Production Mastermind - Building Consistent Growth Through Focus & Systems

All right, let's start with some wins. What is good in your production business? Did you guys— I was, I was on— I guess we'll go 2 weeks for Positive Focus since last week was Matt Plummer, which he's a good dude. He's dedicated his whole life to the literally helping agents Avoid the real estate agent poverty that exists. All right. So what is— let's all just share either in your— in the chat or just unmute yourself.

Either way is perfect.

I'm happy to go. I've been working with a buyer and she had a lot of things going on in her life, lost a child, blah, blah, blah. And we are about 2 weeks away from closing. She's gone through her financing. She looks like a rock star.

She—

her money's where it's supposed to be and the house seems to be lining up. So been a long couple of months with her, but things have been really promising. So super excited about that.

Awesome.

Who's next? All good.

Um, had a closing this morning. Um, got— had another one last week, so that was good. So we put a couple together, new buyer client referral, uh, met with Thursday night. So that's going to be great. And a new listing referral client that I'll be meeting with here in a couple of weeks when she gets into the States. So yeah, just, just a lot of momentum. Just continuing that momentum.

Yeah. Awesome.

Who else? Let's go. You have to share no matter what. It's either in the chat or it's like in real life. What do you got, Kristen?

Yeah.

Hey, everybody. I had a listing appointment yesterday, uh, that was from a new referral, um, and that was great. Um, they're not ready to list like right now, but it was a great, um, just first meeting and getting comfortable, uh, with each other. So that was awesome. And then I'm closing next week on my largest, uh, transaction in my career. So I'm excited about that.

That's awesome.

How long you been in real estate?

Um, 5 years.

Awesome. Yeah, my last closing, literally my last personal production closing, was my highest sale ever.

So you might have to just mic drop after this one and be like, I'm done. All right, who else has a win? No one's in the chat, so I had 9 deals under contract.

I guess it would have been as of last or last meeting, but 2 of them closed.

That's awesome.

Now I only have 7.

Only 7.

Woe is me.

Well, I need it. Things keep on getting pushed like I was supposed to have.

I was supposed to have positive focus. No, it is still positive. This is what you do. You start high and then you You get in the gutter. We're not— you got to be quiet until we get to the coaching part.

It's still positive. I still got 7 under contract.

Awesome. All right, who else? What do you got, Corey?

Oh, on the spot, it's like I put my video off. Um, lots of great things. It was sweet. My neighbors were walking yesterday. They just listed their house with someone else, which is fine. Um, But they were— I just said, yeah, I didn't know you guys were moving. I was so sad. And then I said, you know, how's, how's everything going? Like, don't tell me anything confidential, you know, all the things. And they were like, well, we haven't heard from our realtor. So just I— that in itself is a win for me to like realize that we are doing— all of us pretty much on this call are doing more than a lot of agents out there. So just staying in touch with your people. Making your sellers happy by talking to them. I think it's really helpful.

And they were actively listed. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it kind of, you know, this is like 99% of agents really never— maybe not 99, but over 90% never actually think through or build a system for like, okay, this person committed to giving me like $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 if I sell their home. And like, what would I have to do to 10x earn that commission? You know, it's just like, it's just horrible. When we sold our home, the, the agent that brought the buyer on our home helped sell their home. So sold a 7-figure home, bought a multiple 7-figure home. And the worst agent ever had to be their best friend because their average price point was like an hour and a half away and it was like $250,000 was their average price point, but had no communication. Our side couldn't get in touch with the buyers to talk through the million details that come up at the end, like, hey, do you want this random bookshelf or these like set of weights that I don't feel like moving or all the crap. But we finally just— and even post-closing, we had a bunch of stuff that we had to communicate, like just forget to ship a bunch of stuff to the house.

And we finally just wrote a note and got them to text us directly, which was so weird that you never get to talk to the person.

I wanted to say we published our book too, finally, The Power of Purpose. Yeah, I'm so excited. And Jessica's event was incredible. And Lars, you did an amazing job speaking up there. Just, I've heard that story before and it just, it was very powerful and impactful still. So just thank you. That was such a sweet time.

Awesome.

Yeah, it was a really cool event.

All right, let's get to work. Let's do this. I want to get a flavor for— and Hannah got a listing in the chat renovating, so I'm selling it exclusive until they're ready.

That is amazing.

Good work there. And we still got people coming in.

Awesome.

Andy Wolf is in the house. What is up, Andy Wolf? All right, let's, um, let's do this today. Let's answer this question in the chat. So, uh, we are— what, what is it, May?

I'm like, the last 2 months have been a whirlwind.

So it's May. So really we're kind of like in 45 average day close, you know, we're in end of June already. So the first half of the year is gone. Um, go in the chat and let me know if you're crushing your goal for 2026. If so, why? And if you're not, What's getting you off track? So I just want to get a flavor, you know, half of the year in, if you're crushing your goal and why or why not.

Aaron had a closing last week, awesome schedule showing this week, got an offer on a listing and a couple of new referrals.

Amazing. And everyone has to play along with this part. And if you can turn your video on, that'd be amazing.

All right, so the question we're answering is, are you crushing your goals?

If not, why?

If so, why? Cory is not crusting, crusting So she's not crushing.

That's good.

You're not crushing.

Not crushing.

You definitely don't want to crush.

Not getting crushed.

Super close. I believe I'm getting my points.

However, I'm not tracking. I'm not tracking daily and that is why. Feeling forward here. Oh, that brings up such a good point about tracking. I've never seen anyone crush goals in most areas of their life without tracking.

Kristen says fairly steady business, but I've not been consistent with the activities. Keep— so Kristen, are you not crushing? So if you're crushing your goals or not, if you're not, why? And if you are, why? Behind on goals, um, but God first.

Agent join today.

Got first—

why did I read God?

I'm like, God first agent, that's amazing! Who's a God first agent?

I want in on that.

God is my first agent, right? Got first agent join today. Pipeline's very That's awesome.

All right.

Dominique says steady in a great way, but trying to be more consistent with follow-up. Man, this may just— all right, who didn't answer the question so far? Andy in the not crushing, not consistent camp. First year goal is $6 million, about 6 homes. First closing end of May, not crushing. And include why you're not crushing, your sense of why you're not crushing. Steady and good in the market, not crushing due mostly to inconsistency with daily stuff. Not crushing, distractions allow me to sidetrack me. I'm getting back on track, plan to finish strong. All right, I could easily formulate the talk based on all of this for today.

All right, so that gives me just a good sense of where you guys are at.

Brought on 2 teammates instead, admin and showing specialist, which was not in my initial goals.

Oh, interesting. Okay, Andy, tell me more about that.

Just unmute yourself.

Yeah, the original goal was just to do more transactions and increase the overall volume. And I think there it just— what it came to is I think I just started feeling a little bit crazy and I had an— I had a part-time assistant, but she's come on 20 hours a week now that I pay her hourly and then have also found— I came across somebody who was open to just running around, like doing signs and lockboxes and meeting contractors and all that stuff. And so I've taken him on. So since then, I guess I've kind of built now a new place to spring off of from, from there. But originally my goal was really just to do a lot of tracking and try to increase my transactions to 40 for the year. So I'm probably close to half. So I am close. I guess I'm— the goals are happening. I don't know if it's getting crushed. It feels a little chaotic, but awesome.

Yeah, that's really helpful. And then Anthony says, I'm not where I want to be.

I've had so much in the pipeline, struggle with closing. 6 deals have fallen through, several clients decided. I have a lot of trouble connecting with folks. Within target market, new part-time salesperson to assist in setting appointments.

Okay, let me ask this question. If everyone can please answer it for me. How many of you had written goals before the year started? Clear written goals. So get in the chat. I want to hear— I just want to see yes or no. Because it's really hard to hit your goals if you don't write them down, typically.

Okay, so most of you did.

Um, as we kind of get into— I mean, we still have like 90 to 120 days to do this. Um, if you haven't done a 3190, it's in school in Freedom OS. Anytime's a good time to do it. Typically we do it at the end of the year. We're always moving a 3-year vision, a 1-year plan, and we do it on the calendar year. But if you don't know what you're working on this quarter, then— and how it fits into like your overall scheme, you know, in terms of let's say you sell 10 homes now and you want to sell 40 homes in 3 years, we just break that down. You know, it's— and it doesn't feel like productive work to go through a 3190 and then print it out and clean it up and wordsmith it and read it every day and tweak it. And when you're on a webinar that has nothing to do with what you put down on your plan, that's when you second-guess yourself. Like, why am I now all of a sudden in this AI expired system that wasn't on my plan? My plan written down in a sober state was to database, you know, it was these 3 things. This was the focus area. And now all of a sudden I'm just scrolling all the time. Like, the reason we write stuff down in a plan is so that we don't get distracted. Um, and I wish I had a better way to say that. I feel like I've said it a million times here, but if you don't have a 3190 written, I would stop everything. Does everyone know where that exercise is? Does anyone not know where that is? Raise your hand if you do not know where it is. It's in school, in Freedom OS. It's just called 3190. And then every 90 days you should do a Momentum Game Plan, which is in the same Freedom OS. I swear, that's like, for those of you at the event, you know, that was like, I could have done the whole talk just on the, the being able to like decide where you want to be in the future and like know that the shit you're doing today is going to lead you toward where you want to be. And it's super hard. It's just super hard because there's nothing fun about it. It requires you to do a thing you don't want to do for way longer than you want to do it. And I guess just getting used to, you know, that sort of monotony and not switching, not saying like, okay, I gave this 90 days. It's like Anthony told a story about his Instagram, you know, 3 years of posting regularly on Instagram to start getting a bunch of traction. And then his new problem problem was how do you turn the DMs into consultations with people out of market and all that stuff. Like, it's never in a timeline, you know, that we want it to be. All right. What specific challenges do you guys have? I mean, I can go into all the time management stuff and I mean, you guys did a pretty easy layup and kind of the goals and all that. But are there any specific challenges that you guys— or is there anyone that's like, I don't know how to generate business, or I've totally stalled, or you're new and you're afraid to ask a question like, how do I get started? Let me make sure people don't have any burning questions first, and then I'll, I'll kind of address it based on the feedback so far. Nobody?

You guys are all like just going along, absolutely slaying every bit of every part of your business. No uncertainty, man.

You guys are— what do you got, Corey?

Kristen and I were actually just talking about this on our podcast. Um, I get so caught up in my head with like the, you know, how people have point systems, you know, 66 points 30 points. Um, I get so caught up in I want to track who I talk to, you know, and I think that mindset just needs to change and just reach out to the people and just check the boxes. But maybe you feel differently and maybe that is important and I should just focus on not only getting the points but logging in the CRM, you know, who I talked to when. If I sent a handwritten note, that sort of thing.

Um, so what's the activity like? What's the— what's your like hallmark activity that you think if you do enough of it consistently is going to lead you to consultations? So what are you talking about with the point system? Is that like Ninja Selling or— I don't even know the—

well, I use, I use Jason Chimpaw's 66 Points, but it's basically like I, I will send out letters, like handwritten notes to people. I will text people, but my like hallmark thing is events. So like inviting people to events, texting them, that sort of thing. But that's what keeps me in front of my sphere.

Okay. So what's the challenge though? It's like, I mean, I would definitely use a CRM to, I mean, if you have 100 people in your database and the goal is to do something with them every 90 days, You have to have a recurring 90-day task, you know, touch. And then usually when in the CRM, you click it and you can add a note. I mean, I would definitely add the note, but the goal is to get through whatever that thing is. Usually it's meaningful conversations.

Yeah.

So, you know, if you're doing a different— I'm not saying that whatever Jason is teaching you won't lead to whatever you're looking to achieve. But in my world, at, you know, bringing agents into my world, it was like, how many conversations do you need to have today, meaningful conversations with a decision-making adult about real estate to set a consultation?

Decision-making adult.

Yeah.

Like, not like if they're, you know, they're teenager answers or And it could be like— and that goes, you know, it could be— we have people— I never did it, but we have people cold calling, you know, whatever, probate. And it's like 100 or circle prospecting could be 80 to 100 conversations in a day, could take 4 to 5 hours to set a consultation, you know, or it could be like, man, your database is dialed and it's like, I can pretty much I can, you know, talk to 12 to 15 people and I can get a really good lead, or, you know, I can get the thing I need every day. But make no mistake, everyone needs to have a thing Monday through Friday that they need to get done, no matter what. If you want to sell real estate, ours was 4-3-2. For outside sales agents, it was How many conversations do you need to have in a week to set 4 consultations, to meet 3, to sign 2? And that's the whole business. And I think anything else supports that. So of course, if it's like database stuff, you know, having a touch system and them knowing you, or brand authority, and like you have a digital footprint and all that, and that's independent of lead source. You know, and then the, the 2 that you meet, let's say you sign 2 per week, or let's say your goal is to sign 1 per week, 50 clients per year. And, you know, if they're buyers or sellers, a lot of buyer— more buyers won't buy than sellers that you list will sell. So it depends on what side of the business you're focused on. But it, it has to be like, you have to know those leading indicators— how many conversations set, met, signed. And then most agents are lost once they sign a client. They spin out into client servicing, and, you know, you can argue whether or not that's valuable time. Um, I built a lot of leverage around client care, so I didn't have to do it. But that's kind of like a next— you earn the right to buy back your time in that client care based on your ability for 6 to 8 quarters of just sitting down every day, Monday through Friday, knowing what number you're chasing. And if it's texting or if it's handwritten notes, you better freaking know how many handwritten notes it takes for someone to do the thing you're asking them to do in the handwritten note to get a consultation or a referral, or, hey, my friend talked about whatever. Like, you have to know whatever you're doing, how it leads to the, to the commission check. And really, it's just the consultation. So how many consultations did I have this week? And if you went multiple weeks without any consult, like new business, like seller and buyer consultations, you're not doing the job of a real estate agent. I mean, that wants to sell a lot of real estate. Some of you, I mean, it doesn't matter to me if you sell a lot or not, but you need to track the activity into— and it's only a few numbers. And if you're not like actually putting them somewhere, and it could be on paper, but if you're not actually putting them somewhere, then you have no way, no way to be honest with yourself. Did you do the thing that you committed to do? And it could be Anything. It could be open houses, right? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do open houses to get face-to-face with 50 people a week. And how many open houses will that take? Probably 2 to 3. 2 if you're lucky, 3 to 4 maybe if, you know, you're not getting the traffic. But, and then you'll have the numbers. Okay, I got face-to-face with 40 to 50 consistently per week. And then I have my follow-up system that I put in place, and generally 4 to 5 out of those 40 to 50 are going to engage in some way, and there's some dialogue there, and it'll probably lead to a client or two out of that effort. And then you got to do that for like 2 to 3 years as you're building your database, as you're building your digital footprint. Typically, for 90+% of agents, there's only room for one additional lead gen lever outside of database and digital footprint. And there are agents that don't need anything else besides database. I mean, it's good to have other things going on because it feeds your database, obviously. So let me ask you, Is that helpful? Awesome. Dina said, best thing I've done in a long time was tell my Claude about my goals and my Level 10 schedule, and the give— just tell me, uh, no when I asked it other questions that take me off that path. That is awesome. Um, Stacy Peterson got me one time. I don't know how these things were even legal. But it was to break habits. And it was a band you wore around your wrist that gave you an electric shock. So every time, like, and it was like a dog collar electric shock. And every time you did the thing that you vowed not to do, you had to obviously be in integrity and press the button and it gave you a shock.

I'm sorry, but has it been so long since we've had newspapers that nobody knows what a rubber band is?

Yes, it's the same exact concept.

Yeah.

Boom.

So they basically took that concept and monetized it with a wearable. Um, and I don't see them anymore. So it was probably like a Facebook ad that hit, hit the, uh, the feed. Yeah.

I personally have a mental rubber band in my head. I don't need the real one.

I'm just like, yeah, but, but that's the nature of like, you look at anyone that, um, I was watching a video. Anybody follow Dan Martell? So he wrote the book, uh, Buy Back Your Time, that you guys had a billion copies of it. I sat next to him. This is not a great view on me. When our businesses were the same size, before he started YouTube, we were both at $2 million. We figured out a thing and then we decided that it was more fun to coach people doing the thing. And he decided to do YouTube. And just go down content creation. And apparently I didn't because he's, you know, doing— he's got like 25 million, you know, followers on all the platforms. Um, but I mean, yeah, it's the whole point of the video, uh, and you can— I think it was his most recent one that he dropped was it's, it's the consistency. It's just doing one thing for a long freaking time. Where you're just the best at it. And I understand that, you know, the thing that sucks about it is that there's this tendency to like grab on to the different things, to think there's a shorter path to a check because we need the check. Some of you like desperately need the check and you want to believe that there's a shorter path to the check. But there, there's a period of pain in starting some lead gen lever that a lot of us don't get to the point where it's, it's producing the multiple deals per month. And we stop, you know, in 90 days it only did one deal. So man, I got to move on to the next thing. Oh crap, that thing only did one deal in 90 days. Like, I can't do one deal every 90 days, so I got to move on to the next thing. But in the next 90 days, there's 2 deals. And then in the next 90 days, there's maybe 1 deal, but then there's 3 deals. And then, you know, I wasn't a big geographic farmer, but you know how much of an idiot you look investing in a geographic farm in year 1? You're the stupidest person ever. But in year 10 in a geographic farm, like you're the most brilliant marketer. There's a guy that lives in Ballantyne Country Club in Charlotte, Eric, what's his name? I forget his last name, but he, um, like, it's almost an insult. Like, he won't sell your— if you take a listing in his neighborhood that he lives, he sells like 90% of the inventory in there. It's like on lockdown. Like, you can hardly take a listing in there because he'll like make it not sell. I'm being dramatic. But when he started, he was just like all of us. Like, he was just an agent with a license that wasn't doing any transactions. And then he just decided that he was going to own an area. And it's, you know, he's like 20 years in now. And he just, you know, he prints commission checks out of that area. So, yeah. And then I guess you got to be really convicted that the thing you're doing is, is where you want to end up also. Like for me, I knew I didn't want to cold call expireds. For people that like have that in them, and they can do it, you spend 2 years doing that and you can print money. Like you get so good at the thing, you know, there was a guy, Greg Sisson, who did— he's a Mike Ferry guy, and he's just wired in that way. Lars Hedenborg, he would do like, he did like 60 or 70 probate deals a year and like another 70 or 80 expireds a year individually based on his own prospecting. Highly leveraged. He had admin for everything. But still to this day, he prospects like 25 years into the business. He still knows that he can generate 150 listings a year. That then have offshoot buyers just with probate and expireds. And he knows he just has to sit at his desk and do, do the thing for 3 hours a day. I mean, 25 years in, shoot me if I have to prospect every day. But for him, you know, it's like it's, it's really valuable. I think their average check is like $15,000. So he's able to do like, you know, what, $1.5 to $2 million of GCI. And then he's got buyer agents that like leverage the signed calls and the buyer leads and all of that stuff. But I guess at one point he was like a new license and he was like, maybe I'll try Mike Ferry's approach. And he did it and he just stayed with it. You know, Brent Gov sell like 400 homes a year and I think 75% of them were open houses. You know, so the challenge is that it all works. All right, I'm just ranting for no reason now. All right. Any other specific challenges or questions or problems that we can tackle? We got plenty of time. You guys are like super quiet today. This— these calls are never going to be teaching. What do you got, Alex?

Give this a try. This might throw a lot of things off. As far as getting advice from others, I'm way past the rainmaker stage, mindset, confidence, and so on and so forth. I need, uh, technicals and prospecting, um, maybe even something to do with identity fit. So those are the, those are the 5 different types of, um, categories: rainmaker, technical, prospecting, local, and identity. And by technical, I mean Uh, well, prospecting scripts, uh, lead sources, follow-up objections, absolute specifics on that. Then after that, it's like, oh, I convinced someone to get, um, uh, to actually take a listing appointment. So all the technicals of when you show up with a listing appointment, show them these, uh, 5, 6, 7 things. And they will take your listing.

Uh, so the first challenge though is that you don't have any business consistently. Is that the first challenge?

Sure.

Okay. And you're trying to figure out like, man, if I'm going to put some effort into something, I want to make sure it's a fit for, for me, right?

Um, fit, fit, fit. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Um, I want to make sure it operates. It's a fit for me if I can do it consistently and get results. I absolutely do not want to spend time on something that Um, yeah, okay. So, so what I would do, for example, you know, being the dumb real estate agent who begs their friends for listings— no, that won't get results.

Um, yeah, that's not one of our lead gen levers.

You're lucky you were just—

you were just talking about prospecting and whatnot. Okay, we'll say this is it.

I got it, I got it. All right, so, so I want all of your help. How many years of experience do we have in real estate here? Probably 200. Let's guess 200 years experience. I've got 20, Debbie's got 25. Oh, that's 50. I want 20, so we're at 70 so far. Dina's got probably 15, 16, 15. Um, let's do this with absolute certainty. What is a lead gen activity database Building a database and adding value is one of them. Your digital footprint, social media is one of them. I want you guys to give me one thing that you know works to generate 2 to 3 transactions per month in and of itself and just go in the chat.

Can I make a suggestion for him before we do this?

Yeah.

This is the only thing that when I'm really overwhelmed— Alexander, your name, sorry. When I'm really overwhelmed, this is the literal only thing that helps me get out of this. And I know shit, I take a Post-it note, like a stack of them, and I would be sitting here writing each one of these things on a Post-it note. And then I'm going to put them all around me at the end and I'm going to ask myself, am I willing to live in that thing like that? Somebody put database. Okay. Every day I wake up, am I willing to do that thing? If the answer is no, I rip it up and throw it out.

Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do.

Yeah. So just think through it like that as you're seeing all this stuff come through. They're all options. You don't have to attach yourself to any of them. Is that helpful? You just need to know what your choices are.

Yeah, that's, that's a good point. Yeah. My point here is that I want to— I want you to be able to see there are probably 8 to 10, like, things that still work really well and you just got to find one. They all lead to a buyer consultation or a listing consultation. And I have playbooks that I can show you that literally tell you knock on the door, take off your shoes. I can show you like all of that stuff you have access to for free. We just have to decide for you, and this is for everybody, like how are you going to sort of stake your, you know, claim or whatever the expression is, where are you going to build your business? So social media, database, those are the first I would never advise at this point, like Database Touch Blueprint and Brand Authority Builder, fancy way to say social media digital footprint. Those two, I believe, are non-negotiable. If, if you were to tell me like, I don't give a crap about, you know, database and I'm one and done and I just want to burn and churn and not care, you know, you're probably not good for real estate. So So you probably have to like embody Database Touch Blueprint. That's straight up. There's a 28-page guide that guides you step by step, and I'll bring it up here in a second. And this is for everybody. Same thing with social media. If I think it's going to be challenging for agents to really, you know, I can't imagine anyone that doesn't know you really well isn't going to go online and see what your digital footprint looks like. When they're agreeing to pay you $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 to sell their home or earn a commission on the buy side. So I think that is non-negotiable as well. And then for Alexander, we're picking like, what's the one thing that Alexander or anyone can focus on outside of those two things? Yeah. Yeah, right, exactly. Andy makes a good point. Um, and this was, uh, in Dan Martell's video. Um, Dan started out trying to play a part that he thought he needed to play on social, so he dressed a certain way and he spoke a certain way and he was acting on his YouTube videos. And then he shifted over time that I'm just gonna be me and I'm gonna curse and I'm gonna not overthink and it's not going to be totally, you know, so to Andy's point, like if you smoke a pipe and you're creating content, you know, it could be, that could be part of, I probably wouldn't bring it to an appointment, but definitely as you're the smoky vibe, you know, as you're creating content would probably definitely help you stand out for sure.

Everyone creates kind of a persona, whether they realize it or not. And then sometimes later you're like, oh crap, I created a persona and you're kind of stuck.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, events, open houses, database— like, I knew that I probably wasn't going to be the open house king, or, uh, you know what, I did one and I didn't have a system for it and nobody showed up. I took a 2-hour nap. It was like my first listing I ever took. And she asked me to do an open house. I'm like, okay, well, I put a sign out, said open house on the day of. And it didn't really work too well. So we have a better system for that right now. And the only thing I would add in here is, Alexander, are you— what's your thoughts on outbound to expireds, for sale by owners, having cold conversations? Laser-focused.

So I was convinced, um, by a YouTube coach, but a good one, uh, that, uh, for sale by owners and expireds are high effort, high reward, and low turnaround. So until you get, you know, get your database going after a year of going to whatever events that, um, uh, you'd like, then, uh, those are the way to go. If you move to a new market, you have no database in the new market, That's why you do FSBOs and expireds. Um, I have a pretty good FSBO banter. Actually, I got a listing on the first call, um, just last week.

So yes, but my question more so is like, how do you fit? I did not fit with cold calling expireds and FSBOs. Is that something you can do?

I'm, I'm calling and I'm just having the conversation.

Sure.

Yeah. So, so if that's something—

it's effort to get over the hump to actually start making the calls. Which is cliche, but then, you know, just today I was just staring at my list and not calling. Uh, and then, and then adding more people to the list.

Uh, yeah, there's a book for that.

I'm having those conversations. There's a book for that. What's up, Anthony?

What's that book called, Lars? The one that you sent out with the coaching? I've drawn a blank right now.

Is it Fanatical Prospecting?

Yes, that one. That's such a good book.

Yeah, it's probably the best resource. It's from Jeb Blount or Blount, B-L-O-U-N-T. And the cool thing about that book, I hope he does an update to it because I feel like it needs an update, but it's all sorts of prospecting. Like it's texting, it's social, it's everything. That's like the number one resource for anyone struggling with business. Because he was like a high-level sales manager or something. Um, but Alexander, I would— yeah, there's only one, one, like, if that's it, Fanatical Prospecting. Um, if you're inclined— I've got it right now. If you're inclined to call expired and FSBOs and it doesn't bother you, I would definitely do that. And then I would, I would layer in direct mail. And in most markets, you know, it's a pretty balanced market. There's going to be plenty of expireds. FSBOs exist in every market, you know, so it's just building a system and doing the work on the daily and not having that call reluctance or powering through the call reluctance.

Yeah, the, the idea of mailing, uh, I wouldn't mind just because I get like anywhere from 50 to 70%, uh, is dial safe, safe, you know, and, and I, I keep them on my list. I mark them as a danger, do not call.

So, so then what's your real challenge? Are you impatient? Well, just going to other—

maybe I am impatient— going to other people and asking for advice. And I hear stuff like, oh, I just talk to people, kind of the kind of thing.

Oh yeah. So once you hear this, it's okay, guys. Once, once you pick a lane, yeah, once you pick a lane, you have to decide what you're going to consume at that point. So if you've decided that my lane is going to be expires and FSBOs. And I'm going to get so effing lethal at these two lead sources. And once I, you know, make a rule for yourself, once I get 7 active listings from just doing outbound, I'm going to layer in some direct mail, start with FSBOs, then expireds. You have to stop consuming stuff that's telling you to do something different. That's the key. So what I did, what's a good example? You have to go into your YouTube or wherever, like in YouTube, you can say not interested in this topic. Just go through like your feed in YouTube and it will eliminate. In my example, I was like obsessed with crypto. And I was like, everything in my freaking YouTube feed was crypto. And I just had to be not interested, not interested, not interested. And I unsubscribed from like 6 or 7 guys that I was following in that space. So, so that's where like the pros, the pro level at anything, they're not looking for advice from some online YouTube coach about, you know, you got to do pop-bys, or you got to do open houses, or no, Alexander has already decided that he's going to get lethal at outbound calling expireds and FSBOs. And then Alexander has further decided that instead of following 12 people online that teach that one subject, I'm only going to follow this person and this person. And I'm only going to consume videos outside of these hours. And it has to be script-related or taking a listing-related or whatever. What do you got, Tina?

I was gonna say this. First, you have to make an actual decision, like, like he's saying. What's— and I mean by the literal sense of the word decide, which the root word side means to cut off all other options. Pesticide, homicide, all that, right? Like, we just cut off all the other choices. Once you've cut off all the other choices, you have stop asking people for advice, stop reading anything else, because no matter what you pick, it's all going to work. And then two things: it's going to take longer than you think, and it's going to be harder than you think to stay focused. And that's just the reality, no matter what. You're never going to wake up wanting to do it, ever, ever, ever, ever, never, ever. And it doesn't matter. Like, it just can't. I mean, I'm also a little bit more harsh than Lars Hedenborg. Like, it just can't matter. The, the not wanting to Pick up the phone. Like, it just can't matter because as long as it does and you go start chasing, I mean, you don't even need a book. You just said you're good at what you do. Just go do that more often. It's always going to be get in more reps, stop getting distracted. Don't fill your time with stupid stuff that doesn't help you go down that lane even further. And don't ask for advice for people you wouldn't trade places with. That's— I mean, it's that simple and that hard all at the same time. Yeah, you're looking to get in a category of 1. It's really difficult to get in a category of 1 in any particular lead source, but it also means that you don't have to keep re-earning your right to be here on this industry every single week, which feels good as well.

Yeah, it's so simple. It's so simple, but so freaking hard.

Well, I think it's hard because it's so simple. We, we think it has to be harder than this. So we go try to find other things to make it harder than it really has to be. And every— and you also have to understand that your algorithms are designed to sell you something else to make you feel like you have a gap. Coaching in and of itself that's being paid, or these programs or these whatever, their job and what they're lethal at is telling you a story that makes you feel like you don't know what you're doing. So you buy whatever they're selling. You have to like protect yourself from all of that stuff all of the time. And if you're really great, like you may hate content, right? But if you're really great at expireds and for sale by owners, go work this year to get in a category of one and stop listening to real estate stuff because you're not going to get any better at convincing a stranger to work with you by listening to more podcasts about real estate in general. It's just not going to help.

I have a quick story. A client of ours, when we were charging for coaching, you know, 90 days, $10,000, he needed to— like, he's 20 years in real estate, never focused on database, never focused on social media, pivoted massively hard into those two core lead gen levers. Business was coming in, he revitalized his database, added value, and he was like— his response when he left the program was like, man, I needed this, this, this is going to save my life. I was texting with him because he's not at eXp and I want him to come over. Um, he was at a Glover U event. Nothing wrong with Jeff Glover. He's built a massive coaching organization, but he's a Mike Ferry disciple. And this guy had 20 years of burn and churn, like he could do a Bold 100 like every Monday, you know, but he had no database, no recurring business to show for 20 years in real estate. Because never built any database, never built. And he, like, this was a month after our program, he abandoned what he learned. So it's like, what, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? Um, what do you got, Jim?

Just a quick question. So I'm doing open houses and direct mail. Uh, the direct mail is a postcard that goes out every month and with follow-up calls to them. Has anyone used the— there's a company that does like magazines where they put you on the COVID you get the inside cover, they run about $5 apiece. It's still within that, that same focus of the direct mail piece. And I just— it, it's a little expensive. And so I just want to see if anybody's had any success with anything like that, or if I should just continue to focus on the postcards and just keep banging those out. I'm trying to really put the blinders on so I'm not looking at all these things that we're talking about because they get served up to, to Dina's point, like nobody's business.

Is that Reminder Media or something?

Um, it is.

There's probably a lot of them that do it. I, I would really, uh, guard against that expensive a piece.

Okay.

Unless you have like 50 people that In your case, you don't. If you have a track record of 50 people refer me business every year, like clockwork, at least one deal more, some of them, I would spend $5 on each of them every month, probably even more. But you don't have that track record yet. You know, spending that kind of money early in the journey, there are lower-hanging fruit that are higher return on time or money that you could be focusing on.

Okay, good deal. Thank you, guys.

Yeah, sending a video text to someone in your database and just checking in, you know, and saying, hey, I thought of you and I— because I saw this video or I read a book, might want to— like, that's going to be more valuable in like 2 minutes than spending $5 to send them something.

Oh, thank you.

You got Debbie.

So if I'm not being too repetitive, and I'm sure I did it, but I don't remember what the 3190 is.

It's a real— it's a 3-year vision. So like, I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've always had a 3-year vision, a 1-year plan, and I work in 90-day increments and then I break it down into weekly and daily. So like, if I wanted to, you know, I got to start, you know, I'm doing 20 deals and I want to do 100 deals in 3 years, I would— okay, so I probably have to go from 20 to 40 to 75 to 100, you know, and what's the— what would, you know, I break it down and then I actually know when I'm working on something today that it feeds into this bigger thing because today's work is going to be shit that I don't want to do, but I know it's feeding into like a very vivid multiple areas of my life, business being only one of like 5 or 6. It's feeding into this thing that is worth doing the shitty activities today for. And there are other, I mean, there's lots of methods to do that, to trick yourself into like doing the work on the daily. But to me, that was like, and I went super geeky on it. Like I, you guys have seen my first business plan. I laminated that thing like 20 times and it was everywhere. I had different sizes of placemat versions of it.

It was a personal and a professional.

Like I spent a lot of time in that, on that one thing. And that set the trajectory for me to be able to consistently move out the 3-year vision and just have different, you know, and that allowed me to do hard pivots. Like, I mean, I've let go of big businesses because I knew ahead of time that I didn't want whatever that thing was giving me. But I, you know, I always focused on, you know, getting leverage or getting it to a point where, you know, there was value in it. But so I don't know, that's just one way that I've figured out how to do it. But yeah, once you do that exercise, you know, that's the thing that you review regularly because that's just going to remind you. So, you know, to Alexander's example, You know, whatever the daily mantra is, I will laser focus on, you know, outbound prospecting, expireds and for sale by owners, you know, Monday through Friday from 8 to 11:30, minimum, more in the afternoon if I don't have appointments, like getting like laser focus on what your actual job is. And then your mornings are just to fill up your afternoons with appointments, you know. And, uh, um, unless there's something else that I don't know about why you would do real estate, like, the mornings have to fill up the afternoons. And then you could argue if, like, showing a home isn't even value-add, and necessarily if if you have the ability to get someone else to do it for you. And all the listing servicing stuff that we do isn't necessarily the kind of money that any of you on this call probably want to make. So it's like, that's leverage client care.

So that's a little bit more advanced.

All right. What's the time study?

Yeah.

Oh my Lord, the time study document.

Has everyone done a time study?

Nobody's done a time study.

Oh, is that similar to the— or he did the Dane Martell Buy Back Your Time where he kind of takes—

No, I mean, it's probably— it's all similar, but I've had mine for forever. But yet— but it's, it's a— it's probably a very similar concept.

Um, yeah, this is it here.

Let me, um, let me give you guys the link. You guys probably get annoyed with me pretty consistently with my, you know, very boring do the work advice, but let me tell you, if you do this time study, study, you really hate me for the— but here's the, here's the key. If you really want to make some serious money, um, and you feel like you're busy, you really should do a time study. But I've had people call me or text me like 2 days in and say, this has changed my life, I'm already more efficient. Do not change your behaviors for the time study. So the key is to not change your behaviors, to actually document where you're spending your time. And the biggest culprits are, you know, media, typically personal admin and business admin. So those are typically like the holes that get a lot of time. And, you know, if you have like a deal that's blowing up, you could, you know, forget to do your most valuable, you know, new business development time block that day. And those are the days where you have to not do— you have to not succumb to the urgent, you know, deal blowing up. That's kind of the biggest, the biggest thing I see is people get derailed. But yeah, Time Study is awesome. And has everyone— does anyone even— well, has everyone done the calculation of the money they're making and the time they're spending, like just an hourly rate exercise? We call it the Business Freedom Index, but that's another, you know, having a baseline number for that. So if you, you know, let's say you cleared $75 grand you know, so your AGI adjusted— this is in the States anyway— adjusted gross income was $75,000 and you worked 50 hours a week. That's 2,500 hours a year. So $75,000 divided by 2,500 is $30 per hour. I would venture to guess most agents are making $30 or less per hour. But when I first— and I read it in a book, No BS Time Management by Dan—

not by Dan—

by Dan Kennedy. And it only took me 5 years to get to like 2,000 or 1,000. Then I went from, from 1,000 to 2,000 to 4,000. So like, once you understand the game of time and money and leverage, if you want to figure out that game, it's just, it may take you years to figure it out, but at least you're— that's the game that I played. It was a game of like, how much money can I make working a reasonable amount of hours. So that was like my question all the time was like, oh my gosh, I can't show homes 45 minutes from my house. That's just ridiculous. So like, who— I'm going to find some 22-year-old that couldn't sell houses. You know, he can come in and show my clients' houses and he can do his own deals. That was my first buyer agent hire. Because it was, it was not a good use of my time to show homes. And I could just write out how to show homes in the document. Now we have a whole showing agent playbook.

But yeah, dude, so when, when you, you talk about that scaling process, right, and, you know, reaching that, that $4,000 an hour, is that because it was the same amount of time and you just grew the business exponentially, or is it that you just worked less, totally less hours and outsourced a lot of the stuff that, that you were doing? I, I'm just trying to picture what that landscape looks like.

Yeah. Getting to $250 per hour was me full-time. Between $250 to $500 per hour was me getting out of the business from full-time. So I was making somewhere between $200 to $250 to $500 per hour. Full-time in the business. And then going from $500 to $1,000 to $2,000 to $4,000 was literally just working less hours.

Okay.

So it was definitely a process. There is a cap at like how much money you can make in a real estate business working full-time hours. So then you just take the 40 hours per week and like, okay, what 20 hours can someone else do? I could, you know, I can have them like, in that case, my operations manager, I'm like, I'm not getting involved in any agent deal gone sideways. You handle all of that. And then I had my inside sales manager took 10 hours a week to be my sales manager. I'm like, I don't want to do any agent one-on-ones and I don't want agents calling me anymore. You know, so those are like little tweaks at the end of the journey, but there's a lot of work to do before you're making those decisions. But to get to like $100, $200 per hour, you know, that's just not running signs around town, lockboxes, delivering brochures, you know, picking up a check and bringing it over wherever. Like, there's all these business errands we run all day long, you know, that you can't make money in your car running an errand, you know, unless— and I was driving my Tesla the other day, I'm like, there's no way every agent shouldn't have a Tesla. It's $99 a month to have a driver. I'm at 92% FSD on that thing. So like, I just get in from my driveway and I put in the address and I just hit self-drive and I just sit there and I'm like watching YouTube, I'm texting, and every once in a while Elon tells me to pay attention. But guys, it is the coolest freaking thing ever. If you're at a position where you're in the car and, and you need to be in the car and you can afford— and I think that a lot of people like they, they go down massively in value like 2-3 years after they're purchased. Um, so it's awesome. So that's just like advice there. Um, yeah, you, you— it's the coolest thing ever. My wife doesn't— my wife says that Mad Max, which is the most aggressive, is better driver than me, but she prefers Sloth. There's a setting that's like sloth, and then it's chill, and then standard, and then hurry, and then Mad Max.

I like Mad Max.

All right, what do you got, Andy? You can, uh, close this out.

Yeah, I know it's, uh, it's 2 o'clock, so I feel like some of the— a lot of these, you know, like, to figuring out these systems and these playbooks that you've got, and I've done the Million Dollar Agent Method coaching program with you before, um, Matt Greco, who actually was my coach, I think was on here, but I feel like I'm in the messy middle of some of them, of like transitioning from not having a showing specialist to now having one. And so I'm just like, I guess it's just like every week or every couple weeks I'm just trying to like implement a new little tweak, but it just is one of those things where it feels like it's taking forever. I guess it's like, yeah.

Are you working against the 3190? Yeah.

Well, so yeah. So I started that at the beginning of the year. I did not anticipate to take on a showing specialist. It just sort of had to happen because I had like 6 highly active buyers at once. And luckily, and then, and then I went on vacation as well. Um, so it fell into place a few weeks ago. And so I'm trying to implement it like now. I did actually a video call with a buyer while I was on vacation, a 1-hour consultation. I said, hey, I'm going to introduce you to my showing specialist and then gave them to him. I never met the buyer in person. We did a contract and now we're closing next week.

Yeah.

So like, just, it was almost kind of be figured out on the fly, but I feel like I'm in that spot where it's like everything feels a little bit chaos and I don't have it all like, you know, written out. So I guess my question is coming to like, obviously it's just trying to chip away at that, right? Like, okay, what's the next thing to focus on?

I guess. Well, one thing is like, Um, you've probably seen some of the training that, that Dave Hook has done, uh, for us. He focused on like, man, I want to say like one thing every two quarters. So if you're looking for one thing to— I mean, tweaks are different, but you should have like one or two things that you're working on every 90 days, and maybe not even two, you know. And for the year if, like, let's say your 3-year 2029 was sell 100 homes, you're only doing listings, no evenings, no weekends, you know, any buyer clients, you know, are fully leveraged, you know, whatever. Um, you should have anticipated by the end of this year potentially that, like, or decide, like, I'm not going to be showing homes by the end of 2026. You know what I mean? So, it's like you don't need to know when it fits in in the year, but like that's the kind of specificity is like you decide for this season, given your family and given like your experience in real estate, like is this the year you need to be showing homes? You know, make that decision. And then, you know, and it's okay to pivot, but it shouldn't be every week you're looking for something to tweak. It's like, okay, this quarter I'm implementing a world-class showing assistant system. And I'm also like, carryover from the first quarter is working on my database because I still have a couple elements there that I'm going to put into place. You know, I want to do a, implement the giveaway part of that system. So, but that's more than— because the showing agent system will be in your business 5 years from now. Yeah. You know, robots take over that role. But even then, you probably got to program them and you'll be ahead of the curve and your database isn't going anywhere and you're, you know what I mean? So it's not like, and if your listing system sucks, you know, that could take a whole 90 days to perfect your listing system, like your listing packets, your pre-list packets, the courier script that you send them out there, you know, the way you value home, the script you use, the walkthrough of the property. Like, there's probably 8 different elements that you'll need there, and that could take a quarter or 2 with the reps, you know, with actual listing appointments to go on to implement that system and document it.

I guess that's the challenge. It's like everything feels— not everything, there's a lot of— because you just mentioned a lot of things right there. There's so many things that don't feel complete and maybe a little bit broken. So I'm— I am slowly trying to do a little bit of all of it at the same time, and that's why it just like feels, you know, uh, I get like trying to focus in on one thing, but then when you're also like, well, this kind of sucks, so I want to improve on this as well, and that's where it's like just feels a little messy.

Yeah, it's what sucks the most that's holding you back. Yeah, you know, implementing a showing agent for, uh, you got kids, what ages?

15 and 13.

Okay. Well, yeah, maybe they might like you still, but they probably don't want to.

I'm having to drive them around like, you know, all, you know, she just got her permit, but she's not driving herself yet. So there's a lot of time. Yeah.

Yeah.

My daughter 2 weeks ago just got her license and it's like I got 3 to 4 hours a day back.

It feels like. Yeah.

So it's just, it's like if you want to really just tilt this equation in your favor, the whole time money equation, it's just picking one one thing to work on at a time and getting it done, and getting it done to the point where it's going to be in your business for years. Yeah, where the next showing agent that comes and takes that position, it's not like, oh man, I did it all manually and I didn't document any of it, and you know, now I have to, you know, redo the whole system. So like, when the first time you go through any system, you're building it in a way where someone else can sit in that seat. Like, I had someone who came in at— she did about, uh, $200,000 GCI when she started with us. In 7 years, she got to $2 million fully leveraged. She only did listings. She told the story like it was hard, but I said, man— well, she actually didn't tell it the way, but she had 7 admin over 7 years, and she said every admin took her business to the next step. So it never was like someone come in and they just run it the way they run it and then they leave and then the next person just like, oh my God, there's no systems. She knew she was going toward this bigger business. So she knew that she had to use this person to the extent that that person can help her build systems that were going to live outside of that person. So it's just that mindset, you know, everything you do. And then next week we'll go over— I'll just show you the dashboard of all the crap you could work on. And, you know, there's only like, what, 4 times 4, roughly? There's like 16 to 20 things, big systems that you could work on in your business. And it's picking just one at a time.

Yeah, that's the— I think that's the hard part is just pick— is staying in the one. It's— I guess it's the same with lead gen, is staying on one focus thing long enough to—

you build it. Yep.