Shifting Your Mindset From Real Estate Agent To Business Owner

Are you stuck in the grind of being a real estate agent? You know, that transaction treadmill, the hamster wheel, you know, that you just can't get off? You know, there's a different way to go about this. And so today I'm here to tell you that you deserve more. You're able to build a business that stands for something, that gives you some freedom, that delivers a value to buyers and sellers that you can't possibly deliver. You know, as a solo agent doing everything on your own. You know, when I think about my journey from agent lowly, struggling, working way too much, tired, exhausted, cranky, kicking my dog every day, real estate agent to business owner. You know, in a single year serving over 400 families, I personally made $2,300 an hour in 2014. You know, I built the systems. I took the time to build systems that did the heavy lifting and to bring people into the business that enjoyed doing the tasks that I didn't enjoy doing. You know, that's the journey that I want to talk about. You know, it's not an easy journey. I'll say. There are challenges, There are things I messed up along the way. You know, I finally figured out how to get time working for me to buy back time. I built systems and had people do those things. If you're struggling with your time, stay tuned to the end of this video. I want to share our 21 day time freedom challenge with you. If you like the video, you have to hit the like button. Definitely subscribe to the channel. Definitely turn notifications on so you're the first to know about new videos and and leave comments so we can have a dialogue and we can challenge each other in our businesses and in life. I want to introduce you to one of our members, John and Jennifer Mikish. They're actually in my market a little bit, a little bit north of Charlotte where I practice real estate. Yet at the time where we agreed to do business together, for me to help them look at their business differently and make this shift, it was like a big deal, you know, because we're in not the biggest market. And I just agreed that I wanted to do anything I could to help anyone that was struggling at the time. They were not going down a path that was giving them a whole lot of freedom. You know, John was doing a lot of production himself. I think they were doing about 100 units at the time and a lot of stress. Jennifer was in the base, in the business. She was their operations person, doing closings, doing listings, doing marketing, doing everything that a Husband and wife team does to be successful. Bottom line, they were working seven days a week. And so we got to work. How could we set up this business to not only for them to do less in the business and have less stress, but how could we actually triple the size of this business and get Jennifer out of the business and get John out of production? Their vision for their life was to live, as they call it, like, off the grid. Like, they just didn't want to do real estate. They didn't want to be active in their business. So how could they build their business literally for it to operate like a McDonald's franchise where, predictably, when you order something at McDonald's, you get what you ordered. So if you've even watched the movie, the founder, there's a scene in the movie, though, where they're in the parking lot and they have, like, painted or chalk, like, they. They outline what their. What their franchise is going to look like and how. How do they orchestrate the different parts of the process so that the guy doing the fries, you know, puts out the best fries, the burger, you know, the buns are put together with the burger and the pickles and the mustard and the like. It is just like this dance and choreographed, like, all these different touch points to serve the client their order in the quickest amount of time for the lowest cost. So that was their mission. How do we do that on a grand scale? Like, how do we do it? 10, 20, 30. I don't even know how many McDonald's franchises there are. This is the same commitment we made together, Jennifer, John and myself, to build their business in a way where it didn't rely on them. We've been through a period of time where there's a pandemic. It's a weird time. And they've been in a situation where they're 100% out of their business. They've spent most of any kind of quarantine period, like, on the beaches of, like, in the west coast somewhere. We're in the Carolinas. That's where their real estate team is. Yet they're spending time off the grid. And so it was just their vision to homeschool their daughter and to just have complete autonomy with their time and to not have to stress about money. And it wasn't that way when we started working together. So I want to inspire you with that story because there's nothing really. And this isn't like a diss against them or me, really. There's nothing, like, magical about the steps we took to achieve this, it just started with a mindset shift. And if we could just agree that we're not all that important, right? We don't have to be the one showing homes to buyers. We don't have to be the one, you know, showing up on listing consultations. We do have to be the one to build systems or bring people in that have a systems mindset and they can help, you know, run systems and processes so we can get a repeatable result and experience for our clients. So let me break it down into a few things that you can do right now. Start to make this shift in your real estate business. So I talked about e myth, right? It's this question that we have to ask ourselves. How do we think about our business differently so we don't have to be attached to it? Or specifically, how would you think about your business differently if you had to replicate it 10,000 times? Right. So it immediately challenges you. And in John and Jennifer's case, they literally didn't want to be physically in their business and they didn't want to have much to do with their business. So how would they have to view their business differently? So it came down to, and I want to challenge you to think about the things in your business that you're doing that maybe you don't need to be the one doing them. You know, are you the only one that can put a sign in the ground? Are you the only one that can take photos of a listing? Are you the only one that can enter a listing into the mls? Are you the only one that can show homes or write a contract to, you know, for a buyer? Or are you the only one that can go on a listing consultation? Right. Some of those things are a little bit more scary. The thought of not being the one to work with a buyer as a real estate agent, you know, most people, when I say that it's just a head scratcher, like, of course I have to be the one to work with a buyer or of course I have to be one to go on a listing consultation or service that listing, right? Is that really the case? You know, I have listing referrals coming consistently. In fact, really good for friends of ours recently sold their home. It was a 1.6 million dollar home in my market, that's like top of the top of the market. And so I would venture to guess 99% of real estate team leaders, they would go right out, they would take that business for themselves. They would not involve a team member because they haven't committed to not being, you know, the person that does that on their team, not only did I not take that listing myself, when I sold my home and moved into this home, I wasn't the agent on the sale of my home, and I wasn't the agent that purchased this home. I knew the value of the team I had set up and the fact that they do this hundreds of times per year. We have orchestrated this thing in such a way where they're going to get a better result then the guy that teaches this stuff to teams across the country, to me, was a no brainer. I knew that this one agent was really strong in the listing side, and I knew this other agent was really strong on the buyer side. And I was happy to pay them, you know, the compensation splits that we had agreed to. Even though I have a real estate license and I could have done that production myself and with our really good friends, this was $1.6 million. So this was a $48,000 commission check. So $48,000, even a small percentage of that is a lot of money. I was like, no way. I physically went to their home. They live like three miles from where I live. And so I was able to introduce our best agent, the guy that's in the trenches doing this all day long, and there's a simple handoff. Is that scary? I was willing to not do the business if they weren't willing to work with our top agent. Our top agent sold 110 homes last year. You cannot show me someone that can serve your listing better than our top agent. And the irony of it, and one of the things I hate about real estate is that we were competing with an agent that had sold, I think, eight listings in three years. So here we are. And I asked the couple, I said straight up, what are our chances of winning this business? And they're like, well, the other agents, 51%, you're 49%. I'm like, are you serious? This person has sold eight listings in three years. And Brian has done like 80 of his 110 transactions were listings last year. And so we got the business, we ended up selling it. The point I'm trying to make is that I didn't have to go into the weeds in the business because I'd already made the commitment not to do that. And it started in the mind, and it's never an easy decision to make. And I want to challenge you. What things could you get out of? Maybe that is a bit of a stretch for you at this point, completely getting out of production, but 80% of the things you do week in and week out are things that you could get off your plate if you just slow your roll a little bit. Just look at your time differently. You know, when I talk about coaching and training and challenging you to look at your time differently, that's why I put together the 21 day time freedom challenge. Go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com or click on the link below. I promise you we will spend well. I promise you it won't be easy. And I promise you that you'll get the result. It's 20% of your working hours back where you can reinvest them into your business doing, you know, higher dollar productive activities where you can give them back to your family or pick up a hobby. If you're working 60 hours a week, I'll give you 12 hours back. So thetimefreedomchallenge.com if you like the video, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, make sure your notifications are on and please leave me comments so we can, you know, just have a constructive dialogue back and forth. And the passion comes from me failing in all of these ways along my business growth journey and the desire to bring you an easier path. So we'll see you on the next video.