Will This Crisis Make or Break You?

What's up, business freedom podcast listeners. So this episode is will this crisis make or break you? And been talking a lot about, you know, what happened back in the Great Recession. And every time I mentioned, you know, our agent roster went from 15,000 to 5,000 and I got in at the peak of 15,000. And then over the next three years it went down to 5,000. We're up at 17,000 now, and I fully expect our agent roster to go down to 6 to 7,000 here in Charlotte, North Carolina. The last episode I did was on not so dramatic predictions I have for real estate. I think this is going to trigger a longer economic shift. There's really, I don't know, there's no way to explain how it can't with just all of the folks losing their job and claiming unemployment and, you know, just think of all the industries that are impact but impacted by what's going on. So I wanted to do an episode where I want to put myself a little bit back in the days where I left my corporate job in 2007. March 5, 2007 was when I left my corporate job. Our inventory went, started going through the roof in June 2007. I actually had our statistics pulled up here earlier. I'm gonna do homes for sale. Yeah. So I'm, I have the stats pulled up here. So in our mls, back in, when I got into real estate, it was 29,000 homes for sale. That was active. Homes for sale. So active listings. And that was. That was the month I got in. 29,000, 3. 47. It went up to in August 2010. So what is that? 3. Basically, three and a half years later, it got up to 55,000. 55,000. So it went from what I say, 29, so roughly 30 to 55,000. So it doubled. And so how did I make it through? And I want to sort of give you the actual things I did back then instead of saying, you know, now, you know what, what I, what I would do now. I want to think back and I took notes on three things I did back then that I think will really serve you well. And one of them is not going to. You're not going to like one of them. And let me start with the one that you're probably not going to like. The one you're not going to like is that you probably have to go back to doing things that you maybe thought you were out of doing. So I think a good market, you know, what's the expression? A rising tide raises all ships. I think we've Seen a lot of that for the last four or five years is that there was just a lot of transactions to go around. You know, if you look at closed sales In Charlotte, there's 71,000 in March 2020 or that, that's the trailing. I think that's a trailing 12 months. No, I think that's on a monthly basis. No, I don't know. Either way, it went from, from a low of 30,000 all the way up to 71,000. And so you're going to have to go back to doing the, the things, the disciplines that are going to help you get busy. And it's going to take two to three times more activity than you probably want it to. If you're going to stay in real estate, and I say it that way, I believe our roster is going to at least be cut in half, if not a third of what we've seen. Our peaks, we're at 17,000 in Charlotte. Could get as low as 6 to 8,000 is my prediction. Maybe the next two to three years. I think this economic event post Covid is going to be a multiple year event. I think there's going to be distressed sales and I think there are folks that can't afford their homes and they're going to miss payments. And the stimulus that the government's doing is not going to dig people out of a long term hit on their income. So just know that you're going to have to work really hard if you want to stay in real estate, if you want to stay in real estate. So that's a big if. You know, if you're well established, you're a top agent or you're running a really well run real estate team, as long as you double down and everyone in your world doubles and triples down and your administrators come in and they're willing to do whatever it takes to move the business forward, calling clients, asking for referrals, whatever it takes, they're willing to do it. You will be just fine. That's the opportunity for a real estate team or an agent that has their stuff together. And so that's the first thing I have to tell you is that you're going to have to do things. You have to work longer hours, you have to do things that you thought you didn't need to do. And it was only the market that was allowing you to be successful. Not your effort, not the accountability, not the standards you held yourself to and those around you. I'm not going to get into the team cadence and productivity side. I did a Whole episode on how or why. Well, run real estate teams will benefit from what's going on right now. So that's number one, is that you've got to double down on things that you know are going to get you busy and lead by example if you're running a team. The other thing I did, so that was me back in the day. The other thing I did was I guarded my heart and I guarded my mind. And so I did not get involved in reading really any news whatsoever. So my commitment to not read the news started. And it's been a discipline, it's been a habit that I've sustained over 13 years. I just don't think there's any value in the news. I honestly don't. And people make fun of me sometimes. My wife will make fun of me. I'm the last guy to sort of know what's going on. There were two cruise ships that sunk. This was like a couple years ago. And just a random story, but two cruise ships sunk right before we were going on a cruise. And somebody brought them up. Like, aren't you worried? I'm like, about what? And all of this was everywhere because I think it happened in real time and there were people trapped and it was like. It was just this crazy thing and you had to be living under a rock to not know about it. I did not know about it. I didn't read a single article on it. I didn't see any of it on social media because I avoid all of it. And the reason why that's important is because if you're going to be the guy or girl that fights their way through all of the scarcity mindset, the fear mindset, the, you know, everyone's just going internal and there's just fear and darkness. If you're going to be the person that's going to be a light and you're going to be positive and you're going to fight and get out there and do the activities that you need to do to be successful. You can't do it if you're spending time hurting your mind and breaking your heart and your spirit. Like, it's just not. It's going to hurt your chances. And so there's a lot of folks that are in real estate now that really they're not going to make it through this. They don't have the will or the grit to do it or the persistence to do it or the perseverance. They just don't have it. And that's good for you. If you have it and so it's, to me, it's a decision that you need to make at some point to just limit all of those things. I've mentioned it pretty much on every podcast leading up to this podcast. I'm saying it now because me back then went. I did 27 units in and I got into. I left my corporate job in March 5, 2007. That first year, basically 10 months, March through December, I did 27 units. I'd never sold anything before, never had a sales job before except for like two weeks in high school. I sold newspapers door to door and I did a horrible job at it. So I came in with no sales experience whatsoever. I'd never been a marketer, never advertised anything. I sold 27 units. Then I went on to 44 the second year. So before the end of my first full year, I sold 71 homes with a part time administrator who I hired in the second year. I'm not saying any of that to brag. I'm saying there's no way I could have done that if I was interested in what was going on around me and how agents even at that point were dropping out of the business. The next year I was able to hire my first buyer agent in 2009. That year we did 59, 58 units and I did 54 of them. So my personal production went from 27 to 44 to 54. And then I brought on my first agent and that launched the team. So 58 to 118 in 2010 and then 178. And the baseline for being in my world was that we are not going to let any of that stuff into our world. We're just going to put our heads down, shoulder to shoulder and we're just going to fight through this thing. And so new business development and just the habits and the culture of productivity and like, we've got to report our numbers, we have to account for our time. We have to be open and honest with each other in terms of where we're struggling. That started back in 2007, 8, 9 and 10. And that's when I launched the team in those years. Then we went to 178 with only one more administrator and one or two more agents. And then the year we did 248, I did one transaction in 2012 with 248 and. And I built it on the right economic model. And so that's the opportunity that exists that's coming up. If you are gritty enough to make it through. And if you're not, no one is Going to blame you, right? If there's ever been a time to get off the hook for being in real estate, it is now. And I don't mean that to talk you out of being in real estate. No one's going to blame you if you got out of real estate because it's going to be hard. Like, people know that failing in this industry is high anyway. What is like 82% of agents that get licensed, they don't renew on their second anniversary in normal circumstances. And this is not normal. So we're going to see a lot of folks not pay their dues and get out of real estate. The third thing, I'm going to combine a couple points here. The third thing I did back then was that I was really grateful. Even though I left a really awesome corporate job, I was really grateful for what I had. I was grateful for the opportunity to help folks. Even though I wasn't the best real estate agent. I didn't love, you know, small talk with buyers or, you know, sellers or. I was very direct. I think people appreciated that. This is the time coming up, you know, so gratitude and also just candor, you know, I was really grateful for the family that I was building. You know, Anders was born in November 2007. I had only been married in October 2006. Kendall was born in April 2010. We had a couple of miscarriages in between, which were tough. I just remember in that time being super grateful for my family and having a chance to do it different than the way I had it growing up. And so I really remember that time, even though it was crazy, I was on the same page with my wife. I said, hey, listen, I'm going to do this for it was a means to an end. Learning the job of a real estate agent for me was a means to an end because I can hire someone to take over my. That position that I didn't love. So the first thing for me was buyers. And then it sort of went from there. And I had agents on my team that would love to take over all my buyers. And first I just let them do the showings so I can maintain more of the commission and make the economic model work and all that good stuff that we teach in economic model with our members. So that's it. You have to have a daily practice of gratitude. Now I just use 5 Minute Journal. Back then I just had a feeling of gratitude, like, and a whole bunch of other things. There was a. Okay. My fourth point is it's along the lines of the grittiness but the perseverance and persistence, like, you're going to have to learn to do things differently just because of what's sort of happened, maybe a new way of doing business. And also you're going to have to learn how to be a better marketer. You're going to have to learn how to be a better leader. You're going to have to learn how to hold folks accountable. You're going to learn to get better at your scripts. You're going to have to learn bits of technology that you can get leverage to reach out to more expireds and fizz bos and get a higher conversion, those lead sources. So there's this persistence and perseverance that I saw in myself back then that you need to have if you're going to make it through this. And chances are you either have it or you don't. You know, it's in my opinion, a time like this, a crisis like this is not going to, you know, something's not going to show up in you that isn't already there. Maybe you don't know it's there. And this is going to reveal a side of you that is going to be able to fight through this. And also there are folks that this is going to reveal a side of them that has them just paralyzed with fear. And so at some point you are going to have to make a decision of which one is you and which one you are going to do, which one you are not going to do. So I hope this encourages you. In a way. It is a scary time if you let it be a scary.