6:51 – The most essential ingredient of coming out of a lull to go on to do great things
12:02- Going from developing real estate sales to developing leaders
23:43 – What Vikram did from day 1 that made all of the difference
25:45- How you become the person that others want to follow
29:36- Beyond monetary compensation, what is another reason why people stay with an organization
30:50 – What does Vikram do to continue to be a Big Thinker, to continue to grow and expand your possibilities
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Welcome back to The think Bigger Real Estate Show. I’m your host Justin Stoddart. Today I have a treat for you. It’s all about you moving from operator to CEO, it’s all about you moving from developing sales to developing into the leader that is attracting other top talent attracting the kind of business that you want to have. And I have a very special guest today before I introduce him, let me remind you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we continue the conversation, you can only learn so much listening, you’ll learn a lot more by participating So join us after this episode inside the group. They’re gonna go deep on these topics helping you to develop into the leader that you need and want to be today’s guest Vikram Deol he is out of the Southern California market. This guy is a leader. He was featured with Tony Robbins recently as one of the top coaches for 2021 the guy’s a total stud I’m telling you, his background is he led a massive real estate team in Bellevue, WA doing $250 million in sales and now he’s really moved on to do bigger and more brighter things even than that Vikram such a pleasure to have you on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show today.
Vikram Deol
what up what up what up what up. How you doing this morning, Justin?
Justin Stoddart
How are you brother? Well, let’s do this man. I’m fired up to meet you. I’m so glad our paths crossed vickerman I share of a mentor in common and we’ve just hit it off. We’re excited to be doing some big things together. So stay tuned for that. Vikram Talk to us a little bit about your, your background. You got into real estate how many years ago? And I know coming in you did some things that other people were like, Dude, what are you doing? And then all of a sudden it started to work, right?
Vikram Deol
Yeah. So I was actually in the Bellevue market, Seattle market. I’m not. I’m in Southern California now. So a lot of people think that I sold in Southern California, but I was in Seattle. And when I moved up there, I didn’t know anybody. Right. So I was completely brand new fish in a big pond. And I was a nobody. And so I you know, join this little rinky dinky real estate company. And I was flipping houses. Me and my ex got a divorce. We were having some problems. And I just put like $200,000 into a house that we had bought to remodel it. And
Vikram Deol
I didn’t have any money. Right? She wasn’t working, I didn’t have any money. And we were going through some really tough times. And I ended up right after the remodel because we were going to remodel refinance, we’re basically gonna do the birth strategy. So we’re gonna remodel and refinance, and then repeat. Well, I did the Brr D strategy, which was buy, renovate, remodel, divorce, and then lived out of a trash bag, and one of my clients short sell houses. And so everything works out in the universe perfectly. So I got this listing. He was moving to California, he had this like 800 is actually a million dollar house. It’s now like $2 million.
Vikram Deol
That was short sell. He didn’t want the furniture. Any I said Well, hey, I’m going through a divorce. He was going through a divorce. I was like, can I live here. And he’s like, I don’t care what you do. Like you could burn it to the ground, like it’s a short sale, it doesn’t matter. I’m not getting anything out of it. So it’s the only thing I’m going to get as the furniture. And a check afterwards. He’s like, so if I get 15 to 20 grand, he’s like, suddenly live here, negotiate, do whatever you want. So I left the house with a garbage bag. And I started to sell real estate.
Vikram Deol
But prior to the divorce, I was making a couple of sales here and there, just kind of, you know, networking and meeting some people, I hadn’t done any marketing, I was just, you know, talker, going out to restaurants that I couldn’t afford to go to putting stuff on a credit card and knowing that I was going to be able to figure it out. And so I’ve met a couple of Microsoft guys, I’ve kind of got into a cool little circle of guys and gals. And I had a little bit of money coming in from a deal. I’m trying to think back. It’s been like a decade, had a little bit of money coming in from a deal and I was like, Okay, if I can live here for free.
Vikram Deol
I can get some money. I had started to at that point, kind of outproduce because my sales were so big. I started out produce the brokerage I was at, but I still didn’t have any money because I was as all tied up in the house. And I was like, you know what I had to do? So everybody was talking about this brokerage called Windermere like that’s the premier brokerage. And so I swapped over to Windermere and I hired a coach. And so the money that I could have spent to get an apartment the money I could have spent to you know, go buy new clothes, the money I could have spent to have like a lot. There was no laundry machines in this house that I lived in for like three months. So I scrubbed everyday I hadn’t washed my clothes in the shower, right like I would had washed my underwear and I would wear my shirts like four times I just put a ton of deodorant on did and I’d wear my shorts like 4, 5, 6,7, 8 times right just had like four or five shirts that I kept on a rotation. And I just kept pumping money into like the business. But what I found was Zillow. I found Zillow and Zillow at that time was brand new. And my leasing agent from my older building before we bought the house is like Vikram, you need to do Zillow, you need to do Zillow, because she had started working there and I’m like, Dude, this sounds scammy all the other agents are like you’re an idiot, don’t do it. Don’t be a dummy.
Vikram Deol
I trusted her best decision ever. I picked up the best zip codes in the area for like a few $100 now they’re like $30,000 per zip code. And I had like three, and the system was totally different. It was a completely different program back then. So I got this you know, manufacturer as Sharon would say, our mentor our mutual mentor, I got to manufacture celebrity for a few $100 a month. And everybody’s like you’re an idiot You’re an idiot. And then she’s like Vikram you gotta get testimonials you got to get reviews you got to get like we got to get five star reviews. And like have like three clients like who’s gonna review me She’s like, just have your family have your have their your partners that you flipped houses review you because you sold the houses. So we just made like our first like three reviews or five reviews. I just made my own up.
Vikram Deol
And we just, we just truly faked some of it. But we had to do what we had to do. And from there, the phone started ringing and people are like, Oh crap, and I just started hustling 18 hour days right? Then I hired an assistant and then I started a team.
Justin Stoddart
Here’s here’s a couple lessons that I got to extract from this Vikram is that back when you were at the lowest of lows, right? You You’re carrying your clothes around in a garbage bag. Right? recently divorced, living essentially as a squatter, right? Like a, like a approved squatter, but essentially, that’s what you’re doing. Right? And you knew at that point, you said I knew I could figure it out.
Justin Stoddart
I don’t want everybody that’s listening here today. I know people that have that are working mostly with buyers right now may feel a little bit like Vikram. I’m like, Yeah, I might as well be carried my stuff around in a garbage bag. Like it’s been tough, right? Like all the work that I’ve been doing, I’m not getting paid for. It’s super competitive. It’s challenging. Again, I’m one that believes that what you focus on expands, if you focus on lack, you’ll find it. So I don’t want you to spend much time there. But if you’re in that spot, if you’re in that spot that Vikram was once in where it’s like, this is not how I plan things to be going right now that in your heart of hearts, you have to believe that I can figure this out. I can figure this out. I know I’m gonna figure it out. Right. I mean, that wasn’t the core of you being willing to take some risks. And at the core, have you been willing to go have conversations and network with some Microsoft peeps, right? And even make an investment on a credit cards. Is it in your heart of hearts, you knew you had a belief in yourself that I can figure this out.
Vikram Deol
I mean, you like look did to all the listeners out there, if you don’t believe in yourself, who is like, nobody’s gonna believe in you. If you don’t believe in yourself. It’s not the first time that I’ve lived in a weird situation. Prior to that, I lived in the back of my cell phone store on an air mattress for a year and a half. And I went to the gym to shower every morning. Because I was like, Okay, if I spend five or $600 on an apartment, I was dating somebody out of state Bless you, I was dating somebody out of state, who ended up becoming my wife and then ex wife. And I was like, if I if I’m here for a year and a half, I was doing my master’s program. So I was living in my parents house for like two nights a week because that my the school I got accepted to was in the city that they lived in. So I was like, Okay, I can get to places and that’s going to cost me like 15 $100. And this is you know, like 10-12-15 years ago.
Vikram Deol
Or I could just suck it up. And just live in the back of this. I mean, my office was bigger than where I live right now is like huge. It’s like 2000 square feet office is insane. And so I was like, You know what, I just popped an air mattress in there. I had a huge TV. Back then I had like a 400 foot cable. I plugged everything to the TV, I did all my work off of the TV. You know at night, if it was hot, I would just use the hot water from the, you know, Arrowhead thing and I’d like to have a couple of towels and I’ll just wipe off and wash my face brush my teeth, go to the gym in the morning workout, take a shower. Like if you don’t manufacture adversity in life, you’re gonna be weak. And I know like even like my last business that I started. We did. It didn’t do as well as we wanted to do like we had a timeline of 24 months where we were going to be profitable. Are we had a timeline of 12 months where we’d be profitable. And then the next 12 months, we’d pay down all the loans and everything was going to be great. And then what happened COVID hit. And we service elderly people. So they’re not leaving, like even if they wanted to, like a lot of them just stopped coming in. So our business went from, we hit our time line. So we were profitable, we got to where we needed to be in the first 12 months. And then the second 12 months, things started to fall apart me my partner had some fallouts things happen. And I was like, You know what, my time is better suited doing what I want, I never wanted to be in this business. And sometimes you just got to like cut the cut the cord and be like, I’m out. Like, I’m out. And so, but you got to trust in yourself, that that small amount that you invest in yourself is huge, because people don’t want. People don’t want to hire coaches, I’ve always had coaches. The only time I didn’t have a coach, I made the worst financial decision of my career. Right, I walked away from a business that I built up, we’re doing $50 million a year before I walked away from that business, because I didn’t have the right coach in place, I didn’t have the right therapist in place, I didn’t have the right team of people that I needed to talk to. Because when you run a large organization, it is stressful, right, Justin, so people don’t want to talk about the stress that comes into it. And leaders need to talk to other people and leaders can’t talk to their team. Right. So when you’re running an organization with 10, or 15, 20 people, and you guys are doing a ton of transactions, and you have a lot of stress. If you don’t have the right people to talk to, they’re not going to be able to give you the right advice or tell you like, hey, this isn’t my wheelhouse go, you go get before you make this kind of a decision, you need to go talk to these three people right here. And talk to them for like 90 days before you walk away from something like this and see if there’s another strategy you can put into place.
Justin Stoddart
So here’s the next step that I want to go in this conversation. That guy, I know that your passion has moved from generating real estate sales at a high level, to now developing leaders, right, and the Today’s episode is that we help people to move from operator to CEO. And there’s a lot of great operators, some that bump along are struggling others that are really strong operators, yet they realize if they’re ever going to get their time back, if they’re ever going to scale a business, they have to move out of the operator role into a CEO role. What can you teach us about your kind of what what you do to help people move out of that operator role into your CEO role?
Vikram Deol
So you got to develop yourself before you can develop others. Right. So I see the books behind you, I know you as a human being I know the I know, the level of commitment you put into building yourself up. It’s the same thing, if you want to be a leader, and you want to be a CEO, or you want to be an owner. And not even I don’t want to be an owner anymore. Justin, I want to be I don’t want to be a CEO, I want to be an owner.
Vikram Deol
Right? Like if you think about sports teams, you have the management group, you have the investors, and then you have the owners and the owner sit in their big offices and they make decisions and then other people do the work.
Vikram Deol
I don’t want to be the person doing the work. I don’t want to be the person filling out the contracts. I don’t want to be the person. I want to write my emails in the morning, I want to talk to people like you, I want to be on podcasts. I want to coach my clients. I want to work on myself.
Vikram Deol
Most people don’t find the time to work on themselves. So actually, I was just writing an email about this this morning. Look, as a leader, you need to be the one to start looking at all of the things that you guys are doing, that you are doing. And stop it like you stop it just stop like 95% of the crap you do. You just need to stop and realize that you are not as important as you think you are. You’re not the only one who can do what you think you do. realtors have huge egos. And so they want their name on everything. They want to be the face of everything. They wanted to have all the fame and everything I don’t want to I don’t want anybody to know me. Like I went from the Vikram deal group to the deal group to TDG right? Because I didn’t want people to know about me, I wanted it to be about my team. If you go look at our reviews, most of the reviews, they don’t even mentioned my name, like oh, and Vikram is great too. We talked to him twice.
Vikram Deol
Because my team’s like, you need to talk to him. You need to talk to him. Unlike about what I don’t have a relationship with these people. I want to develop you so that you develop the next person that develops the next person. But if you don’t develop yourself
Vikram Deol
If you’re not going to events, if you’re not creating time to read, if you’re not creating time to talk to coaches, if you’re not taking time to figure out your strategy, and implement systems, you’re never going to grow. So if you want to go from being the realtor, to the team leader to the team, you know, CEO than to the team owner,
Vikram Deol
you have to have systems in place. And like, the more systems you have, sometimes the better. But sometimes, if you put too many systems in there, you don’t even know you can’t even keep track of them. So you got to just have some systems in place, so that your team knows what to do. And there’s people out there just and so I want to preface this, just because you develop yourself. And just because you create structure. And just because you create systems doesn’t mean you have to get out of the CEO role. You can be the CEO, like my buddies are going to do a billion dollars this year, in real estate transactions. And they don’t want to get out of the CEO role. They love being in their office, they love going there, they don’t want that. They’ll never go to an open house, they’ll visit their team at an open house, but they’ll never do an open house, they’ll never sell another piece of real estate themselves personally, probably in the rest of their lives. Unless it’s, you know, $20 million.
Vikram Deol
They have developed their team to do all the work. And then they come in and they pull the strings, they look at the reports, they look at the audits, they look at the numbers, right. So they are now the CEO of the business. They run the meetings, they run the huddles, right, they work on their marketing campaigns with their marketing teams, but then the team does it. And then they show up and they put their little shirts on and they do their little videos, they do their little podcast, they show up, they have fun. And they bounce. And then the stuff goes out on all the social media platforms, right? This stuff goes out to all their clients that you know, and they get to go travel the world. And they get to call, you know, go to the Zillow headquarters for these awesome events. And they get to do the speaking engagements all around the world now that things are opened up. But they’re not the ones going into the house and saying, hey, Mrs. Jones, you want to sell your house today.
Vikram Deol
So it’s just a it’s a shift completely in the way you think. And if you hang out with people who tell you that, you know, the old school realtor, if they say, Oh, you got to be the one doing all the work, Oh, you don’t need to do Zillow. You don’t need to get reviews. You don’t need an A team. You don’t need to just why don’t you just why don’t you just go sell more houses, you’ll be fine. You know, me, agents have told me that in my life, just go sell more houses. Stop doing this other stuff. I’m like, selling houses is boring.
Vikram Deol
Like I it’s not for me, like I want to develop leaders to develop other people that can make three, four or $500,000 a year. Yeah, that’s more fun.
Justin Stoddart
I learned that early on as a high end home builder. I realized my passion really was not developing land. And building homes. It was really developing people and building business. Right? Yeah. And I found that it sounds like that’s a very similar path that you’re on. I know that one of the places where we tend to get stuck, right is people’s. And obviously we in general, our unwillingness to invest in mentorship, in coaching, in systems, I mean, you think about the things that we’ve been learning here even just recently, and how what a fast track that puts us on and off the people like Well, okay, I get that I need systems, I get that I need talented people. But I don’t have any time to do anything else other than serve my clients. And I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck. Is that Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m supposed to work on the business. But I just haven’t had time for that maybe when things slow down. And the reality is things are slowing down anytime soon. Right. And I think what you and I have learned, both in offering this to others, as well as in investing in it ourselves, is this concept of, we have to be willing to not just figure it out ourselves, but to actually pay for it right to pay for a coach to pay for a mentor. And in the process, get access to the systems that they’ve built, and that they’ve refined, and how how much that allows you to jump and leap forward so much quicker than if you were to have to develop them all yourself. Because in reality, you really don’t have time to figure it all out yourself. But if you can stroke a check to somebody who’s already figured it out. Now you’re going to reap the benefits of that right away and save yourself all the frustration of doing it incorrectly and testing it and wondering if that’s gonna work. Someone else has already done that for you. You now just have to, like purchase that from them from that coach from that mentor and adopt it right.
Vikram Deol
Dude, you’re now on the I mean, what are we going to spend on our on our mastermind 15 to 20 grand this year, something like that. I don’t know how much it costs. I have a coach that I’m going to that I’ve already stroked 50,000 dollars for the year, for 12 months. I have the mastermind with you. That’s another 15 to $20,000. I have a therapist that is like $1,000 a month. Right? I have a personal trainer, that’s $750 a month. I have a guy that helps me with my podcast, that I think it’s going to be about a 12 $100 month investment. He told me which mic to buy. He told me what boom arm to buy, he told me the the mixers to buy, right, like, I would have had to do hours of research.
Vikram Deol
And what’s your hour worth? Right? I always ask people, do you know how much your hours worth? And they were like, What do you mean? I said, Have you ever taken how much money you made last year divided by 2088 hours, which is the average 40 Hour Workweek like, Well, no, I was like, do it. How much was your 1099 last year, don’t don’t take your after expenses. Because you know, we as business owners put everything into our expenses, take your top line item and divided by 2088 and see how much money you make per hour. And the next time you have to go do something. Think about do I want to actually go do that. That’s a menial task. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to get done. It just means it doesn’t need to get done by you. Yeah. And people do too much stuff that they don’t need. So I’m reading a book. The one thing right now I’m rereading it by Gary Keller,
Justin Stoddart
such a good read
Vikram Deol
such a such a good read, right. And he talks about willpower. And I’ve always known this, but I forget sometimes you know it but you don’t know it. And so willpower is actually weak power, because willpower is something that you can deflate. And it’s the last thing to get recharged. Right? So our brain charges that portion of our willpower, which is right here in the frontal cortex the last, but it uses it the first. So every time he’s got to make a decision, I check my cell phone, or do I work on my email? Do I go to the bar? Or do I stay at home? Do I put on a black shirt? Or do I change into a collared shirt, all that takes thought process and that all depletes your willpower and eventually, halfway through the day you’re exhausted, you’re like I haven’t done anything physical, but you’re exhausted because mentally you’re drained. And so when we do a lot of things, or we multitask, and we take our brain from one item to another item, one task to another task, one task, one task, we’re actually depleting our willpower, and we can’t do what we need to do. So then we’re constantly tired. And so if you do an audit of your time, and you say, hey, what are the 20% of things that I need to do. And then you start only doing that and you make a 90 day plan like a 12 week plan to stop doing 80% of the things you’re doing, you are going to be able to elevate your time, by 100%, or by 80 to 100%. Because by doing the 20% You’re great at you now have so much more time to do the things that you need to do to grow your business to wake up earlier to go to the gym to spend time with your family. And it’s weird how when you do more things you enjoy, everything just starts to get better in your life. And so with, you know, with agents out there and teams out there that are just talking all day long about how hard the market is, I was in Seattle, it was hard from the first day I got into it. It was always a tough market, we always had multiple buyers, we always had low inventory. My clients always got homes. I just knew that my clients were gonna get homes. Why? Because we just did our job. We spent the time with them, right? We developed our sales team to know how to talk to people, so that they would go out and be able to write the BEST OFFERS.
Vikram Deol
But I paid for coaching since day one. Right and the only time I made bad decisions was what I didn’t have a coach did. And I’ve been a Tony Robbins Platinum partner, right? I don’t say this to impress you. I say this to impress upon you that people think that higher education stops at college or an MBA or a PhD. Higher Education actually doesn’t start until you take it into your own hands and you start to develop yourself in the areas that need to be developed like mindset, systems, sales, marketing, maybe and you don’t need to be a master marketer, you just need to know enough not to get screwed over. In fact, I would say to less on the marketing because most realtors marketing is like I’m so great and they don’t even so hire that out but just know like, you needed to be on Facebook, you need to be on Instagram, maybe you need to be on tik tok. hire somebody to come and do all that stuff for you. And then talk about the things that you’re really great at. Right But you got to learn the mindset tricks, right? You got to be a mindset Jedi. You got to read the leadership books, right? People don’t want to read anymore. I did it. It’s It’s time consuming. But when you read the leadership books, right, emotional intelligence 2.0 like, Oh my God, that’s such a game changer, dude.
Vikram Deol
But people don’t want to read those books like reading Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning on mindset, or listen to David Goggins like, you know, and when you’re tired, and you haven’t worked out, you like, wait a minute, there is no finish line in life, I have to work out.
Vikram Deol
Because what’s the point of making a million dollars a year or $2 million a year, or $5 million a year, and you weigh 300 pounds, and you can’t enjoy it, you sweat to go up the stairs? What’s the point of getting to 65 years old and thinking you’re going to retire? But your knees hurt, your legs hurt, your body hurts so much. And you’re like, Man, I wish I would have done more things when I was younger. Like, what’s the point of doing all these things in life? If you’re not going to enjoy it.
Justin Stoddart
It’s something that’s standing out. For me right? Again, in this conversation of moving from operator to leader, you have to become the person that others want to follow, right? Every, in every area of life, I’m always scratching my head a little bit when I’m listening to a motivational speaker, who has obviously not taken care of their health. And I think to myself, like, I’m supposed to follow that person who can’t follow themselves into good habits, right. And I think, like no judgment, but I do think that there’s
Vikram Deol
I judge.
Justin Stoddart
I think the thing that all of us need to be aware of right is that our business will follow to the level that we grow. And these tips and strategies that Vikram has shared with us today, everything about investing in coaches, taking the time to develop yourself, being aware of the whole self, right, not just the business side, but the whole self. All of that plays into being a leader that other people want to follow being the kind of person that people will respond to, and that will rally behind. And if you’re at that spot where it’s like, Okay, I’m pretty good with customers now. But I’m having a hard time getting people to follow me or leading people. Number one, get a coach, right, you’re gonna need somebody to be pouring into you. And number two, start to like, cut out all the fat, no, your dollar per hour, cut out the things that are not serving you that are not serving your people. Get rid of those so that you can really focus in on the things that are going to develop you as a person. So that then thereby you can go start serving other people, right and developing other people. It’s great stuff. Great stuff. I want to ask. Go ahead. Any final thoughts that I’ve got one more question as we wrap up?
Vikram Deol
Now, I was just gonna say yeah, man, that’s spot on, like, develop yourself before you develop others. Yeah.
Justin Stoddart
Because it gets a lot easier. And it becomes natural, right? It’s like, hey, I want to share with you the journey that I’m on, let me share with you what I learned. Let me share with you what’s working for me. And I think that’s where it really gets powerful.
Vikram Deol
I’ll share a quick story. I know we’re wrapping up on time. So one of my buddies that I met and Tony Robbins super awesome, dude, right? He’s running a massive company. And he put a CEO in place because he wanted to, you know, be an owner. And he put a CEO in place, but he hadn’t done the development on himself, yet he hadn’t quite developed the system and the strategies. And so the business as he put the CEO and started to tank. So he started, you know, he hired a really high end business coach, he hired a strategist, he hired somebody that put a system called traction into his business. And once he did that, and he got rid of the CEO, he became the CEO again, but you would never know that the guy actually works because he’s always traveling on his helicopter. But he’s like Vik, I do four hours of work. And that’s all I need to do, is like, I went back to work, I busted my ass. I developed people I developed myself, I spent two years doing a bunch of things. And now I can work for four hours remotely, and my team takes over everything because I develop them, I put the money back into them, I put the effort back into them. So you might have a seat, you might have somebody on your team that you should pay for coaching. So he pays for coaching for all of his executives.
Vikram Deol
Think about that, when you when you develop your team, because a lot of people think if I develop them, they’re going to leave me if they were going to be if they were going to leave you they would have left you already. So pour back into them, fill their cups, and then they’re going to pour back into your people. And guess what if they leave you it’s a blessing. It’s gonna be tough, but if they leave you it’s a blessing because there’s a hole in your business that you needed to plug and you didn’t see it and then leaving you makes you have to analyze the tape about what the hole was. And then you and your coach get back to work and you guys figure out what that hole is.
Justin Stoddart
And I think people tend to stay not just for the money, but for who they’re becoming in the process. And if I’m working with somebody who’s investing in me and developing me leaving, why why would I Why would I go anywhere else, right? If I know what my ideal life is, and and you you’re investing more in me to help me to get that more than anybody else. Like that’s a compelling offer. And I think anybody that’s looking again to become a CEO and attract great talent so that you can live this life that because describe where you’ve got other people working on your behalf. Part of that is is right, that process really being willing to develop other people and and part of your compensation needs to be, how can I grow this person? How can I invest deeply in this person, so that they become, you know, on a fast track to get their own life, you know, the life that they really want?
Vikram Deol
Yes.
Justin Stoddart
Vik, my final question is this. It’s the signature question of the show. You’re a big thinker. Alright, I’ve I haven’t known you for very long, but I’m already inspired. And better because of you because of the way that you think, teach us what is Vikram Deol do in order to continue to be a big thinker to continue to grow yourself and expand your possibilities?
Vikram Deol
Hang out with people like Justin. I mean, really, you need to one of the reasons why I have paid. One of the reasons why I’ve paid to be in circles that I never felt like I was a part of, was because I always want to be the dumbest, smallest guy in the room. I might be the loudest person in the room, I might be the funniest person in the room. I might be the most interesting, weird person in the room. But I never want to be the smartest and the most successful. If I’m the smartest person in the room, or the most successful person in the room. I’m picking rooms to fill my ego instead of to fill my growth. So like Mike, Mike, my coach, one of them is Bedros owns Fit Body Boot Camp. It’s like, you know, 500-600 franchises, and many other businesses as well. Sharran, right, who just scaled Teles properties from, you know, losing money to being bought out by Douglas, Elliman, and many other companies, people like you, right, so the groups that I associate with on a daily basis, that’s why I paid a lot of money to be in the Tony Robbins atmosphere because those people were doing as well as I was some we’re doing a little bit worse, and we’re doing a little bit better. But there’s a lot in that group, that we’re doing way better, because they’ve been in the ecosystem for longer. And so our conversations are about, you know, investments, growing our sales teams growing our leadership, right? How do we get our teams to perform better without us being there, because we’re out at events every day, right? We did. I did 20 events in a year all around the world. And my business had its best year ever without me being there.
Vikram Deol
And my brokerage hated me. They’re like, Vikram, you need to be here more often. It’s like why, like, we have attorneys on file, like we, if something happens, it’s gonna happen anyways, like me being here to change it. And they’re doing a kick ass job, like they’re doing better without me here. So you hang out with people that are doing better. They hang out with people that are doing better. So they’re going to trickle down here, they’re going to trickle to you, you’re going to trickle to the people that you teach, you’re going to bring everybody back up, but you got to hang out with people that make you not feel insignificant, or insecure, but they want to build you up to where they’re at real leaders. And real people like that are excited about your success. And are excited about growing. Other people are excited when you do well. They’re not they’re not threatened. Like, I never got bummed out that one of my buddies is doing really well. I’m like, dude, that’s awesome. That means that I can do the same thing.
Vikram Deol
If you can do it, I can do it. Yeah. So hang out with people that are going to elevate you. And that’s why you have to hang out with people that have done what you’re doing. And sometimes, when you hire a coach, you want to get the best coach in the world. But like, I don’t need Tony Robbins to be my personal coach. Right? That’s I’m not at Tony Robbins level, yet. I will be there one day, but right now, I don’t need Tony Robbins to be my personal coach. I can learn from Tony from the conferences, from the books from the podcasts from the videos, but get a coach that’s like four or five levels up from where you’re at, or two to three levels up from where you’re at. Because then you guys still have that synergy. He still she still remembers where you were a few years ago. And they can help build you up where you don’t feel insecure. Because a lot of times you don’t want to hire a coach, not because you don’t think a coach will help you is because you don’t think that there’s a relatable topic there. So find somebody that’s two or three rungs up the ladder, not on the Empire State Building, hey, and like King Kong, and and I think that might help you to because you’re gonna feel more comfortable talking to them. And when you hire a coach, make sure that you respect that person. So that you actually do what you’re supposed to because if you don’t, if you’re like, Oh, it’s like my friend and you know, I pay him 300 bucks a month. I mean, there’s not a lot of like pain there. But if you’re paying 15, grand or whatever, I don’t know, I don’t know how much we pay to be a part of our mastermind. But if you’re paying a decent amount of money, you show up to the calls, you’re present. We’re not like screwing around on the calls. Because you have a little bit of pain there. Because I mean, 15 grand, that’s like a nice vacation, right? So show up.
Justin Stoddart
I love it, Vik. I appreciate you for being a big thinker. I appreciate you coming on the show today, sharing your insight telling your story. I didn’t know that about you, where you’d come from. And it’s pretty, pretty awesome to see the way that you can influence people now, in part because of where you been right in part, because now you’re super relatable people like man, I didn’t realize success looked like that. Right? That that’s actually where it came from. And powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing for everybody listening here today. I want to thank you for tuning in. And if this has been helpful, please give us a review. Right? Like whatever platform you’re listening to this on. If it’s in Facebook, just comment, say hey, this was helpful. Thank you. If it’s on podcast, be sure to give a review there. And then my final request to everybody listening here today. They are three simple words and they are Go Think Bigger. Thank you so much for helping us do that today.
Vikram Deol
Thanks, Justin.