How To Stop Chasing The "Realtor Joneses" | Episode 91

I'm gonna do this in a different voice for the audience. Yeah, I'm pretty good at like impersonations, voices. Okay.

You don't get 50% of your business from social media. Just do these three things weekly, and you'll do well.

Everybody just turned off this podcast. The Pinocchio character in one of the movies. Yo, Tara, did you get Pinocchio vibes from that one?

I got a hardcore Mickey Mouse on that.

Well, my daughter is seven, so I do get a lot of that all the time. Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance, and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk.

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Right here, guys. Reach out to John Sachs and his team at Property Management Redefine. We'll take good care of you. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm TMG. And I'm Sean Mooney.

What's up, Shawnee boy? What's happening, sir? Not much. What do we get into today? Today we're gonna get into it. We're gonna be talking about the three ways that real estate agents are always trying to keep up with the Realtor Joneses.

The realtor Joneses, as I call them.

Yeah.

So this one will be interesting today because it's not a term that probably most people have heard before. Because I made it up. But what we won't be making up is the reality of being a residential real estate agent, aka a realtor, as most of us are, and why that sometimes feels like something you should be keeping up with compared to your peers. So what I want to do is I want to start off with like an example of what I mean by keeping up with the realtor Joneses. Let me ask you a question first. Yes.

Have you ever met someone where you asked uh they were a realtor and you said, Oh, just like me, you know, you're a realtor, and they stopped you and said, No, no, no, I'm not a realtor. Did you ever get that?

Uh you mean they're like say, like, I'm not officially a realtor? Correct. No. Really? It's it's so uncommon to not be a realtor because, at least in the state of Pennsylvania, all of our paperwork comes from the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors. Your consumer notice, your agreement of sale, your buyer agency contract, seller's disclosure, all the documents we need to do our job. You only get those documents. So it's kind of like a monopoly. It's kind of like a monopoly, meaning you want to be part of the trade association because their paperwork is written unbelievably well. Now, not every state has great paperwork like Pennsylvania. Case in point, New Jersey. I'm licensed in New Jersey, and their realtor paperwork is not written nearly as well as Pennsylvania. Sorry, Jersey's.

So isn't it odd to you that like there was no other outfit out there that said, hey, these guys are doing this, offering this. We should just come in and do like there's no one like a second version of paperwork?

Yeah. Yeah, I think well, there's a couple things at play. So let's go over like why someone like me would be a realtor. Number one is really in the paperwork. Number two is probably in like the code of ethics. So it is a different way to run your business, honesty, integrity. Yeah, that wouldn't imply. And I know you're not into that. But uh, I would say the third reason is that you know, the cost of being a realtor are so minimal for the tools that you get, for the training that they offer, for the opportunities they have to network, that you're almost like, well, why wouldn't I be a realtor? Do you know what I smell?

What?

I smell like NAR lawsuit 2.0. Go. I have to be uh in this association. I have to, because where else am I gonna get the paperwork and there's only one avenue to do it? So it's being forced upon me to do this.

Well, here's what's interesting. So NAR wouldn't be your fight. I know, I know. It would be PAR, right. The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors.

But what here's what I'll say. I'm not telling anybody to go out and sue anybody. Yeah. I'm not that's not my position. I got you. Like reading the tea leaves.

Here's why I would say PAR is, in my opinion, and what I've heard through other agents in other states, one of the better realtors, so state realtor associations is really in how tight they run it. They have tons of support, their paperwork is second to none. The realtor association that I belong to is Tri-County Suburban Realtors, fantastic organization, no bias. And I think for the fact that if your realtor association is well done, you're gonna want to be a realtor. So I would say it's probably very high in the state of Pennsylvania that people are realtors. I don't know about New Jersey.

So, what would you do if if the person were to say, I don't want to do this, I don't want to be a realtor, I'm just gonna go and do this? Like what? So you'd have to come up with your own documentation, you'd have to come up with your own paperwork, like everything.

You basically have to go out and write your own blank agreement of sale, consumer notice, seller's disclosure, buyer agency contract, listing agreement. It doesn't make sense. Unless chat GPT just pop pop pop. But chat GPT will make mistakes.

That's true.

So, anyway, there's a very good question, by the way.

Just asking for the folks out there.

Yeah? Here's the first example I'm gonna give of keeping up with the realtor Joneses. You only did five million in volume? Let's get you up to ten million in volume, like Billy or Sally. And and it has to be done in that kind of voice with that kind of tonality. With emphasis. Yeah. Where it sounds like I'm like a ventriloquist. Yeah. So it was good. What are your thoughts on that? So we were just talking about this briefly before we started the episode. I had asked you, is there ever this vibe in the insurance industry? Like, let's call it an agency owner, the independent insurance agency world. Does anyone ever come up to you be like, oh, your premium is way too low? You should be doing more premium.

We don't get that. It doesn't uh it doesn't it doesn't really occur. Um we do get the braggadocious insurance agents that you know go online and they post, I sold this, our agency did this much this month. They're swinging you know what? Or we're on pace for this by year end, you know. So there is that element of the insurance.

So almost like, you know, the the bragging effect of people, I'm doing so well, but it's not necessarily like trying to get you on board with why they're doing so well.

Yeah, it doesn't, um, and I think partly because agents um like in real estate, you know, I'd say eighty percent of realtors do between zero million dollars and fifteen million dollars.

Oh like way down five. I'm gonna say eighty percent of realtors do like between zero and like two. Two.

All right. So so the the the the gap between the low performing and the high performing is so low. Yeah. Insurance agencies, you might have an agency that's uh a million dollar agency. Okay, and you might have a hundred million dollar agency like down the street. Yeah. So it really I think it's a different.

I think the culture is probably different in your world because you're not necessarily trying to catch up to someone else. It's like you're like, I want to be a million-dollar agency. That's like by design, let's call it, due to, you know, maybe I'm doing it all myself, or like I don't feel like hiring all the staff, or I don't feel like doing all this marketing. I just want to grow over time, service people well, and just keep the people I have.

Yeah, and so like no one's gonna be trying to how big's your agency? Oh, you need to do this to get to this. Like it it just yeah, that vibe doesn't exist, and insurance is so like vanilla, it's not like real estate, so it's it's a little not super sexy like real estate is yeah. The personalities are not the same in insurance. You know, I'm probably like on the hyper end of insurance. As two where would you label me?

Where would you say I am?

Oh, you're like at the bottom, yeah.

I'm chill.

Like, you know, there from what I gather what I see on No Bother.

Yeah, I would say it's pretty accurate.

Um, yeah, so it's a little different, uh, just from a personality standpoint. Okay. Different that way.

That's that's good to know. All right, so here's my here's my second line. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this in a different voice for the audience. Yeah, I'm pretty good at like impersonations, voices. Okay. Here we go.

You don't get 50% of your business from social media. Just do these three things weekly, and you'll do well.

Everybody just turned off this podcast. Like the radio just you didn't like that one.

That sounded like um Pinocchio bizarre like woman voice.

The Pinocchio character in one of the movies. I forget what it was. Uh Terry, I'm gonna have you bring that video up. Uh, we'll punch it through. Yo, Terry, did you get Pinocchio vibes from that one?

Uh I got hardcore uh I got a hardcore Mickey Mouse on that Mickey.

Well, my daughter is seven, so I do get a lot of that all the time.

So social media.

Social media with real estate. That's another one. It's like, so here's another keeping up with the realtor Joneses. Someone coming up to me. This has happened to me and saying, Well, what are you doing with Instagram or what are you doing with Facebook or what are you doing with LinkedIn or what are you doing with video or what are you doing with your carousels, your reels, your posts? How much of your business comes from social media? Like, people ask me this.

Yeah. Now, is that the intent of asking? Is that because they want to know what you're doing? Like, like, oh, this guy does social media really well. Let me let me find out what he's doing or how he's doing it. Is it from that?

I mean, I think it's I think it's two-pronged. I think one, they might want to be like, well, what are you doing with social media that maybe I'm not doing? Yeah. Or two, like, real estate is just one of those like collaborative, mastermind-ish, coaching, mentor-ish. Yeah, you know, it's like people get together and learn together and grow their businesses together because on every deal that we do, we're usually cooperating with another agent. So if I have the seller, if I have the listing side, chances are I'm not gonna have the buyer or the buyer side. That usually comes from another agent with a client. So because we're always cooperating, like that's our business model, even after all the NAR nonsense, like we're still cooperating the same as we ever were. Uh, I have not seen anything personally that said dual agency is way up.

You you paint the picture of this community of cooperating agents, but when I see you guys, you guys are like jabbing each other in the back, slitting each other's throats, and put a shiv on them.

Well, just because we cooperate on a deal doesn't mean someone's not talking trash behind your back. That happens all the time.

And I think with social media, it's um it's kind of like how much did you sell? Like, yeah, yeah. You're trying to be the most active social media presence out there. Like Jim did six reels this week, I'm gonna do 10, right? It's kind of that it feels like from an outsider that that's kind of a measuring stick that people operate with. It is.

It's just like I said, the real the reason I say keeping up with the realtor Joneses, everyone can understand keeping up with the Joneses. If your friend buys a new car and that's how you look at life, you're like, I should get a new car. Or your friend or your family gets a nice new house, and you're like, maybe I should get a nice new house. Like keeping up with the Joneses is a very real thing just in life. Yeah, but keeping up with the realtor Joneses is very much about peer pressure, about where you work, multi-level marketing, masterminding, coaching. There's just lots of different industries going on within residential real estate besides helping people buy and sell houses, which is why I think there is this culture of people measuring one another or finding holes in your business that they can, you know, sign you up for something or they can train you or they can use this uh company for this marketing or this coaching or this tech. So it's just it's ingrained in my industry. In the last 15 years, I will say when I first got into the business because tech wasn't as good as it is today, keeping up with the realtor Joneses was a little bit more like making other agents feel small or feel stupid.

Yeah.

Meaning you would do like a real estate transaction and no one had transaction coordinators, you know, or assistants. The only like the top, top, top, top people did now, everyone's got them. And back then, like if you like miss something, you forgot to like dot an eye across the T, like the other side, depending on how they operate, would really make you feel it. And they say, What why'd you mess this up? Like you're screwing everything up, or like you don't know what you're doing. Almost like a talking down to point, so they could like maintain more leverage on the deal and make you feel small.

I was listening to Justin Heath on his podcast Behind the Sign. What's up, Justin? What's up, Ryan Kavanaugh? What's up, boys? Um, and they were talking about uh a deal that Justin was on, and he went uh he had a settlement like yesterday, and they tried to move the time or something with a closing.

Uh-huh.

Just kind of something came up, and they went back to the agent, and the agent threw a fit. Yeah. And and it's like, wait, what? But it but it's probably to the point that they were just trying to make Justin feel it's like posturing.

Yeah. It's almost like like peacocking, they call it. Like you're gonna scrap with someone, like the peacockers the ones like taking their shirt off and like yo. The other guy's like just posting up, like, all right, like, yeah, what's the big deal? Yeah, so it's there is always this vibe through the cooperation model, depending on who you work with, that the other side is trying to make you look bad. Yep. They either want to look really good to their client or they have a big ego or a lot of pride. So they want to feel good. And it's probably more the exception than the rule that whether I'm on the buy side or I'm on the sell side, to link up with an agent, cooperate on a deal, and have this very like similar mindset of like just almost like abundance. Like, I'm here to help you make your life easier, just like you're here to help me make my life easier. Our job as realtors, let's call it, is to get the deal done. I've always said, with as little amount of money as possible and with the least amount of pain as possible. So let's work together to get it done. But then there are, per that example that Justin and Ryan gave, there's some agents that want to fight. They want to scrap, they want to make you look bad. They, that's how they feel like they're gonna look good to their client. Oh, they messed us all up. Justin messed us all up with this time change, and then they're gonna go deliver that message to their client, and then what's their client gonna act like? The client's gonna follow suit and be like, Well, you you said they messed up. Why'd they mess us up? When you come at it more from the perspective of we're here to work together to get this done, you won't scrap like that. So hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth, so if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show.

Here's a Gary Vism. Okay. He says, You always want to try to build the largest building in the city. And you can take the approach of, I'm gonna go build the biggest building in the city. And there's another counter approach that is I'm going to tear down the biggest building in the city so that mine is the tallest building in the city.

Yeah, that's cool.

So you can kind of go at it two different ways. Yep. And it fits perfectly in that scenario that there's some agents that feel that they're going to look better towards their client. If they chop you down. If I show my client that I'm doing this to the other agent.

I'm better than him or her, let's say.

And see what happens with these other agents when you work with these other agents. Yep. Um, so that's uh a great uh illustration as to how that, you know.

That is a really, really good example. All right, so here's the third one. Okay, I'm gonna try a different voice. Here we go. Ready? You haven't created any passive income for yourself yet?

Have you thought about investing in syndication?

If they didn't turn it off after the second one, they're pro uh or uh the rate just You think they're right there, they're like, yeah, you're killing me, dude. All right, I'll keep listening. Cratering. So the reason I make that example is again, in residential real estate, a lot of people say, hey, you shouldn't just be an agent. Like, you should have a team, you should run a brokerage, you should have a joint venture and a title company, you should have rental properties, you should be flipping homes, or syndication is like, okay, someone's building a hundred units in Texas somewhere, and they're raising capital around the world for their project, and you throw in $5,000, you're like, I think that's gonna be a good multifamily in Texas. I'm gonna make some money. There's nothing wrong with syndication, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I've even done syndication here locally as an investor developer. I do syndication. Tell me about your syndication. Fundrise. Oh, there you go. I'm a syndicator or a syndicatee. Isn't remind me again, fundrise is more you're contributing to like a loan or like the lending side. So they have uh a bucket for credit, they have a bucket for investment for, you know. Wow.

Yeah.

Do you have a decent amount of money in fundrise? Yeah. Really? Interesting. Where are your where are your like projects at? Do you know off the top of your mind? No idea. You just like here's some money and hopefully it does work.

Well, I I believe that they're probably gonna deploy that money better than all right.

Here's a good question. Why do you like that form of syndication versus let's say, you know, we're doing 16 residential apartments right down the street from here, yeah, that's gonna be ready in the next, you know, month or so from today. Um, why do you find value in the online syndication, let's say, versus like investing in a local developer?

So for me, it just works uh because it's like a monthly withdrawal.

Okay, so it's like the ease of doing it. Yeah, it's almost like I want to be in real estate, yeah, but I don't want to like, I don't want to know about the bricks. Yeah. And as I just want to put my money into real estate and make a good bet and see what happens.

So if you want to be uh like I always say, you got your stocks, you got your crypto, you got your real estate, you gotta diversify. So that is my choice uh for diversification. Interesting. Now, if you if Tim Garrety, the real estate developer, says Up an escrow account, and we were like, all right, we're just gonna have some money, and I can just put in every month, and that's actually sign up for that.

Okay, yeah, that's good to know. Do you do it on a monthly basis for fundrise?

Yeah, so it just takes a little piece, and then it'll put uh a percentage into real estate, percentage into credit, and then a percentage into I think private equity. Wow. And they slice it up. Nice, awesome, man. Never knew that. Yeah. All right. So syndication.

Real estate. Yeah. So I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with any of the three things I just said, which were No, they're great. Get your volume up, you know, try and find different ways to market yourself and get more business, and then invest, invest some of your commission dollars that you make in real estate in other real estate assets, let's say 401k.

You know, parking some money over here, taking, you know, a bit of your income and and putting it into investment.

So here's what I'll say about the Realtor Joneses. If you try and keep up, you don't know who you're actually getting good advice from or bad advice from. So rather than just trust the person or people that are telling you, you should do this, you should do that, you should do the other thing. I have three tips of my own that I think will help people. Before we get there. Yes. So if you're talking You want me to do another voice? No, no, no. No more voices. Gotcha.

Uh I think part of that too is people will use that as another vehicle to put people down. Yep. Oh, oh, you're not doing syndication. Oh, like where have you been? Yeah, you're in real estate. It's just another tool that people do to belittle other real estate agents. Yep. Look at me. I I'm in three different syndication projects. Right. Who gives a shit? And I guess that's insurance. It's different. Like insurance, we have blinders on for the most part. Is I like I don't care what's going on with the like insurance is everywhere. There's a insurance agent, probably six of them in Ambler that I know of, you know, that are like on every corner. And like I really just don't care what any of them are doing. It's and maybe that's a maybe that's a me thing.

No, it's probably a little bit more of your industry too. I think so.

Probably a combo of both. Combo of both. Um, it's I don't care what that person's doing. Like, I know what I need to do to get better. I know what I need to do to get this agency where it needs to be. You know what I mean? So so more just focused on what what I need to do, what we need to do, and you know, less of looking at someone else and trying to put them down. I I don't know. It just doesn't uh just doesn't happen a lot uh in our industry.

It doesn't sound like you have any like culture, let's say, of that. No. Whereas I will say in real estate, there's a culture of that. There is a culture of that, but I will say I think the culture is gradually getting better because some of the, you know, we did an episode already talking about the pros and cons of old school brokerages versus new school brokerages.

Well, don't you have that breeding out of these big box shops? I mean, if every day you come in, it's like, what are your numbers today? Or you have a big board in the office that Jim wrote numbers are down, right? Like it's it's just every day ingrained in your head is like, where are your numbers? Where are your numbers? What did you sell? What's your volume? You know, it's it over and over and over and over. Um then that's gonna be what people are used to and familiar with. And that's what the talking pattern is gonna be when they go out of that office to talk to other real estate.

And some people thrive off, whatever. It's it's again, I I had made the you know, kind of a general example of saying the old school brokerage business model was a little bit more built on competition, on leaderboards, on being number one, getting better, which is a perfectly perfect example of this. The new school brokerages tend to focus a little bit more on collaboration. How can I help you? What do you want to know? You know, what can I show you that I've done? It's more asking and coming from more of a helpful nature because they know it's like if we're all doing well, chances are the company, the group, the vibe, the culture will also do better. If we're putting each other down andor competing for resources, more of a scarcity mindset, chances are the company's not gonna feel as welcoming. It might not do as well. People might shift from one spot to another because they're like, I don't identify with this anymore. I'm not looking to compete with everyone, I'm looking to collaborate with everyone. Um, all right. So here are my three tips. Sims, top three. Top three is how I roll. All right. So, first one, first piece of advice I'm gonna give people to stop following the realtor Joneses is find out why you're in real estate and why you want to stay in real estate. This is one of the hardest things to learn as a realtor, as a real estate agent, is really why am I doing this? For me, me personally, when I got into the business, one of the main reasons I got into real estate, one, I got laid off from my last job. So that was a learning lesson. And two, when I got into real estate, one of my main drivers was I don't want to answer to anyone anymore. And I want the opportunity to grow this business as big or small as I want to in whatever amount of time that I want to. I don't want people breathing down my neck. That was pretty much one of my main reasons for doing it. Other people get into real estate, as I've seen. I ran a brokerage, we had over a hundred agents come through that brokerage in a 10-year period. Some agents look at it as like, I've always wanted to be in real estate because I want to be my own boss, or I've always wanted to be in real estate because I want to set my own schedule. And it's not to say you can't do those things. Like those things with self-discipline, with meeting the needs of your household or your family or just you, whatever your situation is in life, as long as you can meet those needs and you're consistent, eventually you will grow. Some grow faster, some grow slower, some stay the same for 10, 20 years. Yeah. But you get to stay in real estate. I feel like that's the one huge thing that people struggle with. Five years or less, 87% of agents in the industry and out of the industry because they just can't stay. It's usually financial. They just get to a point like I'm just not making enough money. I don't know what I'm doing yet. I need to go get another job.

Yeah.

So I think the best advice, as much as we compare this to the realtor Joneses and keeping up with them, one of the best tips I can give to doing well in real estate and staying in real estate, is find out why you're in real estate. So, again, for me, we know why I got into real estate, and then I did well as an agent, got my volume up to in the teens, then I started a brokerage. Brokerage did well, a couple hundred million in volume over a 10-year period. It was amazing. Now I'm back to being an agent and being a team leader, and I know exactly why I'm doing that. I mean, quite honestly, I want to be a husband first and I want to be a dad first, and I want to keep doing what I'm doing with the network that I have. So that's why I'm doing it. That's how I stay in real estate. And I had that big decision a little over a year ago to make. It's like, where do I want to go with this? I've done this, I've done that. Now where am I going? So that's definitely like the number one thing I would say. Figure out why you're in real estate and why you want to stay in real estate. That's really your income goals. You know, do you want to be a party of one? Do you want a team? Do you want a brokerage? Asking yourself those questions, that's what I would recommend. All right. Number two, set your own expectations on time and how long things actually take to happen. This is, I can't remember if it was a guest or if you and I had just said it. Maybe it was, maybe it was Garrett Maroon. What's up, dude? Who had said you have to give yourself enough runway to take off. And a lot of people in real estate, because it's five years or less, it's not a lot of time to build a career. Like honestly, I've always told agents it usually takes you about seven to ten years to really figure out what your real estate business is. Oh, it can't. You're dead in the water. Nope. Seven years. Seven to ten to figure out what it is. Meaning, all right. So let me give you an example. Let's say you get your real estate license, you start out as a solo agent. Yeah. The first two years are just gonna suck. They're gonna suck no matter what. You're not gonna make enough money unless you got rich relatives that are just feeding you business or like a very high price point, you get lucky and you're making large commissions. Not common. Right. So your first two years, you're gonna be broke. Right. Then you're three, four, and five, you're like, okay, I'm making a little bit of money now and I'm making it consistently. Okay, I'm I'm making enough to live, to eat, to pay my bills, whatever it is. Have a roof over your house. Then you're six, seven, and eight, let's call it, is really when you're trying to figure out how am I scaling this thing and how much do I want to scale it? So once you go through those years of growth, after five years in, you're figuring out how big do I want this thing to be?

Yeah, that's a little, yeah, that's different than what I took it as initially. It's it's you're in it, you can be successful doing it. Exactly. But when it comes to year five, year six, you've seen it from a different perspective. Yep. You're able to size up, you know, what you like, what you don't like, and then pick the road that you're gonna go forward for the rest of your career, hopefully, uh, and go in that direction.

Yeah. And what you just said there, I think is really important, like what you like and what you don't like, but also what you want and what you don't want. So I said, set your own expectations on time. Yeah. So a lot of people they look at as like, I'm in a hurry to grow my volume.

Right.

They either do that as a super successful solo agent, they can do that as a team, and then the whole team gives the pot of volume, that's what they're responsible for, or they can do it as a brokerage. Yep. Those are pretty much the three ways that you can scale this thing over time. So understanding what you want to accomplish in what amount of time you want to accomplish it in, you really have to be realistic. Like for me, starting as solo, growing a brokerage to a pretty decent size in Philadelphia, and then getting back to pretty much being a solo agent. I mean, I'm a team leader, but my team's small. Yeah. So I look at it as like I got back to where I was because, from a time perspective, I want to continue to control the client experience for all of my clients. I'm gonna continue to invest and develop in real estate. And I just wanted to grow extremely slow over time. I just want to keep doing it, doing the things that I love to do and maintaining my goal, which is really to be present at home. Like that's really what I learned through everything I went through. And I think that's where the realistic part comes in. A lot of people don't ask themselves. They're just like, oh, Billy said I should be growing from 5 million to 10 million, like the first example I gave. Why are why are you doing that? Why do you even want 10 million? Do you even know how much time that takes? Do you know how much marketing spend you have to do to do that? Do you have you realize how not present you have to be to go to that next level? And I think when people ask themselves, it's really like in your personal life, like, what do I want? What do I want out of this thing? Do I just want to make enough money to get to the next year? Do I want to grow slowly over time, or I want to grow real fast? And I think as long as you can figure out your own expectations on time, you'll be better set up for the future and you'll be less concerned about what other people say.

Yeah.

And then the third one, I am huge on this. This is what I trained on pretty much the last like 10, 12 years. Plan, plan, plan.

And more planning.

And some more planning.

And a sprinkle.

Like you just take it. All right, that looks like a good plan. Um, it's almost like they say they say in real estate, location, location, location. Like, why is that so important? Because it's everything. Like, if you buy a house in the wrong location, you're like, but I want those schools. Like, you're not doing what you're supposed to do. Or if you buy it in the wrong location because you wanted to save on money, but you're like, now my commute sucks. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Or you're like, you bought in this location because you wanted high appreciation over time and the neighborhood's not doing so well. Again, location, I should have bought over there. So planning is huge in real estate. It's probably the biggest common problem that I see, not only for a solo agent, but for a team member, of understanding where their expectations are on time. Because if you don't have a goal or goals for the following year, and you're not keeping track of something for this year, you don't know whether or not you're doing well or you're doing poorly. If you're just like, I'll just see how the year goes, that was a pretty good year, or I'll just see how the year goes, that was a terrible year.

Well, it doesn't allow you to correct course correct.

Exactly. It's a really good way to put it.

You need to understand what works, what doesn't work, and then use that to either pivot to change to do something different, or double down on, hey, this is really working next year. We're gonna do even more of that.

Yeah. And I'll I'll give a really good example. So again, when I pivoted from Copper Hill Real Estate to the Tim Garretty team, one thing I had to do is I had to plan for my year differently. My plan used to be all about the brokerage. Right. Now the plan is more for myself as an agent. One thing I did to plan was what's my volume goal? What's the number of units that I want to do? What's the income that I think I'll make from the first two? That gives me my annual plan. So once I have my annual plan, then what I do is I have a marketing strategy that goes along with that plan. In order to hit somewhere around those uh units and volume, I should be doing A, B, C, D. And the things I do are email marketing, social media marketing, podcasting, pop buy gifts, client events, magazines, handwritten notes. So these are things that I do in order to keep those goals where they need to be and hopefully grow a little bit more the following year. I don't think I'll ever go in reverse. I think I'll be like, okay, did I meet my goal and or exceed my goal? And why? Maybe it's because the podcasting took off, let's say. And if the podcasting took off, hey, maybe I take my foot off the gas of another marketing thing. Maybe I don't have to do that as much.

Well, it's time, right? So we take time to do this, right? A lot of time to shoot, edit, promote, push out content. I mean, so there's a lot of different things that you're doing. So it's not so much you're getting rid of this by doing this, it's you have time and you're dedicating time to doing this because it's working. Yep. And now that allows me to take away time from something that maybe isn't that fruitful.

Exactly.

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That's all we have for this one, folks. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you next week. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets, and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BR episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content. Until next time, keep learning and keep growing.