Who Says You Have To Wait For Financial Freedom? AJ Mida Shares How He Retired at 31

This is Real Estate Team Builders, and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems, and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. Y' all are in for a treat. Today I've got A.J. maida, and he's gonna talk about his unconventional journey in real estate, specifically his journey as a solo agent to building a team and then building a massive residual income pillar that y' all are gonna wanna hear how he did it. So AJ start out, and we've known each other for, I want to say, like, six, seven years or so. You're just north of my market, and well, now you're like, southeast of our market. You live in Puerto Rico now, so that's sort of the punchline here. But take us back to the early days, like, without kind of spending a ton of time. But, like, you got your license, like, I needed to get busy. What did that look like? What did you focus on?

Then?

Take us into a little bit of, like, how you went about building the team, and then specifically the theme and we just chatted about this is, you know, getting clear on where you want to go. And that's something I've always admired about you. Even if I may have told you to not do something that you ended up doing anyway or kind of told you it was stupid. And we'll reveal that punchline here in a second, but kind of takes us back to the early days. How'd you start the team? Where'd that lead you? And then what did you. What decision did you make from there?

Yeah, definitely. And thanks for having me on the show. It's an honor and a privilege. So I appreciate that. So I got my start in real estate, really, at the end of 2012. And I was essentially, at the time, I think I was 26, 25, I was a failing entrepreneur, essentially, is what I was before getting into real estate. I had some successes. I had some failures getting into real estate. I was running a painting company, and it was more like paint job to paint job, paycheck to paycheck. So I wasn't coming with, like this huge resume behind me. I was young, had just moved to the Charlotte market, didn't know anybody, and I was really unhappy with what I was doing running the painting company. And when I read the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book by Gary Keller, I saw that you could treat the real estate industry or treat being a real estate agent as really an entrepreneur, as running a business, building a team. And that is what attracted me to the industry. So I read that book, got my license, and what I thought I was going to do when I got into real estate was become a top producing individual agent, start running a team, and become the mythical seven. Or the. I was gonna say seven figure agent, but the mythical millionaire real estate agent, where you're out of production and you're making a million dollars a year and you're kind of sitting back and it's somewhat residual. So that was kind of the process. Because what I saw early on in my life in high school, I read a book called Rich Dad, Poor dad, amazing book. Changed my mindset just around, you know, your work hours and income and how it can be residual and cash flow and all these things. And so I knew where I wanted to end up was in a place where I had enough residual income to basically replace my working hours. I wanted financial freedom, time freedom, and location freedom. So I started on that path as a real estate agent at Keller Williams. And. Yeah, you want to keep going?

Yeah. So 2012. I didn't realize you got into real estate five years after me. That's crazy. Yeah. So how did those first few years look like in terms of production? When did you hire your first administrator? When did Abby join the business? Kind of give us a little bit of a flavor. And then the one thing I really want you to spend time on, because I don't know of many people, even in my world, where I try to force them to look three years out. And that's something that you were not going to give in on. Like, you didn't care what anyone would say to you. Like, you had a very clear vision for what you personally wanted for your future. So. So take us to the point where, you know, probably where you're like, leaving Charlotte and living in an ark. That's a cool part of the story. I know your whole story, so I don't want to ruin it.

Spoiler alerts.

Keep going with the story.

Yeah. Yeah. So I jumped in at Keller Williams. Great company. Love my time there. And my first year just killed it. Got rookie of the year, Literally got rookie of the year. But I only sold six houses and pretty much made no money after the split and the leads that I was buying. So it's kind of funny, in our industry, you can get rookie of the year at your local office and not really be making much money. So I got rookie of the year. But what I did that first year, I hired a real estate coach about July of my first year. So halfway through my first year. And that coach taught me. And this is what I was looking for when I first got my real estate license. But I couldn't find it anywhere. So I hired a coach that I perceived had a proven, repeatable process to sell real estate. You know, pretty simple, right? And nobody in my office seemed to have those answers. So I hired a coach. And in fact, they. They had a proven repeatable process. I started prospecting sellers, expired fizz bows, because again, I moved to Charlotte not knowing anybody. So I had to cut my teeth, you know, doing the seller prospecting. And it was great. By the end of my first year, had over 20 listings. Even though I only sold six houses that first year, I had a great listing inventory going into 2014, sold 36 houses. My second year, made around $150,000. So that was an awesome year. And near the second half of that year, my wife quit nursing as a full time ICU nurse to become my assistant buyer's agent and eventually my full time buyer's agent once we hire an assistant and from there started to build the team because again, I was really clear on what my goal was. It wasn't grinding away 50, 60 hours a week, which when you're a new agent, that's kind of what you have to do to build your business. And that's great. You should do that. I call that the grind phase. Everything has a grind phase at the beginning. Just try not to stay there. Try to get out of that as soon as possible. So I was two years in and I started a team. I probably started a little bit sooner than I should have. That first year when I started my team, I actually kind of took a step Back in income because I started spending more of my time in kind of like a management role, trying to hire buyer's agents, train those buyer's agents, start buying leads through Zillow, pay per click. When I had traditionally just been prospecting sellers. So I took a little step back income wise. But then the year after that. So this would have been now into 2016, then it was kind of somewhat a smooth selling as I think I could have got to. Running a team, was working 30 hours a week on average, making close to a quarter million a year or right at the quarter million dollar year mark. And overall it was a good real estate business. I had three to four buyer's agents at any given time. I had an assistant. And it was good. It was good. What I discovered though, again, going back to my idea of having this true freedom, I took a step back and looked around and was like, I'm making great money and I still don't feel like I have that much better lifestyle. I'm not driving fancy cars or living in this amazing house. Sure, my cars were slightly better, my house was slightly nicer, I could actually go on a vacation. But I was like, man, I'm not going to be financially free for a very long time. And my plan was to take the profits from selling real estate and stick that into real estate. And I was like, man, after running a real estate team, I don't have the time or the energy to invest in real estate. And after all the expenses and the little bit of lifestyle inflation that happens, there's not much left over. Like, this is a failing plan. And if I do achieve this true freedom, financial time and location freedom, I'm going to be in my later years, probably late 50s, 60s, and it's going to be a full 30, 35 year career as a real estate agent just selling. And I was like, man, this, this is a hard pill to swallow. Um, I don't really want to do this that long because. Burnout. If, if you run a team listening to this podcast, you know, there's some burnout. Sometimes even an individual agent, there can be some burnout. And I just was hoping that maybe there was a better way. And. And I found out that there was at the end of 2016.

Yeah, and. And you, you just said something there that. And I don't know what I want to ask you, and I've never asked you this question before. What was it? Why were you so motivated to find? You know, because most people would look at where you are, like, what was this? Like 30 years old, 30 to 31. I know you retired when you were 31. I know I've seen that video somewhere. So part of me is like, who the hell do you think you are at 29 years old to be like, really? I'm like to be searching for freedom.

But you were right.

And here you are, multiple seven figure income earner, 35 years old, complete freedom. And so I believe anyone could have anything if they're really clear on where they want to go. So before we get into that pivotal decision, what was it about you like jacked up childhood or like you met this guy who was independently wealthy when you were young? Like, what was the catalyst to you wanting to be free? Like absolute freedom. Not like this mythical, like, hey, I can take an hour off on a Friday, but then I've got to work a deal later that night. And like some real estate team leaders think they're free and they're not free. They're working out of bounds, they're seven days a week. Typically they're stressed all the time. I know because I coach them. Right. My world that I've sort of committed to. So, so what was the influence that, that, that had you go down this journey to freedom?

Yeah, you know, I think I've just been really blessed in my life through the mentors that I had. And it wasn't that I had physical mentors because I grew up lower middle class. I had a great childhood in terms of, I had great friends, my mom loved me, but we definitely did not have a lot of money. And I saw a lot of money issues, money arguments that would occur in the home by not having enough. So that really stayed in my heart throughout my entire childhood into my adult life. That not having money was a problem. It created a lot of stress on the family and a lot of relationship issues. So I knew I wanted to be wealthy through that. And when I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, the idea of residual income came about. And then I read Tim Ferriss four Hour Workweek and I was like, okay, there's a different way to run a business where you don't work your life away. I have a lot of interest in a lot of hobbies and I have a 1 year old and a wife of 11 years. And I knew I want to spend as much time possible with my family, my friends doing things I love. It's, you know, it's interesting. I remember always wishing like, or thinking, man, I would just love to meet a millionaire. You know, like, like learn what they're doing, like ask them Questions. And I was having this conversation recently with my, with my wife Abby. And I don't have any close friends who are not millionaires. I almost don't have any close friends who are not making a million dollars a year. That is crazy. And I am like, I got goosebumps just thinking of it because growing up with not a lot of money and living in generally probably middle to upper middle class area where you see wealth is there but you don't have it, so you're hyper aware that you don't have it. Just having that desire as a young kid to be friends with, know these types of people, it's really cool. And what I discovered is people who make a lot of money have the biggest hearts, they want serve the most and they really care about you as a person. And it's been a real blessing in my life to have such great friends. So. Yeah, so that is kind of what put the desire in my heart to have this freedom was just books. And I think part of it. God, just putting the right opportunities and resources in my hands at a young age.

Yeah. And a super close friend of yours, I just consider him my friend because I know you and I listen to his podcast. JLD ends his podcast, you know, every time like you are the sum of the five people that you hang out with. And he said, and you were hanging out with me and this guest today. So I mean, I mean that there's so much wisdom in that one thing you just said that like, yeah, I just surrounded myself with like Gary Keller and then like whatever, you know, I mean, Kiyosaki, Tim Ferriss. And so I think a lot of people don't realize that it's not, it doesn't have to be literally like you create a mastermind of five people that have their stuff together. You know, it's just what you put in your head.

And that's kind of, this is really key and it's key to where we're about to go with the conversation. But the next step I took my career, like where you are in life is in direct or direct correlation proportion. I didn't do that well in high school. So if I say the wrong word, let's just go with it. Like direct relation. Like who you surround yourself with is in direct relation to where you are in life. Like, I would not be great friends with Lars, great friends with John Lee Dooms of Entrepreneur Preneur on Fire had I not read all these books, listened to all these podcasts, worked on myself because I was not a person who they would want to hang out with 10 years ago. So you have to invest in yourself first. Then you get to level up in your relationships. And it's really neat because without those types of relationships, you're not going to make the money that you might desire to make. You're not going to have the fun you would want to be having. You have to constantly be leveling up relationships. It's not a thing where it's like you're leaving your old friends behind. Maybe some of you listening to this should. If your friends are sitting around drinking, getting hammered on the weekends and smoking weed all the time. I had lots of friends like that in college. And so you just got to be very purposeful about who you surround yourself with. And that's what I love about what we're doing now, Lars, with what we're building now, that the people we get to hang out with are just amazing people. Like, I'm inspired on a daily basis, encouraged, motivated by everybody. And I know for a fact I would not be where I am today without the people I've surrounded myself with. And it's cool that we get to invite people into our world now where they get to probably level up maybe a little bit faster than they could have before, if at all. Because as a real estate agent, you're kind of on islands. Like, if you are connected, you're connected. Maybe people in your local real estate market. And if you do kind of do the coaching network at a national level and go to conferences and things like that, you're maybe networked at a higher level. But at the end of the day, you're still running your team separately. Like, maybe you do a mastermind a week or a month, but they're like, it's just different. It's different. Like now we're doing life together, so it's pretty cool.

Yeah. So let's transition into. To the end of 2016 with the overarching theme of this conversation getting clear on where you want to go. So here you are, you know, probably in your 17, 18 to 20 years old, you're thinking like, all right, I'm going to figure something out to get out of this, you know, lower middle income class situation. And so for a decade, you're probably thinking like, this paint thing doesn't feel like freedom or whatever thing you're. But then you see the next thing and it's like, okay, real estate is going to be the. Nah, that's not the thing. It doesn't feel like freedom, you know, although getting to 250k clear. Working 1,500 hours a year is the 1% of the 1% in real estate. But still there was a missing piece. So talk about the missing piece and then transition once you saw the opportunity, the model exp that everything clicked where nobody could sort of tell you you were an idiot.

Yeah.

So take us to that decision point.

Yeah, I got very clear on that. Residual income, not trading hours for dollars was the only way to have true freedom. And when I think of true freedom, like having that financial freedom, time free, location freedom, all those three things, really what it means to me is I'm happy and I have peace of mind. And while I could have over time, I'm sure built a nice size, you know, investment portfolio through selling real estate. The peace of mind that I've had to sacrifice for 10, 15, 20 years to get there. The cost would have been too high for me. And I set from some pretty solid boundaries around my business. Only work listings typically have my phone shut off by like seven at night, six at night. Didn't take calls on the weekends. Like my sellers knew if we got offers on the weekends, I would negotiate them on Monday. So like I had some pretty solid boundaries around my real estate business, but it was still like it's always on your mind and we only have one life at this. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I don't want to be thinking about real estate. 80% of my waking hours, 90%, 100% for the next 30 years. The price seemed too high. So when I saw exp, what got me really excited was the opportunity to continue building my real estate business, building my real estate team, but just different kind of bolting on having a separate part of my business plan to build residual income through revenue share. And then the stock piece seemed intriguing at the time. It was basically a penny stock not yet on the nasdaq. And now it's kind of blown up and is amazing. It's just killing it in terms of where the price has gone over the last few years. But the residual income piece, I was like, okay. Because what's cool and a lot of agents might not know this, that are not at Keller Williams is. Keller Williams became the number one real estate company in North America because of their Prof. Sharing program. A way for agents to get profit share so that they eventually have something to retire on. Like that was kind of what was an allure to Keller Williams. After I joined, I was like, wow, that's kind of cool that they had that. And then I started working It. And I was like, man, this office must not be profitable. That office might not be profitable because my profit share is very tiny. Like, I'm not. I'm making, like, 80 bucks a month. Like, it eventually got to a couple hundred, but it certainly wasn't anything that was exciting. And. And when I saw revenue share, I'm like, okay, so it's off the top. You know, profits, what's left over revenues, off the top. And we don't have bricks and mortar. We don't have those expensive leases. We don't have all the middle management, regional directors, operating principals, you know, a franchise system where they're taking a royalty. There's just so much more money to share. Back in our revenue sharing model, I was like, this could really work. Because it really hit me, actually, Lars, as an agent. And I don't share this very often because I don't normally think about it, but there's this guy, his name is Mike, and he was a regional owner in the Carolinas. And I remember my team leader at KW Red Day. It's a day where you give back, you volunteer in your local community. We were there, like, having a little barbecue after, whatever. And my team leader was like, this was my second year in real estate. My team there was like, AJ, that can be you one day. Like, he makes $20,000 a month in profit share. He's in Alaska fishing all the time. Like, he's taking all these amazing trips. I'm like, man, that would be so awesome. But what I realized was, unless, like, you joined back in the 90s, like, you probably weren't gonna get anywhere near some significant. So when I saw exp, I was like, okay, this could be it. And at the time, it was a leap of faith because we didn't know it would work because it wasn't really yet working. It was a very small company at the beginning of 2017. Now it's proven to work. It's just. Will you partner with us and plug into our model and our training and our systems? And it does work, and it's proven over and over and over to help agents become financially free. So you want me to dive into how that journey's been?

Yeah, but. But hearing you say. Say some of that, because I was one of those folks, and I don't know if it's. It's. I. For sure it was ego. So I know my ego probably played a larger percentage than I care to admit in terms of me not looking at the model. And I think that is the number one reason why People, let's just pick on Keller Williams for a second. Keller Williams is one of the best real estate companies. Gary Keller is in the hall of fame. He'll forever have a seat in the hall of fame. So it's not taking away anything from Keller will yet. KW agents, let's just pick on them for a second. Their company was built via the same model, except the opportunity has totally disappeared. But they'll be their heels dug in the most against what's going on with exp, which is so ironic now that I'm on the other side. Then the other thing that you said. Yeah. So go from the red book. I don't know if it's the blue book or the yellow book. That's millionaire real estate investor. I went and owned 10 real estate properties. They're not passive. Like, you know, I had, I can tell you a dozen stories of just, you know, out of bounds on time and stuff blowing up and, you know, all of the stuff that happens yet that's the path now. Right. So you have to sell real estate and your. Your dream is happening over here. It takes 20 years to bake out the real estate dream. The portfolio and all the extra hours, the evenings and weekends, buying homes, getting them, getting a tenant in or flipping them, and just another grind and then on top of it. I don't know many billionaires. I haven't met that many. Maybe a couple. Gary Keller was one of them. Gary Keller is the king of revenue share. 6% off the top, not profit. He also does profit share. Right. He has ownership and he has agents under him. But just think about that. KW agents are like against revenue share, but they're totally fine giving 6% to Gary up to 3,000. So there's so many things. Once I realized all of that, and now I'm on the other side of it. So I need to sort of navigate these different objections. But I just wanted to touch on that. But yeah, so take us to early 2017. You get in and, you know, maybe an abbreviated version, because if anyone's interested, you know, you and I did an interview specifically on your EXP journey, so I can always tag them into that. But talk about this vision of freedom and how did it go? And you said you built it alongside. How'd you divide up your time? Take us through that a little bit.

Yeah. I love the illustration you're giving about selling real estate investing. Going from the blue book to the yellow book. I think it's like buy and hold real estate. That's like real estate investing. There's a series of the colored books. And that's the path that was the only option before EXP came. And that's the path that I was on. And it's just a really long path with a very long grind phase. And there's nothing wrong to be on that. But if you're a smart business person, you just got to be open minded to the option or the idea that there might just be a better solution. And EXP is that better solution. It's not for all agents, but all agents should be open minded enough to at least talk to somebody at the company like Lars, that can help walk them through what it means for them specifically to be at a company like exp. Like, how could that look in their current business model? Because it could just be the better way. I mean, I went from $300,000 or so in debt before joining EXP in 2017 to having a net worth over 3 million today. That is in four and a half years. That is insane. I traveled the country for a year in a motorhome. I live in Puerto Rico now. I have also a house in Michigan. It is insane when I think about it. It's hard to even believe. So I came to exp, I was like, all right, I'm gonna keep running my team. The smart agents come to EXP and they're like, I'm going to keep running my real estate team. I'm not going to try to double it, so I get a nicer trophy on stage next year. I'm not going to try to do more volume, more gci. Last time I checked, my banker doesn't care how much GCI I did, how much volume I did. They care about net profit. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to keep my volume the same, keep my units the same, keep my team the same. But I'm going to bolt on another profit center called revenue share. That's going to be additional profit for my business. And I was going to do that for the next five years. So in five years, I wanted to get to a half million dollars in residual income on top of my real estate team sales. And in order to do that, looking at the model as a new exp agent, I was like, okay, I need to sponsor five agents a year for five years. So 25 total, help them grow into a total organization size of 500. So I would personally only know 25 of the 500. And from what I saw, I thought I could do close to $500,000 a year on that size organization. I was like, I'm listing four houses a month or whatever it was. I can certainly get one agent to join EXP every two months. That was kind of like no brainer. I can do that without even trying. And what happened without even trying is in the first 18 months, I got 22 to sign up. I would say probably the first 10 to 15 was without trying. And then I had to try a little bit to get the 22 total. But what's cool is in just 18 months after joining, I had 22 agents that I personally brought into the company. Just like if you're building a real estate team, you're bringing in agents to your team. I brought in 22 and 18 months. They turned into a total organization size of 500 because we have a multi tiered revenue sharing program similar to the profit share model at KW. And that month I earned $25,000 in residual income. I was now like that regional owner that I shared the story about Mike, except I was making a little bit more than he. And it only took me 18 months. And fast forward a couple months, my wife and I sold our house in Charlotte, traveled the country for a year in a motorhome working like five to ten hours a week. And what's crazy, I'll tell you what's crazy about that. When we came back, our income almost tripled. When we were done after a year working five to 10 hours a week, our income almost tripled. Had I been running a local real estate team in Charlotte, I would have came back to agents that would have had a mutiny. They would have said, screw aj, he's in a motorhome traveling the country. Like these little leads are now ours. The leads. And AJ's not getting a split. That's what would have happened. And I wouldn't have blamed them because that's the reality. If the leader's not there, that might happen to a business that might fall apart like that. And now coming up on five years, it'll be five years with exp, which is crazy. January 1st, and instead of hitting my goal of 500 agents, be well over 5,000. Actually, I'm six agents away right now of hitting 5,000 agents in my organization. So it's been so cool. I get so excited about it. And the other thing about being open minded to possibly a better way to achieve your financial goals, I'm having more fun making more money, working less with less stress than I could have any other way. And I'm helping agents achieve financial freedom in their lives. Keep selling homes, sell all the homes you want. But let's take a look at what your financial freedom number is and let's have a plan to achieve it in the next three to five years. But let's not have it take 30, 15, 20. Let's get you to your freedom number in three to five years. And that's kind of what we're doing here in our organization that me, Lars and John are partnered on called Game Changers Nation.

That's awesome. So let's finish with this. And there's so much that you said in there, but I want to talk about. There is still a closed minded. Just a ton of people are still closed minded. Like I was for years and it was probably the most expensive. And I think I came in at the perfect time. I think God had perfect timing in all of it, yet I wasn't open for like three and a half over three and a half years. You know, you came in in January 2017 and I came in in September 2020. What would you tell somebody? You know, just like, if you're, if you're, if you've made it this far and you're still listening after AJ dropped the exp bomb, you guys already know if you're listening that I'm in exp. So you're still listening. What advice would you give someone that's still, that's still closed off to it?

Yeah, yeah. You know, there's two groups of people, those that have never heard about it and those that have heard about it still aren't here. So if you never heard about it, just be open minded and take a look at it. But for this audience, most of you have heard about it because you're, you're following Lars, one of the top, if not the top coach for teams and brokerages in the country. And the reason why you probably just had that either that initial reaction to exp, or maybe you, you think you've seen it, but you're still not here. You've probably just talked to the wrong people or you haven't really looked at it yet. And you're listening to the right people to hear it from now on this podcast. So I would just challenge you, ask yourself this question if you really want to take this serious. And I hope you're taking the time you're spending listening to these podcast episodes serious. You're trying to learn something. You're trying to grow your business so that you can have more impact and give more and serve your family more and all those amazing things that you might have goals to do. Ask yourself. If there's really an opportunity for me to earn throughout a number, whatever number you want. Let's just say if there's really an opportunity over there at exp for me to earn $25,000 a month in residual income within the next three years, and it's not going to cause my personal production to suffer, I'm not going to have to scale back my team. I can do everything else the same, except put it in about five hours a week and building this residual income stream. If that was possible, would I be open to it? If that was possible, what would that look like? And maybe that question will help them be a little more open minded. But I can tell you this. If you're clear on where you're going and you don't feel like you're getting there, you might want to look at doing something different. And that's where I was. I was going where I wanted to go. It was just going to take probably 30 years. And. And I like to snowboard. I like to do a lot of very active things that may not go that well when I'm 70. So I wanted to spend three months in Breckenridge, Colorado, like I did two years ago, snowboarding almost every day while I was still young. If I break a leg, I'll heal relatively quicker. Like, you know, so you just gotta be clear on where you want to go and just ask yourself some real honest questions. Because what we're about here, we're about freedom, we're about impact, and not so much about just getting that big trophy to walk across the stage. We're looking, how can we impact our families, our communities? And man, it's been so fun.

Yeah, I could talk about it forever. And I'll just end with this, you know, after, you know, working with AJ for a couple years in his business, and then, you know, he pivoted and really achieved his vision for his life. It wasn't my vision. It's not at the time, it wasn't part of real estate B school, so. So I didn't understand it at all. I was one of the people that were closed off 100%. So if you're like, I was like, what, 16, 17 months ago, you know, some of 2020, I was looking at you and still sort of wondering, like, man, scratching my head, like, am I going to miss like the only disruptive thing that might happen to our industry in my lifetime? Am I really going to sit on the sidelines of this thing? If that's you, you have got to slow down and realize it's just a brokerage. It's a brokerage that's on a platform that is just like every other sort of cloud based company that is taking their industry by storm. It's just happening in the real estate industry. It's proven already. We're not blazing any trails anymore at exp, if you come over, but you need to slow down and really study it with someone you trust selfishly. That should be me. Because then AJ can help us all get together and come in. But yeah, just slow down. Reach out to someone that you trust.

Me.

Just check me out on messenger. You know, I still check my own Facebook messenger. Aj, I have learned a lot from you, you know, in the last little while. I think God had a perfect plan with the timing of us getting together. You know, I just think it was. It's just awesome. And to be able to learn. I had this. What's the right word for it? I had a. Like, I thought you had to work hard to do a couple things to make money and to have impact. Like, I thought not necessarily grind, but I just saw it a very, very different way. And you have just opened my eyes up to like, I can have more impact. That's the crazy thing. The impact that you can have with five agents. If you're still living in Lake Norman, N.C. what kind of impact is that? It's great because it's five agents right now. You can sort of feed into them. But you went from 5 to 500 to 5,000. Now you're literally impacting 5,000 plus agents. And more than that, because you're getting on stages that are bigger than even 5,000. So you just got to slow down, just cool off a little bit. If an emotion rises up in you when people start talking about exp, then you for sure know you need to just take a deep breath and just calm down for a second. And I needed to tell myself that as I was studying it with John and AJ you know, September 2020. So much love, everybody. AJ, I appreciate your brother, your leadership and just being able to learn from you. Kind of switching the table a little bit. You know, the student becomes the teacher becomes the student. And I think we're going to do a lot of great things together. So I love you, brother.

Likewise, my friend.

All right, be good.

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Sam.