The 3 Key Systems I Used to Sell 44 Homes My First Full Year in Real Estate

85% of what a real estate agent does is administrative in nature. So very few agents have anyone helping them. With all of the things that we do that honestly you can get in most, even the bigger markets, you can get someone to do more than 80% of an agent's job for less than $30 an hour, 2,000 hours a year. A $60,000 person. There are probably 60% of the things that you do that we could outsource to an administrator or an administrative assistant in another country. And we have a systems, we call them VAs. I don't like the term VAs, but you can outsource 20, 30 hours a week worth of work to someone that's making less than $10 per hour. That is the most reliable person ever. They come in trained and they're ready to go. And we have a system and we work with companies specifically to do that.

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 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. In today's training, I'm going to get into the three key systems I used to sell 44 homes my first full year in real estate. I actually got into real estate in March. March 5, 2007 was the exact date I left my multiple six figure, cozy corporate job to get into real estate. I ended up closing. Even though I just started in March. I closed 27 transactions my first 10 months and then 44 my first full year in real estate. So technically, before the end of my first full year in real estate, calendar year 2008, I sold 71 homes and I think it was in excess of $500,000 of gross commission income. So to set the stage, if you weren't in real estate back in those days, this was the gfc, see, was just taking hold. The great financial crisis and housing was the trigger to the great financial crisis. The net net of it was that we went from 15,000 agents in my market to 5,000 agents. Looking back on that time, that was a blessing in disguise. I didn't know any better. I didn't know that real estate was supposed to be as Hard as it was, I focused on just a few things and those are what I'm going to go through today. That the key systems that you'll need to employ in your business and if you have a shot at making what I say is an unreasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time, now I will share a framework with you that we use called the million dollar agent method. Back then I did not have such a framework. So it's only, you know, many, many years. Took me five years to scale my real estate sales business to over 450 transactions. My fourth year in the business I was able to profitably almost a seven figure net take home income doing no production at all. So I chose the path of leverage and systems and succeeding through others. These systems that I'll share today are for anyone at any point in their journey. We have six distinct stages of growth in real estate, B school and our entry level opportunity to work with us is called our million dollar agent method that gets you through stage three. So if you want to be a million dollar agent, I'll let you know how to do so at the end of this training. So let's get into the three key systems and these are going to be. So the warning is that there's going to be nothing new here. I heard a stat recently that only 2% actually 1.8% of real estate agents sell 25 homes or more every year. And most of those agents don't have the kind of lifestyle that I would even want to have, you know, and net, net how much money are they actually taking home? You know, when it comes down to it and is it worth the sacrifice they're making? So the promise here, if you apply these systems and you build them out in your business that you will be able to work a reasonable amount of time and make an unreasonable amount of money. And I'm talking getting to 250,000 take home or 500,000 take home, whatever your goal is in terms of income, take home, we can get you there. Or you might be at the point in your journey where man it'd be great to just net, you know, $10,000 a month, you know, and then we can talk about 20,000 take home net and then 30 and 40. Right? Life gets a lot easier when you add on $10,000 of take home income that you technically don't need to live off of. And that's my goal here. So let's dive into it. The first thing that I figured out and we teach this very, very differently now, but back in the day I figured out lead generation and conversion, I'll kind of lump those together. Lead generation and conversion. I had a very simple lead source. This lead source hasn't worked at a high level very profitably. I think it was just Google pay per click. I've ran some simple traffic to a landing page and I generated buyer leads. My first two and a half years in the business I just focused on working with buyers. So I got good at one single script and they would just log onto my, my site. It was an IDX property search site and they would give, more often than not they would give me decent contact information and I just memorized a script. I it was all speed to lead. If I didn't get them on the first contact, I would call them multiple times the first day, multiple times each day after that I put a, you know, a lead management sort of protocol in place. That's the lead conversion part of it. I would text them, I would email them, I would do everything I needed to do to reach out to them. So I don't even know if I texted them back then. I don't even think texting was on the platform at that point. Really just a series of lead nurture emails and then I could see what they were searching on on the site and I would set up E alerts and send them properties and just continually follow up. And So I sold 44 homes my first full year, 2008 and I think all but maybe a handful of them were buyers, right? So I really just laser focused on a single lead source and I got really, really good at it. If I had to role play with you right now, the script that is embedded in my DNA because I went over and over so many times, you know when you turn a script into a dialogue, that's how good you need to get where you can just handle conversations with a specific lead type and you just know everything they might say. The goal on those conversations was to get them at enough value and we call these gold bricks add enough value where they're, they will be motivated to take action and meet with you. So lead generation, we need leads to talk to. We have 12 different lead gen levers now in million dollar agent method and none of them are paid leads, none of them are cold calling. So we teach things differently now but the principles and the system still apply. So we would generate a lead and I would do the diligence, the work. I would apply the discipline to follow up with those leads forever. And if I got them on the phone and they weren't ready to do something. I would tag them either A, B or C buyer and. And I would have follow up plans in my CRM that would react accordingly automatically. So that's lead generation. Lead conversion is part of it. Most important part. 90% of leads aren't ready to do something. Even if they're your next door neighbor. You may find out that they're looking to sell a year from now. I spent a lot of time building out the basics in the business that I was able to scale from there. So that's lead generation and lead conversion. That's the first system that you have to get in place. And there's mindset and discipline that goes around it. There's time blocking in your calendar. But I've always had pictures of my kids. So I'm motivated by this. Right. This is right behind me. I see this all the time. And so a lot of my willingness to do the work that others weren't willing to do was because I had a lot on the line. I left that corporate job. GFC great financial crisis was taking hold. I think we got up to 27 months of inventory in our market and 35% of them were distressed sales, short sales or foreclosures. It was really, really bad. You know, part of me, like with this whole NAR settlement change and agents freaking out, part of me is like, holy cow. I don't wish they could go through it, but I remember how hard it was. So the first system is whatever you need to do to do the work on the daily lead generate and lead convert on the daily. That's what you need to do. And it could be just calling people that you know or meeting people and adding them to your database and nurturing those relationships. Right. That's a core system that there is not a, a top real estate agent that's making a ridiculous amount of money. They're not working a ridiculous amount of hours that hasn't cracked the code on lead generation to lead conversion period, Full stop. All right. Second system is your consultation framework. So I didn't use the listing side all that much. You know, really. I transitioned into listing side in 2010 when I was able to hire a couple buyer agents that doubled down for my buyers as showing agents. That allowed me to shift 100% of my efforts over to the listing side and build that side out. But your consultation frameworks are when you're getting someone to agree to meet with you. Right now with a NAR settlement, we have to meet with buyers before we show them properties. It's required by the law. Right. So what are you going to say to compel that buyer to meet with you? Right. So we have all these gold bricks that we rattle off in our scripts and they're more often than not they will meet with you because you're adding value on the phone or you're sending them the E alerts and you're constantly following up. Right. That's the system. The consultation frameworks are now on the buyer side. It's you send a packet of information via hard mail, not a PDF, digitally showing the services you provide as a buyer agent represent that client on the buyer side. Same thing on the listing side. You're meeting them at the office or you know, at your attorney's office or you know, somewhere where it's a professional atmosphere. And then you are, you've got an actual process when you meet them. You have things, things that you say in the right order even before that you qualify the appointment before you get them off the phone. That's part of the Step 1 key system. Make sure that you ask all the questions that you need to make sure it's worth you spending your time meeting with that buyer or that seller. Right. And then consultation frameworks is the pre list, the pre buyer packet, the actual consultation, the presentation, and then the paperwork that you get filled out when they agree to work with you and explaining your commissions, explaining how now it's a little different how buyers and seller agents work together and all of that stuff. Right. So that's the consultation framework. We have virtual versions of those as well because there are folks that are out of town or it might be easier just to give a virtual consultation. We've done them over Zoom before or Google Meet. You know, there's different ways that you can use those systems if you're not, if you're not always physically with your clients or if it's just easier for them to meet virtually. But the end result is the same is that you're asking them to put place their trust in you and sign on the dotted line and commit to you as their agent. So that's the second system. Most agents just wing it. Most agents don't really focus on building a consultation framework. They just really, they're just gonna do their magic and they're gonna, you know, they're gonna wow people when they meet with them. That's not the way to build a sustainable business. And that's, there's no way in that model where you're just showing up and showing homes and one off, you know, you Get a referral and you just go and kind of willy nilly the listing presentation. There is no way to scale a business that doesn't have an actual sales system. And so the first part was, you know, a little bit of marketing because we're generating leads. Like I said, we have 12 lead gen levers now that generate leads. Then there's inside sales, which is you have to make the calls, you have to get to 20 meaningful conversations a day. And we've got ways to help that, you know, process go a whole lot easier. And then you do outside sales and that's meeting with but would be buyer and seller clients presenting your service and getting them to commit to you. The third system, and I figured this part out really early. I heard another stat recently, 85% of real estate agents do not have any administrative support whatsoever. And, and I would argue that 85% of what a real estate agent does is administrative in nature. So very few agents have anyone helping them. With all of the things that we do that honestly you can get in most, even the bigger markets, you can get someone to do more than 80% of an agent's job for less than $30 an hour, 2,000 hours a year, a $60,000 person. There are probably 60% of the things that you do that we could outsource to an administrator or an administrative assistant in another country. And we have a systems, we call them VAs. I don't like the term VAs, but you can outsource 20, 30 hours a week worth of work to someone that's making less than $10 per hour. That is the most reliable person ever. They come in trained and they're ready to go. And we have a system and we work with companies specifically to do that. The third system is what we call leverage client care. And so what I mean by leverage client care is that I figured out early on in the process that most of what a real estate agent does is administrative in nature. And there's no way that I can do all of those administrative things. I'm talking marketing coordination, listing coordination and closing coordination and, and running signs around town. You know, my first administrator came in with seven years experience. She was local and she had a license. She was able to do some showing, she was able to. She ran, you know, yard signs around when I got busy on the listing side, there's so much that we do as agents that if you slow down and you just look at it, it's not worth 20 or 25 or 30 bucks an hour or it's only worth 20 or 25 or 30 bucks an hour. So leverage client care is the third system. And this isn't something that you'll focus on first, but this happened in my first year to get to 44 closings. And I did it very profitably. I brought in a full time local licensed administrator and she did all of those tasks. Everything outside of building marketing and lead generation systems, lead conversion systems and meeting with buyers and sellers doing the consultations she handled. Right. So, and she was paid, you know, at the time. I hired her part time for 14 bucks an hour and then she quickly moved. I think within two weeks she told me that she had to go full time at 20 bucks an hour. And I'm like, yep, totally sold. You've, you've proven that you're worth a whole lot more than that. A lot of that third part, the leverage client care comes down to mindset. It's not the first thing that we work on with folks that come into our world. But realizing that you're spending a lot of your time doing things that are not dollar productive is not going to get you the kind of money that you want to get paid. Highly paid salespeople or business owners. Right. If you pivot beyond a million, you can actually build this thing into a business. I'm not going to approach that topic here. But highly paid salespeople eliminate all the admin. Right. The best salespeople at the best companies have their admin taking care of for them and they're put in a position where they can do the most dollar productive thing for as many hours a day as possible. And a lot of agents don't like to do those things. So they get a buyer client on the hook and they'll show them homes or you know, I'll attend the inspection, I'll go measure curtains with them, I'll whatever all those things. Maybe they're important that they get done, but they just don't pay well. And so the vision here that I have for anyone that wants to make a crazy amount of money in a not crazy amount of time is that you need to think about this thing as a business. So the first system is lead generation and lead conversion. And that has a lot wrapped into it. I could have broken that down into just three systems because it's like, what's the mechanism that actually generates the lead? How do I manage all of the leads, the protocols and the lead nurturer sequences? And then what do I say on the phone to get someone to meet with me and then qualify that appointment. So there's actually three sort of systems within that system. And then we have the consultation frameworks. That's number two. You have your buyer consultation framework and your listing consultation framework. It's the pre list packet, the home equity evaluation, it's the listing presentation, all your paperwork, and exactly how to choreograph all of that so that you're getting paid probably more than you're getting paid now. You're collecting transaction fees as well. And then on the buyer side, same thing, we send out a buyer packet, we have a buyer consultation, we have all of our buyer paperwork where we're getting our commissions, we're getting transaction fees paid. The third system is what I call leverage client care. For many of you, this is not something you'll get to in the first 90 days or so, but it is something you need to consider because 80% of your time. If I were to follow you around for your 50 hour real estate work week, it would blow your mind that probably over 30, maybe close to 40 hours are spent doing individual tasks that just don't have to be done by someone that wants to make a hundred or 250 or $500 an hour. I was able to go from literally 100 to 250 to 500 to 1000 to 2000 to $3000 an hour in my real estate business because I was building systems and then I was getting leverage around either automations or delegations around those systems. Now I've mentioned it a few times. If you know that you need help with this process, this journey, I am here to add as much value as I possibly can. And I know there are some of you that just need help putting these systems in place. Our Million Dollar Agent method program is heavy on the implementation side. It is unlike any other program that you might have ever considered or looked at or been through. These are the systems that are required to allow you to grow your income, scale your business, but not lose your life in the process. So if you want to get on a strategy session, that's all I have to offer you. Just go to milliondollaragentmethod. Com, that's milliondollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you on the next video. Be good.