Time Off In Real Estate?! — Part 2

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 it 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. I don't necessarily. I still have financial goals that I'm going to hit over the next five years, but there's not this, like, you know, need to go out and grind and make money anymore. But I'm still just wired that way. Whether it's through a chaotic childhood or, you know, coming from, you know, dirt as a kid or, you know, whatever, we're still wanting to provide, you know, a big future, an opportunity for my family. It's still very unnatural. My response to all the stuff I could get my hands in, and you guys have seen it, like, I get my hands in something and it's like, let's, you know, spin it into this big thing. And some things don't need to be, you know, big, big comp. Complicated things. So. So that was the inspiration, you know, the Clockwork Challenge. Really, really good book on just, you know, thinking your business as a system of systems. Highly recommend that sort of mindset. It's kind of like to. To me, it's the updated version of E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. You know, how could your business run without you? And I think everyone, even I think real estate agents need to consider that, like, if you're going to get any time off, any freedom whatsoever, you need to. There's like 12 different jobs you could do as a real estate agent, but you need to envision most of those jobs being done by other people. You know, you don't need to be the one showing us homes. You don't need to run the lockbox or put the yard sign or take the pictures or design the brochure or enter, you know, listing into mls. There are folks that are, you know, created uniquely by God to do those things that are willing to do them at a fraction of the money you want to make. You know, so your freedom starts with just drawing a line in the sand about, like, AJ mentioned it, you know, what's your. What's your target hourly wage? You know, what do you want to earn in your real estate business and then work backwards from there. If you want to make $100 an hour and you're making $25 an hour, stop doing all the things that, that you could outsource for less than 20 bucks an hour. And then you'll go from, you know, 25 to 50 to 100 and then, and then upwards from there. So, and then it could be infinite, you know. So last 30 days I'd struggle to say I worked an hour, you know, but for the income I made, the hourly wage is ridiculous, you know. So now it's inspired me. Like, how can I get my work week to like, literally I'm looking at my calendar, I want to get it Tuesday through Thursday, you know, 12 to 4pm you know, if I can get it down to a probably I'm going to stick to the Monday through Thursday 12 to 5. So a 20 hour work week. And just, you know, and the cool thing is I got on the phone with Jessica first thing I did, 11:30 on Monday morning. I had, I had literally just left Julie downstairs and I said, honey, I didn't miss a thing. Like I literally missed nothing outside of our, you know, long boxer conversations and, and, and stuff like along those lines with the higher level, level, level, level thinkers. I didn't miss anything. And I wondered if I would even tell that to Jessica, you know, cause she's still gainfully employed. She's been in my world for 13 years and she, first thing she says is like, all I need you for is content. Literally, I don't need you for anything else. Like she's running the sales team, she's running, you know, the whole business she ran and the team figured out how to do all the things I was peppering in my opinion on, you know, the team figured out and we're a team of like five or six people, but four of them are VAs. And you know, in Brazil, in, you know, Philippines, you know, we have. So it's not like these are not like highly, you know, I mean they're, they're, they're great team players, but it's not like they're, you know, 100k people and people are smart and they want to succeed and they want to do right and you give them a little bit of guidance, you know, people can figure out on their own. So long winded answer to your question. But part of me just wanted to see how, how well it could run without me. And, and now I'm, I, if I'm being honest, I'm struggling of how I really want to insert myself back into, you know, what things do I really need to do every week. You know, the fun things are, you know, showing. And John and aj, you guys share this. Showing up for the people that are building, that's the most fun. And it's like massive leverage as well, you know, so it's, it's a compound effect, just kind of sticking yourself in those things.

My wife used to say when I went on vacation that I would spend the first two days kind of unwinding and like relaxing, and then the last two days winding back up with stress, going back to the office. And I found that to be true when I went on my extended trip for 14 months too. I would say the first three months I was still worried about like, things back home at the office. And it took me a good few months to really get into like that new pace of life. Did you find in your 30 days or AJ, when you took your year long trip, did you guys find that to be the same for you too?

Well, I'm, I'm definitely like on a vacation. Like the historical way to do vacation. Like, I'm definitely like Julie, Julie, like on the beach, laying there, like, just annoying her. You know, she's already like, into her book and she's just chill and I'm like, you know, antsy. So, yeah, so that's definitely been the case for me, but now I'm just not going to go back to it. Like, I'm pretty committed to not go back to it.

Yeah, for me, it was a pretty easy transition and I wasn't completely unplugged like you, John. I remember you put like, you know, the blurry, colorful lines that you get, you know, when we used to actually have cable television, when your cable goes out, you get all those lines. I remember that was your Facebook profile for like a year. So I didn't go that extreme. So I still kind of plugged in a little bit. My hours were just down to 5, 10 a week. And man, I can still, like, right now, even though I got things I need to get done, I could take off for a week and put it all on hold for, for next Monday or next Tuesday and. And not even care. So that's probably a skill I have because I'm a master procrastinator. So it's. It's maybe a superpower that bothered me to put things off too much. I've always been that way, school and everything. But man, you know what I like about this conversation? Just listening to you guys talk about how you think about things. Because in, in the world today, you know, really the how to type stuff that you can see on YouTube or, or how to like build your real estate business through sales. It's, it's all just how to, it's, it's a commodity, that type of information. Whereas I think a lot of people need help and, and what I'm personally looking for is like how to grow in, in my thought processes. And it's cool just hearing you guys talk about this. I'm hoping, you know, who's going to take away a lot from this call today because, because this is what's important. You know, I, I, I, I, I, I still need to read the book, you know, this, what is it? The Seven Regrets of the Dying. Is that what it's called? Have you guys read it?

I, I heard, I heard Azul talk about it.

Oh, okay, perfect. Yeah. Zul, great YouTube channel by the way, if you guys want to check him out. Azul A Z U L But I haven't read it. But I know what's not in it is no one regrets not working more when they die. So the stuff that we're talking about here is really the most important stuff like how do you live better, how do you spend time with those that you love better, how do you give better, serve better? So it's exciting I think for real estate agents, they can benefit a lot from putting some standards in place, getting an idea of what you want your ideal week to look like probably increasingly generation activities so that you, you have more confidence to say no to certain opportunities because that's going to have to happen. As a real estate agent, you might lose that buyer who's adamant going out every Sunday afternoon if you don't want to work Sundays. But when you got that lead flow, you can do that. And then the next step to do what Lars did 30 days off, you know, come back yesterday. John a year off. Me a year off. You got to figure out how to create residual income outside of your active work. You know, as long as you're always trading hours for dollars, you'll never be free. So you can do that as a real estate agent by investing your money maybe in index funds, real estate investments, or with our company exp residual income through revenue share and then the stock opportunity and, and the revenue share is what created freedom for me about five years ago now. And now I'm super excited to just keep investing the money that I'm earning past week I, I closed on a rental property on Friday. Single family and then I invested significant amount of money in a, in a chain of car washes in South Carolina and that's through a syndication. So it's, it's. How do you take the active income that you're earning? Redeploying it, not spending it, just redeploying it into other investments that are going to create more res. Residual income than doing it over and over and over. And, and it's a snowball effect. And, and that's been a lot of fun and something that I'm really passionate about is, is helping people kind of life do some lifestyle design around, you know that. So that's like phase two of financial freedom.

I think there's a lot of people watching this that, or will watch it that are going to say to themselves, like I can't even, like this isn't even a reality for me. Like this is so far from my current situation. You know, what are, what are some initial steps that you either took or you feel like are necessary to take for somebody that's think like in the grind right now with no light at the end of the tunnel, like what's, what's the things they got to do to get there, like to start getting on the right track?

I mean if you're in the, if, if you're in the thick of the production, you know, the transaction treadmill. The, the easiest thing to do is to say I am a listing agent. I don't work buyers. You know, like I think our careers are different in that it sounds like you guys were more buyer heavy in the beginning. From day one, I always work sellers. Like my, my first, first full year as a full time real estate agent. 2014, I sold 36 houses and probably 30 were sellers. So if, if you, if that would have been 30 buyers, there's, there's no chance, you know, you're just not going to find enough buyers that won't, that are, okay, okay, no problem. I won't go see houses on Saturday or Sunday. Okay, no problem. I won't see houses after I actually get out of work. Like you're just not going to be able to that. So if, if, if you're resonating with what we're talking about, you got to start thinking how do I put myself in a position to become a listing agent, refer out my buyers. That could be an agent in your office, it could be a buyer agent you hire to your team, but you just say, hey, I'm done working buyers or hey, I'm done working buyers under a half million dollars A year, a half million dollar price point. So now you're only working your higher end buyers maybe. So you start limiting them that way and then just being upfront with your clients. Like this is. When I work sellers, in my experience at least they're 100 okay with it. They actually respect you more because you're professional. If I could text my doctor at 10 o' clock at night for something that wasn't an emergency and he responded to me, I'm going to question his professionalism, to be quite honest with you. And like, does this guy have nothing else going on? Like, I don't want that. If it's an emergency, yeah, I want him to reach out obviously. And we do have a doctor for that. But like Lars said, if there's an emergency, your house is burning down, call 911, don't call me, because I can't do anything about that. So it really is that simple, guys. But the one thing I wish I would have done that would have got me farther along for true financial freedom, for, for like true freedom, not just some time off here and there. Is investing my money sooner. Like saying, hey, I'm going to sell three homes a month, spend the money from two, but invest the third commission check into index funds primarily because it's 100 passive. But I didn't know that back then. I, I was commission check to commission check for a while early on and, but I could have saved something. So, so I, I would be very mindful today. What percentage of your income are you saving? I, I think that would go a long way for agents.

Good stuff, man. You know, I wish I would have had somebody early on that was a mentor to me about these kinds of things because, you know, I think I probably started out like a lot of realtors where it was just about making money. It was like, man, if I could just make six figures and I could like have this lifestyle and then you get there and you realize like, okay, now that I have this six figure lifestyle, all I have is like more demands on my time and attention and my money. And you know, as you scale this thing, whatever that looks like for you, and you become more successful and you do all the right things, you're still going to have those demands, those external demands, trying to steal your time, steal your attention and ultimately sell you something to steal your money. So you know, if you can't develop the discipline when you're in the grind, you're not going to be able to develop the discipline later on. And, and that's just something that you gotta. You gotta be mindful of. And I think what Lars did over the last 30 days is great. I think it's a recalibrating, a resetting. You and I were out in. In Breckenridge this year. We talked a lot about, like, you know, what is it that we're going to invest our time in? Because our time is our most valuable asset. So, you know, when we think about this topic today, real estate time off, is that even possible? What we're really talking about is your number one asset and how you're using that asset. So in closing, anything else you guys want to share on this topic?

I would just. I mean, if. If you're in the thick of it, It's. It's the 90% of agents that are struggling. I heard a stat, you know, I think it was monthly, but I think it may have even been weekly. Like 10,000 agents are leaving, you know, are dropping their licenses, let's say, on a monthly basis, or, you know, so there's so many agents getting out of the industry. The only thing that's going to keep you going to do the work today that you may not feel like doing is a vision of something better in the future. That's the only reason I'm not a natural salesperson picking up the telephone. For me, it was a very, very heavy telephone call. Reluctance was super high. But I knew on the other side of the phone call was I would just say, there's a $10,000 commission check. You know, I can help someone, and there's $10,000. And it was building into this vision. You know, I knew in 2009, I decided what 2012 was going to look like, and it was like I was working less than 40 hours a week. I was only doing listings. I was, you know, so that vision was the thing that made me work 60, 70 hours, you know, for a year or two. And then I was able to get. Buy some more leverage, buy back more of my time. So it's just a process. There tends to be, I don't want to, you know, stereotype, but there tends to be. And I don't think it's generational. It's been dubbed as generational, but I'll just give the analogy that, you know, people want to get to the top of the mountain. Where. How does it go? They, they, they want the top of the mountain, but they're not willing to do the hike right. Like, you know, everybody wants to be at the top. They want to have financial freedom. They want to, but they're just not willing to kind of take one step at a time. And you know, so just, you know, everything you've done to this point in your journey is just fuel for the next phase of your journey. All the mistakes, all the good, all the bad, all the ugly, you know, is just going to give you the experience to be able to approach things differently. And then, you know, the only thing, other thing I would say is that, you know, don't, don't do the grand gestures. You know, it's, it's, it's not, you know, working out. I worked out three times yesterday. It just so happened that it was that way. And my son told me, he's like, that's probably overkill for one day, dad. It's all about, he said it's all about consistency. And he's 15, right. And so, you know, don't work out four times in a day and then expect like the next day you're going to be, you're just going to be sore and miserable and not work out the rest of the week. Right. So just start by taking a 30 minute walk a few times or whatever that looks like in your business, but just, just start doing the work. Real estate's not going away. Agents aren't going away. All the headlines would lead you to believe that no more homes are going to sell or, you know, the bottom is going to drop out of the real estate market. It's not going to, they're comparing. All the stats you'll see in the headlines is comparing against these two unicorn years, you know, 21 and 22, that we're just getting back to normal and the market is super, super strong and it's, it's a healthy market. And the good thing is a lot of agents are getting out of real estate.

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I would just say if you guys are resonating with what we're talking about, the way you start making strides towards having a business like this, a life like this, is surrounding yourself with the right people. I don't think you can do this on your own. If you don't have friends or colleagues that you're on a regular basis having conversations like this with, you need to seek them out. You can do it through paid coaching, you can join a mastermind, you can just go on Facebook and get in these different real estate groups and just start reaching out to people who might be posting comments in alignment with what we're talking about, forming free mastermind groups. There's a lot of ways to do it and, and One of the ways is by joining Game Changers Nation. We have a link in the description. You can book a call with one of us to talk about what it might look like with partnering with us at Exp we and just staying in this conversation. One thing that. That I discovered for myself is I level up really fast when I surround myself with people who are at the next level. I'll give you a perfect example of that. I was kind of new at Snowboarding back in 2018. I'd been doing it for a couple years, but wasn't really that great yet. And I was on this lift with these. These two kids. I'll call them kids. They're like 20, and I was, like, 30 at the time. And they're just like, hey, man, you want to ride with us the rest of the day? Because I was by myself. Abby was at home and at home. My RV was home at the time in Breckenridge for a few months, and I was like, sure. And they were way better than me. They're dipping in the trees. They're hitting jumps. And by the end of that day, I was hitting small jumps. I was getting air. And for the rest of that winter, I was able to build on what I learned in that one day of surrounding myself with people who are at that next level. So every area of life is like that. Want to be a better dad. Want to be a better husband, wife, mother. Want to be a better business person. Want to get in better shape.

So thanks for your time, and we'll catch you next week.

See you guys.