Seven figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO.
Welcome to the John Kitchens Coach podcast experience.
As your host, John Kitchens.
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So for us, it was three things, and then I wanna kind of, kind of jam through
some brainstorming ideas of, of why.
They don't believe that that that's ever gonna be, you know, they can't achieve it.
So for us, number one was, was strategy.
Once we really truly understood strategy and we, we followed mastering the
Rockefeller habits right into scaling up.
Um, and then, then for there, we stepped over into, um.
V-T-O-E-O-S with Gino stuff, just because it's easier.
I mean, honestly, that's, that's the only reason because scaling up was too complex.
Joel has a great, great take on it, right?
Uh, the EOS is perfect.
Up to 10 million.
Above 10 million in, in revenue, you probably need to get
back into, into scaling up.
And, and so, um, for us it was that, it was, it was following the master
master of the Rockefeller Habits.
Really, truly for the first time having a strategic plan instead of
just setting goals and then what are you gotta do to accomplish your goals?
And when we got strategic, it, it, it really started to unlock a, a lot of
things for us and the way we started thinking about things, the things that
we, you know, how we were tackling projects, how we were communicating,
how we were talking about vision, how we were really dialing in culture.
So that was really important.
That was the first thing.
The second thing was having a proven repeatable process to, to articulate
your value, and that's where CHSA and CHBA came in, having CHSA certified
home selling advisor and CHBA certified home buying advisor were the two.
Keys to give to the team so that they can create consistency in what we're saying
and doing to articulate and provide value to buyers and sellers in our market.
Um, obviously started with CHSA 'cause we were listing first listing focused.
That was it.
Everything was listing, listing, listing.
And then after we nailed the listing side, then we said, okay, we gotta
do something for the buy side.
That's the only reason CHBA.
Um, even, even got built is because we needed to compliment CHSA and
honestly we needed to compliment it because they started selling it.
That's, that's, that's the truth.
That's why we created it.
But we had that and, and what it allowed is.
Anybody that could go out and have the presentation could go
out and articulate the value.
It just wasn't the me monster presentation of, of the early days.
Right.
Look at my accolades, look at my awards, look at, look at
all of the things I've done.
It's, it's really the true consultative approach of.
Dude, what's the goal?
What are you guys trying to do?
Hey, let me, let me articulate our system and our process.
Do you believe this is the best system to help you guys accomplish X, Y, and Z?
Great.
If we can agree upon price, we're ready to move forward.
Awesome.
Just being able to, to go that path.
And then the third thing, and this was the magic, was um, thank goodness
we were students of Vern Harnish and we consumed everything he sent out.
Um, and there was a day in 2010 that he sent out, um.
Of his weekly newsletters that had a book in there called Simple Numbers, straight
Talk, big Profits by Greg Crabtree.
That changed everything for us because if it wasn't for that book,
I don't know if we would've ever nailed the financial component.
We would've never understood top line cost of sales, gross profit.
Salary cap profitability, right?
There's mackowitz profit first.
I think we're somewhere kind of in a, in a, um, a modified profit first Greg
Crabtree kind of structure early on.
And those were the three components.
Um, strategy.
Consistent repeatable value proposition and the financial model.
And we were at a negative 3% net profit before taxes.
And then once we read Greg Crabtree's book, understand the salary cap within
a quarter, because we, we were in the NAAA Mastermind days at this point.
We got hooked on him, uh, in, in 2010, and then we made the changes
and we had to go over a quarter.
Yeah.
Simple numbers.
Yeah.
Gary, it's a, um, what is it?
Orange Book Joel, I think is what it is.
Yeah.
And within, within a quarter that we were there, we showed our numbers.
When we made the adjustments and we went back, we, we went from a
negative three to a positive 14.
So we had a 17% turnaround without me or Jay in production.
And so that, that was the missing p piece for us.
And once we had that, then, then it, then it really unlocked and we knew
that we could keep, um, we could keep Jay outta production because one of
the biggest things that we learned in there was, uh, market based wage.
Mm-hmm.
The reason that.
We got sucked back in is because we were paying ourselves as if we
were still selling 60 houses a year.
And when you ain't selling 60 houses a year and you're still
paying yourself as if you were, that's why the cash disappears.
So we made those adjustments.
We stopped paying Jay 'cause he wasn't doing anything.
He got his percentage of profit, but he didn't get a paycheck because he
didn't do anything in the business.
And once we understood that, that component and we were able to make
that happen, um, to where the coaching organization could finally pay him.
He didn't have to rob from the brokerage.
Then we were able to maintain, and, and so that's just like one of the biggest gifts.
There's so many little nuggets in that book, and I, I love it because
he wrote it for small business entrepreneurs and you know, Greg's
a former IRS auditor, so he knew.
The traps.
He knew what to stay away from.
He knew what to do, and he was just fantastic to work with him and
his team for, for so many years.
He spoke, what, two or three times at EGS in Mastermind for us, or some great old
content of him kind of breaking it down.
But those, those were the three, three big components, um, that.
We've seen.
And if, if we could nail those, then we knew we could, you know,
can get you outta production.
I think the other big component is that you had one clear value
proposition to the market.
That was the other thing, Joel, on the marketing side of things.
And so for us it was your home sold in, you know, 59 days
guaranteed, or we'll buy it.
And we stuck with that and we ran it.
And we ran it.
We ran it.
Um.
You see it with the Mark Spains, you see it with the Jeff Cooks,
you see it with the Blake Sloans.
You see it, you know, across as the one consistent message to the market
that you, you build everything around.
Um, that, that was the big component for us,
that, that a couple of those things fit perfectly in, um, in, in one of
my big pieces about it, which is it's.
To some degree, it's math, right?
We're we gotta, we gotta do the math on what it looks
like to get outta production.
The, the problem is a lot of, a lot of team leaders can't do the
math effectively for two reasons.
One is they don't really know their own numbers, and then two, they can't make
good assumptions in order to forecast because they don't have consistency.
So what, what you're talking about with, um, with the designations with
C-H-S-A-C-H-B is now we have consistency.
Across what the team is doing so we can have consistency across
their results, which means we can make a better assumption when we
start to forecast what it's gonna look like to get out of production.
Um, I did a real short training on this for the agent to CEO mastermind members
last year, um, and I just want to give this example of how drastic it can be.
Um, so these are just, I just made up these numbers.
Don't get stuck on these percentages.
It's just to illustrate.
So let's say as a team leader, you went on a hundred listing appointments last year.
Let's say that you took 80% of those listings.
And then you closed 90% of the listings you took.
So that would give you 72 closings.
If you're in my market with a $425,000 average sale price,
that's little over $12,000.
Average commission, 72 closings, $900,000 in GCI is what you did in this,
you know, made up little model here.
Now, let's say you're stepping out of production and you're gonna hand
all a hundred listing appointments off to, um, your top guy or to,
you know, a bunch of your people.
Now, let's say, uh, uh, again, we're talking about forecasting here.
Um, they're, maybe they're not gonna close quite as many.
They're gonna close 70% of those appointments into listings instead of 80%.
And then let's say they're only gonna get 80% of those deals across the table
instead of 90%, because they're not gonna be as effective on the listing
presentation as you, they're not gonna be as effective negotiating, troubleshooting,
you know, getting the deals across.
So just by saying, Hey, they're, they're 10% less, um, in conversion,
in both of those metrics.
And then now we have to pay 'em a split.
Let's say we're only paying out 25%.
Just in that equation, it takes us from 900,000 in GCI to 530 in GCI.
So that's a, it's a 40% loss just because the split we're playing, we're
paying out plus a little bit, you know, worse performance than you're
gonna have on a listing appointment.
And so again, we, we can account for all this stuff, but we have to forecast it.
And when people don't have the consistency across the team, then
you can't make the right assumptions.
In your forecast, and then now the two by four is coming because you thought
you were gonna make, you know, 700,000 GCI, but you actually made five 50
instead of your forecast, and now where, where's that money coming from?
Well, it means you're back in production.
So again, that's just, those are, those are made up numbers, but in most teams,
the, in the beginning, when you hand off your deals to people, they're not
gonna, they're not gonna perform quite at the level that you're performing at.
And we have to account for that.
So I love what you're talking about because it, it creates consistency, which
creates some level of predictability, which helps us forecast and forecasting's
a really important skill in business.
A lot of times we confuse forecasting with goal setting and forecasting's.
It's based on as much data as we can have and then as as strong
of assumptions as we can have.
Goal setting is forecasting.
Plus what do we think we can accomplish?
So it's forecasting plus plus, you know, ambition is where we get our goals
from, but forecasting we wanna be as accurate as possible, which means we
need to be able to make good assumptions, which means we need to get consistency.
So I think that that totally lines up with, with what you're,
with, what you're talking about.
Strategy is bringing consistency to the business, the, the repeatable,
proven, repeatable system that's bringing consistency to the business.
Having one offer to the marketplace, bringing consistency to the business.
So I think that that totally lines up, John, with, with the, the forecasting
issue that I see a lot of teams get wrong.
I don't, I don't know if it was dimming or, or where, where I got
this, but one of the things that they were talking about from a financial
perspective was, you know, most people don't know how to, to, to look
at the financials and evaluate and.
It's, the rule of thumb is 75% on what is going to happen and only 25% on what has.
And so, like you said, being able to get good visibility into cash
flow and forecasting is way more important than, you know, if I had
to prioritize balance sheet p and l. Cash flow to me is always at the top.
Um.
Especially for a lot of, a lot of agents, especially in this position that are
trying to escape production, is that they don't have good visibility on, on
the forecasting because they're so, I mean, that, that's all they do, right?
Because their, their sales, marketing, managing cash flow forecasting
because they haven't got to that, that other point to where cash is good.
Cash flow is consistent.
And then we can, we can be more strategic.
So that's where a lot of it happens, and I think they get spread too thin.
I, I would say the biggest, the biggest piece, um, you know, most, most agents
start going to build a team and, you know, uh, we, I would love to maybe, maybe
we can unpack Joel, we can unpack Jim and Leanne's, um, you know, game plan.
Um, and, and Renee's a, a great example as well is like, you know.
One, why do you wanna escape production?
And two, what is, what is, what is, what is the freedom plan?
Like, what is, what is the number to get you to freedom?
Where, where is that going to come in from?
Um, so I, I can use, you know, Travis can appreciate this.
I could use Sta Reedy as as a great example, right?
So we tried every which way we possibly could.
To see how exp would make sense for them, um, in what they were trying to do.
And we could just never make the math, math, it just never would make sense
based upon kind of their business model, what they were wanting to do.
So it made sense for them to stay independent.
So now we're staying here, so what, what is, what is our freedom plan?
And they're like, listen, the only thing we can do is let's,
let's go get real estate.
And they like.
When we were looking at this, they didn't, they didn't own one piece of property.
Re I think Reedy only owned his personal house.
I don't even know if Sta owned a house.
Now, how many properties do they have?
Trav?
Quite a bit like maybe 30, 40 properties.
They're constantly using flips for cash flow, but their game plan is.
Their freedom is, is real estate.
So everything they do, all of their decisions move them closer to to
investing in buying in real estate, right?
Like Renee has her freedom plan, so everything that she's doing within her
business to escape production has to use.
The revenue to make the investments so that she can escape production.
So I think the biggest thing too is, is getting real clear on what that game
plan for, for escape is, is for you.
And for most people it is gonna be through those investments.
And so, um.
That's just something to, to kind of keep in mind, and that's
where it really starts, right?
Why do you want to escape production?
And what are we moving, you know, to, to freedom the next component?
If, if it is still a team dynamic, you gotta have who's, it's
gotta be all about the who's.
Um, you've gotta have great people in there.
Um, if, if not, it's not possible because you gotta think about these
rainmakers that are doing, you know, that build these teams that are
doing 40, 50% of the production.
There's no way to ever escape it.
If, if that's the, if that's the case.
So we started working, Joel and I started working with, um, Jim
Griffin and his fiance Leanne.
They're in Johnson City, Tennessee.
And I had, I had gone on a, um, our sand dollar Mastermind, um,
a couple years in a row with Jim.
And Jim was miserable and he, I was like, bro, what is going on?
So he was miserable.
I talked to him, we, we get back, go through p and ls.
I'm like, bro, things look good.
He's just miserable.
And then he started complaining last year when we were at Sand Dollar again,
and I, I, I just sit there and I just listened to everything that he was saying.
And he's like, I wanna be done in two years.
I wanna be done in two years.
And.
I was like, well, one, I, I got, I got your guy.
I know, I know how we can do this and, but here's what it's gonna take.
And so Joel and I jump on the phone with him.
And what they were wanting to do is that he was wanting to increase the number
of doors they they own to be able to accelerate them getting outta production.
And so what we realized is that he needed to go crank sales.
For two years, which meant he couldn't be head of company.
And so I was like, you have your perfect head of company.
And he goes, she'll never do it.
She'll never do it.
And I What was her initial reaction when we proposed it to her, Joel?
It was pretty funny.
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Alright, let's get back at it.
She's pretty witty as it is, but she had something comical to say about it.
I don't remember specifically.
I'm, I just, I just remember thinking, well, I guess, I
guess that conversation's over,
yeah.
Yeah.
It's never gonna happen.
Yeah, it was along the lines like, you're outta your damn mind.
But, uh, but she said it more colorful and, and, and more
to, to her, uh, sense of humor.
And we, we proposed it to her and we hit her with the question, what, what?
Must it look like for you to stay committed to this for the next 24 months.
And she's like, well, I'm not giving up my massage.
I'm not giving up this, I'm not giving up that.
We're like, great, we don't have to.
So we ended up structuring and moving her head of company.
We're 10 months into the process.
They are the most profitable that they've, that they've ever been.
They've had some of their best months ever, Joel?
Yeah.
This year.
And so what was built was 24 month run.
And all the systems and processes in place and get as profitable as possible.
That was actually their word of the year was profitability.
And they, they, they've hit it.
Um, they're, they're doing it.
And so now, now the game plan is building the leadership development.
So year two of the plan is all about leadership development and, and
then fine tuning the model, which we know we've gotta increase headcount.
And increase agent productivity for that to be true.
And here's the other kicker.
Jim's only paying himself as a listing partner.
So you get paid for what you do.
So when he steps out, that mechanism's already in place and the company's not
taking a hit for money being paid out for, for something that's not being done.
So you just gotta get real clear on what the goal is in the timeframe.
And what they did is they, they hit the, the, the science of scaling,
you know, set an impossible goal with an impossible timeline.
And that was, you know, a 24 month run to put in a new head
of company for, for 24 months.
And then now we gotta groom.
You know, who's gonna be the next level of leadership?
So to me, it's, it's one, not having a goal.
Not having cadence, not having structure, not having strategy,
and then not having the right people, um, to allow you to do that.
Right.
So it was, it was part of it, it was, it was the real reason Jay came hard back
at me to come back on board in 2010, um, after we parted ways in, in seven.
Uh, because he knew that he needed somebody to come in and run the company
'cause he needed to move to the next step.
So I think that's the biggest component too, is, is getting ego out of the
way, knowing that you've gotta be able to, and that that was the example of
Jim and Leanne is letting Jim's, Jim, allowing his ego to get out of the way.
And he didn't have to be head of company.
In fact, he enjoys not being head of company.
Um, he enjoys.
Working with the agents.
He enjoys training the agents.
Um, he's, he's coaching quite a bit.
Um, he coaches, um, he took over coaching, you know, some this summer
for pipes as, uh, pipes was, um, on.
Um, honeymoon mode, um, after getting engaged and a lot of the
events and stuff that he has.
So Jim, you know, was coaching some of the best teams in the country.
He was coaching Blake's team.
Um, and, and so being able to have that, um, in that role and letting
gaze ego go away to be able to.
You know, to do that.
And, and, and even like you guys, you know, like Blake's story, like Blake
has tremendous leadership in place that allows him to take that week
off a month, um, with his family.
I mean, if you guys saw pictures he was in Orlando for, for almost like 10 days.
Um, and being able to be there with his family and you
can't do that without great.
People in place, and I don't, I can't remember the last time Blake sold
a house, um, and his, his margins are some of the best in the country.
So there, there's just real clear ways of getting clear on what the goal is, um,
and, and what it is that, that you really, truly want to do and, and make sure you're
moving towards a known, a known project.
I mean, the other, the other things too, Joel, right?
Like, I think we've hit on quite a bit of, of them.
Um.
You know, the, the fear is, you know, stepping back profit
drops, of course, right?
Because if you don't have, have the right structure, I think not having weekly KPI
Cadence, um, not having leaders in the right roles, um, not having the right
comp models there, the right incentives, uh, not having the, you know, the, all
the operational gaps that are there.
Not having the right, you know, scorecards, plans, SOPs, I think, um.
The agent output is inconsistent.
'cause you don't have the right training rhythm, you don't have
the right people in place holding, holding the agents accountable,
really leading them at a high level.
Um, you know, I I look at like, like top notch out in Idaho, right?
Like with, with, with Anthony being able to step out because he had Devon, right?
And then he had, you know, his head of ops, uh, you know,
there for, for, for a great run.
So you look at.
You know, a bigger future, um, you know, projects that's gonna get you to
freedom, but then having the right people in place is the most, most important.
Yeah, I think one thing, these are good, good examples.
Um.
Because with, with Jim and Liam, they're, they're looking at stepping
out of production and stepping out of the business at the same time.
And there, those are two different things and they need
to be handled very differently.
Right.
If you're stepping out of production, like you said, John, for, for, for most
people who are stepping out of production, they're not stepping out of the business.
They're taking the time that they're saving in production and, and, you
know, working on another project.
But almost all of 'em are still in the business, at least in the beginning.
They're still providing leadership.
They're still, you know, helping guide, uh, guide the organization,
uh, probably grow the organization, recruiting, um, things like that.
When you talk about stepping out of the business altogether, it's
an entirely different conversation.
And it's a lot trickier to navigate, especially on, on
relatively smaller teams.
Mm-hmm.
Because when you're stepping out of, when you're stepping out of production,
in order to help grow the business, it, it's easier to maintain the culture.
It's easier to maintain continuity.
When you're stepping out of the business altogether, it, it's much
trickier to navigate the, the impact that that might have on your culture.
It's one of the reasons it's dangerous to have the, the family type environment for
the team because you, we, we don't, you don't walk away from your family, right?
Like.
I thought we were all in this together, and you're telling me
you're stepping out of the business.
Like it could just, it can just destroy the team if you're not careful.
Um, and, and now, you know, again, easy to fall into people having resentment.
They feeling like you, you know, you're, we're making you rich, and
now you're just gonna go retire on us.
So you gotta be really careful when you're stepping out of the business altogether.
It's much easier to say, Hey, I'm gonna step out of production so I can focus
on growing our business and turning our company into something even better.
People, you know, get on board with that very easily when you're
stepping out of the business.
It, it, it's even more important to have the next levels of leadership.
Continuity in the culture, continuity in leadership takes longer to navigate that.
Right.
We're, we're a two, a two year plan with Jim and Leanne and spending an,
an entire year focused on the, the cultural and leadership transition
already starting to promote and kind of give opportunities for other people.
So I think you gotta be really clear on that.
Auto production outta the business are two different things and
need to be handled differently.
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great point.
And, um.
You know, I still think there has to be, uh, you know, it's, it's, you
know, in the business, on the business, over the business, I think can still
be, be another, another component.
I mean, I think there's, there's some other conversations that have to be
tied there to, to the bottom line.
Um, if you want somebody to still stay, you know, they gotta have the upside
right, to be able to, to push through it.
I mean, it was the only way that, that Jay was able to get me back.
What.
You know, I was never gonna come back as an employee.
I was gonna come back as, as an owner.
And so I think you've got to, you know, factor those things in.
If you're, if you're really, truly trying to, to step away from it as
much as, as much as possible, you gotta factor, factor those things in.
Um, yeah, I, I mean, those are, those are, those are awesome, awesome points.
Um.
I, I'll, I'll pause right there.
I mean, any, you know, you guys have any other thoughts or
questions, anything around that?
Um, you know, there's so many ways up, up the hill, right?
You know, we got four or five different examples right here.
I, I just, um, am grateful for the.
Uh, her mission, if you will, like, I think most people think that they need
to scale this really large team to step, like they need to build a Tina call
team or they need to build to, to, um, you know, step out of, of production.
Um, and this is the first time I've.
Sat in a situation where they're like, well, that's not the only path, right?
I know there's other paths, but for that to be articulated in this way, um, it's
almost kind of like busting the myth.
Um, but perhaps it, perhaps it's, it's not a myth.
Like what do you, um, believe truly is, um,
I guess where you would need to be to, to.
Uh, step out of production, meaning, and I guess it's all that, like you were
saying, Joel, that math problem, you know, what does it take to fund your life?
What does it take to fund the goal that you're trying to get to?
Like, all of those things.
Um, but do you think that there's like a certain benchmark to which this
just doesn't, you know what I mean?
Like you're.
At what point is it you're just choosing not to do real estate anymore as
opposed to stepping out of production?
You know what I mean?
I,
I think it's, I think it's hardest to pull off on like mid-size teams.
So I think it's actually pretty, I think it's probably easiest to pull off on
small teams, um, or on really big teams.
And the reason I say that is if you've got, if you've got.
Four agents, for example.
Um, it's pretty easy for you to step out of production, but, but
feed those four agents, right?
With your own stuff.
What, what's happening to all your deals?
You're just making four rockstar agents and yes, we're gonna have standards
for them to do their own business.
Um, but with, you know, with your experience, your brand, your
marketing, you could keep three to four agents really, really busy.
You can take a little bit higher split off those deals that you're feeding them
'cause you're feeding them great deals.
Um, and so you could say, well, I'm gonna take 70% of all these
deal, these, these high level referrals that I'm giving you guys.
I'm keeping 70%.
Um, you're, you're feeding them consistently, one to two deals a
month each, maybe even, and then they're gonna do their other stuff.
So it's easier to do it on a small team.
Now, of course, there's risk, right?
When one, when, when a person leaves, that affects things more
than it does on a large team.
I, I think it's hardest to pull off.
On like a team with like 10 agents.
Mm-hmm.
Because your personal business can't feed 10 agents, so you have
to keep the lead flow on which is overhead for your business,
which means it's the profitability equation gets more difficult.
So I think, and then, and then there's a point where, you know, I don't know
exactly where it is, maybe it's 30 agents where, um, where there's enough
business happening where you can afford to take a, a step back in the short term,
in your own income in order to grow.
Um, so I think it's trickiest in the middle.
That's, it's been a theme of a lot of conversations we've had lately,
John, of like the middle's tricky.
Yeah.
Uh, tricky to navigate.
So,
yeah,
so I think, I think like really small or really big is pretty easy.
And it's really hard in between.
Yeah.
You gotta, you gotta have something else too that, that's
got the income coming in for you.
I think, you know, Kyle, Kyle Davis is a, a fantastic example and, um,
you know, his, his whole goal was.
You know, to, and, and, and listen.
I mean, you know, Kyle doesn't mind me sharing this, is that Kyle doesn't have to
work like at all, like literally at all.
He doesn't have to ever get outta bed if he doesn't want to.
He's got enough money to come in, but he just has such a fire about him.
Like he couldn't, he, like, he would go crazy if he wasn't doing what he's doing.
And, um.
And so I think, you know, for, for him, um, he's just continuing
to push that monthly coming in.
'cause he's got enough coming in right now.
He doesn't ever have to do anything ever again, just just through his
investments and everything like that.
But he's built a machine that's uncovering opportunities for him.
So that's what he loves.
He loves the game, he loves the chase, he loves the deals.
Putting the deals together, which was honestly was my favorite part.
I mean, I loved, I loved.
You know, every other week we had, you know, um, sheriff Sell Trav, right?
Every, every two weeks the sheriff's sell.
So Sundays, me, rusty and kinder meet at Cracker Barrel, have breakfast,
go through the, go through the list, see what properties we wanted to see.
I, I, I, I could do the quick math on this is where we need to buy this one at.
I would say, I'd just say, 'cause what will this one sell for?
Rusty, how much is it gonna cost?
Then I would run the math and I said, we have to buy it at this.
And we would do, we did that for, we did that for, for years, and that was
just my favorite part is going and finding and putting deals together
and, you know, the developments and new construction and those projects.
And that's what, that's what kept me, you know, plugged in into the game.
As long as, as long as I was.
And so I think just whatever it is, man, you gotta have something else
you're pursuing, you're chasing, you know, Jay, like I said, Jay
was the coaching company, Al was.
You know, um, you know, the call center and, and where that went and, you know,
why we're even at exp is, you know, him getting sucked back into production.
And, um, you know, cliff, just, you talk about return on luck, right?
Um.
It's a real thing.
Um, you know, return on luck is a real thing.
I think.
You know, not saying Glen wasn't gonna be successful, but there was
an element of, of return on luck.
It was timing, right?
Timing in the market.
Timing, timing in the season of the market, what was happening,
um, you know, timing in.
You know, the future is faster than you think.
Right?
The book that they dropped, that came out in December of 2019, and the only
company that they talked about that was gonna be transformed by the, the,
the speed of technology, the only company they talked about in there
was exp. So just there, there's just a lot of things when you look back is,
is it's, it's pretty cool, but the.
Biggest point of, of whatever it is, man, you gotta have a goal for freedom.
And if you don't have that goal for freedom, then you,
you're never gonna escape it.
It's always gonna, it's always gonna have you there.
Um, I look at, you know, Renee, I look at, you know, the Ink team, um, and
you know why Laura's there, right?
Because it is family.
She ain't family.
And so.
You need that component for the agents to see her.
They know she's not family.
Um, and, and so, you know, Sylvia's stepping, stepping away outta production,
obviously Junior, you know, ramping up, uh, you know, Mike's there every day.
And, um, but, you know, there's, there's a plan.
It goes back to my point, right?
You gotta have a Laura.
To be able to, to pull that off.
Um, you gotta have a Joel, you gotta have a jk, whatever, whatever the
case is, you've gotta have those rock stars on the team side of things.
Um, like for you, Renee, you know, you, you, you're building the ATM model as
Joel, you know, one of Joel's models.
You're building the at TM model and you just have created leverage.
Yeah, you have a couple agents, you can feed 'em, but it's also
leverage and support for you.
Um, but Renee's goal is, is exit through, um, you know, exit through.
Investments, which you guys have been amazing at, but you also, you know,
you, you, you also have a who over there helping navigate and run those too.
So it's all, at the end of the day, you wanna distill it down
as it's a bigger goal and having the right people around you,
sum it up simple.
That's it.
Big goal freedom.
Get great people around you.
Cool.
Joel, any, any other final thoughts before we, uh, get you outta here?
Go fix dinner.
I'm proud of you, man.
That's a really cool goal.
I, I, I love that.
For you and Carly and, and Wes and I think it's, um, you know, creating
those non-negotiables, um, you know, having clients, making sure that.
You know, it's you, you bring, you know, make it four dimensional
as Blake likes to talk about it.
Right.
You know, you know, faith, family, you know, finance and fitness, and
what are, what are the four goals?
What, what are the key goals in, in, in those that are non-negotiable?
So it's really cool.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a, it's a domino habit for us.
We're, we're eating healthier, we're spending less money on DoorDash,
spending better time together.
So it kind of hits, it hits all, all equities by the by
one, you know, kinda one thing.
So it's been fun.
I love it.
Anything that you wanna wrap up with?
Any final thoughts?
I don't think so.
I think we hit every, we, we hit everything I wanted to do.
Um, I just, I'll, I'll reiterate the, the better assumptions you can make,
the better forecast you can make.
And so where, where do you start right now is, is if you don't know your numbers.
At a really high level, that's where you start.
Even if you're not, even if this is years away, maybe if you're not even sure you
wanna step out of production at, at all, where you start is knowing your numbers.
'cause that's gonna be your, your, your, your personal numbers with
your personal production's gonna be the foundation of the forecast
you make to get out of production.
And then now when we're, when we have ours, then we, now
we need to know our teams.
Um, and maybe we find out, Hey, I can't step out of production until we
get more consistency across the team.
Okay, great.
But now, now we know.
Right?
So that, that's where it starts with this whole conversation, starts with, um,
with being dialed in with our numbers.
Yeah.
My favorite t-shirt that's ever been on expert mentors is, uh, from, uh.
Everybody's friend, Chuck Fazio that said hashtag it's just math.
That's my favorite t-shirt that anybody's ever wore on all 305
episodes of expert mentors live.
It's, uh, hashtag it's just math and uh, it really is.
Um, and so if you're struggling with that component.
To me, to me, the, the book that unlocked it all is, is Crabtree, uh, with simple
number, straight talk, big profits, and there's so much to unpack in that book.
Um, but just getting the salary cap concept, getting the, you
know, pay yourself for what you do.
Um, you know, your earn on, on the profitability of the business and
being able to make sure that that's aligned to, to the future, to the goal.
It's good.
Guys, thank you guys so much for, for, for jumping in here, hanging out with us.
Gary, it's great to see you, Renee.
Yeah.
Um, always great.
And we, we were laughing.
We gotta see Trav twice today.
We gotta see Renee twice today, so, um, it's good.
Uh, good, good having you guys in and, um, I think, uh, we'll, uh, we'll speak
for Joel, but I think we'll, we'll, we'll keep running with these, uh, maybe not
every week, but, uh, we'll definitely keep running with these power hours.
So appreciate you guys.
Thank you so much.
Thanks soon, guys.
See Bye.
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