FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:
Justin Stoddart 0:01
So the big question is this. How do we those of us in the real estate industry with crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we simultaneously see success and significance, income and impact? My name is Justin Stoddart. And this is the Think bigger real estate show. Hey, what’s up, everybody Justin Stoddart here. Very excited to be with you today for a very, very special training as part of freedom week. So for those of you that are watching live, welcome. And if you have questions, please put them in the comments. If by chance you are listening to the podcast afterward, I would encourage you to reach out if you have any questions or any ways that I can help you find me on any social media and DM me, today’s episode is going to be all about how we gain freedom. I was over the past 300 Plus episodes of the Think bigger real estate show, I’ve observed that you do not have to choose, you do not have to choose between having a very successful business and also having a lot of quality of life. We take you back to a story, I was interviewing a gentleman who owns a very large financial planning, advisory business. And he said his sole purpose is for him and all of his advisors to be expert, not just that living, but also at teaching three main areas, he calls them the three eyes, first of all income, hard to be able to live a very abundant life without great income. Secondly, is independence, actually having freedom from your business. And then number three, is to have impact. And he said, If you can get all three of those to align, you can really live an amazing life, and you can help other people live an amazing life. So today’s episode is going to be all about that. How do we help you to capitalize on the three eyes? How do we be sure that you have not just success in the way the world portrays it, but actually significance in the sense that you actually also have the time to enjoy it. And all the while you’re pursuing something that really makes a great impact on other people. Anyway, very, very excited to be with you all here today. Going through these things I’ve developed again, as I’ve interviewed over 300 people on my podcast, as I build a number of businesses myself, I’ve identified what I call the five pillars of freedom. And today, we’re going to be going deep on exactly what those are. And I’m gonna be drawn it out for you. And not only am I going to tell you what they are, but I’m going to help you to really understand and internalize the concept that you can’t have one of them, or you can’t have more than one of them be your focus, you have to choose one. And it’s actually not difficult. It’s actually very, it’ll be very clear when we’re done, which one you should be on. Because you’ll find a bottleneck. And the biggest limiting factor will be one of these five, we’re also then going to parlay into how do you structure your calendar, to where it gets very easy to be sure that that one thing, that one pillar is your priority without neglecting everything else. So like I said, today, we have a full training, lots of great information I’m going to be sharing with you. And I’m thrilled that you’re here joining me. Again, if you have questions or comments or if you find value in this, I would encourage you strongly encourage you to speak up. Those that speak up are those that learn along with me. They aren’t just observers and consumers of content, but they’re actually people who begin to create content in and of themselves. So again, with that being said excited to be with you. Let’s get rocking and rolling. Okay. Now for those of you that can see my screen, you’re going to see that I’ll be drawing them out for you. Let’s start with number one. Number one is getting the business
Justin Stoddart 4:15
this is pillar number one, I have had the chance to spend a fair amount of time with Grant Cardone many of you know him, kind of an abrasive personality. There’s things I like about Grant, there’s things I don’t like about Grant, beside the topic the man has has created a billionaire wealth, and it’s creating millionaire wealth for lots and lots of other people. So regardless of whether or not you’d like his personality, there’s some things that we can learn from grant. And one thing that grant taught me is that revenue creates the space in which a business can operate. In other words, if you don’t have enough revenue, then you don’t have enough space to do anything else. So first and foremost, we need to get really good at generating revenue Okay, now there’s a number of different components of getting the business, okay, and they’re not all created equal. We have, for example, branding. And I think branding is oftentimes a very under misunderstood concept. Oftentimes you think of it as your logo, your business card, kind of the colors. That’s a very small part of it, some very dear friends of mine who own the company brand face have helped me to see. And I recommend, if you’re, if you don’t fully understand what I’m going to share with you here, it might be time for you to have a conversation with them. But each and every one of us are a brand. We are, as my friend Amy just taught me recently is that when people think of, for example, you think about your, if you’re going to buy a new car, there’s probably somebody in your phone, you would say, Can you help me with this? Can you help me negotiate? Can you Can you guide me? Kind of through this process? Can you can you give me some tips on buying a car, right? If you’re going to be doing something, Construction wise, maybe in your home? Is there someone on your phone who you would call? Okay, so there are certain people in our lives who have a certain brand, something that we know about them, that makes them different than everybody else in our phone? When we do branding, right? It’s not what we say about ourselves, or the color that that’s associated with our brand. But it’s really how other people see us. And do they see us as the best possible option that they know how to do those things. And if they do that, then you’re doing branding well, but where you’re not doing branding well is if by chance, you think that you are going to gain by having a really, really wide net, and talking to everybody the same people that do branding really, really well, are actually people who have a very specific avatar that they’re speaking to, they know who that avatar is. And not only that, but they they speak they they aim their entire message and everything about their brand, too, as if they’re talking to that person. So again, branding is one small part of this, okay? After branding comes marketing, your marketing is guided by your brand, supported by your brand. Okay. And then there’s of course sales. One thing that I see oftentimes in the real estate world, and in other situations, is that there’s so much emphasis put on marketing, and so little put on sales. We think that by posting online that we are selling, no, that’s marketing, right, and very passive marketing to some degree.
Justin Stoddart 7:40
A better approach is to be sure that we have all three cover when it comes to getting the business branding, marketing and sales, we actually need to have something that’s driving sales, some process through which we are generating conversations. And I’ll put it this way, if your social media marketing does not have the intent to generate into conversations, then you are missing the boat with social media. Because yes, it’s a great broadcasting tool, just like you’re experiencing right now. But more importantly than that, it is a conversation tool, that all of these, all of these tools have the ability to be also very powerful conversation tools, so that you can be in conversation people, because as my mentor Sharon Srivatsa taught me is that there is no conversion without conversation. So you need to be very clear that all of your branding and marketing is eventually leading to conversations because if it’s not, then it’s not doing you much good, right, you’re really missing the boat on that. So again, now, I’m going to I’m going to kind of share it this this way, if you’re trying to identify is my one priority right now getting the business, the only way that you’re one priority would not be getting the business is is is if you have more business than you can handle. And operations really become the big bottleneck, like you’re letting clients down, or you don’t have enough people to satisfy the leads and the referrals that are coming in. Okay, so for many that are new in the business, getting the businesses should be your primary focus. Now, as I mentioned before, of these five pillars, none of them should be entirely neglected. However, there are seasons of emphasis in which you should be focused on one. And if the space meaning the revenue in which you have to operate isn’t yet big enough, then this is a great opportunity for you to say okay, this is my one thing, this is the most important thing. And when would you move off of that when would you move off to something else? When the bottleneck is the operations and you have other people or other systems or other tools that are generating enough of the business to where you have a big enough planes space to operate your business. Okay. Let’s move on to pillar number two. Okay. pillar number two is that ANA, implementing the business, okay? Or operating, we’ll call operating the business.
Justin Stoddart 10:18
Okay? Now, obviously, if we’re getting the business, we need to be doing the business or we’re not going to be getting much business for very much longer, right? So operating the business is the second pillar. Now again, this becomes the emphasis, the one priority, the moment that you’re like, Okay, I’ve got sufficient revenue, to be able to put somebody else, somebody else on getting revenue, and it’s not going to significantly drop, whether that’d be a great system, a great additional person, when I can maintain revenue, or maybe even having jumped just a tiny bit, right. In fact, I would say, as long as you can continue to grow revenue and not have it be you, then your focus can move to operations, okay, that’s when you would move your focus from one pillar to the next, or if operations are actually sabotaging your ability to get business. Okay. So if you’re unable to get the business because your operations are really poor, then that becomes the focus. But obviously, operating the business is everything from when a customer says yes, to when transactions complete, right, then those people fall back into marketing, because you’re marketing them for future referrals. So getting really good at having great operational systems in place to be able to do the business at a high level. That’s pillar number two. pillar number three, is to account for the business.
Justin Stoddart 11:50
When you think of accounting, you typically only think of dollars and cents, but there’s more to it than that. Anytime numbers will ultimately guide your ship. And if you can put together key metrics, and you don’t need to have a ton of them. But I think gross commission income is an extremely important one, I think profitability is an extremely important one. Okay, those, those two will be extremely important for you to know, and to have systems around to be sure that number one, get revenue gross commission is big enough for you to operate within. And number two, you’re actually keeping your money, I can’t tell you how many top teams top producing professionals who are one month away from being broke. Okay, and I don’t say that to criticize, right? Businesses are at different levels at different times, and business owners are at different levels of maturity at different times. So there’s no criticism here. But I am saying that just because something looks awesome on the outside, to other people about your business, or your perspective of their business doesn’t mean that they’re actually profitable. Okay, so having a key system around ensuring that you are consistently watching your revenue, watching your profits is critical. Because it gets really hard to have a business of great impact and great independence, if you don’t actually have a profit, a profit allows you the ability to invest back into the business and hire people that can continue to grow the business without it being you. Okay, so accounting for the business. And I would encourage again, as I mentioned before, only one of these pillars should have your priority focus at any given time. However, none of these should be neglected. Meaning you could very well outsource to an accounting firm, to help you keep track of the numbers. Okay? And or have a simple system, write some sort of software that helps you to track the numbers. So you know, revenue, so you’re no profit, so you know what your expenses are. Okay, so you know what your taxes are. A very simple formula that I follow is from the book called Profit First, PR, O F, it first. Profit First gives you the ability to decide as a percentage, how much how much of your revenue is going to be expenses, how much of your revenue is going to be taxes and how much your revenue is going to be owners compensation, and how much of your revenue is going to be profit. That way you’ve decided once, people that have really mastered Money Mastery at one time, and then review it on a quarterly basis. In other words, they decide in advance how much they have to spend. And then they work within those boundaries, to where every possible thing that pops up is not a temptation to them to by this by that they have a very disciplined approach of this is what I need to do. Now when great opportunities come along. They may very well decide at that point that hey, this makes sense to invest in this thing because it’s a unique opportunity and I need it now. And I need to grow my revenue now. Right? I get That’s things like that don’t always come just at the quarter marks. But that it is, I do think it’s very important for us to recognize that you can systematize this pillar to where it happens, simply because you’ve decided in advance, and you’ve brought in some outside help to help you to do that. Okay, so that is accounting for the business, again, not just dollars and cents, because you could add into here other key metrics. And I think one of the most important for real estate agents to be watching is how many meetings and like, how many appointments Am I in? And from there, if you wanted to be more granular, you could go from appointments down to actual conversations, okay? Because that then becomes the focus of your marketing and sales is how many conversations can I get in that turn into appointments, because when I have appointments, now, we can get really clear on how many appointments do I need to get contracts and contracts obviously lead to the revenue. So this accounting, that I’m talking about here, is not just dollars and cents, but we can expand that to where it creates real clarity. And you can go into each and every day saying I need to have X number of conversations, because those conversations lead to X number of appointments. And those x number of appointments lead to X number of contracts, that X number of contracts leads to X number of dollars and cents. And once we get clarity on that, now we can really even build out the budgets better, so that we know how much we have to spend, how much revenue we have, and how much more emphasis we need to put on our marketing and sales to produce more space or more revenue to operate within. Okay, now, these next two are number one, or sorry, number four, is going to be leading the business. This really comes into play
Justin Stoddart 16:50
at the point that you have the first three are in some sort of decent shape. Now keep in mind, none of these should be neglected up until that point, but the moment that it becomes a priority is a moment that you start adding teammates that are playing large contributor roles to your business. Because if you don’t lead them, they will go somewhere else where they can be led. Like that’s the reality. If you want talented people, you have to step up and lead them. Because if you don’t, they’ll find someone who will, each and every person that comes comes into your world is looking to better their situation. And if they believe that you’re the best person to help them get from A to B where they’re at where they want to be, and there’s a good chance that they’ll stay as a part of your world. But only if you lead them if you don’t lead them, then that doesn’t happen. Right? So I forgot that I wasn’t sharing some of this with you. Okay. So again, we are getting the business, we’re operating the business, we’re accounting for the business, and we are leading the business, part of leading the business includes as well. The self leadership is that you have to have a culture in you and a regimen in your own life of continually getting better personal development and professional development. Okay. So if I could do a breakout here, part of this is going to include
Justin Stoddart 18:14
personal development, professional development, not just for you, but for the teammates that you serve. And that it’s also going to be team and culture. Development. Now again, when you have built your business correctly, and you’ve attracted good talent, now you as the leader, your number one job is to remove obstacles from those that you serve, meeting your other teammates, so that they can continue to grow themselves and the business and they have leadership. One of the big things that I see is people who have had an operator role, right, they’ve been the sole breadwinner in that business, the Rainmaker, and now they have teammates, they have a hard time letting go of that. And pretty soon they’ve got everybody with oars in the water, and nobody’s steering the ship, which oftentimes equates to everybody rowing on the same side of the boat and you’re going in circles. So every good ship has a captain has somebody who’s guiding that boat forward, removing obstacles for everybody else, that’s a part of that vessel moving forward. Okay, so leading the business, here’s some key things to keep in mind if that becomes the priority. Now in the meantime, again, if you’re in pillar number one, but you really want pillar number four to take root, you can start to self lead which you need to okay that that needs to be a priority for you. regardless of it being the only priority, okay, it needs to it needs to have some play in your life so that as soon as you can say, okay, like businesses growing number one, number two operations are going great. I know my piece there. Right and Business accounted for we know what our numbers are. Now, I’m really going to develop the people, myself and our team and culture so that we can reach new levels. If that becomes the priority once one, two and three are in good shape, and can work and function and grow without you, okay, that’s the key. Now, pillar number five is exiting the business. You ever had this thought that maybe your Brit business needs a break from you. But your business may actually only grow when you get out of the way. So your business is a living organism, it’s another entity. And when we are our businesses on life support, if it requires us to be there to work, sometimes some of the best thing you can do, especially when you have talented people in the seat, is that you have the ability to step away and say, I’m going to give you ownership, I trust you, you’re going to do a great job. People like that they’re scared at first, but they like it, they grow into that. And they want that. So I would encourage you that exiting the business is something that you need to be doing from day one, okay? Now, when it becomes a priority is when you’re at a very mature phase of your business. And you’re looking at actually turning it over to somebody else, selling it retiring, etc. But in the meantime, you might be saying, well, that’s way down the road. In the meantime, you need to learn how to exit the business in the evening and spend time with people you love more than your business more than your clients. Okay, you need to learn how to take a day off, potentially during the week or on a weekend. That means exiting the business as well. You also need to learn how to maybe take a vacation doesn’t matter how high of a performer you are, that if you never get away, your performance will be stalled. Like you can’t run a sprint pace, which is what’s required to really exceed excel in this market. At a marathon distance, you have to reward yourself, you have to take time to let go to get away from it all. So exiting the business becomes a very important exercise for you, not just in the long term of what’s my exits, what’s my exit strategy here long term. But it also becomes important for you to realize that I need to learn how to exit now. Because my business will grow and thrive as I get out of its way. And my people will grow and thrive as I give them ownership. So exiting in the short term. And of course in the long term.
Justin Stoddart 22:38
Now, just recently this past week, at Mega camp, I wasn’t there, but I always read the notes and talk to my my friends. For those who don’t know mega camp is Keller Williams and the largest real estate brand in the country. Gary Keller, one of the co founders talked about it, He’s chairman of the board now talked about how nobody schedules perfect. So the last promise of this broadcast of this live some of this training is to teach you very specifically how to get your calendar to be reflective of the one priority that’s most important. And Gary taught something that is refreshing for us as imperfect business owners to understand. And that is this concept is that you will never have perfect days for any long, extended period of time, if at all. But the one thing that you can do is really work on perfecting that your your, your time until 12 Noon. Once you can get to 12 noon, and really focus on which one of these pillars was most important to you. Now all of a sudden, you can be in a spot to where you can get the most important work done while your willpower is at its highest. And the distractions are at the lowest. You see we as humans, our our willpower is very similar to a reservoir when we start the day. It’s very high, right we have high willpower. Yet, as the day goes on, that willpower starts to wane and we start to have less and less energy towards doing the right thing. And as the day goes on the emails, the text, the demands on our time start to also increase. So our willpower is decreasing at the same time that the demands are increasing the temptations are increasing. So in other words, if you want to have something be a priority and actually have it show up as such in your business, then it will be essential for you to take Okay, which of these which of these five pillars is my priority right now? Which one is my priority? And be sure that that gets put in place and that you focus on that for an hour or two? At least every sing Goal day. If that’s your priority, then your calendar should reflect that your calendar should argue that fact for you. So I would encourage you, what pillar Am I on? And where do I need to be? During those morning hours, that will be very clear to you once you understand, which is your priority, and then everything else can fit in after the fact. Again, not that everything’s gonna be a priority, but the remaining things that you’re not neglecting can fit in as the smaller rocks in and around that. So if this has been valuable for you, a couple of things. Number one, please let us know in the comments, if you’ve gotten value from this. If you’re listening again to the podcast, we’d encourage you to let us know reach out, right, we love feedback. Secondly, for anybody here that’s listening to this that has not yet received their referral score, their your referral score, you can find directly on my website, I will put it in the comments. But it’s simply think bigger, ar e.com. Think bigger, real estate.com. Think bigger rt.com. And at the very homepage, you’ll see that there’s the opportunity for you to get your referral score. That is the most powerful diagnostic that I’ve seen on helping you understand how much untapped potential is in your sphere and your professional network. So it’ll be a great tool for you to really be able to see how can I grow my warm market business, which is our priority for you. So again, be sure to go get your referral score again, if you’re not yet a part of the successful real estate agents Facebook group, where we again, help focus on growing your warm market business. Please join us there and appreciate you joining us here today. And my final request of everybody here are these three simple words and they are go think bigger. Thanks everybody, talk soon. If you enjoyed this episode that I have a very special invitation for you. I have created a private Facebook community called successful real estate agents where the focus is going beyond success having both a successful business and a significant life. If you’re not yet a member. Go sign up now.