Time Off In Real Estate?! — Part 1

There is no pot of gold. There is no freedom at the end of the production rainbow. You know, after 13 years in, you know, of building a business, I took a tremendous income out of, you know, my real estate business. But you know, a seven figure, low seven figure valuation, you know, so there's not these businesses, even when you build into hundreds of transactions, there's not this like exit, you can't exit and live off the residual income from, you know, it just, it ends. And so that's just something that, you know, when you look at all the ways that there are to, to, to, to make money in the most leveraged, as close to passive as possible, there just aren't that many ways, you know, and, and that, that really opens, opens up. That's what opened up me to the conversation about what could it look like to, you know, I did the production thing, I've done, you know, the coaching thing for 10 years, you know, what's the next thing that I can still have massive impact, but it allows me to literally delete all the business apps from my phone.

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 gotta do the work.

We got all three of us this week, so it's gonna be awesome. I got my man, AJ Maida, Lars Hedenborg, and I'm John Mikish. Really excited about today's topic. Real estate and time off. Is that even possible? You know, I think that for 99% of real estate agents, th, this isn't a reality for them. You know, they're working 24 7, they're always chasing the next deal. You know what, what does it even take to build a foundation to where you can truly take time off? What do you guys think about that? As a real estate agent?

Yeah. So as a real estate agent, man, like that's why I got in this business was for that time off, that time freedom and you just got to have standards. When, when I first started in real estate, I was lucky enough to find seller prospecting. And when you're a listing agent, you definitely have more control of your Time. But it's just about having standards with your time too. It's setting expectations right off the bat with your clients. Like, hey, these are the hours I work unless it's an emergency. You know, I take Saturday, Sunday off. If we get an offer over the weekend, I'll negotiate all offers with you. I'll go over the offers with you on Monday, we'll negotiate them on Monday, but we'll let the offers pile in over the weekend. So I just did first year agent. I mean, I was 26, had never sold a house, and really that first year, this is how I started to run my business. Being really green in the industry, and I had a lot of success with it. So I was able to take most nights and weekends off unless I chose to work a Saturday morning for some more prospecting.

I.

My clients knew not to reach out to me after hours. If they did, they knew to expect a phone call from me the next day during prospecting hours. On my voicemail, I said, hey, I'm looking for buyers and sellers from 8 to 11. I'll get back to you after that. So I find when you're. When you set proper expectations, even if you're just an individual agent, you can have a lot of control over your time and not burn out in this business. A lot of agents, I feel like, are so needy when it comes to the clients they are on 24 7. So I think a lot of it does help. When you got good, consistent lead flow, you're consistently prospecting, lead generating. That also helps to give the confidence to set those expectations with your clients.

So, yeah, this was not at all pretty or thought out like that in the beginning. That sounds like a wonderful, like, perfectly executed textbook plan. Mine was a total crap show. I worked all the time. I was just like, trying to get set up, you know, I was still probably running from fear of not having money in earlier days and, like, just putting the pedal down hard to try to escape that, you know, previous reality. And I remember getting to a point where I was like, I have to build a team because I can't keep going at this rate. And, you know, Lars came into my life in that sense in a big way. And I want to hear what he has to say about this in a minute. But I remember feeling guilty for taking time off initially. And one thing I had to do was just kind of like get over that mental hurdle of feeling guilty for taking time off and not making excuses for time. I needed to be with the family, to go out on the lake on the boat. And I would just call it an appointment. And that started to help me make that mental shift is like, hey, can you do this, John? Or can you take me here? Or can we look at a house then? Or can we have a listing appointment at this time? And I'd be like, actually, I already have an appointment then. And it didn't matter what I was doing, if I was out in the lake or I was just taking some downtime, it just became an appointment. And I found that to make it easier for me to say no to people was like, hey, I'm on an appointment. Lars, what, what were your earlier days in real estate like?

Yeah, it was quite a shit show for me, too. I mean, I'd like to say that I had boundaries in the early days, but I identified the path I was going to go down was through leverage and systems really early on. So when I wasn't like, playing the job of a real estate agent, I was building systems. So I would probably work about 50 to 60 hours as an agent. And then a few nights a week, like, I'm talking like 10pm to 1 or 2am, I would sneak upstairs and I would just, like, build systems. And I did it with a vision toward, you know, having leverage. And I was willing to, you know, I was willing to do the 12 to 15 hours a week of new business development. And, you know, that brings sort of the lifeblood, the engine of the business. But I just had a specific vision of what I wanted. And to AJ's point, you know, having standards and, and a specific focus in the business, right? I mean, buyers are gonna take every evening and every weekend, you know, and it's, it's tough to rationalize being a good buyer agent and not giving away most evenings and most weekends. So that's not the side of the business that you're going to have any, any freedom whatsoever. So that's one thing. Early on, I had to, like, I had to get the heck out of working with, with buyers. My first 10 months, I sold 27 homes, and I think 25 were buyers. I technically didn't work on Sundays, but of course I worked on Sundays, you know, if I was working an offer or, or whatever. But aj, there's one thing, you know, and, and I'm coming off of, of 30 days completely disconnected from anything in business. First time I've ever done it. One thing that you said, aj, when you talked about, you know, having standards, but then also having the discipline to not go into email, to not go and respond to the text of the not so well behaved client that texts you, you know, nine o' clock on a Friday night. Right. Like make sure as long as they know you don't respond unless you know the, the, the house is burning down. In that case, call 91 1, don't call me. You know, I will talk to you Monday at, you know, know 11:00am when I'm done with new business development. So agents are, it's the good and bad about our industry. The reason we can succeed at a high level is that it's filled with a bunch of commission hounds. You know, people that are so desperate for a commission check that they're willing to work whenever. Right. And there's one specific tactic though, I think every agent can, can pick up and, and A.J. you touched on it a little bit, is that you have to decide in advance what your calendar is going to look like. You know, when you're doing new business development, when you're, you know, in email, when you're taking lunch, when you're doing appointments and have appointment slots in your calendar pre decided. So if someone's like asking you, hey, can you go out, you know, Friday at 6pm to look at this house? It's like, I can't make Friday. I've got an appointment. But I do have Friday at 4pm Open if you, and, and, and, and you know, Jill can get out of work an hour early. You know, you can grab that appointment, right? And so just have those appointments in your calendar and your job every morning is to fill those appointments. And that's freedom, right? It's. The irony is that there's freedom in the structure. Taking vacation as a solo agent is super hard. You know, that's, that's another challenge that we'll get into. But those, those are some of my initial thoughts. You know, standards and discipline and just being willing to focus on the things that most agents won't focus on consistently. New business development that solves all the problems, you know, despite the market, even the squirrely market that we're in now.

Yeah, yeah, it's challenging man, like to be a single agent and to, to deal with all of the different clients and the emotions that come up in a transaction and try to take time away. Like I don't even know how that works, but that was kind of like the first thing that pushed me into wanting to get a team was like, hey, there's got to be an ability to take some downtime. A.J. you've always been very intentional and like when I think of you, I think of that Word intentionality. And it's, it's no surprise that you were the first one to come over to exp. Was exp. When you first saw it, did you see it as a path to more, you know, time off or was it just, hey, you know, I'm gonna do this because this makes sense to me.

Yeah, definitely. You know, I look at everything and, and really have since probably age 16 when I read Rich Dad, Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki about this idea of financial freedom through residual income. It was so the lens that I looked at in terms of, you know, the lens when looking at opportunities was, you know, how can I live this ideal lifestyle, which for me is being able to work when I want, work wherever I want, doing things that I enjoy. So yeah, the EXP thing with the residual income piece through revenue share was the, the main factor for me. A lot of other great benefits like the stock and the split in the cap. But I got very good at only looking at opportunities and pursuing opportunities that provide either complete residual income or, or very high dollar per activity income, I guess. You know, was it income, high dollar income producing activities? So to get me to do something at this point, it's a lot per hour if it's not residual. And, and it's been that way for years.

That's awesome, man. Well, I took a different path to that. And I remember you and I having a conversation early on when you had just started with exp and you know, I was, you know, a proponent of the team model and building out a team with leverage systems and processes like I had learned from Lars. And you were like, no, man, I'm gonna do this. And, you know, you got to a level of freedom that most real estate agents will never get to in a very short period of time, which is amazing. But I went the opposite way and kind of like the long way around the bend. The way that I learned from Lars, and I really did have a sense of freedom in my business from, you know, building out the processes and systems that not only took me out of production profitably, but eventually took me out of the day to day. So much so that I was able to take 14 months off and travel around the country and really just manage my business on one 90 minute meeting per week. Lars, when you started your coaching company, I think I remember hearing you say one time, like you were doing it with the idea in mind to help real estate agents achieve a level of freedom that most of them would never get to on their own. Was that part of your process and hey, let's, let's help these people get more balance in their lives.

Yeah, I mean my journey was so painful, you know, that I felt I didn't ever really see myself as like, you know, being, being leading others in, in any kind of way. Like, like even we're doing now with game changers. But it was, it's, it's painful to, to build a business, you know, that, that it's, it's really, really hard. You've got to keep so many ball. You got to keep your pedal down on new business development and lead gen and all of that. And then you're bringing people in and you're building systems and the people you bring in, you know, think real estate's easy and it's like this just like complicated sort of mess and. But the motivation was like I just wanted to make it easy for, for others. There, there is no pot of gold. There is no freedom at the end of the production rainbow. You know, after. Call it so 20 and so 13 years in, you know, of building a business, I took a tremendous income out of, you know, my real estate business. But you know, a seven figure, low seven figure valuation, you know, so there's not these businesses, even when you build into hundreds of transactions, there's not this like exit, you can't exit and live off the residual income from, you know, it just, it ends. And so that's just something that, you know, when you look at all the ways that there are to, to, to, to make money in the most leveraged, as close to passive as possible. There just aren't that many ways, you know, and, and that, that really opens, opens up, that's what opened up me to the conversation about what could it look like to you know, I did the production thing, I've done, you know, the coaching thing for 10 years. You know, what's the next thing that I can still have massive impact, but it allows me to literally delete all the business apps from my phone. I think John caught me texting like once in 30 days about business. But the thing that allowed me to do that, I still have a great core team at real estate B school and I checked my rev share dashboard. So I'm not gonna lie, I did check that. That's the only work that I did. But you know, it's for every business day, you know, I'll probably make about $4,000 every transaction day. Every Monday through Friday that I was gone, I made about $4,000. And, and that was me, that was me doing nothing, me not showing up for any calls or, you know, really anything. So that, I mean that. That's the ultimate in terms of anything I've ever put my hands on or been involved in.

So, yeah, I think it's nuts. Like, so. So we all kind of knew each other early on. You know, we were all doing real estate the hard way. We all eventually saw the light through. AJ Came over to EXP let's fast forward to that now. Like, aj, what would you say on a. On an average week for you? Because I'm sure people have heard of your success or Lars's success, and they're like, well, how much time do you guys put in? Like, what would you say is like a, like a true average business week for you? And what kind of flexibility do you have at this point?

So it's, it's been a lot of flexibility for a long time now. I've been with EXP for seven years. And like, you took about a year and went around the country in an RV, and really from from mid 2018 when we started that trip, I was consistently working, Gosh, I'd have to guess now probably about 10 hours a week. And necessary work at this point. It's. It's probably five to ten hours a week. So some. Most weeks I do more than that. And a lot of my work now is evaluating investments, managing my money, keeping track of it all. Great, great problem to have. And working on building, you know, YouTube. So, so I enjoy that, but that's not like, really a necessity. So bare bones, if, if I had to just say, hey, what's the least amount of work I can do to. To maintain my current income? It would probably be about five hours a week. That'd be the necessity. But, but I'm putting in probably 15 to 20 hours a week right now. I have a plan in place to bump that up to 25.

But.

But that's where my comfort level is. That's, you know, it's when you get, when you create, when you reach financial independence at the lifestyle that you desire. Sure, I have higher aspirational goals, lifestyle wise, but. But not that much higher. So I'm kind of already financially independent on my dream lifestyle. So any additional hour that I put into my work week is an hour taking. That I'm taking away from either my family, my health, or my hobbies. And it, the financial reward just is, is. Is. It's, it's. It's hard to explain, but it's incremental. The, the value you get from that extra 10k a month or Whatever it might be, it doesn't really move your lifestyle that much. But if it's, if it's a significant additional effort that goes into it, it could really affect your lifestyle. And having a kid that's three in one, two kids that are three in one, I'm just not willing to do it. So that's one of the things I'm working through with my coach right now, because I have an opportunity on the table right now over the next 10 years, I think, to realistically make an extra $10 million over the next 10 years by working an extra five, 10 hours a week. And, and I'm, I'm wrestling with it, man, because it's like I already have the lifestyle I want, so why trading more time for money that I don't necessarily need. So it's kind of a little bit of a moving target for me. But man, the, the freedom that comes from having residual income that supports your lifestyle is the greatest blessing that, that I think one could have. It just allows you to do whatever you want.

And the model is so, is so pure and so simple that what I find kind of the thing I'm most in love with it is that, yeah, it's passive and it comes in residually, but you can take these breaks, these pauses. So like, if I leave tomorrow, which I am, and I go on a, you know, 30, 40 day break and I come back, you can just pick up where you left off. So there's just, there's just a lot to it that most people, you know, we want to them to experience that freedom. And Lars, you know, what was your catalyst for this idea of taking a 30 day sabbatical and really unplugging and, you know, setting your structure up to do that?

Yeah, it was specifically inspired by, I don't have many bromances, but Mike Michalowicz, who wrote the book Profit first, also wrote a book called Clockwork and I had him on my podcast. I met him at an event he spoke to. I'm in the highest level of this group. And you know, he spoke about this Clockwork challenge. You know, it's, it's 30 days away from your business and, and you're, you're not in anything. So there are no meetings, there's. You're logged out of email, you're not on social media. So I set this date about nine, ten months ago. And, and I had, I did a one week, a couple, two weeks. I failed at, at those. So I was surprised that I was able to actually pull this off. But I love work I'm driven I'm highly driven. I also if you put me in a situation where you're going to ask me a lot of questions it probably fills my ego a little bit to be the guy that has all the answers and in that comes just a never never being able to unplug and so the thing that the biggest biggest you know even if you can do it and I John I saw your video on the 12 hour walk even if you could take 12 hours and disconnect from business and social media and email just to clear your mind to to not do it for a whole day so wake up and then go to bed at night and then wake up the next morning and and just that was the biggest thing you know I'm I'm out of email out of slack off all social media and I just have a just a a peace and serenity that I I haven't had in a long time and.