Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. A quick reminder, if you have clients that are looking to move to Portland, Oregon, please reach out to me, I’m not a licensed real estate agent, but I do know the best here in town, and I would be happy to make an introduction for you. So let me begin by saying first and foremost, Erik hatch, thank you for coming on the show today.
Erik Hatch
Ah, Justin, my man, if I’m here for the second time, it means I wasn’t terrible the first time. So glad to be back.
Justin Stoddart
It’s a pleasure, man. I’ll tell you what, for those that don’t know, Eric, his team is the 49th highest producing real estate team in the country. They sold 664 homes in 2018 and are getting after it again in 2019. And amidst all of that, the you know, one of the my favorite things about you, Eric, is that a lot of really high producing teams, you walk into their office, and there’s listings all over the place. There’s goals and metrics. As you know, these thermometers have Are we almost there, describe to the audience what is on your wall, in kind of one of your conference rooms?
Erik Hatch
Well, our goal is to create champions with what we do. And so of course, we do have some things up there that that are tracking, we believe in scorecards comes from the four Disciplines of Execution, which has been a great book in our world. But what’s the main thing in our training room is over the whiteboard that says we’re in the business of helping people, we just happen to sell real estate. And then on our back wall, what I’ve done is I’ve taken a picture of every person’s family or pets, whatever they deem most important to them. And we have that up in our training room as a reminder and as the constant watchers of what we do and how we do it. So we make sure that we’re consistently serving instead of being selfish.
Justin Stoddart
And it’s so consistent with what what this is all about, right is that even the think bigger real estate show, it’s about thinking bigger than real estate, the real estate can be a vehicle through which you can bless the serve a lot of people I know you, Eric, you even had a passion, one point in your life, to be part of the ministry. But you felt like you’re called to serve through real estate, also impacting people’s lives and deep and meaningful ways. Talk to us a little bit about how that came about.
Erik Hatch
Well, I still feel like I’m in a service based ministry-esque kind of environment. Ministry, for me was what I did right out of college, it was the best job you could ever have. That doesn’t pay you well at all. And I was in the ministry, I did youth ministry and lead worship for about eight years, built some nonprofit movements throughout the community as well and was just fired up about it. But I needed to take better care of my family. And what it came down to was and my wife and I desperately want to kids. In fact, my son Simon is in the room right now. He’s three and just had his tonsils taken up this last week. So he may jump on camera and say what’s up. But we wanted so desperately to have kids and we ran into major infertility. And the only way I could be a dad was if I was able to fund it. And the other way I could fund it was not by working at a nonprofit. But by working in real estate, I was selling real estate part time. And I needed that financial acumen in order to really be a dad. Now I have two kids, my daughter spent almost my daughter Finley is almost five, my son Simon just turned three. And I am just saying smiling from ear to ear with where we’re going.
Justin Stoddart
You know, it’s really fun to see somebody like you who’s who has a heart like that, that was willing to at one point, you know, work for not much money, but just to impact but then you realize how much more impact can one have? When you take you know, you take that hard and put it into a you know, a business that can impact even more people. And I see your beautiful son right here on the candidate. Let’s introduce him this is Simon
Erik Hatch
Simon Simon, Can you say hi? No, gotta be shy.
Justin Stoddart
Simon, it is a pleasure to have you on the think bigger real estate show my friend. You know what a lot of what we do Simon is is is for people like you it’s to inspire the next generation inspire all of us to be a little bit more like you
Erik Hatch
He’s not listening. But I am.
Justin Stoddart
Thanks for making a guest appearance, Simon. So let’s jump into again, your book, right. So you have this heart to, to serve people to be a servant leader, you realize that real estate is the vehicle through which you can do that and provide you for your family in the way that you want to. Let’s talk a little bit about how the book came to be.
Erik Hatch
You know, I’ll hold it up here so people can see it’s like, it’s like a double twin with me right here, I’ll just try to shade some of my face as well. So I’ll just match it. It’s called play for the person next to you a guide to servant leadership. And it had been on my heart to write a book for probably five or six years. There’s this interesting thing that happens, Justin, when you decide to write a book, because what you’re doing is you’re saying, I’m an expert in something. And I actually don’t think of myself as an expert, I think of myself as a student. And I have studied leadership. And what happened was, I got into real estate full time from the ministry in 2011. I built a team in 2012, and the beginning of 2013, everything crashed down on me, I failed. So tremendously, I got kicked out of the brokerage that I was at, I went from a team of 13 people down to a two team of three people, myself and to others. Overnight, I invited everybody on the team to come with and nobody said yes, except for two of them. And I realized that I was chasing transactions. And I was failing to think about transformation. It was all about me instead of all about we. And so I buckled down and I put my head down and I said, Eric, you are you are still that servant that you were made to be. And I had really lost that my first couple years of jumping into the for profit lifestyle. I was chasing things that were empty promises, and they really weren’t life giving. I think things like this, I think of the idea of profit. And if you ask most people, what’s the purpose of business people will say, profit. But I think that that’s is maybe foundational is saying that the purpose of life is breathing. It’s absolutely essential to what you’re doing. But it’s not the purpose, the purpose of businesses not profit, the purpose of business is to live out your purpose. And to make it difference, just like the purpose of your life is not breathing, but it’s to serve. And in fact, that work has already been set aside for you to do. And so I’ve made the conscious decision from six years ago that I was going to restart. And at that time, I recognize what I’m saying is maybe a little bit different than what the main stream of business and real estate is saying. And so from that, God put it on my heart to write a book and I didn’t know what it was going to look like. And I didn’t know when I was going to write it. But I finally said enough is enough enough about talking about your dreams and said start actually acting on them. And so here I am now, six years later, and I have my first book in my hand.
Justin Stoddart
Talk to us about the process of writing a book. Was it as challenging as many people say?
Erik Hatch
It sucks. I don’t know how else to spin it. It is not a sexy thing by any means. I worked with a publishing company out of Charleston, South Carolina called advantage. And so I went went out to I went up to Charleston for a couple of days. We laid out the book what we thought it would be like I met with all these advisors and learned about the process. From there. I spent about four months working with a ghostwriter. It wasn’t me writing it, it was me telling the story. And then the ghostwriter would trim the fat of a certain bring back the chapters for me to edit. the editing process took so much time, but the actual speaking of the book boy, I probably I probably spewed out things for 20 or 25 hours and called it good.
Justin Stoddart
It’s a powerful thing to have to go through that process. I say that because I’m in the process of writing a book right now.
Erik Hatch
Are you writing it yourself or working with a ghostwriter?
Justin Stoddart
It’s not a ghostwriter. I have an editor that accompanies me every week. And we go through and review the work that I’ve done based on an outline that we created together. The only time I can do it to where I have complete blank space to focus this from four to six o’clock morning. And so yeah, it’s been it’s been a little tough. I’m a little more sleepy and the kind of late evenings that I’d like to be. But it’s, it’s it’s an amazing process at the same time. And you can probably attest to this, because it causes you to really have to refine your thoughts and your stories to make them both entertaining, as well as you know, very advantageous. So I admire you for doing it, I haven’t done it yet. I’m trying to do it. I’m attempting to do it, I intend to do it. But I admire you that you’ve done it. And it’s it looks like an amazing, amazing rate. I’m so excited to actually get into more of it.
Erik Hatch
Thanks. Nobody’s told me it stinks yet. So I think I’m onto a good track there. There’s this interesting thing, and you’re going to learn it is I’m a speaker. And that’s what I do most naturally, I love having a microphone in my hand and one of those second people and that sort of way. You know, when I speak, I get instant feedback from people, you can see the whites of their eyes, the smiles on their faces, the energy that comes from my communication. So it’s pretty great. And when you write a book, and you put it out there, all of a sudden, you wonder, okay, Justin has my book. He hasn’t said anything yet. He hasn’t read it. So why hasn’t he read it? Why doesn’t he think it’s good enough? Read? Is it this book number 12? Do you just humor me in buying the book? No, he has read it. But he hasn’t told me that what he thinks about it yet? Like, Oh, my gosh, why hasn’t he give me any feedback, you must think it’s terrible. And I’m just like, in my own head. Because I’m a super high I unapologetically. And I’m looking around being like, well, somebody, please tell me I’m pretty. That’s all I want. And with the book, what I realized is, the goal was not to have everybody Tell me, you wrote a fantastic book, The goal was to dream big, and to take a step. And even if it’s not a 10 out of 10, I’m very confident in the book I wrote, I feel like there’s some huge nuggets, if you’re in business, in general, there’s going to be some big takeaways for you. But the actual success of it for me is not in the number sales I have, or the number of people that give me out of boys instead is figuring out what I’m dreaming and actually acting on it. Because that for me is the momentum I need to get to where I want to go.
Justin Stoddart
For you articulated that so well. That it really doesn’t matter what the outcome is. It’s the it’s the growth that happens to you along the process, the clarity of your mission as to how you can best serve the world. And I’m I’m impressed by what you shared right there. What are some key takeaways, Eric, that people are going to love about the book that you want to kind of whet their appetite a little bit as far as what it’s going to teach them? What are people going to get? How are they gonna become better by reading a book.
Erik Hatch
I think the the final chapter, the final notes, is the summation of the entire book, and I talked about the idea of crossing your arms. And I think most of us cross our arms like this. And we live so tightly wound that we don’t really let anybody in. And my faith tells me to cross my arms like this, right. But the idea is, if we’re going to cross our arms like this, these hands have to be doing something. One hand is for serving. And I think that most people can hear servant leadership. And if they’re going to buy the book, they probably subscribe to that idea. Or they’re one of my family members looking to humor. But I think that most people are like, yes, I’m buying a book because it already aligns with my level of thinking, servant leadership. But if you’re going to be balanced, like if you if you’re walking a tightrope, and if you’re walking a tightrope, your arms are out like this, right? You can’t walk a tightrope like this. And the higher you go, the more pressure that comes on you. More important it is in your life to have balance. And the balance is one of these arms is serving and taking care of other people. But the other one means you have to let other people take care of you. In our organization, we’ve claimed to be one of the top 50 Real Estate teams in the country, and exceedingly fast amounts of time. And we’ve done so because we’ve figured out that balance piece we have integrated into our system, and our organization checks and balances and ways in which we can make sure that we’re creating champions out of people. And we’ve curated an environment where we’re, we’re talking about the tough stuff, and we’re letting other people into our world into our lives, so that we can climb higher and higher and higher.
Justin Stoddart
And one of the things that I admire, I see a lot of people struggle at building a real estate team or any team in general. And I think especially in the world of real estate, you have a lot of entrepreneurial minded people who go into real estate in order to be in business for themselves. And then they’re presented with the case of being a part of a team. And it’s like, wait a minute I, I got into business, not to work for somebody, but to be part of a team. And I always admire those teams that succeed, because what it tells me is that those people that have built that team and built that platform for others to rise upon have done, done so in such a way that people realize that they’re going to get farther in life by being on that team than being by themselves. And that their brand is improved upon by having their brand associated with hatch Realty, for example, than by just having their own brand. And it’s a great testament to what you guys have built and what you are teaching in the book is that you’ve built something that’s not about building a statue to Eric hatch, right? This isn’t about building you. And I hear that everything that you say that you know, what you’ve written, and the team that you’ve built. That’s, that’s people like Robbie, that are that are deeply committed to this cause that it’s much bigger than you this is a cause this is about making them champions not making us like champion, right?
Erik Hatch
Yeah, Ziglar says you can have everything in life, you want to be helping others get what they want. And for me, I live in abundance every day. Now there’s this divine irony that happens in our world, and that is my name and my face or on everything. It’s it’s actually royalty, and it’s my face on every sign and hatches my last name. And so I think of myself like Colonel Sanders, you know, I may be created the recipe, but I’m not in the kitchen anymore, and I don’t deserve any other credit. And so my job as a leader is to shine a light on everybody else, the best leaders take all the blame and give all the credit. And my hope is to figure out what it is that people want in their world, what makes them come alive, and to create an environment that allows them to do that? You know, we have, we have a company, we’re birthing here very soon. And it’s a spin off, we have an agent who’s climbing and climate and climate in our world for the last five years, and has hit a point that is usually the flight mentality for people. A lot of real estate teams exists. And like once people get to like right here, they abandon it, and they say this team won’t serve me anymore. In our world, our folks have climbed all the way up to here and here and we have a guy named Kyle who’s climbed up to here, he’s doing 40 sphere deals a year, plus another 50 or 60, from the team. So closing 100 transactions and 40 of those from his sphere, annually. amazing success for this young man, he’s 29 years old, and he should be leaving, according to what real estate team says he should be leaving. And instead, we’re building another business together. And we’re chasing down the dream, we’re figuring out how he can not just have the abundance of money, but instead we want to create real wealth in his world. That’s the right culture. That’s the right time in his life. And that’s an abundance of resources. And that includes money.
Justin Stoddart
You know, I find that the best leaders, like you said, live in abundance, and they realize, like, if I want to stay in business with top talent, I’m going to have to think a little bit different and have to think a little bit bigger, I’m gonna have to create a world big enough to where they can build their empire on my soil. Right? And it sounds like that’s what you’ve done here. And it’s not a one size fits all right? Sometimes you get a talented person that doesn’t fit the mold. And you have to you have to you have to be a little bit creative to say how can how can I continue to be in business with this person as opposed to just being a part of their past? How can I continue to be a part of their present a part of their future, and and help them get to where they want to go even faster? Even better, because we’re in partnership, as opposed to just saying, hey, it’s been great. Thanks for all the lessons. Thanks for everything. Let’s be friends. Yeah,
Erik Hatch
I hear my son pouring some water that has me freaked out here without a mess to clean up. And this is done.
Justin Stoddart
Well, we can about wrap it up here. So I want to thank you. For what shared how do people get their hands on the book, Erik.
Unknown Speaker
You know, if you go to hatchingleaders.com, again, I put my name on everything. So if you’re going to hatchingleaders.com, you can pick up your own copy of Play for the Person Next to You. They’re wonderful stocking stuffers for Christmas. We actually we have a lot of real estate teams buying this for other team members. There’s 12 chapters. So they’re doing book studies of it. And we’re just excited to have it as a part of people’s worlds
Justin Stoddart
Hatching leaders, I love it. We’ll put that in the show notes and invite everybody to go get a copy, it’s going to make you a better person, a better parent, a better business entrepreneur, a better leader. I’m, I’m excited for people to get their hands on it. I want to end with this this question. Eric, you’ve been asked a question before, I’m asked you again, which is, you know, you are a big thinker. You are constantly expanding your own possibilities, as well as the possibilities of other people. How do you continue to do that, what’s advice you can give to this audience that will help all of us continue to be big thinkers to continue our own big thinking?
Erik Hatch
I just wrote out a 1-3-5 for my life, one objective three steps to get there and five sub-steps that will help me do it. And I revisit that every couple of months. And I cast a really big vision to figure out where I want to go. I think that we often overestimate where we can get in one year and underestimate where we can get in five or 10. And so if I’m thinking big enough and long enough, I’m going to make sure that I’m continuing to make sure that the steps today are going to get me wherever want to go tomorrow. And so I’m not thinking about tomorrow, I’m thinking about five years from now, and reverse engineering that back.
Justin Stoddart
And that’s a powerful practices. I know it’s that time of year, especially for those that are in real estate. And even for those that are not aware, October 1 is really January 1. Jay Papasan said that recently on a webinar that I listened to, yeah, and it’s, although people think of business planning is something they do between Christmas and New Year’s, the results that you’re going to get in January, are because of activities you’re going to do starting this week and so I think it’s essential that all of us take heed to that and say, what is it that I want to be creating, not just for 2020, but for five years out. It’s powerful man, super powerful. Anyway, for those of you again, who who have not had a chance to get their hands on Erik’s book, and go to hatchingleaders.com, you can get a copy of it there. I’ll be the first one I guarantee after the show to go get it. But I want to thank you, Erik, despite being at home, attending to those things that are most important, potentially having some water damage in the background while you’ve been on the show. I want to thank you for coming on the show today. I want to do one final charge to everybody listening with your three simple words. And they are Go Think Bigger. Eric, thank you so much for helping us do that today. It’s a total honor to have you as a friend and I’m excited about what you’re doing.
Erik Hatch
You the man Justin, thank you very much for the opportunity.
Justin Stoddart
My pleasure, man. Talk to you soon!