The Blueprint to Selling Over 100 Homes a Year [4 STEPS]

What's going on, Hosey? Bro, you're looking, you're looking a little slimy, slims, bro. You've been, you've been fasting and I didn't eat all that. I'm just saying you look like a little slimy, you know what I mean? Thank you, man. I appreciate the compliment. Hey, uh, who do you think you are having me waiting, uh, for you? Hey, don't you know who I am? You're like three minutes already, man. Come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all good. So, uh, how you doing, bro? You doing all right? Good. Yeah. Good. Yeah. It's out there selling homes. You know what I mean? Taking $9 million listings. You told me way to go champion. Yeah. That's the first nine middly that I take. So this year we have a 5 million and a 5.5 coming up. So good for you. Good for you. So today we are gathering to have a conversation about doing a hundred deals in a calendar year. I've done that. Let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years in a row. You've had the good fortune of doing that. I want to clarify personally. I've only gone probably to about like 80, 80 homes a year personally with the team. I've gone to 110 and I think max was 120 basically. So we hover as a team anywhere from a hundred. Just a little quick clarification there for me. Yeah. I've done more than a hundred, but it's all good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like who's counting? I've only done 80 only. Only. A light 80. Just like a light 80 million in volume or whatever it is. Yeah. So we've both sold real estate in high volume. And what I'm aware of is doing a hundred deals for a lot of people is like this, it's like a holy grail. You know what I'm saying? If you could do a hundred deals in a calendar year, it's like winning the Superbowl for being a real estate agent. And if you could do it consistently over an extended period of time, it's just demonstrated excellence, right? And what I'm also aware of is there has to be a system behind it. Wherever you see results over an extended period of time, there's a system behind it. So what could be helpful or useful is me and you just kind of going through in our minds, I don't know, four or five things that if somebody wants to do a hundred deals in a calendar year, what mental maps would they need? What kind of tactical approaches would they need? What would be their main sources of business? Where should they be stacking time? What skills should they be focusing on? Just really like a blueprint as far as what it would take. A hundred percent. And I'm on board for that. A hundred percent. Now, keep in mind that the blueprint that we're going to give you is something that is duplicatable because you're basically taking the ideas of two people that have sold listings in high volumes and we're giving you the mental map to do so. It's not like, hey, look, I have a TV show on TV and you can't duplicate it. Or it's not like, hey, I am a 13 out of 10 in terms of hotness that you can't duplicate. Hey, bro, are you a 13 out of 10 in terms of hotness? No, but I'm just saying that there are some things that you can't duplicate. And sometimes you see somebody who may be selling sunset. I looked at their production before they had the TV show and looked at their production after they had the TV show. Production is completely different. Sure. Yeah. And I remember being at a like speaking at a Hispanic Association of Realtors and I spoke. So I like tear the house down. And then everybody afterwards like, yeah, like what Aaron said, right? But this woman stood up and she was on like Millionaire Real Estate Agent Miami. Again, 13 out of 10 like model. And she's like, well, you got to build a personal brand. And I'm in the back. I'm like this. I wanted to raise my hand and be like, excuse me, ma'am. I was like, yes. How many people in this room look like you? Like zero. How many people will have the probability of getting on TV like you did? Zero. So essentially what you're sharing with them, like really won't help them that much, right? Because it won't do it won't. It's very hard to duplicate. Now, if you have the opportunity to get on a TV show, by all means, do it. If you are a 13 out of 10, by all means, use that. We're not saying don't do it. You know, unfortunately, I didn't have the TV show or I didn't go after the TV show. And unfortunately, I'm not a 13 out of 10. I'm probably a good 10 out of 10. Dang, bro. Hey, it's getting spicy today, bro. Self-assessing at high levels, huh? So yeah. And if you agree with that, comment down below if you agree with that. And if you disagree, comment down below as well, too. There you go. So and what we both did is we both gravitated towards something that was actually like duplicatable, meaning that it was independent of physical appearance. It was independent of the amount of attention that we had on platforms, whether it was, you know, television or media now, which we both are in that world. And we know that it's predictable, duplicatable. I also know that it can be taught because when I first met you, you weren't doing too many transactions. And after spending, you know, some time together and really working on your craft, you know, you started to list property in high volume, independent of those other two factors we mentioned. So I know that it is something that can be taught and it's a skill. It just implies practice. So let's first begin with a mental map as far as if you want to go down this path of having a goal of doing 100 transactions, which, by the way, you want to set goals based on the person that you will have to become in order to accomplish them. Because if you think like doing 100 deals is going to drastically change your life in some way, I promise you nobody at Dunkin Donuts is going to be like, oh, my God, here's Jose. He did 100 deals this year. Like the guy you cut off is still going to flick you the bird. You know what I'm saying? Like not that much is going to change. What will change, though, is who you are as an individual. And that's actually really valuable, right? Because nobody can take that away from you. So if you want to set that goal, I think the first mental map that you have to get really clear on is that it's going to come from listings. And I know that that's like really difficult. Period, end of story. Yeah, like period, end of story. And I know that that's really difficult for people to accept or acknowledge. I just know that it's a fact, is that if you're going to go from 10, 15, 20 deals and go to 100, it's primarily going to come from listing property, like 80% of it, right? And in order to do 100 transactions, if you have a well-oiled machine in the sense that you have like administrative staff, like listing coordinators, transaction coordinators, and then you refine the skill of being able to make outbound calls or knock on doors or things of that nature and set appointments, pre-qualify those appointments, that sort of thing, you can just throw it over your shoulder and keep going. But the main mental map that people need to get clear on is that it's going to come from listings. And just to piggyback on that, I did a presentation for eXp recently, and part of that presentation was I looked up the top 10 agents in our market, who does the most units, and I looked up by who does the most volume. By who does the most volume, 10 out of 10 were primarily listing agents, meaning more than 50% of their business came from listings sold. On the unit side, 9 out of 10 were primarily listing agents, meaning more than 50% of their business came from listings sold. And not to brag, but I was the number one seller's agent in the entire county, entire Ventura County for the last five years in terms of units sold. And I was ahead by about 100 units. Let's not get into that. But 94% of the business that I do is listing sold. And the reason is that it's a lot easier to manage 10 listings than it is to manage 10 buyers. 100%. And it's much more effective and efficient. It's more leveraged. So if the goal and objective, the first mental map that you got to get clear on is that if you want to set a goal of doing 100 transactions in a calendar year, you have to be heavy on listings. There's no way about it. And success leaves clues. So when Jose pulled those numbers, he could see, yeah, those that do the most volume have the most listings. There's a reason why 80% of agents, I'd say 70 to 80% are very buyer heavy. The reason is, is because there's not that much rejection. And truthfully, it's not that skilled of an activity. It's much more, requires much more skill, requires much more of a competitive, aggressive in a way, disposition to play in the arena of listings. Where you may be competing with three, four, five other people versus just like, hey, you want me to open up the door? Like there's not that much resistance there, right? So that's the first mental map. The second thing that I think is critical is that there's two groups of, if you want to get to 100 transactions, okay, there's two groups of people. There's people that you know, and people that you don't know. The question is, is which one's bigger? It's the ones that I don't. So I want you to really hear, I'm not saying not to work with past client centers influence. What I am saying is if you want to get to 100, you have to get very, very good at speaking to the group that you don't know. And that comes with nauseating, disgusting amounts of role play and practice, right? When I first met Jose, he went on like 100 appointments and took like 20 listings or something crazy like that. It was a very small number. And it's because he was working with buyers previously. He didn't have the skillset of being able to work with sellers in high volume. Didn't know what to say, how to say it, didn't know how to close, didn't know how to do those things. We spent a lot of time together. And then he went from doing that, having to go on appointments twice to get listings, only having a 25% closing ratio to having like an 80 to 90% closing ratio. And his amount of listing inventory jumped dramatically from listing 20 homes in a year to like 50 to like 70. So I think what you're referring to is just looking at this as a skillset and being like, okay, so when I started off as an agent, I didn't have the skillset of becoming a top listing agent. Now, like let's say I'm learning social media, it's a skillset that you have to learn. So the good news is it's not something that I possessed, but it's a skill that you can learn. It was funny because I was listening to a podcast today and the guy said that Michael Jordan was so fanatical about practicing that he would rather miss a game than to miss practice. Yeah. And I was like, that's unbelievable. You know, it talked about like Kanye West too, one of his first albums, College Dropout on one of his songs, he says like spend three summers locked in a room, like basically producing five beats a day or something like that. So meaning like practicing and this idea of like that the skills are a skillset and that you could actually learn this skillset to be more efficient is actually something that can help you. I have an agent right now that she's making the phone calls, but I could just see the conversations that she's having. And it's almost like she's losing money, not losing money, but the business is just kind of like going through her fingertips because she has no idea what to say and how to say it because she's not practicing basically. Yeah, agreed. So, so two separate things. One, you'll notice that when Jose first started in the business, just like me, he was being told all these different things. He didn't have the mental map of it's going to come from listings. Then once he realized it was going to come from listings, he needed to obtain the specialized knowledge on how to take listings in high volume, which includes how to prospect, which includes what to say and how to say it's set appointments, which includes how to prequalify those appointments, which includes going and presenting, which includes handling objections and closing, right? And then, you know, if need be getting a price adjustment, all of those are skilled conversations that take an extended period of time to really get good at. Now, if you want to speed it up, you just put more time and energy effort in, right? So I role play twice a day, six days a week for three years. That will speed up the learning curve. You see, it's easier to start things. It's very difficult to finish them. Most people are really good at starting things and they get really excited. They have what you could call uninformed optimism. They see somebody like Jose or me doing all these deals and like, oh man, this is fantastic. People make all this money. Like, this is great. Then they get in it and they start to do it. And then they end up with informed pessimism, which is, oh, this is a lot harder than I thought it was. Jose makes it look easy. Aaron makes it look easy. This is a lot harder than I thought it was. And then they end up in what would call like the valley of despair, which is like, oh, I don't know. Maybe this isn't for me. And then you know what most people do there? They find something else to get excited about. So they're like, oh, this isn't for me. I need to go do this other lead gen mechanism. I'm going to try to do pay-per-click or I'm going to try to do this or I'm going to try to do that. Or what agents do often too is they switch companies. Oh, you know what? It must be the company. Like, that's the problem. And they switch companies so they can get on. They have uninformed optimism again. Oh, like they get all excited and then they go through the same cycle and they never actually accomplish anything or very little. Like mediocre results. So if you're going to go down this path, like you need to be a finisher, it's not going to be easy. And I'm glad it's not because if it was easy, everybody would do it. If it was easy, the pay would drop dramatically. If you could watch one YouTube video and become a master salesperson over the course of a weekend, then everybody would do it and the pay would drop dramatically. So I'm glad it's difficult. And it's just understanding that A, it's going to come from listings. B, being able to list property in high volume is a skill set. And as such, I have to be willing to put in the time, the energy, and effort to acquire that skill set. And it requires me to finish because it's going to take a while. It's not going to take like three months, six months. I mean, I remember role playing with you, Jose. And after six months, you finally called me and was like, I think I kind of understand what we're doing here. Just to like understand the process underneath. And when it clicked, it was like, oh my goodness. It's funny because one of our agents is having that same realization. She just took three listings, I'd probably say in the last 45 days. And it's starting to click for her, you know. But here's what I would say. And this was an exercise that Lars did at our gala. He said. Oh, you mean the gala where we had 150 people fly in from all around the country? That gala? Yeah, which is awesome. But what Lars did, and I thought that this was brilliant. He said, okay, what amount of money do you make right now on a yearly basis, net after expenses? And then how many hours are you putting into the business? And then it calculates your hourly rate, basically. And then what he said is, if you want to make more per hour, you've got to delegate the things that are lower in terms of hourly pay. So what I would say is that as a top listing agent, you've got to focus on prospecting, lead follow-ups, appointments, and negotiating contracts, basically. 80% of your time should be spent on that. So if you followed me around for a day and you came to my office, you would notice that most of my day is spent on prospecting or lead follow-up or going on appointments. Everything else has been delegated. Now, a lot of people are like, well, when I start making a lot of money, then I'll start delegating things. It actually doesn't work that way. It actually is backwards. Once you start delegating, you'll start making a lot more money because you'll start to be like, okay, I delegated all the lower-income producing activities. What do I do with my time now? You only have four options at that point. Exactly. So that's another mental map, which is that what gets in the way of delegation for most people is just scarcity, mindset, and being cheap. Because 65% of us grew up in families that live paycheck to paycheck. That was my experience. And you would hear things like money doesn't grow on trees, eat all the food on your table. I think I listened to that one. Yeah, yeah, you did. A penny saved is a penny earned, which is bullshit because it's just a penny. Or if you want to get something done right, you need to do it yourself, which is terrible advice. So the challenge is this accurate assessment of reality, which is what Lars was sharing with people, is that your dollar amount per dollar activity of prospecting, following appointments, negotiating deals as an agent can be upwards of $500 to $1,000 an hour just to be doing those activities. Anything less than that, you should be paying somebody else to do. So the listing coordinating, transaction coordinating, people meeting people at homes with a photographer. I'm like, why? Are you a professional photographer? Why the hell are you there? Or meeting people with inspections and all of these other stuff. So that's another mental map, which is that I only get paid to do four things, prospect, lead, follow up, go on appointments, negotiate deals. Everything else should be delegated away from you. And that can be a challenge for a lot of people because they feel the need to hover over things because they're afraid that if they don't, they'll fall apart. And that's just not true. And keep this in mind. If you ever want to get to $400 to $500 per hour, you're never going to do that by focusing on activities that are $20 an hour. You're never going to do that if you focus on activities that are $30 an hour. So if you look at everything that happens on a listing from putting up a for sale sign to taking pictures, to inputting it on the MLS, to coordinating showings. Coordinating showing is not a $500 an hour activity. So if you find yourself doing some of these activities, it's like, okay, what do I need to delegate to be able to focus on the four things? The prospecting, lead, follow up, appointments, and negotiating contracts. And by negotiating contracts, we don't mean negotiating requests for repairs. What we mean is negotiating offers to get accepted, basically. Meaning negotiating new escrows. We don't mean like, hey, look, once it's an escrow, that is a lower dollar in our activity. That's something that you can delegate for $20, $25 an hour, or you can even delegate it on a per transaction type of file. Agreed. And then this leads to the next kind of, and it's interesting because we didn't talk about this prior to, just the fact that we have done this. So we know kind of what's required to accomplish it and the mental maps. And the majority of them are thinking. And I want everybody who's watching or who will watch the replay and everything is that one of the best things you can get from somebody who's just a little bit further down the path. I don't even like to use the word coach or like, you know, just somebody who's a little bit further down the path is access to the way that they think, because the way that they think allows them to do what they do. Okay. Another mental map that you're going to have to really get clear on and wrap your head around is that you need to structure things to where you're not the linchpin. So what most people do is they make themselves the center of everything. So it's their phone number on the yard signs. It's their phone number in the MLS system. Right? So as such, their phone's blowing up all the time. Everybody's asking questions. And they, they truthfully, like, let's say you list three properties and they're all, you know, two of them are bangers and are priced, right? If, if your numbers in MLS, bro, you for two days, your life's going to like, stop because you'll be getting blown up with phone calls, blown up or showings and all this other stuff. So you have to be aware that there is a value chain in all businesses. And I like to use the doctor analogy because we're all very familiar with it. Now, whenever I use this analogy, my wife's always like, you're not a doctor. I'm like, I'm a doctor of selling, babe. So the doctor analogy is when you go to the doctor's office, it's like, who greets you? Does the physician greet you? No, they don't. Who does the receptionist? What's the first question they ask you? How are you going to pay for this? Is it insurance? You're paying cash. Then they give you a clipboard and you sit down and you fill it out. Now it's like an iPad, right? You're filling out the iPad, answering all the questions. What are they doing? Pre-qualifying. Where does it hurt? How long does it hurt? Do you have a history of a hurting? Have you left the country? Have you taken any medication? That, that, that, that, that, right? Then they're like, yeah, the doctor will be with you in a moment, which is a lie because you got to wait like 20 minutes. Then do you see the physician? No. You see the physician's assistant and they bring you in the back. They bang on your knee. You pee in a cup. You know, they ask you some questions. Great. Looks like this is what you're in here for. The doctor be in with you in a minute, which is also another lie because you sit there for 20 minutes with your legs dangling off the little thing, right? Then the doctor blows in. He or she, they grab your, you know, they look at the little, uh, iPad and they say, Hey, it looks like you're in here for this. And what they do is they touch you here. That's a bill. They look in your ears. That's a bill. They look in your eyes. That's a bill. You go, ah, that's a bill. They touch your abdomen. That's a bill. They write you a script. That's a bill. And they say, Hey, we want to see you back here in two weeks. Just make sure everything's okay. Say hello to the wife and kids and they leave. They're there for about 10 minutes. Okay. Those 10 minutes that they are with you, they do that 20 times a day. I know both of my in-laws are retired physicians. Those 10 minutes, 20 times a day. I need to understand something. That activity is so valuable that it pays all the rent for the, for the space. It pays for all the staff, pays for all the bookkeeping. And there's a profit left over at the end. So there's a value chain in every business. I don't care what it is. The value chain for us as agents is prospect, leave, follow up, go on appointments, negotiate deals. What we do as agents though, if we stick with that doctor analogy is we greet them at the door. We take their payment. We give them the clipboard. We read the clipboard. We bang on their knee. We have them pee in a cup. We do everything. And as such, we get stuck at low levels of productivity. Now, this is a hard one, Jose, because one of the things that me and you hear all the time is like, well, you know, Aaron, you're so difficult to get on the phone. And I'm like, uh-huh. How can I help you? It's designed that way though. Yeah. It's like designed that way. By design. It's by design. A hundred percent by design. Because if I had to, you know, if you have 15 listings and like, you know, 17 pendings, bro, if everybody had access to me easily and quickly there, I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything. I'd be on the phone 10 hours a day and not, not getting anything done. Right. So it's designed that way, but you need to be okay with that. Part of being okay with that is understanding the value chain and putting people in place. So what would be the equivalent for us as agents? Well, you should have a listing coordinator. People are like, well, you know, it costs money. Yeah. Uh-huh. Tell me one person that you know, that's incredibly successful, that has no employees. It costs more money not to have one. Exactly, bro. To have one. It's costing way more money to not have it. Then the transaction coordinator. Well, you know, I want to do my own deals because I don't want to pay the $400. I'm like, dude, it's going to cost you more money in the long run because you're going to get involved in all that. Something goes wrong. Who are they going to ask for money? You do. That's what they're going to do. Right. So having, uh, somebody like, you know, we used to do is we had the photographer. We mailed the lock boxes to the photographer. Part of the photographer's job was to call the seller, schedule the appointment with them to take pictures. They would come with the lock box, get the key from the seller and put the lock box. And then what we would do is because we used combinations because we found that a lot of agents don't have supers. And the reason why they don't is because they don't have the damn money to pay for them. And they would call me and be like, Hey, can you come out here and open it up? I'm like, uh, absolutely not. So we use combos and my wife who's brilliant said, Hey, Aaron, it's actually less expensive to not go pick them up and just leave it with the agent. So the agent would be like, Hey, I'm at the walkthrough at closing. You going to come? I'm like, nope. And they're like, great. Um, what do you want us to do? The lock box? I'm like, you know what? That's my gift to you. You can keep it. So just doing right, doing things that are just, you wouldn't let them keep the lock box after $10 instead of going, instead of going out there to pick it up or paying somebody 50 bucks to go get it. It's actually cheaper just to give it to them. But most people can't get past that because they're so scarcity driven. They're like, Oh my God, how am I going to like leave $10 on the table when it's like, it actually, if you really think about it, it costs you more. It reminds me of like, sometimes sellers have, uh, uh, uh, a tenant that's not paying. And they're like, I'm going to go through the eviction process. I'm like, Hey, instead of going through the eviction process, why not just pay them $2,000 to get out by next week? Like, why would I pay somebody when they're not paying me? And they have such a hard time understanding that it's actually cheaper for them to just pay them out versus lose three months worth of rent and pay the attorney 1500 bucks. But that's what you're referring to that it's cheaper just to let them keep it. Basically. That's right. But it's just like we, and again, this is, it's mostly mental. Now I want to magical fairy, which is a wonderful name said that, uh, we're speaking truth. However, the value chain approach is not for new agents. I disagree. The only reason that you think that it's not acceptable is because you think like you have to put up with everybody's bullshit and run around like a chicken without your head cut off for two years to somehow deserve to implement the value chain. No, you can do that right from the beginning. And in fact, people who have business background, because I want you, I want everybody. Yeah. They'll do it from the beginning. So what I want you to be clear is that most agents are just salespeople. They are not business people. Okay. They just want to do deals to pay their bills and they have no business background and they're getting into a direct sales business. Okay. No sales background and no business background. People who have business background and understand the way businesses work. Lars is a perfect example of that. He created systems and whatever, like very quickly, because he has an MBA and he studied this shit and he knows how business is supposed to be run. So I don't think that's true. I think that if you work on your skills, another perfect example, Heath, who's on my team, I talk about him a lot. He's awesome. He's a part-time, he's a full-time cop. Okay. Full-time cop, part-time agent. He did 20 deals last year, all on the listing side. And from the beginning, from the very beginning, I forced him to use a listing coordinator and transaction coordinator. That's the only way he's able to do the 20 deals. So again, I don't think that that's true. And here's the other thing. Sometimes people say, well, like, well, I'm new. I don't have the money to do so, or I don't do that. Here's what I would say. I hired my first assistant, I'd probably say within my first year. It was actually a virtual assistant though. Now we live in a world, there's really no excuses. I hired a virtual assistant at $3 an hour from Sri Lanka at that time. And here's an example of delegation from very early on. Me and another agent, we worked at the same office. Both of us would get in the office at seven in the morning. That agent would upload his leads into Mojo by himself. I delegated that to a $3 assistant, a virtual assistant. By the time I got there, my leads were already imported into my Mojo. That agent would take 15 extra minutes to start dialing. I start dialing right away. That agent would do that every single day, five, six days a week. I just start dialing from the beginning right away. It starts there with just thinking about, okay, how can I delegate this lower dollar an hour activity? And then what that does is it starts increasing your dollar per hour. So because I was first on the phone, I was able to get appointments that maybe he wasn't able to get. Hence, I was able to bring additional revenue that he wasn't able to get because he was 15 minutes later. So was he really saving money or was he losing money? No, that's exactly right. So yeah, it's more mental than it is anything else. It's not really a physical exercise or an implementation. It's really about way of thinking. Okay, in nature, when you go with what's true, you get rewarded. If you go against what's true, you get punished. So a lot of us can get caught up in being right. And I want everybody to be clear. Me and Jose are not attached to being right. We're attached to the truth. I don't care where it comes from. I don't care where we get it. I just want what's true because if I get to what's true, I can make decisions in accordance with that. And that'll increase the chances that I'll get what I want. So what I find interesting is when we have these conversations, people will push back on their thoughts and opinions. And then I'm like, okay, well, what is your belief system producing for you in your life? What are your mental maps producing? Are they producing seven figures in income? Because if not, then I should be paying close attention. Because there's probably something to this, right? In terms of adopting that particular way of thinking. And my tendency as well too, like I remember when you told me start presenting on an iPad, I rejected that information. I said, nope, that's not the way to do it. It probably took me about, I'd probably say about a year to start presenting my listing presentation on an iPad. But once I did it, it was a game changer. And what I was doing is I was taking somebody who had already been through what I want to get, where I want to go and rejecting his mental map and saying, no, I'm correct. But that has a lot to do sometimes with like a little bit of ego sometimes. Like I'm like, I'm not a little bit. I mean, it's normal. There's a saying that says when a man starts or a man or a woman makes money, they become a piss poor listener. So, and we go through that together. We still do that where we triangulate ideas with each other. And sometimes I'll say something to you, like on the syndications and you're like, nah, bro, I'm good. And then later on, you're like, oh, and then we're like, were you with me with the XP? I'm like, nah, I'm good. And then a year later, I'm like, yeah, bro. Like this makes total sense. You're like a full-time EX multi-level marketer at that time, you know? That's what I am, bro. 275 agents, let's go 21 months. Now here's another idea that I rejected. Like I remember I was getting stuck at a certain production. I'm like, okay, well, Aaron's at 150 to 200 deals a year or over a hundred. And I'm like, I'm spending a lot of times checking my email, like, and I would get caught up in that black hole. I would go in there and I spend two, three hours just replying back to people or clearing it out. And it's funny because you told me, he's like, look, you need to delegate that. So I delegated it to my wife. My wife checks all the emails. Whenever there's something that needs my attention, she sends me a text message, says, this is something that you need to get back to her. This is something that requires your attention. I reply back and then that's it. I don't check emails. It was funny because my brother-in-law, he does about 20 deals a year. I gave him the same advice and he was pushing back. He was like, well, what if they don't do it correctly? Well, what if I, what if something gets messed up? What if this? I'm like, Jaime, I'm telling you, bro, this is going to be one of the best things you ever do. He does it to his girlfriend, his current girlfriend. He's like, bro, this is one of the best things I've ever done. But it's that process of learning how to let go of things that are lower dollar productive and focusing on the higher productive. Imagine if you're spending three hours a day checking email and you can delegate that for $10, $15 an hour. Imagine if you spend those three hours prospecting or instead of those three hours, you spent it with your kids. So here's what I tell people, me and you can work the same amount of hours in a week, but why are the results completely different? Why? Meaning why is it that I'm able to make X amount of money and you're making $100,000 in a year when we're working the same amount of time? The thing is that I'm focusing on income producing activities and you're focused on lower dollar per hour activities. Yeah, agreed. And what I'm aware of too is that, like little things, like not having your phone number on your yard sign because that becomes a nuisance, right? And truthfully, if I'm going to be focused on sellers, that should be diverted to someone else. Having my phone number in the multiple listing service, that's a problem because then everybody blows you up, right? And they have direct access to you, whether that's having a Google number that you check or you have a virtual assistant who answers that. Little things like what I shared with Jose, I would... So ask yourself a question. If you're on this stream or you're watching it, how many of you guys prospect with your email open? Is that not a distraction? Of course it is, bro. It's like a massive distraction. So instead what I would do is I had a... What if I need to send out an email? Yeah, exactly. So here's what I did. Here's what I told Jose. It's a simple thing. He said the same thing to me. He's like, what do I need to do if I send out an email? I said, okay, here's the answer. The email that's in the multiple listing service goes to somewhere else, like admin at themoralesgroup.com, right? And somebody else is sifting through that and checking. Or maybe you wait till you're done prospecting to check it. I had a separate email like Aaron at whatever, you know, at gmail.com that I would prospect from, right? And now it requires me to have the discipline to not have that other email open. And truthfully, it's not my job. Now, what was super helpful for me is that my wife understands the... Yeah, it's like the tyranny of distractions, right? What's up, Kim Taylor? How you doing, Rockstar? Elite builder up in New Jersey. Let's go. So what would happen is Carla understands the value chain. She knows that Papa needs to be a prospect. We follow up appointments, negotiate deals. That's what brings that cheddar in. And we like the cheddar. So what would happen is the moment that she would see me check an email, Jose, she'd be like, hey, hey, hey, what are you doing, bro? This isn't your job. Get out of this, bro. Go talk to somebody. Go prospect. Go on an appointment. Go do something else, right? So it's very interesting because really what I'm aware of as we're having this conversation, the mental maps really allow me to focus. And focus is incredibly powerful. I mean, ask yourself a question, right? If you focused, like legit focused with very few distractions, no distractions for three hours a day, five to six days a week, being dialed in, having conversations with people, honestly, what would happen to your business? It would go up. It would explode, bro. And then what happens is it's in stages, right? So it'll explode. And then you'll need to deal with systems and admin, right? So you can handle. Another good thing, another mental map that I want everybody on this call to really be clear on is like, no matter how motivated you are, okay? No matter how much David Goggins you do and how many cold plungers you do and how much 75 hard, all you guys posting that shit all the time, that has nothing to do with Sal Rosley, by the way, just so you know. So no matter how much of that you do, if you don't have systems in place, if your system will not support you doing 100 deals, meaning eight to nine, 10 transactions a month, eight to nine to 15 listings per month, you will not do it. No matter how much motivation you have, no matter how much rah-rah, no matter how much work ethic, no matter how much hustle, no matter how much grant, you can only grow to the proportion that your systems will allow you to, right? So ask yourself a question if you're watching this right now. If you took 15 listings this month, would your life fall apart? For most people, the answer is yes. If you had 15 pendings right now, 10 pendings, would your life fall apart? For most people, the answer is yes, because your current system is not set up to handle that level of volume, whether that be listing coordinators, transaction coordinators, standard operating procedures and checklists on who does what, right? So part of getting to 100 deals a year, those mental maps that we just mentioned and also understanding that you can only grow to the proportion that your systems will allow you to and putting that system in place before you actually need it. Because like Jose was saying, what most people do is they'll be like, oh, I'll hire people and I'll put that stuff in place when that time is right. I'm like, well, you're never going to get there, dude. You have to build it before like you and grow into it, right? You have to build it before you actually need it. It reminds me, I actually, like, so the coaching program that I was a part of would tell me that you would need to hire your first assistant at 30 to 40. I hired my first assistant at 20. And the reason I hired her, the first in-house assistant, not like the first virtual assistant that I hired. And the reason I hired her is once I hired her and I focused more on listings, my business started to go up basically. So I almost doubled the business at that time from what I was doing from like 30 to 40 deals. So, and the logic behind that was that the assistant would actually help me delegate the lower hour per hour activities. And that would give me more time to focus on the income producing activities. Now, what I would want to say about delegating, delegating is not only in your business, but it's also in your personal life as well too. Like, I don't take my car to get an oil change. I have a gentleman that is a runner for me. We give him the keys of the car. He drives it to the dealership. The dealership changes the oil. He brings it back to me. The car is done. But Jose, that costs money to do that. It costs more money not to do it. Think about it. That one hour, two hours that you spent driving your car to the dealership, that could be time spent on income producing activities. Now, here's the only exception that I would say to that. If you enjoy it, don't delegate it. Or you have the option of delegating it or not. For example, taking my son to school is a lower dollar activity. I enjoy that. I want to do that. I'm not going to delegate that. So there's certain things that you're going to have to make a decision that are lower dollar per hour activities in your personal life. Getting a haircut. I don't drive to the barber shop to get a haircut. The barber comes to my house to cut my hair. That frees up more time to either spend with my family or to basically focus on the business. Now, here's what I would want to say. And this is for the agent on our team that is making the phone calls, but she's not getting the activity. And the reason is that she's not practicing whatsoever. So what she's having is that she's having people just fall through the cracks because she doesn't know what to say. They'll ask her, where's your office located? And she'll very nonchalantly answer, my office is actually here. Not knowing that the reason that they're asking her that is to see if she's got enough experience in her particular neighborhood and she's not recognizing. And then the people ghost her. They're asking her questions like, what company do you work for? Not knowing that the reason they're asking these questions is just to see like, hey, look, people have certain perceptions of certain companies. They think that like a company makes the agent or because an agent works for a certain company, that that means that they're going to get a higher level of customer service. So what I told her is, look, you need to start role playing five days a week. You need to start chanting your scripts and you need to start writing them out and you need to start practicing. If you're not doing that, you're going to be missing out on business. What that has done is it makes you more efficient. It makes the prospecting, the lead follow up, the appointments more efficient. So you have to talk to less people. You have to lead follow up on less people. You have to go on less appointments. Therefore, you're more efficient. Therefore, your dollar per hour activity shoots up. Yeah. So like in that cycle, I was saying where you have like uninformed optimism where you're like, oh man, look at all these guys are making all this money. Like, this is easy. I'm going to do this. And I think a lot of people get their real estate license for that reason. And then when you get into it and you start doing it, you realize like, oh, this isn't as easy as I thought it was. And then you have informed pessimism. And then what you end up with is that you end up in the valley of despair. Like, I don't know, maybe this isn't for me, blah, blah, blah. And then people switch and they do something else and they just perpetuate that cycle. They constantly find things that they're kind of can get excited about. At the same time, there is a handful, okay? The fantastic few. Because I need everybody who's watching to understand something. Mediocrity scales. Like, the square root of any sample set will produce 50% of all of the output. So in other words, if you have like nine tomato plants, three of them will give 50% of all the tomatoes. The other six will share the other 50% of production. If you have 100 agents in an office, 10 of them will do 50% of all the volume. The other 90 will share the remaining 50%. So mediocrity scales. But I'm glad that it does because I can make a decision if I want to be one of the mediocre many or the fantastic few. And what the fantastic few realizes once they end up in the Valley of Despair, this is harder. I made $13,000 my first calendar year, okay? I think we could sufficiently call that a Valley of Despair. Jose, like, didn't sell a home for six months, right? He went on 100 listing appointments and took like 20 of them. That's like the Valley of Despair, right? At least four times all the way up to 100 deals, I would look at Carla like a year, probably once a quarter, I'd be like, I could be doing something else with my time, right? What the fantastic few do though is when they're in the Valley of Despair, they're like, you know what? This is hard. I think I can do it though. And I'm going to finish. I'm going to see it through, right? I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to see it through. Whoever I need to get proximity to, if it requires, you know, it's crazy to me, bro. We do a role play thing. Me, you, John Sy, all million-dollar-a-year GCI guys. It's free. And there's like 40 people that show up to that thing. Like, I'm just aware that so few people are actually committed. You know, I had a mentor one time tell me like, hey man, it's actually not that difficult to get rich. I said, why? He's like, because there's very few people that are actually trying. Like, how committed are you to the skill of selling about using your intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, your words, your tonality to influence the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of other humans? Like, are you a serious student of that craft? Are you willing to go through the valley of despair when everybody's laughing at you? You should be like, hey, go get a real job. Hey, you know, this isn't for you, Jose. Maybe you should go back to selling hats and boots. Hey, you know what I'm saying? Like, just sticking with it during that timeframe because any, like, it's a skill that's learnable. If you look at Jose's personality profile, he is not a natural born salesperson. It's not his profile, bro. He just willed himself. His desire is so strong, he willed himself to become one. And he got proximity to people who are really good at it. And he just learned from them and, you know, ripped off and duplicated, copied and pasted. And now he's a fantastic salesperson. Yeah, and it forced me to grow and become something like a different person, you know? And I'm very grateful for the opportunity because the fact that I focused on listings, I've had so many different opportunities outside of just taking listings. I had a seller finance me a $4.4 million building with only $150,000 down, you know? That wouldn't have come if I hadn't focused on listings. Now that one building is gonna be a vehicle that allows me to have all this residual income, you know, which is great. So the other thing that I would say is as you're talking to, now, so we've covered like, okay, what the focus. We've obviously covered the fact that people have to delegate things. We've covered the fact that people have to focus on higher dollar per hour activities. Now it's like, okay, like, who do I talk to? Who should I talk to? So what I started doing at the very beginning of my business is I literally just talked to my sphere of influence at the very beginning of my business. But like Aaron said, that number is limited. You're going to be capped out at that number, meaning that if you have a good sphere of influence, you can get a five to 10% return on that. So what I did is I took everybody on my phone. Like if you look at the bottom of your phone and all the contacts, you maybe have 500, 1,000, 2,000 people, create an Excel sheet, import it somewhere where you're basically reaching out to them and letting them know, hey, look, I just got started in the business. This is for new agents or even experienced agents. I think that's the foundation of the business, meaning like, hey, your sphere of influence. Because that is like, if you talk to a seller, the number one objection that you're going to get is I already have an agent. And if you ask them who that agent is, it's somebody that they know. So what that tells you is that the people that you know are more likely to do business with you because they know you like you and trust you. So if that's the case, that should be where you start focusing your, that's the foundation of the business. So this business has foundation. The foundation is sphere of influence. The foundation is prospecting. The foundation is practicing, lead follow-up appointments and negotiating. That's the foundation of the business. Now, as it relates to, once you talk to your sphere of influence, you're going to realize that, hey, look, I can only get 10, 15, 20 deals from this group. I need to add other people that I need to contact to be able to grow that sphere of influence and to be able to take more listings. So there's different groups that you can talk. There's expires, there's for sale by owners, there's just listed, just sold. And then there is absentee owners. That's the group that most realtors call. I would challenge you to get a little bit creative on this and to start reaching out to other groups. If you look at wholesalers, wholesalers reach out to different people than real estate agents do. Wholesalers are reaching out to people that are going through evictions. Wholesalers are reaching out to people that have inherited properties. Wholesalers are reaching out to people that are going through bankruptcy. Wholesalers are reaching out to people that are in default. So I would challenge you to think about this as, okay, like who else can I reach out to that I can help them sell their property? And then as you're talking to the people, be looking at who else can I add to my sphere of influence that would be a good addition to it. So what I did when I was prospecting is I always kept my ears open to people who were business owners. I always kept my ears open to people that own multiple properties and I kept my ears open to people that could refer me multiple deals. So if I were to hear somebody on the phone saying, oh, I'm a CPA, I'm adding you to my sphere of influence. You have a book of business. You're having financial conversations with people about buying or selling different financial instruments. I wanna provide value to you. You're a business owner. I wanna provide value to you. You're a person that owns multiple properties. I want to provide value to you as well too. So then you're prospecting, but you're also growing your database at the same time. So the purpose of prospecting is to set appointments and to, I would say, build relationships with people that are going to be selling, but it's also to be growing your sphere of influence. That's the foundation of the business, I would say. Yeah, no, 100%. And that's the foundation. And as you were saying, if I focus primarily on past clients and influence, particularly at the beginning, that's gonna be a smaller group. And as such, if I simultaneously learn the skill of speaking to strangers, whether that's the four horsemen, like expires, cancels for sale by owners, just as it just solds, and or I get into some sort of niche, like probate or state sales of real property, that's a group that I can go after aggressively, right, each and every day. And in doing so, as I start to earn that business, I'm making my database bigger, right? So if I do 10, 15 deals with people that are strangers, they get added to the database and it just keeps making it bigger and bigger and bigger. So it's doing both simultaneously at the same time. Exactly. I got a call yesterday from a past client, sold two of his properties already. He's like, hey, I need to sell a third one. I got a phone call this morning. Hey, you sold two of my friend's homes. I want you to sell my home as well too. So everybody's sad for Jose, aren't they? Well, the other thing too, is that as you focus on listings, sellers refer sellers, buyers refer buyers. So like when I was- Say that again, Jose, say it again, say it again. Sellers refer sellers and buyers refer buyers. So when I started my career, I started off as a buyer's agent. I was helping buyers. They would refer me other buyers that were looking to buy. Once I made the transition to sellers, they started referring me other sellers. So you want to build a listing business because then you're getting seller referrals as well too versus a buyer referral. And once again, we talked about how if you want to become a top producer in your market, it's on the listing site. If you look at your market sets and you look at the top 10 to 20 agents, you're going to notice more than 80% of them are going to be listing focused. If not, 90% of them are going to be listing focused. In my market, there's one agent that is buyer focused that is in that top 10 in terms of units sold. And I guarantee you that if we compare both of our business, his life is a little bit more hectic than somebody who has more leverage on the listing side. I can guarantee you that his schedule is more all over the place than somebody who has more leverage. And think about it. If the property is only available to show one time on Tuesday at six o'clock and your client wants to see it, guess what time you're showing the property? Tuesday at six o'clock. If the buyer's only available, think about this. How many times do you have to show a client a property before they buy? In some cases, it's one. In some cases, it's 10. Think about this. How many times do you have to go on a listing appointment in order for a seller to sign a contract? Once. Sometimes you got to go back a second time. There's a lot more leverage. It's a lot more of an efficient process to focus on listings. I agree. It's just more skilled. It's just more difficult. It just requires you to be able to put up with rejection. It requires you to being able to constructively work through conflict at higher levels. It requires you to be okay with criticism. Meaning like other agents in the marketplace being like, oh, how come I don't have Jose's direct cell phone number? Or how come I don't have Aaron's cell phone number? Or agents calling you and being like, oh, it's so hard to get ahold of you. Or I've been trying for like all day. And you're like, oh, yep, I understand. Well, it's interesting because even we had an agent that one time was like, well, I don't like you, Jose. And I'm like, well, why not? I had a transaction that I was doing with you or that I wanted to get into it with you and I couldn't get ahold of you. Yeah, I remember I was in the room. She was mad. And now we're really good friends. But the response that I gave to her, I was like, look, I understand where you're coming from. And if I talk to every agent that wants to talk to me, I wouldn't be able to do the amount of business that I want to do to live the life that I want to live for myself and my family. So I have to make a choice. Do I want to let myself and my family down as to what type of business we want to run? Or do I want to please everybody else and not please myself? And what I mentioned to her, I was like, look, I would rather me be internally happy than to please other people. And I'm okay with other people being mad because it gets me and my family closer to the goals. And because I've been willing and able to deal with that, now it's been like 14 years in the business, close to a thousand properties sold. I own 57 rentals, 37 of them individually, 20 of them in a partnership with my dad and my sister. I'm building all kinds of ADUs. That 57 portfolio is going to go to 74. That's going to spit out 30 to $40,000 a month in positive residual income every single month. Meaning I'll be earning half a million dollars in residual because I follow this mental map. I've been okay with people criticizing me. I've been okay with doing my job when nobody's watching me. I've been okay with practicing. I've been okay with prospecting every single day. And I follow this certain roadmap that has allowed me to achieve more in 15 years than most people achieve in 45 years in a real estate career. So you have to ask yourself the question, if this is the mental map, are you willing to do that? And it may not be for everybody. It's only for a select few. And it's up to you whether or not you want to do it. All I can say is that these last 15 years now are allowing me to focus on the next chapter of my career because I was willing to follow that mental roadmap basically. That's what's up, bro. I'm excited for you, dude. I'm excited for what's to happen in your future. The same is true for me. By following these mental maps, it's radically changed my life and provides me with time freedom and location freedom and multiple streams of residual income. So we're here to help guys here at the Elite Builders at eXp. The model and the opportunity, the goal and objective is to equip you with what you need, the tactical information, the mental maps that you need in order to accomplish your goals and objectives. If you like this episode, be sure to catch the next live team. Let's go, let's grow Elite Builders coast to coast.