Beginning
OK, since I am going to throw it all the way back to where my journey to transform the real estate industry began, I want to take you to 2022. Ever since I won my top producer award in 2018, I had been looking for something that would drive me. You see, when I got into the industry, the main goal I set for myself was to become a top-producing Realtor. I felt that it would give me the respect I craved from my peers, plus it would justify my decision to quit a comfy corporate job to everyone who doubted me. In hindsight, I don’t think it really did either. Anyways, once I reached that pedestal I created in my head, I was mentally done selling real estate. I never had the desire to build a team or be the top agent in the city. So instead, I started a brokerage.
I started my brokerage in 2016 but while I was building it I was still heavily focused on winning a top producer award. Once 2018 happened, I knew it was time to focus more of my attention on the brokerage, so I stopped marketing myself (except sending a newsletter to my database), but inside, winning the award left a void that I could not figure out. This void kept growing year after year, which led me to 2022. By this time, the brokerage had grown to two offices, 54 agents, and was doing around $200M in production. I was still selling, although I was not marketing myself, I was still selling around $5M while I tried to figure things out. As the void grew, I started trying different things to figure out what was missing. I tried Tony Robbins coaching (which I loved and it helped me a lot in other aspects of my life, but didn’t help me find what I was looking for), tried spending more time in nature, jumped out of a plane, started doing cryotherapy, and a few other things. Then one day I was going through some of the coaching items I received from Grant Cardone, thinking maybe I missed something when I came upon a PDF I was given by my coach, but never bothered to read. I was called The Millionaire Booklet. I figured it couldn’t hurt to read it so I opened it up and gave it a shot. It was a short book, and I don’t really remember much of what I read, but I do remember Grant saying he wrote it in two hours and was making money off it. I thought to myself, heck, if this dude could write a book and make money, so can I!
I couldn’t stand school and how I was taught, but I always liked it when my teachers would give us writing assignments or essay tests (I’m pretty sure I was the only person in any class who actually liked these). With normal tests, which require memorization, I was terrible. None of the subjects, except maybe history, excited me. I would try my best, I normally would get C’s and on a lucky day B’s. Rarely was I ever handed a paper with an A or a smily face ☹️. But, with written things, I could always B.S. my way into getting good grades on these because of my writing. So, once I read Grant’s book, I figured it would take me no time to knock out a book.
In the back of my mind, I had always wanted to write a book to help newer real estate agents build a successful real estate business. I had thought about it a few times over the last five years. Even thinking through what I would call it if I wrote one. So I knew exactly what I was going to write about.
Not knowing what to do (and foolishly not researching anything beforehand), I sat down, opened up a Google Document, and just started typing. I didn’t bother mapping out what I was going to write about or putting it in any specific order; I just wrote about whatever topic came to mind. I would work on the book when I had free time, mostly in the evenings after I put my kids down. I did my best to try and explain as much as I could with lots of details of what an agent needs to do, and filled it with examples to make sure they knew exactly what to do.
After a few months of writing, I finally finished my book, and called it Realtor? Get a Real Job!. I wanted to get a few opinions on it before doing anything, so I gave it to my business partner, his wife (who worked for us at the brokerage), and my wife to read. I asked them to be brutally honest with me and give me honest feedback. Which they did. Have you ever had one of those days where, for whatever reason, every single one of your extremities seems to run into something, then at the end of the day, you feel like you just were used as a punching bag? This was me when I received the feedback. To sum it up, my book sucked. It was out of order, confusing, too detailed, and had way too many examples. While I appreciated the honesty, it was a major blow to my self-esteem. I took a day to regroup myself and then opened up the document and tried to figure out what I needed to do with the mess. I worked on it for another month, and things seemed to be coming together. But, due to agreeing to step in and run another business my partner and I had started a year prior (a mortgage company), I made an executive decision to shelf the book for the near future. I didn’t feel it was right to spend my days writing my book when my partner was counting on me, so I turned my attention and focus to our new venture.