https://www.listennotes.com/e/b3e6358942984ee98ef9f6e1447ab72e

Welcome back to Real Estate Revolution. We have Isaac with us today. He quit his job last year being a high school teacher and he and his wife both jumped in the entrepreneurial space and we're gonna dive in lots of great information. So if you're newer in the business, this is definitely for you and you're gonna see a lot of things that he's done and prepared for and we're gonna answer some of the confusing questions.

So let's get into it.

Welcome back to the Real Estate Revolution. I'm excited today. Isaac's here for the first time in person. We met through some mutual friends. He did some coaching with me and He quit his job last year and decided to go full-time real estate. He was tired of wiping the snot off kids noses and he was ready to go. So dude, welcome to Arizona.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Nice to be here in person. Fantastic. So you quit your job middle of last summer, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Early last summer right at the end of the year.

And you were middle school teacher, right?

High school. High school math. So you like the numbers. I remember talking a lot about that and Man, do you remember that conversation? I do. I do. What was the striking moment that we had that conversation? Like, oh shit, I'm just gonna do this.

I think that I was going back and forth. I was pretty convinced that I was going to leave teaching. Pretty sure that's what I needed to do. I wasn't real sure exactly where I was gonna go from there. We've owned one investment property, and so I enjoyed I really enjoyed that process and I enjoyed the transaction, I enjoyed everything about it. And really, like, I've always been the numbers person, I've always been like the analytical type. So I actually was thinking like lender for a while and even to the point where I started having some conversations about like joining some different teams. But something about that conversation that I had with you about Being the problem solver and being in all aspects of the transaction, not in a specific aspect of the transaction. Yeah, I think that and then just the helping people. And I don't think I really fully understood how much as a real estate agent, your job is to help people as I have over the past year, right, through these transactions.

Now getting into it, so you did the one transaction, but now you're on the other side of it. Did you have an inkling as to how complicated it actually or how complex it is on the backside?

I have had a lot of good guidance. I think that I made a very good decision joining the brokerage that I joined. And part of that process was completely irrelevant of commission splits. I paid no attention to commission splits. I'm like, how are you gonna teach me? what supports do you have? What sort of software do you use? What other things, tools can you offer me? And that's kind of how I made my decision. And by doing that, I think it really helped someone, you know, looking over multiple people, looking over my shoulder saying, hey, don't forget to do this. Don't forget to do this. And so as we went through that and I'm taking these notes, so the second transaction, I'm going back through my notes and I'm, bouncing ideas like, Hey, I did this. What does this look like? How's it look? By the time I hit third or fourth transaction, I'm like, there's a couple things. It actually was funny. My fourth transaction, the assistant manager has kind of been my mentor throughout was always on the selling side and I was on the buying side. So obviously, I then had to rely on my notes and then there were still, I made enough relationships that I was bouncing ideas off of people, but it was kind of came full circle a little bit.

All right. So a couple of follow-up questions to all that. Number one, I hope you all heard, like he quit his job as a high school math teacher and on his fourth transaction, it's been what, eight months, six months?

Yeah, nine.

Okay, so four transactions, nine months, Columbus, Ohio was a teacher. Here's what I want you to get out of that is that I think a lot of us struggle and we're new in the business of where we go. And if you heard what Isaac's mindset was, which is I'm not worried about the splits, I'm worried about how I'm going to be trained and what I'm going to learn. So, Isaac had the mentality of the investment side of the investment that I'm making is actually an investment out of thin air, right? I didn't actually earn this money yet, but I'm going to earn this money and somebody's going to teach me before I earn this money and I don't know where else in any industry or profession you can go. You can't go and be a doctor and get your license and then go, okay, somebody's gonna teach me and pay me to learn. while I do this. And so I commend you for having that mindset. And what was your interview process? Like, you know, as a new agent, there's a lot of things out there on the brokerage side, right? There's the different models, like where I'm at, real, the model that you got. One of the conversations I'm having with a lot of agents is, as we talk about real brokerage and different things, is really like, where are they at in time and space? Because I don't know, you know, with new agents, unless they find somebody like you did, There's a piece where they have to find that training and it may not be forever, but it may be where they want to start and I think that they need to have very clear intentions and I think their mentor should have very clear intentions and conversations at the beginning. So, tell me about that process because you said you interviewed a couple of different brokers, a couple of different teams and some of your questions and what are some of the worst conversations you had with brokers? And then tell me about where you landed. Oh gosh.

Yeah, I think it depends the worst ones. I'm thinking about what the worst, how I felt the worst was when everybody is talking about individuals. They're talking about this is what you can do, this is what you can do, this is what I've done, this is what I've done. There weren't very many brokerages that talked about what we do. And I was really drawn to the one that I'm currently at about it feels Like a family, it feels like a team. It's the largest privately owned real estate brokerage in the country.

Wow, okay. Which company is that?

Howard Hanna. They're all East Coast, creeps into the Midwest a little bit, but not much past like Indiana. But I loved the idea of being privately owned, right? It was raised by agents, it's owned by agents, it's not owned by a bank telling agents what to do. I liked that idea.

Sure.

And I think any time throughout my life that I found myself just have very little knowledge and this was one of those instances where I didn't really know exactly even what I was looking for.

Sure.

I had no background, no context about how to look at a brokerage or how to compare brokerages. I go to people that I trust who have the knowledge. And so I relied on an agent that we use to buy our house, same agent we use to buy our first investment property, stayed in touch with them throughout, I've created a good relationship with him. He's at this brokerage. And so I knew that, you know, worst case scenario, at least when I get into this and I'm like, Hey, I don't understand how this works, I at least got him to fall back on if I make no other connections at the brokerage. So I would say that was a lot of it. He had been, he had hopped around a couple times and this is like, yep, this is where I belong, this is the best place I've been.

Okay.

Great.

Awesome. Yeah, and I think that's awesome. So the thing I'm hearing in that is you found something that was more family owned and operated. It also came through the relationship of your agent and you felt for your current need of knowledge in the business and guidance, that was the best place for you to go, right? So what I want to break that down for everybody else is that that is a space you're currently in. When you fast forward in your career and you're 10 years into this, you may realize that the brokerage model and whatever you're investing in may not be needed anymore. And it may be time to look at what your return on investment is because maybe now you're 10 years into it. You don't need the training, you don't need the hand holding, you don't need the software, you don't like you're realizing I'm not using this, but a lot of agents go in and they get sold on this not, I don't want to say Kool-Aid, We get very complacent and very comfortable where we're at. We don't like change and we don't look at what we're investing in and what the return is in for that company. So when you get to that point there in your career where I don't need as much support, I do need to look at what I'm paying into and what the background of that company and things is. So I do think that that's a very relevant conversation where you're at being new. 'Cause there is gonna be a time you're like, Hey, I've learned what I needed to do. And I think brokerages are very aware of that. Obviously they always wanna keep us in, but there's gonna come a time and space where the value isn't worth the return on investment and something's going to change.

And I think also for those older agents, they don't have to offer what they're truly worth because of they know that there's complacency there, right? There's a lack or an unwillingness to change. For all, for all people.

Well, look, it's like the old school subscription model. Yeah, it's a subscription you got on that you just forgot about and you never go back and look and go, Shit, I paid a lot of money into this and I probably should go back and look at this and really figure out, is it worth all of this? And, you know, because it's always interesting, somebody will not make a shift from brokerage to save five grand a year over $1,000 and a week's worth of headache.

Yeah.

And they're afraid it's going to disrupt their business. And the reality is the consumer really at this point doesn't give a shit what brokerage you're at. The brokerage should really be a place where you're interviewing as to how it's.

Going to impact your life going forward. Yeah, and specifically over the next short term, right? Even being a year in, I'm already at the point where I'm starting to hear about what other brokerages offer. I'm starting to investigate, and I'm not close to making a move, but I am making some mental notes about, hey, that's kind of cool how they offer that and mine doesn't, or mine offers this, but theirs doesn't.

So you want to. You're gonna hear something fascinating is. So my CFO, Tammy, she does this every year, always cracks me up. I i'm not threatened by it, but every year she goes and does one or two job interviews at other companies just to see if she's missing anything. What's competitive? Is she still marketable? So as agents, we should be doing the same thing and going and going, you know what? I'm gonna go interview a brokerage. For the fun of it.

Yeah.

Just to see where does this compare to what I paid in and as business owners and operators, we should be doing that, right? That's a responsible thing to do, realizing like, yes, I have a lot of fun over here and if that's part of your culture and that's there and it costs you more because the culture, that's okay. That's an investment, right? That's a return on life investment.

Yep.

And so those are all the factors and so the interesting questions and then we'll change subjects. that I've been asking questions is, you know, where you're at currently, does it bring you joy? Where is the culture? Do you have potential to grow? Like, can you pull more than one lever? And so starting to look and asking these questions and then just making them sit, right? Just asking the questions. Now, you need to go sit with yourself and answer these questions and figure out, like, where do I need to be? Do I need to be somewhere where they're gonna kick my ass right now? and get myself back in line? Do I need to be somewhere where there's... So that's some of those choices. So I love that conversation and congrats on ending up somewhere that's mentoring you, going through that mindset. Let's talk about path. What most people, you've had some success, but let's really talk about struggles. What do you feel are a couple of your main struggles? We started talking about it all offline before you got here. Is it the market? Is it me? So let's talk about that and let me see if I can give you some guidance on that.

So I mean, the obvious struggle is just keeping the pipeline full, right? Continuing to have those conversations with so that not every conversation is just completely cold, right? Somebody who's, yeah, you know, I'm not actively looking, but I have started to think about buying or selling, buying or selling whatever it is. Having an avenue to create those conversations, I think is my big challenge right now. Oh, one of the things that goes with that though is I don't know if that's a me issue, I don't know if that's a market issue, I don't know if that's a whatever it is, right? But what's the roadblock?

So you're saying you don't know if it's one of these things, but tell me what is it? Because you're not getting transactions, are you not talking to people, are you not engaging? Like what's the roadblock at this point? Do you feel like you're not talking to enough people? about real estate or you don't have enough at bats?

I think the conversations create the at bats. Transactions to me are a, well, it's.

Two different things, right? Conversations do eventually create at bats, but then there's also the lead gen piece that creates the cold at bats. Gotcha.

Right?

Okay.

So there's two different facets to this, which we'll get into in a second.

I guess I'm, I am of the, I'm at a place right now where I Know that I need to be having more of those conversations that the transactions will happen as a consequence of having more conversations so I'm at a place where I need to have more of those conversations Specifically with people who aren't just Happy where they're at right there at least starting to think about.

Transactions so how do you how do you create those conversations?

That's what I'm still figuring out.

I All right.

And it feels even kind of silly that it's taken me a year to get to a point where I'm like, I'm still figuring this out.

No, 'cause I think that when we come in, this is so much of what I'm toiling with right now. And I love to go back through and pivot and go experiment with stuff and go, okay, what have I forgotten that I can go back and do that still works, right? After 25 years. So, I'm gonna give you some things to never forget to do. And here's why. You are eight months or nine months into this business. And your choice right now in your path and your trajectory is to build a business that is like being on a roller coaster. And what is that like? There's days that you want to stay in the seat and go again. And there's days you want to get off and puke your brains out. And there's days you don't know if the roller coaster is actually gonna come off the track or make it back to its destination, right? But it's the same freaking ride over and over again. And it gets a little mundane and a little boring. And what does that ride look like? It's the feast or famine in real estate, which means we do all these things to generate the business. We work the business and we stop generating while we're working. And then the roller coaster comes down the hill and we have to regenerate to climb up the hill and we keep going down, right? The question that I asked you earlier was, do you want to get up in five years and resell yourself a hundred times or do you want to get up in five years and somebody had already sold you? And that's the difference between building transactional and relationship and there's a longer path. And when you, the transactional is the roller coaster, the relationship is the train. And so what happens with the train is we get to lay tracks where we want to go as we're building that based on how we build the business. And I think the business should have a couple of layers to it and not get overwhelmed. So you know me from being in my coaching, right? There's a lot of squirrels, right? And I can dip my toes into a lot of things. And Garrett and Tammy have been helping me wrangle and pull back and go, okay, how do I take one thing and implement this, get it completed, make sure it works and move on to the next thing, right? So for you, let's just go back to the basics and let's make sure that we're starting off you know, you've gone through it, right? It's kind of like ready, fire, aim in the first nine months. And now it's the power of consistency and moving the needle slowly every day is the power of success in real estate. It's not the ups and downs, it's not the big wins, because the big wins, you're still broke, right? It's going on to the next thing. So as we're going through this, the thing that I thought has been so much fun and getting to the point of the database, right? So what do you use them for CRM?

We have a couple different things that Howard Hanna offers. I haven't found one that I like, I'm all in on or like love.

Right, the old saying, right? The only thing you love is the one you use, right? So you gotta find one, so play with it. If you're not gonna use it, find something else that works. I am the king of trying every CRM. Garrett's been through two. The last guy went through three, so I've been through all of them.

Yeah.

And we're realizing I just have to use whichever one. The issue I've always run into is I'm like, it doesn't work for everything I want to do. So you just have to make it work for communication. And, you know, you were in my last master class just about, you know, the Rolodex, right?

From.

From Rockefeller. And he held all these people's information. So the database is a vault of people's information, right? It's relationship building rather than lead generation, and so. Going back to that, what we started doing was going through the database one person at a time, making sure their stuff is correct, making sure whatever background is in there on them. And then I started with people, dude, that I haven't talked to in years. And my whole goal was, hey, I'm gonna text them, and if I don't text or call, I have to delete them. 'Cause if I don't do it now, I'm not gonna do it later.

Yeah. Right?

So I started going through. By the grace of God, my business has been built relationally, so I haven't done a lot of marketing. But I'm also regretting that I probably could have done twice as much had I had the systems in place. So these are just tales of, I don't want to say accidentally successful but it's just I'm very good with paper and pen but if I do some digital stuff, I can probably take it to the next level if that's what I want. Yeah. So playing with this, what I found is that it has been a lot of fun just reconnecting with people and I'm like my text messages were simply I suck. I enjoyed working with you. I'm sorry I haven't been in touch. If you bought a house, I totally understand it's on me. I'd still like to stay in touch with you. I'm doing some other things, right? And if they text Brack, if they don't, some of the texts are pretty funny, you know, that come back and some of them are like, yeah, we bought a house. Don't need your services.

Cool, right? Yeah.

That's okay. Not taking it personally. So realizing that the more people I do those things and it doesn't have to be real estate related.

Right.

Too many of us go into this and we're like so real estate related. So, the things that you're putting on social and some of the things from your kids, it's how do I go through that holistic approach and create relationships in a community with my clients? And so you're at a stage where you're starting small. So I'm going to give you some ideas of things that you can do right now that don't cost you anything that are going to enhance the relationships and teach your clients to be better refers. That's the goal, right? But we have to do it from a different level of what's been done in the past, right? So, what I've learned from the influencer space is we want to build community. What a lot of us try to do but I don't think we quite have it all together. I think there's great people. I know like Shannon Gillette is really big on her client experiences and things like that. She's out in Gilbert. We do a huge VIP client party every year. But then how do we stay in front of our clients to stop from getting all the media bullshit and keep them internally? So I had a recent investor that challenged me and I'm like, I'm taking the challenge. He teaches the Ninja Selling System all over the country. He's an investor of ours, referred by Brian North. And Don just said, he's like, Hey, as an investor in your company, I've got quite a bit of money in there. He's like, I love you guys and I have no questions. It'd be really cool to see a quarterly call, just what's going on, maybe a market update. I'm like, you know what? I love that. It's a zoom wide, it's kind of like an earnings call. Well, I also want to do that. I took that one step further. I'm like, I want to do this for all my retail clients, and I want to do one for my agent clients to where it's a community thing to where for the quarter, Garrett's gonna help me with this. Here's all the headlines from the corner. I'm gonna address them, right? What's going on in the public, what's going on right now. and then I can talk about referrals if you guys have anybody like this, right? And I can talk through that and build that community and start to add value to it to where it really has a little bit to do with real estate, but it's really about staying connected with them in a different manner rather than a bullshit newsletter or some of these other things is like, how do we keep our consumers from consuming the media and getting it straight from us? Because we all have those people like, What's going on in the market? Well, here's what's going on in the luxury market. Which market are you talking about? Right. So that's one way, right? Is doing some sort of quarterly or annual call with your clients, maybe a party.

Will that be live or recorded or both?

It would be both. I won't do it live. I mean, it'll be a live Zoom, but we won't do it. I mean, right now it's playing just do a Zoom, 'cause I think it's a great thing for people to get. It's recorded, they can get the replay on it, those types of things. So, great content piece. And then I think for the mindset of talking to people is figuring out how to funnel them through and what you're communicating with them. So, you're almost building out little communities. So, here's how we structure our database if this gives you guys ideas is when I'm talking to somebody. So, let's say I meet somebody at... I'm trying to think recently... I'll give you a great example. I go to the same restaurant all the time and I go to the same waitress. She's there. She's raised five kids, all the things. Now, Jodi is somebody that I'm looking at going, She serves me on a regular basis. She's a hard worker. She's in front of a lot of people. How can I win-win with Jodi? So I sit down with Jodi and I said, Hey, here's what I want to do. I want to ask you for some help and I want to make sure that you're connected and I want to do business with you eventually and I want you to see who I am. I'm getting her into my atmosphere with that. But then I'm gonna sit down with Jody and I'm gonna go, Hey. And I did this recently. So listen up here for a second. This is great. Jody's raising five kids. She's a single mom. She's a hustler. So I've asked Jody recently if she would take 90 hours of real estate school and she could make an extra 20 to 30 grand a year working her waitress job just by referring people. So I'm helping her get a real estate license to help her go sell me. She doesn't want to sell real estate. But can I help her make an extra 20 or 30 grand a year by, hey, this guy provides the best services, but I gotta teach her how to sell me. But she's given me permission because I asked her if she wanted to do this, now I'm gonna teach her how to sell me. How to connect me with people. So I've done this a couple of times with a couple of different clients to help them create a side hustle, which is gonna feed the business. So there are some things and avenues To think about when you're in your spot, it's also the other piece and I'll totally divulge this and here's why. Because 99% of the listeners won't ever take any of these ideas and run with them. But if you do, I want to hear about it, okay? I want to know how you're doing with it. Because here's the other one. This is outside the box of how we're generating leads and things. How many agents do you work around that are probably in their 50s?

Lots, okay?

How many of them have an exit plan? Very few. How many of those guys do you look at and go, Hey dude, do you still want to be doing open houses in 10 years? I have an idea how we can work together and exit out of this business with a long-term residual plan. Do you want to hear it? Here's how we lay it out for him. Hey, when you're about a year or two from retirement and even before, we're going to start slowly introducing me to your clientele and then we're going to make a commission split that When you're ready to start slowing down, you're like, Hey, I got this client. It's a 50/50 split on the first one or 60/40. And we're start building you into my clientele so that eventually I have a residual income from this clientele. I'm gonna stay involved with you is how I'm communicating with them. And then I'm gonna continue to create long-term residual benefits from my book of business, which is a great way for an agent to sell their business because most people's books of business are not sellable. They're all referral basis. But how are you creating the exit? So you think about in five years, you take a couple of older agents and go, Hey, I want to help you retire and have a good life. And I'm going to work your business and I'm going to train somebody else to like, do you see where that perpetuity is?

Yep.

You can go work cold Zillow leads or you can go freaking make a good relationship with Jim in your office and start helping him dream about retirement and go, this is how we're going to do it.

Right?

So how are we opening doors? Because that door is a three to five year door that could bring 10 to 20 transactions in a year. If you had four agents doing that, you'd just wake up every morning and go, Yep, I got another one. Yeah. That's a whole business in itself. If you build a team to service the referrals, this is where my brain goes, is like, Hey, how can I build the business outside of the norm, what everybody else is doing? Right?

Mm-.

So those are some things, right? And so I go one step further. I did it yesterday in my quiet time. I sat down, I'm like, Jim is 50 years old. If Jim did these steps over five years, he can retire with $250,000 of annual residual income, not passive income from his business. He can still be involved in it as much or as little as he wants to, and he can go play golf or, you know, in my case, I'd be on the drift track or shooting guns or something of that nature. while things are still going and his clients are still being served and he can still be involved.

So that was kind of where I was, one of the questions I was gonna ask is kind of where if you were to invest money into your business and you kind of already answered this, I guess. I think the natural, what everybody's talking about right now are ads, right? Like you gotta invest in ads, you gotta get on Instagram, you gotta get on Facebook and gotta have come up on Google and yada, yada, yada. Just something doesn't feel right to me there. And what I'm almost hearing you say is it would be better to.

Hire.

Somebody to handle some of these extra referrals that you're getting so you can expand your business more rapidly.

When you're ready for it, right? Until you're dying. And I mean, we can talk about that. There's so many different lead sources. I think from, I want to finish on this topic first. Yeah. And we're going to go into that. No, you're good. It's consistency. So if you go into my office right now, there's five of my books, there's five note cards, and there's another five note cards. Every morning I have to get through five people I need to send a book to, five clients, and find five gratitude notes, right? That's my consistency, that's building my relationships one day at a time. Can I hire somebody to do that? I absolutely can. Right now, I'm getting into the feeling of it, of what it feels like because guess what? When somebody else is doing it, you don't always get the feeling of it. And so right now, I've just backed up and I said, you know what? I'm gonna go deep into my relationships because this is what I wanna build and this is the life that I want. I don't want to live the hustle grind lead gen. I don't wanna resell myself. I'm over that. It's not the life I wanna build. You have a choice as to the career you want to build as well. We talked about having some runway, right? It might be a little bit tight doing this and hopefully some of the things from the coaching you've learned are gonna be the shots in the arm, right? There's gonna be a fix and flip, there's going to be a wholesale, there's going to be something that's a shot in the arm while you're doing this, right? But if you can build through the relationship piece and realizing that your agents are as much of clients as the consumer is and you're wrapping into It goes back to people, right? If I can help enough people get what they want, I will get what I want, right? So if you're thinking about that long-term business, you're thinking about, how do I build this relationship with Jim? I'm gonna have coffee with freaking three agents once a month to talk about this. What are the bullet points, right? You don't have to have the program designed out. You have to have the idea. You have to go sit with Jim. Hey, would you be interested in this? 'Cause I'm building this out. Well, yeah, I would. Okay, cool. I'm gonna come back to you in six months, right?

Yeah.

Because obviously he's not ready to retire. It doesn't have to be done right now. I'm just saying, what is something... So we go back, okay? To what I was originally talking about, and then we'll go into those other questions. We have to build some relationship time each day, right? Some people will call that lead gen time. This is relationship building. These are people that you've sold houses to, you've done business, or you want to do business with. Okay? And this is how we funnel that. I think I started to go on this track is that somebody that I want to do business with is in my network. So I'm communicating to them differently because I haven't done business. So I may be sharing different information for that email every week. That's their customer journey. Now, the next level is tribes. So that is somebody that has done business with us, you know, either bought or sold a house or invested with us. You go to VIP, which is our elite clientele. These are people that might have come from our network that have referred business, but they've never done business. So they can skip a step. Now they're over here. These are investors that have a lot of money that are invested with us. So there's in people that have done multiple transactions. So these people, we spend a lot of time sending gifts, watching what's happening in their lives, and really like being on top of them because they're our greatest assets. So when you go through like the gifting thing, Right? Dude, the silly gifts are the best things. The humor, the things, especially in our older clients and investors, they still go to the mail. We have one investor we still send paper checks to because it's his excuse to get out of the house. I'm pretty sure he has coffee with his banker every day to deposit one check. But he's retired. So you kind of know your audience and what they're looking for. And what's interesting about it is, and it's the last part of the lead gen. I would really go back into, if I was gonna invest something, I would look at perfecting my message, right? And then I would start looking at an area that I would farm. Now, with what you've been taught in the farming thing is a little different. Because once you've gone through and understand the investment opportunities that you are a buyer, you can sell a house, you're looking for a buyer, you can do all these things for people, Your messaging is a little different. I'm not taking that message and going to the luxury community. I'm taking that message and I'm gonna do direct mail to the lower end communities where there's more likelihood of me listing a house or buying a house or them not having a relationship with a real estate agent. And I'm gonna pick 2,500 homes and I'm gonna start there and I'm gonna do that for six months. But I'm gonna track it, right? Change the message every month. Different QR codes. The nice thing about direct mail, there's so much real estate space on it with the digital. Yeah, QR codes with text to this. You can direct message and you can have a full video on what you have to offer. You don't have to write it all out, right? So and I would encourage you to go look when you get home, start keeping track of everything that is sales in the mail, any catalogs, anything, and you're going to come to find out the direct mail is dying and not as many people are using it. So, you have less people to compete with. So, over two months, I got one piece of real estate mail. And all it was was for a new listing. That was it. It wasn't anybody buying houses. It wasn't anything else. That was all. So, I'm like, there's some attention to be had in the mail right now. People don't always get it as often as they used to because most of it's garbage but not as much of it is garbage. So, I would start looking at direct mail and finding some Targets, go back to consistency, you got to do it for at least six months and you have to track it. So you got to figure out how you're going to track it with QR codes and different things. So the way you do that is maybe you have a Google number and a Google voice for that campaign and you have one QR code that is, if they sign up for it, it all leads back to that one thing. So you know at the end of six months, I spent X amount of dollars I got X amount of calls, leads, ticks, whatever, and did I get something out of it? And again, why that is such has such a good ROI is because all the options that are available, right? You might get a hoarder house, you might get a listing. It's one or the other. Most agents, when they're doing it, if they're not in the opportunity zone of being the investor or connecting with the investor on the wholesale, it doesn't have as great of an ROI.

Right.

So we have more of an ROI when you have that opportunity mindset. that you've gone through in the coaching.

Do you view those transactions as, so you're tracking, what sort of metrics I guess are you tracking? Obviously I think calls to me, any calls, messages, website visits, those are the things that I guess I view as controllable. Whether that results in a transaction or not, I feel like it's sometimes mostly out of my control.

So it's gonna, you know, everybody tracks differently and I'm gonna be completely honest, I'm not big at tracking all this stuff, I'm terrible at it. I'm wanting to get better at it. It always is so impressive when people are like, well, this many clicks equals this. What it is, it's a numbers game and that's why they track it, right? So if it took six months and 12,000 postcards to get 200 calls, or whatever website visit or whatever, right? And it led to one purchase and one listing. Now you have your numbers and it says, I invested $5,000 to make 40,000. This is scalable and duplicatable. I'm gonna go pick another neighborhood.

Right?

And I'm gonna do the same thing over or you look at the six messages and this is what we're trying to do, which gets complicated. each message is tracked. So what got the most results? 'Cause then you might say, hey, when we delivered this message, it got three times the results as the other six. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna lead with this one and I'm gonna end with this one and everything else is gonna be in between. 'Cause what somebody got six months ago, they are not gonna remember in six months. Right. It's gonna be new.

Yep.

So if you got that much results, so that's where the tracking comes in. And that's why I said, if you take one project, so if you go home, you're like, Hey, my new lead gen source is this. This is what I'm focused on for six months. It's just that one. I'm gonna perfect it, I'm gonna track it, I'm gonna look at it. Then I'm gonna look at the results, I'm gonna set it and forget it in the next neighborhood. Now it's just an ongoing consistent piece that you shouldn't have to think about, 'cause you've designed six months. You go to a printer, you set the six months with the message, the addresses. And it's on autopilot. You're not thinking about it. Now it's duplicatable. So now let's go into your question about hiring somebody. If all of a sudden your phone is ringing off the hook, you're doing your relationship building, this one lead source is going and now you have too much, now the question is, where's your skill set? This is the crossroad that a lot of agents come into. and I think is hindered when it's like, oh, the first thing is hiring a buyer's agent, right? This is like everybody's first thing. I have too much, I need a buyer's agent. Here's my question. Do you wanna start building a team or do you wanna start building a business and a life? Okay? So the question is, the next hire is how do I hire, how do I buy more time? If I buy more time, Can I be in front of more people? Which means you're now hiring more of an executive assistant that has a license that can do some TC work, right? Paperwork. We don't want to stop doing paperwork. And they might be doing some task management. They are not your marketing person. Do not confuse that. Do not go, I want a marketer, a task manager. They're not the same people. They aren't, right? They're a task manager. They are there to keep your life on track, watch your calendar, set appointments, and they should be able to talk to clients eventually, right? That's what Erica does in my business. I don't do paperwork and she talks to a lot of clients in between and that's the experience that we're building in that. That's where you get into your duplicating because your time, so think about this for a second. I'm gonna hire somebody for 40 hours. Let's say it costs you $1,000 a week. For that person. Now, if that 40 hours allows you to pick up one extra client, what's the offset? -Right. -You can't... Now, there's two things this. That 40 hours is also... Does it get you home at 5 o'clock? Is it buying you time with your kids? Is it buying time with your family? You're not freaking burned out. You also have to think about that. That's the other part of that hire. The buyer's agent just allows you to make more money and it takes more of your freaking time. Yeah. Because you still got to coach somebody through it, right? So you really have to think, do I want an employee? Yes, it's cash flow. And the way to help cash flow with that is maybe you hire a TC slash assistant on a lower salary with bonuses at closing, right? That does two things. It keeps your cash flow down. It keeps your payroll expenses down as far as your taxes and things. And then they're 1099 because they're getting referral fees on transactions. So my staff has a percentage of everything that I touch that they get. So that they know what their responsibilities are. It keeps my cash flow down. They're getting bonus, which means they win when I win. So it keeps them... Erica knows you need to be out of the office in front of people in order for me to make more money. So now that's incentivized her. She doesn't want me in the office, right? Neither does Tammy. Nobody wants me in the office. You need to be out making money. So that's the goal as you to hire out the things that are going to keep you in front of people or moving the needle forward in the business, not the other way around. Because I don't know that a buyer's agent is going to further where you want to go. It may take a few things off your plate, but the training, how you want things done, it's a lot easier to scale first with an assistant than it is a buyer's agent.

I think too, like the last thing you should ever, probably never, Outsource is the relationship building, right? I mean, you're hiring people to take the other things off your plate so that you can do more of the relationship building.

You can't outsource it. You can add to it, though, right? So if you do have, if that TC person is making a customer service call, right? There's, that's an addition to the experience, but you can't. That would be like me telling Tammy that she is responsible for all investor relations. She's responsible for keeping them engaged and creating customer service. What she's not responsible for is what the investor calls and says, Hey, I'd like to sit down and talk with Steve and go through our loan and what this is. Those are my responsibilities. Her responsibilities is to make me look really freaking good to the investors and that's the goal, right? These people that you're surrounding yourself, they are servants heart and they are there to lift your business up and be part of it. not to just do a job. And I'm super proud to say that Garrett's been here for two years, hopefully a lot longer. Erica's been here for nine, Tammy's been here for 10. So when you look at that, that's my staff, that's my core. Everything else is gonna come and go. 'Cause I know the agents come and go, some of them wanna be around, some say they wanna be here forever, but they don't. They will eventually go out on their own.

You talked about like the being home at five. What advice do you have for a young father who is trying to build a real estate agent business?

Your first couple of years are going to be the grind. That's going to be the rhythm, right? That jumping up doing things, I think that you can because you have a little bit more runway than most do. If you can build a life around boundaries. When I got into the business, I didn't have a choice, right? We were freaking broke. Both of us were selling real estate. There wasn't any money, so the only choice was to grind, right? When we had kids, there were years when we were broke that I'm just like, I'd leave and just say, I don't know when I'm coming home. You got the kids, this is what's gotta happen. Where you're at, you have the ability to create the boundaries for the life that you want. And you start thinking about looking at your career in three-year increments because your kids are two and six. Now we're gonna be seven and nine. What do you want your life to look then? What trips, what experiences? what does your time off look like? What does your rhythm look like at those ages? 'Cause when they go further down the road, your rhythm is gonna change. You're gonna have more time, your wife's gonna have more time, they're gonna be in school. Now the time is spent in experiences, right? It's like, hey, my goal is to be off from Christmas to New Year's every year. I'm not turning my phone, like, what are your boundaries, right? How are you gonna live and how do you start setting those now so that when you do those things, you start looking at like, this is the reason why I'm doing this. And if somebody doesn't, if you don't command respect now on your time, you will do what most people do, which is I'm going to run when everybody calls.

Yeah.

Rather than I'm going to be available when I'm available. When you call a dentist, when you call a lawyer, when you like, everybody set an appointments. And I believe if you set those expectations up early with your clients, you will have that loyalty and that respect when it goes down to it. I think you also in those times as you're building relationships, you build those relationships that can cover you when you're gonna be gone in those times, right? Yeah.

Right.

So like, you know, one of the guys, Dan Weisinger, that just joined Real with me, he's in Hawaii right now. He just switched over some of his stuff. Isn't he? Sure enough, he's got a buyer that called, wants my house, right? If you want, if you want to, if you want business, just go on vacation.

Yeah.

So he's freaking out and I'm like, Hey, dude, I got you. Like, go whale watch. Like, connect me with a client. I'll take care of it. Right. I'm not looking for anything. It's a support mechanism.

Right.

Right now, if I'm on vacation, I need Dan to show me a couple houses. Guess what? I can call Dan and have him show me a couple houses without a problem. The funnier thing was, is, dude, he calls, he conferences me with the client. He says the client's name. and immediately out of my mouth, it couldn't have even been him. Thank God it was. I'm like, Shut the fuck up. The kid that he put on the phone was somebody that I was friends with in third grade that we grew up to church together. No kid. And we're dying laughing. I'm like, All right, Dan, go on vacation. We got this. So I ended up talking to him, writing his contract last night, getting everything submitted for Dan. And that's the relationships that you build in this. You're like, It's great to have that collaboration and help kind of build in that aspect. So I would say in your careers, always looking That dad thing should be a priority, that family thing should be a priority. And it makes life so much fun when you have the power to control it. Sometimes, they're not going to be able to. There's going to be times. I always wanted to go a different direction from my dad. Love my dad, he made the commitment to be there but he was always on the phone or always trying to do business when he was there. I want to be there and I want to be there. I don't want to talk about business. I want to have relationships with people, but I want to be there. It's kind of like right now, when I'm on the track with the kids, we're on the track. Yeah.

Right?

I'm not trying to do a deal. I'm like, I'll call people back on my way home, but other than that, we're on the track.

Yeah.

So I love that piece of just building for where you want to go, rather than I think a lot of times we are brainwashed into the growth and the transactions and feeling like we have to be up in here rather than, Hey, you know what? I built my life around these 25 transactions, so many referrals and a flip a year and it's doing all the things I want. So, if we're building that way, we don't get sidetracked with, oh, there's a squirrel. I want to go chase this or I want to chase this. And in that career, you're always prepared for opportunities come up. And some years you're like, Sweet, this one came up. You know, we've talked about this, right? They're always gonna be there. It doesn't matter the market.

If you're looking for them.

It matters that you live in that zone all the time. And every person we talk to is an opportunity. It just depends where does it fit in that opportunity.

So along those lines too, this is something I'm still dealing with right now. I feel like every real estate agent that I know, it's not just what they do, it's who they are. Like they are a real estate agent. I don't know that I'm at the place where that's who I want to be. It's what I want to do, I want to be as part of who I am.

You don't want it to be your identity.

Yeah, but I can't picture a real estate agent that I admire and respect that that isn't their identity.

I think the identity depends on what you're looking at and consuming, right? So look at the different people that you're talking about and you're looking at social, right? That this is all they talk about, right?

That's what I'm thinking about the one, even the ones I know in person.

Okay. Like that's all they talk about, all they do.

Okay.

That's just my perception about who I see.

No, stay there. Stay there. I'm gonna give you a great example in something that is really awesome to think about. I grew up in a real estate agent's household, right? My mom and dad. What you're trying to avoid is the fact that Whenever my dad was around, you knew real estate was gonna be talked about. There wasn't these other factors of life identity wise. That's what he built. This was a great realization for me, having breakfast with clients on Sunday. Great friends of ours. Our wives were catching up. They were hitting it off. All the things, we're talking about different things. He mentions in passing, you know, they're here for three months in a VRBO in Sedona. We definitely wanna buy something, you know, in the $2 million range, you know, before the of the year. I'm like, oh man, that's a great goal. That was it. That was where I ended the conversation.

What I did do is I made.

A note and I sent him a voicemail on Tuesday after we had breakfast. I said, Hey, I wanted to reconnect with you and make sure that you knew I heard you. I heard you talk about the sonoma place and I also didn't want to assume that you're going to call me when you're ready because you might have met somebody up there that you're working with. So I just want to be clear on what path we're going on and make sure that you knew you were heard. and he sent me a voice and he's like, Dude, I thank you so much for just respecting the conversation on Sunday and not turning into a sales pitch and you're definitely gonna be selling us a house. We're not ready yet, but I'll let you know the exact area and stuff when it comes on. What I learned from that was, Hey, he mentioned real estate, but this isn't the time and place to talk about it. But it does give me a reason to follow up with them and go, Hey, let's clear the conversation and be clear on this and if you're gonna buy from somebody, they're awesome or let me at least vet them. for you. Now I've served the client all the ways I didn't assume and I didn't take over personal conversation turn into business. So you're trying to have this space of I want to be Isaac and yes, I do real estate, but it's not the only thing. And I think you have a well-rounded thing there of the different pieces, right? So you start looking like going back and giving your high school. We talked about this when you started, right? Where's your relationship there? stay involved with the school, stay involved with teachers. Don't talk about real estate when you're there.

Yeah.

Is there any way you can support the teachers? I know this was a struggle when I was here. How can I support you?

Right.

These are the ways to build your identity in, in that space. So if I ask you, what, what is your perspective of me when it comes down to real estate? I don't think, I mean, my perspective is I'm not always talking about real estate. I add some some kids stuff, some parents stuff, some life stuff. I think that's the important part is that if you're only talking about real estate, that's where you get put in that. If you want your identity to be other, don't talk about just real estate. And that's same thing with your clients. When you find something of value, share it with your clients, whether it's personal. And I just had this realization. It's like we build our businesses and all we do is send shit canned emails to our clients that have no value. and we wonder why they delete them or they uncheck them or whatever. We're not sharing anything that's personal.

Yeah. Right?

We're not sharing a life hack. We're not sharing who we are. We're not doing that. We think that everything's got to be a sales pitch. Yeah. Rather than, Hey, how do I build a relationship? Here's what we did. Anybody want to go to the track? You know, so fun a couple weeks ago, I invited one of our investors out to the track. She's 67 years old. I got the joy and the pleasure of strapping her into the passenger seat in a five-point harness and putting a helmet on her and fulfilling a bucket list item she never wanted.

Right?

And she had a blast. We did one lap and I'm like, can I turn it up? She's like, let's go.

Right?

And you're like, now when we talk, we're not talking about money or the investment. We're talking about the drift ride. We're talking about playing pickleball. And then she'll call like, I got a million bucks. Where can you use it? If that's what you want to build, right? I don't want to call Pam 12 times a year and try to go, Hey, do you have any money you want to invest? No, I want them to go, Hey, what are we doing this year? So those are the things you build relationships and dude, Amazon makes it so easy to send books, to send funny gifts, to do different things. I mean, dude, the shit we send to our clients is hysterical. And it's just a note to Tammy. So when you talk about an assistant, This is where you for the experience, right? When you sit down with you're like, hey, here's 10 people. Here's the gifts that need to be sent to their houses this week, right? With these notes. Off your plate. You're in the car. You're like, I'm thinking about this person, send this thing, right?

That's where you enhance your business and speed it up. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. No, the conversa, that's exactly kind of.

Where I was heading.

And I, you reframed it well for me. Like the idea that this relationship, it's not a real estate relationship we're building. This is just a personal relationship we're building. So use who you are to build that relationship in whatever way that makes sense. You will be there as a real estate agent when they are ready, but not every conversation, most conversations will not be about real estate.

Right.

So here's probably the most powerful thing in all of this is this question. Every time you talk or meet with somebody or you touch them on your desk or CRM, Always ask yourself the question, what's next? And if you're active listening, you're gonna have a what's next every time, right? Now the goal is, like in that CRM on your tablet, is how are you being reminded of what's next? Okay, so I'll give you the conversation. So I had an agent recently come in, he's sharing a conversation, it's kind of funny, about a next door neighbor to his listing. The neighbor says, in the conversation is sharing, he's like, Yeah, she's great. She asked me for a business card and she said she has a couple people that are thinking about selling next year. I'm like, that's awesome. What's next? Blank stare. What do you mean, what's next? I'm like, Ben, what is next? I'm like, I love this conversation. I want you to see what's next. I'm like, Ben, she lives in Westbrook Village. She's older, she's retired. Old people like mail. I said, I want you to go in the next room. I want you to write a little note and say, thank you so much for all your help. Make her feel really good and give her a stack of like 50 business cards. Go, Hey, I want to make sure you had enough for all the people you're gonna talk to.

Here it is, right?

Yeah. Send it to her. Next time you're over the listing, stop in, bring her coffee, say hi.

Yeah.

And then guess what? When the house sells, make sure you call her and go, Hey, thanks for all your help. And then you're gonna put a note on there. In two months, you're gonna drive by.

And you're gonna say hi and you're.

Gonna talk to her and you're gonna shoot the shit. I'm like, you, can do that? three times a day for the rest of your life and never have to look for business. Or you can do the dreaded thing of me giving you a list of a hundred freaking people to call every morning while I watch you. So which do you want to do? Because that's the business you want to build. He's like, I want to do 10 to 20 transactions a year. Good. You can do them on relationships. Pick the thing you're good at. Stop trying. I won't cold call. Yeah, I'm telling you right now. I'm not cold calling. Could I have fun with it? Sure. I don't want to do it. Do I like going through DMs and talking to people and having different conversations? That's what I enjoy doing is the connection piece, right? How can I support other people in what they're doing and connect the dots and be there for them and move on to the next thing?

Yep.

That's where the connection, the ecosystem comes in. The other big piece for newer agents is spending the time building relationships with other agents that can be referral sources. from other parts of the country. There's no reason that any one of our businesses when we start shouldn't be able to refer one to two people a year somewhere that creates whatever money that is, right? You should always be the gateway of anybody in Columbus, Ohio that is leaving is calling you saying, Hey, I'm going to Phoenix. Can you find me an agent to connect with? And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna go find an agent and you're gonna call them. You're gonna say, Hey, I have a client this is their deal, this is the referral, are we good? You're gonna make sure that client's connected with somebody that they would work with. You're not just gonna let it feel out, right?

You're not just putting it out there.

You're actually doing the work. Doing the work, yeah. Because you care about that client. If you're constantly talking about that and you're talking to other agents, you're like, Hey, I'm in Columbus. If you need anything in Columbus, I'm here, right?

Yeah.

Now we're connected making sure that somebody says, Columbus, I got a guy, right? then you're making sure that you're staying in touch with that person. You're not just having the conversation. Now they're on an email list, they're on a phone call list. They're like, Hey, just wanted to remind you.

Yeah.

If somebody, it's the same thing in if somebody doesn't know you're a buyer, they're not gonna bring you a house to buy. So you do have to be a little vocal if you're not talking about referrals with your clients, with your things. Remember, we're not selling them. We're talking about the referrals. You're saying, Hey, I wanna help you. If you're moving out of state or you have family out of state, I wanna help them connect with the right real estate agent because they don't know anybody. They might be getting referrals. That should be part of our relationship building. And when you get further in, you know, 10 years, if that was part of it, guess what? Again, it's another Zillow source that doesn't cost you anything but time and energy to go through and build those relationships and keep in touch with them.

Yeah. Right.

And you never know where those are going to lead. So we forget all of the little things that are income generators and lead generators in our business because when we come in, it's talked about income and GCI. That is it, right? What are your goals this year? It's not like my income goal is X, part of that's gonna come from the referral sources with these agents, part of it's gonna come from here, part of it's gonna come from here and this is how I'm gonna execute on this. Now, you have a pretty good plan each day to execute on with what you're doing and who you're communicating with. And that is the end goal. Because all those relationships, the more value you add, the more they come back, the more they share things. And when you put things out, it's like, Hey, would I share this? -Right. -Right? If somebody said it to me.

-If somebody said it to me, would I share it?

So, you think back to some of those emails that you've gotten. You're like, I would share this. -Yeah. - Even if it's good content, throw it in the database, send it to everybody. Like, Hey, I just got this. This is awesome. Check this out. Tammy recently said, She's following Guy right now in his community. She's like, I actually love his emails because his email was simply a thought-provoking question and it was sent out to real estate agents. What keeps you up at night? I promise I'll respond. That was it. And so it's like, to him, he's like, it actually kept me up all night. Yeah. What's keep. So it's intriguing to just start thinking about how do I want to build these relationships? And like you said, you can't outsource it. You can use the lead gen to start it. Yeah, but the lead gen piece is we do too much wanting to go straight to get in bed with somebody.

Yep. Right.

Rather than the dating piece and the courting piece and the other things and getting to know each other. Because here's the thing most people don't see. If you don't court a client, you may realize, I don't want to work with this person. This person doesn't fit my standards, my morals, my ethics, my character, any of it. And they're gonna be a pain. Who can I refer this person to?

Right.

Seriously, that's the thing. Don't just give up on somebody. Just say, Hey, we're not a good fit. I want to make sure you're connected with the right person and go there. I do that in my own business, you know? And if I would tell you one thing that I've learned over the years is like, hey, if you're in your lane or zone of genius, stay there. If you really want to take care of a client, so for me, when I go outside the luxury space, I love luxury. But with all the things I'm doing and I do have clients in luxury section, do I do them a disservice by not paying attention to all the things that need to be done in luxury? Am I better off connecting them with one of my best friends and going, Hey, I love you guys. This guy's gonna do a better job for you. And we're gonna stay connected. You know, I just did this with Brian North. I'm like, I called the clients, very humbling call to say, I'm not the right guy.

Right?

This is the guy. He did a great job. It did make me look like a rockstar at the end of the day rather than the client fired me 'cause I wasn't doing a good job. I wanted to solve his problem.

Right.

That was the way to do it. So we think about those things, you're like, well, I don't have to get off my path, but I can still earn income by connecting the dots. So we have to think about that in the holistic approach is the more people I connect the dots, the more income revenue is generated in different things, which all goes back to how many dripping faucets do you have running?

Right?

Because they're all filling up the bucket a little bit at a time rather than just having one bucket we're focused on. There's these little things that are working in the background.

Yeah. Right?

That's where when you go back to like the direct mail, you have one thing that is just spinning in the background on autopilot. Then you start getting to things like, do I want to run ads? And again, it's looking at ROI and going, if I spend $1,000 on this ad and I'm getting people that take a year to nurture, is that what you want to do? Or do I want to spend $1,000 and do a live event for teachers on how to invest? Yeah.

Right?

That's the education thing. And the other thing too is like, you know enough about it, I would do it with you if you're more comfortable. It's like, do a webinar just for your school. Just for the teachers. Here's what I did. Here's why I did it. Here's the guy I did it with and this is what you need to see and I want to help you do it.

Right?

Now you're helping with the retirement plans. You're meeting with them individually. Tell me where you're at. Where do you want to be? How do I get you there? Dude, you can build a whole freaking teacher network of referrals.

Yeah.

And you should go get your real estate license, here's why, right?

Yeah.

Those are things you can do. So you're educating, you're solving problems and you have a bunch of kids running around that all have parents, right? You were a teacher there. Go dive into that, 'cause that is a community that needs help, needs guidance, needs assistance, and now not that you're going in to be the hero but you get to show people what's possible. -Yeah. -Right? And dude, I know so many teachers that would be out of it in freaking two seconds if they could.

If they thought that it was possible. -Yeah.

-So, take that and start looking at show them what's possible. You know, one gal that I met with recently that I talked about the referral program with, her job has served its purpose to get through raising her kids and she's like, Real estate interests me but I can't do anything right now until my kids, right? If I want to take that risk. I'm like, well, what if we do a 3-year plan? You start by referring, you start by doing some part-time and then your kids are now going to be 18 and 21, then maybe you've got a little bit of runway with what you've built up from the referrals and now we can push you into full-time. So, it's not out right now and it doesn't have to be that scary, but can I help you move in this direction?

Why do they need to have the real estate license in order to be a...

Referral? -'Cause you can't pay somebody. For business without them being a licensed agent, right? So by getting a real estate license, they're legal to allow to pay commission. So, yeah, it's a great piece. I mean, anybody looking for a side hustle, I mean, that's, that's what I would do. And the cool thing about that is that if you are the person, like, I may approach this gal and she may know another real estate agent. That's a good personality that she wants to fit somebody. that's okay, right? The goal is to give her a path. Yeah, right? And the goal when you're referring is, you know, I love the Dave Ramsey thing is I may talk to somebody and like, man, their personality would fit really good with this agent, right? And so you do have that ability to go, I'm serving this client with my referral fee, not by just sending them to somebody, but who's gonna really work for this person?

Connecting.

Right? And that's where the difference is in the referring is like, It's not just the past, it's like, I'm gonna work for this referral. The whole point is to connect you with somebody that will do the job that I can do or close to it. That's the goal in it. Some people are like, oh yeah, I got one, right?

Here you go.

Here you go, I've never talked to the guy, but good luck. And I just don't want to do that. I'm like, yeah, I just referred to somebody that's never done any business and, well, they retired 20 years ago.

Yeah.

'Cause I don't want to be that person.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what's next for you? I mean, is Columbus where you guys are settled and that's where you're gonna build the business?

We are, yes. I would say we're more likely to be in Columbus long term now than we have been at any point in the recent past. So yeah, I think we have our one rental property there. I know the area well. That's important to me. I actually have two cleaning businesses that I run. One is in Chicago and I just opened another one in Columbus.

Nice.

So I feel like we're getting more connected there where it would be, where it's getting to the point where it would be more difficult to ever leave.

Got it. Got it. Well, that's good. Yeah, yeah.

My wife also has her big event coming up in a couple weeks in Columbus.

Now, what did your wife do?

She's a growth and mental edge coach.

Okay.

So she is working with individuals, teams, coaches, and professionals who want to grow.

To the next level. So the mental, mental coaching. Good. All right.

That's awesome.

How long has she been doing that?

She started full-time at the beginning of last year.

Okay.

So I think the event where she met your wife, at Keisha's event, was when she finally was like, Nope, this is what I'm gonna do full time.

Kisha'll do that to you.

Yeah.

Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Give you that energy, right?

Yeah.

And so that's what she got. Kisha's a hold my beer, watch.

Yeah.

Watch me dance pregnant like Rihanna. And when she came home from that event, whatever it was, a year and a half ago, that's where she was at. She's like, Look, we gotta talk.

I'm like, oh, guys.

Oh.

So you guys have both. Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second. That's such a, what did she do?

She was a physician assistant. Orthopedics.

You guys have both just dropped your W-2 jobs and went full-time into the entrepreneur space.

We both grew up very much in households that valued comfort and stability. My parents both grew up on farms. Like my dad didn't have running water until he was in high school.

Sure.

So when they got into that, like the pension age and the like, that was very important to them to know that they were set up for their future. And my wife's mom was a teacher for, she's still a principal for, she's been principal or teacher principal for 40 some years. Like she's retired, rehired multiple times. Same thing. Like she was a teacher, she valued that pension and the benefits. so much. And when we first started our careers, I think that was kind of at the forefront, like the stability, the physician assistant was she knew she could get a job, she knew she could make good money right away. There was a lot of that comfort, I think, that led to some of those decisions. And I can't pinpoint like an exact moment of when this started to shift. But we started to recognize that.

In.

Exchange, that that comfort was expensive. Like we were giving up a lot, not just of income, but of time, of flexibility, of freedom, in exchange for that comfort.

For the future comfort.

Yeah, and the current. I mean, having healthcare, having jobs, neither one of those jobs were ever going anywhere.

Sure, right.

During COVID we both still got paid. So like I was kind of working from home and still getting paychecks every month. She was not going in and still getting paychecks every month. It was a big enough company that they could afford to continue to pay their workers. It was great. I don't know exactly where we started to shift. I don't know if it was the kids, that gradually started to say, hey, I found myself at a place where I was giving the best of myself to my students. And then I'd go right after school, I'd go to coach. And I would be coaching from, you know, October till March. And then we have a couple months off, then we'd go, we had summer coaching as well. My students and my players were getting the best of me and whatever my kids and my wife were getting whatever was left over at the end.

Right.

And there was just friction between what I said my priorities were and how I was acting. I said my priorities were my faith and then my family.

Right.

And it didn't feel like that anymore.

Yeah.

You guys did what a lot of people fear, which is getting out of that comfort and security.

Mm-.

What gave you the ability to do that, especially together, right? I think, and who was who's more of the driving force behind that?

The ability to do it and the strength to do it came from each other. I never could have done it without her. She would have never done it without my support, blessing, whatever it may be. She was the driving force, but we had conversations. I've always had some sort of side hustle I was working on. something growing. We were coaches for a long time too, but there was something more. She wanted more of that connection piece. And that's what she really loved about the coaching, was connecting with her players and helping them to grow into people more so than just soccer players. And she wanted more of that. And so that's kind of led her to start the podcast. That led her into the, what seems like, has grown incredibly small over the last year for us, this personal development community that she found and that's what led her to Keisha's event. And that was the tipping point of, hey, we can't just tip toe into this anymore.

Yes, it's fascinating conversation Wendy and I have had recently is where, you know, in your world early on, think back about this, when she was PA, you're a teacher, when you're in those W-2 jobs, what are you exposed to? How did you guys finally get exposed to this world, the self-development stuff. Because I think there's a lack of people when they're in those things. Social media and things are disconnects. It's not consuming what's better. And I think a lot of people don't realize, like, when you are walking in the air, I'm like, you don't understand. We've been exposed to 20 years of coaching and mental training and things that have gotten us from one place to the next. The average person doesn't look that either they need these things or that they'll help them or do they want to watch them? Yeah. Some of them just don't want to get better.

Yeah. Right.

They're comfortable.

Yep.

So where, where did that change for you guys? Like, how did you guys get into that space that all of a sudden was like, oh, there's, there's more out to life than just what we know.

Yeah.

And it's funny. Like, you say that if I had even three years ago, somebody said, you know, I have a, a mentor. I have a, a a growth coach, a mental coach that I pay, I would have been like, what's wrong with you? Like, what are you doing? What do you need help with? And now I just view it completely different. I think that this started way back when we wanted to shift the way we were coaching. We wanted to be more relational coaches. And so we started seeking out some of those mentors who could help us get there. Tim Kite is a same thing performance coach. He was with Ohio State, the Buckeyes for a while. He worked with Urban Meyer for a while. Coach Darr, I don't know if you know Coach Darr. She's worked with Phoenix Suns for a while. But we came across some of these people that are like, Man, the way that they teach coaches is a lot more about how we believe, I think deep down. not what we've ever been exposed to, but it's like, man, that feels more familiar. That feels more aligned with who we, where we're going. So actually, Jenna and I started a podcast, this has been, I don't even know, five years ago probably, specifically about building culture, and in particular with sports teams. And we had kind of a bigger vision for it, but we started out very much in our lane in what we knew. And so I would say that was kind of the start of it. When we started thinking about things a little bit differently, and like I said, it was a toe in the water. It was a, we'll do this a little bit on the weekends and when we have time.

And.

The bad thing about doing that is as soon as we started to hit road bumps or where it wasn't going real smoothly, it had to go to the wayside, right? Our kids were super young, had to try to take care of them. It started to get a little bit harder recording and where we wanted to go. It's like, I don't think we can do this under these circumstances. So I think the shift was just kind of letting that slowly brew within us to where we knew at that time what was in alignment with us, whether we were living it or not. I think that friction eventually just grew on both of us.

That's awesome. Yeah, so I think it's just very inspiring and very encouraging for people to understand and it's like, even with two small kids, you guys both changed careers. You know, you went into the real estate thing, which is actually really funny, right? Because that's kind of, if you look in Keisha and Cena. Yeah, right. Cena coached with me, and he's like, I don't want to do dentistry.

Right.

And every time we talk, I'm like, dude, you could be doing a root canal right now. He's like, ah, awesome. Do that. Right. So it's, it's fascinating to watch the people that have taken the jump and given some people some inspiration to go, okay. Now, I do think it's got to be clear though that you guys also planned for some of the jumps.

Yeah. Right?

You're like, hey, you know, and I think that that is one of the things that you can do things slowly. I think sometimes we put this false narrative and deadline on something like, I need to do it here. Yeah. Rather than really planning it out and going, what's possible and how much time do I have pick this up. And we had a very clear conversation on that. How much runway do you have? Right. Right. And I think that was what kind of clicked because we talked about money. We talked about your salary. Yep. You got a year. Yep. With no income to pull this off. So if you get a couple of deals, that's great. But we do have some runway.

Yeah.

Right.

It's always hard when I get agents to come in my ecosystem that don't have any runway and they need a sale yesterday or they're going to die.

Yeah.

It's really hard to train in that capacity because there's so much desperation and you're just chasing worlds.

Right?

You're like, I need something to happen right now.

That's been one thing I think for both my wife's business and for mine. As soon as you get into that point, that place of desperation, people feel it. People don't want to buy from desperate people. And so that, the entrepreneur, if you're not doing the mental work and the behind the scenes, like the deep work within yourself, to make sure that what people are feeling from you is what you want them to feel and not, you know, wherever you happen to be blowing at that point in time.

Well, I think Alex from Mosey had a video the other day which really made a lot of sense and for anybody that's thinking about like the entrepreneurial world, right? They get the uninformed excitement, right? Which starts the roller coaster and it's up here and you're like, yeah! And then you get the uninformed information, right? You get all this information now you're pessimistic. It's called an informed pessimism. So now you're down here, but now you have to make the decision, is it worth building? And can I pick up that initial excitement that it turns into informed excitement now? But he's like, most people quit down here. Yeah. He's like, so that is the evolution of we get excited about what we don't know, and then when we do know, we get worried about it, and then we have are we willing to go to the next thing? -Yes.

It's something that I really want.

-And I don't think that a lot of us do a good job of, Hey, real estate looks really good. Oh, there's a lot of shit I have to do to perform in real estate and there's not as much money in it as everybody said there was and it's certainly not as easy and then you go, Hey, you know what? I know this isn't as easy and I know it's going to take me longer but now I'm really excited about.

What I'm building or you're like, you know what? I'm going to go back to my job. -Yeah. And I think the thing for me too is, when you run into that point, when you get to that point, we're like, oh shit, this is really hard. I know that that's the point where people quit. And so I know that on the other side of that, there's fruit, right? And so if you're willing to go through that hardship, that's the only way you're ever gonna get to the stuff that actually makes it worth it. And so that's kind of been my thing. And one of the things I guess I'm, I feel a little bit blessed that I've come in at this stage of the market rather than a few years ago. Because heaven forbid I came in two years ago. Yeah. Everything's gravy. Like, I, I, I, I, way too much business. I'm thinking about hiring assistants and, and getting buyers agents under me because I'm doing so great. And all of a sudden you're like.

Oh, wait a second. Maybe I'm not that good.

Yeah.

Maybe I didn't really learn anything. 2024 and a lot of real estate agents are like, Maybe I wasn't that good. I mean, you fogged a mirror and now the skill set is really what's having to be honed right now.

Right.

And so I think that in a lot of ways, this has been a great blessing for me. I just know that I need to weather the storm to get to the other side. And I view investing exactly the same way. Like that's one of the things like we bought our first investment property almost two years ago. Have not bought a second one. part of it is I view it as the first three need to be like the foundation of my portfolio. And if your foundation is not strong, then you're in trouble as you start to build, right? If you happen to get lucky and things look good, but the foundation isn't really strong, I feel like I need those first three properties to be great foundational 30 plus year properties.

Yeah.

And that has, I think, hindered my speed of my growth, which makes the difficult part. But I also believe that on the other side of that is, you know, where I really want to go.

Sure, I think that there's always a trajectory, right? It's like the hockey stick, right?

Yeah.

You've got the swoop. So you're seeing where, you know, the one to its slow. And then all of a sudden, you're gonna, you're gonna hit the slope, right? Yeah. And it's gonna create trajectory. Part of that is going to be your career trajectory. So it is all going to line up with each other. The only difference is you're gonna start seeing the opportunities a lot earlier. And because you're kind of a math nerd, you're gonna be able to project things. You just have to be careful. The numbers aren't, don't always like, folks, like, you got to get outside of the number sometimes, because sometimes there's something you can't see in the numbers, right? So we got to be careful with that. But it gives you a good gauge really quick and you start seeing like, all right, well now my real estate, you know, remember the at bats and the ROI on things. Remember, all those at bats are not just about buying and selling houses. They're about the investment side of things.

Right.

Right. So the more opportunities we have in that, even if we don't pull the trigger, the more opportunities we have to connect the dot, right? You may not be in a place to buy your next rental. You're in a place to connect that house with an investor and make some money. Yeah. You don't have to put it on the market. You don't have to be the buyer on it. You do have to be in the stage where you're factoring in of where this works in your career, and it works your entire career. It's more about being prepared for opportunities. Where can I get capital? And I guarantee you, if you find something at 50 cents on the dollar, you can find the money. Right, 100%. Yeah. It's gonna happen. The question is, are your eyes wide open to it? As you're building all these different things, knowing that that is always in your arsenal, right? It's always there. It's like, hey, you know what? I know that there's gonna be one every year that's good for 40 or 50 grand. I just don't know when it's gonna happen. It could happen in the beginning year, it could be up in the end. And as long as we know that's part of our business, just like it is mine and you're still talking like I'm always a buyer, I'm always looking at things on top of the other stuff you're doing. It's just one piece of the business. Yeah.

Right.

So the more opportunities you have, like I said, the better your business is because of what we have to offer in the solution based. Where do you feel like the rest of the year is going to go for you? What are you focused on now?

Man, I feel like I have a lot of potential energy, like Build up and I can't identify why or where where that's coming from okay, but I do feel like I've got some momentum rolling right now.

Okay what's creating the momentum? Like what are you working on right now? That's creating the momentum.

I don't know if I can identify that okay, and again, I don't know if I can identify why I feel like I have that momentum either youe.

Know feeling gut whatever.

Yeah, I But I guess it's probably some of the conversations that I've been having. And they haven't been like, oh yeah, I want to get my house listed next week. It just feels like more people are asking me about real estate and it makes me feel more involved in the industry, more part of the industry that if and when those opportunities do happen and those situations do come up, I'm confident that I'm going to be the person that they come to.

Yeah.

I think it's also remembered too, when we go back to the what's next is that just because somebody's not doing business, they're a source for referrals, right? So we have to keep in that mind and how we structure our presentation into that conversation, right? Not to do the, as much as I love Brian Baffini, you know, it's all by referrals, but ending every conversation by, oh, by the way, do you know anybody looking to buy a sell house, right? I just, I can't do that. I can't sign letters that way, right? But it does need to be a conversation and when somebody is looking for a house, because now they're talking to people and a lot of times they are talking to people that are looking for houses, right? So there's keeping people in mind and again, it's setting expectations of, Hey, when you do a buyer consult, Hey, I want you to know as you're doing this, you're gonna talk to people and they're gonna be looking for homes and I really appreciate you know, you referring that person back into me for the services that I provide. Right. So it's a way that we set up expectations and how we ask for it. It doesn't, you know, we're trying to get them to refer somebody that is good for somebody, and that's the goal.

Right.

So we're trying to keep the eye on the services that we provide and that they become the hero to their friend by providing somebody that can service them.

Right.

And I like phrasing it like that, too. if there's someone that you think might be a good fit for me, feel free to send them my way. And obviously if you've had a good interaction, a good experience with them, there's probably a wide variety of people they think would be a good fit for you.

So, that's what I would keep that to, just in those conversations, the what's next. Because that's where you're able to guide them. the point in the conversations is to find out what's next. So it might be in six months, it might be in a year, the goal is setting that reminder. And if you start to do that every day, guess what? You wake up every day with a new list of things that you've already reminded yourself about. Or as you hire an assistant, it's a new list of things that somebody else is doing that is taking off your plate to move that needle forward. And that's what my advice would be on that piece. Because again, you said it a couple of times, right? It's, you know, in your brokerage interview, how a couple of them made you feel and that's with the clients, right? How you made them feel, were you answering their questions, were you checking in on them, or did it feel transactional? Right. So when you're building the business, it's, I'm building a transactional business, is that the way they feel? If I'm building a relationship, how did they feel when everything was set and done?

Right? Yeah.

Do they feel like you cared about them? Not the house, not the deal, but did you care about them?

Yeah. One of the greatest books if you want to build relationally is there's two of them. Ninja Selling, which I mentioned earlier, and then Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman. That one is a fantastic book on just understanding how many cool things you can to do to build your community and keep your business in check?

I bought both of them. They're both sitting in my sack. I haven't started either one of them yet, but they're both on my list.

Oh good, at least you can list.

Me in my sack, yeah.

So you're out here on vacation with a family, you guys do anything fun this week?

Not really, hung out at the pool, let the kids play a lot. Nice. My six year old's really into geocaching.

Okay.

So traveling around, finding these little treasures, like he could treasure hunt. So it's good.

So speaking of kids, the fun thing is as your kids are doing things, you start thinking about, okay, so the geotagging, well, how does that fit in my business? So that's the next consumer coming up. What do I need to get ahead of the game on? You know who talks about it best is Ryan Serhant. Ryan Serhant says, the reason I'm on TikTok and some of the other places that, or Snap is like, I'm raising my next generation of yeah. And some of these clients, they really follow me like, Mom, Dad, you got to use this guy, right?

Yeah.

So he's like, I'm trying to get to the attention of the younger by building up my next phase of clients.

Yeah, makes that make sense.

Yeah, he's, he's definitely one to follow his energy and just what he does. I still don't know how he does. All he does freaking kills me.

So.

So what's, what's next for this year? I mean, what, what are you building out and what are you really focused on? as you finish out your first year.

So I also feel like I have, I feel like I have different irons in the fire. Like I want to, I do want to be more involved with Jenna's business. We do want to do like some more couples focused things like that. We have a couples retreat planned already.

Good.

So I want to be more involved there. Like I said, I just started a cleaning business, a second cleaning business in Columbus. So I want to kind of get that once that is up and rolling, at least the one in Chicago, once that was up and rolling, I respond to a couple texts a day and outside of that, probably not even that. A couple hours a week. So getting that to the point where I've got a little bit of income coming from that. And like I said, I really just feel like from the real estate perspective, I have some things coming up that I just think are going to propel me through the rest of the year. I really think this spring, I have two listings coming up right now. I know I have a third coming up from an investor who wants to sell. He's an agent, but he doesn't want to do the hassle of the showings and answering the calls, so he's gonna let me list that. I have one rental listed right now. So I've just been fielding more phone calls, having more conversations that I feel like are gonna propel me through the.

Rest of the year. So what I'm hearing in your different involvement with different businesses, you got the cleaning stuff, you're wanting to be a little bit more involved with what Jenna's doing and those types of things, right? So now we're moving over to the real estate business and I think that if you're really focused on the relationship piece, that's where it builds into your time of things versus the lead gen and the scrubbing calls and all the data stuff, right? Really focused on doing the, I'm going to do a couple hours of relationship building a day, I'm going to do my business, I'm going to work Jenna, I'm gonna play with kids, right? And you're doing all the things and if you're consistent every day, things are just gonna start happening.

I think what I'm hearing you say too is they don't have to be separate things, right? Build the relationships within the things that you're already doing and then the real estate conversations will happen more naturally.

Yeah. Because if you're involved in Jenna's community and going through all those and somebody's like, you know, I'm thinking about buying in Phoenix or whatever the case may be, right? Now there's connected peace, there's cross collateralization with those communities and those things. And that community may come into, you know, wanting to learn how to buy rentals or like, that's how those things happen, right? I mean, if you look at my ecosystem from Chris Harder, right, which is technically where you came from, right? It's being in that ecosystem with those people where Relationships referrals and things have come from and most of them are just calls and breakfasts and we're just catching up and what the hell's going on? And yeah, right and that's where people want to do that business and right and if when you're focused on that Dude, when you're driving around the car, you're just like randomly picking up the phone going what the hell's going on, right? When are we buying another investment property or you know, and you're just kind of jamming through this that and the other and then you're directing your people to make those happen for those people and that's where it's like Okay, well this is the life and the business that I wanted to build and we all have that choice.

And come from anywhere, right? Choose whatever that ecosystem you want to look like. I heard a story of a lady who's, her entire family's in like the wedding business. The bakery, they have the wedding, everything, photography, her whole family's in, so what does she do? She sets up a booth at the bride weekend.

Home show, yeah.

Yeah, show. And she sets up a real estate booth right there. It works for her because she knows that community, she knows that industry. It wouldn't work for me to go set up that booth because that's not me. But when you know who you are and the circles that you're in, being a real estate agent can happen anywhere.

Yeah, and you pick it up. So you brought something up that's really good for everybody to see is, One of the things that has been part of my relationship building is the car community, right? When we're on the drift track, when we're at car shows, when we have the blazer out, when we're doing different events, it was a hobby and a passion that we were able to put into the business. So it gives me two abilities. One, it becomes a business expense, right? For the things that we enjoy, for the drift racing, all the things, all the cars, all that stuff, right? It gives something to do with clients. It gives a connection and there's guys that were building, you know, through and with on the investment side and that came out of Hobby, right? You have little kids. I spent so much time at school.

Yeah.

You would have thought I was enrolled. But dude, we were broke.

Yeah.

I didn't have any money to advertise. So I just, you know, went in and played in the mud with the kids and helped them color and like, you know, you just got to be a five-year-old for four hours twice a week. But I built a lot of real relationships and people are like, well, this guy's kind of crazy, but I mean, I buy a house from him, right? And you know, it goes back to my dad saying, right, it's better to be there than be good. The relationship comes and this is the funny part about all the crap that's going on in the world right now. Most of the time the consumer doesn't do a good job of interviewing the person. Like, oh, you were referred. You were also a serial killer.

Yeah.

But we don't know that. So you kind of go through those relationships and those pieces. But yeah, the circles and the hobbies are great places to go. Where can I meet and enjoy the community and real estate may come up where I can throw something in. And you know, I've got a new community that I'm part of where it's really fascinating. We go in there and we have our meetings, our meet up once a week and I'm always a go-to person. They're like, Hey, what's going on with this? And then all of a sudden one guy's, yeah, I want to remodel. Here's my wife's information. We're talking about real estate. They know I do real estate. So the question is like, Hey, can you do this? Hey, I've got a friend coming in for spring training. Can you do this?

Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody's on an email list.

Nobody's on anything.

-Right.

-Right.

I'll find a way to solve that problem. -Right. So that's where I want my business to be and that's what I really enjoy. Freaking... I love it when the agents call and they've got weird shit going on and we figure out how to partner and figure it out and fix it. -Yeah. those are, those are the things that you start to build and go, where, where do I want it to be? So I encourage you to kind of do that, especially with the kids' ages and start thinking, like, what am I building to? Because there's gonna be a different Rhythm then.

Yeah.

Same thing with your wife, right?

Yeah.

There's gonna be more time. So it's okay to be a little slow and run this Rhythm. And I, I think mutual friends, you know, Kyle, Kyle Depius has always said this is like, you know, he's got a seven-year-old my kids are 19 and 20 is realizing, like, your life with kids, there's going to be a rhythm, right? When they're younger, you got to be around, you got to chase them. When they get a little older, Garrett's got the eight and ten. Eight and ten, right? So he's still in the sports and the things right now. So he's running all over, like, chicken with his head cut off, wondering when he gets his own time. And he comes up and down with the crashes, and he's like, you know, a cesspool of whatever they bring home from school. I think last week was Pink eye, a scratchy throat, and the only thing he didn't have was chicken pox. And then the rest of us in the office have, you know, adult children. So we're all in different rhythms and different phases, and you're like, all right, well, Wendy and I are looking at each other going, okay, what do we do now? The kids don't need us as much. What are we building? So you're gonna go through and start a thing like it's different. And I never really did that with the kids early on. I was like, well, there's this stage. So I look back and I'm like, Now there was different stages we should have planned for different things.

I like that a lot. And I feel like in this stage, I need to be present. I need to, 'cause it's gonna go fast and they're not, all of a sudden they're not gonna be there and they're not gonna need me to play with them.

They do, it's just more expensive toys. When they need you to trailer the car to the track, they still need you. So don't worry.

And so I think like as I'm trying to I'm trying to build my business, but I'm also trying to like.

You know, it's also the experience, though. We talked about experiences with kids.

Yeah.

They're never going to remember that you were home at five o'clock every day watching TV. They're going to remember the Saturday that you took them to do whatever or like, those are. Yeah, those are things. Don't get too caught up in the being home just to be there. Like, get caught up in being there. Like, my new thing is everything's got to be left on the desk when I leave. Yeah. I no longer have the energy or the wherewithal to work at home. So I don't. I just chose. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna go into the office on Sunday. I'm gonna bang stuff out, and then I'm gonna go home and be home. It's a different rhythm. I used to work all the time at home. Now I'm just like, eh, I'll do it tomorrow at the office. It's my space. So just go through the rhythms, build for the life that you want rather than getting so soaked up in the industry. Why aren't you doing more transactions? Why aren't you doing? Dude, I built the life that I want.

Right?

You're gonna find, I think that you're the guy, you and your wife, right? You're driven, so there's always gonna be more.

Yeah.

And that's great. Just don't do what I did over the last seven years and go, I want all this stuff right now. And then go throw yourself into a tailspin. Yeah.

Right?

It's like, we're gonna do all these things. Just start planning them out and pulling one project at a time. I'm Garrett and I just went through a spreadsheet of my squirrels. I'm like, here's all the projects. Where do you want to start? And like I said, I hope Garrett's gonna be here for a while. You might be a little nervous right now because what happens when you start thinking in steps is this is where everybody's like, I'm annoyed or everybody's annoyed by me is like, okay, so this phone call comes in. There's 12 steps before and 12 steps after. So everything's a process right now of what needs to to happen. And so it's, it's been fun, but frustrating.

But systemizing that too is gonna be super valuable as well.

So, yep. Um, if there was going into year one, right, you're nine months into it. What would you have changed or what would you advise for somebody starting? Like, what do you feel you're missing in this nine months? that could have helped you?

Well, I think the first thing that I kind of already mentioned was choosing the right brokerage, not based on commission splits, but based on the support that you're going to receive.

Sure.

You mentioned the other one. The second one is the having a runway, like having some savings, because if I had been a real estate agent at 2021, In college or right out of college, completely different. I can live on ramen noodles and live in a small, tiny apartment and be fine. At this stage of my life, I can't do that.

You just went and had dream killers. That's what Ramy calls them.

So it's important that we had that runway to allow us to not get into that point of desperation where, oh my God, I need a transaction. and then every single conversation you have, you're holding on so tight to that person that they feel it and they don't want to work in that with you. I like that. And so I think those are the two things for sure. I guess number three, the third thing I'm thinking of is taking advantage of like regular check-ins with a mentor or a manager or something like that. I did that. I don't know if I fully took advantage of them to the point that I could have. I don't know exactly what that would have looked like.

What was the process of the check-in? What was the purpose of it?

So.

The purpose of it was, Sometimes they were very clear objectives and sometimes they were not.

Okay.

I can probably only now that I'm thinking about it, think of two, maybe three of the weekly check-ins that I had with my manager where he had something to throw out as an idea.

Structure wise.

Yeah.

Like hey, here's something that other successful agents do. You might want to give it a shot. Here's how it works. Do you have any questions about it. Sometimes it was just, hey, let's go line by line through an exclusive right to list.

Okay.

Exclusive right to sell. Just so you understand exactly what every line is because it's always the line that you don't understand that somebody's gonna ask about and you're gonna look like an idiot. There were other times where I had specific questions that I kind of created the the objective, the agenda for the meeting. Like, hey, I need to talk about this, this or this because I know it's coming up or it hasn't come up yet, but I do know it's coming. I want to talk about these three things. I don't know how I would have done that better, but based on the hand that I was dealt, I needed to probably be more structured in those.

Check-Ins that was what I was getting at, is do you feel that you would be further ahead if somebody gave you structure for the last nine months? Like, step by step is what we're doing for the first eight weeks. And then, or I think some people want to just like come in and jump in and run. And it's really hard to get people to look at like if you really want to have this great success and not fumble along the way, like follow these steps. And I'm gonna check in with you here. And I think the accountability piece is more so that the agent needs to learn to be accountable to the I don't care if you did it. It's not my life. You should be ecstatic that hey, I got through this, this was my result. Is there something I can tweak on this? This is my conversation, right? I watched an office meeting two weeks ago where there's an accountability session that everybody's supposed to be making 30 contacts a day. Two of the guys showed up, didn't have anything and they're laughing about it. I'm like, as a leader, you're like, I don't care. But also as a leader, you're like.

I don't need that in my organization.

Yeah, you're poisoning your mind meeting. You like peace out. So I'm finding that with some of the newer agents, they need to be told what to do and held accountable, but not from the standpoint of what we think about accountability, right? Accountability should be like, dude, you're not taking the vacation and the things that you're not getting based on the goals that you set. So why are you not doing these things rather than you're fired if you don't do these things, right? There's a difference in accountability has consequences versus the accountability to project future to get you where you want to go. And I'm seeing some of that in different things is like, well, how do you, how do you structure? Right? So I was just curious, because I'm feeling more and more that some of the agents either need a reboot. Like right now, they need to go back to basics, too many squirrels, and be willing to go through like 90 days of boot camp and go, okay. Now I'm ready to go. Because I think a lot of things have changed over the years. And it's like, what can you do in 90 days to be successful in this? And that's some of the things that I look at. How do we help the agents better? Because I think there's some confusion in the business when you go through, and I'm gonna take you for an example, you come in, and the first thing you want to focus on, well, how do I build my brand? What am I doing? How am I gonna get my things out? Rather than I want to go in and I want to learn the business and if I have to take leads from a team and they're telling me exactly what to do day in day out, I want to do that for the first 90 days. I want to get this under my belt. And then taking a path of this is how you grow your business or this is the path you can choose. You can grow a solo or you can go be on a team and here are the benefits, pros and cons of both. Mm-.

Right?

Here's the pros and cons of a team. Here's the pros and cons of being solo. Yep.

Right?

What do you want? What's the life you're building? And kind of lead through to the end of 12 months of, okay, you've been through 12 months of basically this, you've had some leads, some things, and now how do you want to build your business? But again, it's the path where some people don't have a runway long enough to go, I'm doing this, this is what this looks like.

I do kind of wonder if I.

Had.

At least like trialed being on a team first. Because I went solo having no idea other than I know I'm fairly driven, I don't need to be motivated. But I think one of the obstacles that I ran into was, that's fine, that's great. I want to do things, I want to be active. But there's so much stuff that you could be doing How do I figure out what's best for me? Had I started on a team that says, Look, I want you to sit down and I want you to, you know, this week, I want you just every day make 30 cold calls. I didn't want to do that. Would it have been good for me? I don't know, maybe. Or today I want you to, you know, this week you're gonna send 20 emails every single day. This week you're gonna send 40 text messages every single, whatever it is, you know what I mean? where someone's telling you, no, this is what you're going to do. One of the, that didn't appeal to me, I don't think, coming into the business.

Most people, it doesn't, because you're leaving the W2 have to be here to go be on your own and you don't want the structure. Right. The reality is, I think structure is good, and I think you have to interview for the structure that you want. And I think most people do this the wrong way. I think you didn't. they're looking at straight like what are the fees are, rather than what am I being coached in and through for the next year or six months or whatever that commitment is, and being firm on the commitment that, Hey, I'm new, I'm here, I'm committing to you for a full year for the training and I'll work my ass off, and then we'll revisit it at the end of the year as to what I want to do. I don't think there's enough clear conversation in that. And I do think some people should start on a team, get some structure. Obviously these people are successful and some of them run things like Nazis, right? When it comes down, very regimented. And I think that helps you build a consistent real estate business that I get to go into work, I get to do my things, have a little bit of freedom, but I'm also earning an income that I really wanted to do that I couldn't do on my own. And that's right for some people. And maybe in the beginning, some people thrive in that. Arena and that's where they need to stay. Because as an agent, you have a choice and this is where the confusion is. As a solo agent, you have all the costs of all the things that the brokerage doesn't provide, right? That's business expense. You're doing the marketing, the tech, like all the things. You're like, yes, this is great. Oh, my business, right? And you were, you know, you're responsible to your clients. A team is doing all this in the background and you just get to go to work. Yeah. Right? You don't have to. It's the equivalent of a landscaper. You go out, you do yards all day and then you go home and do all your paperwork.

Yeah. Right.

This gives you a little bit difference of I just get to go do my work and I don't have to worry about the business side. So there is a path for everybody. I just don't think people spend enough time figuring out what their path looks like and I don't think they have the ability to question themselves all the way down into the numbers of what does it look like? And here's, you know, the exit strategy one on your team, if you're getting, you know, anybody should be looking at, and we talked about earlier about like every year looking at something your business as is this still a value to me? Well, if all of a sudden you get to a point that your business is 75% your sphere and 25% team leads, it might be starting to think like, well, maybe this potentially is the time because my business isn't relying on the team lead source anymore for me to that exit. Now, some agents, you already talked about earlier, like, I was so good during the up times. Dude, we got agents here that freaking blew it up during 2021. And now that's not happening. And they're trying to figure out, well, oh, I'm sorry. Take it back. They're crushing it. 100% of their business is driven off company leads. They're like, I kill with this. I'm going to do it on my own. They go out. They don't know how to generate leads. They don't know where to start. They've just built a new business. and they're flailing because nobody really walked them through, nor did they sit down and either pay for somebody's counselor guidance, say, what should I be looking at before I make this move? All it's looked at is like, well, this person's, there's no math behind it. We gotta math this process out. Some people like to build the plane on the way down. I'm typical of that, right? I will totally jump.

I can kind of relate to that.

-Freaking figure this shit out here. -It's wide open right there. -But some people are okay and understand how to navigate that. Some people should not. -Yeah. -Right? And I think you're seeing a lot of decisions on that where commission structure change in the business, you are gonna see some people that fold in and become entrepreneurs into people that are really good at what their systems are. So yeah, there's gonna be some shake-up but I think that that there is a place for everybody if they will learn that, Huh, maybe I don't like this or maybe I can do this. -Yeah. -Talking to an agent last week, he's like, It was okay but I realized I freaking hated it. I didn't want to do it. I'm like, Cool, what are you doing? He's like, I love it. I'm at corporate doing my thing. I'm like, Cool, what are you doing with your real estate license? He's like, well, nothing. I'm like, well, why don't you bring it over here and let's have some agent conversations and just refer business from Discover Card over here. you still make money, I get to serve people and everybody's problem solving. He's like, All right, so we just walk through it. So those are the fun things. Like, if you think about the amount of agents that are going inactive. Hey, I have an idea. Here's how we work together, right? So there's targets that people are just not looking at and I'm looking at Garrett and I are going through all the things. I'm like, how do we create things that specifically say, I'm raising my hand as a lead gen source. So they're further quicker, you know? So for you, it's do a first time home buyer seminar with a lender for the teachers at school. I don't care if three people show up.

Yeah.

You're still added value, right? Or if you tell those teachers like, Hey, bring another teacher. We're going to do this. I'm really like they know your history, right? Do that, guess what? If you have three people show up, that's three people raising their hands saying, I need help. If you do that once a month at the school, talk to the principal, you have all these relationships. Those are ways to have people raise hands and say, I need this information right now. Guess what? I want to know how to buy my next rental property. All those teachers need to know how to convert their current primary into a secondary and what the plan is. and guess what? It's not right now, maybe.

Yeah.

12 months, 13 months.

Planting seeds.

Right.

It's the action plan of giving them the information that helps them do those things.

Right.

So there's some Financial stuff, there's some different people connection wise, there's some refinance. So you're leading them down that road. We just don't know when they're going to pull the trigger.

Yeah.

So I would just be, like, looking at, what are all the places that are communities that can be involved in? And where can I give back and add value? And that's where your business will build. And I think that you very much like to serve and go through that and you have those connections. So when you're serving, those things will just naturally progress when you're giving that.

Yep.

No, I love that.

Cool. Dude, this has been fun.

Yeah.

Congratulations on your success.

Thank you.

Jumping and with a little bit of.

A plane to build it on the way down.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we're gonna stay in Columbus and where can people find you and watch your journey on Instagram?

Instagrams. I-K-L-O-P-3.

Okay, cool. And where can they find Jenna's podcast in Jenna?

She's on Apple, Spotify, everywhere. She's at JennaKloepfenstein on Instagram.

And what's the podcast name? It is Next Level youl. Next Level youl. Cool.

Yeah.

All right, brother, we'll save travels back to Columbus. And I definitely appreciate all you've done for me. You've definitely played a pivotal role in my journey, so I appreciate that. I appreciate that. See you, brother. Yep.