The Journey From Agent to Owner

What's up?

What is up, party people? We are here for another weekly session. Real Estate Game Changers weekly live. Our brother from another mother, A.J. maida, is, uh, I think with the second week of his, uh, of his vacation. Uh, John and aj. Yeah. So you guys hung out last week. Uh, catch ups. How was that trip, man?

It was awesome. Uh, I didn't really know what to expect going to Breckenridge this late in the season. You know, it could have been just a slow, plush mess. And the first few days was really amazing spring skiing. And then it got really cold, I mean really cold. And it dumped for like the next three days in a row. You know, that kind of snow where you're going up the lift and by the time you get to the top you're like covered in snow. Some of the best powder I skied in all year, surprisingly. So. It's been, it was really, really fun.

Awesome. Yeah, I went to, I am not quite 50, but my best buddy turned 50 and he had a, like, probably like 20 friends come into town. We went to Chicago and I played, man. Have you ever played whirly ball?

No.

It's essentially bumper cars. Five on five bumper cars where you're smashing into each other and you have like a high lie thing with a wiffle ball.

Yeah.

You're trying to score on each other. So it's like a combination of basketball with like these highlight wiffle ball things. And it was about the most fun I've ever had in my life.

It sounds amazing.

Ridiculous. All right, so let's, let's, let's get into it. So AJ's out this week, so I think all of us are around next week, so we'll get together. The, the pack will be back together this week. John and I wanted to just unpack. You know what, what I'll call this is the, the good, bad and ugly about, you know, making the shift from failing, struggling real estate agent to, you know, a traditionally successful top producing agents. I use air quotes there because that life kind of sucks, you know, kind of takes you up to the 500,000 GCI and then, you know, what's it like to introduce leverage, you know, administrators and start about, start thinking about building systems and then, you know, what about like doing transactions and leading people is hard, so then you get more leverage and you sort of exit different parts of the business. So I want to unpack all of that today in this conversation. Let. Before we even get into the specifics of it. You know, John, when, when you were talk about Your journey when you had to make that decision to sort of push through, like life as a solo agent and you know, was there anything that was holding you back from starting a real estate team?

Yeah, no. I mean, I've always been progress oriented. So what, what really helped me get traction as an agent was getting coached. And once I got into that coaching world, which is a funny world if you've never been in it, because it's just like different. Right. Everything becomes almost like when you, when you think of the military in the context of there's a hierarchy. When you get into real estate coaching, it's like, okay, single agents start over here. And then if you're really good and you become a really good single agent, you move up to this area over here with these coaches. And these coaches still try to build the team. So I guess for me it wasn't really a decision, am I going to start a team? It was a natural progression of, oh yeah, I'm gonna work through this, like rankings, if you will. So I, I couldn't wait to start a team and I didn't know what I didn't know. So I wasn't prepared for all the negative sides of, of that kind of and the lessons that I was going to have to learn. But I was really excited. My first team member was my mom and she came in and worked with me for a little bit. And then I brought my sister in and then I brought my broker in charge in and we just kind of started to build it from there.

Awesome. So, yeah, I would say to kind of answer my own question, you know, wondering, like back, back at that time, I think it was similar for me. You know, it was like my first 10 months, I didn't have any leverage. It was just me, you know, slinging 27 homes in 10 months or whatever and, and just barely getting by, you know.

Because you came, you came out of a really good thing. Like, like real estate was the only thing I had, but you came out of a really good thing into being a real estate agent. Like, what made you want to do that?

Yeah, I mean, most people thought I was crazy. So I had like a really cozy corporate job. I mean, I was, I was in charge of acquisitions and strategy for an aerospace company. I was relocated from New Jersey to the market that John and I are in, the sort of greater metro Charlotte market. And it was, it was like a multi six figure job to become a real estate agent. And if you hear a lot of real estate agent stories, you know, they, they kind of come into it, you know, with a shift in another career or something happened, like, this was a choice that I made, and people were like, you know, we're not highly regarded as an industry. There's like this survey. I remember what's his name? Gallagher. I would do all my CE with this trainer here, and he would always show, like, you know, the rankings of like, you know, attorneys and car salesmen and. And then there's real estate agents, like, what the public, how they perceive. So it's not really highly regarded. And here I am leaving this, like, you know, I think I visited like, 30 countries over seven years and we acquired. I saw 200 companies and we acquired like, 42 of them or so. Really, really cool. And then I get into real estate and I'm like, you know, wondering, like, what the heck's going on with that.

Business background as a foundation coming into this industry. Did you know, like, before day one, as a single agent, that you were going to build a team and own a company? And, like, did you have that vision in mind?

You know, it's funny, I didn't. I. We were in the same coaching program at one point. We were in Craig Proctor, and I was in there. I got into. In March 2007. I went to my first conference in April and I signed up for coaching at that conference.

So funny. I don't. You probably don't remember this. It was so funny to me. I realized that you and I were both in Craig Proctor, and I went because we were both at the same company too, but we had like, multi offices. So you were in the Charlotte office and I was in the Lake Norman office. And they did this, like. I think they only did it once or twice. This huge company wide, like, ce. So everybody went to it because it was free. And I saw you there and I walked up to you and I was like, hey, man, we're both in Craig Proctor. And you were like, who are you? And I'm in Platinum and I've never seen you before. And that was like the end of it. And like, I was like, okay, Is.

That really that much of a dick?

Oh, yeah, totally. I wasn't. I wasn't turned off by it because my D was like, oh, all right, game on. But yeah, like, we. We like, stopped for coffee and I walked up to you and I was brand new in Craig Proctor and I was so excited. And you were already like the season, like, at the platinum level. And you were like, yeah, I'm in that. Yeah.

You know what's funny is that I, I at at each level like you, I, I felt like, you know, I was just gonna soak it all up. So, so the, the question, like I don't think I realized that I was going to build a team. But really quickly did I realize that traditional success was horrible. Like, and that was in my first 10 months I managed to sell 27 homes. So I figured out lead gen, you know, I got a simple script from the ufos, right, The Universal follow up script. One lead source, one script. And I did one activity three hours a day. I would just generate some inquiries on home search or Craigslist ads at the time. And I was just religious about calling them back and I had, you know, lead follow up systems and. But then I realized, you know, when I looked at what I was doing every day compared to my corporate job, I'm like, even at the most basic sense we had, I traveled a lot. So we had an admin booking our travel and we had like a cleaning crew come in at night and take out, you know. So like obviously there were things like 80% of what a real estate agent does is really important, but it's like administrative in nature, you know. So my first hire early 2008 was, was that was my first administrator and you know, I was able to sell a few more homes I ran with that model. The 2009 is when I hired my first buyer agent. That's when we did, you know, 55 homes and he did like no, 58 and I think he did three of them and I did 55 of them. Next year he did 27. I think I did like 66 and I added a couple more agents. And so we kind of went through that, you know, only a couple years under 500,000. But, but that's kind of the first thing I want to unpack here. Most of our listeners, most of the industry is under 100k, you know. So John, I want to ask you, looking back on when you were under 100k, so when you were selling less than, you know, 15 homes at the time, probably our average Commission checks were 6,7000. So it was like 15 to 18 homes was under a hundred thousand. Yeah, that's like probably 75% of the industry doesn't sell 15 to 18 homes. So remembering back into those days, what were the things that you did or the habits that you ingrained that that kind of enabled your, your growth into the 250 to 500 range?

Yeah, so my first couple years in the business, I was in New York and I made over 100k and I mean, it might as well have been a million dollars to me then at that time, like where I was in my life. And then I thought, well, I'm going to move to Charlotte and I'm just going to make more money because it's a bigger market. And then I spent the next three years making under 100k, which was super painful because my expenses actually went up. When I moved to Charlotte, I bought my first house and like all of that. But when I got coached, they gave me something to lock onto, like a plan, if you will. And I went after FSBOS and expired like really, really hard. And my, my thought process was because I was in a big office with a lot of agents and I was asking them what they did. I was just going to do more than them. And I figured if I could, if I could just over compensate for my lack of skill with activity, that I would win. And I did. And, and ultimately, you know, I started taking expired listings. You know, it probably wasn't as much of my skill set as it was of the frustration of these sellers who were just like, okay, it didn't work at that price. So I got to go down on price. And their agent had told them they had to go down on price, but they weren't going to go down on price with that agent. And I would step in and look like the hero. And really all I did was get the house at the right price, which, which it was eye openening. Right. Because it taught me early on in the listing game that it's all about price. And we can say all these things like, oh, you got to take the family pictures down and we got to like repaint this accent wall. But at the end of the day, like, that stuff is like, whatever. It really just comes down to price and location and condition. And if we get those three things right, we're going to sell the house.

Yeah. There's something you said in there that I want to spend a little bit of time on. I forget how you said it, but you said you were willing to do more of the thing that you saw working. Talk about that. That a little bit. I don't know anything that I've achieved in business or in my physical body or the strength of my marriage that didn't require like, compared to the average person doing that thing, I was just gonna do more. So talk about that. Like, what did that look like for you? Was it hours? Was it activities? Was it, you know what, what was it?

Yeah, I mean, back then, I remember to this day, like I Had on my, on my social media, the quote that I had like on my profile was hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And when I looked at the most successful people in our office or in the industry, in our market, to me they weren't working very hard. So I said, okay, well, they might be more skilled or they might know this market better than me and they might have these advantages, but I'm going to outwork them. And I just believed in hard work. Like, that's how I was raised, that's how my dad was, and we always had a good lifestyle and I was trying to find that lifestyle for myself. So I just came in with the, with the mindset that I'm going to outwork these people and, and I did. And I think it was a, I was willing to do anything mentality. And there's a, there's a bad side of that too, because sometimes we're doing activities that don't yield the highest value. But I remember my first deal that I did in North Carolina was a, a big, a vacant piece of land that was less than 50,000 because nobody in the office would even drive out to go do it. And that led to a referral, that led to a home sale. And it's like a lot of these things in real estate. If we do a good job, they will lead to better things. I remember working the short sale game, right? Like, how awful is that? You go out and you do all these broker pricing opinions. You don't even get the listing most of the times. But then I, then I, I did one and I got one and that one led to so many others. And you build a career off of that. But I think that we have to get out of this mentality of instant gratification. I'll only do if I get. And you just have to be a servant and go into this job, into this career, into your marketplace and, and be willing to outwork everybody else. Because if we look at it and say, hey, the average agent does this and we're in the market that we're in today. Well, the average agent is the average of what they've been doing over the last couple years. And that's going to get you basically pushed out of the industry. So I think we have to look at the average and then we have to look at the top and we have to be, I'm willing to go to the top of this activity chain and do more activity than anybody else, and you're going to get an unfair share of the marketplace. If you'll have that mentality.

Yeah. There's a guy that we both know, he tells this story his first three years in real estate. He Monday through Friday he would have 60 meaningful conversations a day Monday through Friday. So 300 meaningful conversations a week. Expireds, FSBOs Probate, Circle Prospecting. So what is that, 15,000 conversations a year. And he did it for three years, didn't miss a day. So 45,000 meaningful conversations in a three year period. His first three years in real estate. Most agents, if you take 10 times the total meaningful conversations they have in their career, they wouldn't hit 45,000. And so now you could sort of pick on him then and he probably wasn't good on the phone and probably like a hundred meaningful conversations to set an appointment and then it went to 90 to 80. But now he does, he works a 40 hour work week. He's still in production. He does about 150 listings, just himself and his team does another 300 transactions with about 8 agents completely financially free. He starts, still struggles a little bit with, with his time because he's in production but he's got, got a great staff. But when you look at that, so, so that story is, is all to say like if you're, if you think you're struggling now, I think things are going to get worse. I think the income is going to continue to squeeze and I think, you know, agents will have to go through the, the cleansing where agents will probably get out of the market. But if you're not tracking one thing, if you could track one thing, it would be like how many conversations do you have every day? So a two way conversation with the decision making adult, that's a meaningful conversation. So a little technical there, but is there anything and, and at least 20. So, so to, to kind of you know about those early days, I didn't know a lot and I wasn't like a natural salesperson. But my coach, Joey Trombley at the time, he gave me just a one page tracking sheet and I think it only had like three or four things to track. But I remember it was dials and it was manual dials because I didn't have any technology. And then meaningful conversations and then buyer appointments set and listing appointments set. And that was like, that was the game he said was the whole game. If you could do this for as many more hours above 12 hours a week, I think he said you will, you will win the game of real estate sales. And so I would have like you know, five like immovable Two hour, you know, time blocks in my calendar where like one lead source. So I got really good at having conversations with buyers that were registering on my site. You know, it's not a hard conversation and just have as many of them as you need to to set all the appointments. Right. It was so simple what I did to. To succeed. Same thing with expireds and fizzbos, right? It's just a numbers game. Any. Anything come to mind when I mentioned kind of just tracking and time blocking and the. The not so sexy parts of growth?

Yeah, I mean, that story is amazing and. And it makes me feel less amazing about what I did because I don't think I had the intentionality of being that disciplined. I was just in love with the process of becoming free. And my path for freedom was real estate sales. And I started to get good at it and I started to get more business. So I learned later on a lot of help from coaches like yourself when we coach together about the importance of tracking specific KPIs, specific things. But early on, if I'm being honest with myself, it was less about that and more about, hey, I found a way to be successful. And I went all in on that success. And for me, the one thing that I kept in my mind was like, I needed to have 30 or more listings at all times. Because this is. We're talking about like 2007, 8, 9 era, when getting a listing wasn't the problem, it was selling it and not going broke in the process, because you could get 100 listings and sell two of them and go broke in the process. But I had this thermometer, if you will, of having 30 listings at all times. And I would do anything to get those listings. I was mailing people. I was door knocking. I was, you know, door knocking through farming communities. I was in a BNI group. But it was always like the thing that I was hunting was a listing, because a listing to me was better than a sale because it was an opportunity for multiple sales. And I think looking back, what I did well is I made some things happen and I. And I created stories out of those successes and I told those stories to all my prospects. So if I got on the phone with you and you were a cold lead, I'd be like, hey, hey, Lars, it's John from, from ReMax. How are you doing, man? And, hey, you weren't expecting my call, but you came into my funnel this way and, and hey, man, you remind me of somebody. And I would just start telling stories. People in my office thought I Was crazy because I would dive into a story before I even like, figured out what they were looking for. But the story made their guard go down and they would open up and then I would get into the regular model of like, you know, following up with them and finding out, you know, L.P. mama, like where they were at, what were they looking for. But I felt like this, my ability to tell stories brought people's guard down and opened them up to possibility in the marketplace. Because, let's face it, it was a scary market back then and, and I would get people to, to do business with me that way. And then we would go get more listings that were distressed or foreclosed on and we would go get more buyers and we would create stories of those buyers getting like. Think back, Lars, to your, to your time in the marketplace back then during the last recession. I know that you can bring to mind properties that. Man, could you imagine buying those properties today at those prices that we saw then, like unbelievable life changing opportunities for people to invest in real estate.

Yeah. And there's something that you just said there that I want to, I want to pick up on in the vein of like, you know, the market that John and I went through being in the same MLS, we had like 15,000 agents on our roster that went down to 5,000. Now that was similar across the country, but you and I were at an event recently in Cabo, and I think it was Brent that asked the question, or maybe Gene asked the question, like, how many of you have been in. Or one of the speakers, you know, been in real estate for less than two years, less than three years or five years. And it was most of the room.

It was crazy. Right?

Right. And, and you made me feel even older. You know, I'm going to turn 50 this year, so maybe feel even older. But I, I don't think most of the industry knows what's coming and h. How to, how to stay in, in business, you know, so some of this stuff is like, man, it's not the sexiest stuff. We're not talking about like digital marketing or, you know, Facebook ads or we're not talking about the, the next mousetrap, but none of that matters if you don't have like. And the thing I wanted to pick up on, I want to ask you, what was the vision? So for you it was. You were willing to, to Will Smith die on the treadmill because you had this vision. Right. What was that vision that, that you had? Because some people are like carrot and stick. So for you it was a Carrot. Like you finally found something that was going to get you out of probably a not so, you know, wealthy childhood or whatever. Right. What was the thing, what was the vision that that kind of you painted for yourself? And was it just in your mind or did you have a vision board or what did it look like?

Yeah, so. So even when I was very broke and I was making less than 100,000 a year, I had these vision books and I would, like, cut out stuff in magazines and paste them in there. And what happened is the team, like we talked about earlier, was a natural progression. Like, I just did the team because it was the next thing to do in my coaching program and I wanted to, like, rise to the top of whatever program I was in. So I did that without giving it too much thought. And in that three year process, things that were in my original goal book came to fruition, like, eerily so, like the house I got in, the car I was driving, like, eerily similar to what was in my book. And when I started to see that, I started to have a greater belief and, and, and courage to set bigger goals, which ultimately happened. But when I started to run the team and I saw that I could actually help other people do what I did in a way that would impact them positively and me positively, that's when I switched. And I went from wanting to be a real estate agent to wanting to own a real estate business. And it was probably a combination of, you know, the coaches and the people I was exposed to, like yourself. But something flipped a switch in me and I said, okay, I'm. I'm now understanding what Zig Ziglar always said, which is, if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get everything you want. And, and, and my whole world opened up then and, you know, things. I went from being a team leader where I would feel guilty if I wasn't out there grinding every day, to realizing that I could have more impact if I was helping other people and I was setting up systems and processes to bring them in. And that's when the tracking really took off for me.

Yeah, man, that's awesome. I, as far as vision goes for me, I mean, I, I think if you're sort of rudderless in, in any area of your life, whether it's your physical body or your marriage or, you know, business, for sure. I feel like if you have to have some, I think a vision board, AJ Maybe one day, one time we'll do a who question on just. He's the king.

He's good. At it.

Yeah, he's the og, but he's the youngest of us. But he is the master of vision. I'm telling you. This guy had, like, he lives in the place that was on his vision board, you know, 10 years ago, and he's only like 36 or something, right? 35 or. It's just. It's just amazing. For me, it was. It was words. So I created this, like, super geeked out. Like, John and I have very different styles. For me, it's like it's going to be in a laminated business plan that I wrote in 2009, but I'm going to read the words here. And this. This kept me going until I got there. I want to positively impact the lives of everyone I touch, especially those whom I love the most. And here's my vision. I want my children, my wife, and all of my family to have total freedom of choice to do what they want to do. I want to give back to those who love me, support me, and believe in me so that they may live a life they never thought was possible. And to me, like, that was the thing. I was just willing. I knew I could do it because there's so much money thrown at a real estate agent when they're, you know, it's. It doesn't really make sense when you think about it. The only reason we're paid so much is that most agents can't figure out how to sell a lot of homes, right? So they have to get overpaid on the 10 homes they sell so they can make a living at it. That. That's kind of my cynical belief of our industry. So, like, if you don't have a vision, you need to just think about, like, why are you doing this? For sure. And I have, like, a bunch of stuff around, you know, I want to positively. I want to create positive change, make the world a better place. I will always strive to be the best that I can be. I want my family to be proud of who I am. I want to set us free financially so that we may lead an incredible, fulfilled and happy life. So you have to put to words, what is the thing that's going to get you out of bed to do the things that you don't want to do? Success in anything involves. What's the Jim Rohn Pain of discipline? Pain and regret is one of them. Like, you can add, there's one of two pains. You get to choose pain of discipline or pain of regret. But there's also another quote. It goes like.

There'S been One going around that I've been seeing a lot that I like, and it says it's. It's. If you make decisions that are easy, your life will be hard. If you make. If you do things that are hard, your life will be easy. And I think that's good. My mine was, I exist to deliver freedom to myself and others through hard by working hard and being smart with my time re finances and relationships.

Awesome. Say that again.

I exist to deliver freedom to myself and others by working hard and being spartan. My time, my finances, and my relationships.

Man, that's really good. That's like a. That's a writer.

2008.

Yeah, 2008. And you still remember it, like. Yeah.

I'm more of a visual learner. No, it hasn't changed at all. I. I did this really.

This.

This guy came into my life. He's like an angel to me, honestly. I. I was at a. I was at a seminar that they did remember, down in Charlotte, over by the airport. There was, like. I think it was a Weston, and they would do, like, events there sometimes. It was. It was pretty dingy and dirty. Well, I went to this event there, and this guy was teaching this class, and it was on, like, productivity, time management, something like that. And at the end of the class, very subtly, he said, would anybody like me to be their accountability partner? And my hand shot up so fast, I thought for sure the whole room's hand was going to be up. And nobody else raised their hand. And he looked around the room almost, like, disappointed. And he was like, okay. He's like, I give back to every community that I work in, and I do free coaching for one person, and I was that person. And that guy set me on a trajectory, dude, that, like, changed my life. One of the things that he had me do was he had me write down, like, every 15 minutes what I was doing. That was eye opening. But he had me create this mission statement, and it stuck with me to this day. And it was, like, really deep the way we did it. And we went through Chad Helmstetter's what to say when you talk to yourself. And he reprogrammed me. At that time when life was really, really hard and difficult for me, he reprogrammed me. And, man, it's amazing how many of those things have stayed with me all these years and the path we set me on. So I guess it makes me want to be that to somebody else. And I've tried to be that to members of my team. It was just challenging and heartbreaking in in traditional real estate, how you would do that for people and then they would ultimately become your competition, which was my biggest pain point in this industry and what almost took me out of the industry.

Yeah. So let's, let's. It's. It's such a natural. Talk about the, the latest shift, you know, so this is never going to be the EXP Show. But, but that statement that you just said, talk about that a little bit. The difference with, you know, running a, a local team, you know, to now what you're doing, you know, impacting almost 2, 000 agents.

Yeah. I mean, I, I think that exp just gave people like me and you inability to impact more people at, at a scale that we could never achieve on our own. You know, you build a real estate team and if you're listening to this and you have a real estate team, I would guess that you're probably somewhere in the area of five to 15 agents. And you're like, I don't want any more agents because there's a, there's a capacity that you have a capacity to providing value for these people, to mentoring and shepherding these people. And that's how I ran my team too. It was like five to 15 people, you know, on any given year. And that was it. It was never going to be 50 people because I couldn't run my model with 50 people. It was, it was inhumanly possible. But when exp came along, it was like a way for me to shepherd my core 5 to 15 people and then actually serve them at the highest level, which is to encourage them to get out of the nest and do their own thing. And that's something that I never did before EXP because I was like, why need these people to stay right here? And when EXP came along, and I didn't know at the time, Lars, that me saying, oh no, you need to stay right here was not only robbing them of their highest potential, but it was also creating this feeling inside of me that was like a cancer that was like, I will help you so long as it helps me, but I could help you more, but I won't. And that creates a weird relationship that I think creates feelings that can be felt even if they're not spoken. So. So that all that was going on for years. And like I said earlier, I'm very progress oriented. So if I feel like I'm hitting a ceiling and I'm not making progress, it tends to wear me down. And I started to lose my passion and interest and, and I'm sure, people listening to this can relate to it. Especially in a market like we're going into now. It feels even like less progress. But what happened is these people would leave to go find their next step, their next, their better version of themselves. And I would, I would be out of that relationship. So Exp says, hey, you can do that same thing you're doing with them, but when the person has the opportunity, the ability or the desire to go beyond you, you can help them on that journey and you'll still be taken care of and you'll still be in relationship with these people. And I mean, I mean, you know my story, man. I was, I was out of my market. I was traveling the country. I moved to Montana. That's a long ways away from North Carolina. But really it was, it was a symptom of a greater problem that I couldn't solve, that I was running from and I was running out of this industry. And as a last ditch effort, I said, okay, now that my ego and my identity is removed from North Carolina in this business that I built, maybe I can take a look at exposure. And I looked at it and I said, this has been the answer I've been searching for all along.

Yeah. And I'm gonna add one thing onto that and it really highlights what Exp gave us the opportunity to build upon. And this is just next month. And this is not my expertise or John expertise, but we have a guy coming on or we do a Tuesday production. Mastermind. He's taken, I think for the last 15 years he's taken over a hundred listings. Not with a big team, over a hundred listings a year for like 15 years straight. He's gonna give away the, the top 10 things he does to generate listings in any market. We've, we've got a gal in South Carolina in our. I say gal like I'm from the 1950s. We've got a kick ass real estate agent who's female in South Carolina. She gets most of her business like a hundred plus deals per year from social media and she's going to give away all of her best stuff. We've got a guy in our organization, not even in our organization, but in, in, in the bigger organization who's going to teach us how he's using AI in his real estate business. Those are three of the five calls we have set for, for May. And so again, this is not a commercial for Game Changers. And if you are resonating with any of this, the only thing we can offer you is just a conversation about Your business. So agent game changers.com you can kind of just get the lay of the land of what we're doing. And, you know, we've got production masterminds and, and all this stuff. I found this quote before we just kind of got into that last segment, and it's a Brian Tracy quote. The ability to discipline yourself, to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success. So talk about that a little bit as you look back on your journey. The things that you did, the door knocking, the whatever you're willing to do, the seven days a week, the evenings. Right. And making sacrifices to the life you have now. What are some of the things that, you know, agents really need to start doing or consider doing as we enter, you know, into this unsettling time that I think we're going to go through?

I'll answer that, but read that quote one more time because I want to add something to it.

Yep. The ability to discipline yourself, to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.

And I would add happiness because I think that it's having that discipline and that delayed gratification that makes you appreciate every good thing. One of the things that I've learned as my, my lifestyle has changed and my income has changed is that when you can have anything you want at any time, that, that can be a very, very unfulfilling place, believe it or not. And it's, it's having that like, hey, I worked for this. Hey, I planned for that. That delayed gratification greatly enhances the excitement or the joy over that thing or that experience or, or that relationship. So, you know, I think looking back, the reason that my. Let's, let's be very tactical. The reason that my business grew and I was able to make the business moves that I made is because my lifestyle never grew with my income along the way. Too many agents, they make a little bit of extra money and they upgrade their lifestyle accordingly immediately. And then they can't make good business decisions because they're living at the top or above their means. And, and I think we'll find a lot of agents in that situation as this market changes right now, unfortunately. But hopefully they'll learn that lesson. Moving in. You've got to have margin. That's margin of your time, margin of your finances, margin in your relationships, or you're never going to be able to capitalize on what's right in front of you.

Yeah, it's, well, what's that expression? It's like, you know, all hat, no cattle, you know, our industry. I mean, you've got agents, you know, driving cars that are $1200 a month lease payment and, you know, they've got no residual income, they've got no net worth to speak of. And they're sort of, I don't even know if it's keeping up with the Joneses as much as, you know, just kind of playing the part of that, like super successful, you know, real estate agent as we wind down here, you know, any, any thoughts kind of looking back on the, on the journey? You know, we get to coach agents every, every week now in our organizations. Any things that you're seeing that, that are working or advice you want to give to the, those that are listening?

Man, I, I, I think that if you're listening to this and, and you're, and you're struggling or you're fearful about what's coming around the corner. The more I talk to agents and have the ability to be in communication with agents, the more I realize, like, most of us are in the same boat. A few of us make a couple decisions or distinctions or get coached into a path that's slightly better or moving at a, at, at a better rate to get us to where we want to go. But so much of us are in the same boat. So if you're a broker right now and you're feeling the pinch, so is everybody else. If you're an agent right now and you're nervous, so is everybody else. So I think just get honest with where you're at. Have open conversations with people that are not where you're at, that are where you closer to where you want to be. And like, I go back to my early days. Like, it was always about getting around people that were ahead of me. And that was the benefit of coaching. It wasn't so much what they did in coaching, it was getting around people that were ahead of me that said, look, you're on the right path. Keep doing what you're doing. Or, hey, stop doing that and start doing this, Start tracking this and being more diligent with your time. Here's a, here's a marketing piece. Do that. But the, but the, but the reality is a lot of us get the right marketing piece and, and we don't understand that the right marketing piece has to have the right frequency. So if you have the right marketing piece and you mail out 50 of them and you don't get a result and you think it's the marketing piece. You have an incorrect expectation because you need to mail 5,000 of them. And it's just having somebody ahead of you that can say, hey, your activity and your desired, you know, where you want to be is in alignment. And a lot of times that's all it takes, right? You can look at somebody and you can coach somebody large. You did this for me. You looked at my business and you said, hey, your activity isn't in alignment with where you want to go because, John, you're doing too many things. And that was like mind blowing to me at the time because I thought I had to do more and more and more and more. And in fact I had to do less, but I had to do less things better. And we, and we stopped doing, you know, I think I was doing like probably 10 to 15 things marketing wise. And you were like, what if we just do these three? And what if we get really good at these three? And that changed everything in my business. So, you know, get around somebody that can give you that clarity, that insight.

Yeah, I'm, I'm going to pick up on, on that one thing that, that you just said there, you know, so, and, and this goes. It's sort of an epidemic in our business, you know, that agents think they have to do all the things and you know, you'll have a top agent selling 25, 30 homes, which is less than 2% of our industry. Like it gets two homes a month is like super tippy top like almost 1% of the industry. And they're doing like four or five things to generate those 24 closings. Where the philosophy, if you really want to grow your business, the philosophy has to be, you know, every lead gen lever you install in your business has to be good for 50 transactions. Not this year, but when you go super deep on that one and you master that one Legion lever, it will produce three to four transactions every month. And then you get, you earn the right to move on to the second one. Right. So your database is probably the first one. Open houses can be the second one, but not like a haphazard open house here or there, like doing. We had someone come on to one of our production masterminds and she regularly turns open houses into two or three additional closings and she just gave the whole system away. Right.

I'll give you a real world like that came to fruition. Before this call, I was visiting in person with a large independent brokerage Here in Bozeman that moved over to exp and one of the reasons they came to exp, because they wanted to provide better training to their agents and they feel like they're doing that through game changers. And he was talking on our interview this morning that we did about that training and how much value they got out of it.

Yeah, it's, it's so good. But, but most agents will do an open house, like one open house. And they'll say, well, that didn't really work that well. Instead of committing, we had a guy ask a question on the mastermind. Like what? He's like, I want to do a lead conversion challenge. You know, personally, I want to commit 90 days to generating as many leads as possible, but I don't have any leads. I said, well, just do like an open house challenge. Challenge yourself to do a minimum of one open house a week, every week for 13 weeks and then see what happens, Report back the results. Right. So all in, probably all in maybe six to eight hours, the way we prepare for open houses. So you're going to generate additional business, but he'll be all in like maybe a hundred hours to generate probably an additional 20 closings is, is my guess because now he has the systems, he's, he's committed to this 13 week challenge. And so my sort of advice and the point of even telling that whole thing is that pick one thing, get really good at it. You can hang your hat on databases, you can still hang your hat on open houses. Even to generate sellers, you can still hang your hat on what's another one, like social proof, Getting people that know you to say good things about you and then recycle that in your marketing. We just did today's training in production Mastermind was through the way you treat your clients. How can you generate two to three additional closings from every closing you get? So client care as a lead gen lever. Right. So all these things can bear all this fruit, but only if you turn into system and only if you commit to building one thing at a time in your business. That's kind of.

Yeah. When you're saying all that, it made me think of the word focus like the thing. Probably even more than hard work that's missing from most agents right now is focus. And I know that like if somebody were to have a conversation with you, your secret, your, your masterful ability is to help them figure out the area that they need to focus on. So like I could come to you and, and I know because you've done this for me and I could just dump all my objections, excuses, problems in a call like this. And in a short period of time, you'd be able to synthesize all that and be like, this is where you need to focus. I think that's your special ability and I think how you've helped so many people like myself.

Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Less is always more. Surprisingly, I now violated the rule recently. Right. Collectively, me, you, and A.J. we have, like, things going on, and it's kind of a little bit all over the place because we're so excited to impact as many agents as possible. I would Definitely check out agentgamechangers.com if you're even curious about what we're building. Yes, it's on the EXP platform and it is much bigger than exp. EXP is is hands down the most elegant platform that's been built. And if you don't know the model, you just owe it to yourself to study it. But on top of it, we're just building a group of agents that are really changing the game of real estate. So much love, everyone. Every week around 1:00pm, 1:10pm Eastern, we're going to show up here and go live on the different channels. And so expect us to bring as much as possible. If you're on a channel and you're commenting and you want to hear a specific topic, feel free to type in the topic. I'm thinking for sure. I think we're going to cover vision at some point. I think it's the secret sauce to everyone's success. John, any ideas for future topics?

They better give us some topics or I'm just going to talk about Montana the whole time.

Yeah, get everyone to move. Move to Montana. All right, everyone, much love, much respect. We'll talk to you guys next week.

See you guys.