Welcome to episode 000 of the Listing Agent Lifestyle
I'm excited to share all the great ideas we have for you over the coming months and years!
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep000
Hello, welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. My name is Dean Jackson. There's something exciting about the first few words of a brand new podcast. I've been podcasting a long time, started out in 2005. One of the very first podcast on iTunes called Marketing Monday, and we did almost 200 episodes of Marketing Monday. Archives are still on iTunes today and it's still one of the top real estate marketing podcast on iTunes. Lots of listeners every week, but this has been a journey.
When I look back right now, we're in November of 2017. I got my real estate license in November 1988, so it has almost been 30 years. Over that 30 years, I've had two real passions in my life; one has been real estate and the other has been marketing. The combination of those two have been what I've been completely focused on for 30 years, and I'm excited to be doing a new podcast with a new vision for the next 30 years.
I'm one of these people that I believe that the future of real estate is better than we think. I mean, you think about all the people who've been tapping the demise of the real estate business since the digital age. It's been more than 25 years now that people have been predicting the end of the real estate industry, and I just don't believe that's true. I think we're entering a period right now were we have so much opportunity to embrace the digital availability; all the things that are available to make our lives faster easier, simpler, to make them more leverageable, to expand our reach. All of those things are wonderful, to be able to apply them to our real estate business, embrace them. I think that that is going to be the power move of the next 30 years, and I think we've got an amazing opportunity in front of us.
I've been thinking a lot about this to prepare for setting the contacts for what the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast is going to be about because I think that the words say it all, listing agent lifestyle. I believe that the great opportunity we have is going to be in adapting a listing centric approach to creating a business that affords us a wonderful lifestyle.
Now, lifestyle and real estate are generally not two words that go together, almost notoriously known for being successful in real estate, not being conducive to having a great lifestyle; but I believe that with all the tools and the new development center are here and available to us that we're able to balance the two to have a really great successful profitable lucrative business, but also have a life. Have a lifestyle that's a wonderful thing.
I just want to settle a little context for us. I've had this vista for almost 30 years now, and when I look back at getting … the first day that I got my real estate license, if I look back at the technological landscape of what was before us, the fax machine was state of the art. That was the newest thing. Our office had just gotten the new fax machine with the thermal paper. You had the print it off and then you had to rush to the photocopier to make the copies of it before the invisible disappearing ink run off from that curly long roll of paper. We were at the bare bones beginning of the online … not online, but the computer based info where you have databases. Sometimes you could network computers in a really dust-based environment where you had access to the MLS computer, but it was all very command oriented and just strictly the data. No interface. Nothing around that. I remember this is in 1988.
The information that we had came twice a month. Every other week … I still remember that every other Tuesday the MLS catalog would arrive and it had all of the listings. You could see all the new listings that had come on the market there. Eventually we would get daily hot sheets from the MLS office that were printed and delivered in the carrier pack that would arrive every day. That was the state of the art for us as real estate agents, the access to that information.
Now, for consumers it was even worse. I mean the only way that consumers could get information was through the Wednesday and the Friday newspaper ads that came out. I was just outside of Toronto, in Halton Hills and on Wednesday and Friday the real estate section of the newspaper would come out. People would anticipate that arrival and they would get to see the new ads and see what was the new properties that had come on the market or, they had to drive around and look at the signs on the lawn or they have to, if they were coming from out of town, drive all the way out to Halton Hills and kind of walk into an office or come to open houses.
That MLS catalog, that book, that was power. People would beg to take a look a the book. They would just say … they'd come to my office towards the end of the night and they would say "Can you just let me keep it overnight and I'll drop it off first thing in the morning." It was like the people were craving this information and that's really … I remember that now that we really had the power because there was no other way for people to get that information and that was kind of our position there.
It's been this slight decline for 30 years now, the balance of power had shifted in the information world. If you fast forward to today, every property is available instantly online, sometimes before it even comes on the market. There's virtual tours and drone videos and there's virtual reality and lifestyle cinema videos or films that highlight properties. When you look at the balance now, the consumers often have more information about the specific properties that they're interested than the real estate agents do because they're really that focused on it. They become experts in all the properties that are available in a particular market.
When you really look at that, that changes the dynamic of everything. It changes the dynamic of the information but at its core, same 30 years ago as it is today, the job of being a real estate agent is about finding a buyer and a seller, matching them up and negotiating an agreement for a commission or a fee. That's the core of the job, the fundamental thing that has to happen.
For all of the advancements in information, in the way that we present information, all the fanciness of it, has anything meaningful really changed? I was kind of reflecting on that because when you look at it right now, what hasn't changed is that you still have to find a buyer, a seller, and negotiate an agreement for a commission. The reality is that you can't digitize the last hundred feet of a real estate transaction. It still comes down to a negotiation between at least two completely irrational people who are negotiating the market value of the only property like this one in the world on the market today.
That doesn't lend itself to, with all the emotions, all the intangible things that go into an algorithmic approach to, you take this property for this price. It's not that simple. It's not like selling a Honda Civic or something where the price is based on what other Honda Civics you're selling for, way more than the price of real estate is because certainly people can get more attached to somewhere where they're going to live, where they're going to setup a life for themselves.
It reminded me, as I was thinking about this, about golf in a way. If I look back, I did the research here in golf. In the 25 plus years, from 1990 until today, driving distance … the distance that players hit the ball off the T went from 279 yards to 336 yards. People are driving the ball 57 yards further all through an advancement in technology, in the clubs themselves, in the golf balls. All the things that can be technologically aided have led to an increase of 57 yards on the distance of people at the golf ball.
Here's what's been interesting is that scoring average, the actual scores that golfers get have gone down less than one stroke from 69.1, was the winning score in average in 1990, to 68.85. Less than one quarter of one stroke. All that technological advancement, all that technology both of the golf ball and the clubs have not led to a substantial improvement in people's golf scores for the same reason that all of these technological advancements in real estate have not led to a fundamental change in the core things.
I would call the core things of real estate, I would call it the days on the market and the percentage of asking price that the homes sell for. I don't think that if you really did the research and looked at it that those things have substantially changed. If you look at it, the amount of time that homes stay on the market and the amount of the percentage of the asking price that they get, what other things has the technology done? We may be able to broaden the pool of people that a property gets exposed to because we hear all these things. We get it on that internet and that exposes it to millions and millions of people. Well, the reality is that none of those millions and millions of people, most of them are not looking for a three-bedroom ranch home with Berber carpeting in Happy Valley on the ravine, but there's one person that's the home of their dreams. It's really still about finding that person and about connecting them with the person who has that home for sale.
I wanted to set that tone because I believe that for all of the things that have changed technology wise, there are still some fundamental things, the rudimentary things that really make a difference and that's what this Listing Agent Lifestyle is fueled by. There's just a few elements that really make a difference in the result that you're getting. I would look at that as the difference. What we're really looking for for you is the number of times that you're able to match a buyer with the seller and earn a commission. The number of transactions that you're able to do personally or through your team, the way you've got things structured, the number of times that you're able to make that happen, and the amount of net dollars that you're able to keep from that endeavor.
We look at a lot of these things. It's very easy to spend a lot of money on technology and on all these fancy things that are available to us. There's no end to it; but when we look at it at the end of the day, what are the things that are actually moving the needle for you? What are the things that are what I call making the boat go faster. Are we just rearranging the deck chairs and putting fancy ribbons on things? Are we doing things that are actually adding the horsepower to the boat, things that are going to help us get to our destination faster?
Let's talk a little bit about the elements of the listing agent lifestyle. I look at these elements as … I have a friend who is a physician and she focuses on what she calls rudimentary medicine, the underlying causes of what makes people sick. She's actually got a website called unsick.com. There's basically only five things that make people sick, and she's focused on identifying which of those underlying things are the things that are causing the problem and treating those rather than treating the symptoms.
Think about that a lot because the way I look at it there is five basic rudimentary things that we need to focus on to build a listing agent lifestyle. Number one of those is getting listings. You got to have a way to get listings if we're going to have a listing centric business. I'd like to think about where you are right now in your ability, or your system, or your approach, or your confidence level in your system for getting listings and matching that with your lifestyle.
Right now you may be in a situation where you don't have any listings and that could be an issue for you; or that your approach to getting listings is like a hamster wheel, prospecting, where you have to go out and door knock or go out and cold call, or chase FSBOs and expireds where you're manually going out and chasing down the listings and getting them; or you're trying to maybe get listings through personal promotion about getting your name out there and building your brand and your image so you can get to topple mind awareness; or maybe you're trying to attract listings by offering reduced commissions, or you're frustrated with losing out to other agents for listings.
Our focus for you in this first element of getting listings is to set up a systematic way for you to get motivated sellers to call you when they're ready to sell. One of the things that I've really focused on over these 30 years of trying to apply world class marketing to the real estate world through that lens is I've been able to develop a program called Getting Listings. We've helped thousands of people all over North America, and the UK, and Germany, and Australia, and South Africa. People all over the world setting up what I call listing oil wells. These are automatic machines that continue to pump new listings as easy as pointing to an area saying, "This is the area where I'd like to get listings" and setting up an automated program that will identify people who are going to be selling their homes, get them to raise their hands, systematically follow up with those people, and get them to call you when they're ready to sell.
My whole intention when I created the program was to set up a system that would work if my phone only accepted incoming calls. That requires marketing. That requires some skills, some psychology of understanding how and what motivates people to first of all identify themselves as somebody who's going to be selling their home and then what type of offers or how do you word the offers that you make to people so that they will call you when they're ready to sell.
My intention on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast is I'll introduce you to people who have been using our system for getting listings and creating amazing results. The first guest that I'm going to have is Tony Kalsi. I've just finished up a four-year case study with Tony where, over this four-year period we measured from September of 2013 to September of 2017 with a capital investment over that four years of $50,000 mailing postcards and newsletters to a specific group, he was able to generate $543,000. An 11 times ROI without making any outbound phone calls.
You'll get to meet Tony on the first episode because I'm super excited about that. You'll see there's an infographic that shows all the data of what happened and how it all played out, but the reality is there's only a few months that he was mailing before he reached what I call a skate velocity where he did his first transaction and then every other transaction on top of that built on top of it to reach that 11 times investment. Very exciting and a really easy system to operate.
We are going to focus on, as a listing agent lifestyle, the ability for you to get listings because it's the core of all of it if you're going to have a listing centric business.
The first three guests that I'm going to have, Tony Kalsi. We are going to meet Chuck Charlton who's been in the Getting Listings Program for over 10 years now and was the person who got the very first listing from the very first time we offered the Getting Listings Program in 2006 and he's gone on to do tremendously with that Getting Listings Program. Then we're going to meet Ron Reed who is sort of the first case study that we've had for the first year of this where Ron did the Getting Listings Program in one small neighborhood and got some amazing results.
You get to see, they're almost like the ghost of Christmas future for each other. Tony is in a place where Chuck Charlton was four years ago or five years ago and Ron Reed is at the point where Chuck was 10 years ago now. It's neat to see the progression of what happens in one year, what happens in four years, what happens in 10 years. It has been working and working and working just like clockwork for all of them, so I'm excited to share that with you.
They way that we measure your Listing Getting System is in a return on investment. That's what we look at, it's using leverage and using money over time, capital investment to generate new business. You can start with a small amount and grow it from there. I'm excited to share those experiences with you and share the people with you.
Now, the second element of the listing agent lifestyle is multiplying listings. We measure that with something that we call your listing multiplier index. What it means is that if you've got a listing right now. You've got an opportunity not just to get one transaction, you've got an opportunity to get at least five transactions with every listing that you take. Here's what we mean by that, first of all you've got the opportunity to get that listing sold which is what most people focus on right? Most people use the three Ps. They price it right, they put it in the MLS and they put up a sign and they pray that it sells. Usually it does. Somebody else will bring the buyer. It may take a sense of pride that they launched a property and that it gets out there and a buyer comes and then everybody celebrates and they get their one commission which is the listing side commission of that transaction.
There's also the opportunity to get not just that one transaction but there's an opportunity for you to find the buyer, the buyer that actually buys the house. There's that opportunity for you to double-end your listings if you're in an area where that works for you. It's a wonderful way to double-end and make twice as much money from every transaction if you can find the buyer who's going to buy that house.
You've also got an opportunity to find a buyer who buys another house, but you met them because of the marketing that you were doing for the original listing that you got. You've got the opportunity to get the next listing in the neighborhood or to get another listing from a buyer that you meet from somebody who you met from the marketing for that listing, and you've got an opportunity to get a referral from the seller before the end of the transaction.
Each listing has five opportunities for you. When you look at it like that, if you take the last 10 listings that you have and you add up, how many points out of 50 you got? Meaning, those five opportunities times 10 listings, you'll find that mostly you'll probably end up in the 8 to 15 range. That's the band of where I've found most people that I present this idea to.
Now when you add that up, when you look at it … you look back over the last 10 and you give yourself one point for each of those five things that happened for each of those listings. Let's say that you end up with 10 points, meaning all of your listings got sold, but you didn't double end that or you didn't find another buyer, you didn't get another listing, you didn't get a referral from the seller and you got those 10 listings because your system is set up to get a property on the MLS. Stage it, put it in the MLS right, price it right, promote it to the other agents and get the property sold very quickly. You may be celebrating that your average days on market is 7 or 10 days and you get 98% of the asking price or 99% or 102% or whatever it is, the reality is that you're probably losing a lot of money.
When you look at it now, let's say that each side of those transactions is worth $10,000, if you're in an area of $300,000 homes or $350,000 homes, you're looking at a $10,000 commission times 10 listings is $100,000; but what you missed out on was the $400,000 that you could have had if you had a systematic way of multiplying listings.
Now, even just focusing on that can make a difference for you. Even just that awareness can change things. Even just knowing that you're losing $400,000 on the last 10 listings that you had. That's an interesting place to come from.
Now, what we do is we take that number and we divide that by 10 to get an index. If you had 10 listings and we divide 10 points, we divide that by 10, that gives you an index of 1.0. If you had 15, you would have an index of 1.5. That means that the current system that you're using, every transaction, every listing that you take is worth one transaction or 1.5 transactions.
Now, if you're focused on taking the multiplier approach rather than taking comfort in the fact that you don't have to do just listed and just sold cards and you don't have to do info boxes or you don't have to do open houses because all of your listings are priced right and they sell so quickly. All that you don't have to is costing you money when you think of it in this context, and I want to help you maximize the dollars that you could have to get the most out of everything that you're doing. By focusing on this, we've been able to get people up to 3 and 3.5 as a listing multiplier index.
Just list some simple changes and you'll hear Tony Kalsi talk about this. You'll hear Ron Reed talk about this. You'll hear other people that we'll bring on, and I'll share so much more about this with you. There are so many things to share with you but I want to kind of just set the context here. It's hard for me to not want to just tell you everything all at once, but we're talking about the cumulative effort of 30 years of nothing but focusing on real estate marketing and culminating in this platform to build the listing agent lifestyle, this amazing context for you. I'm just trying to kind of set the stage and give you some insight into these kind of things that we're going to be talking about.
Every listing that you take, if you imagine what it would be like for it to turn that into multiple transactions. Imagine what kind of impact that would have if every time you took a listing, even if you look at the last 10 and you were, instead of able to get one, you were able to get three transactions from that. That's an amazing impact on your business. It doesn't really take much to do it, so I'm excited to share some of those things with you.
There are the first two. First, element number one, getting listings. Element number two is multiplying your listings. Now, element number three is getting referrals. I'd focus on this because we're not just sitting back waiting passively for people to refer. When you look at these things, when I share these ideas with you, they are all measurable, right? Everything has a philosophical side to it where this is our approach to this, this is the philosophy behind, focusing on getting referrals but there's also a measurable element to it so that we can know that what we're doing is working.
What we measure for your referrals is what we call your return on relationship. Now, the way I look at it and the way that referrals work is that it's been shown with a lot of research, and we've got all kinds of supporting data and everything to hear this out, that you basically know personally 150 people. There's an actual anthropological sociologist in Oxford in England called Robin Dunbar who came up with this term Dunbar's number. You may have heard that term.
The basic idea is that we have the capacity to have a relationship with 150 people, meaning that if you saw them at the grocery store you'd recognize them by name and you would stop and have a conversation with them. That's the 150 people. When you look at it, across the board normal people on Facebook, not people like us, like entrepreneurs who tried bring and expand your network, your acquaintances, people who are just keeping in relationship with people on Facebook, the average member of friends is 153. It plays out, across the board that we basically have relationships with 150 people.
Now, the way that we measure your return on relationship is from those people that know you like you entrust you. How many of them are doing business with you themselves or referring their friends and family to you? How many transactions did you do in the last 12 months that were repeat business or referred to you by somebody that you know?
Now, we take that number and we divide it into 150. I have to admit, I can always get those mixed up. Whatever it is, it's the ratio, the percentage of your number of referrals related to the number of people in your relationship portfolio, 150 people. We use that standardized number because even if you can't think of or have a database of 150 people, you've got them. There are 150 people and we'll show you ways to build that up or to pair that down to figure out who your top 150 are. I guarantee you that anybody that did business with you or referred you as somebody who's in that would be somebody who's in that top 150 for you.
If you look at it that you did, let's call it five transactions from repeat and referral business last year. That means that your relationship, your return on relationship was 3%. Does that makes sense? Five out of 150 is 3%. If you did 15, that's 10%. Now, our gold standard for what we're looking for you for getting referrals is 20% annual yield on your relationship portfolio. Think about what that means. That means doing 30 transactions from that group of 150 people. That may sound like a lot to you if you haven't been focused on this or you haven't been introduce to this, but I assure you that is an achievable number. I'm going to introduce you to people who have even higher than that number. Some people get up to 30% repeat and referral business. Not a percentage of their business coming from repeat and referral, but the percentage of transactions that they're doing from their served influence from their top 150.
We look at that, that there are some simple tools that we use to keep that in mind with those top 150 that when they hear somebody talking about buying or selling a house that they not only think about you but the that they introduce you to that person. We've developed some really simple tools to do that. One of which, the easiest thing that we do, is something I call the world's most interesting postcard. It's just a simple postcard that we mail to your top 150 that will keep you in front of those people, but also use the power of suggestion to make sure that when they hear people talking about real estate that they think about you and they introduce you to that person.
Now, the first year that we did this, we did an experiment with a local realtor who had done 13 repeat and referral transactions in the 12 months previous. Now, her strategy for keeping in relationship with her clients was that every year in December she would send them a magnet calendar to put on their fridge. That was her entire communication with that group of people. She would send out the magnets then no other communication throughout the year. She had been in business for 20 plus years. She constantly got repeat and referral business it was kind of a staple of her business, 40% of her business. Then, when we started sending the world's most interesting postcard, in that one year she went from 13 transactions by referral to 33 transactions by repeat and referral with only that one change.
Now, it's very interesting to see how all of these things come together, but knowing that that's a focus for us getting referrals, that every time somebody hears somebody going to be selling their house they reach out to you to let you know, they introduce you to their friends, that's going to have an impact on the number of listings that you're able to get by referral.
Okay, now the fourth element of the listing agent lifestyle is converting leads. We have a real emphasis on this. When I look at it, I'm fascinated by this idea that I see all the time. I see it on Facebook, I see people taking their approach were they'll complain that they tried Zillow Leads or they tried Realtor.com Leads. They did it for three months and I got nothing from it. Realtor.com Leads don't work or Zillow Leads don't work or I've been doing Facebook leads or whatever it is. The fact that they're taking a short-term approach to this is what is interesting to me. They'll say in 90 days, after three months of it, that those are all bad leads, those are tire-kicker leads. What we've discovered is that the real, real equity in leads is the long game.
When you look at this that there's … and I'll share all these studies with you, but our basic approach is to look at your leads not as an expense but as a capital investment. We're not putting pressure on the investment to or the expense of advertising or generating leads to recapture that money in the next 30 days or 60 days or 90 days. When we extend your vista, we extend your idea of this to be for the next 12 months, 18 months, 24 months or more that you're building this capital asset, this portfolio of unconverted leads that's an asset in your business. That you've got this opportunity now to maintain a relationship with people over a long term and know how long, that the longer you keep doing it the more valuable that prospect portfolio is getting.
You're going to hear some amazing tales. I mean, I shared with you the idea of what happened with Tony Kalsi. When we tracked the results of the lead conversion on Toni's Getting Listings case study for four years. He mailed for five months, from September to February, before he did his first transaction. Then from February on, for the next three and a half years, there were 21 transactions that came over that four-year period from people who responded to his postcard in the first year.
You'll see on the infographic a link to episode one, and I'm putting up both of these episodes right now for you so you'll be able to listen to this one and then go immediately and listen to Tony. You'll see in the infographic how long some of these people gestated, right? It generated the listing lead which was an asset that in some cases, there-and-a-half years later, called him up to list their house. You're going to hear story after story of people like that, that the long-term approach to this is the asset. That's where your ability to patiently educate and motivate people and look at the yield from your prospect portfolio year after year is an amazing thing.
You'll see we do infographics for all the leads that we generated. We're not just focused on looking and keeping an expense-based approach where you're focused on finding people who are ready right now and not building any equity. You've got a great opportunity. In fact, one of the things that we use as a magic trick for you is to re-engage with leads that you've maybe neglected. We stumbled on this idea several years ago, and I call it the amazing nine-word e¬mail that revives dead leads.
We had an agent who was running one of our money making websites and they had stepped away. They got really busy, got involved in all kinds of other things but had neglected all the leads that they had generated from even 18 months or more before and had not really kept in touch with them. They felt like they were going to have to start over.
What I suggested was sending an email to this group and just asking the simple questions. We sent an email, put their name in the subject line and then we asked them one simple question. We just said "Dean" in the subject line and then "Hi Dean, are you still looking for house in a Georgetown?" That's it. That little email, if you just send that email to all of the leads that you've generated and maybe neglected for the 90 days and longer ago, you'll be amazed at what happens.
All these people that have sort of fallen off the radar, that you lost touch with, that have kind of slipped through your fingers, when you send out those emails the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to be surprise by how many people respond "Yes, we are still looking." You're also going to be surprised, not in a good way, at the number of responses you get from people that said "No, we already bought." That will break your heart the first time, but now you use it as motivation and you understand that that's not going to happen again because we're going to focus on converting leads. We're going to make it one of the pillars of our business, taking a long-term view to converting leads. That's element four.
Element number five to listing agent lifestyle is finding buyers. Now we put that down at the bottom of this. There's no order necessarily to this but it does play out that that's kind of the emphasis that we put on this. If we've got all of these others in place, finding buyers is an amazing thing and it serves a wonderful purpose for a listing centric business especially when we're taking a listing multiplier approach to it.
I'll share some really cool ideas with you. Remember I mentioned that the fundamental thing about the business is finding one person who wants to buy a home and finding one person who wants to sell a home and matching those people up. That's the essence, the rudimentary essence of what the real estate business is about. We focus on taking a market maker approach to this and not necessarily focused on finding buyers for listings.
This is where most people get it mixed up. A lot of times agents are focused on getting listings because they believe that they need listings to find buyers, and the listing centric approach to finding buyers is to find buyers so that you can get listings. What I mean by that is to think about the very best thing that you could come to a listing appointment with.
I talked about this a lot, that the best accessory that you can bring to a competitive listing appointment is a buyer who wants to buy the house or a list of people who are more than one buyer who is interested in a house like that one. That is so powerful because you've got the thing that they really want.
I often tell people that, listen, if it's a situation where we're up against somebody who's thinking about listing with their mother, their mother has a real estate license. If you came with the buyer and all they have to do is sign and sell the house that it doesn't matter that it's their mother. They would sell their mother out in a second because self-interest always wins, and their self-interest is to find a buyer. That's an extreme example but I guarantee you, if you line up the four best listing presentations in your market place to compete against and we can come in there and say to the people "How much would you like for the house?" "When would you like to move?" "I'll take it." Nobody would get that listing but you.
When you look at it like that it makes the most sense to focus on already having the buyers. That gives you an advantage on the listings. I'll show you some really cool ways that we've been able to do that and to triangulate those opportunities.
We've spent a lot of time running our Getting Listings Program to find lakefront home sellers here in Winter Haven - that's where I live, Winter Haven, Florida – and then running homes and land ads and online ads to find buyers who are looking for lakefront homes. It wasn't too long before, on the same day, we got emails and a phone call from somebody who'd been getting our updates about the new lakefront homes that were coming on the market and told us that he had sold this house in Stuart and that he was coming up to Winter Haven and he was looking for a lakefront home that was this and this and this and he wanted to spend up to $375,000. Then literally within an hour of getting that email, got an email from a seller on Lake Ruby who said, "I've been getting your newsletter for the last several months. We're ready to sell our house and we think it will sell for 375,000" which is so bizarrely coincidental that you couldn't even script it.
That's exactly what happened. I'll tell you exactly how we handled that situation and what we ended up doing because of it. It really solidified my idea that the very best thing you can have in a competitive listing arena is a buyer or access to buyers that you can show people that, hey everybody else is talking about how once I list your house we're going to do this, and this, and this, and this to find a buyer. If you can go in and say, "We started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago by doing this, and this, and this and right now we have a pool of all of these buyers who are looking for homes like yours and I send an email to tell them that I was coming over to see you about selling your house. These eight people want me to send them the information as soon as we get the information about your house." That is going to be an advantage for you.
So those are the five … I call those the five kind of business elements of listing agent lifestyle which is getting listings, multiplying listings, getting referrals, converting leads, and finding buyers. Those are the five rudimentary things that we focus on from a business perspective of building this listing agent lifestyle, but then there's three more elements that make up the lifestyle elements of the listing agent lifestyle. I'll tell you all three because there are such an amazing interplay between them that go into making your perfect lifestyle. They are, number six, daily joy.
I'm a wordsmith and there's something about the words "daily joy" that, as a measure of success in your business and your life, there's got to be … there's not many words that convey what we're really looking for, so they're daily joy. Number seven is abundant time, and number eight is financial peace.
When you look at those things about joy and time and money, the combination of those three dials, to dial them in, the balance of those is really what leads to the amazing lifestyle portion of a listing agent lifestyle.
Daily joy, I talked about that a lot because so often I run into people who are so busy, so frustrated with their business, so up against it in their business that they spend most of their time doing things that they have to do versus things that really bring them joy. Joy is such a great word. Joy is an exceedingly happy state and it's something that … everybody would love to have more joy in their life. I'd look at it that we want to experience that daily. Not that we're looking to the future as some aspirational view of success but that we're looking to bring daily joy into our life and that you have a business that supports you in doing only the things you love and you're really good at and that brings you happiness and your definition of what successful is.
That seventh element, abundant time. I love that word abundant because it gives us the sense that there's more than enough. A lot of times I run into people that are … they wake up running. If people tell me it's like their to-do list gets longer every day instead of shorter, that they end the day with more on their to do list than they actually got crossed off. They get trapped with this successful business that the more successful they get, the more time it takes from them and it's things that they can't get out of.
What I'm looking at is let's see if we can dial that up to 11. Let's see what if you can wake up every day and say, "What would I like to do today?" That's pretty amazing to have that kind of freedom. You may think that that's impossible in the real estate business but I'm here to tell you it's not, and I want to help you get there. You may not even be able to imagine that right now, but you have an opportunity to create an amazing lifestyle centered around your listing business. I'm super excited about that for you.
Then number eight is financial peace. These three things, joy and time and peace, they really bring the emotional element into us because they are the things that you have a visceral reaction to. When I say the words financial peace … I think Dave Ramsey who wrote the book Financial Peace and has had the very successful radio show and Financial Peace University, I think he got it right that those area perhaps the two best words that I've heard to talk about finances. Financial Peace. You hear those words, you see that book title and you want that in your life.
For some people, you may be hanging on by a thread right now and it feels like you're digging yourself deeper and deeper into that especially if you are a newer real estate agent where it seems like all the expenses and everything that it takes to build traction, or you may be in a situation where you're more established but you're still wondering and worried about where your next closing is coming, or maybe you've been around for a long time and you have been through the ups and downs. Maybe you survived 2008, 2009, 2010 and you hang in there but you saw how bad it can be, what could happen? You sometimes get to a situation where maybe you're hoarding more money that you need then you get this point of "I better hang on to every dollar" instead of taking an abundance approach and an investment approach where you're going to free up some of that money to multiply itself in your business.
I will not blame you because a lot of times people spending money in their business has been like putting money into a slot machine where you put it in and you pull the lever and you hope that something good happens. What I'm talking about, our approach to this is about helping you have the certainty of a vending machine. That when you're running these approaches, when you're putting money in getting listings and you're putting money in multiplying your listings and getting referrals and converting your leads and finding buyers, when you're putting money into those systems – and that's really what they are, it's systems, a systematic way to get those results - that the results are certain like a vending machine.
You never worry when you put your money in the vending machine that the thing that you want is not going to come out; but I want you to imagine your listing centric business, these five business elements, as the labels on the vending machine. I want listings, I want to multiply my listings, I want to get referrals, I want to convert leads, I want to find buyers that you're pushing that button, you're putting in money and outcomes, a multiple of the money that you're spending. That's the kind of financial certainty that we want to have going into this.
I wanted to kind of set the stage here for you to introduce what we're going to be talking about and what the listing agent lifestyle is all about. I got so much more to say about all of these things, and I'm going to introduce you to people who are living this, who are further down the path for you here. I've been doing this and focused on this for almost 30 years now and so I'm excited to take you on this journey with us here.
If you like what you're hearing here, here's what to do next. First of all, we're going to put out new episodes so I want you to go to listingagentlifestyle.com and click on the "subscribe in iTunes" button. You can subscribe to the podcast or you can go right to iTunes and search Listing Agent Lifestyle. Subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss anything. It will come right onto your phone. You'll get the notice every time we put up a new episode. I look forward to continuing the conversation for a long time here.
Next, what I'd like you to do is be a guest on the podcast and we can talk about building your Listing Agent Lifestyle. What I'm going to do for the first few episodes, I'm going to introduce you to people who are further down the road, who have our implementing systems. I'll give you field reports to amplify and illustrate the things that we've been talking about here, but ultimately where we'll get is a point where each episode will be you and I talking about your specific path to building your Listing Agent Lifestyle. I want to talk with you, we'll go over what's working in your business right now, we'll go over what you could be doing in your business, and we'll focus on building a plan for you. I'm very excited that interactive opportunity for us.
Then come on over to gogoagent.com and join our community, building an amazing community of people who are focused on living this Listing Agent Lifestyle. They are implementing all the elements in their own business, and I've got all the tools there for you, the Getting Listings Program, the Finding Buyers Programs, all the tools and trainings for the listing multipliers. You can come on over and see what we're all about and see if it's a good fit for you, but that's where everything is at gogoagent.com.
Thank you for joining me. I'm excited to get more episodes out with you, continue the conversation. I'm happy that we've been able to set the context for what we're going to focus on here in this first hour, and I look forward to really sharing everything I can with you to help you build that Listing Agent Lifestyle.
That's it for this week. Tune in and go, and you can listen to the Tony Kalsi episode number one right now. Thanks for tuning in.