Building a seven-figure real estate business used to be a pipe-dream for most. With the increased access that ambitious agents have to better models and mentors, this is more easily attainable than ever before.
Any seven-figure real estate business owner will tell you that in order to make this happen, leads, listings and leverage are key.
Today we talk with Jess Lenouval, founder of the Listings Lab as she walks us through what it takes to scale up from 6 to 7 figures.
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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.
Welcome back to The think bigger real estate show. I am your host, Justin Stoddart, and I’m thrilled today to have someone who thinks a lot like I do, folks, somebody who understands that you can have a very successful business without sacrificing everything else. Before I fully introduce this fantastic individual. I’m going to tell you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook is where we’re going to go deeper, and actually introduce just today’s guests and allow her to continue to answer your questions, really engage with the conversations where this isn’t just a one way audio, but you get engaged. So be sure and join us there again, that’s the think bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook. Back to today’s guest. She has scaled up a real estate business not only for herself, but now teaches other people how to do that. She’s based out of Ontario, Canada, soon moving to the Bahamas, you’re gonna want to hear this story. jesslyn oval, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Jess Lenouval 1:13
I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yes.
Justin Stoddart 1:16
My pleasure. Yes. So let’s let’s get into this first and foremost, for anybody that can relate to like, you know, I live in a pretty cold environment. And my real estate business is all centered here, right? Like every, like, it’s here, like, how do I go anywhere else? Let’s just break that paradigm really quickly, would you say that the world is changing out of where and how you build a business
Jess Lenouval 1:36
100%. So we have so many people that we’re working with right now who their goal, or what what they’re building towards, or even the way that they’re doing things already is that you know, sometimes they’re here for six months, and somewhere else for six months. Sometimes they’re, you know, they’re they’re fully remote, and they just have a really solid team locally that can run the show. But you know, at the end of the day, we’re so connected. Now, you know, if you’d asked me that 25 years ago, my answer would have been that would be really hard. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not hard
Justin Stoddart 2:13
anymore. You know, I have, you know, one of my favorite teammates that works with me, obviously, for me, works with me. She wakes ever like she wakes up every day in the Philippines. And she’s fantastic. And it’s like, it’s funny, this world that we used to live in, we used to think that like, oh, like other people that are working virtually, there’s a stigma around Oh, they’re there. They’re a VA they’re a virtual and I’m telling you that actually mentor my brother’s my attention, Jesse appreciate this. He said, so if you talk to your parents on zoom, or they virtual parents, let’s be honest, we’re all virtual, right? You got it down the street from someone and it’s just as easy to hop on up on zoom. Now I’m not saying there’s not a time and a place to get face to face, a lot of the stuff is unnecessary. And the technology that we have today facilitates you to have a real estate business without the boundaries that traditionally we’ve had to be confined within right
Jess Lenouval 3:00
100% and you know, even the way that we go about generating business now has it shifted so much, even, you know, 10 years ago, you geo farmed, and you did it because that was the only way to be consistent and frequent. You had to be able to cold call it and door knocking and, you know, meet people in person and there was only a certain like, you wanted to fly or your ZIP codes and, and all of those things. And now that’s that’s not the way that we build businesses anymore. And it’s because we have this thing called the internet that connects all of us, but also allows us to do things in new different and a lot of the time more. I would say like more efficient ways.
Justin Stoddart 3:45
I love it. Okay, so anybody that’s listening thus far, right? That’s the first paradigm that we’re gonna break is that your real estate business doesn’t have to look like it did two years ago, right? Yeah. Next one that like the next really kind of paradigm that we want to break is this reality that you have to sacrifice everything in order to build a great business, right, you and I are both on the same page on that. Those that know me know that think bigger real estate does not mean necessarily, that you need to build some massive Empire and definitely doesn’t mean that you sacrifice what matters most to do it. Think bigger real estate to me means think bigger than real estate, use real estate to leverage and get the life that you want to to make the impact upon the people that you want to impact. Use it as a vehicle to improve your life, the lives of other people. don’t sacrifice everything for it, right. So with that being said, let’s talk a little bit about kind of your belief around that around how real estate again is is a vehicle right? It’s not the end it’s it’s a vehicle to help get you to the end you want.
Jess Lenouval 4:42
Absolutely. So I hosted a I hosted a live conference last year called the listings live live. And I started the entire conference and I got up on stage. First question I asked was how many people in this room right now feel like real estate is like their calling. Like that’s, this is the reason why they were put on this earth and out of 100 people two people raise their hand and I said now look around and all that guilt that you feel that real estate is that is the vehicle to the things that you want to do with your life. Let it go because there’s no reason for us to feel like we have to live and breathe and you know, only think about real estate and only want to buy and sell real estate like that, that doesn’t have to be your purpose in life. Real estate is such a fantastic tool yes to have all the things that you want and to also be of service to the people in whatever community but at the end of the day very few people get into this industry because they feel like this is their calling it’s the reason why they’re able to do the thing that is their calling. Right So yeah,
Justin Stoddart 5:55
no please go Oh, I
Jess Lenouval 5:56
was just gonna say I really think that you know getting over that concept of I have to live and breathe and only think about real estate I have to answer my phone in the middle of the night I have to do all of these things and I have to hustle and grind and the glorification of this grind lifestyle is the opposite of why most people get into this industry in the first place. And it’s it’s this kind of like sexy kool aid that people drink after a little while, you know listening to the rah rah training trainers and the coaches and people lose sight of what what what’s the purpose of your of your business? What like where are you actually going and 510 years from now? Are you going to wake up and look back and think I wasted my time I wasted my life I hurt my relationships and I’m not where I want to be.
Justin Stoddart 6:50
Well that’s beautiful. Jess, we’re so aligned in what you’re saying there that yes it’s funny I’m actually doing a lot of business planning with agents right now did a group of at this past week and the first thing I asked him is like identify your big why it’s very similar question that you had right like and for some people that’s a really difficult concept which it should be at first like it takes time to cultivate and really get clarity on that I journal about it every day trying to just be sure that I’m aligned and then I’ve got a you got a better vantage point every day on what that means to me. But but for for people that are really kind of answer that honestly just very similar to the 2% out of 100 people right that you quiz and polled Yeah, that like none of them said like my Why is real estate right? It was it’s my family it’s this cause it’s like it’s a support these people it’s to create this, this lifestyle for those people that I love. It’s it’s XYZ and then below that they start going to talking about like, this is a great path to get me there. Right? Yeah. So I think keeping that in perspective, for everybody that’s listening here today is you shouldn’t feel guilty about if you’ve also feel like the 98% of people that are like yeah, this is it’s a great industry, I can do a lot of impact a lot of good but it’s it’s not why I exist,
Jess Lenouval 8:01
it’s not why I get up in the morning. Yeah, yeah. And and, and I really think too, and there’s this element of, of just feeling like you’re why also has to be external. And that you you know, if if, if the thing that you’re working for is your family or your kids or that you have to sacrifice yourself on the altar of that, why. And the truth really is, is you get to have all the things that you want, you get to have the the freedom, the lifestyle, the unlimited income, and at the end of the day, I you want to look back, and it’s the time that actually matters the most and not necessarily the money. Yes, you know, my definition of freedom is being able to do what I want with who I want, where I want, you know, like, basically, like, get rid of as many limitations as possible. And sure, you know, income, revenue, money, it, it opens a lot of doors and it provides access to a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it’s the time that we can’t get back. And really understanding that when we’re all older, hopefully very old, and I’ve lived all you know, these these big lives, that we’re never looking back and thinking I wish I’d worked less, which is a lot of people’s last, you know, last regrets. And real estate is one of those industries that so many people get so caught up in the thought process of I have to work harder after grind Harder, harder. I have to make more calls. I have to sacrifice myself. For the business. It’s 100% the opposite. It’s it’s the mentality is is wrong in my opinion, that your business is there to serve you. You are not there to serve your business.
Justin Stoddart 9:57
Interesting. I had an experience. This is me been A bit vulnerable witch, right? That’s what this is all about is really connecting with people. I was laying beside my five year old the other night. And she is like the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen, right? Her little voice in her mind. She’s in kindergarten for the first year. And I was telling her little stories and her little voice and she was giggling, and she was looking at me, she was like, are you serious damage, just like this cognitive, like connections are starting to like speed up at this pace. Right now she’s off to school. And I thought to myself, I think I’ve had too few of these experiences, I think that I’ve like, this is just, I just want to bottle this up, I just don’t want this moment to end. I know it will. But I thought like, we can actually condense time and make our life much richer, like not by necessarily living longer, but by living more fully and taking those things that actually bring us deep joy. And just having more of them. In the years that we have, we might not give more years, but how much more life can we can we stack into the years that we have. And so again, all of this, that Jesse are talking about is from our own hearts, from our own perspective of what this industry can be for us and what it should not be for us, which is to rob us of those moments, which I see a lot of people doing right, because they feel like they have to get back to clients, they have to get back to people at eight 910 o’clock when they should be having those experiences with their favorite people. Right? So with that being said, Let’s now move into kind of how you serve this world, Jess, obviously, you you have have come up with with what’s called the listing lab, you help people move from six figure to seven figure a year businesses, which is a fascinating topic, let’s get into more kind of what you do to help people move their business in that direction.
Jess Lenouval 11:39
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, just like everything that we’ve talked about, the everything that we teach, and everything that we train on is about growth, without a without, without him without a cost, right without without a time cost, everything’s about more efficiency, more automation. And, and really create being able to create relationships at scale, right, there’s there’s never a point where we want to take out the humanity out of what we’re doing. Because this is a human to human business. People make decisions emotionally before they make decisions logically. And so that idea of building that know like and trust. It’s not just about brand awareness or, or you know, visibility, it’s really about allowing people to connect with you and connect with your brand and connect with connect with the people on your team. And so everything that we teach through the listings lab, which is the listings lab is 100%, digitally based, and everything that we teach in there, whether it’s organic, or whether it’s through paid traffic is about taking someone from a psycho psychological standpoint, from stranger to client. But a lot of that is built through the relationship building so that you know if that person and this actually happened the other day, there was a someone in our members Facebook group, she said, I was in the grocery store. And the woman next to behind me in the in the line tapped on my shoulder and said, hey, I’ve been watching all your stuff, I follow you on social media, I’m ready to list my house. Like, we’d be my agent. And she was like, I didn’t know who she was, I wish she saw me in the grocery store, she felt comfortable enough to come up to me, she’d already watched everything. It wasn’t, hey, I’m going to interview for other people. It was I’ve seen your stuff, I’ve consumed your content, I know who you are, I like you and I’m choosing you. And that all can be done in a way that is not manual. And I think so often with online lead generation, we collect these phone numbers and these email addresses. And then the next step is to call and call and call and email. And it’s almost impossible to actually build that feeling of attraction, when everything is built on chasing. So everything that we do in the listings lab is based around attraction, marketing, and inbound lead flow. So the concept behind all of it is how do we give somebody everything that they need to know and see and hear from you in order to be an inbound client to get that call of Hey, we’re ready to go. Will you come and
Justin Stoddart 14:18
list our house? Do you have time for me? Yeah, that’s a powerful place to be. And you know, I think anytime we come, in fact, I teach this in in my book, or that here we go over that shoulder, the upstream model, which is the door through which you walk into somebody’s life matters significantly, right? Sometimes people have heard it said this way, like it’s, it’s hard to make it or you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. And I think when you walk through the door of somebody as a solicitor, and you with your hand out wanting to get something from them, that dynamic is is hard to break at that point. Yeah. Whereas when they come through your door, almost soliciting your services because they know so much about you Now all of a sudden, this gets much easier is because they aren’t nickel and diming. You Yeah, and expecting you to be, you know, answering everything at a moment’s notice. They trust dynamic shifts completely, totally, they trust you, they respect you, they’re willing to what I say two major things they’re willing to pay for you, and they’re willing to wait for you. And when you can get people that are willing to do that all day long, like your life has changed, your business has changed, because you’ve built
Jess Lenouval 15:28
a foundation for everything that we talked about before, right? The quality of the client relationship, impact everything else. And you know, if you if you build a business on chasing, then you’re constantly living in scarcity. And when you build a business based on attraction, then not only is it unlimitedly, scalable from like a business generation standpoint, but also the quality of the relationships that you’re building, the clients that you’re serving, the way that people see you and your services shifts completely. And so really, from a quality of life standpoint, I think that my opinion is that this is kind of the foundational piece. And then of course, we get into automation and delegation, and how to grow a team and how to get the right people in the right seats, and all of that stuff. But none of that matters, until not only you have enough business to actually scale, but also that you have the right kind of business and that you’re not you’re not building a house of cards, where then you’re just built bringing more and more people or more and more systems in to keep people happy that are never going to be happy.
Justin Stoddart 16:44
Amazing. I love what you’re doing. How do people learn more about the listings lab? Let’s just jump straight to it. I think we’ve probably caught the attention of people where it’s like, yes. I want life over business and business to support my life, not the other way around. Yeah. And, and I also want to have people coming to me, not me always net chase mode, right?
Jess Lenouval 17:05
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say the best place to start is we I would go through the listings lab methodology. First, it’s 20 pages, I know it’s long, it’s gonna take some attention, but there’s there’s photos, there’s pictures that’ll that’ll break it up a little, but it’s just the listings, lab.com slash guide to the listing lab, the listings lab.com slash guide. And so here, I’ll just type it in here. It’s pro listings, lab.com slash guide. And and you got that’ll take you to, you know, download the listings lab guide, and then it’ll prompt you if you want to feel invited, not obligated into our, our Facebook group, we’ve got about 21,000 agents in there that are all really collaborative positive. This isn’t one of your typical real estate, Facebook groups where everyone’s complaining all the time. It really is a, it’s a really nice place to be I do live trainings in there all the time, we’re constantly giving out value and resources and things to help you grow.
Justin Stoddart 18:15
Love it, love, it sounds like a great place to be. Again, I’m a big fan of number one ever you’ve talked about and also having a listing based business, right where you can have, again, that just adds to the leverage adds to the ability to you being potentially remote right and having having some options on the geography which is kind of where we all started. 1,000% so just this has been amazing to have you on I want to I want to finish with our with our final question here, which I consider to be the signature question of the show. It’s the one that’s oftentimes foundational to everything else we do, which is you are a big thinker. What does just do to continue to be a big thinker? What do you do to continue to expand your possibilities continue to grow? What does it look like for you?
Jess Lenouval 18:57
I put myself in rooms with people who are smarter than I am. Yeah, I’m, I’m a member of different masterminds, I pay to be in people’s worlds that maybe would have been otherwise like, you know, not accessible to me. I think that the the I would always rather be the small fish in the in the room that I’m in then, than the big fish were that everybody’s coming to me for knowledge and wisdom. I think that it it continually pushes us.
Justin Stoddart 19:30
I love that you said that. I also pay for multiple coaches. Yep, mentors. And it’s paying for access to what they’ve learned. Right? Yeah. You can go about it the long way. I don’t have time for that. No, we’ll have time to figure it out myself and look back and say Did I do it right? I’m gonna find somebody who’s done it who’s figured it out. And I will I will stroke a check to get access to that knowledge and their mentorship and that help?
Jess Lenouval 19:54
Yeah, you’re just collapsing time.
Justin Stoddart 19:56
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Jess. We got a lot coming. Amen, my friend, I’m so connected to you. You’re doing some great things. Thank you for that. Thank you for not only sharing access to this amazing guide, and inviting people into this Facebook community where you can, again continue to expound upon the things that we’ve discussed here today, it’s been a total pleasure. So and to everybody listening here today, you know what my final request is going to be? It’s these three simple words, which are go think bigger. Just thank you for helping us do that today, my friend,
Jess Lenouval 20:27
thank you so much for having me.
Justin Stoddart 20:30
I want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. If you found value here, I asked three things. Number one, give us a review. Number two, go to Facebook and in groups search, think bigger real estate and apply to join. Here you will find a community of big thinking professionals that will help you grow your income, your independence and your impact. And my third request is to go think bigger.