Think Bigger Real Estate

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, very, very excited about today's episode, somebody who I respect and admire, and he is just a wise man. And I'm learning more about him. And he's somebody who is being featured on some pretty big places around the country for the work that he's doing. He's a 25-year industry veteran out of the Dallas Fort Worth area recently featured on WaterCooler Is that right? Jay?Jay Marks 0:27 Yeah, WaterCooler, right,Justin Stoddart 0:28 With Chris Smith, and Jimmy Mackin. And Jay and I've met a couple of times, and been following each other on social media for the past while and just has a lot of really great things to share. And I thought, if I can convince this guy to come on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show, it's going to be great for everybody who listens. So, Jay, thank you good for your time for being here. On a post-Memorial Day episode of the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.Jay Marks 0:52 I'm glad to be here. And you forgot to mention also that you and I are good buddies, so help a friend.Justin Stoddart 0:58 Thank you. And that's true Jay, Jay's a man of faith, good man all the way through. And he and he has a great perspective on the real estate industry. And so let's dive into this, Jay, kind of the topic of today is Oh, my goodness, the sky is falling. Yet at the same time, everything's gonna be just fine.Jay Marks 1:20 Everything's gonna be just fine. That's right.Justin Stoddart 1:22 Let's talk about that. I think that's it, that's great, because there is a bit of a reality check is that like, for some real estate agents, I believe they're, they're at the brink of extinction. Now I say some real estate agents, because some, in my opinion, are not doing what's good for the consumer. And we're living in an era more and more where the consumer is going to win. So for those agents, I think there will actually be applause that like, thank you, right, that those agents aren't with us anymore. Now, will there always be a bad apple infiltrating into every industry, of course, but I do think that those agents that are not innovating, they're not truly adding real value that the consumer will be replaced by a robot. And yet, there are people like Jay marks who are doing some incredible things with their clients, with the community and adding real value to where there's nothing to fear. So Jay talks a little bit about more kind of your perspective on that, why you say, the sky is falling, yet at the same time, everything's gonna be just fine.Jay Marks 2:23 Right? You know, first of all, it's been a statistic for years, that 87% of all real estate agents don't seem to get past the, to your first two years of their career. You know, as I walk into a room, I'm 25 years in the business, I can count on one hand, how many people been there, as long as me or between 17 and 25 years, there's not a lot of us up in the corner talking about the old days. But I will tell you this, that it doesn't really matter who takes over what and who buys who and what new technology if you are being authentic and being you, and most of all, staying in contact with your customers in your sphere of influence. You know, just this morning, we had our Monday morning meeting, and a part of our Monday morning meeting is to look at every closing. And at the end of every closing, we look at how the transaction goes how the client experience ago and is this person, someone that we would like to put in as a VIP, or someone that we want to make sure that? Yeah, let's include them in future marketing at a higher level. And someone really wants to in touch with you get referrals and things like that. And, you know, some closings are smoother than others. But we are we want to make sure we're adding value prior during and after the closing, we want to be the resource ever. Sorry, long answer.Justin Stoddart 3:40 Well, I think it's interesting what you just said there, Jay, if you're actually asking your team, is this somebody that we want to add into our VIP list because I think there tends to be a bit of a feel of like, if the person is has a heartbeat, then, of course, we want their business. But there are people out there that recognize the value and those that don't. And all they want to do is Jeremy on price when they don't have eyes to see the fact that there's a value that you're offering. And so the fact that you guys are making a decision, is this somebody that we want to invest our time in, right? Is this somebody that we want to invest time and resources into, to add superior value because they're going to get it and they're going to receive it and they're going to want to continue to reciprocate in the form of future business as well as referrals.Jay Marks 4:26 Right? You know, just recently Justin we had, we just put it under contract, we're going to close here in a couple of weeks. But I had a wonderful opportunity to put a house on t

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart thrilled about the topic today. It's one that I'm passionate about. And I was so fortunate to be introduced to really an influencer in this space, somebody who helps with a personal brand, helping people find the greatness within them and share that with the world. So please help me welcome, Jennifer Powers. Jennifer is a master certified coach, top 3% of coaches worldwide. Pretty impressive. She's the best selling author of the book "Oh, Shift". In addition to that, she has actually been a keynote over 250,000 people. So needless to say, I feel humbled to have a big thinker. How appropriate for this show a big thinker isn't today to help us solve the problem of how do we help unlock people's potential and help the world know about these people so that they can make the impact that they're supposed to make? So Jennifer, thank you for coming on the show today. It's such a privilege such an honor to have you.Jennifer Powers 0:58 I'm giddy, I'm giddy be here, thanks.Justin Stoddart 1:02 We're gonna have a blast. I know that we've had conversations before. And I'm just thrilled that you agreed to come on the show today. And I'm thrilled that my audience, the think that your real estate audience gets a chance to know who you are, and getting some access to the resources. In fact, I'm going to ask a favor. At the end of this show, I know you have this best selling book, if there's even a part of it, that you could share maybe a digital portion that we could put in the Think Bigger Real Estate Group. So people can kind of get a taste for that. So can I put you on the spot and say, will you?Jennifer Powers 1:34 Whatever, you need Justin, you've got it,Justin Stoddart 1:36 you are the best. Okay, so here's something that I've noticed. And I'm really going to kind of present this as a challenge that all of us are facing in today's day and age. And then I want to really tap into your expertise to help us solve this. And the problem that I'm seeing is that because of information overload, because there are so many ways in which people are gaining information, that we are all happy to make split decision on the brands that we support the people the products, the services, we don't have a lot of time to evaluate. And so as a result, people who are not clear on their brand people who maybe aren't outspoken, and letting the world know who they are, are going to get passed up. Would you agree? Jennifer Powers 2:20 Yeah, definitely. And I think it's becoming more and more so because the competition is becoming more and more. So it really is important to get really clear on that. Yeah.Justin Stoddart 2:31 So so I'm excited to kind of dig into that with you. But I think that there's a lot of people, again, my this audience is probably very heavily saturated real estate agents and mortgage loan officers. And at a time when their competition isn't just the real estate agent down the street, right, or the mortgage loan officer down the hall, like their competition, is now Wall Street and venture-backed tech companies that are spending massive amounts of dollars to not only create technology platforms that minimize what a real estate agent doesn't get paid. But they're also spending billions of dollars to change the consumer mindset, that maybe the traditional path of hiring a real estate agent isn't as important or isn't necessary like it once was. And for any of us that have been on the backside of a real estate transaction to see kind of below the tip of the iceberg. Everything that a real estate agent does and the value that the good ones really bring that thought is not well grounded, right. And so real estate agents have to more than ever be good at speaking up and sharing who they are. In fact, I was teaching a video class yesterday. And one of the big challenges that that agents are facing is the courage to speak up. And I know you absolutely specialize in helping people step into that role. So So please take the mic for me and teach us what you do what you teach people what your book teaches people, how would you help us solve this problem?Jennifer Powers 4:01 So here's the thing, I want to start by saying, yes, that is an incredible problem that is facing, I think, more than just the real estate, mortgage agents. But overall, there is a move toward, or I should say, away from the human interaction toward something that's their main storyline. But here's the thing. And we got to remember these humans, no matter how much AI can take over humans are always going to be humans and humans have a very special need. And that is a connection. So I think in order to stand out among all of those, we need to use what we bring each individual as humans. And that is the power, the richness, the intimacy, the service, the person ability of connection. And I know that sounds like so doll, right? But now more than ever, you're no lo

Justin Stoddart 0:01 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show, I am your host Justin Stoddart and absolutely thrilled today to bring to you someone who is a friend of mine and an absolute icon in the industry in the real estate industry. She acts as the Senior Vice President, national marketing manager for Old Republic title. And I get opportunities to learn from her. And I thought today how appropriate it would be to share some of that and allow those that that tune into this show, get a chance to meet Michelle, and hear her sharing some really awesome stuff that she's learned in how many years in the industry, Michelle? Michelle Lenahan 0:36 Oh, my gosh, I think I'm 23 now, can you believe it?Justin Stoddart 0:38 cool, coming up on a quarter century in this wonderful industry? And so first and foremost, thank you so much for taking the time and making the effort. I know, like many of my guests, video is not something that you love to do.Michelle Lenahan 0:54 So my kryptonite, it's my kryptonite.Justin Stoddart 0:57 You're, you're awesome at it. So I think everybody's gonna probably private message you in fact, if you have like, find value in what Michelle says today, will you please let her know do more video. Awesome. Let's dive into this. As as you know, Michelle is you've probably heard me say before, is it my mission and passion is really to help people think bigger and to help them as a result of that grow themselves so that their business can grow. You know, you and I both know that businesses don't grow, at least they don't grow sustainably unless there's the personal growth behind it. And I know for that reason alone, you've risen to the heights that you have. And the ability that you have the impact in a large degree because you're deeply committed to like developing yourself and constantly learning. And I love that about you that you like, every time I talk with you, you've got like, stories from your previous positions, stories that you're learning now. Like, there's always just something top of mine, that you're identifying a lesson, and then you're sharing it with other people? Did you have to grow into that and kind of learn that ability to, to identify, to start really picking out the lessons in life? Or have you kind of always been just a curious student like that, you know,Michelle Lenahan 2:09 what it's, it's absolutely at a time totally curious about everything. And I have to tell you, really, my passion is people, I love to learn and grow. And if there's one thing that I say, every single day, please let me learn from others. So I don't have to fall into the same pits that they fall into. If I can avoid one pit by learning from someone else, then that to me, is worth a million dollars. And so studying people and learning from them and seeing what's working and what's not. And just being super curious, I think, you know, people, people are so amazing, at every level, and there's so much to learn. And I love it when I talk to someone, and they sort of hit me upside the head and make me think differently. And that those are the moments that I'm that I pull from to say, how does this affect my personal life today?Justin Stoddart 3:00 I love that, you know, my, the signature question that I asked at the end of nearly every episode is, what do you do to intentionally think bigger? Like what like, how do you position yourself to where your possibilities are always expanding? And I think you might have already answered that question is, is it you're just a very curious student of what other people are doing?Michelle Lenahan 3:20 Absolutely. That, you know, I had a professor in college who said, Never make up a story. Because what people will tell you, it's not possible for you to dream up. We were actually doing a project where, to go out and interview people. And she said, Don't try to skip over this interview part. Because I guarantee you, if you try to write this paper without having done the work, I'll know it because you are not you can't possibly dream up what people are really going to tell you.Justin Stoddart 3:52 Isn't that interesting? And is that true in life to in business, that, you know, kind of fake and it only gets you so far, like you actually have to do the work. Now some people get lucky. And they, you know, lat like land a couple of big deals. But if you aren't doing the work behind the scenes, eventually it shows up in the business doesn't last like and you know, I don't even add to that if you're not growing into the person that can sustain that success. Pretty soon the tide goes out, and you're left without your shorts. Michelle Lenahan 4:19 Absolutely. And I think Justin it's so important for you to learn it here. But you've got to learn it here. Because if you just learn it here, it won't translate when you learn it here in your heart. That's where the magic happens.Justin Stoddart 4:33 What have you found on that note? Before we get into the kind of the

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Think Bigger Real Estate Show, I'm your host Justin Stoddart thrilled about today's episode, I think it's going to give a lot of real estate agents a solution to a problem that they've always wanted to have solved, which is how do I get more time in my life? You know, there's endless coaching programs, endless ideas, even here on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. We're constantly giving you ideas of how to improve your business and how to improve your life. And the reality is, none of those are any good if you don't have any time or capacity to implement them. So I want to welcome today's guest, Bob Lachance. Let me give you a quick rundown on him. And then I'll let him talk a little bit because he's the guy that actually you know, I listen to, he spent eight years playing hockey at some of the highest levels. And he both here and in other countries, got into the industry in 2004. He's founded multiple real estate coaching businesses. And he now does a lot of investment properties. He's done over 1,000 In fact, investment properties, over 700 short sales. And I'm one thing that he's really excited about that we're going to talk more about today is the company he founded called Reva Global, which is a company that helps real estate agents outsource things that they should not be doing so that they can focus on doing things they should be doing. So Bob, apologize for the long intro, but man, it's your fault. You've got too many accomplishments. So thank you for being on the show, man. Super excited to have you here.Robert Lachance 1:17 Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate you having me, you've had an incredible list of individuals on your show and I'm a huge fan so I really appreciate you having me.Justin Stoddart 1:26 Yeah, man. I appreciate that. That's super fun to hear. Let me start by this so so for those of you that are just tuning in Bob and I found that we have something else that we're passionate about beyond just the real estate industry which is that of being dad's you should have heard Bob light up his he started telling there are we start telling stories about kids growing up and having them experience kind of athletics. So, Bob, you played sports at the highest level. We're going to get to that here in a second. Let's talk first and foremost about what is your favorite part about being a father?Robert Lachance 2:01 I think it's probably teaching them and seeing them grow up. I know you have six kids, which is absolutely insane to me, I have three kids my oldest is 15. But I think it's teaching them the little things in lives and in their lives and also coaching them so I coach ice hockey for them all the youth sports grown up so it's really a pleasure to see them grow and teach them the little life lessons that you know I'm sure that you've you're teaching your kids as well. Yeah,Justin Stoddart 2:28 yeah, that's awesome man. I'm part of the mission of this show, is to not just help people have better lives are better businesses as a result of what we talked about, but better lives. And I think you know, one of the greatest impacts that people can have is within the confines of their own home and the impact they can have on the next generation so super love the fact that you are a committed dad I think that that says a lot about you so super. Thanks so much for sharing that. Let's talk about your hockey career again. We're going to start with all the good stuff. Everybody gets into real estate stuff at the end but you played all the way up to NHL level right?Robert Lachance 3:06 Yes, I got drafted by the St. Louis Blues who happens to now be in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Boston Bruins which is pretty cool. So it is my team I played in the-so the equivalent of the triple-A in baseball, I played triple-A and hockey for four years here I played one exhibition NHL game, proud to say point a game so that's pretty good. One is this one. And then I took that over to Europe. I played in Italy, Milan, Italy, Hamburg, Germany, Switzerland, core Geneva, Lugano, Switzerland, for the remainder of my career, and then I happened to jump in a real estate right after that. Justin Stoddart 3:49 How does hockey compare over there in Europe to here is it more popular as popular that's popular? Robert Lachance 3:57 It's in different countries. So I played on and obviously soccer as they call football over there and not our football but soccer is extremely, extremely popular. So hockey, not so much Germany a lot more. Switzerland, very, very popular.Justin Stoddart 4:13 Very cool. Now, tell me what's the biggest lesson that you learned from hockey that's benefited your real estate career.Robert Lachance 4:20 You know what I think the most important thing in any business is actually the work ethic, you have to have to be successful in anything. It's, you know, you put in hours an hour, it's kind of like, you know, if you're a Top Producing real estate agent, you just don't fall out o

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart.My passion and my mission are to help you think bigger so that you can have a life of more possibilities and more impact. And today I have with me, somebody who is going to personify and redefine for you what it means to think bigger. His name is Joseph McCabe. He's out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the owner of REMAX experts Philadelphia. He also owns home first mortgage owns a title company and an insurance company. In addition to that, in the past five years, he's picked up 112 investor- excuse me, units as an investor, and is raising money to do to pick up about 400 more. Needless to say, these past five years have been a pretty fruitful five years for Joseph McCabe and I don't see any signs of him slowing down. So let me first begin by saying thank you, Joseph, for being on the figure real estate show today.Joseph McCabe 0:50 Yeah, no problem. Thanks for inviting me. excited to see what I can do to help everybody out.Justin Stoddart 0:54 I love it, man. So again, 26 didn't finish college and I understand you correctly? Joseph McCabe 1:01 No, I finished I just did it. Pretty accelerated way. Okay. See, I Justin Stoddart 1:06 kind of seems like your style. Joseph McCabe 1:08 Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, they actually they were like, yeah, you need to talk to a counselor, you're going to take 24 credits. That's part of taking action everyone is so they think everybody's like a snowflake kind of week. And you know, they can't handle it. We better talk to them. So no, I did two years of Penn State. Then I enlisted in the Army, went to school became an MP. Military Police with the army, got out, started training people at GNC or started training people to LA Fitness, working at GNC while getting my real estate license while going to Cabrini. So for two semesters, I took I needed like 50 or 60 credits. So I took 24 credits each semester and graduated a year early. And while I was training people, I think in that first semester, maybe over the summer, when I got out of the army, this guy was like driving in a nice Mercedes, I found out that later, you know, I didn't know anything. So it wasn't the nicest Mercedes. So he could have done better. But I used to make fun of it. And he told me he was in real estate. And so I got my license, and I jumped at I started working out long and foster pull off you startJustin Stoddart 2:15 and an end. And that's where it all began.Joseph McCabe 2:17 That's where it all began.Yeah. So then, uh, you know, because as I do it, my first two weeks, I had two deals right off the bat. And nobody there would help me. I was just kind of brought in and left to myself. So thank God for Google. I just went out there and started Googling what to do, ended up going to an independent and then eventually Keller Williams, open up my title company, Keller Williams, and then realized I didn't like the culture, I wanted to do something, start my own Colts or start my own company. And that's when I decided to buy a REMAX franchise. Although, when I did that I still wasn't sold on I'm going to be in real estate for the rest of my life. So I was still in the process to be a Philadelphia cop.Justin Stoddart 3:01 So you're buying a franchise and you're still deciding as to whether or not it'sJoseph McCabe 3:07 I think my mind was made up but I couldn't tell myself that, you know,made up butbut ya know, it was a good experience and my initial partner in REMAX was a Philadelphia cop. My whole family's filled up with police officers, my brother's a cop, and I was a cop in the army. So something that for some reason, I wouldn't let go out right away. But, you know, thankfully, now I did because the income potential was much better.Justin Stoddart 3:32 Yeah, to say the least. Um, it's funny recently, I was listening to Tony Robbins talks about how we live in North America, where there are endless amounts of opportunity, yet most people don't make the kind of money that they want, they are the shape that they cut that that they want to be in. They don't have the relationships that they want to have. And he said the biggest reason for that is because they don't take enough action. And I want to get into that with you. Because I feel like that's the great Golden Nugget, I'm sure there's a ton of golden nuggets that we can extract for you today. But I feel like you pouring into this audience, what it means to take a step when you don't know what the outcome is going to look like. or even if that's even the right step. Talk to us there when you are present an opportunity to buy you know, purchase a title company or insurance company or a real estate company and you don't know how it's going to turn out you do it anyway and decide later. Talk to us through mine.Joseph McCabe 4:29 Yeah, I mean, I think that, um, you know, people, people spend all day spreadsheets, and paralysis analysis on every single, eve

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the think bigger real estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and I am really excited today to be here with a good friend of mine with James Adair, of Sierra Pacific mortgage to talk about this, how to differentiate in a crowded marketplace. James and I've had this conversation before that so many agents do what every other agent does. They show up the same way. They say the same things, and they all lead to generating the same way. And that today, I'm going to have James share with us some absolutely brilliant ideas that he helps, that he really mentors and has a process and a system to help real estate agents really stand out. And in again, accredit marketplace. So first and foremost, James, thanks for being on the show today. James Adair 0:36 Sure, can we get some confirmation from anybody that's on online? Did they give up? So? Justin Stoddart 0:44 Yeah, if you're watching this live, if you would type live, if by chance you're watching this, as a replay, please put replay once you see this that kind of help us know who's watching the show. So anyway, we'll kind of keep an eye on that. So, James, let's get this.James Adair 1:00 Let's get into it here. Right,Justin Stoddart 1:02 Yeah. Right, let's, let's bust this out. So how common is it for you to hear real estate agents say that all their businesses coming from cold market prospecting, open houses, online leads?expired for sale by owners? Like, how common is that?James Adair 1:19 Well, I know it's common in town for and I think it's more common for newer agents who are trying to build their book, you know, it's like, All right, let's call some expired. Let's call some fizz bows, let's do some open houses, let's just get in the mix. And fight it out for opportunities. Right. So and I, I don't think that's a bad idea. I think that's a, it's got to be a part of every new agent's business. But I do see a lot of teams that really just prospect focus, prospecting focused, and this is they just crank and crank and crank. And I think it can be exhausting. It can be demoralizing. And it's hard to get the right kind of momentum. If you don't, if you aren't connecting. And you aren't getting some easy wins every so often, right? And so when I say an easy win, I guess what I'm talking about is a referral. So someone saying, oh, man, you gotta call Justin he'll sell your house, he's the best. And then someone calls you like, hey, James told me to call you, I need to sell my house and then use get right to work. You don't have you're not. So there's a difference with prospecting. And there's a difference in selling. And we need to do both. But we really need to be focused on selling, selling is where the money is made. Right. And if you get a referral, you can really compress that timeline. The more referrals you get, the more often you're just selling and educating your clients on how this works, and how you can help them not trying to convince them to choose you and then go into selling, you know, yeah. So I wanted to do a little call back to an episode you did a while ago when you talked about the book Blue Ocean Strategy, which is such a cool concept. It's actually kind of a, it's kind of a classic now, right? I mean, it was that that came out in Oh, six, I think it's an older book. But it's basically about trying to find ways to make it operate in parts of the market, that not everyone else is operating in, operate in a place or in a way that you're not competing with as many people if you call it for sale by owner, it's like that person's just getting you to know, 20 phone calls a day until they list with an agent. And then in this just make it's like part of the value proposition of that for sale by owner is make my phone stopped ringing with other agents, please. But what we're going to talk about at our this Wednesday, we're sharing the stage again, on the third command performance of the exponential referrals workshop, you've got a great piece of content, Nick Crowder, has got a great piece of content about leveraging referrals from retiring agents, such a huge idea that he's got a great system built around. But I'm going to be talking about what I call the homebuyers playbook strategy, which is about leveraging your existing business relationships and turning those into referrals. There's, there's plenty of businesses that everyone uses every day for their own selves, their own families. And well, first of all, most of them, not most of them, but maybe more than you'd like to say, don't even know that your real estate agent. Don't even know that your lender. So make sure everyone knows what you do that if it's a business that you're frequenting, make sure that they know what you do.And then you want to get into a conversation around. How does your business work? Right, you want to ask them that I'm getting into now this is sort of the, this is the formula for getting your existing business relationships to star

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddartpartnerships. Are they a good idea, are they not? Today we're going to talk about how partnerships can leverage can be a powerful source of leverage to allow you to take your business to the next level. I want to, first of all, thank James Becker, owner and founder of fusion growth partners for being on the show today. James has spoken at Inman before. He's built Fusion Growth Partners and is a business incubator for emerging mega agents. You probably have not heard that before. So we're going to talk all about what partnership could look like. James, first and foremost, thank you for being on the show today.James Becker 0:38 Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.Justin Stoddart 0:40 Yeah, good stuff. So, James, we were talking here before, and I kind of wish we would have started the broadcast a few minutes ago because so the stuff that he was sharing was absolutely fantastic. So I'm hoping to be able to pull that out of him again.But here's what I think of James, when I think of a partnership, or how most real estate agents think of a partnership is they think, boy, I'm getting busy. Susie over there in the office doesn't look as busy. Hey, Susie, why don't we team up and let's go list. I go on vacation, you can cover my stuff, you go on vacation off cover your stuff. That's about as complex of a partnership that you typically see in real estate. And really what you guys are doing is coming in creating partnerships, almost investing in real estate agent businesses to take them to the next level, like less of a mom and pop shop, and more into a really established business that offers big value to the clients. So I'm interested really interested in having you share kind of your story. How did Fusion Growth Partners come about?James Becker 1:40 Well, I started selling real estate back in 1989, we had a great market in 1989. And then we had Desert Shield when we had the first Iraqi war. We had boots on the ground, the market literally went to a stop. I was newly married, I have a pregnant wife, and I needed to pay some bills. And so I sat down and I cold called until my fingers bled. And I did very well doing kind of the mike ferry process. Yeah. And. And back in 1990. Before there are mega-agents, my best year I did about 65 transactions with one TC. And those do all the prospecting myself, I was in 1% of the agents across the country as far as volume was concerned. And, and then after that last year, then 1997 year I was just completely burned out. And I hadn't leveraged it, everything in a wasthe amount of business that I did was strictly correlated to the amount of energy that I had every day that I could put into prospecting, burnout being and so I started thinking about, okay, need to do something different. And I opened up another business, that business was kind of Fusion 1.0 was not successful. And I ran into a guy running a mortgage company who became a mentor of mine, I shut down my business went to work for him, learn some corporate structure and some additional business stuff for five to six years and then opened up future.Justin Stoddart 3:27 So talk to us a little bit about what Fusion offers. Again, it's very different than just offering an agent or even offering an assistant, but when I went through the presentation really can understand your model, I was super impressed when I thought all the stuff that I try and recommend to real estate agents that they should do to grow their business. I mean, it was you know, it could be a menu of like, dozens of things to really get their business showing up in the right places, with the right touch with the right look. And like I think about every good idea that I had heard or ever promoted, you're saying, we do that, with companies invest in companies to help them on day one, be able to turn the switch and have this stuff rolling. Right?James Becker 4:07 Right. Well, not day one, it takes 60 to 90 days to build out a factory. And that's one of the things that keeps agents from doing and there's a huge commitment to building up all the systems and the processes so that they can run on a regular basis and have consistency. We believe the number one reason why people don't have long term growing sustainable businesses is the lack of consistency in just the fundamentals, and the basic business development stuff. Because the works, they produce some business, they get busy, they stopped doing that. And so they're in business, and they're out of business, they're in business, and they're out of business. And so for us, we want to build up this particular factory. So it's not particularly day one. But when people ask us what we do, it's impossible to explain in five minutes, but the best way to explain it is most of these people have been to a family reunion or mega agent or Tom Ferry seminar. And they come out of those seminars just like if

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. So excited to be here today about a topic that is, I think so important to the industry, which is how do successful, loving, caring, thoughtful moms stay that way while still succeeding big in real estate? And I have with me today, Stephanie Peck. Stephanie Peck 0:17 Yeah. Hi. Justin Stoddart 0:18 Thank you so much for being here, Stephanie. Yeah, this is such a treat. Because, you know, guys consider around and pontificate and talk all day long about what we think the solution is for moms. But it really doesn't do it justice. What really needs to happen is for us to bring someone to the plate, who's for the past 10 years, is that right?Stephanie Peck 0:36 Yeah. 12 years, actually,Justin Stoddart 0:38 12 years in real estate, has managed and grown a very successful real estate practice and yet been a fantastic mom. So now I know that conversation kind of weighs heavy on a lot of moms, I was in a top agent mastermind I can reference this yesterday. And some producers, some of which sell 100 homes a year. And the kind of constant feeling of like, Am I doing enough? At home? Am I doing enough for my clients? Like, is that a real feeling? Do you feel that?Stephanie Peck 1:05 Yeah, all the time, I'm always thinking, how am I going to be the best at everything, and also trying to remember that it's okay to not be the best at everything. Yeah, that's always my balance. Justin Stoddart 1:17 You know,it's been really interesting. I was raised in an entrepreneurial family, my mom was a very successful business owner. And I cannot think of something that she could have done better, in fact, because of what she did outside of the home and inspired me to similarly want to, you know, build a business. And so I'm grateful for the fact that not all moms are built a like some, like our dedicate like my wife, for example. She works one day a week as a nurse, and she thrives in that environment. Like my mom would have driven me and my siblings crazy. Had she been home? Right? Yeah, she's just wired to be like, very different. And so I don't know if you feel that way as well, like some moms like are better moms by both, like having some participation in the large participation, the workforce.Stephanie Peck 2:04 Yeah, I definitely feel that way. Personally, I,I went back and forth a lot about whether I wanted to be a stay at home mom or a working mom or part-time, I'm always trying to figure out where my place was in that. And I know for me when my kids were younger, and I was able to spend a lot of time at home with them. I'm so grateful for that time. And I love that I was able to do that. But now I personally am so much happier, doing what I'm doing and still being able to be the mom that I want it to be. Justin Stoddart 2:41 Now that's some moms probably have that. That guilt, right, that feeling of like,I'm giving up kids, let's talk a little bit about motherhood. For those that know me, some of you don't know me as well, others do know that at the core of who I am, I'm a family guy. And family is the most important thing to me. So and I honestly believe that there's no greater work than one will do than within the walls of their own home. Right? That's a quote that stuck with me ever since I was young. And I believe that, that a lot of realtor moms feel that same way to have even though they build a great business build a great empire, they realize that all shrinks in comparison to the work that they're doing. And raising up the next generation talk a little bit about kind of your feelings about motherhood and home just so that those things like, well, she doesn't like she doesn't get me because of she obviously family's kind of the second tier to her. And I know that's not true, right? Talk a little bit about like, your feelings towards motherhood and being a mom and all that.Stephanie Peck 3:33 Yeah. So for me, I, I got into real estate because I wanted to do it for my family. And because I wanted to be the mom that I wanted to be knowing that I still wanted to be a working mom. But I didn't want to be a drop off at daycare, 10 hour a day kind of a mom. That was just my personal choice. And that's how I wanted to have my family structured. So that's when I got started in real estate was with that goal in mind. So for me, I'm always trying to think about why did I do this? Why did I decide to get into this business? And who am I serving because of it? So I focus on what I want to do for my family because of real estate and not the otherway around is Justin Stoddart 4:21 interesting that we've talked about before. You've mentioned before about how important it is to to have a clear why right? Because I know that in real estate you get in any training, and it's like more and more and more bigger, bigger, bigger. Yeah. sell, sell, sell. Yeah. And unless you're reaching the highest small percentile in the industry, sometimes you feel like a loser, r

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Welcome to Think Bigger Real Estate show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, very excited today to have with me two very close friends, guys, they look to as mentors, leaders, and bosses. These guys are fantastic.Steve Yeager 0:13 I like the laugh.Justin Stoddart 0:14 They are the leaders of Old Republic Title here in Oregon. And they have built an amazing company culture. And if you're a real estate agent and desire to scale your business, at some point, you're gonna add somebody, and you're gonna add somebody else, potentially add somebody else, and it's going to be requisite for you. If you want to keep good talent and attract good talent, then you're going to need to build the company culture, place where people want to work a place where people don't just get everything they want, but they get what they need. So we just had a great branch meeting, and I thought it'd be appropriate to have a lively conversation with you guys that make me laugh and inspire me about how to have a great company culture. So, Ryan, you mentioned something in the meeting, that gives people perspective, that it's not that their perspective isn't always right, would you share what that is?Ryan Wood 0:58 Well, it's actually a line that you've used, so we'll steal it from him. But I basically, it's, when you're, and I can say this because I step up on my soapbox a lot, I get passionate about things. And I start, you know, putting my point of view out there and telling everybody, you know, what I feel is right. And, you know, Steve, made a really great point in the meeting, basically talking about the fact that all of us need to when we're in that position, also sit there and say, according to me, so basically do a little little bit of self reflection, which can go a long ways. And, you know, say, okay, am I right? Or am I doing the right thing? It's not all just about making you right, it's about making sure you're doing the right thing.Justin Stoddart 1:41 Great stuff, Steve, any thoughts on that?Steve Yeager 1:44 you know, Ryan, I have teased quite a bit, we have a mission statement on the wall, but taking the mission statement down and just putting the word communication, you know, seems like anything in life, whether we're going out or meeting with clients were handling internal issues when you're trying to grow anything, communications, the deal, right? People want to have to transparency and they want to have people that there's a level of respect that goes along with communicating with people. But I think it's, you know, if you take that a step further in it, it really is, you know, I might have this really strong opinion on something, but it's according to me, it's according to, you know, what my background is, what my thoughts are, what my reality is, what my perception is, it doesn't necessarily mean the people I'm talking with disagree with what I'm saying. But they've had an entire life where they have, they have been trained to think a different way doesn't mean the wrong way, just a different way. And being able to step back and actually think about that, when you're having a conversation with someone, it goes a long way with respecting them. And it goes back to another thing we're talking about today with ego. Right? I think, you know, sometimes as guys, we struggle a little bit because we like to lead with ego, you know that the puffed out chest. And I think it's super important, you know when we're having those conversations when we are trying to either coach train, teach, or just have a conversation with somebody that we are really listening, and we're really hearing it from their point of view.Justin Stoddart 2:58 Great stuff. Iscrewed up a little bit, guys. And maybe the audio won't be as good.Steve Yeager 3:01 A little concerned that I'm not standing on books next to Ryan, I'm concerned about that.Justin Stoddart 3:05 And one thing that I actually had a thought this morning, that oftentimes building great company culture isn't always about just encouraging people. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's about telling them, Hey, I believe in you, you can do more. You've got untapped potential. You're amazing. I support you. Sometimes just having a fierce conversation with people, right? Sometimes it's telling them like, hey, what you did there was not the right thing to do for the group for the company for the whole? How have you guys come? Because you get to have both conversations, right? You get to see I believe in you, you're amazing doing a great job. And at times, it's like, Hey, don't do that, again, how have you kind of come to grips with being able to have those fierce conversations, without people taking it personally or without it being super heavy on you.Ryan Wood 3:47 It's not easy. There's, there's no easy way about it, you're dealing with people, you're not interested in smashing people's opinions or, or making them feel bad about themselves. At the same time, you do have to think of th

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Welcome back to The think bigger real estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, today's episode is going to be a really unique and valuable one, I hope you stay tuned for the entire thing. It's really helping real estate agents move from being salespeople to being advisors, which is where I think the industry needs to go in order to maintain the value to the customer that the customers happy to pay for your services. So excited to have with me a guy who does that naturally. He's always done that. And his name's Nick Krautter. And Nick, thanks for being on the show to them. Nick Krautter 0:26 Yeah thanks for having me. This is great. Justin Stoddart 0:27 Yeah, super fun. Nick, and I go back almost five years. And his kind of claim to fame nationally, is he wrote the book, The Golden handoff, which is how to help real estate agents buy and sell their business. And so in addition to that, maybe what he's less well known for, at least nationally, is he really has an economist type brain. And he really goes deep on helping people understand the numbers where they've been and where he believes they're heading, which gives consumers the ability to kind of have a little bit of a crystal ball to some degree, right? To be able to understand what will actually help them build their wealth, which I think is uncommon. And I'm excited to kind of delve into this topic. But before I do, Megan, I am going to be actually speaking at an event together with our friend James Adair called exponential referrals, if you're in the Portland market,it is I should have had the date, I'm going to put the date in the comments below, you can be able to hear this guy go in depth on the golden handoff and really house the strategy, not just exit the business, but also to grow the business. And probably one of the things we hadn't mentioned, Nick is you're now under the umbrella of your own brokerage city and state.Nick Krautter 1:35 Yeah, that's a big, that's the big change for us here. The Celtics team decided to start our own real estate brokerage. So we've had the team together for 13 years, we decided to go out and start our own brokerage. It's called the city and state real estate. And we are working in Oregon and Washington right now and looking to expand into new markets. And we can talk about some of why I decided to do that. And a big part of that was exactly what we're talking about today. Which is there's a difference between being a good real estate broker who executes a plan, helping someone better sell something, but are you asking your clients great questions? Are you understanding what they want? And why they're Why are they selling? Why are they buying? Yeah, I often find that people will be buying or selling real estate because they have a goal or a plan. And maybe that process that they're going through is really not the best way to do it. Or maybe they have a different asset, or there's a different way to go about doing it that in the big picture for them would be much better for their family or their future. And it is sometimes that costs us to sail right then as a broker. But I I believe that building those relationships and building trust is is significantly more valuable in the long run, and it's just doing the right thing. And so our brokerage is really set up for our clients to be working with agents who are there to advise them. And then for the brokers that are there to really understand who are their clients and have a plan of action to staying in touch with them. That's very tangible. And then is your business structured correctly as an agent, you know, are you are you saving taxes are you investing do having retirement plan, and then at the at the kind of the top level for our brokers, it's really about looking at investment property and understanding that because there's a lot of great real estate brokers who don't understand real estate investing. They're very good things. And that's fine. But we have great brokers on our company that understand the investment, and I do to inside out, and so we can basically help build folio to build wealth for those agents because we don't get retirement plans. You know, there's no pension in real estate. So it's all about what can you do for yourself and your family. And we're city and state is built specifically to help people know their clients build their business and build their future. ButJustin Stoddart 3:55 you know, what's interesting, that you said, Nick, is, you know, the tech companies, they're looking to really create algorithms that help people buy and sell, and or empower the customer to buy and sell themselves. What is not really accounted for is how will you know a client, right? It even better than the client knows themselves, right? And even start asking questions where the client is learning something about their future plans, because no one's ever asked him that question. Now you can custom tailor a real estate experience that fi

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, you know, oftentimes when I'm sitting down and meeting up with agents, I say the word system and they start to light up. And I think because real estate agents tend to be very excited about growth, very entrepreneurial consistency tends to be a weak spot of theirs. And so I'm more than excited today to have on a guest who is truly an expert, helping agents be consistent, put the systems in place to help them be able to have the life and business that they want. So I'm excited to welcome today, Lars Hedenborg. Lars first and foremost, before I give kind of a full bio on you, I appreciate you being on the show today.Lars Hedenborg 0:37 Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. This is the one thing you know, I almost see sometimes the opposite effect. When I mentioned systems to real estate agents, they, they feel a feeling of overwhelming almost like what's a system like I'm not a systems person, you know, like enlighten me as to what a system is. So I'm looking forward to the conversation today.Justin Stoddart 0:56 Yeah, very good. So for those that don't know, Lars, let me just give a little background him large section in your first year of business, close 71 homes, yet that came to come at a price it came being away from his family realizing like I can't do this forever, I can hustle for a year and prove the fact that I can sell a lot of real estates. But at the end of the day, you were short on time. And you wanted the ability to have both right to have success and significance a great work life and great home life. Continuing on large scale his business to where now his team produces over 100 million dollars a year consistently. And he's found some tricks some systems, to say the least, that have propelled him and his business to the next level. As a result, he's actually developed a whole school around this real estate B school BB and just the single letter B. I'm going to put that up here on the screen now. So any that are curious about that. I'm gonna put that up here real estate B school. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But Lars, I want to thank you, again for being on the show today is on the think bigger real estate, is a big thinker yourself. And helping those of us in the audience think bigger. So thank you again, for coming on.Lars Hedenborg 2:02 Yeah, for sure. And you, you nailed it in the intro in terms of 2002, 2007, 2008, you know,I was married in October 2006. We had our first child in November 2007. And I realized early on that every part of a real estate agents job like 90% of it could be done via a system and a lower level person, not in an ugly kind of way lower level. But let's scale right? Yeah, systems were out of the gate, I was just like, well, if I want to make my number was $250 an hour, if I want to make $250 an hour, for a full 2000 hours a year, right, I wanted to make at least a half a million to me and the government, there was 90% of it, I had to build out a system and have someone else run it. And systems are everything in the business, like anything that you do more than once a month is a system. And a lot of times, agents don't like this, I think it's that simple. You know, if you're doing something personally, and you're the real estate agent, and you're doing it more than, you know, let's say let's start with the weekly stuff, you're doing it more than 234 times a week, you need to put that into a document and make it so someone else can do it. And that really, for me, that's been like 99% of everything we do. And I just have a consultant role in the business now.Justin Stoddart 3:22 Interesting. There is definitely a lack of consistency. You know, and I think again, when you as I mentioned before when you work with entrepreneurial people, entrepreneurial people, I believe move the world has the ability to change the world. The downside is that they tend to be very easily distractible, and their high performers and can produce very significant results for short bursts of time and oftentimes lack the organizational skills to be able to do that consistently, which causes them to not have the long term impact that they want. Let's talk a little bit about the systems that you think real estate agents need to start with, or one of the few of the big missed systems that you feel like real estate agents could really implement and have the most amount of impact.Lars Hedenborg 4:11 Yeah, so I'm going to give like a, probably more than 10 seconds, but real big the business is our ability to attract buyers and sellers convert those into face to face and clients deliver a differentiated service. And then there are a few things in scaling the business. You know, creating your future, knowing your numbers and growing your team. So it's a little bit more complicated in scale. But when it comes to attracting buyers and sellers, what got us here isn't going to get us there. So you

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Real Estate photography today matters more than ever. My wife and I, for example, toured about 1000 homes virtually, toured one physically, that was the home we bought. So Case in point, real estate photography matters if you want to be a great listing agent, and I'm really excited today to have on the show gentleman by the name of Darryl Glade. Darryl is the founder and CEO of stilio.com, which is a marketplace to connect real estate agents, and great photographers, they do a full vetting process and training program to make sure that the photographers that they bring to the table, understand some very key principles of which we're going to be discussing today. So I want to, first of all, thank Darryl for being on the show today, Darryl, welcome.Darryl Glade 0:43 Thanks for having me, Justin looking forward to it.Justin Stoddart 0:45 Yeah, based on what you've built, you're, you're a big thinker, which I'm excited to have someone like you, who not only has been a top agent, right? for 10 years, you're a top agent in New Orleans, found your passion within kind of this niche of real estate. And now you're pouring into the industry in a different way. So very cool, excited to have you here to extend really my mission of my passion, which is to help agents think bigger. I know that when that happens, they themselves grow. And their business follows suit, which opens up options and impact that they've always wanted. So thank you again, for being here. Let's dive into this there'll, you know, one thought that I've had actually taught a class this week, as I was mentioning to you previously, called becoming a powerful marketer through storytelling. And I believe this that the great marketers, and great agents out there, don't just say, hey, let me show you a house. Right? They say, let me tell you about what your story what your life would look like living in this house, there's a much deeper emotional connection. And people really start to see their story transform and having that home be a part of it. How do you feel like photography plays a part in helping people see the story, their story being in that home,Darryl Glade 1:57 it's got to be the easiest way to do it. You know, there's a great stat that says 90% of buyers say that the most important part of any real estate listing is the photos. And so it's not the flowery language. And if you're trying to tell a story and trying to get a certain message across, the easiest way to do it is by photos. And it's really the cheapest way to do it as well. I mean, it's not a very big investment. And the listing agent and homeowner can work with a photographer to really set the stage to tell that story to get your point across. So exactly like you were talking about in your presentation, the photos are a key part to accomplishing that goal.Justin Stoddart 2:39 You know, so many people, again, I think maybe an indicator of where we're going as a society, right, Facebook was the big deal for a long, long time, they were wise enough for a small investment of a billion dollars, they bought Instagram, but what's Instagram, Instagram is image heavy, and text light right there. So Case in point of what you're saying here is that you can have great copy, and you need to have great copy. But if you don't have good photography, no one's ever going to get to your copy.Darryl Glade 3:07 Now you're exactly right. And, you know, to expand that further, the Instagram generation and in Facebook still, all anybody cares about is content, all these agents are trying to create content to get their own personal brand across and to get that listing information across its photos. So if you commit to getting great photos, and all your listings, you've got all that content built in right there ready for you, ready for you to extend your brand and to get that listing messaging across. And it's just so easy. All you gotta do is get your listing photographed. And then right there, you got 20 or 30 pieces of content ready for you to post to extend your brand online.Justin Stoddart 3:48 Well, how important it is, you're right, because you're not just listing at home, you're listing your business, if you will, right. You're demonstrating what kind of marketer you are. And I believe that when people evaluate a real estate agent, it used to be just on like, who have your friends us and who do you trust. And I believe that now people have more of a discerning eye. Yes, they want to know that. But they're also vetting you to see if you're also a professional marketer, not just a good real estate agent. But are you a professional marketer? Are you showing up in the video? Or do your images look like they were taken on your phone? Or do they actually look like it's amazing, Darryl, that how many agents and I say, well, you go through our MLS, and you can identify a much higher percentage than you would expect, are still doing ph

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart. And as you know my mission and my passion are to help you think bigger, so that you can have the business that you want, which produces the options and the impact that you want. Super excited today to have kind of a real estate industry icon, possibly even celebrity depending upon what standpoint you're looking at it fromnationally known, at least His name's Kevin Kauffman. Let me start off by saying a big thank you to Kevin for being willing to come on to think bigger real estate show. Kevin Kauffman 0:28 Yeah, my pleasure. I love to do it. You know, I think you and I connected over the fact that we both love to give back to the real estate community. And so I'm literally my pleasure to do this. Justin Stoddart 0:38 That's awesome. Good stuff. Let me tell the audience here a little bit about Kevin Kauffman, again, he's a wants to be known as a realtor. I think that's pretty cool. Out of Tempe, Arizona, from another perspective, he looks at Real Estate a little bit differently. He goes about a different we're going to talk about what that's what that looks like for him. He has an expansion team and if you're familiar with expansion teams, where you have one huband one location, and you add other agents in different parts of the country, he's done. He's got five different locations about 50 agents, what he calls a small expansion group. Some might beg to differ that that's that small. He's also co-founder of the group next level agents, and the podcast, Kevin and Fred's Next Level podcast. And in talking with you, Kevin, prior to this, I love kind of your passion behind that, which is, you've been fortunate to be surrounded by some really great people. And why not give back? Why not record those conversations and let more people have access to them? Kevin Kauffman 1:35 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, you know, I, I realized a couple of years ago that something I've done naturally my whole life is to seek out mentorship. And sometimes it's a mentor for a season. Sometimes it's for like, one individual little thing, one topic, and sometimes it's for life, right and,and so I love learning about the genius inside of people and being able to want toMy reasons for having the Facebook group I mean, the day I started that and then told Cody and Fred: "Hey guys, we now have a Facebook group, surprise!" And the reason I started the podcast was that I wanted to be able to do that on a bigger level as you can only teach live to so many people so often without being on an airplane 300 days a year, which I'm not willing to do. And so it's kind of like my ability to kind of deliver on that stuff that really lights me up. Justin Stoddart 2:27 You know, I feel the same way. A very similar motive for the bigger real estate show is I'm I guess, gutsy enough and passionate enough advocate for the industry, that I want to get the brightest minds in real estate. Like I want to be around them, and I want to be learning from them. And why not offer that to a bigger audience? Why not? Like, let's like with technology these days, there's no reason why we can't be broadcasting great conversations all the time. So thank you again for being a part of that. Yeah. Let's get into kind of your definition, Kevin of what it means to be a next level agent.You've obviously carried that through your kind of your branding, both in the Facebook group as well as the podcast, obviously, in your mind, you have some concept of what it means to be a next level agent help define that. For the rest of us. Kevin Kauffman 3:14 You know, it's funny, Justin, that's a great question. No one's ever asked it to me that way.But you just forced me to think about it differently. And one of the things I love is the fact that there's not this one size fits all recipe for success in real estate business. And so for me, when I think of like, what, like I say this to people who want to be coached, and I'm, I'm like, we go through an interview process to see if I'm gonna, if I'm going to coach them if I could be a good fit for them, but they'd be a good fit for me is, I don't care if you sold 10 houses this year, and your goal is to go to 25. Or if you sold 500 houses and your goal is to go to 1000 I really don't. But what I want to know is the desire to hit your personal next level there and Will you follow through on the actions that are requiredSo when you ask the question that way, you just reminded me, number one, it's about whatever that next level is for you. And number two, it's also about it doesn't not like you don't have to go the expansion team route. You don't have to go the team route. You could go the luxury route, you could go the investor, right, like there are so many ways to be massively successful in real estate. And so I guess at the end of the day, that's how I would answer it is like, it's the person who thinks like, what is my personal next

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, very excited about today's episode before I introduce the topic, let me just restate my mission, which is to help you think bigger. And when you think bigger, you end up growing as a person. And as you grow as a person is so good. So grows your business, which opens up all kinds of opportunities, more options, as well as more impact. So I'm excited to have my good friend Josh Hackenjos with me here today. Let me just begin before I fully introduce you, Josh, thanks for being on the episode today. Josh Hackenjos 0:30 Yeah. Good morning, Justin. It's an honor to be here. I really appreciate you letting me come on here to chat. Justin Stoddart 0:35 Yeah, man, I appreciate you let me twist your arm to have you come in for value into this audience. I know. Every time you and I have conversations, I walk away a little bit smarter. And so I knew that you do that for this audience as well. So for those of you that don't know Josh, he got his start in the real estate industry back in '05. He was a guy that would show up at the front yards of homes were getting to be sold he would dig the hole and the sign in the yard. So little humble beginnings. But he was a talented guy. So he moved from that to actually being a team owner, kind of ran his own real estate team, then was promoted, and I should say, recruited into a role in which he was, had a very big leadership role within a very big Keller Williams office here in the Portland metro area. He's now a solo agent. He owns Hackenjos Property Group, as well as has built a coaching company called Community Empire, and which he helps agents with many of the things we're going to talk about today. So with all that being said, Josh, you and I both have a background in the construction industry. I had a contracting company, you've built homes yourself. And there are some common threads that you and I started to talk about, that that industry is well known for its craftsmanship, but not well known for its professionalism. Would you agree?Josh Hackenjos 1:49 Yeah, absolutely.Justin Stoddart 1:52 You know, for me, I didn't aspire to be in the, in the construction world, I really grew up in a very business oriented family. And in the early 2000s, that was just a great business opportunity. And so I hopped on as, as did many, and was able to benefit greatly from the construction industry. Until it will kind of wasn't a more but in that timeframe. It was interesting. As the construction market started to crash, I had asked myself, I was asking mentors around me, I was like, What do you think this is going to mean for the industry? And their comment was, you know, I think five years it'll be back. And for me, it had I really loved building homes. And I really loved working with contractors day in and day out, I probably would have said, I'll wait for it right, I'll do kitchen and bathroom models because I love this work. For me. I realized my passion was not building homes. It was building people and building businesses. And so the construction world actually at times was quite aggravating. Because of subcontractors again, they were they kind of fall into this typical concept of the E-Myth. Right? If anyone's read the book, E-Myth, I know, Josh, you have that people are very good craftsmen, very good technicians. So they assume that they're going to be good business owners, they just kind of like Well, I'm good at doing finished carpentry. So I'm going to be good at building a finished carpentry business. And that wasn't always the case. Josh, I would imagine you had some similar experiences in a Ha's and your time in the contracting world.Josh Hackenjos 3:12 Yeah, absolutely. And it's and it's funny, as we've been riffing on this, you know, the similarities, real estate are going to start popping up as-as we talk through this, because, right, you've got these, I came out of the new construction, world framing and then doing finished carpentry and in the remodeling world. And you've got these guys who are amazing at their work, you know, as a tile setter, as a Finish Carpenter as an electrician. And while they are masterful in what they do there, they never went through the courses on how to run a business, how to hire, how to retain talent, how to run QuickBooks, and get billing out how to just show up as a business owner. Is this starting sound a lot like realtors, right? low barrier to entry, high level of skill and talent up here, and maybe not the business background to run it.And this is something you know, we were talking about this in terms of these, these general contractors who are out there who are so good at what they do. And yet the customer experience the customer service and communication expectation setting is where things fall apart. Right? How often have you been in the middle of a remodel? And it turns out, well, that sink is out six weeks. And so because

3 years ago, Tazz Weatherly wasn't even a real estate agent. Year one, she and her team sold $12M, year 2, $20M and this year, her 3rd year, she and her team are projected to sell over $30M in volume. How did she go from 0 to hero so fast?! Tune in to hear her secrets that include the oft-overlooked social platform of LinkedIn.

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Justin Stoddart excited today to bring you a topic that I'm passionate about from someone who I don't know if I could seek out and find somebody more qualified to talk about how to get a lot of stuff done and be a high achiever in multiple areas. And we're going to talk about a morning routine, and maybe having a bit of a paradigm shift for you, and the number of things that you can be accomplishing by nailing the morning routine, and by hearing and being inspired by this gentleman's story. So first of all, I want to before I fully introduce him, I want to thank Eric, thanks for being on the show today, man. Eric Post 0:30 You're welcome, brother. You know, I, here we are. So let's rock and roll this thing. I'm excited.Justin Stoddart 0:34 I love it. For those that don't know, Eric. Some may know him is he was at one point, an equity partner in five Better Homes and Gardens offices. He's now sitting on the board of that organization, continues to be a real estate investor has projects all over the place owns a restaurant. Here are some cool things in addition to being actually a veteran served our country, the Marines. Thank you for that. Eric. He also is a father of two kids. And he's currently in the top 10% of the world for his age group for Iron Man triathlons. In addition to that, you've done all kinds of really cool races. Talk to us a little bit. Eric, before we get into kind of the morning routine, and even some of the business stuff. Talk to us a little bit about your, like, some of these races and stuff that that that you've done.Eric Post 1:23 Sure, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I'm not a self-proclaimed like an adrenaline junkie or anything like that. But I do believe that that comfort is the enemy of progress. So I'm always looking for ways I can push myself out of my general comfort zone. And I mean, come on, we live in a great country, we live in a great place, you know, have a great home a great life. And so, you know, that can evoke complacency. And the best way I found to like get myself out of that financially or relationship or any other way business wise is to push my body and if I'm uncomfortable and kind of get familiar with pain and little stuff doesn't really matter. So yeah, I find crazy, the minimal amount back races or climb mountains are these triathlons, that kind of stuff just to literally push myself and remind myself that it's okay to be in pain. It's okay to suffer. And the gratitude and the feeling and the sense of pride you have afterward is irreplaceable. SoJustin Stoddart 2:12 that's why I do those. I love it, man. Good stuff talks about some of like you've done in addition to the triathlons. What else have you done? I know there's 100 hundred mile mountain bike ride. What else? Yeah.Eric Post 2:24 Cascade, Lakeside, 100, you know, down in Central Oregon. It's amazing, right. But it is grueling. You know, it's one of those where you climb like 10,000 feet in a day. And it's 90 degrees. And it's pretty technical trails. You know, and so it's just one of those of you, I push me and there's a whole long story with that, but that one pushed me for sure. I've done some, you know, different adventure races and trail running races and, like, went to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and, and things like that. So it's just, it's just, I just kind of like, find what inspires me and, and when I wake up in the morning, and my eyes light up, and I want to have something done going towards. So that's why pics on those things.Justin Stoddart 2:59 So cool. I'm so inspired by what you've done. So sometimes when people see people that are for example of triathletes that hike these mountains, I know, one common thing that people say as well, you know, I've, I've got a job, I've got a business, I can't do that stuff full time, I can't be in the gym full time. And that definitely hasn't been your situation. As I mentioned before, the number of things that you've accomplished from a business standpoint, I would imagine a lot of this stuff that you do, you've got to fit it in, in and around a very busy schedule. You've got to fit it in maybe first thing in the morning. Is that true?Eric Post 3:31 Yes. Well, I did this morning. It does. It does vary based on my schedule because it needs to be a fluid schedule, I've kids, I gotta get up and all that kind of stuff. So you don't have to school sometimes. And so it's one of those things where we just we have time for everything that we make a priority for. So if it's a priority for me, magically, you find the time I mean, that's just how it works. And, and time literally is the only equalizer in the world. You know, opportunities in life are generally completely unfair with the exception of the distribution of time. And so that's true, then just have we spend our time as a result of what our life is like. And so yeah, I find the time I make I make the opportunity and make the time. And for me, there's a couple just nonnego

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the think bigger real estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart where my mission and passion are to help you think bigger so that you can have the business that you want in the life that you want. And you know, I am more than excited today to introduce a good friend of mine, Josh Friberg, who is fabulous at helping people have it all. Can you have it all, right? That's kind of the big question we're going to solve today. I believe that you can be in a dedicated family man and a dedicated professional. Today's topic is very near and dear to my heart. So let me give an intro for those of you that don't know Josh Friberg. First of all, let me say, Josh, thanks for being on the show, man.Josh Friberg 0:34 Yeah, my pleasure. Really happy to be here with you.Justin Stoddart 0:39 Good stuff. So for those that don't know, Josh, his background, he has actually was just recently on the executive team of an organization. Five doors that we want Inc 5000 top fastest growing privately held companies number 113. On that played a very critical role in helping them grow to the level that they did Justin has been a real estate agent and is now the abundant agent, somebody who's helping agents again, have it all. So excited to delve into this topic. As I said, that's very near and dear to my heart of how do you not neglect your family and still build a great business? So Josh, thank you, my friend. Appreciate you being on here talking about this incredibly important topic.Josh Friberg 1:18 Absolutely. Yeah. You know Justin it's so interesting. Like, as I travel around the country teaching in brokerages and, and at associations, like over and over again, I find that real estate agents got into this business to take care of their families. And then now that their businesses are doing great now that their businesses are growing, they find out that their families are suffering, right, they look back over at the family and go, Oh, something's broken. And what many people don't understand is it actually only takes about getting takes getting three things, right. And if you can nail those, you can have amazing results. It's really about figuring out like, where your biggest contribution is really mapping your priorities, and then having an execution plan that works and, and the results are, you know, it's honestly just amazing. You know, we've walked agents through like doubling and tripling their businesses and reporting back, oh, I have more time with my spouse, I have more time with my kids and better relationships than I've ever had. So that's really what we're doing with the abundant agent is helping people really tap into that part of their real estate, businesses, and lives.Justin Stoddart 2:23 You know, at the core of who I am, I'm a family guy. And, but I don't necessarily want to have a lousy career because I have a big family because family is important to me. It's It's interesting. I meet with agents all the time. A lot of times, it's moms, they kind of raise their hand and they say, I'm torn inside. I don't know how to do this. Because some days I wake up in fact, this is a quote from a client. She said, You know, I wake up some days and I just want to kill it. And I'm just so excited, fired up to go build my business. She said other days, I just want to be a mom, I want to foreclose, I just want to. And so there's this like kind of schizo Franek, like, Who do I want to be. And, you know, me myself self was raised in a family, where I had a mom who was a very successful entrepreneur, and yet, she was the best mom I could have ever imagined. And I think she came to grips with the fact that she could be where she needed to be when she needed to be there by owning her own business. Right, actually gave her the freedom to kill it during certain work hours, and then step out and be at all of our games, travel around the state to watch our football games, etc. And so I think that you can't have it all. I've seen it I was raised in an environment of, of entrepreneurs and family members who pursued both and and and were great parents at the same time. So let's start with Josh, what advice would you give, whether it be a busy mother? And or a maybe even a busy father, but like, what are some of the tactics that you see some strategies that you teach, to help people to, you know, not neglect the family while still building their business?Josh Friberg 3:56 Right? Well, first of all, I want to put huge Asterix on this, this is where talking if we are talking to moms, right like that, we don't know that you and I do not understand their world, right, and the responsibilities that are on them. And so anything that I say I say with like great caution, and great like, just, hey, apply this as you can. And I know that I don't fully understand your world. The first place, you know, you mentioned and I thought this was really good is to be where you are, is to actually like, it's really interest

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart, fired up excited to be with you here today. As you know, my my passion and my mission is to help you think bigger, so that you can build the kind of business that will produce the kind of life that you want, giving you the options and the impact that you really want. I'm very excited to have returning guests with me today, someone who's locally famous and probably becoming nationally famous at this point. But the topic today is contribution. And so I have just the right person who spends his life contributing to the real estate industry, helping agents get better. So I want to thank first and foremost, Mr. Joe Fustolo, for being on the show today. Thanks, Joe.Joe Fustolo 0:36 Thank you so much. I have to start every compliment with a compliment back from the place of contribution Justin you're doing an amazing job given great media, great content to people. It's a selfless act. And we all appreciate these videos and the knowledge and the people you interview. So thank you, the spirit of contribution. You're up there with a lot of people.Justin Stoddart 1:02 Well, thank you. That's very kind of you, Joe, I appreciate that coming from a guy who, again gives so much so let's delve into some of these topics. And let me kind of build some like him a frame of reference for those who maybe need a little more background on on Joe. So Joe is the owner of Soldera Property Group, which I understand just turned 11 on St. Patrick's Day Happy Birthday to Soldera properties.Joe Fustolo 1:24 Yes. Soldera turned 11 years old on St. Patrick's Day. And I own it with my business partner, Patrick Kraus. And we're having so much fun is just a ball. Justin Stoddart 1:37 You know, it's funny, because today actually is my son's 11th birthday today. So after this, I've got a birthday date. With my 11 year old so 11 years ago was a very special year apparently. And it was fun, actually, I got a chance to see Patrick and Joe in action at their big Easter event. And it was a blast. And that's maybe kind of a lead in a fight. Let me get to that here in a second. Let me finish my bio on Joe. So for those that don't know, Joe, been in the business for 28 years, just been a great producer, and a great, great contributor. In addition to his his success within his own business and his own brokerage. He's served on about every board you can imagine. And that is the founder of the well known Real Estate Group called Masters in Real Estate. So if you by chance are an agent, whether you're inside the Portland metro area, or in the state of Oregon, or even nationally, I would really encourage you to search Masters in Real Estate. I'll put it up here on the screen here a little bit later in the episode. But search this out, Joe does such an amazing job of just helping real estate agents get very, very good at the business of real estate of being great real estate agents. So huge thanks to Joe. I know so many people are so appreciative of the work and sacrifice that you make to make that happen. Joe, it's just great stuff.Joe Fustolo 2:50 Thank you. Justin Stoddart 2:52 So let's talk a little about this great community event that you held. You know, I've been invited as you can imagine to a number of events. I'll tell you what, my wife and I and our little kids were amazed, we rounded the corner at the Soldera Properties Easter egg hunt, like there were oceans of people and I thought yeah, goodness, and you guys were prepared like you're like totally handling it with with cool calm. I think I'd be like choking like oh my goodness, what are they going to stop the Stoddarts are coming, they had six kids just in love themselves. And you guys handled it handled it so well. And the cool part that ties back into our theme today is this topic of contribution. Talk to us a little bit, Joe about the cause that you guys were supporting and kind of what came of from that event to this cause that you care deeply about?Joe Fustolo 3:39 Well, so what a fun day, that was the mother nature shown down on us. We had room for about 600 people, we had about 1200 RSVP. So as comfortable and collected as we looked, there was a little freak out earlier in the day, but we're pretty passionate about contribution and giving back and this year was Embrace Oregon, which helps foster kids and foster families. And I can't think of anything better than you know, foster kids and their families out there. We did an Easter egg hunt. We had face painting, we had a guy doing balloons, we had, you know, temporary tattoos. People were playing cornhole, the adults were wine tasting. And then this massive Easter egg hunt where out of the 5000 easter eggs, there were a good couple hundred golden eggs that had extra special treats in there and we had two different photo booths and the Easter Bunny, and it was an absolute ball. everybody was appreciative and and we just filled up with

Justin Stoddart 0:00 Hey, welcome back to the think bigger real estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart. And so excited to be here today with a friend of mine, someone who I admire and I think everyone in the Portland area, real estate industry admires this lady. And for those of you that are outside the industry, let me give a little background on Debi Laue and the treat that we have today. For me, first of all to have her here in studio. Thanks for being here, Debi. I know video is your favorite thing in the world. So this is this is really exciting for her to be able to impart her knowledge. And anyway, so background on her, been in the business Debi for 42 years, really that 42 years. And her team is still one of the very highest producers in the entire city. Just phenomenal, phenomenal amount of production that they do. And I think even more impressive than that isn't the numbers, but the people the way you guys go about doing business. Debi Laue 0:47 Is that can I clarify, it's not my team anymore? Justin Stoddart 0:49 Yes. Yes, please, please. Debi Laue 0:52 Misunderstood proposition. Rick and Kiesha Brainard bought out on our team January 1, 2017. So what they've built from that point on is what we're doing now.Justin Stoddart 1:00 Very cool, great distinction. So Debbie laid the groundwork for what Rick and Kiesha are now building, which is something phenomenal. And anyway, I'm excited to spend the time here with Debi and really try to extract from her, how she built what she built, it was really set the stage for what the team is doing now, which is really exciting. Super cool. So let's see any other bio points on Debi, I'm sure if anybody pops in here and wants to ask any questions that Debi, feel free to bring that up. But I know I've we've kind of pre-discussed a couple of different topics. So one of the things that I'd love to hear, Debi is if you were right now able to go back and talk to Debi Laue, it was just getting into the business. Now. Were you married to Bob at the time that you guys got in the business? Debi Laue 1:43 No. Justin Stoddart 1:43 Okay, so this was pre even pre-marriage you've been? You've been married to real estate long have you been married?Debi Laue 1:50 That is true.Justin Stoddart 1:53 if you were to go back and give advice to that person that's maybe a year in the business, like maybe they kind of give, What real estate is, but they haven't obviously built the career that you have. What advice would you give to yourself? So my first managing broker was lead Davies mother, Dorothy Davies mother, okay days.Debi Laue 2:13 The best advice she gave me, she gave me a lot of advice. But the best advice was to surround yourself by positive people. And I understood very quickly why she told me that because in that era and continuing on, there's always office drama. And if you just avoid that, then you'll have a lot of time to spend with your family and your clients, which is what you should concentrate on. And going forward from that consistency has been the number one thing I would share with people. There's a quote out there by some entrepreneurial book writing Speaker I can't remember his name Darren Hardy, I think but he says because consistency is the one thing that achieves and continues the momentum. So in this is if you're not continuing the momentum, then you're stopped dead. It's called filling your pipeline, whatever you want to call it. consistencies, the number one target to achieve. And some of the ways almost that I'm hearing you say that people aren't consistent as they get caught up and stuff that doesn't matter. Right, right. You've got your clients to get the growth of your business, then you've got as you said, this office drama, stuff that's maybe not other stuff or other stuff, right Life Life drama, you can't avoid life. But if you can focus on the things that are productive, that that will help you be successful. So that consistency, I know that that is a big challenge for any of us that are entrepreneurial, right? We see shiny new ideas all the time.Justin Stoddart 3:38 At what is that what is considered the consistency? How have you found to be most consistent? Is it certain by just having a calendar having a planning session? I mean, what's it look like for you or do you just have the discipline to be able to do it? Well, so this is this goes back to Bob. So Bob was a corporate guy, you know, he came out of the corporate world which most realtors didn't back in the day.Debi Laue 4:00 He put systems together that kept us consistent. In other words, we had a CRM since 1983.Justin Stoddart 4:08 Wow, that was pre-sales free CRM, wasn't it? Debi Laue 4:11 I bought my first computer, which was this big and cost $5,000. But I had no idea how to use it until Bob came along. And he figured out a mail merge system where he put all of his clients into the system. And we started sending out these anniversary letters. Congratulations. This is the seventh y

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart, and man, I'm excited about today's episode. Before I get into introducing today's guest, let me talk about my mission, which is to help you grow so that your business can follow suit. I know that when your business grows an amazing thing happens you life gets more and better options and you have a greater impact in the lives of other people. So, today's topic is something that the sports world and really the world in general is still buzzing about, which is Damian Lillards last second, I should say his entire game, but his shot from 37 feet away to win the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, um, has again, blazer fans is still in absolute pandemonium and it has those of us that are students of high performance, trying to learn from that and be like Damien. So today I have with me, um, um, a good friend of mine, someone who I admire look up to and I really respect what he's doing. Um, Jesse Dow and today we're going to talk about how we can be like Damien in our businesses. So Jesse, thanks for being on the show man.Yeah, absolutely. I'm a an honor to be on the show. I'll obviously, I always talk to you and admire what you're doing, so thank you. So for having me on.Yeah, for sure. It had, for those that don't know, Jesse, you're going to love this story. Jessie's a top producer here in the Portland market and that probably many people think because he's becoming so well known, he's been in business for a long time. He's, he's coming up on two years in the business to use in the business and he's absolutely killing it. And for those of you who, who kind of want to get a little taste of what Jesse's up to, what he's working on it go look at a couple places. Number one, his his youtube channel, which is real agent now by Jackson Wilkie and Jesse Dow real agent. Now you're going to see some crazy quality and quantity of videos that are just creating a standard for agents in this area. And around the country. Um, well done man. And then also your Facebook group, um, digital mayor now, uh, which is a really cool term coined by, uh, the only, uh, or the, the fantastic Gary Vaynerchuk. So, um, anyway, Jesse, again, thanks for you on the show. Let's get into this topic of really a book that you and I, uh, read together. I guess we read separately and, and, and then I read again, uh, by Tim Grover. It's called relentless. It's going from good to great to unstoppable. And uh, let's talk a little bit about the game the other night cause it will tie in. What did you see in Damian Lillard that had you, uh, recognizing him as being unstoppable?Yeah, I think the thing that I recognize and I think everyone else recognizes, you know, he, he had an ultimate goal and that goal is to obviously win and you stay focused on that. And it didn't matter what it took, he was set out to accomplish that goal and then he made it happen.I was, uh, I was impressed, uh, at, at halftime I tweeted out, like, Dane's got 32 points. I like, I was amazing. Oftentimes when people have that kind of first half, the second half is lack luster, right? Like to put in the work, they just squeeze a lot of points into one half. But you're exactly right. Like his aim was not to have a big first half. He was not going to stop until he won. You know, I'd been a Jordan fan my entire life and it was actually after the game that I said, I think Damian Lillard just became my all time favorite basketball player because I've never seen somebody close a game out. Like that was such audacity and, uh, it, it, um, it was impressive nonetheless for sports fans as well as for guys like you and I who, um, who get after it in the, in the, in the business space as well.Yeah. And I think, you know, he, uh, you know, he even talked about it and some of the, uh, of the game one, two and three in is basically, you know, I don't celebrate or I don't get excited until like we've won the series. It isn't about the single games. It's about my ultimate common goal and that's to keep moving forward in the progression of the playoffs. Ultimately with the championship.You know, the uh, this book that you and I read called relentless, it's authored by Devin. They have Tim Grover and a heats. He, for those that aren't familiar with the book, Jesse and I are going to go into it a little bit today, but the concept behind it is there. This Guy Tim Grover was the coach or trainer, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, to name a few, like some of the all time best players and, and toughest, like those were the toughest mindset. Absolutely. Ice In their veins, assassins when it came to closing at a game. Like they're just unbelievable. And they all sought out this trainer to help give them, not just a physical edge, but I was, I was impressed as I reviewed the book again, how much emphasis he puts on the mindset that anybody can have great, uh, great physical set. But that's not what separates people, r

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. My name is Justin Stoddart. I'm your host and my goal, and my mission really, is to help you think bigger and grow yourself so that your business can follow suit. I know that when that happens, you're going to have more options, including the ability to have a greater impact, which is I think fundamental for any of us that want to have a great life. I'm excited today to have a fellow big thinker, with me today from Nashville, Tennessee. Let me tell you about him here just a second, but the topic we're going to cover is house warming parties and what a gold mine they can be if done right. So, I'm excited to have Josh Anderson of Josh Anderson Real Estate Group with me today. Josh actually started his business in 2006, which is, probably, what some would see as an inopportune time to get into the real estate industry. But he's thrived. He did 86 million in volume last year between four agents. They did about 215 transactions and his business is 75% referral/past clients. So, he obviously does some things very, very right and well. Josh, I'm excited to have you here pouring value into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for your time today.Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.Yeah. I know Josh came highly recommended from a friend of mine and Josh has, let me just kind of lead with this: Josh has a great business that services a lot of referrals from agents, both gives and receives. So if you ever have business in Nashville and you need a great agent, Josh is your guy. So we'll get that out of the way. So Josh, you, aside from being a dad of two young boys, which I'm sure it keeps you on your toes at home, I'm sure, have a very robust real estate team. Tell me, how do you keep balance between the two? That's a passion of mine is home life, being a great leader in the home and outside of the home. So tell us how you find balance among the two.Yeah. You know, I don't know that I believe in balance, but I think that there's a lot of counter balance that goes on. It's one of those things that you just work around. I work our schedule, very rarely do I work after hours. I don't do a whole lot of weekends. One of it's just doing it and there's times when we have to be in really good communication with husband and wife in so far as who's grabbing the kids.I love it. That helps It sounds like you've got a great partner in crime.We're going back and forth and we've got the NFL draft is in town this week and we've got lots going on in Nashville and lots going on in the family part of it. So, it's really just kind of counterbalancing. There's times when the kids come up to the office with me if it's on a weekend or after hours and it helps that my office in my house are 300 yards apart.It does.Well, yeah, it's just a lot of counterbalancing and making it work.Great. Awesome stuff, man. I think great leaders like you are going to create the next generation of great leaders. So thank you for sharing that. Let's get into this concept of house warming parties. I'm enamored, enamored with what you're doing. I hear too few agents doing this and I really think there's a gold mine. Walk us through this concept of a housewarming party. Do you do it for all of your clients or just those that ask for it or those that agree to it? What does this look like?Yeah, so we offer it to all of our clients. There's a pretty decent amount that don't take us up on it. You know, for whatever reason they're like, "We're too busy... kids... whatever." We've done them for a long time, and we go in and out of doing them at very high levels, or doing big volumes of them versus not. We just did one this past weekend. So it's really great timing on talking about it. It's one of those things that, because so much of our business, is past client and some type of referral, it's the perfect piece for us to finish the transaction, thank them for allowing us the opportunity to work with them and also getting to meet all their friends or their family or whoever's at that housewarming party suits, you know, we really kind of take it and run with it the whole way and do everything for them.So paint this picture. You've got a past client or an existing client, I should say. I'm actually trying to eliminate the word past client because you want to service them in the future. But this client, right, who's now happy with your service, they're in their home... how many people, for example, this one you had this past weekend, how many of their friends and family were at the event?So that was the one this past weekend. They had 44 people that RSVPd and I think 100% of them showed up. So it was really awesome. You know, most of them are somewhere... We've always kind of said, we've looked at it and said it's about $250 or $300 that we spend and about 20 to 25 people usually show up. This one was a little bit different. He's one of our top, top referral sources and clients. And so we spent a little

I'm excited today about today's topic because I think it's essential to what's happening in the real estate market in order for real estate agents to continue to thrive and offer the value to consumers that they'll respect and appreciate enough to allow you to have a business with the margins that you want to have. We're going to go into a topic about how to become the CEO of your business and I have with me today somebody who's brilliant at this topic. Those of you who know him probably admire him first as a loving husband and father, which is something that is very dear to me. Those that work along with him, despite the accomplishments I'm about ready to read, all those that know him best say he's a very humble man to which I would attest to that as well. So, Chris Suarez, he's a real estate agent here in Portland. He's sold himself over a thousand transactions and over $250 million in volume. He actually didn't ask me to say that, so he's probably a little bit embarrassed that I did say that, but nevertheless someone with great accomplishments. He's somebody who has ownership as a broker owner in five different offices for Keller Williams up and down the I-5 corridor, he has an expansion team, meaning other brokers around the country of which he's the CEO. In addition to that, he still goes on buyer and seller appointments and balances that out with his other responsibilities of being a CEO and a big thinker. So Chris Suarez, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a great pleasure of mine to get to spend some time with you and share your genius with the think bigger real estate audience.Awesome. Well, I appreciate being here. I appreciate the opportunity to connect. We talk a lot face to face, but now we're talking screen to screen and happy to share anything I can. But also I'm really thankful for what you continue to do for the community and our industry as well. It's a love for the real estate industry. I think that drives us both. So I'm happy to be here.Yeah, no, it's true. I've been asked before "Justin, have you ever thought about getting your real estate license?" And that comes up often and I think my passion isn't necessarily to be with buyers and sellers, it's to be with real estate agents. So all day every day, in my role, I get the opportunity to be knee to knee talking strategy and finding ways to add value to agents. So, I appreciate that, Chris, that means a lot coming from you. Let's get into a little bit here about this topic of becoming a CEO. I've studied your teachings on this and others where there's a real difference between an entrepreneur and a CEO. Would you just share for the audience, what are some tactical differences in mindset in their activities, and just how they show up and be, that really differentiates somebody from being an entrepreneur. Which a lot of people embrace and love, but maybe they're hitting a ceiling and they're tired of hitting a hitting a ceiling and they want to do more in their business and/or just have a better quality of life. Let's talk about the how embracing the role of a CEO will help them.Yeah. Justin, I think one of the interesting things about our industry is everybody starts as an entrepreneur. Like if that wasn't, if that wasn't our core, we wouldn't be in real estate. And so typically you look at a founder of any, any company, real estate or non real estate, and they have incredible drive. They have natural ability, right? They have intuition. They have enthusiasm. And depending on your level of any one of those things, that's sort of the level of your natural ceiling of achievement or the size of the business that we're going to create that makes a phenomenal entrepreneur. And then as we're really, really good at that, and as we care about people, our business is going to grow naturally. And at a certain point in time, I think our industry has told us, "Well then, you'll naturally be the owner of the business."And so since you own it, we start putting three letters on our business card and it just says, you know, Chris Suarez, CEO and by nature, the fact that we call ourselves that, we just think that we'll just continue doing what we've always done. And now we're just the CEO of a business because we hired someone or we added people or we've grown. Interestingly enough, I think that was me, early on, right? I sold real estate and I sold more real estate and then more real estate. And I thought, well, "Gosh, I'm going to have people now because I need them to deliver service." And so now I was just automatically a CEO and as I started researching founders of different companies outside of our industry and the founders that, that stayed CEOs of their business versus the founders that hired CEOs of their business--and there are incredible companies that went either way--the founders that stayed as a CEO had to change dramatically what they did, what their skill set was, what they focused on. In fact, they had to go from like dry, natur

Let me give a little background on the topic that you and I want to solve today and then I'll give some background on you to speak to some credibility of your story as to why you're the right person for them to listen to on this topic. So, I see agents, as I have a chance to be knee to knee with them all day every day, I see them spending a lot of time and a lot of effort walking past people that already know them, like them and trust them to spend resources, time and money to convince other people to know them, like them and trust them. And I really feel like they're, they're headed out into the diamond mine going down, risking everything, to go down to find these diamonds when they're walking past fields of diamonds right in front of them. Do you ever feel that way Jennie?Oh, preach! That is, I mean that is so true. And that's been honestly my mission over the past years when I discovered that I truly love to empower agents. That is why, is because we already have all these people that know us, like us and trust us, and we're just not pouring into them more or squeezing them with more love to get referrals and recommendations out of them. So I'm with you on that.Perfect. Well, we're going to dive into that topic and how agents, some real tactical strategies that you've employed to master this database topic in your business. So some background on Jennie. Jennie and her and her team last year had the privilege of serving 135 families. And that's exactly how she stated it to me, which again tells me a lot about how she feels about her people. She didn't say 'sell homes or houses.' She 'served families.' Okay. So there's probably a, a built in lesson within that. She's been in business for 18 years, but you actually got to a point, Jennie, where you felt almost a little burnt out, like this business is making me not like people. And you said that that's a problem. So talk to us about how with you being so relational, how even you said at times like, "I'm kind of burned out." What, what happened there?Well, thank you for leading me up to that because I think that's an important part of the story because now people can see where I am or where we are as a team and they can make assumptions that we've just always been this awesome, right? That's not the case. We've had so many fail forwards during the process and like I shared with you in 2010 and 11 is when I took my first BOLD and got to a coach and my production doubled and I was a single agent still. And so what happens when your production doubles? Things start breaking, you start losing your mind and getting pretty stressed out. So I sloppily started building a team, not following any of the proper processes that are lined out for us. And by hodgepodging a team together, I was still, yes, I had some leverage and relief, which was awesome and at the same time, maybe I didn't hold them accountable correctly. I was still learning how to be a leader myself and so then I'm still hanging on to way too many things, not properly leveraged. What does that cause? Frustration and and really just getting to a point of like I shared: hating people, I hated people. I say it out loud in the classroom and people always laugh out loud and I know it is because they have been there and we cannot hate people in this relationship business that we're in. And so that's where I had to take a step back and reevaluate why in the world am I really doing this business? What do I love and how can I apply doing what I love to helping families buy and sell homes.Let's talk a little bit about the root of this, of this hate and I'm not going to try and be a psychiatrist, but I would imagine, I know you're the loving mother of a beautiful little girl and I would imagine you had people that were imposing upon that time with her and they were demanding. And because you felt like, now this is pre team and I know some teams get a bad rap and that's probably accurate. Other teams don't deserve that bad rap that actually serve clients at a really high level. And I know based on what I've heard about you from Patrick and others and that you teach this business by referral at a high level, that's not you, right? But with these people, while you were just a solo agent you had on 15 hats at a time and the hat that you wanted to wear the most, which is that of being a mom was always on the sideline. Is that what caused the root of that hate?How did you know all of that?I am a dad. I get it. Right?!That it, that is so true. And so many and dads are awesome as well. I can speak to the working moms because I am one. That is our struggle. You know, there's a book on it. It's called the ONE Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. And by using that book as a tool, it really helps so much along with the Six Personal Perspectives, like we mentioned early on, the whole value of time blocking and knowing your calendar and family is on your calendar. So every day for the past four years, "Pick up Mia" is on my c

One of Justin's mentors taught him that the faster you are not the only WHO in your business, the faster and greater will be your success. Brock Worthen, a managing partner of multiple KW franchises in Pasadena, CA, discusses here the key leadership principles for attracting and retaining great talent for your business AND... bonus material on how to be a great leader in the home.

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and this topic today is very meaningful to me. Even having this guest on today is an exciting thing for me. I'll introduce her here in just a second. But here's the problem that I want this episode to help you solve, which is: There's endless amounts of tactics and strategies and ideas for real estate agents to grow their business. And the opportunity is most of them will work if you grow into being the right person. The challenge is if you don't grow as a person, none of them will work. So I have with me today, Sarita Dua. Let me first of all say Sarita thank you for coming on the show today.Thanks so much Justin, for having me.I'm excited to have you here. For those of you that don't know Sarita, let me give a little background on her and I know many of you do. Over the past two years, her team, a very small team, has produced over $130 million in real estate volume. Pretty impressive for a small team. In addition to that, she has entered into the executive MBA program at MIT. For those of you who are familiar with MIT, it's a very prestigious university and to be accepted in means a lot. She loves teaching and training. It's really a passion of hers. Maybe some of you have seen her on some of the biggest stages including Keller Williams big annual event, Inman Connect, the big event that they have multiple times a year. And all over the place on podcasts and other places. So I'm, again, fortunate to have you here today, Sarita, pouring into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for again for your attention and your time.Of course. I appreciate it.So let's, let's dive into how are we going to solve this now. I know Sarita, you have developed and followed a growth plan and you say that that is an essential component of helping you to produce at the level that you have and I want to talk through some of the things for you that are a part of this growth plan? And, uh, maybe let's start with something that you put into the growth plan first, which is your fascination with travel. Talk to us about that because most people think that has nothing to do with real estate. That's what you do when you're not doing real estate. But for you, that's been an essential component of helping you produce at the highest level. True?Yeah, absolutely. And if somebody asked me like what are the three things that mean the most to me and I can't put individual people in my family, then it would be honestly my family, education and travel. And one of the things I love about travel is that it's a perfect intersection between family and education because anytime we go anywhere, we're learning and we're together. And so it isn't this, you know, a quest to fill my passport, although I do love that part of it. What I found is as my kids were young and active and I was working quite a few nights and weekends, we realized that when we connect, the few times we have, let's say we had an hour here or like 30 minutes between appointments, I would try to connect with my family and guess what, they were busy. They'd have soccer games or lacrosse or birthday parties or whatever.So if it was a good time for me, it may not have been a good time for them. And what we realized is anytime we went anywhere, the four of us, and we reconnected, whether it was a long weekend or for a week, we would just come back synchronized and recharged. And then, my husband especially, he's a bit of a nerd and he loves like these educational field trips. So anytime we go on a trip, he's going to make us go see the largest ball of twine or how cashews are made. And we always, you know, the kids, especially "Daddy," and they roll their eyes. But the funny thing is we started playing this game called Trivia. We were at a restaurant, we were waiting for a two hour wait and I was trying to keep them awake. They were jet lagged. So I was like, "Hey guys, we visited Google today. What were the colors of their logo?" I didn't even know most of the answers. I was asking questions and I didn't even know the answers. Or, "What gate were we at?" Or, "What seats were we in?" Or, "Who was our flight attendant?" And it was so funny because my son was like maybe six or seven, "Momma ask me another question." And since we started doing that too, we've become very observant when we travel. And you're always learning when you're just looking around and your present. Right? So it really did bring our family together. So, one of the best coaches I've had in my career said, "Hey, you don't always have to have a goal of how many houses and what's your production. It could be [for me] how many days, how can you maintain your production and how many days out can you take?" So every year I start with what are all the days I'm going to take out and then I cram all my real estate in in those days that I'm not out of the office.Which typically is not how it works. If I have time this year we'll go on a

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart. I'm very excited about today. A very good friend of mine a very experienced mortgage loan officer who has been in the business for 17 years. He has been wowing people with value for a long, long time, Mr. Tony Gillard. Tony, thanks for being on the show today.Happy to be here.Let's set this up properly. You know, Tony, you run your business like a business and the topic of today is, is really one way in which agents can do that. And I think this term of lead generation is synonymous with real estate agents. More leads, more leads, more leads always seems to be the answer, but maybe it's not the answer. Maybe it's not about more leads, more leads, more leads. Maybe just maybe it's about better converting on the leads you have. We're going to talk some specific strategies around that. Tony, what are your thoughts on this concept of more leads, more leads, more leads?Well, it's certainly a topic of discussion with every agent. I sit down, every agent, uh, they want more leads and when we start to peel back some of the layers of their business, we find that it's not necessarily more leads that they need, but more conversion on the activities and opportunities that they're already generating. And so, you know, especially when we start talking about like work life balance--can you do more with less? Can you do more things with fewer interactions or really is it a matter of just an equation of pouring in more leads? I don't think that it is based on the conversations that I'm having and specifically I'm just sitting down with the agents and finding out what their track record is and starting to, to ask the questions that are more business related. I know that a lot of agents are in the business because they're really good people.People's personalities--they're outgoing. They have a servant's heart. And sometimes what is maybe lacking is just the lens, the business lens, looking at their operations and finding out the efficiencies that they could maybe tweak a little bit. And that to me all comes down to what's your longterm client plan because statistically we call this the other 98 because statistically 2% of your database or 2% of the people that you interact with are going to be ready to conduct business right now. And so we always ask, what about the other 98, what kind of client plan do you have in place to incubate these people over time? Just create a relationship of value so that you're the obvious choice when they come back around. And that's in a world of Zillow leads the lead part is really the weakest component of that funnel because the value proposition is being built by Zillow.You know, they, they come into Zillow's funnel and that funnel provides them a really pretty platform with search tools, a lot of like information and recon, so to speak, for the buyer. And so all the value is being provided by Zillow. And by the time that that buyer wants to make a buying decision, the agent in that equation is the commodity. And so if you're not cheaper, better, faster, if you're not willing to open a door during dinner on a Sunday night, it just gets moved to the next one. And I feel like because of the activities that agents engage in on a really, really regular basis, there's so much opportunity in just those engagements that they're already conducting.Whether agents are getting their business primarily via referral or via some online lead source, if they're actively growing their business, they're actively in real estate related conversations on a very regular basis, on a daily basis. What would you say Tony, would be the average as you've interviewed agents? What's the average number of real estate related conversations that an agent is in on on maybe an annual basis?So I have my notes from the last interview that I just did and I'm referring to these because it's fairly common. This is a very kind of common breakdown that I'm coming across in these agent interviews. So this agent I recently sat down with, I asked how many families they helped last year. They said they had closed on 30 transactions last year you know, a mixture of listings and buy side and you know, so it's a decently medium producing type of agent. They were a single operator and I said, how many real estate related conversations of people that are looking to buy or sell do you think you had in order to help those 30 families? And as we started to dig deeper, you know, talking about open houses and barbecues and past client referrals, the networking activities that they engage in, we really kind of identified that they're speaking to about one person a day on a real estate related type of conversation.Okay. So we're talking about five conversations a week, you know and I'll always kind of lead them down the path of like, well, do you take a couple of weeks off for vacation and so forth. And so in this particular case they had determined that they sp

Alright everybody. Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate show. Boy, I feel honored today to have two people with me here today who are making quite the stir in the real estate industry and the kind of a stir that I think the real estate industry needs. I want to welcome today here on the show, Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr. You may have heard of these names. They're bestselling authors of the book Brandface. We'll be talking a little bit more about that. A little more on their background here in just a second. Before I go into that, I want to talk about the problem that we're going to solve so, and you're going to want to know who these people are. So the problem that I see so often is, real estate agents chasing, hunting and the consumer feeling hunted, feeling chased, which is not necessarily a good position to be in. Whereas what Tonya and Michael teach is a way to brand yourself to where people chase you where people are anxious to try and find time to get on your schedule. I want to thank both of you for coming on today to discuss this very important topic.Hey, thank you Justin. We are honored to be here. Thanks for having us.Thank you so much.Yeah. So, let's get a little bit more into your background and, and they've got such a comprehensive bio that I won't be able to cover it all. Let me start with you Tonya. You really have become synonymous with building brands in the real estate industry and really helping people stand out in this "sea of sameness." I love how you said that. That's so true here. You know, in the market where I work directly, there's over 8,000 real estate agents just in our city and very few of them really stand out. So many of them say the same things, market the same way, have the same tag lines, have the same posts. I mean, it just looks so much the same. I know that you really specialize in helping people stand out.Yes, yes we do. So, you know, one of the things that I thought I'd start with Justin is kind of what's going on in today's real estate industry. And that is, it's no surprise to anybody listening today that there are tons of new agents coming into the industry. They're entering or reentering the industry. And then you also have lots and lots of new marketing platforms and tools out there that didn't even exist 10-15 years ago. So there's so many ways to market yourself, but the real problem comes when you mix those two together. You've got all these agents using all of these marketing tools and systems exactly the same way, right? To your point, everybody kind of then starts to look the same and that's why we refer to it as the sea of sameness. And that's not really coming from us. It's coming from all the agents we've been dealing with these last several years. They're saying, oh my gosh, everybody around here is marketing exactly the same. And when that happens they tend to kind of blame the marketing platform. Oh, Facebook ads doesn't work. Um, newspaper doesn't work. Radio doesn't work. Google ads don't work. Zillow doesn't work. Right?! And so that really is not always the truth, right? There are some platforms that are better than others, but most of the time if your ideal customers on the other end of that platform, it should work for you. Most of the time what hasn't happened is they haven't set themselves apart. They haven't differentiated themselves in such a way that they stand out from everybody else. And you've got to do that before you can expect to be treated differently.You know, I'm a big fan of the book Blue Ocean Strategy and what you're talking about sounds sounds similar to that. You know, what they teach there and I'm sure your book, which I'm so excited to read by the way really takes a concept of standing out and really deeply applies it to the real estate industry. Like, how important is that?Right? It does. And you know what I'm going to hand this one off to Michael because he's actually the first real estate professional that I worked with with the Brandface concepts and that's actually why he's a partner in the company today. So I'm going to hand that one off to Michael.Hey Michael, before you get started, let me just share with the audience who you are. They're like, who is this Sean Connery looking figure in the middle of the screen. So, some context here. Michael is actually America's top selling real estate auctioneer and the 'Abundant Life Broker.' During your 26 years experience, you've been actively involved in over 74,000 transactions. Like that's phenomenal; And licensed in as many as 27 states in the Continental US. Now let's talk a little bit about how you guys met. You kind of alluded to it, Tonya, that you actually implemented these ideas in Michael's business. True?It's absolutely true.Yeah. The way that all worked out is I was an auctioneer by trade. I still am. And the guy that taught me the industry said, get your real estate license because you might want to call a sale, a farm sale or something like that in ru

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and I am so excited today to introduce to you somebody who was recently introduced to me who has just created a magnificent legacy in real estate. She's the kind of person that is giving back to the community and I'm privileged and honored to have her here sharing with the Think Bigger Real Estate audience today. So I want to start by welcoming Kendra Cooke to the show. Kendra, welcome. Thank you for coming on today.Thank you so much Justin. I'm very excited to be here.Thank you. So, a little background on Kendra. Kendra has been serving annually over a hundred families on a consistent basis while working, this is the kicker, while working less than 40 hours. I'm so excited to dig into that because that's not what most people experience or think is a reality if you're serving that many families. In addition to that Kendra also serves as senior leadership within The Core Training for real estate agents. So again, not only is she producing at a very high level, but she's giving back and serving and coaching and training at a very high level. So again, thank you for being here Kendra. I know some of the questions that are probably in the minds of people is, number one, where do your leads come from? To serve over a hundred families a year, there's got to be some sort of online lead generation mechanism. True or false?False.False?No generated leads from the Internet, 100% percent referral based business.Wow, and over a hundred families and that's coming by referral.That's right. And so what you should really try to achieve in your career is to build a relationship based business. So building relationships with people and casting a deeper net versus a wider net. So what I figured out is if I would work with people who knew, liked, and trusted me from the get-go, then they respected my boundaries, they respected my family time, they respected me. And so there wasn't that disconnect. And you shouldn't show me houses 24-7 and you shouldn't always be on call. I got to work with people who, when they were referred to me, were like "Hey, so and so said you are the best I should work with you." So it goes from a relationship of selling them to a relationship of building deeper relationships which warrants continued referrals.I love what you said Kendra. I want to go into this a little bit more and expound upon your analogy here of "instead of a wider net, a deeper net." Now, I'm not a deep sea fisherman, but I know well enough that these big fish fishing boats in Alaska, they don't just have nets on the surface, but they have nets that go down very deep because that's where the better fish are at.That's right. We want to chase the bigger fish, right? So you want to have business partner relationships, you want to have VIP relationships and then you will have your database relationships. And so when we talk about going deeper, it's not a surface relationship. So the people that are in my business referral network, or in my VIP group, I know their families, their children, their hobbies, their charities. I want to be in the flow with them if you will. So, you know, if we're going to a charity event and I know somebody is very passionate about that charity event and they are a business partner, referral partner or whatever, I want to bring them with us. So now we connect on a deeper level. Real estate has become such a transactional business for the most part because leads come in from the Internet. We don't really have a relationship. We have a transaction, we get the money and we run to the bank and it's over. And it was always really shocking to me that we tell everyone we want to be your Realtor for life, yet when the transaction is over, we're done. And so I just found that is a really crazy concept. So I feel like if I stayed in relationship with these people and we connected on a common bond, whether it was community involvement or I'm a runner. You might see the medals back there. I love to run, I love to meet people in the community that run. I love to run for charity. So if I can bond on a connection with the charity or a hobby or a community involvement, that relationship is just really consummated on a relationship versus a transaction, if you will.I love that. So valuable to the real estate community to hear what you're sharing right now. You segmented your database into three different parts. Would you go over that again?Yes. So the general database is about 400 people in our general database. These are people who have bought and sold with us. Maybe my kids' families or their friends and family. So, their contacts, if you will. I'm one relationship with them, but maybe not deep relationships. Those people may refer you once every three to five years. Okay. So if you have 400 people, let's say you get 15-20% of those that refer every single year. We didn't generate some leads for you but not a plethora of leads. And then we go to

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart and I am thrilled today, I'm absolutely thrilled today, to have with me a legendary real estate trainer, coach, leader, Mr. Don Hobbs. Anybody who's been in the industry for any period of time will know Don's name. In fact, prior to real estate he was, in fact, we were just talking about his personal relationship with Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins, which are some of the biggest minds in personal development. So before we get into the topic, I just want to thank you, Don for taking some time to be here in porn into the audience today.Hey Justin, I'm so happy to be here. I love your energy. I love who you are and what you're doing and I'm thrilled. It's always a fun thing to get a chance to talk to a group like this.It's awesome. Well, I know they're going to be thrilled to hear what you have to share with them today. So let's dive in. The way I've set up today's conversation is that there are agents in the country that Don knows, that Don's coached, that are not lowering their commissions amidst industry disruption, they're raising their commissions. They're going 7%, 8%, 9%, even 10%. Is that feasible? It almost seems like that could not be possible in a world where you've got 1% listing offerings everywhere you go on all the billboards and buses that drive by, right?Or Redfin or whoever, right?Whoever. Yeah. How are people doing this Don? Is this real. You're telling me that, you know people that are doing this and they're having success with it, not just once on an unassuming buyer or seller. Like they're doing it, they demand that.Yeah, in fact it was just funny you went for that right away because that's such an interesting thing. There's so much pressure and there's so much sameness amongst Realtors and Justin, that's the challenge, right? We're just a giant commodity group. You know, if you think about any commodity, I don't care if it's, you know, I can buy Lexus here, a Lexus there, but here it's $1,000 cheaper. I mean, if things are the same, then price is the only thing that matters. When things are not the same, we don't mind paying more for more. We don't mind. We don't mind paying more for it--a brand we trust a name we know. But we do mind paying more for the same. And that's the challenge. And Realtors have made themselves that way. So I think the biggest thing I would say is it's really about branding and, and really about building something that people can identify with and hold on to is "She's the expert." Or, he knows my market. He is the guy, or she is the gal, you know that makes it work and we're not afraid to pay for that. I had somebody the other day where I walked in and he said, his listing contract is already filled out at 7%, and he was concerned about the commission and he thought it was going to be a pressure down. And they said, "We thought you'd be more." I just laughed my butt off when I heard that. I was like, how cool is that to think that the expectation of value was so high, they were shocked and surprised pleasantly at 7%. It's really cool, but that has to do with the brand. And you can't do that by just being a Realtor. You can't do that by being one of the multitude. You can't do that by doing what most Realtors do. You can't. It's not going to happen, right?I love that. You and I have studied some of the same sources and there's this concept about becoming an expert. And I know that's one thing that you, when you coach and teach and train, it's how do people, as you identified, separate themselves from the masses and truly become an expert. Let's talk about this concept of gaining expertise so that one can be moving in the direction that these agents you're talking about are moving, which is we're not lowering our prices. And if in fact we may be doubling down on our value, therefore we're more valuable and can charge more.Yeah, absolutely. I know you and I talked about a book that we both like and, and have in our libraries called Expert Secrets. So let's start with a recommendation. Let's give our man Russell Brunson a good plug right there and sell some books. But you know, Russell Brunson has got this concept of being the attractive character, the interesting character. You know, that person, and I think that agents don't see themselves that way, which you realize today if you look around, if you're at all observant, you see that there are people with less talent in almost any industry that have made themselves somebody by raising their profile and becoming the expert. One thing I want to make sure, and again, I'm certainly going to promote that the agent needs to get to be good. I mean, they need to be an expert. They need to find out, you know, what that niche is and then everything about that group and that style o property or whatever it is. But the biggest thing is remember that we don't find out if you're good or not good until after we've called you. So the reality is that only le

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. You're going to notice again that my voice is kind of sexy today. I won't to ask for forgiveness because I know some of you will probably enjoy it. This time of year, we're coming up on the end of the first quarter, and we're at a point where we're checking in to see how we're doing. Hopefully if you're like me, you have a business plan and that business plan had specific goals as to what you wanted to achieve for the year. You probably then broke that business plan down into quarterly and even monthly milestones, or checkpoints. And we can see the end of March. It's just over a week away. And, in that timeframe we have Spring Break. So some of you may be taking off and want to be cognizant of maybe lesser activities during that time.So right now might be a good time for you to evaluate to see how your first quarter went. And if you're like me, maybe you ran into some things that you didn't expect. I've been out for the past number of days. Maybe that's why you haven't heard from me and why I'm even broadcasting from home today, because I didn't want to get anybody sick. So thank you, or you're welcome that I canceled some appointments with some of you... and kept it with some of you other people. I'm sorry for those of you with whom I didn't cancel. But it was actually per your request that you thought you could handle it. So, I want to go through four points really quickly, as to what you can do, what we can do, if we find ourselves behind on our goals.So, the first thing that you should not do is, say, "Well, I guess this is going to be a lesser year, so I'm going to adjust my plan down or I'm going to adjust my goals down to meet reality because this is, this is the reality, right?" Because that's what happens a lot of times as we get into this mindset of, "Well, I had these plans but then I got sick," or then the market did this..." So, we start backpedaling on what we committed... To the life that we actually wanted, the business that we actually wanted. And a commitment to you of being a part of Think Bigger Real Estate is to help you get beyond those silly excuses and realize that, "No, you made a commitment to yourself and your family to have a certain business, have a certain life and I'm gonna hold you to it." And I'm going to hold myself to it. We're going to hold ourselves to it. How about that?So the first thing we need to do is stop with that stinking thinking; To stop telling ourselves, you know, it's circumstantial. It's a result of the circumstances and it's just something that I need to accept. You can accept it or you can choose not to. So step number one is to change your thinking and stop telling yourself, or stop talking about the excuses. Every time you talk about, "Well, the market has done this..." or "I was a little bit sick..." as I cough. See how powerful the mind is. When I say sick, I start coughing. Stop talking about those things. Stop talking about the reasons why you haven't and start filling that void with the reasons why you can and the things you need to do.So that's step number one, change your thinking. Number two is you're going to need to change your plan. You actually need to readjust the fact that now you've got three quarters left and you maybe have more than three quarters of the work yet to do. So adjust your plan. It doesn't mean you do need to do it all in the second quarter, but it might be a good idea to adjust your plan to where you've now leveled out the rest of the year to equate for maybe where you're behind. Number one change your thinking. Number two, change your plan. Number three is you're going to need to change your activity level. We are going to need to change our activity level. So, what I mean by that is you're going to actually have to work harder. Which really means you're going to have to say no to some things that are pretty comfortable right now and that might be going home early and that might be not showing up late. You're going to have, we are going to have to get rid of some of those things and we're actually going to have to work harder in order to achieve those same goals in less time.That's point number three. Point number four is is working smarter. You're gonna have to change how well you convert. This means you're probably going to need to be taking appointments with people that can get you there faster. You might need to prescreen your people a little bit better as far as who you're meeting with. I know I am. You probably also, when you're in those appointments, going to need to need to be more effective. Like a two hour sit down meeting is probably going to be too much. You may need to start cutting those appointment times in half and doing more appointment in less time, if that makes sense. So again, that's the fourth point is start working smarter.My guess is if you had some reason that you really, absolutely had to find success in the way that you set out to at the end

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm here with some of my favorite people and they kind of look like me a little bit, don't they? What's up kids? So these beautiful children just got home from school. We're missing one. He must be with his mom. We're missing a few others too. They must also be with mom. I was sitting and listening to a mentor of mine yesterday and he was talking about his legacy and what he wanted to have on his tombstone and how that should correlate with what he shares on social media. And he said, I don't have pictures of my kids on social media because that's not what I want to have on my headstone. I want to have my headstone be sales and marketing guru. And I was like, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."At the end of the day, if your biggest legacy is something other than your family? I'm sorry, but I think you're screwing up life, period. You're screwing up life. Like you're missing the big boat. Like, what matters are, is your family. So I'm going introduce you to some people. a little bit six and working mom today I have these beautiful children with me. So, my point is, is that our businesses should simply fund our perfect life. They shouldn't be our perfect life. That at the end of the day, what I want on my headstone, that's where I was going. What I want on my headstone is that I was an amazing husband and father, like too much else doesn't really matter. ButI also want to be known as someone who has stepped out and served a lot of people. And that's where this Think Bigger Real Estate community comes in. And the way that I hope that I can serve you is by helping you achieve a really great business so that you can be a really great parent because that's what matters.Kids. Do you think it would matter at my funeral if none of us had a relationship, but if you came and heard about all the cool stuff I did with the real estate industry. Would you care?If I came and heard like a bunch of different things that everyone says that you've done that we don't know because we never were with you. That would actually be sad.I love it. Corbin, when you think of that, like if you, and I really didn't know each other or didn't get to hang out much, but you came to my funeral and other people said nice things about me...I would just feel like I didn't have a good connection with you and I'd be sad because I've like spent practically my whole life with you so far. And I just really enjoy having you in the family and I love you Dad.Oh, thanks Corbin. That wasn't planned. Okay Aretta, what do you think? Do you care more about me spending time with you or me about spending time with other people, helping them with their business? Would you prefer to have me hanging out with you or would you prefer me hanging out with other people? Anyway, she's pretty sweet.Think about that, like who's getting the best of you and what is your legacy? Do you care about how many homes you sold or do you care more about your family? It, your business, should be a vehicle to help you get a better life, which is impacting more greatly the people that matter the most to you. So enjoy! Kids, thanks for being my impromptu guests and peace--out!

I'm excited about having Laura Gillott here with me today. Laura, thank you for joining me.Thank you for inviting me.Yes, I'll start by saying I've got a more sultry voice, than normal. So, if the audience is wondering like, this is really enjoyable, don't worry, I'm not going to charge you for this episode. This one will also be free despite how much you might enjoy my relaxing voice.So with that being the case, let's dive into the topic, Laura. Let's share some of your statistics, your with the Gillott Home Team out of Lebanon, Oregon.Yup. Small town.How many people live in Lebanon?16,800 people.16,800 people. Last year from Salem to Eugene, you guys serve 523 families.526 families.526 families were served by your team. So one would have to think if you serve that many families, you must have a massive Zillow budget. You must have a massive cold market marketing machine. True or false?False. Very false.Okay.Yeah. We buy no Zillow leads. We are a premier agent on our listings. [engine roaring in the background]. Sorry. We have someone trying to drag race in front of our building.It is Lebanon!Right? Yes, good old Lebanon. Our budget is small there with Zillow where we're just a Premier agent with our, with our own leads there. About 80% of all of our business last year was just based off relationships.Wow. So let's do the math. Let's say 80% of 523. Now, I made a commitment once to never do math in public, but that's gotta be somewhere around 450? I'm assuming somewhere in that range.Yep, yep. Either past clients or referrals you guys closed. Meaning that's how much business you closed by referral from your sphere.Yes. We include sphere in that or people who have referred themselves from our reputation and things that. For example if they just came in and said, "Hey, I want to list my home with you." "I'd like you to help us find property." And part of that is because we meet a lot of people through our events and we offer classes to help the community in buying homes. And then that helps us get those people walking in wanting help.So I think one of the big myths, again, that real estate face is "Do I go quality (sphere) or do I go quantity (cold leads)? Some would believe, "I could never possibly know enough people to generate a mass amount of business by sphere." Right? So let's talk about, it's not just your sphere, right? You have a a great team.We do. We do. When we get their sphere involved in this too and we market to that sphere. We give them the newsletter each month. We invite them to the events. Of course all of our past clients we offer items of value. We do the pies twice a year our client database. Anybody that gets the newsletter is invited to the rest of the events. We pair up with the Chamber and do National Night Out. Next month we have Biz Expo. We'll invite the whole database to the Biz Expo, let them know if they visit the booth, that we have something special for them. You're just trying to get as much face to face time with their clients as possible.I love it. That's the goal, right? Face to face time with your clients in an era filled with bits and bytes where there's so much convenience in doing things electronically, that's been your secret sauce is getting face to face with people.Yes. Getting face to face and then you know, it's for us, we don't do any cold calling, but what we do is lead with items of value or leave with contribution. So we'll call and say, "Hey, we've got an investor class coming up on Saturday. Do you have any interest in coming? Or do you know anybody that does?" And so that way we're just not calling saying, "Hey, give me your business, give me your business, give me your business."I love it. So again, the way that I see you solving these two problems, or busting these myths, BTW--this episode's gonna be Mythbusters. The first one is that a combined sphere, you've got a good size team and all those people contribute who they know. The second myth that people hold is, "Even if I have that many people, how can I possibly take care of them? How can I possibly get face to face with that many people?" And what I hear you saying is a key to your success has been events, both ones that you're putting on, right? Like client appreciation events and then also events that you're not even hosting. Like the Biz Expo. It's not your event. You've got to space there and you're using it as an opportunity to reach out and invite everybody to come participate at that event.Yeah, the Boys and Girls Club did a Brewfest and they shut down Main Street. We asked have a booth there and then we gave away a growler and then we invited people to come down to visit us at the event, helped market the event for the Boys and Girls Club and helped them raise money. When they signed up for the growler, we had over 500 people sign up for the growler. A handful of them said, "Yes, I would like a market analysis," or I would like a list of properties and I would like to be on your newsletter."

I have with me someone who's going to help solve this problem: How do millennials really want to be treated? What is their ideal process? I think there's some myths in the marketplace and I happen to have a true expert with me today, Kristin Messerli. She founded the organization called Cultural Outreach. So first of all, let me start by saying, Kristen, thank you for being on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.Thank you so much for having me, Justin. Great to be here.Great to have you. So I actually met Kristin a couple of weeks ago. She spoke here in Portland at the Oregon Mortgage Broker's Association and I was super impressed. I thought, this is knowledge that more people need to know about. The room was packed, but I'm excited to get this content, and her mission really, out to more people. So let's talk about this a little bit, Kristen. I think that you have spoken on the biggest stages, including Gary V's, big event. I know you're touring around the country sharing this knowledge. Let's dig into a little bit about maybe some of the myths that are utilized to characterize how millennials want to be treated. Is it true that they actually don't want to talk to anybody? They don't want to meet with anybody? They just want to text and use Facebook messenger?Definitely not. I think that this is something I'm so passionate about because I think people assume that because Millennials are using social media, are texting, want convenient and have access to things, that we don't want the human touch. And we really want to have someone that is going to guide us through this process. I mean, buying a home for the first time, making the biggest financial decision of our lives, we want someone that is going to to help guide us through that process. And I think that texting and convenient communication, Facebook Messenger, all those kinds of things are important to get the communication going and for quick communication, but technology should always be about enhancing the relationship and increasing that kind of connection with your buyer, particularly someone who's a first time buyer and for Millennials, we're seeing that trend even more so with Gen Z where they want that individual relationship with a person or brand. They want to feel like they can trust that person. I think that we miss that a lot of times when we think about our generation.I love it. So, two big potential risks here is number one, Millennials are underserved, right? That they aren't getting the level of service that they want because of these stereotypes. And number two, that real estate agents are missing a huge opportunity because they're assuming that they want to be treated a certain way and we're giving them something else. So I really appreciate you clarifying that. There are some forms of quick and convenient communication, but it shouldn't stop with that. Is what I'm hearing you say?Yeah, exactly. I do think it is shocking how much Millennials, well-off Millennials--successful Millennials--don't know anything about buying a home where, or who to talk to about it. And I think there's just this huge gap between them feeling like they know someone who is an expert in that, who is a real estate agent for instance, that they feel comfortable enough to reach out to and not be immediately sold to, not feel like they are stupid for not knowing these things, you know? So I think that element of being underserved, it really is a big deal when we talk about our generation. I think that it doesn't stop with a quick text or with more social media in any respect. It's using that as a way to build your network and provide convenient access to you and then going from there to a person-to-person or video kind of communication that really improves that trust and relationship.I love it. Let's talk about this now: I know you've been a buyer, in addition to being the founder of Cultural Outreach, I know you're also the editor of Mortgage Women Magazine. So again, you're involved in a lot of places really influencing. Let's talk about even your personal scenario. I know you've been a buyer and a seller before and you described to me how some people tried to earn your business and it didn't work very well. Talk to us about that.Yeah, so it was interesting because when I bought my home, this is about six years ago or so, maybe seven years now, I remember going through that process and how my real estate agent and I had a sit down at the beginning and I honestly didn't even really vibe with him that much. I thought this guy is like a typical salesman, whatever. But when we started going through the process a little bit, I realized, man, he really knows his stuff. He is educating me on all these things that I feel like I could reach out to him about anything about buying a home. I mean, if he didn't know, he was going to know someone who knew. And so that was super valuable to me. And then also when we were going through looking at homes, he would point out stuff

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Today's topic is going to be on building community. Is it simply a publicity stunt or does good actually come of it? I have with me today a good friend of mine and a Senior Escrow, sorry, not Senior Escrow Officer. I'm used to saying that from my role, Senior Loan Officer, branch manager of Advantage Mortgage, who is making some waves in our marketplace. Kahren, thank you so much for being on the show today.Hi Justin. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. This is awesome.Yes. For those of you who don't know Kahren, she recently is a part of a newly launched, I should say, mortgage company here in town and I have to share something before we get into today's topic. I saw something that Derek Hill had posted online that was comparing Quicken Loans to the prices that you guys have. And I think consumers need to know that, just because it has flashy advertising, it's not necessarily the best deal. Even though they may say that it's the best deal and that it's super fast, it may not actually be the best deal. And then I think the phrase was that was quoted that I loved is that "Whenever a big brand has fancy TV commercials, somebody's paying for that and that somebody is the clients." So, before we get going on the topic, talk just a little bit about that--what you're excited about with Advantage Mortgage. And I know you guys have a huge heart. That's what really we're going to talk about today, but you're also doing some pretty cool stuff on the pricing side too.Absolutely. You know, I think that a lot is changing in the mortgage space and our goal is to provide education and transparency around that. Everybody has choices with their mortgage and with their financing and it's true glitzy commercials or expensive trips or you know, those things cost money and they come from somewhere, and really we want to educate the consumer and let them know that they're paying for that. And so really that's our goal is providing that transparency and giving the consumer the power in this negotiation and really understanding--how interest rates are comprised, how fees are set up and really enabling them to understand really where that comes from. Your large retail lenders in this large space, they're not always going to provide the best value for the consumer. So, we really just want to educate our consumers and talk to people through that and provide as much transparency as we can in that space.Awesome. So rather than paying for Super Bowl ads and other forms of fancy advertising on TV, you've taken a different approach, which is to get out and build the community. Talk to me a little, talk to the audience a little bit, about how you came to the conclusion that you wanted to build your business this particular way.I think Derek and I both love people. We love interacting with people. Both our customers our referral partners our people that work for us and work with us and out in the community really getting that excitement and involvement because we love people. So, I think really that's where it all started is just knowing that my super power is working with individuals and I love talking to people. I'm definitely an extrovert in that way. I get my energy from talking to people and from sharing what I'm passionate about. So really that's where it started is really just wanting to connect with other individuals abd connecting in that way that was meaningful for us.And you believed at your core that you could go contribute to the community and build the community instead of just focusing on building business that you could build community and it would come back around like that. People would appreciate that and value that more than a glitzy commercial on TV.Yeah. It's, it's kind of more of a service over self mentality and really knowing that giving back so much more comes back to you. As an aside, I became a big sister about 12 years ago at a time where I really felt like I needed to give back. I knew that children were unfortunately not going to be in my future and I love kids and I wanted to spend that time. And so I thought, well, Gosh, I'll go invest my time and improve the life of a child. And I connected with Lindsey who is now in college and we've maintained this connection over almost 12 years now. She gave so much more to me than I gave to her that I really realized years ago that when you give, you receive so much more in return. And that's just a small example of really what giving has done in my life. Derek is very much the same way and it just allows us to really, truly, authentically give and so much more comes as a result. And it feels great. I think she gave me more than I than I ever gave her.I think that's the beautiful thing when we set out to only pursue our own success, we find that we don't really end up with a whole lot, but when we seek the success through other people or for other people--or rather seek significance--I agree, something magical happe

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Realtor safety--is it a real thing? Is it something that you need to be concerned about? That's today's topic. I'm passionate about this topic because I happen to have a lot of real estate agents that are very good friends and I don't know that the world that we live in is getting to be any safer. And so for today's topic I brought on an individual who has a very storied background in self defense. He's a former marine, a former police officer, a current private investigator and a security consultant. I'm excited to have him on the show. I met him a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with him as I actually heard his presentation on Realtor self-defense that you're going to be hearing more about and are actually going to be receiving an invitation to attend. But in the meantime, I want you to be safe until you have a chance to attend that. So I want to welcome to today's episode, John Jayne. John, thanks for being on the show.Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.Yeah, so let's get into this. John is this hype? Are people blowing out of proportion the threats that real estate agents are facing?Absolutely not. No way. It's a, it's very real. It's very current and it's growing.Okay. Tell me some evidence behind this. What makes you say that? Is this your gut feel or is there some data to back that up?No, there's a lot of data out there. It's sometimes hard to access, but what I've found is the National Association of Realtors puts out a report every year on safety and statistics on attacks. A big surge lately, which isn't really my forte has been electronic data security. There's been a lot of identity theft, which has increased over the years. Forgeries, fraud, stuff like that whereas my expertise is in the physical security and those numbers are growing as well. When I first got into this topic, I started going through it.Let's talk about what some of those numbers are. I know there's 1.2 million real estate agents in the nation today. Is that number right?Correct. Roughly.Okay. Talk to me about how many of those on a percentage basis or actual number basis have felt some sort of threat.So, of those polled, 38% reported being threatened or had felt unsafe during a showing of a home or an open house,Thirty-eight percent!! So over one in three real estate agents at some point have felt a potential real threat.Correct. And that could range anything from just the hair on the back of their neck standing up, to an actual attack happening.Now I know we've heard of situations, actual homicides, terrible tragic stories--a handful of those we've heard about. I know that as you start digging into this to see if this really was a real area of need you uncovered, and not that I want to go into necessarily the gory details, but you found more than what you expected to find, didn't you?Way more than I expected to find. What really got me started in this area was I was hired to do some consulting for an apartment complex. They had one of their leasing agents attacked showing an apartment. So I kind of started delving into the statistics and some case studies. And then obviously, I know a lot of Realtors as well, and I started looking into this aspect of it. And the number of stories, the new stories, just if you Google real attack on Realtors, it's unbelievable how often this happens and how extreme the attacks are.Jeez. Okay--so it's real. I know having stayed close to a forum here that's a pretty popular one, Masters in Real Estate that it's not just in other parts of the country, right? There's stuff happening right here in Portland, Oregon. I know my audience extends beyond that and I'm sure that people outside of Portland can validate that as well, that it's happening all around us. I would say in part because of the rise of access to pornography and other things as I'm sure things other than just that it's increasing the number of predators out there. Would you agree with that?Absolutely. One case that I became familiar with while putting this presentation together, it really unfolded as if it were some sort of a kind of a pornographic fantasy where a real estate agent was showing a home, they made it up to the master bedroom and he attempted to seduce her from the bed as if he had watched this maybe in a video of some sort. And luckily that case didn't turn out to be the case that I used as an example of success. She had been trained, she had practiced and thought through tactics and mindset stuff to where she knew exactly what to do in that situation and made it out safely. But it could've been, it could've been much worse.So that we don't end on the downside, right, we're here to talk about how to prevent this. So let's give them two points, John. Let's, give them two key points. And obviously you have an entire training that they're going to be invited to in the very near future that will give them a much more kind of robust set of tools to defend themselves,

Welcome Back to the Think Bigger Real Estate show today you're getting yours truly, just me. If you've not yet read this book, High performance Habits. I highly recommend it. Point number one that he makes is about CLARITY--that every high performer out there creates clarity both in their own life as well as for the people that they serve, that they lead. I'm going through the process right now of having a website built and it's interesting how much I could say. Probably those of us in sales, to my real estate agent audience, there's no shortage of things you could be saying. We talk for a living. That's what we do. And the challenge with that is we tend to overstate everything as opposed to saying what is the one thing that people need to know that would help them to take the next step, or to take action and how few words can I say that in?And that's typically not how most of us think. I want you to look at your website. I think websites, traditional websites are really in trouble and why is that? It's it's a maze. When you go to anybody's website, there's all these options, there's all these words, there's all these videos, there's all these blog posts and it's kind of a mess.I think one of the greatest innovations in real estate websites recently has been, you show up to the website and there's a box, enter the zip code where you want to search for homes now, and it's clarity. I'm here because I want to shop for a home and you're giving me that option to shop for a home.I think beyond just shopping for a home, you need to take a look at your website and say, what else might I want people to do and how can I use that same simple format. Make it so easy that it's not about how much can I say here? How much can I provide? It's "What's the one thing that people need to know now so that they'll take the next step?"In our noisy, cluttered world, there are so many information avenues coming at people that they're inundated. And if someone shows up to your website and in five seconds can't identify what you do or they can't get clarity on your message before they have to scroll, they're gone. They're gone.So I would encourage you to go look at your website today. This is the call to action for everybody listening. Go look at your website. Try to the best of your ability to pretend like this is the first time you're going there in five seconds try and identify what it is that you do and what makes you different from every other real estate agent out there. And my guess is that for some of you, you're going to have a hard time because you've been so excited to create this big flowery site with so many options that people cannot come to that conclusion in five seconds and they have to scroll to really figure out what makes you different and/or your website looks like so many other websites that it's just noise. You're a commodity. And so again, clarity is everything.What, what I'm reminding myself through this process is what is the one thing that people need to know that hooks them, that makes them want to learn more? Think of your website as a resume. When you create a resume, for example. Let's say you're searching for a new job and you create a resume. The purpose of that resume is not to get you the job. The purpose of that resume is to get you the interview and then the interview gets you the job. And so my question to you is, is your website trying to be the interview or is your website trying to be what it's meant to be? Which is the resume. It's supposed to be this thing that gets you in connection with your ideal people. Don't try and turn your website into the one on one conversation with people. Keep your website what it's designed for, which is to help people take one more step that gets them in communication with you, that gets them to accept one more offering from you. Maybe it encourages them to get on a Webinar or to reach out to you or give you their contact info. But again, keep it super simple. That's what people want today. They want simplicity. Yes, they want content, but they want it delivered in a very simple format. So anyway, thoughts, ramblings from me about clarity in this noisy world--the less we can say and the more clear the message can be, the better. Have a great day.

Welcome to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm excited to be broadcasting this week from Kona, Hawaii. That's how committed I am to this audience and really, this passion project for me of delivering value to real estate agents. So, I apologize for any poor a bandwidth issues out here from this rock in the middle of the sea. The topic I want to talk about is this: YouTube advertising, number one, "Why would you do it?" And number two, "How hard is it?" So, I have with me today, Jackson Wilkey with NextHome Realty Group. Jackson is a great real estate agent and really forward thinking when it comes to the digital space. He and Jesse Dau, if you're in the Portland area, you've probably seen them for sure. They've developed a FB group called Digital Mayor Now, which I'm going to really encourage you to go check out. I'm learning things from it every day. They're fantastic guys. And so today, Jackson, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, man.Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here.So let's talk about this YouTube. And I'm gonna come at you a little bit. I want you to defend this because, I'm a guy that does business by referral. I'm very relational and, you're telling me that I should take some of the money that I may be spending on my sphere, or maybe not, maybe you're saying you should come up with new money to advertise on Youtube. So first of all, let's talk about why would somebody do this? What is the point of advertising on Youtube?Well, YouTube is obviously owned by Google now, as everybody knows. And if you don't, Google owns YouTube. So whenever you're searching anything on Google, they're really trying to push videos upfront, which I actually saw the other day, they were actually putting some Facebook videos up there too. It's crazy, but interesting. I think living in the youtube space that video never goes anywhere. It's there forever. And if you can start really pinpointing with SEO and keyword optimization, things people are searching, your stuff is going to really start rising to the top. Because competing with blogs these days is impossible. There's billions of blogs. So, you know, having that video available is going to help bring you to the first page. And Google and YouTube are super cheap right now. I mean it's super, super cheap because I think it's a really tough thing to learn, but once once you get it, um, and, and in our group, I teach exactly how to do it. You can really start getting in front of a lot of people.Okay. So let's, let's go back to this. Let's say that I'm a real estate agent in Portland, Oregon or Sacramento, California or Los Angeles. And let's say again that I, I want to do business by referral. Does that still make sense or does this really just work for someone who is buying leads and is doing business more via cold market prospecting?It's funny because you're going to get a guy who cold calls and feels that's the only way you should do business. And you get a guy who, you know, door knock. So, I'm a video guy. I'm doing videos every day. To me I feel it's so important. We are competing not against other real estate agents in this community. We're we're competing against these huge names, the Redfins, the Opendoors. I mean they're not going away. And I see that as my, my competitor, not these local real estate agents. So I've got to get out there ahead of everybody else. And there's 5 billion videos being watched on Google or on YouTube a day. And so people are living in that space and Google is ranking those videos. I feel if you're not in those spaces, you could get washed away because even your closest friends are starting to see these, Redfin's every day and the Opendoors. My whole premise behind it is just I get out to the masses like really quick, really cheap and I'm getting better at the call to action for these people to start clicking on these ads.Okay. So I get your point of what you said. Yes. Redfin, Opendoor these companies are starting to infiltrate even our databases. That makes sense to me. Let's say that I've got $30 and I've got someone who's given me 10 referrals over the past three years. Does it make sense to take that $30 that I could go buy a book that is very centered towards what that person cares about and they've given me referrals and instead put it in YouTube to just get in front of a bunch of strangers?! Defend that a little bit.Okay. And I should have answered that at the start. Here's the thing. I don't know how many people really delve into doing videos. What I would say to that is take that $30 and brand yourself, like you build your brand, take your phone and do a very personal video to that person. I'm starting, I've done that to you know, open house clients or past clients and you will not believe the response you get. It's better than going and giving them a book. They can't believe that you actually shot them a video. It's a very emotional thing that you've done for them. So I would say them a really personal vi

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate show. I'm excited to be here today in kind of in a unique setting underneath an airplane, apparently. I just saw that. I'm with my productivity coach Jay Puppo. Jay, thanks for being willing to do this--love this guy. He's become a very dear friend of mine and I thought it'd be interesting today, to have this broadcast come from Jay and my coaching session. I think any time you're being coached, it is essential to not just look at the business. I was taught once that if your personal life ends up in shambles, it will act as an anchor to the rest of your business goals. It will really slow you down. So I know that some of the first questions that Jay asks me when we sit down in a productivity coaching meeting is how are things? How's life? How's the family? How's your health--things that he covers, areas that aren't necessarily business--and then we dig into business. I know that I feel strongly that that's by intention, by design--one because we've got a personal relationship, a friendship, a deep friendship. But in addition to that, it's all part of the big picture.It's definitely part of the big picture. You know, one of the things I love about Mr Keller's book, the ONE Thing is that he starts out by talking about the most important thing, which is your spiritual life. You just have to have a center--this whole thing. And so he says, start with your spiritual life, then think about your body, then think about your key relationships and the very last thing you think about is money, right? Yeah. So you have to start with the core.I love that. Jay and I were talking in advance of this and there's really seven key areas of life that we focus on that Jay holds me accountable to. And we would encourage, I guess an invitation for everybody here is that habits are the fastest way to change your life. And so, we would encourage, or an invitation, as you think about this concept that if you really want to increase your business, you're going to have to be a better person. You're going to have to improve habits outside of just your business life, otherwise they won't be sustainable. And so we have an invitation, that we want to talk about, which is to take one step forward with something non business related. It's the weekend, and now although many of my real estate agent clients will be working part of the time, but not all the time, hopefully. Jay, what advice would you have for somebody if they're like, "You know, I really want to change either a health habit or relationship habit or a spiritual habit." What advice would you give them?Yeah, I would encourage you and anybody who might be watching to think about the focusing question. Mr. Keller says, what's the one thing? So we're looking for one small thing. What's the one thing that I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. I've have been thinking about this. You know, this vessel that I live in called my body and how do I make it healthier? How do I make it stronger? And you know, you can think of a million different things like: eat better, and I have got to go to the gym for 900 hours a day and I have got to do this and I have got to do that. It becomes overwhelming and you do what?Nothing.Nothing--Yep. And so this weekend I'm committing, live to your audience and to you, that I am increasing my water intake.Cool.Because I've noticed that my skin's a little bit dry or I noticed that my mouth is a little bit dry or I've noticed I'm a little bit low energy and probably I've had too much caffeine this week. So my goal is 100 hundred ounces of water over the weekend, which is way more water than I normally drink. And so we're not trying to change the world overnight, we're just trying to look for that one little habit that you can do that will have massive impact.I love it. And so I would invite you: Is it your health? Is it your spiritual life? If it's spiritual, maybe it's say a prayer. Maybe it's go to church. If you're not religious in any way, maybe it's go give service. Go find someone to serve and help and tap into that deeper purpose, whatever that looks like for you.Or have gratitude.I like that.You know, just just being thankful. One of the things I teach my clients is when you're sitting in the car and you hit a red light, that's the universe's signal to you to take a timeout and look around and say, "What am I thankful for?" And use this phrase, go like this, "I am grateful for..." And look around you and say, for example, "Man, that tree, I'm grateful. That's a beautiful tree. Holy Cow. I'm grateful for that tree." "I'm truly grateful for the stop sign because it made sure that nobody crashed into me." Just all of the things that you can be grateful for. I promise you, if you get to five, your whole attitude, your whole day will be different. Just be grateful.Man--powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that, Jay, again, let's put this into action, right? It's one th

So, you hit the nail on the head. You know, over 80% of the businesses that I run into are exactly like what you mentioned. I was exactly like what you mentioned, very entrepreneurial out there doing a lot of the business and not focusing on the back end of this and I got myself in trouble that way and I had that paradigm shift. So yeah. For me and the businesses that I work with it is paying attention to your numbers and that can mean a lot of different things depending on who you're talking to. For me, I pay attention to where my business comes from. It comes from who were my best referral sources. Is it different networking groups. Is it websites? Is it something else, etc. Figuring out where my new clients are coming from, figuring out if they have worked with me over time and things like that. The second thing I track when it comes to my numbers is that I'm also revenue based. I pay attention to what types of services. For us, it's controller work or consulting or bookkeeping. And is it a bookkeeping cleanup or bookkeeping maintenance or is it some of the other ancillary services. For real estate agents, is it buying, selling, referral? Is it commercial or residential? You can break this down quite a bit as far as where the business comes from. Does it come from Zillow? Did it come from referral? Did it come from a past client? Things like that. So splitting revenue is a big one. The other part of paying attention to your numbers is simple budgeting, figuring out and making a plan. So number one thing that has helped our business grow is that we do everything in our business with intentionality. We don't do anything by chance. If you're doing something in your business, you should know why you're doing it. There's the old turkey or the old Christmas ham analogy where the girl asked her, mom, "Why do we cut the ends off the ham?" He says, "Well, I don't know. We've always done it that way." So they go talk to mom, dad and grandma and they say, "Well, you know, my mom always did that and let's go ask her if she's around." She says, "Oh, well, when I was growing up, the pan was too small. So my mom used to always cut off the ends." So it went through four generations and we keep doing the same thing over and over, and we don't know why. So, paying attention to why you're doing things, which for me is I follow that up with all of my spending. So we create a spending plan, we figure out our budgets, and that doesn't mean we always stick to it, but we know what our plan was. So now I can see what am I spending on advertising per listing. What am I spending for meals or client acquisition, things like that. These tools and managing that money wisely gives you more. At the end, you're managing it better. So it, it helps when you're paying attention to your numbers. You're not driving blind, you're not going somewhere, you haven't gone without a map or a GPS. You're paying attention to this regularly. So those two things, at the base level for taxes, keep things separated. On the other level, pay attention to your numbers and figuring out what those numbers are and acting with intentionality. Those are the two biggest things that I've found for any business, but especially real estate. Perfect. I love it. So, again, keep things separate and then also know your numbers and you gave us some great examples there of what the possibilities are with that. You could actually say, this past year I earned this much from my sphere and I spent this much on my sphere, therefore my ROI on my sphere is 'X'. Boy, I ought to spend more on my sphere or grow my sphere further.

And then what I recommend is that this is the content strategy. This is something you can do whether you're you're 18 and freshly licensed or whether you're 70 and been in the business for 50 years. So I would recommend starting off with what is the one type of type of niche in your industry that you love. So let's talk real estate. Let's talk luxury real estate. If you love luxury real estate, they need to start saying no to the mobile homes. You have to actually define your lane, which requires saying no to the wrong thing. And a lot of people say, "Well I have to eat this month." This is a personal opinion, but I'd rather go to the plasma center and be in my lane then selling out. Because the more yeses you say to the wrong thing, the more you repel the right thing. Okay, and that that becomes a downward spiral. I would agree with that wholeheartedly. There was a Steve jobs quote that said, "For every yes, there were a thousand no's." At some point you have to take a stand for who you are and who you want to serve. And I know a repellent for people is that, if for example, you want to be luxury and they see you list a home that's far from luxury, in their mind you're actually not who you say you are. Yet. It doesn't mean that someone on your team can't service that person. Doesn't mean that you, if you get a referral from a close partner, you don't help them, but maybe your marketing looks different. You may just need to learn to say no and refer it out. That's probably a better strategy because with every yes, there's an opportunity cost. I've learned for myself that every time I'm meeting with an agent, that takes up space, and so that better be a good meeting. It better be a productive meeting and not all agents are productive. And so I have to be very careful with whom I choose to work with because there's an opportunity cost to that. I could be sitting in meeting with somebody and it takes the same hour to meet with somebody that will close 150 homes this year, compared to someone who will close four this year. Same hour, but the result is very, very different. And typically the one that's closing 150 they hear my value offering different and better. And so there's this whole added layer of that's actually even a better fit. It's not even just the opportunity costs. It's actually a better fit for not just who I want to serve, but who I can serve. Insurance is where I spend a lot of time doing coaching and training and the differences is insurance agents are fishermen, real estate agents are whale hunters. You could get a deal as a real estate agent and pay your bills for three months. You will die as an insurance agent on that strategy. If you get one sale every three months, like you will literally die, you will starve to death. And so it's a different market. We have to get more deals every month in the insurance world. But it's still the same. I want to build that luxury brand and you have to take a deal in let's say a starter home to pay your bills--take it, but don't, don't make it public. Obviously you have to promote the house to sell it, but like don't celebrate it. Celebrate the luxury homes. Put that out there, make that your brand, communicate that. So this is a content strategy. Once you've defined your lane, you know what you want to stand for, the first thing that you post regularly, 33% of your content should be about the one thing that if you could do this for the rest of your career would make you just ecstatic. If that's luxury real estate, then that's the one thing that you talk about. The next thing is, because there's three parts to this, the next thing is what's the one thing that you absolutely need as a human being to function. To some people that's faith, to some people that's family. So if you have a god that you worship, if you have a family that you fight for every day, what is that one thing? Your "why" that you need this as a human being. That needs to be something that you share. You have to share. If you want to be successful in 2019 and you'll hear this from anybody, If you watch anything from any, Agent 2021 influencer or marketers sharing the reality of the situation is that if you want to survive longterm, you have to be willing to connect with people. Because if we're not willing to connect with people, and we're going to be them a digital avatar, then we're not going to be able to beat the big brands who have the big budgets, right? So we have to be vulnerable people. And so make your Facebook profile public. And if you've got pictures of your kids and you don't want to share those, make those friends only and that's fine. But for the most of you, make your profile public so people can share and connect. And then make every three posts, or 30% of your posts, about the one thing professionally that you love. Let's call that luxury real estate. The next thing is the one thing that you need as a human being, let's call that family, right? And then the third thing i

We've promised the audience to help them identify two blind spots. All of us have blind spots, right? And they're always more apparent in others. Meaning, it's always easier to spot someone else's blind spots than it is our own. Obviously. That's why they're called blind spots. Yeah. It's hard to see the picture when you're sitting in the frame. I like that. With the amount of transactions that you've done and the amount of agents that you've coached and taught and helped, there's a couple that probably stand out to you. Would you do me the favor and let's start with the first one. What's the first major blind spot that you think real estate agents struggle with? The first major blind spot when people get into real estate is they don't realize that they are actually tasked with running a business; That their own personal real estate activity is a business. And the minute that light bulb goes on for them, so many things change in terms of the way that they go about their day. They just see themselves as, "I'm a real estate agent." I don't know if they think that, well, they know it's not a job, but they don't quite realize that it actually is a business and can be run as a business. I love that you said that because it's true. I think they come in the business saying, "I want to learn how to sell real estate." And so they see themselves as, "I'm a real estate salesperson," just like maybe they used to sell appliances or cars or RVs "...but now I sell real estate." And even though there's this 1099 reality, I agree with you wholeheartedly that there's a little bit of a deficiency in realizing that "No, I'm actually a CEO. I'm actually a business owner," right? Yes, and the minute they start to realize that, one of the biggest things that changes is they start to think about being in business. A perfect example, I see so many agents, especially newer agents, but I see agents that have been doing this for a while. They'll meet someone, they'll get into a real estate conversation and that person expresses that they're not going to sell their house for probably two years. When their youngest kid graduates high school, they're going to downsize. And that kid is a sophomore and the real estate agent gets frustrated. They're like, "Oh, I keep talking about these great people, but this one's not for six months. That one's not for two years," or whatever their timeline is. The way that people initially respond is there they're not happy because they need a transaction. "I'm so frustrated. Nobody came to my open house today, right? Like nobody came...""...but they're not going to buy it until next year. "And they're just window shopping."The shift that happens when you think of yourself as a business owner is "Well I plan to be in business two years from now. I plan to be in business six months from now." So I'm not thinking about while, yes, I do need something to happen this weekend. I also know that I'm going to want to be in conversation and have a closing six months, two years from now, ten years from now. Because as a business you're looking the greater scheme of things. So anyone listening today who's in real estate and has been in real estate for more than six months, think about this. If six months ago you would have this mindset, what would this weekend look like for you?" You just got paid two years from now if you have the foresight to see it that way? Right. The way that I look at it when I'm talking with somebody who has an interest in buying or selling real estate is, I'm not so concerned with when that's going to happen. Is it going to be this weekend? Is it going to be this year? Is it going to be six months from now? I'm more interested in the fact that when they buy that house, I'm the one handing them their keys. Or when they sell a house, I'm the one putting my sign in their yard. As opposed to when exactly that happens. So that's the biggest mindset and there's a lot of other things when you start thinking of yourself as a business owner. It's helpful in terms of how you look at taxes and how I track things but the biggest impact on your bottom line is really keeping track of these people and being excited to talk to anybody about real estate that's going to be buying or selling at any point, whether it's tomorrow or next year or two years from now. It's almost as if one can say with the right perspective you're not buying for two years from now. That means I get two years to build a relationship with you and get in your referrals along the way. I have more time to have you as a forever client.Exactly. When someone expresses to me that they're going to buy or sell at any point and my goal is that when they're ready, I'm their obvious choice. Fantastic. I love it. Let's move on to the second blind spot. What is another major blind spot that you see agents have that we can help with today? Well, it dovetails nicely with what we were just discussing. So, the second biggest blind spot is the job of a

Awesome. So one of the videos that I was most compelled by, and I've seen you doing videos where you're setting up these mega open houses that you guys do. One that I thought that was really compelling and it endeared me to your cause and your mission and what you're doing was you sitting on some bleachers that must have been at a nearby high school near to one of the homes where you were at, included some great drone photography was included and it was, you speaking from the heart about why you're at where you're at, why you do what you do and I feel like you displayed that you're a good storyteller. At the end of the day people want to work with people they know, like, and trust. They want to work with people with whom there's an emotional connection, not just a logical one. And in that moment I saw you demonstrating the skills that every real estate agent that I work with or that I teach and train through through Think Bigger Real Estate needs to have this skillset. It's not just about being a master of the market, it's not just about being a master of buyers and sellers scripts, you actually need to emotionally connect with people because it's such an emotional purchase. It's such an important thing for people. Talk us through a little bit, when you're creating a story, what does that look like? Yeah, those are great points. And the video you're talking about is on Superbowl Sunday when I first did that interview and then it snowed the next morning. So if you do go and watch it, it's a combination of two different days. My thought process, two separate things that why video and to your point it is so important for our audience to know what makes us different. There's so much competition out there and we need to get comfortable in communicating it. And if you're struggling with that, you've got to dig into the passion of why you're in this industry and why you're doing the job within this industry. So for me it's home loans and what makes me different. So my clients come to me for the trust, the communication and the experience and the fact that every time they're working with me they are truly treated like family. So, that's something that is extremely important to me when it comes to just the basics of any video. Some of the things I focus on, and it doesn't always happen naturally, but hopefully some sort of conflict. And then there's a resolution. So it just on the day to day stuff like at the open house, something that's super compelling to watch as a story is what are some challenges? We've all been a little late to getting to an open house. So it's like how am I going to get all of these signs, this, that set up unlocked the foot things. And that's super compelling to watch because it's real. It's not just a picture of the house, everybody's seen that, but people then could see how you handle stress and the fact that this open house is extremely important. So that that's if it aligns perfectly, that conflict resolution timeline is really nice. Some simpler stuff, because that doesn't happen all the time. So, I focus on two main things: have I done this before? In other words, Am I repeating what I've already done in the past and is it better than the last thing I did? Now I can't always hit the mark on both of those. But if I do think in those terms, the trajectory of where I'm going is in a great direction. So some of the focuses for me there.

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. This is Justin Stoddart, your host and I'm really excited to be here tonight in Nashville, Tennessee at Funnel Hacking Live with a good friend of mine Pedro Adao. I even said it with a Portuguese accent.Wow, I wasn't expecting that. Tell them why you know that. So, I speak Portuguese. In fact, you're probably my best use of that for the past 20 years, meaning, I haven't used my Portuguese much at all. So this is going to be fun. He has good Portuguese enunciation. I was pleasantly surprised. He said my name right. It's very hard. It's a very hard name to say. Beautiful Man. So this guy, very, very successful financial planner and has achieved at some of the highest levels in his industry. He's also built a movement of Christian entrepreneurs. Maybe some of them in fact, who I've seen that have liked your page. You have some fans in Portland, Oregon. 100x Academy has hit Portland. Yes, 100x Academy. If you don't know what that is go take a look at it. Ben Rose, he was the guy in my area that I remember that had liked your page. Yeah, he's a videographer. He might be watching this and if not, I'm tagging him in this video. So Pedro, I'm going to talk tonight about financial planners and real estate agents. I work all day, every day with real estate agents, helping them have better businesses and better lives. And this guy, again succeeds at a really high level as a financial planner and as we began to talk, we realized that there's some commonalities, some common struggles and woes that real estate agents and financial planners face and some potential opportunities that you and I are talking about helping them to explore. Honestly, for me it makes no sense. This is like one of, probably the most under underutilized potential relationships. I know there's BNI and other networking type concepts, but like for real, if you're a Realtor, instead of having to go beg for leads from your mortgage lender, which if you have a lender that will do that--amazing. Alright, I mean that's, obviously still worth pursuing but also having two or three life insurance agents. Then you can network with and you can send them a lead, and guys, an insurance agent, a good insurance agent is in someone's home two, three, four, five times a week! And, and these are people, they obviously own a home or are looking to and they obviously met with their life insurance agent, which means they have some level of wherewithal. They love their family and care about their family and this is like ideal for a Realtor. I want to expound upon that. You think about when a life insurance agent is inside a home, it's typically when they're getting married, when they're having a new baby, when maybe they are getting ready to retire, all of which are triggers for real estate agents to say, Hey, somebody might be moving here. You're adding a baby to the house, you're getting married, you're thinking about life insurance and you're probably also thinking about a new home. Like there's often like a perfect connection here in that they need both of you at the same time. And what's happening now is there's a big industry called mortgage protection. Mortgage protection is a whole industry that the life insurance industry has created on the back of loan activity. There are life insurance policy companies that send direct mail to these homes offering mortgage protection. I get them like weekly probably. Okay. Hey, if something happens and you can't pay off your mortgage insurance. Most Realtors out there might not not know this, but most of these mortgage protection offers, they're not great plans. These are not awesome. Yeah. This is basically overpriced term insurance. So if you're a Realtor and you care about your client, if you sell them a home, what I would do is as they move, tell them, "Hey, by the way, you're going to get hit with direct mail for this thing called mortgage protection. Don't do that. Ignore those letters. I actually have so-and-so, he's an expert here in town. He'll go over all the options for you and get you the best product for you at the best possible prices." Because if you don't do that, your homeowner, is was going to go to the mail, open the letter--and this mail is very deceiving, these companies make their direct mail look like it's from a Wells Fargo or look like it's from Chase Bank. They literally make your mail look like it's from the lender. "Attention homeowner in regards to your mortgage in regards to your loan amount..." They make it look like it's the lender and in small print at the bottom it says "Not the Lender", but most homeowners are going to submit this form, which becomes a lead for the insurance company. They literally thought they had to fill it out. That's how deceptive this industry is, so if you're a Realtor or a loan officer, why would you not take one minute to give a heads up to your client and then actually refer them to an integral, high quality insuranc

Hey, welcome back to Think Bigger Real Estate. I'm excited to be here today with someone who I've known for a long time, my brother Jeremy. Hey there. Thanks for letting me twist your arm to come on the show today.It took some work but happy to be here.Yeah, he's been a very close friend and a mentor of mine for a long time--a very bright individual. And tell the audience real quick what you're up to now.Yeah, I have a very entrepreneurial background, but I've spent the last three years working for a company called Andersen Windows and Doors and I'm actually headed to San Diego. We're opening a new division down there, so I'm going to help open that up and get things up and going down there.You will be managing a sales team of how many people do you think?Well, we're going to grow. We're starting with zero, but I've hired six so far and we'll be at probably 20 by the end of the year. We'll probably have a team of 30 sales people by the middle to the end of next year.Awesome. Yeah. One of the top producers in the country. So, we're here to talk about some things that we're passionate about and it has been helpful for us and we really think it applies directly to real estate agents in helping them grow their businesses. So we're here at a conference and we are learning a lot.So the three things that we want to point out that are central for real estate agent to have a better 2019 than their 2018 is TO LEARN. What are some of the ways that you learn the best?I think it's a good question. We were having this conversation and it's interesting, we're already almost two months into the year and when you get out of town, it gives you a chance to look at the year you're having and say, "Okay, where am I at?" And where are my habits are my practices. What am I doing? Am I in a better spot than last year? And I certainly think that the learning component is huge. It makes a huge impact on where you're at and the direction you're going. For me, I, I think there's a combination of things. I end up spending a lot of time in the car and so naturally I have Audible and I, try and be listen to something good at all times. We're obviously at a conference now where there's huge value in that and we are learning from bright people. Someone that would go out and spend enough money to go out of town and learn is typically a person that you want to hang out with and learn from. So between books and podcasts obviously are great and what I spend most of my time on.Yeah, for me it's the same. I try and read a book a month and really go through it and even go back and listen to it. So for me it's books and podcasts, of which I have a few favorites. Hopefully the Think Bigger Real Estate Show is on your list. A bit of a plug, or shameless self promotion right there. I would also add in conferences. This past week, I've been at two really significant conferences for me and so I appreciate you pointing that out. You do learn differently when you're out of the whirlwind, right? When you're learning in your city, in your environment, it's hard sometimes to really get to the right mindset, but when you're here to a new spot, you tend to buy-in at a higher level.I think it's distracted right? When you're at home it's, there's so many distractions with work and family and things pointing different directions. Getting out of town allows you to really immerse deep into a topic and work to become an expert at that. And maybe just as importantly some time in the evenings to reflect on where you're at and how to implement some of these strategies in your life. You know, I've set a goal to try and go to one a quarter and as I've done that at certain times of my life, I see great growth. I don't know if it's what I'm learning or the chance that it gives me to reset and organize myself going forward, but it's probably a combination of both.So point number two in addition to LEARNING is the NETWORKS YOU BUILD. I've been surrounded for the past week with like-minded people that are smarter than me, that are further down the path that I want to be on, and they're able to teach me. Last night we bumped into a friend of mine who is an architect who has built some really cool things in addition to just being an architect. And so it was fun for me to pick his brain and say, what advice would you give me here? There's so much value in having people around you, not just learning from books and podcasts, but also real people you can talk to and mastermind with. Tell me Jeremy, how have you found to best build a powerful network?Well, I think the challenge is we are very, very busy in our daily lives and so you end up living a life that's fairly reactionary and you end up surrounding yourself with the people that are the easiest to hang out with. Whether they live by you or they're old friends or whatever, and we've all heard the adage that you end up making as much as the average of the five people we align ourselves with. To get where you want to go, you've

Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm here in the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee at a digital marketing conference, learning some amazing things and I just happened to bump into one of my longtime friends Enoch Sears. He is an architect that actually has a digital media company in which he gives really great resources, consulting and coaching to architecture firms. First of all, thank you for taking a few minutes this late at night. It's super late where we're at, almost midnight, but this guy keeps it going. We just keep on rolling; No stopping. We're at this conference and they brought in the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, which is an operation that goes in, a bunch of bad dudes, former Navy Seals, Army Rangers and Homeland Security Officers, that go in and bust up human trafficking rings in other countries. Were you impressed by the presentation?Blown away--blown away. I mean, I'm a big fan of Navy Seals. The operator mentality, everything they do, I mean, a lot of the guys that are involved in those operations, you know, left the navy seals, left the rangers and now are doing something like that with their lives is... It does make me proud to be an American, but not just Americans. It makes me proud to be a citizen of the world that cares about other people. And man, it was just very inspiring. So the point, I guess, the message that I would hope that at least that I'm taking away from this is, the real estate industry is a really powerful industry. I think sometimes we don't think big enough and we think in terms of what does my family need, and that's it. And so we don't get really disciplined and good enough to really go bigger. And, and to think that for $2,500, yes that's the cost to actually bring someone out of sex slavery--a child out of sex slavery--and to rehabilitate them to where they have the opportunity to have a good life. If you think about the frivolous things that we spend $2,500 on in the course of a year. I don't know if that thought went through your mind at all. It is now, let's put it that way. It is now. But this, this concept of how grateful I am to be part of such a great industry and I hope that maybe all of us start to think a little bit bigger and start to think about growing beyond just what we need and realize that there are some children in some really bad situations in the world right now and that finding great organizations like Operation Underground Railroad that can lift them out, is a powerful thing. Any other thoughts from you? Yeah, just, I was really struck by the fact that everyone has a part to play, right? So I'm not an ex Navy Seal. I could never survive even the most basic Navy Seal training. But what I do as a businessman, what I do as an entrepreneur, it contributes in a way. So I think the best thing we can do that I was having as I watched that amazing movie premier that we just got to see, and to see the founder, and being here at this marketing conference, is that we all have a part to play. We should all do our best to do it. Not only to do just mediocre, but excel at what we're doing and realize that it's important. Yeah. Very, very important. And if we just get by with mediocre, we will still live, we'll probably still be fine, but there are people out there whose lives could be touched if we actually put in the effort to be great at it. And it's almost like what Grant Cardone says: "It's our duty and our obligation to have massive success", so that we can not necessarily increase our own lifestyle, although that's one of the benefits of it, but more importantly because of the good that money can do. You can look them up online, Operation Underground Railroad, they have the trailer on there. It's heart wrenching. I was thinking about, I don't even know if my wife would even want to watch it because it, it is disturbing to see the reality of what's happening in this world. But at the same time it is heart warming to see the rescue and the guy who's leading it, Tim Ballard, who we just saw, he premiered the movie, it started as an idea in his head and he relies exclusively on donations. So it's people like you and I who are willing to say that this is an important cause and I believe in Russell Brunson who's leading this conference, getting everyone together to contribute to that cause. So whether you contribute to that cause or something else, you're making an impact. And I know Justin, here, my buddy has been doing that for a long time.Thank you, Enoch, Sears. For our audience, if they know of any architects that are great practitioners but maybe could use some help on the business side, how would people get in touch with you? Meaning where would people find your courses.I would say just to have them search for the Business of Architecture on iTunes. And actually, they might have already heard of it so you can use it as a conversation starter. I love it. The business of architecture. Find his podcast on iT

I've mentioned that the real estate industry is being disrupted. That's right here. That's not hype. That's reality. Yeah. And I've always seen AI as being a real threat to the industry. This weekend, my, my mindset shifted and I started to see that if properly gone about, AI doesn't have to be a threat. It can be the most powerful leverage tool to empower great agents to continue to be well paid and not to be paid like baristas or Uber drivers. But to be paid as they are, but by adding more value. And that's always what I've thought is if agents are going to continue to get paid what they get paid, they're going to have to add more value. And today, this weekend, I had this mindset shift that AI is not the thing that's going to cause them to be marginalized and have their margins compressed, it's going to be the thing that allows them to add more value.Cool. Well, right in the old story of the Luddites, right? Which is now just a word that means somebody who is against technology. But the Luddites were a group of people who smashed weaving looms. They were actually a group of people and it was like, oh, those looms are taking our jobs of weaving cloth together.Oh, I haven't heard this story. Maybe some of you haven't either. YYeah. So that's where the term luddite comes from. If you've ever heard that term before. And what we can't do is say, oh, the machines are going to beat us and I need to somehow be against the machines. It's where I'm going to refuse to participate. Instead it's like, wait, how can this machine make my life better? And the reality is there's so many of us that are living with machines that make our lives better, right? And it doesn't have to be high tech. I mean, the shovel made people's lives easier. Before you were using a stick and now you know, my smartphone makes my life better. And, and here's the other interesting thing is I think people are afraid of technology because they think, oh, I have to be tech savvy. But what Apple taught us, what the smartphone taught us is, I don't understand how my phone works. Do you understand how your phone works?No idea at all.Right? I don't know how my car works anymore either. And yet I use my car, I use my iPhone? And so it's simply a matter of being willing to commit to the process of learning how to use the technology and then allow the technology to enhance what you already are. So, hey, guess what, I've got birthday reminders in my phone. It actually makes me a better friend and son and brother because I remember my people's birthdays and so the technology makes me a better human being and I have become acutely aware of it.I mean some of the technology that's being being rolled out in the real estate industry now is similar to why you and I love Amazon. But the reality is your Amazon is different than my Amazon. You go to Amazon, you get a certain experience. I go to Amazon, I get a different experience. We both love it. Same thing with Netflix. And what I realized is that agetns have tried to do that for a long time and that's why they've worked their absolute brains out to try and create a customized experience for their clients. And now using artificial intelligence, they have the ability to offer a very customized experience at scale. And not have to be managing spreadsheets constantly to make it happen.Yeah. That's a powerful concept. Well, a real simple example of that, right? A good real estate agent will say, Hey Josh, when you're looking to buy a home in the next 30 days, now you've really risen to the top for me as somebody I need to be paying attention to. So now I go in and check out our hot sheets once a day to see if there's any new listings that match your criteria. But that's a highly labor intensive practice and it's a very human practice, so it's just going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort to send you what you need. Yeah, but here's the thing, you're not going to move right now. You might not be moving, looking for a year or two years, five years, but you like looking at houses. Who doesn't? Right? It's like one of the best forms of voyeurism, I'm just looking at other people's houses and you, so we do that, right? We're looking at houses were sort of window shopping for houses, but I can't listen if you're five years out, I can't do that.Yeah, I'd go broke. Honestly, if I'm five years out, I'm less interested in houses that I am if I'm three years or three months out. Absolutely. You're less relevant to me in that conversation.And by the way, I've got a huge ramp up period to get to know you and what your preferences actually are in the midst of that, right? Unless I've had this machine sitting on your shoulder for five years, that every time you go in and look at how every time you drive by an open house and you open up your phone and go, Hey, what's going on with that one? And every time you go in and be like, man, I like, I like granite counter tops better than, than Corian counter tops, you know? And I like,

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate show. I'm actually very excited to need to talk about something that I'm obviously passionate about because you hear from me a lot when it comes to video. My personal belief is that your clients, need to be hearing from you a lot through video. I know for a lot of people that's very daunting and a you get stuck in, “I don't like how I look. I don’t like how I sound. I don't know what I'm going to say.” The reality is those really shouldn't be issues at all and I'm here to help you with that. I've got with me, Shane Ryan, with BombBomb. Many of you who know BombBomb know that it's a big time solution for real estate agents in helping them really take their video game to the next level. Shane has a couple of tips that are going to help you get started to not overthink it, but just very simple things to get you in action. The first thing is you can't change the way you look or sound. So the fact that you may be scared to be on video, should not be a thing. The thing to remember is that we don't want to boil the ocean. There’s Facebook live, there's Instagram live, there's YouTube and all these other avenues where you could be using video. Choose one and get consistent with that. Maybe that's birthdays, or anniversaries starting with just your repeat and referral business. Start with the people that already know, like, and trust you.This will help you gain your confidence so that you can start doing more of the advanced things that we talk about all the time. I just want to put an exclamation point behind what he said.oftentimes, there are so many things you could do with video. Just pick one thing and I would suggest with people that already know you, like you and trust you and do a one-to-one video. You can do it from your phone and send it via text or even a better solution is to check out BombBomb. The thing that we have found so often, it's just starting with the understanding that people matter, right? Are spoken here is we believe in you when you believe in your clients, and so when you're reaching out to them and you're saying simple things like happy birthday, or I remembered they just got back from vacation and just want to see how it went. Or, the next step in this scenario would be to let them know that you want to hear all about it over coffee. You're rehumanizing your business.That way when you interact, it's no longer transactional. It's more about them and that's a big deal. The second point is that you need them to be the hero. You can't allow yourself to try and be the hero. I went to a training just recently in Columbia, South Carolina, and I asked all the agents, I said, raise your hand if you believe you're the hero for your client, and a 95% raised their hands. And frankly, you shouldn’t be. Your clients want to be the hero in their story. They want you to be the guide. The guide is going to stay in people's lives. Everyone wants to be their own hero and so for you guys, that's what you need to start focusing on how do you provide value so that you're helping them with their story. We’ve ot a question here from Elizabeth Davidson, a friend and client of mine. She asks:How often should you post videos on social media? Shane- I think you start with maybe once a week I work in video and I think you can do it too much. And I think that was a great question because what happens is that if you do it too much and you're not providing value, then they're going to start unfollowing you. But again, with that, I'll put a little bit of a caveat because you do a lot of videos every single day, but if it's valuable, you watch, you tune in, you're tuning in right now at seven 30 in the morning. And so if you can do that every single time that you get on air, if you're providing value, you're not just talking about the weather or something like that, providing value for people, they're going to tune in and you can continue to do those things. Justin- that was going to be my point. To get online, just to get online and be heard, I don't think that’s a good strategy. If you have something specific to deliver what you know that has helped people, then do it. I would say that most people do video too infrequently. Can you overdo it? Sure. If you're not delivering value, absolutely 100%. But if you are delivering value, I think sometimes we think that everybody in our network is going to see everything we post. And it's just not true. Facebook algorithms and others, they favor the frequent, they favor the content creators. And so even if you think people don't want to hear from me every day of the week, guess what—they won’t! Even if you post it everyday of the week, they might see it once or twice a week. Yeah. So I wouldn't overthink that part of it. What I would dig into, which is what Shane's talking about is, how do I provide value? Justin- And I think a great, a great way to do that is when you get a really solid question from one of your clients, you ans

Marketing is important for marketing properties and the owners care about that. But when it comes to getting business for me it's, I'll give like almost all credit to prospecting. Is that right? Jordan? Did I understand you correctly? Yeah, I mean, we're a prospect based team and we have been for a long time. I've, you know, I believe in marketing. I, it's something I will, I like to look good and something I like to do.Ultimately earning business, every transaction that we get, it's because we could go out and we get it. I would say that we're prospecting based, marketing enhanced and that's been the key to success for years. Many think, as long as I'm really good at marketing, I'm going to have all the business that I want. And what I hear you saying is that could be a fallacy depending upon your business type and model. But if you want to get business quickly now, today and actually improve your 2019, you're going to have to go hand to hand combat. You're gonna have to go talk to people. I believe when I first got into real estate, I wanted to spend a bunch of money, you know, and you know, radio and marketing and flyers and postcards and every, and database mailings and you're sitting there and you're waiting for it.Earlier in my career I had gotten connected with Mike Ferry and I really enjoyed Mike. I was very involved with him and I liked the idea with Mike was that instead of spending money in waiting for business to come to me, I go out and get it. The marketing can be really great. It's great to have them in Luxury Home Magazine. It's a way of getting in the door. It's part of an elite, a pre-listing package to get us in the door and earn that business. But at the end of the day, we win that business because we’re great at scripts. We know what to say and how to say it and we've called hundreds and thousands of people.I don't see anybody having a solid career based on marketing. It really, it really needs to be, you need to have earned that database and earn that. Even if your work a database, if you're not calling expireds and cancels, you still need to prospect your database. I know brokers that are doing 50 to 100 million dollars of real estate and some you've had on your show probably and they're calling, they're still calling. They're calling every day. They're calling now. It might be, hey, how's your kids birthday? Or how was your wife's anniversary? Or whatever. They're calling and having those relationships, but they're consistently staying in front of those. It's a schedule, right? It's following that schedule. Look, if you want to have more business, you're going to have to talk to human beings, right? At end of the day, if you want the real estate business, they're going to want to actually have a conversation with somebody. And the more of those conversations that you can be in on a daily basis, naturally with the right scripts and the right offering, you're going to be getting more real estate transactions. Let's talk about failing to schedule. Jordan, I know that's one of the key value propositions to your team, right? Last year you close 112 transactions, you've got 13 people on your team, all of them are newly licensed minus you, right? I've got a couple of staff and the rest are new agents. We just hired somebody who got licensed in May and her first 90 days she did six transactions. She'll do 12, 15 million next year--no problem. So what you're saying is that the differentiator, is you actually have and hold them to a schedule, right? And in the middle of that schedule is contacting people. I tend to lean towards expires and cancels cause it's my bread and butter. But despite that my business has become more database. We’re now almost at 30 to 40%. The goal this year is to get 50% of our business from the database.Again, people want to spend a bunch of money on marketing and they want to spend the money and hope that they don't have to do the work. And the thing is, even if you spend five, 10, $20,000 a month on leads, you have to call those people and you get to call them for years. But again, the gold is in the schedule. Everyone is here at 8 am. Everyone does three hours of log Mojo time, which means that they have to be dialing for 3 hours, not just sitting in front of a phone. They click pause, it stops. We follow that religiously. We have script training every morning. We have team meetings, we have huddle ups. It's like getting a master's degree in real estate so that we can get our agents into production very quickly. Their number one thing is getting them into a 200 person database as quickly as possible--reaching out to those people. We also do quarterly events, like OMSI, the zoo or Christmas trees or whatever, and inviting people to that. We then follow up with the 20,000 people that we have leads paid for leads hundreds of thousands of dollars with the leads that you have to call 30, 40, 50, 60 times. Right? So that marketing can be great, but it's, it's like dot. E

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My fellow agents, our clients struggle with social media and online marketing. And the biggest thing that they struggle with is often, knowing what to say and what to do and then the consistency of doing that repeatedly. The premise of our company is pretty simple. It's just to take as much of that off of the Realtor’s plate as possible. So, we do a lot of the online marketing for them, email, social media, our websites, blogging. We also coach them and lead them to the water for the things that we can't do for them. Social media obviously is social and so you need to be your best representative of yourself on social media.It’s not something that you can hire out. But what you can hire out is the coaching and the accountability and the knowing what you should be doing so that it is as easy as possible. I hear people spending money. In fact I just heard, of an agent on Friday who had, outsourced his social media to other companies. Wouldn't that be the equivalent of sending somebody else instead to your best friend's birthday party and expecting them to like be okay with that?Once we get our heads around what social media is really about, it's about, relationships, we won’t do that anymore. It's about enhancing relationships that it gets really hard to outsource to like a loved one. It's hard to delegate that to somebody else and have it go well. What you embody is that people need to own it and people need to do it. But you also realize that most people out there aren't doing it at all. Either they're overthinking it or they're spending too much time thinking about it as opposed to just being an action, getting it done. I think for most of us, social media is not our business. It is a tool of our business. I like to stay in touch with people, but it is not our business. And oftentimes when I see people saying, I'm going to do social media, every other part of their business starts to really struggle and suffer because they spend so much time in their thinking about, ‘Should I post this? Should I post that? Luminary Agent’s 14 day challenge takes away the, “what should I post, how should I post it, how do I make it sound this way”. Or “should I do it this way or should I do it that way?” All the what if’s. Because those are all the stumbling blocks. So if I can remove all of those stumbling blocks and make it as easy as possible without doing it for you. With social media, it's meant to build relationships and then those relationships lead to transactions. But social media is not meant to be transactional in and of itself. That's where a lot of people get social media mixed up is because they want to, they want to hire out being themselves on social media thinking that it's a marketing sales transaction tactic and it's really not. It's not a selling tool, if you use it that way, you'll quickly lose all the hours and credibility with people. If all you're ever doing is selling, for your friends, your followers, your fans, what value are you providing them? If all you're ever doing is posting your listings, your solds, your awards and accolades? What's in it for me? That's the question you should always ask.Too often, especially this time a year, all of my counterparts in the industry are putting out, “I sold X number of homes. The entire newsfeed is filled with people talking about how many homes they've sold. I don't see anybody else doing that in other industries. My insurance agent isn't doing that. My doctor isn’t doing that. I get that it's been taught that there's this evidence of success concept, where you want people to know you're actually a successful agent. So maybe there's some truth in that and I think it's working for some people, but maybe there's a different way to do it. I think there's a time and a place for proving your success. I don't think that it is randomly on social media to a bunch of people who may or may not know you very well. That's the thing you have to remember with social media is that it's a huge mix of, your mom, plus somebody that you met at an open house. And so you need to be careful and mindful that those bragging pieces, those experiences pieces, there's a place for those. And it might not be to everybody on social media to share those with. It might be in the middle of an email campaign or a Facebook marketing campaign when you're targeting an actual potential client. With that information, it becomes relevant to that person.There is a way of telling your success. If you say, “I had a goal of helping this many people last year and I reached that goal,” or “I exceeded it” or “I almost made it, but it was still an amazing year and thank you all so much, you helped me get there.” That's a different post. Then when somebody's just flat out bragging and saying, I sold X number of homes last year, you know, great. I know what's in it for me as the person seeing it.You might think how that's being received on the other end? And even ask yourself, is there someway for me to sa