The 5 Financial Mistakes Agents Make

All right, welcome to another edition of our production Mastermind. We've got Matt and I almost texted you this morning. I didn't know if it's plumber or plumber.

Plumber.

Plumber. I was going to go with plumber. Matt Plummer's here. And I had the honor of meeting Matt at our Build conference earlier this year. AJ Hooked us up and said, this is someone that needs to come into our world and share his unique giftings and his focus. And it's a. It's an angle that I think. Well, I don't think I know that what's going to come to the real estate market and just to the economy in general, what you're going to deliver to us today is really, really needed and timely. So, Matt, without further ado, give yourself a brief intro so there's some context to the conversation, and then just roll into your stuff.

Awesome. What's up? Jesse Gomez. Good to see you, man. So, yeah, thanks, Lars. Thanks, AJ. You know, man, 10 years ago, I was not the person that you. You're going to hear from today. I was an alcoholic. I was an addictive sports gambler. I smoked a pack and a half a cigarette. Today, I weighed 300 pounds. And I share that with you, because where you are today, we are going to uncover some of the three steps to a transformation and especially a financial transformation. Where you are today, it is okay to be there. However, it is not okay to stay there and just know that wherever you are today, you can change. I changed, and it took me 11 months to lose 100 pounds. It took, you know, after we lost 100 pounds or after I lost 100 pounds, I realized I was a half a million dollars in debt. And over the course of the next 40 months, I reached out to the people who. Who. Where they. They were where I wanted to be. And I just did what they said. Lars, hit it right. Right on the head. If you want to be where AJ is and you get an email or a text message from aj, read it like he's a smart dude. You know, there are. There are a handful of people that have what he has, and there are hundreds of thousands that want it. So. So if you get communication from Lars and aj, just, you know, do it right. If you're on this call, take notes. Like, this is no. There is no shame, no blame, no guilt. This is going to be a lot of awareness and some action. Just know that it's okay. But the first step to any transformation is awareness. Hey, dude, you're 300 pounds. You don't fit on the couch. We probably should lose some weight. You make, you and your wife make 200 grand a year and you're half a million dollars in debt. We probably should look at how we handle our money, right? It's just the facts. It's absolutely just the facts. The facts are truth and the truth is going to set you free. So I went, we spent 40 months, we followed Dave Ramsey's plan, Financial Peace University to a T over the course of 40 months. And when I say to a T, gang, we did not try to Matt and Melinda fy this. We didn't try to add any special sauce. We just did the work for 40 months and we eliminated a half a million dollars worth of debt. And that got me into real estate. And quickly as I was in a market center in Reston, Virginia, five and a, five and a half years ago, cannot believe it's been that long. I was listening and I had never sold a house, but I was listening to real estate agents. I was listening to real estate agents talking about selling real estate next month to pay last year's taxes. And knowing that I'd gone through a significant financial transformation eliminating all of the debt, I quickly put together that said, hey, my impact in this work in this real estate space is not going to be helping buyers and sellers go buy more real estate. It's going to be helping real estate agents go make a, a ton more money and know what to do with it. Because I had been where they were, you know, my widget was, you know, I was just, I was selling a three thousand dollar move, you know, around town or a $10,000 move across country. I wasn't selling a $500,000 house, right? So when our widgets are bigger, right, and when we, you know, if we make more money, it's just a bigger reflection of who we are. If you go out and you make more money and you're a jerk, unfortunately you're just going to be a bigger jerk. But if you're a giver like Lars and AJ and you make a lot more money, you're going to be able to be a bigger giver and that will give you more energy to go make more money, to go impact more people. And so, you know, a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today, we might get into the weeds a little bit. I do want to leave some time for some Q and A afterwards because some of the stuff that we talk about will either, you know, strike some, some questions and the easiest way to Ask, you know, to get the answer is to ask the questions live, right? You know, I can promise you. I'm looking at Jeff. Jeff, if. If you have a question, I promise you There are 17 other people that have that exact same question. They just don't have the. The guts to ask it.

Right?

So if you have a question, put it in the chat and then AJ and Lars will. We can kind of go back and forth and, you know, answer those at the end to do some. Some live Q and A and maybe even a role play, right? But we're all in this, you know, we're all coming out of the greatest spring, summer and fall in the history of real estate, period. I mean, I didn't even try to sell real estate in 2020. And I think I sold $7 million. Like, I was the world's greatest real estate agent. Like, all my listings sold for over. Ask. Like, just ask me. I was the world's greatest real estate agent, right? I was perfect. I batted a thousand in the years 2020 and 2021. That's not the case anymore. Like, you've got to be in the trenches. And you guys are doing such a great job. You have tremendous leadership. You all are. You all are the world's best real estate agents. My job is to help you after you make the money, after you close the deal. So what do we do with the money? There are five mistakes that agents make that I've uncovered after thousands of phone calls and conversations over these past three years that I've uncovered that agents that are some. There's some facts and some truths and then there's five mistakes. Lars. I have the ability to share my screen, I believe. All right, cool. So one of the things I've created is a proven system for agents looking to exit the financial. The transaction treadmill and achieve financial peace.

Right?

We all, especially at exp, we talk a lot about the transaction treadmill exiting, helping agents get from point A to point B, right? Help them get that freedom that we all look for and we all joined real estate for. But we all know that it doesn't exist unless you have a handful of things, a very few things in place, right? One of those is how can I earn money, enough money, what can I do with it over the next X amount of years so that I can actually stop selling real estate? Regardless of our agent count, regardless of our rev share size, regardless if we have a team or we're a solo agent, there's. There are ways to do this and there are especially ways to do this through a market shift. So we're gonna, we're gonna walk through this system and like I said, if we have some time afterwards, we can role play and actually go through some scenarios. So at the end of this, I will actually, if you all write this down, the website is the www the number5financial mistakes.com the number5financialmistakes.com. I'm going to put that in the chat here. It's my, it's my gift to you. Financial mistakes.com go there, download this, the ebook. It'll give you more in depth. It's a free download. It'll actually also give you access if you would like to join my, my private Facebook group called Budget Hackers where we talk about some of this stuff, but this is an easy way to, to get some of the content that we're going to talk about that you can take with you and, and, and go from there. Talked a little bit about this earlier. My wife and I, you know, we've gone through a significant physical, financial, spiritual transformation. You know, paying attention to money at the, at the very front of this in 2014 led me to accept Jesus in 2015. As I was, as I was going through our budget and I was giving, we were able to give about $25 making, making 10 to 12,000. We had $25 left. And my mentor said, hey dude, your, your budget's upside down. Let's give out of the, the 10, $12,000 instead of giving out of whatever's left. And so that sent me on a journey to understand what the Bible said about money and ultimately led me to accept Jesus. So if the, if the worst thing that comes out of this, you handle some money and, and you get clear on, on your core values and understand where giving is a part of this, then I've done my job. You know, one thing on this and I'll, I'll share at the end, you know, kind of where we are today. So the big question is this. How do we increase our, how do we increase our net worth and grow our wealth without a consistent income? Thousands of conversations I've uncovered that the two things that stress real estate agents out the most inconsistent income and disorganization. Can I get an amen? We've all been there, right? Inconsistent income and disorganization. I take it a step further and say financial disorganization. Here's what we know to be true. Obviously, the two, the two things that give agents most stress and anxiety are inconsistent income and disorganization. Agents make less than they think the number one thing, when I have a discovery call with a real estate agent, whether they're in my group, whether it's a brand new coaching prospect, they don't know how much they make, no clue. And it's less than they think they made agents. And I'm just going to cross that out. Guys, we all spend more than we care to admit. There's no judgment here. We all spend more than we care to admit. So when agents make less than they think, spend more than they care to admit, that's business and personal. It causes them to be behind on taxes and or retirement, which starts the whole thing over and forces them to keep selling more real estate. So when you keep going around the wheel, it all comes back to consistent income and organization. So if we have a consistent income, whether it's one deal a month, like we're just getting started, but we can build that rhythm of one deal a month, two deals a month, three deals a month, one agent a month, one agent a month, one agent a month, start building that consistency with a plan and a path to our money. Our stress and anxiety is gone. When we know how much we make out of every deal, when we live on a written plan, a cash flow plan, a cash management system, a budget, call it whatever you want, spending plan, and we stick to it. That will allow us to say, hey, we're going to save this much for taxes and we're going to save this much for retirement before we spend any money. Okay, so this is the plan. This is what most real estate agents do. And I don't want to pick on real estate agents. It's just because that's what we are. That's who we are. This is every business owner, by the way, guys, this is the majority of business owners out there. All of their money. The closing goes into an account, one account, and then everything is spent out of that account. So $20,000 comes in and then we pay all of our money and all of our expenses out of it.

Right?

We pay our mortgage, our car payment or house bills or debt, our food, our expenses, our lifestyle. It leaves no room for taxes, retirement, investing and savings. It's just like I was in 2014, making $12,000 and having $25 to give to my church. There's nothing left. For those of you who are coming to Las Vegas, you're going to see, I think the Mandalay still has their buffet open. Some of the world's class, the world's best buffets pre Covid were in Las Vegas for $19.99. And so when we handle our money this way, it's kind of like going to an all you can eat buffet in Las Vegas with the biggest plate. And how much food are we going to put on that plate? We're going to fill that sucker up because we're going to start at the prime rib, then we're going to go to the barbecue, and then we're going to go to, you know, the desserts and, oh, we might get a little bit of vegetables on there, but we're going to fill up that plate because we just lost or we just won or whatever, right? And then how much of that food are we actually going to eat? What did Mama tell us?

Right?

Mama told us to clean our plate. So we're going to take the biggest plate, fill it up with the most food, and we're going to eat all of it. And then how do we feel? We feel terrible, right? We just consumed 4,000 calories, half of its carbohydrates, and we have no energy the rest of the day. And we just gained weight, right? Our body can't process that much food. So when you want to lose weight, when you want to have more energies, right? Which causes these mistakes, right? No plan. We run our business on credit now because we're just, we're just backpedaling, right? We've already eaten the food, we can't get rid of it.

Right?

So now we have no money, we have no food left. So when, when it comes to our money and we don't have an order, we don't have an order of priority, we don't have a path of money.

Right?

You see that third mistake down here? It's probably the number one mistake other than a plan. But the five mistakes are, there's no plan. We didn't have a plan to go to that buffet. We just went into it, you know, so if we don't have a plan on when we're going to stop selling real estate, it'll force us to not run on a budget. And we'll run our. We'll run our business on credit. And if we run our business on credit, we're not going to have a cash flow system. And if we run our business like this up here top, we're not going to have any savings and we have no exit strategy. So what do we do? The hardest thing on the planet for real estate agents to do is to slow down long enough and treat their business like a business. Be the owner of your business. If you're a solo Agent, you are everything in your business until you've earned the right to hire your first person. So who's who here has read the book Profit first, okay? I don't see a ton of things. I see a couple of the hands go up. Profit first is a cash management system. It's teaching ourselves to run our business correctly.

Okay?

So when we have our business set up and we say, okay, I'm going to take all of that same amount of food, all that same amount of money, and I'm going to put it on one plate, but before I do anything with it, I'm going to carve out profit for myself, the owner, and then who's the next and most important person, right? If the owner is number one, who did the work? You can come off mute if you want to answer this. Yeah, you, right? So if we're the owner, we get paid with profit. If we did the work, we get paid for the sale, right? If we went out and sold the house, now who does the work? Now who needs to get paid?

Right?

We need to pay the government. And then the business expenses. All of these are little plates, right? All of these are little plates. And then last thing is business savings, right? It's untalked about, it's just not talked about. In, you know, in our world of handling money is to saving for future expenses, saving for future opportunities. We're all going through a shift here, right? Savings actually should be moved up to the top in this, in this day and age.

Right?

Because if you have a coach, if you have admin, if you have virtual assistants, if you're paying for pay per click business, or you're paying for client events, and you have a down month. Can you afford to stop doing that stuff? No. So you have to have 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12 months of cash set aside just for when we have a month of inconsistent income. You've just created consistent income by having cash on hand. Okay, so we'll come back to that.

Right?

But does anybody have any questions on that path of money that I just went through? It's the number one mistake agents make, I believe. It's not the number one mistake I talk about in the book just because of how it flows. But I think tactically it's the number one mistake agents make.

One of the pushbacks, I'll ask it in the form of a question, but one of the pushbacks that we get with just the profit first methodology and the multiple accounts and you having been through financial peace, and if you did it like true, you've had the envelopes or what is that? It's just too hard, it's too much effort. Why would I set up all those accounts and have separate accounts at different banks? And you know, so that's just the natural pushback. And most people read the book and like great book, but they don't implement it.

Yeah. And that's, it's the number one reason I've talked to Mike about this. It's the number one reason, I think he says it in the audible. It's the number one reason why he front loaded the book so heavy because he knew that people were going to get through, they can get through two, three, four chapters, they're not going to get through 12. So he said, why am I, I'm not going to put all this stuff throughout the book.

Right.

I'm gonna front load it.

Right.

If you read the one thing, there's gold all the way through that entire book, all the way to the very last page.

Right.

But if you read profit first, you just need to read the first three chapters like it's 90 of it's there. That's. And that's why I said with us majority of agents high producers being Ds, Lars high Ds, like, it's like, why am I gonna do this? Why am I gonna do this? I can tell you, it's the number one way that you can run and operate your business and be profitable. The agents that are doing it that slowed down just long enough to go to the bank for two hours out of a 40 hour workweek and set up seven bank accounts. You only have to do it once. And then every day and every week. Pay attention to your money. If you pay attention to your money, your money is going to grow, your business is going to grow. You're going to be more aware.

Right.

Awareness, decision, intentionality. Those are the three steps to any transformation. Become aware, make a decision. You know what I'm going to do? Profit first I'm going to stop using credit cards and then I'm just going to be intentional about every dollar that I spend.

Yeah, that's, there's a question. So, okay, so once these mistakes are made, so this is a person on, on the other side of the mistakes or maybe just asking for somebody else. How do you find the right professionals, accountant, et cetera, to get back on track and organize financially?

Yeah, great question. So the quickly the mistakes are lack of a financial plan for the future. So I would say you always go back to step one.

Right.

I mean, you know, Russell Brunson says it, it's hook, story and offer, right? If so, if your funnel is broken, it's hook, story or offer. It's not anything else. So we always go back to the hook, the story, the offer, right? In your marketing, it's always going to be one of those three things. It's never anything else. And so it's always, we always come back to a lack of financial plans for the future. How much longer am I going to sell real estate? What do I want to do as I sell real estate? I mean, who here would actually enjoy real estate more if they knew that, hey, in the 10 years I'm going to stop selling real estate, I only have to go, I'm going to need to go sell this many more houses and I'm done. Because I'm going to do this, this and this with the money along the way. I'm going to save for retirement. I'm going to save to go buy rental properties. I'm going to go, you know, buy an Airbnb. I'm going to go learn. I'm going to go. That's what I want to go do. So when you have that plan, so if you've made the mistakes, go back to plan one. Slide. Step one. Let's plan for the future, right? Maybe that's a financial planner. Maybe it's reaching out to me and it's a journey for us for a financial coach for six to 12 months.

Right?

That can help point you in the right direction. Here's a great cpa, here's a great bookkeeper, you know, to help you build that plan in addition to, you know, in alignment with your business. Mistake two, living beyond your means and living in debt. We gotta get out of debt, gang. We have to get out of debt. Don't master the path of money. That's what we spent the last 10, 15 minutes on, mastering that path of money. Think of profit first, everyone, as a path to your money. Whose responsibility or who earns the money out of every $10,000. Because I think if we break it down that way, Lars, and say, hey, out of every ten grand, the owner gets this, the person who sold it gets that, the government gets its money and the business gets whatever's left. And we just want to be mature, responsible, professional business owners. And that's the way that professional business owners handle their money. The ones that are winning at all time high levels, right? So if you've made those mistakes, it's okay. Everything is fixable. Everything that we're talking about today is Fixable. None of this is open heart surgery. If I was a half a million, if my wife and I were a half a million dollars in debt and we owed the government timeshares, cars, credit cards, personal lines of credit card, student loans. If we did all of that in our mortgage, if we made all of those mistakes and unraveled it in three years and went from negative $140,000 of net worth to 850ish now, like everything is fixable. This is money. It's all fixable. Okay?

And there's a quote in the book, I think it's worth mentioning. Mike says putting your nose to the grindstone is a really easy way to cover up an unhealthy business. We think that if we can just work harder, longer, better if we just hold out, something good will happen one day. And I for sure see that in real estate. Like I just got to sell more homes and there's going to be this sort of event that happens that all of a sudden makes everything right. But guys, this is like, I don't know the analogy or the reason how I could drive this home. This is the whole game of wealth. It is a small systematic digging out and piling up cash or, you know, spending less than you make and investing the difference. And there's no, there's no monumental event that will happen. There's not enough real estate sales you can do to be able to become wealthy.

You, unfortunately, there is not enough real estate to sell. You cannot sell enough real estate to out earn your spending. You just can't. And so when, when that, when the person, you know, Lars, I know you're a believer and I know that you, you lead through that. When you surrender and you have the ultimate surrender, all of this is so much easier. You know, we can't outwork God, we can't out give God. We can't do any of that kind of stuff, you guys. We can't outsell our spending. You just can't do it. And it doesn't matter what market you're in, it doesn't matter what lifestyle you currently have, you can't do it. And that's where, when we come back to consistent income, predictable income, reoccurring income, leveraged income, like it does make, everything it takes, it takes all the stress and anxiety, whether it's $500 or $50,000, right? It just makes it so much easier and it removes the stress. And so if you've made the mistakes, everything is fixable. Reach out to me, right? This is literally what I do 25 hours a week. I have 35 agents in my, in my coaching calendar right now that all are going through this because they were willingness, they had the willingness to go learn and they said they were aware. They made a decision. Now they're intentional with their money.

Right.

I've got CPAs I work with that, bookkeepers I work with that can undo all of the mistakes that we've made.

Real quick, any opinion on. I have not read Profit first for Real Estate, but any opinion on the different verticals that he's. He's sort of white labeled the book.

You know, I think so. I've read through, I've skimmed through Profit first for Real Estate Agents that Damon wrote. You know, it's, it's very similar, but Damon has really keyed it into real estate agents. And I think real estate agents as they read through that book will be like, yep, yep.

So it probably deals with the lumpiness of commission checks versus like a lot.

Of inconsistent income stuff in there. Yeah. Okay, good.

Another quick. Two quick questions. Any opinion on using a credit card during the month, Paying it off each month or. I mean, I use two amexes in each of my business, but I just pay them off weekly. Any opinion on using credit at all?

My coach will do this. You know. Yes. Here's, here's the dirty, the dirty truth. If you use credit in any way, shape or form, you know, especially on daily spending or monthly spending, you're going to spend more money. 100% fact. If you use a credit card and then pay it off weekly or pay it off monthly, you're going to spend more money than if you use the debit card. And it's, and it's very close to 20% because you just don't feel it.

Right.

It helps smooth out your cash flow issues.

Right.

At some point, it's going to catch up. I have a saying that, you know, juggling credit cards or playing with credit cards is kind of like playing with swords or juggling swords. It's really cool until you trip. For people that work with me, the first thing that we do is we go to all cash or all debit for the first six to 12 months, depending on where you are. We have to build that muscle. Now, once you earn the right, using a credit card is a right. Lars has earned the right to use it. He's probably not quite in the 20%. He's probably in the, he's in the minority of spending more than if it was debit versus credit. It's just simply out of ease for him. He's earned the right. He's paid attention to this stuff for years.

Right.

I've earned the right. I don't even love doing it, but I do it a little bit.

Right.

So I would say that depending on where you are, I would go all cash, all debit for 90 days. Especially as we go through a market shift where it is very uncertain. We do not know what rates are going to do. We don't know what price pricing they're going to do. We don't know what the public's going to do.

Right.

Our income is based on, on the public.

Right.

And very emotional decisions when it comes to buying and selling real estate. So I would go all cash as fast as possible.

Yeah. Tina's comment's really cool. She says since we went to all cash, it's hard. The, it's hard to pull the trigger to buy, buy something. It's, I mean, different psychology.

It is, it totally is. You know, we had a, we have a guest that's coming to expcon that, that we helped compensate. And I'm like, you know, help them get there, you know, paid for a flight or something like that. And I'm like, I looked at it and I made sure that I had the cash set aside for that before I went and did it.

Right.

It makes all the business sense in the world to help someone get to the event. But I'm like, if that's going to put my business or my, my, my, my family in jeopardy, you know, thousand dollar flight, thousand dollar hotel, whatever it is, like, you have to pay attention. It's so easy to put that on an MX and just deal with it later, right. Next thing you know, you spent $7,000 for a person to come to Las Vegas that either one doesn't join or two sells three houses a year.

Right?

Because it was easy, because there was not cash, it was credit. And so that would be my biggest thing is, you know, for those people is I would go cash for 90 days and make that your commitment.

Right.

Coming out of this conversation, you know, what are the handful of things that people, that an agent can do?

Right.

What's the number one thing a real estate agent can do, period, on a daily basis? Prospect, prospect, prospect. The number one thing a business owner can do is to manage cash. And the thing that I always encourage everyone to do, when you bring it all the way back to the now, when you bring everything back to the smallest common denominator, it's reviewing your bank accounts on a daily basis. It doesn't take any very long. This morning, the first thing, the first thing I do when I get to my phone time is I open up my bank app, I log into my personal bank account and I just make sure that what I thought has coming out has come out. There are no surprises. I don't know if I have this number right. And I think I'm going to be short. But the banks, the big banks, $22.

Billion.

Earned from overdraft fees annually. That's people just not paying attention. So what's the one? Literally the number one, you have it. And most people have an overdraft fee every now and now. Every now and then, right? Pay attention to your bank account. Make sure that's not going to be overdrawn. Know what's coming out the next four to five days. Make sure you have cash, right? So the first thing I do is I look at my bank account, make sure everything's where it's supposed to be personally. And I log into my operation on my OPEX account and make sure that everything has coming out that should. And nothing has surprisingly come out. Annual subscriptions.

Right?

You sign up for a, you know, a hundred dollar a month and you pay that annually. It's twelve hundred dollars and you don't remember it or you don't recognize it. And that sucker comes out on a slow month, it can wreck you for the next 30 to 60 days. And I know we're talking about little numbers, but guys, I see this daily. I see it daily. Agents that don't have a closing, one month, have three closings and then two closings fall through or one gets pushed to the next month, the big one, right? The million dollar closing gets pushed a month.

Right?

It's so easy to get caught up and I just encourage everyone to just. This is the time where we do all of our business planning. I just encourage, encourage you to take a hard look at this money stuff and really dive into what really matters. Transferring the money, making sure it's there. What's my pipeline look like.

Right?

Do I have enough Runway to get to December, you know, and that's where from a strategy standpoint of getting through this shift, if you don't have it, I would stack three to six months of cash as fast as possible. Cash is oxygen for us as, as humans. It's oxygen for our families and it's oxygen for our business. I would highly encourage everybody to really tap, pause on what it is they're saving and investing. Depends on where you are, right? But if you're just, if you're selling one to three houses a month and you've got a nice rhythm going or you're maybe a little scared or a little anxious, that cash savings will help smooth out the, the, the upcoming bumpy ride that we, we could have. I would just tap, pause for the next three to six months and stack up as much cash as possible.

And I would say this is, this is not even a struggling agent issue. I, I've coached guys doing 600 units that were, you know, didn't have 90 days of cash saved personally or in the business. You know, so it's, it's just a, it's just a, an evil that's in our business that nobody talks about. But I want to let you get back to the, the five things if.

Yeah, so like I said, we've spent a lot on the master the path of money not having emergency funds. Like I just, we just touched on that. You know, if you look at Ramsey's baby steps, you know, he has starter emergency fund, pay off your non mortgage debt and then build up your fully funded emergency funds. I believe that is 100% wholeheartedly true. For those that have predictable reoccurring monthly income. If you have an agent, if you're an agent that is on this roller coaster, on the entrepreneur roller coaster or the income roller coaster I take the first step I'm taking a hard look at is cut expenses. So somebody up there, 10, 15% out of the box at home and personal, that'll help you create some margin, right? This is living beyond your means, right? Cut expenses. We just don't need it. We're in the greatest business on the planet that we can generate every lead that we possibly need. We do not need to pay for a single thing, period.

Really just an easy way to do that. It's been a while since I've done it, but I did it recently where I just printed out six months on paper of my SO2 businesses. My 1Amex, my other Amex and then our personal account, our spending account. Six months printed took me about four or five hours, but I found $6,000 a month easy.

It's the, it's the thing that I have. Everyone start doing Lars again. It goes back to the bank accounts. Why do I need it? I don't want to slow down to do it. Go print out now. This is the, this is the ebook, but go print out your last six months of bank statements. Take the weekend and just knock it out. What doesn't. What, what no longer is Serving you. It's there, right? And then waiting too long to start to start and never saving for retirement.

Right.

I mean younger and younger people are coming into our business every day or the industry and my client base is getting older and older and they come to me and they're 55.

Right.

I mean the average, I mean I would just say the industry itself, the, you know, has a longer lifespan. But I mean the majority of my coaching clients are 45 to 60 with, without, you know, without a 401k because they, they came from corporate America or they, they, they, they lost it in divorce or they didn't save for it when they were in corporate America and they've been a real estate agent for 15 years and they've just never saved money. We're just never going to get there if we don't save first.

Right?

We'll give first, then save. We're just never going to get there. And so those bank accounts, Right, the bank accounts help all of that. You know, my buddy Josh Rogers, who's an agent at EXP as well. And if you all are ever looking to grow your real estate business organically on YouTube, hit up Josh on YouTube, Josh Rogers team or Josh Rogers Real Estate on YouTube. He's incredible. And he, he says, you know, his mentality now is I think he has 14 bank accounts and he has only one goal. Fill them all up as fast as possible. Like, and then you just, you get to a point, you just start losing track of where your money is. It's just in so many places. So go set up the bank accounts, gang. Go set them up. Read the book Profit first or Profit first for Real estate Agents. Download my ebook Walk through these mistakes, right? Just and know that there's no shame, no blame, no guilt because the majority of us have made all of these.

Right?

Go ahead.

Let me, let me tell. Now that we've heard you speak about this as an expert in an authority, say, say your journey real quick again. And then I have a specific question about getting spouses on board. But you went from X in the hole to Y in the positive and how long because that's like there are some people that are listening right now that are X in the hole and they're just, there's so much shame, there's so much hopelessness, you know. So what were your numbers again?

So when we started, when we started the, we had $551,000 in debt, it was about $250,000 of consumer debt that we owed other people, non mortgage debt. And about 300 grand that we owned on a. On a townhouse that wasn't worth. It was barely worth what. What we owed. And over the next 40 months, we increased our income. We cut lifestyle. We sold as much as we could. We went as close to not being beans and rice as you could be. Now, this was in 2014 and 2015. Like, I did not have the skills I have today. I did not have the influence I had today.

Right?

We just. My wife and I. I say we. My wife and I just went to work. She was 29 dollaring us to death, and I was 29,000 dollaring us to death. Mine was a lot more fun. BMWs and timeshares. Hers was Amazon and Groupon. No fun. But we got on the same page because we had similar goals. And, you know, the first handful of months, it was dragging her to Financial Peace University. You know, I joke around that there's that. Yeah, I joke around that we. I was. There are still heel marks going down Loudoun County Parkway from our house to church. They're still there. And the number one thing that I did is I fell on the sword. I messed up. I'm taking responsibility. You know, we've done this together. I'm taking responsibility. And I'd like for us to go through this together because I don't know any other way on how to get out of this. And I begged and pleaded that she would do it with me. And, you know, there was. There were times where, like, I cut stuff to the bone and those bone. Like, when you cut bone, it hurts. Oh, it was probably her case. It's probably that one. That. And, and those are still some scars left that we still talk about every now and then when we go out to dinner and stuff. But we got, we got, we got intense. We got, we got focused. We got on the same plan, and we didn't argue about it. I think that's the number one thing that we just didn't fight about it because neither one of us knew any better. We did, we were doing. We were just doing the best we could with what we had, and we just followed the plan. We. We turned on Financial Peace University every week, whether we wanted to go to it or not. We didn't miss. And then we did the work. And I think that's the most important thing. You just have to grab your spouse by the hand. Go on, you know, go on a. A dream date night, right? And it doesn't have to be anything fancy. It's going to be Starbucks and just say, hey, this is what I want for our family. What do you want for our family especially? This is coming from the person that is, that wants to. That, that wants to pro. Make progress, right? That's listening to Dave Ramsey, that's listening to Better Pockets podcast, that's listening to Matt and Lars and AJ on YouTube or Instagram, right? They're seeing the stuff, they're hearing it and just say, you know, this is what I want. What do you want? And then just fall on the sword and be humble and say, I don't know how to get us there, but I do know that if we go and walk this together, right, it's in the Bible that or I don't know if it's the stories in the, in the Bible that one ox can pull X amount of pounds, the other ox can pull Y amount of pounds, but if the two ox are yoked together, they can pull £10,000. So you and your spouse need to be yoked together walking in the same direction. Now you can go learn information faster, come back and slow down. But you got to reattach that hitch because if you pull your spouse, you're just pulling them into the ground. Walk together, slow down. This is, that's the hardest thing for agents to do. They want to go sell the next house. They want to go pay off $15,000 of debt like that, right? You will run over your spouse, male or female, if you come back, listen to Dave Ramsey on YouTube at 1 1/2x speed. Watch binge watch Financial Peace University. Come back and say, hey, hon, we're selling the truck. We're not ever going on vacation. And we got to eat everything in the house this week before we go to the grocery store like you are toast. But if you slow down and say, hey, you want this? I want this. This is great. I don't know how to do it. Let's go find help. Maybe it's just going in and buying a Dave Ramsey subscription, a Ramsey plus, maybe it's setting up a discovery call with Matt together and we go through this steps in this process. But it has to be slow. It has to be slow first. When I lost 100 pounds, my goal was not to lose 100 pounds. I had no idea. I didn't even know I was 100 pounds overweight. But I did know that I could lose 10 pounds and I could probably lose 10 pounds 10 times.

Right?

So if you're there, if you're at that half a million dollars of debt or $25,000 of debt, it's a Thousand dollars a month. You know, $10,000 a year is $25 a day that, on spending on stuff that you don't need, that's ten grand a year.

Right.

So let me ask you this. So, so when you've seen contrast, like, you know, folks that are really successful at this methodology versus folks that, that fail, you mentioned some of it, but what are some of the things we should watch out for?

Yeah. So to just wrap up that last thing, Lars. So we paid off the half a million dollars in 40 months. I struggled through real estate 17, 18 and 19. Three years ago I made a decision. My wife and I came to expcon and we started looking at real estate in Las Vegas. I mean if you're in, if you're in Las Vegas for Exp Con this week, please get outside. It's 62 degrees in the morning and it's 87 degrees in the afternoon and there's, you won't see a cloud for four days. So please get outside. We experienced that. We went on a journey to say, hey, could we build a business online or that was location independent so we could come and we could figure out where we could move. Because we moved from Washington D.C. stone, concrete, glass, central, hot pavement, cars, traffic everywhere, humidity, rain, snow. And over the next 36 months, we stacked up close to a quarter of a million dollars of cash. We increased our income significantly through Zoom and Melinda. A new career with Melinda, that was, that was from home. And 120 days ago, we closed on nearly a million dollar house in Summerlin, Nevada. We're seven years ago.

Eight.

Eight and a half years ago we were a half a million dollars in debt. We could not breathe. Eight years later, we're living in a gorgeous home on the outskirts of Nevada with 100% predictable reoccurring income on the 1st 15th and 21st of the month. And that's where you all can be. And the good news is, because I've done it now, it's not going to take you eight years.

Right?

That's what the Internet's for. That's why people like myself and Lars are able to reach back and connect and bring people along and speed them up faster. A few of the pitfalls, a few of the pitfalls that are, that are the dragons, the ninjas with the swords that are around the corners that you don't even know exist. And I think a lot of it comes down to ego and just, you know, looking at the mirror. Ultimately, man, ultimately, guys, at the end of the day, we are not guaranteed Our next sale. So do not spend the money before it hits your bank account. I would plan the money, be intentional with the money, but do not spend it until it hits your bank account. Do not allocate it.

Right.

Do not mentally go on that vacation until $10,000 comes in. Five grand's coming home. And, you know, whatever. It's the path of money. Don't make that next higher because you have 14 closings under contract and you need an admin. My goodness, save up the money first. 14 can be 7 real fast if interest rates go from 7 to 8. So it's not closed until it's closed. And. And just be wise, right? I would be. I would say one of the things, the mistakes that agents make is just don't, you know, say it out loud. You know, when I was an alcoholic and going through all the stuff of rehab and recovery, I'm like, man, I'm gonna go spend $4 on paper and nicotine. I'm gonna light it on fire and I'm gonna ingest. I'm gonna inhale chemicals into my lungs while I'm going through McDonald's and eating a fabricated Quarter Pounder and then go to the. Then go to the bar and drink 14 Coors Lights. I mean, that just sounds amazingly healthy.

Right?

So if you just say the stupid stuff we're doing out loud and we're all doing it, I think it will help bring awareness to the situation of what we can do differently.

That's awesome. What's the. So opting in for your book is a good way to get into your world. I did it. I opted in the next page is getting into the Facebook group. Few questions to answer. So I would say everyone do that. I'm going to get a copy of the book as well. Would you. Is that the best way to get in touch with you?

It is that Facebook and Instagram, I mean, all of my stuff is all open. So, I mean, guys, you know, as real estate agents, I will help as many people as I possibly can. Obviously, the more people that raise their hand puts a pressure. Puts a good pressure on me to go create things that don't currently exist. So reach out, right? I'm here in the. In the. In the world to. To help you all win financially and live a better life that you're called to go live. I just do it through the lens of finances and. And that's just, you know, that's my calling, and that's what I'm able to do. So Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, Facebook or the Budget hacking Facebook group is. Is fantastic.

Yeah.

This was amazing. Would you pray us out?

Absolutely. Dear Heavenly Father, please look over this entire amazing group of real estate agents who. Or if they're traveling this week, make sure that they're safe and their families are safe. And, you know, I just encourage you, Lord, to speak to them and walk with them on their journey of life and business and money. Handling money your way, your calling. We know that you own it all, Lord, and you just call us to manage it for you. In Jesus's name we pray. Amen.

Amen.

All right, brother.

I appreciate it. We'll definitely have to figure out ways to stay in each other's world and get you back here. And this has been really inspirational. This is the kind of stuff nobody talks about. It's kind of on the outskirts. We just hope it. You know, Hope. Hope everything works out, you know, And I don't think that's a good strategy.

So I'm just Gonna go sell 36 houses this year and figure it out later.

Yeah, really, really good. If there's anything I can do to help you. I'll definitely have you on the spring summit. You know, we do a. An event that. I'll have you on that for an hour.

Cool. Let's do it.

Good. All right, guys. Be good. Much love. We'll see you guys.

See you, guys. Thanks, man. Thanks for being here, buddy. You bet. Take care.

Thanks, man.