taking your unfair share of the market. This is going to be good. All right, unmute yourselves. We're going to get after it. So, in true Lars fashion, I put together a list of questions this morning as I was sitting in the sauna. And so you guys have had only about an hour's advance notice, but what I thought we'd do, you guys have the unbelievable vantage point of not only one day you decided to get a license, you joined a brokerage that gave you probably no guidance on how to get super busy and be a successful realtor, but somehow you figured it out. Then you probably got so busy where you just had to figure some crap out and add some people around you, and you figured that part out, and you've all done that at a high level. And now you get to coach others that are on a version of that journey from, like, newer to the business. I want to get to two transactions per month, and you've coached people that are doing 20, 30 transactions per month. So you guys have seen all of it. And this is just your chance to speak. Like, there's no specific client you're talking to. So sometimes when we're talking to a client, we almost have to, like, tiptoe around what we want to tell them, because we don't. But I just want the, like, unfiltered, raw, like, coach perspective. Knowing all that, you guys know, what advice would you give? And I'll kind of guide you through some questions here. But it is just an interesting time in real estate. There's just a lot of fear around what's going on on the buyer side. And there's agents and clients of ours that have already pulled the rip cord, and they're like, I'm out. I'm giving away my license. I'm not going to do this anymore. And then generally, real estate is just really hard, you know, outside of that additional fear that's kind of entered into our world. So real quick, and I only want you to spend, like, maybe 60, 90 seconds. I just want you to kind of give a brief overview of, like, market, like, your journey, what your, you know, what your business looks like, that sort of thing. Stacy, I'll let you go first.

All right. I'm in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and my market when I started was 150,000. Now it's at, like, population 225,000. Built my business while having two babies 16 months apart. My husband has been amazingly supportive, so I was able to build a team. I was part of another team as well, and we had great success there. And then second team built from zero to 300 transactions in five years and sold that team for a seven figure valuation using all these systems and stuff you're hearing about today, including Kirby's database system. And now I get to coach agents. Been coaching for 10 years. That's really my passion is to help others build a bit a business with efficiency through system and people.

Yeah, the, the funnier I told the one part of the story. Stacy was the first client, but it was like three months in. I'm like, hey, can you coach for me too? And you're like, I don't know, this seems weird. I'm only like a client for like three months. I'm like, you're going to be great. It's going to be awesome. So that's how real estate B school is really born. When Stacy gave me money and then she helped me pull all of the stuff stuff together. So. All right, cool. Ben, you're next in the, in the rotation here. So real, real quick overview.

Yeah. So I'm in the Greater Syracuse, New York market. Average price in our market's about 200,000. In 2017, I started building a team, hired a coach because I needed help, didn't go as thought I as well as I planned. Hired a second coach, didn't go as well as I planned. So hired B school in September of 2019 and then just implemented systems every quarter. And so I've been coaching now for B school for maybe two years or so and, and I'm lucky. I have an amazing team that just have stepped up to the plate since I've started coaching. And you know, my operations team does really well and the sales team does really well. So it's, you know, know abled me to kind of pull out of production as much as I want to and spend more time coaching.

And one thing I want to say, even though the journey of everyone on the screen here is, you know, in some sort of team systems building capacity, that that's not going to be the focus of this per se. So I don't want you to check out thinking like, oh, I don't want a team or you will get to the point in your journey where you will need leverage to have any freedom whatsoever. Whether that's you want to get to two to three, four transactions per month, but you still want to have a life. You will need systems. You will need someone coming into your world to help you on the journey. All right, Chris.

All right. So I'm in the South, South Jersey market. I got into real estate probably around 2014 and only because my wife started selling real Estate in 2009 and got to a point where she was, you know, selling a lot as a solo agent. Decided next best thing was to start a team rather than hiring like an operations type person. I quit my job of 16 years and we started a team, hired our first buyer's agent, and my whole job since then has been just, you know, implementing systems and tracking and accountability. We start with real estate B school, probably In, I think, 2016, I'm not mistaken. And, and we were able to just, you know, use everything we learned there and quickly grew from, you know, $12 million a year to, you know, 40, 45 million. I think we've gotten to 50 million recently. So. Yeah, and that's just kind of been my focus as, you know, all operations and implementing systems.

Awesome. How about you, Greg?

Been in the business for over 20 years. Had four small kids, quit my job. Wife wasn't working, so she helped in the business. We had no income, had no experience, Couldn't believe how dysfunctional real estate was compared to a normal job. Started building a team from the very start, early 2000s. Got up to somewhere in the low 400 units over a long, long period of time by slow growth. I still am sitting in my office right now, still working in real estate, and I've been coaching for seven, eight, nine years now, I guess.

Awesome.

All right, cool. So let's, let's kind of take a, a big picture view of your journey. You know, kind of maybe specific to you, but also kind of like in. As you guys are coaching, you know, you, you've got small teams, you're coaching, you've got solo agents that are trying to grow a business and, and kind of get to the 2, get to the 2, 3, 4 transactions per month. But as you look back on your business building journey, what, what would you say the, the few key moves that had the most impact when, when you look at like, man, I have figured some stuff out. We've all made all the mistakes. But what would you say, like the three, two or three kind of big moves that you made that had the biggest impact? Stacy, why don't you go first?

One thing for me was determining what holes I had in the business and what needed to be plugged first. So, like, finding that one domino that gave me more time and more freedom in my business and it could slowly start knocking down others. So really finding that, that thing I could just start with, focus on and implement fully. Secondly, I think working off a plan, it wasn't my natural ability to stay focused on one thing. It was like, try to find a million things and Whatever excites me at the time. That's what I'll. I'll work on. So really focusing on, you know, quarterly planning, which we didn't call it that at the beginning, I don't know what we called it, but just working through that two or two and a half number two, two and a half is utilizing the tool to their math. So really just having a couple tools and, and figuring out how to really use them. Like, we all know how to use our phones, but maybe not fully, but then we get better and better. So really utilizing my CRM, really utilizing like a tracking, which was honestly a Google sheet, so. But just using them to the fullest and then hiring a really great assistant because I didn't start with a really. Well, she was really great, but just it wasn't working for the business. And so finding that person that I could really. That could move as fast as I could, but also slow me down when I was like adding new things, which goes back to working off a plan.

Really good. How about you, Ben?

I think for me it was two things. Um, it was the realization when I read the quote in Atomic Habits that we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. And understanding that I just couldn't like, push through. I had to get systems implemented. And then the second thing was just, I think one of my, you know, superpowers is staying focused and not squirreling out as hard as it is. And my coach Greg is on here, so he might call me out on that. But, you know, I just have a lot of things under the black line on the whiteboard, you know, and so trying to, you know, not go to the next whiz bang thing, but really focus on, like, going deeper on the things that are working. And, you know, you can do that when you track stuff. So I think just staying focused and understanding the value of systems has been critical.

Awesome. How about you, Chris?

I would say the things that had the biggest impact was like, you know, what we decided to focus on. Meaning, like a couple of things that we focused on early was lead gen. So that was one of the big things for us. Like, you know, rather than just say, like, hey, I hear this works. You guys should do it. It became kind of a requirement for our team, like, in exchange for the tools and the systems and support and everything. Like, you also had to show up in Legion every. Every morning. That was a. That was, you know, no questions asked about that. And then also tracking and accountability. You know, once we started you know, really tracking their numbers and reporting them and having them report back to us. I think everyone's, you know, everyone's sales improved, you know, once they knew that we were kind of what we were tracking that stuff. And then finally I would say big focus on our database. You know, we were, we were guilty just like everyone else of, you know, sending as much money as we could to Zillow and Google and every other, you know, big lead source. Hey, this is going to make a ton of money. If you give us a ton of money and, and we still do that, there's still a place for that. And it's good, you know, but we are very careful with how much we spend on those other lead sources. Our main focus, you know, is definitely on our database, and that's what we definitely spend the most money because it's the highest roi for sure.

Awesome. How about you, Greg?

Starting with sales productivity, just myself and working with others on agent production. Secondarily, we've my team, and I think most teams that are successful focus on the basics over and over, that there's not something new that comes along necessarily. It's the same thing. We've all been told what to do and we haven't maybe really committed or kept working on that. And a big one for me was understanding the correlation between tracking production, tracking cte, your profit and loss statement, how that mesh and why we don't do that very well because we don't have a financial model, which is why we don't really track net worth, because what does it all matter? Because we don't have a people chart and we don't understand really what our business looks like. And, and we don't have a personal financial model which really screws up our life. And the taking any one of those two things out of. Out of the group doesn't really matter. But when you have a picture where they're all interchanged and then tracking down your financials every month really does matter because it affects your net worth, which affects your life now, not some 20 years down the road when I maybe possibly am going to retire. So that's been a huge impact working with Lars.

Yeah. Just hoping that one day it'll all turn out, it'll magically. And that's. That goes back to atomic habits too, you know, that like the system of building, you know, net worth, it. It's not just simply a goal. It's. It's the, like the daily, the weekly, the monthly system. It's really good. All right, next question. This is hopefully no squirrels. You guys have have known better that no squirrels would be let out. But as it relates to like what's actually working right now versus what's not working, like consistently, you're seeing, you know, your, your clients, agents that you're talking to when it comes to like lead gen sources. So what's working? Like, hands down, these couple things are working and hands down, these couple things over and over and over again. Agents come into our world and they've done this and hands down, it's not working. All right, we'll just go same order. Ladies first.

Well, I'm of course I'm going to say database because I think it's as we've all been talking and Kirby did such a good job presenting it. It's one of the things that I think people check the box on, like done database. Yeah, I've got that going. Yeah, I get enough referrals. I need more business. More business. But then when you look at the number of contacts and the number of conversion, the conversion percentage that they're doing, it's not maximized. So database and really adding maybe more touches. And the touches are probably what I call good touches, not passive touches. Passive touches are like direct mail. You know what else? Postcard, well, that's direct mail. Card, things like that. Acid touches are like actively talking to them, hopefully face to face, connecting, you know those things. Being the market expert so really confidently being able to articulate what's happening in the market as well as how that relates locally and then globally or at least United States. And showcase that. Showcase your knowledge. Show up so people know you're an option. And then. And these aren't like you were probably looking for or maybe a lot of you on this. We're looking for. No, I need like the three names of where I can buy something. I'm not going to give you those. And then the last lead generation lever is literally that like you have so many contacts in here and you're not. I want a magic pill too, for a lot of things, but there's so many people in here that you're just not touching base with, which goes a little bit to the database marketing. But how many people are in your phone that aren't in your database? Or how many people are in an email, an old email, an old Google sheet, your phone, your iPad. Like, where are all these contacts stored? Get them in one place and start working through that. Like the game is quantitative of conversation. It's not even quality because sometimes you can't control that. It's quantity, the amount of reach out and follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up. Anything you pay for the reason that it most times doesn't work is number one, you're not committed and number two, there is not like a two year follow up plan because that's the average that it takes sometimes to get an online lead conversion cycle going. So that's mine.

Really good, Ben.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say it because I have to. It's my largest lead gen lever is my database and I don't have a large one. It's 258 people brought me in. I spent 13,000 on it. In 2023 it brought me in 257,000 in GCI. Again my market is smaller but the point being that it's massive roi and, and so that's something we're continuing to go deeper on. But the other thing that we've really seen a great benefit from and it was something we learned in B school a few years ago, was our building out our Google page because it is, it's free. So you know, we did a Google review contest in my team. We got a bunch of reviews and from that we get really quality leads that they're almost like warm leads because they've seen all of the wonderful reviews online. So you know, it's like, hey, you know, we sell all this stuff, you know, we want to hire you. I just got a, you know, buyer called the other day and they said, well, they said I was referred to you. And I said, well who referred you? And they said actually Google referred us. We saw all your views on Google and, and so taking the time to build that out and you know, it's not easy to like call your friends and family and say, hey, will you leave a review for me? But it's also not hard, you know, once you kind of get over the, the mindset hurdle. Just like it's really critical to your business to have that social proof pointing to how great you are. So I think the Google is just an untapped. For most agents it's an untapped lead gen lever.

Awesome.

How about you, Chris?

So I'm going to start with database first as well. I don't need to spend a ton of time on that. We all know how important that is. I would just say, you know, similar to Kirby. Yeah, we have our, our passive type of touches like postcards and emails and stuff, but everything's kind of centered around client events for us as well. So we do four client events a year. And I mean that's just, it's just every quarter is a, there's the postcards that go out, the phone calls that you make to make sure they got the invite. And everything's kind of centered around that. And that's, you know, where we spend the most money and what's by far the most effective for us. The next one I would say. And I'm going to combine, I said, like Google lsa, but also Google my business. So Google local service ads are, are doing really well for us right now. And it's important like, like Ben was saying, get your reviews up because when you do pop up there, most people are going to jump first to the person with the most reviews. So we did the same thing, Google review contest. We got our reviews up. And one piece of advice I would give for Google LSA is set your budget as high as you can. You'll never hit the budget. I mean, I would still do it if I could, but if you set your budget at $1500 a week, you're not going to get that. You're just saying you're willing to spend that. So don't be afraid of the budget on there and answer every single call that comes in. You'll get, the more you answer, the more you'll get. And you get, you, you know, you'll get a good return on that. And then also Google my business, I'm just combining those, focus on that. It's like a free little website on the right hand side of Google. Add to it, you know, keep adding every time you get a listing, add it as a product, add a content to it and you'll get organic traffic. And then finally circle prospecting and I'll say circle prospecting for nurtures. Most people don't like it. It's hard to set an appointment to a completely cold. You know, I'm calling to see if anyone, if you want to sell your house. We're not super salesy. We're not trying to talk someone into an appointment they don't want. But we do want to find out if they're, you know, may sell in the next three years, even five years, whatever, if they didn't just move in and, and then we find out, you know, when, where would you move if you were to sell? We'll nurture that person. I mean we, we list houses now from a call that somebody that's not even our team anymore made six years ago. You know, we, we, we market to that database and call that database regularly as well.

Yeah. So the Only reason, the main reason you're doing it is to take cold to warm.

Exactly.

So you're not necessarily like in a hardcore close someone to an appointment. You're just looking to build your database on a weekly, daily, weekly basis.

Yep. 100. Awesome.

Greg, how about you?

I think I'm kind of maybe bring it full circle around where Stacy started. I attend like all of us attend a lot of conferences and it gets kind of confusing because you're, you're in one room, you're like, oh yeah, that'll work. And then your next room you're like, oh wow, maybe that'll work. And all these different ideas. And then a lot of people ask like what should I do? And I think while there's a better idea than a worse idea, it really doesn't matter. What matters is are you having a lot of conversations with somebody about real estate? Preferably those conversations would be higher quality than lower quality. And then do you have a great follow up plan that isn't garbage? Like, I mean we send a follow up plan that really matters and it doesn't have to be real hard or scientific, just updating people. Hey, I saw this house, I think you might like it. Or here's why the market changes. I was in a golf trip with friends of mine a couple years ago and I'm getting ready to tee off a very nice course. And he's like, why'd you send me something about pumpkins? I'm like, what? He goes, you sent me some email about pumpkins? He goes, why? He's an engineer. And I'm like, I have no idea why we do crap like that. You know, it just made no sense and it's just funny because I'm laughing. He goes, no, seriously, I want to know why are you sending me a pumpkin recipe? I'm like, I do not know why people send that from my email, but it's coming out to you. And that's not, not to make fun of what we do, but if we just followed up and cared about people and over 18 month period our conversion I'm convinced would be 90% and I am obsessed with that. So conversations, better conversations and worse conversations and follow up that actually is meaningful to, to anyone, particularly people we've talked to.

Yeah, I had a conversation recently with one of our coaching clients who went through our, our kind of entry level program and I was doing a debrief with him and I was looking at his numbers and ironically I'm not going to give his name. He was on my real estate Team. He left the real estate team. He's doing his own thing. He hired B school to kind of help him. So I was looking through his numbers, so I knew our minimum standards, like, and they are what they are. Do we want it to be easier to sell homes? Yeah, we do. But we know if you don't have 25 meaningful conversations a day, you're not in the game. And there were some weeks where he had, like, 12 conversations in the whole week. And I'm like, all right, let's just look at your numbers to see where you're at. And I'm like, jimmy. That's not his name, but Jimmy. Like, really, like, you can't BS me. Like, you know better. You know that, like, me, you may not have liked the structure and the cadence, the accountability and the fact that we knew the numbers over, like, a gazillion contacts and conversion metrics by. By lead source, but I'm like, you're not in the game. You have to figure out a way. And this is for everybody. You have to figure out a way to have 20 meaningful conversations a day. If it's like, you can get 10 just by the landscaper that's across the street, that's one. Like, your pool guy shows up or you drop off your dry cleaning, that's three conversations. You go to the gym, you talk to a couple members. That's four and five. Like, you may get to 10 just in your day to day, and then you may have to sit down for a couple hours to get another 10 to 15. But as a real estate agent, you cannot end the week unless you have 125 meaningful conversations in the week. You know, so just sit there silently in the morning, like, how am I going to talk to 20 people today? You know, and we want to think that, like, one. One guy, and I love him. I'm not going to mention by name, but on this thread, he's like, I'm going to work on my SEO. And he's new to real estate. And I'm like, who told you to work on your SEO? Like, who? It's like, well, you know, all the big companies have mastered SEO, and clearly it's part of, like, a larger. Like, it is not part of a strategy that you need to even worry about even a little bit at this point. It's like, figure out how to have 20 meaningful conversations today. All right, hopefully you enjoyed part one of how to take your unfair share in a crazy, crazy market. And you got a sense of our coaches and the kinds of issues that our members are bringing to their world, that they're helping them solve. Like I said in the intro here, if, you know, you want to have a conversation about your business, what, what it could look like to have someone come in and hold your hand to build out systems in your business that give you that chance at not only selling, helping you sell more homes, but give you the leverage that you need so you have the ability to generate an unfair share of income in a reasonable amount of time. That's really the goal of real estate B school. So go to million dollaragentmethod.com that's milliondollaragentmethod.com I think there's a seven minute video that you could watch and then just book in these strategy sessions. So we'll see you on part two of how to take your unfair share.