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The Grit and Grow Podcast
The Grit and Grow Podcast delivers in-depth, unfiltered interviews featuring emerging entrepreneurs and start-up founders. Join us as we dive into their vision for change, explore their sources of motivation, confront their fears and failures, and uncover the pivotal moments that propelled their ideas into reality.
The Grit and Grow Podcast
From Homelessness to Luxury Realtor: Blake Clark's Inspirational Journey of Grit and Real Estate Innovation | #gritandgrowpodcast
How does someone go from experiencing homelessness to becoming one of Arizona's top luxury realtors? Blake Clark’s journey is nothing short of extraordinary, and in this episode of Grit and Grow, he opens up about his path from living in an office space to owning and leading Limitless Real Estate. Blake’s story is filled with personal anecdotes and actionable insights, making real estate engaging and fun through creative listing videos and podcasts. His father’s relentless work ethic and multiple side hustles, such as freelance marketing and e-commerce, played a crucial role in shaping his entrepreneurial spirit.
Blake didn’t set out to be a realtor; he stumbled into the industry after buying a rental property from his grandmother and discovering the potential for passive income. With a background in marketing, he skillfully integrated modern techniques like PPC campaigns and social media marketing into his real estate business, which ultimately led to the formation of his own real estate group. His narrative serves as a testament to the power of innovative marketing strategies and the unexpected paths to success. Blake’s transition from a restrictive brokerage to launching Limitless Real Estate is particularly insightful for anyone considering a similar leap.
We also delve into the nuances of building a personal brand on social media. Blake emphasizes the importance of authenticity and consistency, sharing how personal stories alongside professional content can create a genuine connection with the audience. From posting motivational quotes to maintaining a high personal production, Blake’s approach to leadership through example offers valuable lessons for aspiring real estate professionals. Whether you’re interested in building trust through conversations or understanding the financial realities of running a brokerage, this episode is packed with practical advice and motivational stories that underline the importance of going all in on what works best for you.
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You're tuned in to the Grit and Grow podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grit and Grow podcast. On today's episode we're going to tackle the topic how to leverage social media influence to increase business. We thought who better to help us with this than a guy who has mastered the craft himself?
Speaker 1:He's in the top 1% of luxury realtors in Arizona and he's discovered a way to not only stay. Thank you. He's continuously encouraging others with his vision of success. We'd like to welcome the owner and CEO of Limitless Real Estate and visionary entrepreneur, blake Clark. Welcome to the show, thanks.
Speaker 3:Matt, quite the intro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate that Just for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. We've been following this guy for quite a while, Jay.
Speaker 1:We have, and you know you've actually been on our board for probably about nine months or so. Okay, cool, like somehow I've got to get this guy on our show. Yeah, man, and somehow here you are. Here he is. Plug to Justin Mercer. Justin, thanks for the intro again.
Speaker 3:We really appreciate you. Yeah, he's a great guy, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm always looking at your social media content trying to figure out like, how do we emulate that from a mortgage perspective?
Speaker 1:Yes, like, how do you promote our mortgage? It's so amazing.
Speaker 2:It's like the the cool, you know, the the awesome listing videos that you do, the podcasts that you do, it's all. It all just comes together really nicely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just try to make it look interesting and fun. Man, real estate's not always the most sexy thing out there, you know, but I try to make it look fun. I like to have fun with it, you know I think if you don't have fun, it's going to get really boring and monotonous over time. So I try to entertain myself. Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:It's consistent, but it's definitely, it's definitely fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we definitely. So, before we get into all that, I kind of wanted to just get into a little bit of your background, like what's your, how did you get into this and why did you choose real estate?
Speaker 2:Well, and real quickly. Also, you know, blake is owner CEO, so that's really why he's not just a real estate agent a successful one, but he's also owner, ceo, and that's why he's here. But but yeah, I mean, tell us your your background story. How did you? How far do you want to go? I got into real estate.
Speaker 1:So I grew up here.
Speaker 3:I grew up in Las Vegas, so I'll roll with the sad story. Nobody cares, it doesn't matter, but for what it's worth, yeah, we ended up in Arizona. We were homeless. I had a little brother when I lived in Vegas who had unfortunately passed away and put my dad into a bad spot.
Speaker 3:We lost our house and just needed a new start. So we ended up in Arizona. My dad put everything we had in a driveway. I remember still remember the day he put it up in the driveway. We sold everything made like 500 bucks, threw it in a U-Haul truck and then we were. We didn't have a place to live when we arrived in Arizona, so we stayed. Luckily, my mom had known somebody that had like an office space in downtown Phoenix.
Speaker 3:It was a connection of hers and they let us stay in the office building so we lived in for about a month and a half month. We lived in the back of their kitchen in this office building on air mattresses during the day when they weren't using it. Dad ended up getting a job, finally landed one. We rented a property in South Phoenix, kind of Levine South Phoenix area. We didn't know South Phoenix was South Phoenix at the time had a couple of cars stolen over a six month period while we were living there and my mom and dad were like maybe this isn't the place for us.
Speaker 3:Uh, we didn't know. Just you know, we were happy to have a roof overhead at that time and, you know, did what we can do. So my dad got us a house. Uh, he was able to secure a small little manufactured home is eight, 800, eight, 900 square foot kind of little single wide out in Maricopa, arizona. This was back in like 1996.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay.
Speaker 3:So I still remember the day. I was pretty young, I was, I think at that time, about 12 when that had happened.
Speaker 3:Them taking me out there and you know, mind you, I come from Vegas, so it's, you know, hustle bustle city that was my childhood, my dad had a small, very small, concrete business, and when I say small, it was like him and a friend that got new concrete jobs. And then he was a DJ at night at these little dive bars. That's how my dad paid the bills out there. So you know, growing up in Vegas we went to Maricopa and I still remember the day I was in the back of their car. I could picture this they drove us through Maricopa and there was nothing out there and there's a guy riding a horse down the side of the street and I'm like where the hell are we? And so that's where I ended up at Graduated high school, out there, yeah, 2003, I think there was like 32 kids in my graduating class.
Speaker 1:It's pretty quiet out there, very quiet. It's bigger now, a little bit bigger now 2003,.
Speaker 3:When the economy started, the housing market back then really got its wind right before the crash. They started building a lot out there and Rancho El Dorado was the first subdivision and that was kind of getting completed right about the time I graduated. Sounds like your dad really kind of lived out the grit and grind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he taught me work ethic, man I still remember Is he still with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's with me. He lives up in Oregon now, but I still remember being a kid and looking out the window and he was that guy that was like sun up to sun down, you know, and used to smoke cigarettes and I remember being a kid and I'd see him at night. Hardworking guy Taught me work ethic for sure. And now you're a family man yourself, yeah, three kids wife.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 16 year old daughter, 15 year old son, 10 year old daughter. That's exactly where we're at. Yeah, a lot of fun. You're in the East Valley. Yeah, I live in Queen Creek. Yeah, so I got out of Maricopa in 2003. Just wasn't for me Small town and at that time I was doing construction and underground utilities. I got my first job. I actually started working when I was 12, out there Small glider ride operation, washing airplanes after school.
Speaker 3:Oh cool, I get off school, school bus would drop me off and then I'd work there from about 3 to 530 at night and then my dad would pick me up on his way home. And then I worked on the weekends out there. So I've been working since I was 12 out there. When I finally was able to kind of drive and graduate high school, I moved up to Phoenix and I was doing construction before I got into sales and had my first sales job University of Phoenix actually.
Speaker 2:Got a break.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a girl I went to high school with called me up one day and was like you know, do you want a job selling education? I'm like I don't know anything about sales and I don't know education. What does that mean? And, mind you, this was like July, I want to say of like 2005,. 2006,. Right around that timeframe I was sitting on a tractor. I still remember it. I was on the side of the beeline highway. We had a contract digging ditches for Cox communications. They were running the fiber optic out to Fountain Hills. So I was on beeline highway and she had called me. She's like, yeah, do you want this job? They're hiring people. And I was like, I don't know, is it in the air conditioning? Because it was hot in July. I'm on this tractor and she's like yeah, it's in the AC and you get college for free. And that was my first sales.
Speaker 3:No kidding, yeah, I didn't know anything about sales, didn't things started? So what year would that have been? 2006, 2006, right, the timing couldn't have been better for me on that, because that was when the housing market started to crash and the whole economy had crashed. So I just made the transition out of construction into that education. And then about eight to 10 months later that's when the housing market started to crash my dad lost his job again because his company shut down and all the contracting you know a lot of construction can go halt which was ironic because just as I had started at that company, everybody that got laid off wanted to go back to college.
Speaker 3:because they're like well, I'm laid off, I'm unemployed. What do I do now? I guess I'll go to school.
Speaker 3:I don't have to pay for school right now because I get Title IV funding and might as well get a degree. So I happened to be right on the front end of that, where the economy crashed, the construction market went down and I happened to be just hopped over into education, which that thing really ramped up and started booming because everybody was unemployed and wanted to go back to school, Yep, Yep. So what was the spark for real estate? Like what Complete accident? Tell us about that.
Speaker 3:So I, you know anyways went, played it out at that company ended up leaving, started a couple e-commerce businesses, did freelance marketing for a while, drove semi-trucks for a while, got a CDL, did food delivery at night oh wow, Did freelance marketing during the day, and then I'd also started some e-commerce business. So I was kind of like doing three little hustles at one just to kind of pay the bills. My wife had just had our youngest daughter, so she kind of she was supposed to stay home for a little bit and then go back to work after maternity leave and then had made the decision to not want to go back to work and so I just took another job at night, driving semi-trucks, so she could stay home.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:And so I was making decent money at the time between all three jobs, but I had lost my 401K in retirement because I didn't have University of Phoenix. I didn't work for a corporate job anymore, really. So I had read all these books and everybody I knew that was wealthy and seen as wealthy. You know just the common trend owning real estate makes you wealthy. That's literally what I knew and I was like maybe somehow I need to get into real estate, I need to buy some rental properties, and I had bought my first rental property at that time off my grandma actually.
Speaker 3:She had owned this little tiny property. I bought it off of her for $30,000, and she didn't own her finance, so I made payments to her and then paid it off with one of my tax returns and then put a renter in there and I was making like $500 a month passive on that property for a $30,000 investment. And I was like okay, maybe I could just replicate this system.
Speaker 3:So I only got my real estate license with the intention of building some kind of retirement, had zero intention of selling, had zero intention of doing production, just literally wanted to go find and source some deals for myself to park some money into. And yeah, it was crazy, I got my license. And then a guy I used to work with at the time he was like, hey, you got your license. I was like, yeah, he's like you want to sell my house. I was like sure, so I Put his house up for sale and it sold really quick and I was like, wow, that was easy. Okay, this is a cool sale, right. And then my second transaction was a complete nightmare. Wholesaler had a deal. I didn't know what a wholesaler was, but a wholesaler had a deal, listed it on MLS. One of the owners was. It was literally. I went from the highest of high, like this is amazing, super easy. Okay, I love real estate. Never mind, I hate this business, I'm out, I'm never going to sell another property again and this is it.
Speaker 1:This is the real estate industry.
Speaker 2:We kind of experienced that type of roller coaster in our business.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, so I went from the most easy transaction to immediately followed up with one of the hardest deals, and that's how I got into real estate.
Speaker 1:It seems like there's a sprinkling of that, maybe once or twice a year, where you just are like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:When did you know you wanted to start your own, your own group, your own company, again by accident.
Speaker 3:Everything. I did nothing. I wish I could tell you guys like I had this grand plan of getting into real estate and starting it. It all happened out of necessity.
Speaker 3:So I had a background in marketing through doing some of my e-commerce stuff. So I was doing pay-per-click. Ebay started. This is way back in the eBay days. Um, I was buying car parts and reselling them on eBay. So I would go to junkyards in like the Chevy Silverados that had the little powerful mirrors and stuff like that. I was going to junkyards and I'd buy those for like 50 bucks and I'd go on eBay and flip them for like two to 300 bucks and so I got really good at like just taking photos and videos. And then that turned into manufacturing my own products and at one point I got all the way up to like 800 products and I was spending quite a bit Still car parts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3:Just kind of white label branding stuff. And then I moved off eBay and Amazon, moved into my own platforms, got into PPC campaigns, hired a mentor who taught me how to really scale and we got up to doing almost a million a month in sales and e-commerce. And so I took a lot of what I learned from e-commerce and just rolled that into real estate. I was like hey, you can take really cool photos of properties and then you could do like PPC campaigns and you can utilize like Facebook groups and stuff. And this was 2015, uh, kind of like. Not as many agents at that time were really rolling into Facebook Instagram was really a thing back then as far as like marketing and brand building.
Speaker 3:So I was right on the front end of that and so I started really like learning how to generate leads and everybody was like what the hell are you doing? And so I got pretty good. Didn't have anybody, I didn't have a TC, I started off at a flat fee broker just because I was cheap. I was cheap, I was like I want to save money and so I went to this guy that ran his broker suit. By the way, I don't mean this in a negative way, cause this guy was like the dawn of real estate, like did a bunch of sales. He'd been in the business 15 years. Anytime I needed something, like he totally helped me. But he had been in the business for 15 years and he got into a prior to social media marketing. He just built his by good old you know marketing and or you know good old networking and things like that. So but he ran it out of his house, had no transaction coordinators, no, nothing Like basically, and I would do a file and he would give me a piece of paper and he's like write out all the deals and fax it to me or bring it to my house.
Speaker 3:That was that's what I did my first two years in real estate. I didn't know what a transaction coordinator was. I didn't know what a team was. I knew none of that. I just did some sales, did some deals. I got to the point where I was averaging about four to five transactions a month. At one point my wife was like I don't see you anymore, like this sucks, like you're working weekends and that's four to five deals.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, cause I was still at that time. I was still running my e-commerce businesses too Okay, Still doing some freelance marketing for a chiropractic office as well.
Speaker 3:So I've always had like just different irons in the fire at one time and totally running every deal, because you didn't have a yeah, I didn't even know a transaction coordinator existed, because the fact that I went to that brokerage they didn't do any of that. So I didn't learn any of that. I didn't network, I didn't really care what other agents were doing, I just was like fumbling my way through this. Again, keep in mind, I had zero intention of doing volume. It just happened where I was doing a sale and I was like all right, and then another friend and another friend and generating leads and just fumbling my way through this.
Speaker 1:No real system. No real like zero system zero processes.
Speaker 3:My CRM was an Excel spreadsheet at that time. Okay, so my wife had actually met a girl. Our daughter went to a cheer gym and she had just got her real estate license, just moved here from California, and she's like, yeah, I need some help. And she's like I think your husband does real estate right. And my wife's like, yeah, go work with him. And so my daughter had a cheer function at our house. They all got together for lunch and this lady comes and she's like I want to come work with you coach anybody.
Speaker 1:I'm just here to do my own sales, I don't? Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:Okay, interesting. My wife's like, yeah, you should hire her, like give her a chance, she can help you and I'll, you know, take off some of your workload. And I was like, no, I'm good, I don't want responsibility, I don't want to worry about anybody else's income. I don't even know if I can train anybody in real estate because I don't really know what. I'm sitting in there working. She pulls up a chair. She's like you know, I'd really like to learn and anyways, I ended up caving. So that was my first official quote. Unquote. Team member Didn't even have a team agreement.
Speaker 3:Just like a handshake deal of like you're going to help me go show some homes my buyers and I'll split with you. And then, as soon as I got on Facebook, I was like here's my team member, a girl I went to high school with, that just happened to follow me on Facebook. She's like well, can I come work with you? And I was like, I guess, why not? I've got one of these two. And then she brought a friend of hers and so I went from like none to four of us running out of my house Still no TC, no, nothing.
Speaker 3:And then it got really disorganized for me. So I'm like well, this is chaotic, we don't have time to like help you guys do paperwork. And so I had found a friend of mine who at the time, had had about a big team of like 60 people, and I ran into him at a networking event. Somebody asked me to come speak. They're like hey, you're new and you're doing some pretty good volume. Can you come speak? And he was speaking there.
Speaker 3:So we met and he was like hey, it seems like you do a lot of stuff online with like e-commerce and stuff too. I was like, yeah, he's like I'll tell you what can you teach me. And I was like, yeah, but can you teach me how to do? You run a big team and I need help. And he's like, yeah, so we exchanged. I taught him how to do some e-commerce stuff. So I remember showing up to his office and he was like, yeah, so who's your TC? I was like what's a TC? And he's like you don't have a TC. You have a team and no TC. I'm like I don't know what a TC is. He's like it's somebody that does your paperwork. And I was like somebody does your paperwork you can do that in real estate and he's like yeah, you have this person.
Speaker 3:All you should be doing is out selling and training. I'm like no way. He's like yeah, so leave my office. And that was a game changer for me. I scaled up to 10 people, capped it at 10 because I didn't want any more and we did really good for about three to four years. So were you still producing at this time? Yeah, I've never been out of production.
Speaker 1:You've never been out of production. Okay, so to this day you're still producing.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, I did, yeah, so fast forward. I had to leave his brokerage because he told me he's like hey, he was trying to retire, he was heading into year 20 at this time and of real estate and he was he's already like 60 something, heading in the sixties Like hey, I've made my money, I'm going to go retire, I'm going to move up North. If you want to do this team thing and keep doing, you're going to have to go somewhere else. He's like I love you but I don't have. He didn't even have a transaction coordinator assistant. It was him personally doing all of his files and he had about 50 agents at the time that were all kind of like part-time here and there.
Speaker 3:Then you have me coming in and doing full scale with my team.
Speaker 3:He didn't even have any other teams there. He didn't even know what foundation. So I was. I was kind of like man, this sucks, I gotta go somewhere else and it just so happened in Queen Creek. It was still a smaller town. This was about 2018, 2019. The only other big brokerage out there was a franchise, homesmart. At the time this lady had ran it and she was like showing up in my house leaving gift baskets, trying me for the last time like no thanks, I'm good over here.
Speaker 3:That's awesome when that conversation came yeah, I was like, well, this lady's been trying to get me forever. I guess I'll go interview another. Flat fee brokerage went over there. Um did my thing and we scaled. We had an amazing like two, three years. We just killed it. My team, like she had 300 and some agents and my team, pretty consistently for about two to three years, was doing about 20% of their production with 10 people. Uh, the turning point for that was COVID had happened. Everybody's favorite year, 2020.
Speaker 3:And I had my own office. I had my own thing, I was paying for my own systems, my own CRMs, just hung my license under there. She called me and she's like you got to shut your office down. And I was like, why? She's like cause COVID. I was like, so I'm not going to shut my office down. It's how I make a living, it's how my agents make a living. Why don't we do this? Let's just give them a choice. If they want to stay home, they can. Uh, if they want, frigging name off my door because I'm not going to shut down. And so she did. She de-designated me, came and took her name off the door. I rolled out that year and I had one of my best years in real estate as all of her agents. She was basically telling them look, it's okay, stay home, don't do anything. Me and my team were like let's just let's kill it.
Speaker 3:Let's, let's, pick up the slack here.
Speaker 1:So at that point is when you transitioned from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, by the end of 2020. So we're really, really. The breaking point for me was at that brokerage, for every a hundred K in GCI you get, you would get what's called a diamond award. Okay, and so I had did that year. I hit, I said who? I told her cause she was telling everybody to shut down. I said who's your highest producer in this brokerage? And she was like me and I said what's the highest you've ever done? She's like three diamonds, which is $300,000 in gross commission. And I said I'll double it.
Speaker 3:And she laughed at me.
Speaker 1:I was like.
Speaker 3:OK, we'll see. So that year I had hit $200,000. By March, quarter one, I'd already hit 200. And so she gave me diamond one, diamond two, diamond three I hit by the end of April and she wouldn't give it to me. She would not give me that award because it meant that, like she would have to recognize that I passed her at that time and by this time she was telling everybody to stop working and I'm the guy that's like still killing it out.
Speaker 1:Like my agents were now as a reminder, and so I just said I'm done here, Like I'm not going to be in a culture that doesn't promote growth or success or competition or anything.
Speaker 3:It's a sales environment. Got my broker's license. I started in October of 2020. I finished by December. January we submitted for our brokerage name. We got rejected like five times by ADRE because our name was like we had a couple names that we were trying to go with and they're like oh, it's too close to this team name that's registered. We got kicked back and ADRE would take like 20 days to reject.
Speaker 2:You're not just fighting like company names, like broker names, there's team names that you actually yeah, so adr you had this rule where it was right around that time.
Speaker 3:They're like his team started blowing up around 1819 and they were being the commissioner at that time. They were like judy lowe, I think so it was. I was saying teams were too. There had to be a distinction between like brokerage and team names and too many people were thinking teams were brokerages so at that time they were really aware of like hey, your brokerage can't like a team, like we're trying to segment it.
Speaker 3:Anyways, we got it took like literally three months to get a name approved. That was the biggest delay. Finally got it approved. Finally got our insurances, our licenses, everything in order, and by May of 21, we launched.
Speaker 2:And Limitless Real Estate is what you landed on. That's a freaking great name. It is amazing. I love it. Yeah, so, and it's a testament to like your story?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a testament to like your story? Yeah, totally. Don't put a cap on me.
Speaker 2:Where were you in your social media journey.
Speaker 3:At that point you know I started documenting from day one, and I had always used social media as a diary for myself, so I have a personal Instagram page.
Speaker 1:I keep it locked up, it's private.
Speaker 3:But the biggest thing was it was just a documentation of my life, Like it's a digital, like I got pictures of my kids on there for me, Like I've been such a car guy since I was a kid cause we grew up with nothing. We were like I was a kid that had that Lamborghini Countach poster on the wall of the trailer and I was like one day it'd be so cool to own this.
Speaker 3:Like I remember, I bought it at a book fair in third grade. It was a white Lamborghini had on the checkered floor. I thought that was so cool and so um. So I kept my personal Instagram as that and then when I got I got into real estate, I remember I posted a house up for sale.
Speaker 3:Mind you, I come from a construction background, so you know the guys that are in construction uh, truck guys, cause I was into diesel trucks at that time, so just kind of the rough neck guys, really really good group. But I was like trying to be a professional so I was like I'd get a listing photo. I'd be like, all right guys, I got this new property and these guys would make, like these stupid comments on my. They're my friends but like, oh yeah, let's go whatever, go throw a party there or whatever. I'm like God, dang it, all right, I just have to start a new social media. So my buddies like stop commenting on my.
Speaker 3:And for my first I wish I could tell you like day one it was just what I have now. It's it's. If anybody has the patience to go back to my Instagram, you'll see. I've made transitions over time to finally like the iteration of who I am today, which is just my true version on Instagram. But back in the day I should just post just houses for the longest time on social media. People probably thought I looked like a two-story. You know it's like 2,000 square foot it's all this posting like no pictures of me, no pictures of my family, no, nothing.
Speaker 3:Get like five likes, ten likes it's a house, whatever, yeah. And I remember one day I posted a picture of my daughter my family, I think, or something like that and also boom like a hundred likes on the business page. Yeah, yeah, I'm like, huh, okay, nobody gives a shit about my houses, but my family, okay, cool, okay. And it just starts to click and it's like okay, people care about you. It's not really your business, it's you. And so from there I started integrating more of, and then just yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 2:So you are posting some personal stuff on the business page. So, yeah, I want to explore this with you, because my Instagram page I've got right about 5,000 followers. And it started out as a personal page. And I kind of sprinkle in a little bit of business, but I don't do not very much business and I'm trying to figure out. You know where's the balance there, what?
Speaker 3:advice. Do you have? Great question, man. So it's the thing that we often forget in business is that people do business with us, for us, but it's often the thing that we market the least is us. And so if you look at every agent not every agent there's some that are amazing, but you look at a majority of real estate agents especially you could always see this rinse and repeat get a brand new agent. What do they do? They start a new Instagram and they post nothing but real estate, just like everybody else, and there's no differentiator there because you have 66,000 other realtors doing the same shit.
Speaker 3:You just blend in. You know what I mean, and so the game you have to play is is who am I as an individual? How much depth is there to me? What's the evolution of me? And, by the way, these are subtle reminders of what I do for a living.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Boy, is that interesting. So that's cool. Yeah, because I've always looked at social media as an opportunity to develop as part of the know, like and trust process, whether it's agent partners or previous customers, for example. But I've always been afraid to really kind of up the business posts.
Speaker 1:Yeah so just to back up really quick. So you said you're to try to really figure out the evolution of you, so how would you advise someone to do that?
Speaker 3:It's easier said than done. So, and I do believe you have to earn this. By the way, I would not here's the thing like you have to be willing to look like an idiot. That's all I could tell you. Um, so, for example, what this looked like for me, the evolution of I posted nothing but business, just like everybody else does, and I didn't get a whole lot of traction. I got some and I got some interest, and I'm not going to say I didn't get deals from it. Some people are like okay, yeah, you could sell real estate. Okay, this guy posted, on the right day, right time, a house that reminded me okay, great, I'm going to use them. I wanted more than that, because what was important to me was what I understood.
Speaker 3:Just my background in e-commerce is that every product has a life cycle, and so when you look at the life cycle of a product and you look at, like I was selling products online, you play the game of like how often, how long is this product going to last? How often was the turnover going to be? If I, if this is a customer today, when could I expect that they may come back to me to buy something else? So am I selling a product that's um, for example, we'll just call it toothpaste, right, cause toothpaste. You know that that customer, if you do right, you have a great product and great service they're going to come back and buy toothpaste from you like every month because their tube's going to run out. So you can plan on okay, I need to start retargeting this customer within 30 days. The housing cycle is a three to five year process, sometimes longer. So I always looked at things very differently, from an in-depth manner of like okay, realistically, if I'm trying to build my business to be repeat business, what does that mean? That means I need to figure out how to stay connected with my client and keep them engaged until they're ready to purchase again.
Speaker 3:Well, if I'm only posting about real estate and they don't care about real estate because they bought their house and that's the last thing, it's kind of like the analogy I tell people and we've all heard it where it's like hey, I want to buy a red car, and you see them all over the damn place. You're driving on the road like red car, red car, red car. It's like cause it's on the top of your mind. You see it everywhere, right. And then you go out and you're like all right, I bought myself this really nice, shiny red car and then it's done All of a sudden, all the red cars on the road disappear because you have that red car. And it's the same thing in real estate, where somebody buys a house and then if all I talk about is real estate and they don't, really that's not on their radar now for another is really going to be relevant to them.
Speaker 2:And they're going to lose engagement with your social media.
Speaker 3:So then it goes back to the game of who do I need to be as a person that would engage people and make them? How can I add value to them in other ways over the long term to get them to stay engaged with me until that life cycle comes back up? Or maybe they're ready to buy and sell again and if I did a good job, they'll call me back. So I always play that game of the human development side of things, cause I like to develop people. We're all like. Here's the thing everything that I have today I never thought I would have had. And if you would have take half of what I had today at one time, that was my dream, right. So, and what I have today, it's not the end for me. I'm going to keep going, and I don't even know what that looks like. I don't think any of us do right. The goal is I mean, I think the goal of life is to keep growing. It's kind of sad if you're like, hey, my end goal is to be this, and then you hit that, and then what do you do? The other half of your life, maintain, you're not growing, and that's the lead to depression. So it's an evolution.
Speaker 3:I like a person and for those of you guys that follow me, you guys mentioned some of the motivational quotes. That's often a conversation I have with myself every day. I literally make those little you kind of see the motivational quotes and the thoughts. I'm at the gym, I just got done with a workout and I'm laying on a cryo chair. As I write those out and then I post it. You guys will notice, most of the time those are being posted at about 6 am the thoughts I had in my head that day that I try to share with other entrepreneurs. So I know that people that buy houses yeah, they don't care about houses, but I know that they're living life just like I am. I know they're trying to develop and grow just like I am. I know that they probably want to see success at some level and I know that if they're an entrepreneur, they're getting their face kicked in every day, like I am, and sometimes it's okay.
Speaker 2:It's okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Like not everything every day is supposed to feel okay and sometimes that hard stuff is going to help you grow. So that's why I share a lot of that stuff is to keep them engaged and let them know that, hey, you're on the journey with me, I'm right there with you doing it too, so Instagram YouTube. Yeah, like I don't know you have a channel.
Speaker 2:I have a channel. Clearly, you've spent most of your time your social media following. Yeah, like, how do you see YouTube fitting into? I don't.
Speaker 3:Here's the thing Like everything works if you do it enough.
Speaker 3:like everything right, I'm sure you could advertise in the newspaper enough and you would see success at it. My personality is I'm very one-tracked right, so I don't. It's too. This is just me. Some people, they have a much different mindset. They can multitask like crazy.
Speaker 3:For me, I found that when I try to do too much, it's almost like when you think about like a garden hose, and you have a nozzle on it and you're trying to like clean this area and you put it on the mist, it's just going to get the area wet, but it's not really going to pressure and clean that area. Yeah, you're touching a huge surface area, but you're just drizzling it with a little bit of everything. When you turn that nozzle and you put everything you have into that one section, it's going to clean the heck out of it and you're going to literally do some damage on the dirt there, if you use that analogy. And so my energy is very much that and what I focus on every day. It's like listen, because I tried that game, I've tried to be the master at this Jack of all trades master of none.
Speaker 3:Just don't it, just yeah.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing. So you would say, yes, focus on one platform.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if it works, don't just go all in on it, right? Because here's the thing, how many people do we know out there? And I see, this business is the worst. The shiny object, the sign he's oh me, youtube. Well, I went to this conference and they told me Twitter. Well, I went to this conference and they told me open houses.
Speaker 3:And then you see the agent just every month doing something different or doing nothing years later and they're still, their results are still mediocre, and it's like you're doing all this activity, You're so busy, but you have nothing to show for it at the end. And I'm like if you took all of that and you just put it into one thing, like literally, if you just like the only thing I'm going to do, I got an agent who's brand new, for example came to me and I was like, what's your one thing? He's like I'm gonna do a hundred open houses in a hundred days straight. I won't miss a day, Love it. He's already got two listings in the first week, Right?
Speaker 1:He didn't put his focus on anything else.
Speaker 3:He's not focusing on Instagram, youtube. He's like dude, go do it. And he's already seen success. Awesome, you know. And that just goes to show the power of like and again, what works like. Here's the thing If you're uncomfortable on social media, don't force yourself to do it unless you're committed to it, because I see a lot of people dip their toes in it. Like. I'll do a post, yeah, and then they get frustrated until you're posting 15, 20 stories a day, like you have to again.
Speaker 3:if it's your, your lever for marketing, whatever that is, you better be all in and be one of the best at whatever that is right, like, if it's cold calls, if it's pay-per-click campaigns, if it's open houses, like whatever it is, you will win if you take everything else off the table and put your energy on that. Yeah, and then master that and then, when you master that, say okay, now that I've got this up in cruise control and I've got a great system in place. Let me take on one other thing now. Mine started out.
Speaker 3:Truth be told, I started out in Facebook groups way before Instagram. My bread and butter was posting on Facebook and sharing links in Facebook groups and I can right now like clockwork, doesn't matter what day of the week it is, I can pull five to ten leads a day for free. It's always been my lever Until my social media. My Instagram following grew enough over the years. My jump, 10 years into posting every day. I've got over 3,000 posts, 10 to 15 stories a day. So it took time until that finally reached a day where I was like, okay, I'm having five, 10 conversations a day on this thing, what can I let go of now? And that's where people mess up. They're just looking for the instant I get into the business. Give me that one thing that works today, right now, and make me a hundred grand. You're thinking so wrong.
Speaker 1:So, so running straight at Instagram, like you did, how long would you say it took for you to actually start to experience the success at the level that you, that you have now using, you know transitioning from Facebook?
Speaker 3:group posting to about four years four years yeah when I felt comfortable enough that it could. So I started off like doing open houses and link sharing. That was an open house two times a week, give or take, I'd open house my brokers.
Speaker 1:So were you link sharing just other open houses? Yeah, pretty much, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'd sit any open I could. I didn't have an office at that time so I looked at open houses as my office. To get out of the house, I had kids running around and stuff and I'm like I got like ADHD and I had like these cool cars in the garage. I've always been a car guy, so I'm like man if I'm at home.
Speaker 3:I just want to go in the garage and play with cars all day and stuff. I'm a big kid and so I was like I have environment. So my self-discipline was let's just get yourself out of the house. You're going to go do two, three open houses a week and while you're in that open house, you'll do link sharing, you'll make your calls, you'll do all of this stuff and that's what I did. And then you know, no-transcript year. One year, two client was coming to me referring to me. So I was picking up a deal a month here and there. Okay, great, I think what they have to do until what they want to do takes off, they just do what they want to do, even if it doesn't show them success. Well, I'm only going to do what I want to do. Yeah, you got to do what you have to do until you're good enough and you've undeniably you're successful at it.
Speaker 1:And that's discipline. Yeah, I mean, that's the discipline I think that sales people lack, right. It's just a long game.
Speaker 3:We're in such an instant gratification. I'm just such an old school thought process with that because you know you look at everything Like I was laughing. The other day I caught myself I had bought like a car part and it was coming from this guy that was like an eBay seller and he ships it from himself. It took five days to get to me. I was like God, this is so annoying Five days Because.
Speaker 2:I buy on Amazon and I'm used to it. Same yeah.
Speaker 3:And I caught myself. I was like laughing. I was like I remember like I ordered it Monday and it showed up last Friday. I was like that was really annoying. That took five days.
Speaker 2:And then I was like I just started like chuckling at myself.
Speaker 1:I'm like this is so ridiculous.
Speaker 3:But it's such a reminder that we live in a society that's so instant gratification that we oftentimes overlook that the compounding effect of like, for example, with Instagram, just post every day. I started off day one, zero followers and I didn't say, well, I'm going to try this for a month and if it doesn't work I quit. It was more of like I got nothing better to do. It's free. I'm already paying a phone bill. Why don't I just get my camera out? And but I might as well. I mean, like, what's the downside? Nothing, it doesn't cost me any money, right, like that's where too many people look at the world. The downside is it doesn't get me business. Okay, so I just started doing that and eventually you kind of find what works. It's just by putting in the reps, right, like there's no blueprint on social media. Like, post five times a day, do this and you'll get a deal. It's just do the reps, Like, try, just kind of experiment a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know, and that was the evolution of me, because what I found was, you know, some days I would be a little agitated with something in the industry, I'd see something I didn't like, or especially with like other agents, and I'd get my phone out while I'm driving and I'd just do a quick rant. You know, like hey're, like I was being in a transaction and some agent pissed me off, right, and I'm like, if you're an agent and you're doing this, don't do this. I always my thought process, just so you guys know, if you follow me, I always have a solution to follow up. I'm not that guy that gets on Facebook and bitches, just rants. Yeah, you don't do that. It's let me. If I'm going to complain about it, let me.
Speaker 3:Got my car. And I'm like, if you're an agent doing this by the way, you're new, I get it. I was that way too. Do this instead, I promise you'll see success. And then it started getting a little traction, like people start DMing me like, oh, that's awesome, yeah, that's cool, oh, I love that. And then I would do like more of a therapy session for myself?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I get up at 3.30. I've been doing it since I was 12. Yeah, my first job I started. I had to be there at 4.30.
Speaker 2:When do you go to sleep at night?
Speaker 3:Nine, nine, I go about six hours a night, yeah, so I get up at 3.30, very routine. Been doing this forever, right? If you want consistent results, you have to do the same thing every day. So I get up at today hey, by the way, just try to add some value. And I started doing that so much that it would be it'd be interesting because I would not post for a couple of days. I just didn't feel like it, I'll be honest. Like I just woke up and I get DMs that morning, like you. Okay, you didn't make a video today, okay, I guess people pay attention, you know.
Speaker 3:but that's just where it started. It all just falls in line. You just start to really see what works. You see what people enjoy, you fill out what you enjoy and if you do enough of it, you'll you'll organically find a pocket that works. But you're only going to find that through volume.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 3:I could tell people today.
Speaker 1:So how do you measure it?
Speaker 3:How do you know? I measure by conversation.
Speaker 1:Conversation.
Speaker 3:I don't even measure like here's the thing I don't again real estate is such a long game, and this is the thing, by the way, I tell people I'm like you got to make 15, 20 stories, oh no.
Speaker 1:So the engagement isn't the like. It's the direct message or the conversation that is generated through the post.
Speaker 3:Think about this this is where people people pay attention to the wrong metric all day. So how many real estate agents are in the state of Arizona right now? Too many, I agree, like 60,000, 60 plus how many? Loan officers are in the state of Arizona, 40 plus Okay. So knowing that there's 60 to 40, 60,000 agents, 40,000, what are the odds that somebody that is not in real estate knows a real estate agent Really really high? What are the odds that somebody that is not in real estate knows a real estate agent, Really really high.
Speaker 3:What are the odds that that person knows maybe three or four real estate agents? Yeah, okay, pretty high. So what happens is I make a post and I'm like, yeah, I just sold this property, here's how I did it. You know drop. You know drop in my comment section if you want it to be you, who's going to do that? Because they're gonna be like, well, no, this, my, my cousin, who's a realtor I really don't want to use. They follow you and if I comment, they're gonna see that. But if I'm in my stories and I'm like, hey, if you got any questions like you guys don't notice on my videos, I'm like just drop me a dm. I don't ever say drop a comment below, like because nobody's gonna do that, like I wouldn't even do that if I have like one of my family members is a doctor and I I'm like hey, I need to go get a service done like a doctor, right.
Speaker 3:And my sister, whatever, is a doctor, I'm like I don't want to use her because she's kind of like part-time. This guy's like a full-time. I'm not going to be in this guy's stuff. My sister's going to be like what are you doing? You know, I'm a.
Speaker 3:That I track is how many conversations a day, how many DMs am I getting and how many people am I engaging with. It could be it doesn't even have to be real estate related, Just are they reaching out? Are they asking for advice? Do they like one of my cars? Am I, you know, hey, offering tips and business like, whatever it is? How many DMs a day do I get that I can respond to and just have a going to lead to? But where does trust start in a conversation? But people post and pay attention to a like metric or a comment metric, like oh, I got one comment. I've got stuff all the time that gets like two, three comments. But I get like I'll share that into and I'll say drop me a DM If you're interested. I'll get like eight messages on that. Who's more successful? The guy that got two comments on this post, or the guy that got eight conversations started.
Speaker 3:Nobody pays attention to that I do, and so yeah, it works. So, I spend a lot of time on stories because that's naturally. If you were to look at the social media and, by the way, if you look at Instagram, what do they do? They push your stories to the top.
Speaker 2:Right when you get to the top.
Speaker 3:You're in the top.
Speaker 3:So if you're posting 15 times a day. See, if you post a story or a post one time a day and you do it in the morning, you're buried. Now, right, If that person's following 3,000 to 5,000 people and they're all posting one times a day, mathematically it's impossible for your post to be seen by all of your followers. But if you're hitting 10 to 15 posts a day, like me, from 4 am all the way to like 8 or 9 o'clock at night, I'm going to hit my audience across all hours of the day.
Speaker 2:One way or the other you're doing 10 to 15 a day, yeah, sometimes 20.
Speaker 1:And how many of those are stories.
Speaker 3:No, that's not posts. I do like one to two posts a day. That's 10 to 15 stories a day.
Speaker 2:10 to 15 stories a day.
Speaker 3:I did one the other day. I had like 53 stories in one day.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So long Committed.
Speaker 2:So back to business owner, entrepreneur. So one of the reasons I was asking about YouTube earlier is you did a video where it was here are five things to do if you want to fail. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so.
Speaker 2:I mean, from the perspective of a successful real estate business owner, what are two or three things that you can think of? That would be good advice for people who are thinking of maybe moving on, moving up from being a team leader to a business owner in real estate. Like what are the? What are the top two or three things they could do to fail?
Speaker 3:I think the yeah number one have the wrong intention. This is my biggest qualm in real estate and, I'll be honest, this is one of the things I bite my lip on the most is I look at an industry that has such a low barrier to entry, that has people, that has such high hopes to succeed Everybody gets nobody gets into this business and is like I hope I fail. They all want to win. I want everybody to win, but the problem is is that you have too many unqualified team leads being a team lead for the sake of their own benefit instead of doing it to help people. So what I mean by that is is, like you know, I lead from the front. I am the highest producer at my brokers, not to say like I don't want my agents to beat me because I do. I've got some heavy hitters that work alongside me, that trust me. Every day I wake up and I'm like whew, got to get my ass in gear because this guy is going to whoop me.
Speaker 3:He's one of my and I've got some good people with me, right, and I love that because it keeps me hungry. But what I teach and what I show is all from practicality. I'm doing the volume. I'm doing the five, six transactions a month. You know, I'm at personal, my personal personal production. Right now I think I'm at 23, 20, no, almost 30 transactions. I got to go back and double. Last time I checked I was at 34 million myself in sales. My average sales price right now is $1.5 million at volume this year. Okay, and I share everything about it Right. So, undeniably, if an agent came to me and said, blake, I want to learn how to do what you do, I can show you. You literally just have to. You just be my shadow, get behind me in the morning, replicate my day, do what I do and at some level you're going to see success, because it's I can undeniably show you the results. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even if they put their own seasoning on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which they should, because you can't take my recipe and be me. But we see that too. I see shit all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see that when it's like it's a carbon copy of the team lead and they're going to do it and be the exact same person. It's not realistic.
Speaker 3:The framework is there right, the framework is always there at some level. The framework is there, but you put your own spin on it. That's where you're going to see the magic right. But the problem is is like I cannot tell you guys how many people failed at being an agent or were subpar and mediocre. And you have these brokerages that their business model is headcount. We're going to go down a tirade because this really pisses me off.
Speaker 3:But these business models have a their metric. That they pay attention to is a head count. How many heads do we have? 300, 400. We got a thousand people here, yeah, but what's your average agent to deal ratio?
Speaker 1:That's the real true level of success. Quarter yeah, are your people winning?
Speaker 3:Are they all there winning? Is your average agent producing more than any other brokerage? Because it's really easy to say I've got half a million sales with 300 agents. Guess what I'll do half a million with 50 agents. Who's more successful? Who's the guy that's got a thousand agents that does a billion in sales successful? Or is it the guy that's got a hundred agents that?
Speaker 2:does half a million successful yeah, whose customers are getting better representation, yeah but we never pay attention to that metric.
Speaker 3:We never pay attention to it's always the total volume, and I got this many agents right. And then the way that these brokerages are I'm not going to name names, but they're big ones right now. Their model is okay, you're okay, you're mediocre at being an agent, but here's what we're going to do we want you to be a team lead and then we're going to slam every new person underneath you, and then we're going to slam every new person underneath you and then we're going to give them a discount on their cap, because that way we as a brokerage don't have to deal with the training and the coaching. We're going to let you train that person and we're going to incentivize them to learn from you by a cheaper split. And that's the evolution of real estate.
Speaker 3:And then we wonder why we have such a high failure rate. Because we have people leading these people that can't even produce success. If a meteor came down and landed on top of their house, they'd still not. You know like, and that's my qualm with this business, and so I believe that you know, if you're here's the thing, like again, my, my path is it's all through necessity. I saw a hole in the business and I saw that like this just isn't for me, and the way that these guys are doing it whether that's from a team lead, whether that's from my previous broker the way you're doing it, it's not right. Like you're not successful, I'm going to go do this my way, because my way is successful.
Speaker 1:And some teams would actually criticize you for continuing to wanting to lead in production. Like lead the team in production.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in production and like lead the team in production.
Speaker 3:Yeah, why are you still? Why? Why are you doing production? Why you do it? Why I do it, is because I set the bar If I take myself out of production and you take a multimillion dollar and, by the way, I don't take any of my leads, my business is a hundred I do pay traffic. We supply eight to 900 leads a month. I literally go you can go on my Facebook right now and verify and I'll say for more details, click on this property, You'll see the link. And that link goes into my brokerages pond account that all my agents get access to. Like it's not, it doesn't even go into my name. I don't generate a single lead for myself.
Speaker 1:All of my business, so yours is all referral referral based all social media on my own thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't even actively compete with my agents there has. I don't even actively compete with my agents. I can't even tell you, guys, I take that back. Twice in my career have I gone to a listing appointment where maybe one of my agents got this. Once happened when I was a team. One of my team members got called in and then they called me and I gave it to my team by default. I said you take this because I'm not going to cry over one deal, it's not going to break my. That one deal would mean more to that person that's just starting out to feed their family than it will to me. And then once, as a brokerage owner, same thing. They call this in and I was like no, I'm good, you're going to get the same level of service because this person works directly with me and my brokerage and I handed it off. You'll never to this day find a single agent that's ever been coached or trained by me raise their hand and say he took a deal from me and that just goes to show like you don't have to run a business that way. So to bring it full circle back, number one I stay active production because I have to be able to teach my people what works. If I'm that guy, that's like okay, I'm out of production and I haven't sold. I haven't really been producing for four.
Speaker 3:The market changes so much. Like you think about, what we're doing today wouldn't have worked three years ago and what was going three years ago wouldn't have worked. It's constantly evolving. We went from multiple offers to having to get creative with some of the deals to now like, ok, how do we do something off market? Now we're doing seller finance on some of these transactions because it's like all right, we've got to push this multimillion dollar deal across the line when rates are 7.2% or 7.5% on a jumbo and we're talking a $3 million loan and that's an $8,000 to $10,000 swing on a mortgage. For some of these people that could mean taking a half a million dollar hit on the purchase price from my buyer. But what if they did a subject to creative finance deal? That didn't matter two, three years ago, but it does now.
Speaker 3:So me being in active production, I can say hey, guys, this is what is working. We have a big group chat in my brokerage where I take every transaction I do and I'll say here's how I got the deal, here's where it came from, here's what I did with it and I share right, and I set the bar. So if you take me out of production, who's the next bar? And I got some good agents in there and stuff like that. But why would I not set the bar? Why would I not say, hey, if I'm doing this, you guys can do this. Differentiator, I'm in the office, 730 am. You'll see my car in that parking lot. It's either me or my office manager. Generally, at the end of the day, it's me and maybe one other agent. But I just outwork you by volume of hours. It's not some secret thing.
Speaker 2:You know and so do you foster a totally in-person collaboration, then Absolutely so, like you got to come in, if you're going to be on this team. Absolutely, we want you here?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, it's not. Of course they're 10.99. I can't require them sure but my philosophy is it's a people business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, somehow in covid in 2022, we got this philosophy that we do everything virtually all these virtual brokerages popping up and stuff like that and the agent's been sold the dream that, hey, you can sit on your couch and just kind of do whatever and work your own hours and you'll be super successful.
Speaker 3:No, you won't, because I don't see any of them doing it right. If you statistically look at the numbers of the top producers in the state of Arizona, most of them have an office they go into, they collaborate and they have a set daily routine where they take themselves out of their house. And this isn't for everybody. There's always gonna be that exception but statistically on average, if you were to, right now, we're going to take the top 100 agents in the state of Arizona and you divide them up and say who has a team and like goes into the office and has a team office and training, and who's a solo agent that just sits at home all day? It's like very. It's very evident of like where success lies in that and it's been done that way. We're always trying to reinvent the wheel when the wheel's not broken, like it's the craziest thing to me People do well together they do well, collaborating face to face and working together.
Speaker 1:We believe that too.
Speaker 3:I've got an agent really really good guy matter. Funny story this guy got me into real estate. He's been doing it longer than me. Uh, I was thinking about getting into it and I talked to my one of my good friends. We had a mutual friend I went to high school with and he's like oh, my, my buddy over here. He's like, oh, my buddy over here, he's in real estate. Give him a call. I call this guy up, I said, hey, um, you don't know me, but I'm friends with so and so, um, I think about getting into real estate and you're an agent. He's like yeah, dude, I totally go for it. It's a good career, you know, and he's doing. He was doing okay at that time. He I got into real estate and just blew up and stuff. And one day we're at the gym working out and he sees me and he's like all right, dude, I don't think I can do it anymore, I think I'm going to come over. He like fought coming over and he's like I'm going to be very honest.
Speaker 1:And he's a good, good guy.
Speaker 3:He had to succumb to you, basically, yeah, well, he basically was like I kind of was like kind of like was hating on you a little bit because you started after me and you're just doing really good and it happens he's so competitive Like dude. Set the ego down and just be like I need help and let me go find the dude. Like that has been the biggest hack in my career, is like ever since I talked to you guys about earlier, like how I said, hey, I found that one guy and he helped me start a team. It's like, oh crap, like my business changed. I learned my lesson. Like when I went to start a brokerage, I went to a really good friend of mine. I me Like, if I went when I wanted to learn creative finance and stuff, I went to another really good friend who's just a master at it.
Speaker 1:So counsel, like the wise counsel, like lean on it, it's 100% what it is Like.
Speaker 3:We have to have counsel in our corner, right, and when people think of counsel or coach, they think they have to have one person. No, like, we all know that person. That's like an amazing family guy, great with his kids, that we all aspire to be, right, I'm not the best at that because I'm a frigging workhorse, so I'm going to, I'm going to be the first to throw myself on the train here and say, hey, I'm bad about always having a work-life balance, right, but I have friends that are amazing at it. So guess what I do? It's like, dude, I got to balance myself out a little more.
Speaker 3:Let me go to this guy that's just so damn good at this and learn from him. If I want to sharpen those tools, who do I go to? I go to that guy. And if I go to this guy who's done so much deep work and development and been through the trenches and he's like five years down the road for me and I'm trying, he's the guy that's already around the bend in the corner. I could just be like hey, instead of running myself off the cliff, can you tell me what's coming? The craziest thing. But so, yeah, that's like for me, that's really where it came down to, so so.
Speaker 2:So let's, let's land the plane. Um, as a business owner, how have you? Um, you've obviously achieved a high level of success as a as a real estate business owner. Where do you go from here? Um, what, what and I kind of asked this earlier, I guess but what are the primary lessons that you would impart to somebody who's now starting their own real estate business?
Speaker 3:Oh man, so many lessons.
Speaker 1:I mean, we could probably finish the failure list.
Speaker 3:I'm going to be so transparent with you guys on this. I was just having a call. I've got a business coach. I've got a guy who I was going to ask you on this. I was just having a call. I've got a business coach. I've got a guy who I was going to ask you that question. I always have coaches Okay, always have coaches, life coaches. The coach being coached Always Love it. Here's the thing, man your ceiling is as high as you're ever going to go and if you've got nobody above you pulling you up, you're. We're continuing to grow in life and just get better, because I don't ever like if I think of the iteration of me that doesn't grow anymore, I think of just being dead.
Speaker 3:Like. You know what I mean and I love growth. I love changing. I love looking Like. It's so fun to look back Like. I even put our stats and our numbers up every Monday on my social media. Here's where we're at. Here's what we did the previous week. Don't like you'll get these people online like top producer. It's like dude, you sold 10 houses last year just because you put in your instagram bio doesn't mean it's true I can show the stats.
Speaker 3:I have every address, every sale, everything verified. I put it up for our brokerage, I put our numbers out there. And then it's really cool to go back like three years ago and look at the spreadsheets and look at the trackers and be like, oh damn, I remember that time when we thought like 90 million was like we were just partying. We like remember we ended the year, we got everybody, we had this big celebration, we hit 90 million, you know, and so so questions and this I'm sorry because I'm a systems guy I'm like I can't help myself here.
Speaker 1:So from a business owner's perspective, from a real estate broker owner's perspective, would you have built your company by building the systems first and then start filling, or would you have built using people first and then adapt the systems as you need it?
Speaker 3:That is such a hard question to answer, but I'll tell you which side I lean more on. The people first, systems. I outgrow the CRM I had when I first started that I thought I was going to have. Like we outgrew that and everything systems and processes and everything. I think there's a. I will say this If there's anything you're going to do, have a great framework in place. One thing I was really bad about getting stuff in writing. I've had team agreements where I got burned. You know what I mean. I've had people, even being a brand new agent, sucking at writing an offer.
Speaker 3:I've had to buy people refrigerators because I didn't pay attention. There's one lesson I've learned If I had to say the one thing, I would have done as far as like just have great things in writing Also. On the other side of that, though, I lean into if you have the right people around you, you have a great community. You can build some systems and processes around that, because the problem is what I used to think was true was I knew everything, and what I found is is I only need to really be good in my company at one thing and that's motivating and that's sales and like helping people develop and see more in themselves. I've got a associate broker who is like she's been a broker. She was a broker for K-dub for 20 something years and I hired her and she's way better at file review and paperwork than I am.
Speaker 3:That's why I won't be a broker. I don't want to be a broker. I have a broker's license. I don't want to be a broker. I don't want to sit by. I suck at that. I'm definitely a very gray area kind of guy, so I'm not good for that seat and so if you have to have the right intention Again, this goes back to the team lead thing Don't do it because you want to make money, because you won't, I don't. My brokerage doesn't. A lot of people I think they're like oh, I do all this volume and sales, it doesn't make me that much money. My personal production makes me money. My brokerage pays for itself and lets me be left alone and I don't have to answer to anybody, which is what I love.
Speaker 1:But I think we could relate as we grow and we scale. It's not like.
Speaker 3:I you know we make these sales and I just pocket all the money right. I pay for my agents' signs, I pay for their CRMs. We spend close to $10,000 a month in lead gen as we grow and hire more people. I hire staff to help so that my agents have enough people right. So it's not matter of fact like we ended up letting go. We had some agents leave because we put some standards in place. We let go of some agents that weren't producing, so we shaved about like 20 agents that just weren't really getting it done or it wasn't a good fit for them. And we're more profitable because we were able to shave system.
Speaker 1:So what's?
Speaker 3:more important again, is it the head count or is it the profitability? You know what I mean, so, and you just have to have a mission, man Like. If you're like I want to own a brokerage for the sake of owning a brokerage, don't do it Like there's so many great options out there. People would ask you why.
Speaker 1:They've asked us the same thing. Why would you want to be on your own?
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, there's teams out there that are bigger than I am right now. I can name teams that have like 100 people right now bigger than I am. From a brokerage perspective. My mission was I wanted to create a place that could replicate success, without a doubt, because I was like I know what.
Speaker 3:I do works Okay great. I was like I know what I do works Okay great. And then I had a team and I was like, okay, and time after time and time, every person that's came to me that's listened to what I said and with their own twist on it, has been successful. That's awesome. And then I've seen those same people leave and they're not successful anymore either. Interesting, by the way. I'm just going to throw this out there.
Speaker 2:I haven't know if that's good or bad by the way.
Speaker 1:I think that's a testament to what you're doing.
Speaker 3:But, it just goes to show it's not always the systems the processes, it's the daily motivation, it's the being around the people that want to get it done. It's the collaboration. It's the day that you're sitting at home where you're just like I'm not feeling it today.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to flip the.
Speaker 3:TV on or there's people get around them. So bringing back full story to that guy, that was like hating on me for a little bit. As a friend he told me. He's like dude, I was hating on you, man, because you were doing good. He goes, but I want to do better. He's like I'm going to come over and work with you. Dude is killing it now.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:He's like I've been doing this business for 10 years. Having people that believe in you. It's the having the people that push you. It's the days where you're like I'm not feeling it. And then you got your broker owner lead like 4 am Get your ass up out of bed, guys, let's go.
Speaker 1:Let's go, all right.
Speaker 3:And then you take that one day where maybe you didn't get out of bed or maybe you weren't feeling it, and then you see the numbers getting posted and you're like all right. And then compound that over a whole year. Yeah, People talk about like why do you get up at three, 34 o'clock in the morning? I get a two hour head start over most people, Most people start their day at 6am. I get up at four. 32 hours a day times, 30 days in a month gets me an entire month more work done than anybody else over a whole year. Just two hours a day, right, it's not. It's not that day that I got two hours that made me successful. It's the fact that I replicated that two hours 365 days that bought me a whole month over any of my competition.
Speaker 1:It's the discipline.
Speaker 3:It's the day by day, right, so you take an agent who, yeah, they're pretty good four days out of the week, three days, but then the other four to three they kind of, you know, mess off a little bit or they're not that motivated, or they're just not feeling it. And then you throw them in an ecosystem of mine that's very competitive, like let's go get up, like hey, don't be hard on yourself, let's go Right, and then maybe out of that they won two or three more days. Two or three more days compounded over a year it could be the difference between five to 10 additional transactions. Not by one big thing. It's just because they had somebody like me in their corner, like pushing them right, Running full speed ahead.
Speaker 3:People underestimate that so much and this is why I'm such an advocate. Like you get these big brokerages like oh, just stay at home, we do virtual Okay. Nobody's motivated, seven days a week, nobody.
Speaker 1:We all need even me, especially from the house Right, especially from the house it's not you know what.
Speaker 3:I mean and so sounds. And no matter how many agents say, oh, I just love to work from home, you take this industry, you plug their butt in and, I hate to say it, corporatize it. I'm not a fan of corporate America at all. Guarantee you, if there was ever some way to take all 66,000 agents, put them in an office, put a microscope over them for eight hours a day. Tell me they're not going to be miles ahead of where they're at. We are our own worst enemy when we say we want freedom and then we get the freedom and then we don't hold ourselves accountable.
Speaker 2:That's it, let's. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Let's, let's like this is very amazing Totally awesome, it's been great.
Speaker 2:Really appreciate you taking the time busy, busy schedule. Successful real estate business owner Guys, we have to leave it here, unfortunately. We'd love to keep talking to Blake, but we really want to thank our listeners for sticking with us and sticking throughout the whole episode here. If you have any questions, DM us.
Speaker 1:Yes, don't comment.
Speaker 2:We're going to have all of Blake's contact information for Limitless Real Estate and Blake in the description, so if you have any questions for him, DM Blake and we'll catch everybody on the next episode.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much, man. Thanks again, I appreciate you guys having me. Thank you so much, guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks again, Blake.
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