Ep. 9 - Joint Ventures: Building Wealth Beyond Commissions with Andy Peters

3,000 agents doesn’t happen because someone posts harder on social media. It happens when a leadership team builds trust, installs repeatable habits, and stays obsessed with the details that clients actually feel. Mike Duley sits down with Andy Peters to unpack the real story behind scaling a real estate team into a multi-market brokerage organization across Georgia and the Carolinas while keeping family, values, and long-term thinking at the center.

We talk through Andy’s path from launching a business with his wife in 2008 to hitting major production milestones, then stepping into market center leadership and expansion decisions that didn’t always feel comfortable in the moment. Andy shares what changed when COVID forced faster communication and how that pressure created a lasting system: a daily “mastering the market of the moment” call where agents track listings, pendings, expirations, back-on-market inventory, and interest rates alongside lender updates. If you want to sound like the most educated real estate agent in your market, this segment is a blueprint.

We also get into hiring and developing leaders without micromanaging, why the question “What did you learn?” changes everything, and how planning tools like the 10-year letter and a 1-3-5-10 goal framework keep growth tied to real life. Finally, we cover joint ventures in title, mortgage, and insurance as a way to create ownership-minded opportunities beyond commissions. Subscribe, share the episode with a team leader, and leave a review with the one habit you’re adopting this week.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Reunion

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Real Mike Dooley Podcast. I'm Mike Dooley, nationally recognized broker, bringing you real conversations, real strategies, and real insights into today's real estate market. Hey everybody, we are here, the real Mike Dooley, and we are bringing on the one and only Andy Peters today. It's gonna be a lot of fun. What's up, y'all? Glad to be here. Thanks for having me, man. No, we're we're excited. And it's funny, I you learned all the little podcasting tips or all little things that keep telling me now, hang loose on my microphone. So if you see me do this, I'm trying to pay attention to rules and orders and making sure that I got my my mouth where I need to be for the microphone to pick up the sound. But we're stepping up our game a little bit. We were just talking about it. I had newly noted podcast, I think season one or season two, you were on there maybe like eight years ago, which is wild. Yeah. I remember that. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, there's some people that said I should have kept uh that name uh going, you know. So as you know, you get branding, you get all these ideas, you get things going. So the the real is kind of the play on real estate. Real Mike Dooley, that fun, you know, where you see uh celebrities or people have the real. I don't know, we'll see. I think my my wife still laughs at me. You know, what do you what are you trying to do here? But we're trying to have fun. And I know you have your wife in your business all the time too, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

We do. We we are uh we're together all the time, right? I mean, uh life and business is beautifully intertwined at this point.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Well, we'll go into that if you will. I think just give a little bio. I was reading it, I almost fell out of my chair. We're almost up to 3,000 agents in your organization. How cool is that? Is that is that wild? Thank you. Yeah, it is wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Um, it's it's amazing to be able to help that many people uh get the things that they want. You know, there's a lot of people that helped us get to where we were, you know, when we were in production and and and help us do what we do today. It's nice now to give back and hopefully help people do what we did and beyond and do it a lot faster than we did it, hopefully save you a little bit of time and a little bit of money. Um, that's the most fulfilling part of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, so you want to just go ahead and give a quick snapshot just of you know, kind of ecosystem. I know it's uh a great team, market centers, agents, a little bit of everything. Obviously, being a dad, and I think I read in our kind of show notes average dogs. I gotta I gotta hear about that too.

First Market Centers And Big Wins

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Two wonderful kids and two very average dogs. Um yeah, so uh my my wife and I started a team together back in 2008. Seemed like a great time to get into the real estate business. And um, of course, it was it was a much different time then. Um we were very blessed in the sense that we had a lot of our brokerage leaders that really poured into us and saw a lot in us and and helped us move up the ranks fast. Uh, we were the first team in our organization at that time of seven market centers to hit a million dollars gross commission income. Um, that was in 2013. Um, with that market center center's help, as well as uh you know, somebody that's also very near and dear to you, Gene Rivers. Um, Gene helped us in 2018 net a million dollars in our business. About that same time as we were doing that, we got a knock on our door to go into the brokerage space. And we were offered an opportunity to go open a market center down in the coast coastal Georgia, which at that time was about five hours away from Atlanta where we were living. And we passed on it. And we thought, oh my gosh, like we'll never get this opportunity again. You know, I can't believe we're passing on this. But things were good. And the we were we were really concentrating on our production sales business at that point. And we we immediately regretted it. Um, and fortunately, the region came back to us, you know, three or four months later. And so we've got something else that just happened to be three brokerages uh were close to where I grew up. So, I mean, they were like my stomping grounds and uh places that we were already selling um houses. And so we stepped into those market centers, which were good in their own right, they were good. Um, but they were all ran independently, and um our vision was really to push them together, to pull resources, to create more community. And um, as a result of that, it just it you know started pushing them all up. Um, today those those three in Atlanta, one of them is the most profitable franchise in Keller Williams, one is number 25, and one's like number 98 or 99 or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Oh, oh, trust me, I'm looking at the reports all the time, like there they are killing it. I'm just I'm just trying to get on the report with my you know, some of my offices. So I see what you're doing. You're you're getting we're making some headway. But as you know, it takes time, and I do like that you laid out it's not like it just happened today. You know, it's like 2008. So when people look up, it's a journey. And I do love that you you kind of talked about the the the no or the pass. Because sometimes, you know, God has a different plan or you know, companies and you, your timing uh worked out to be right. So I think that's a lesson already, a nugget, I think, for anybody listening is sometimes you have to be patient on some of the decisions on all the timing. Um, for sure for sure. I love that, no doubt.

Moving To Savannah For Family

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Yeah, and you know, through uh some changes that we wanted to make personally, like we our kids wanted to move to the coast, like they wanted to move to the beach, and there weren't a whole lot of options for the beach um within the southeast region. It's more or less kind of a landlocked region between Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Uh, but there was one place that we circled on the map that what we were quite fond of, and that was Savannah. And um, our kids had gone to Savannah, you know, growing up, they they really loved it, they were excited about the idea. Then it was all about just working a deal out with the the current owner operator that had that franchise, um, which we did, and she is wonderful and gracious, and perhaps one of the best investors that we have in our whole organization. Um, we we went to Savannah and we moved our kids in the middle of high school. And uh what an what an awesome opportunity to grow that was. Uh fortunately, that franchise was in really good shape. It fit in really well with what we do. Um, and they have you know a market center and three business centers. If you put all that together, they'd be a top 10 market center in profitability. So um we've just been really blessed with a lot of great franchises. Um, we've been blessed with a lot of leaders. We develop a lot of leaders inside of the organization. Um, and you know, um we're just gonna continue to grow. Uh, we've since moved into the Carolinas now. We have operations in Columbia, South Carolina, uh, Fort Mill, South Carolina, which is just south of Charlotte, and then Greenville, South Carolina, which happens to be uh a place that's close to our heart. We went to college at Furman University in Greenville. And so it's kind of a full circle moment to go and be involved in the real estate space there in Greenville, too.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

So they have a pretty good basketball team, too, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Every now and then I feel like they make a run. You know, they're they're kind of a uh a back bracket buster, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah, more of a basketball and soccer school now. We we played in the semis for uh for the final four for soccer last week. Lost, but it was the farthest we've made in a long time.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah. So so would you advise anybody else? One thing I thought about when you were talking about moving your kids and all this was happening, traffic. I'm sure you're like, how much time? Did you calculate it? You should have how much time you saved just in traffic uh from coming from Atlanta. I mean, just and your kids being able to have their driver's license and all that stuff and maybe a little bit slower place.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, I used to complain about the people who complained about traffic when I lived in Atlanta, and now I'm one of those people.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Oh, yeah. I remember I grew up in Miami and I had to drive 13 miles. Took me an hour and a half to get to work each way. And I'm like, people in Arkansas are like, uh, the traffic's horrible. I'm like, yeah, you're seven more minutes, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

You know, you look at that traffic though, and you say, Thank goodness for opportunity, right? Like uh, I'm Leslie and I are both so grateful for Atlanta. Um, Atlanta is we we wouldn't have anything. We wouldn't have our production business, we wouldn't have the market center business. You know, we our kids attended great schools there. There's a lot to be thankful for. So uh all those cars are a good reminder that this is a place where progress lives for for sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

You know, as we have like 14,000 people coming here a year, where the business side of me is like, oh, I love it. Let them keep coming, right? The living side, you're like, oh, I want to keep it a little bit slower.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, your community's blowing up for sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So you think too, and I thought about this as we were going to talk today, COVID probably helped. And tell me what you think. There's some some goods I think that came out of COVID. Obviously, not with nothing for the health and lives and stuff. That's a horrible. But if you think about business perspective, did it change your leadership, how you became how you were a leader, how you delivered, how you communicated? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

We've been working hard to put all of our organizations together and have them work closely. And COVID accelerated that. You know, we went from, you know, more or less having a weekly team meeting to having a daily team meeting. And, you know, we we started pushing all of our resources, at least uh through virtual um broadcasts. I mean, we did that through Zoom, but um, that is, believe it or not, still a ritual that exists today. Like we we do an 8:30 call inside of our organization for all 3,000 agents in the system. Um, the only day we don't do it is Tuesday because that's a team meeting day. Um, but Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we all come together and we we have a spreadsheet where we look at everything that's happening in the market, you know, new listings, what's going under contract, what's expired, what's back on the market. Um, we track interest rates daily. Um, we have our lenders, they're on that call every day, giving us updates on you know what reports coming out today that might impact rates. Should we lock? Should we float? Like all of that on a day-to-day basis, so that we know we call it mastering the market of the moment. So we know exactly what's going on in the now. Um, and nobody can ever say, I don't have a conversation that I can go have or educate my database, or you know, just people expect you to know some of this stuff. So um we we rotate the leaders in the organization that lead that. Um, everybody takes a week at a time to create some continuity, but it's just one of those non-negotiables for us now. We've seen the fruits of it, and we want to, you know, we want to help people be the most educated agent, you know, in their board.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, if people are listening, and I think I found out, you know, we have people from all over that are gonna be listening as we uh we haven't officially launched yet, so that's so great. But I think you're episode eight, which is pretty cool. I don't know what your lucky number is. We can we can change that order, you know. If you have lucky number nine, you're number nine. I'm just happy to be included. No, it's it's gonna be a lot of fun if you think about it. Just so to your point, it's made me a better brokerage leader and owner just by understanding my real estate business sometimes. And I just think to your point, people think, oh, uh, I had someone yesterday say, Do you still have your license? I actually still have to do CE on Friday. So no matter your role or what you're doing, you're still continuing ed, you're still, you know, in deals uh and for myself or you know, helping our team. And it just now the the thing I tell people, I can see everything end to end. Sometimes when you just have a team or you just have a brokerage or you just have you don't understand all the pains when you're just referencing where you have, I think we have all-time highs in some place in the country, you know, 23 to 24 percent terminations. So, how do you get creative? How do you get better? How do you lead better? What do you read? You know, I want I wanted to go into a question real quick. You talked about, I love that. If if someone's run an organization and you take a week, are they themed? Are they layout? Like you use Chat GPT, and you're like, hey, today's marvelous Monday week, or do you have is it is it creative?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

You know, we've let the leaders kind of do their own thing and let their own personality shine through. What typically stays the same is that there's always a review of the numbers, you know, and that can be done in about five minutes. So typically leaders are bringing something of value to that call, could be a question or a topic, um, could be a video or something that they have seen, you know, an image that they want to talk about. Um, so it's a good diversity of you know, topics and and ways to present. You know, I think if you did it the exact same way every time, um, you know, you might have some people check out of that over time, but because it is different and everybody's personality gets to shine, it holds interest a little bit longer. And it's 30 minutes.

Hiring Leaders And Giving Space

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Did anyone in your group cover um the Heisman Trophy speech? No, that would be a good one. You talk about I'm giving it to you. There you go. So you have your nugget. I just did that on Monday for our 26 offices for our region, and there's so many life lessons in there. If you really slow down, you really have, I mean, it is just phenomenal. It was such a such well done. This is humbleness, gratefulness. Uh, I I believe, you know, he thanked almost everyone possible from team to coaches to family to grandparents. It was just authentic. Uh, but I've some of the lessons that I learned from it, I think about you and everything that you're doing is you know, school teacher, wife, you know, you guys are starting this business, you're starting this team, you and your average dogs, and you know, now you look at it and you built, you know, a team to one of the largest brokerage businesses, uh, not on any flag uh in in the world, you know, and that's pretty amazing. But I think you've done it the right way, to your point. Humbleness, and we were gonna go into if it's all right, um, picking leaders. So if you think about it, when you have this kind of organization, I tell my executive assistant this all the time, Michelle. She's she's awesome, she's great. What she does sometimes is grit her way. So something needs to get done, boom, she just jumps in. Now, I think there's still times where you could do that, but we start getting, and here's what I always tell her: imagine our real estate team is a hundred people. Imagine our brokerage is a thousand people, imagine our region is 10,000 people. Well, you can't grit your way to everything. We got to sometimes use AI, other people, you know, technology, get systems in place. So is there a framework for you in hiring talent and having talent around you? Because you've mentioned some things that you're you're winning at a high level, and that's gotta be you're really good at picking good people.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah, I mean, I think I think good leaders are developed, right? They're not nobody's born with great leadership. Um, but I think it's about what what people are being influenced by, you know. Um how do you hear them speak? Um you know, are they are they comfortable are they comfortable talking about success, but are they also comfortable in making sure everybody understands that that success is not all about them? Um so I think it's you know, you you understand how people talk to themselves by the way they talk to other people. Um and I think the way you talk to yourself is really important, you know. Um I I when I look at the the most successful leaders that we've had in our organization, you know, there was there was definitely hints that they they could do what we were asking them to do, but we also believe we got to give people space. I mean, the last thing that talented people want is to be micromanaged, you know. And and I think my job as a leader is just to kind of keep people out of the ditches, you know. You you remember that, I'm sure Mike, when you were growing up, driving your granddad's truck down the dirt roads, right? You got to stay outside of the ditches. Um, and and if they didn't drag the road right before you drove, it might get a little bumpy. Um, but I think that's really our job is to kind of be the granddad of these leaders and just help them um use the gifts and talents that they're blessed with, and just, you know, you're gonna be a really poor version of somebody else, but you can be a great version of yourself. You know, be who you are. Um, you are picked really because of your values. You were picked because you've shown some success in over the course of your career. Um, and you know, chances are most of the people that step into leadership roles, they've they hadn't done the things that we're asking them to do. So we gotta be able to expect that they're gonna fail and they're gonna, you know, make mistakes and all that's just part of the gig. Um and you gotta you gotta talk about it. I mean, you gotta have an eye high expectation. But I I had probably my my my my most famous or infamous conversation with people is um you know, people will call me a lot of times and give me the problems, like what's going wrong, or giving me bad news. And I would always ask them, Well, what did you learn? And you know, that that's a good disarming moment for people to replay that call and and and get something out of it. And then what happened, Mike, is that over time, as I I had the pleasure of working with people and seeing them grow, when they would call me subsequently, they would say, Hey, I learned something today. Like, great, what'd you fail at? You know, um, but it it really we have to reframe all that and we gotta give people room to do it and be okay with it. And uh when things are going really well, that's when I feel like I'm the hardest on people. When things are going perhaps not so well, I think that's when I pick them up and web them. Um but yeah, I mean, you you just when you see people riding that bike and riding it faster and faster and faster, like you you have to keep giving them stuff, right? Whether that's things in their job or whether that's new opportunities. If you don't, they'll they'll eventually spend out, right? They they they'll get bored and where they are. So the worst thing that we could possibly do, and this would be the first issue that I see, is that people maybe not be rocking the role they're in and they're not asking for more things, and they just start coasting. Um, I know Michelle McBride, you know, she has a saying, she says, Yeah, you can only coast when you're going downhill. And um and I love that. And and you see that in people. And so we've got to make sure that we're having the conversations that we need to have to make sure that this is still in alignment with what they want to do. And at the time that it's not, that's okay, right? Let's let's exit with grace and figure out uh what's next. And um, and that that happens. So I believe it's probably aspirational to think that people are going to be with you forever. It's just how can we all work together and you can get what you want, and we can get what we want, and let's have fun doing it.

Reading Summaries And Negotiation Skills

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, yeah. If you've ever read Traction or EOS, I don't know if you do that or not. We're doing that in our organization, and they talk about just a different seat on the bus. It still might be a great, awesome person than the wrong seat on the bus. You also triggered something else. I know buy back your time when you talked about what'd you learn. He also says, you know, bring me three solutions and which one would you pick? So it's a little bit more thought process. Is it what do you what are you reading right now? Oh my gosh. Uh what are you reading right now? You got a lot of things in the hopper?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

What's on my desk right this second? Um, where is my well they're all stacked up on my um bedside table right now? Um never split the difference. I'm kind of brushing up on some uh negotiation right now. Um I you know, I've read so many business books in the last year, and I'm I'm really good at listening to the the summaries, right? I I subscribe to Blinkist, and so going and exercising, even just taking a short walk in between calls, you know, in 10, 15 minutes, you can get the concepts from a lot of books. So I just keep a running tab of you know all of the books that I subscribe to. Um, and then I share them with people. You know, a lot of our people have Blinkist um subscriptions as well. So it's just sharing them back and forth, and they know that I listen to it. Blinkist has been a great thing for me in the last year.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

That's awesome. I just wrote a note of that myself too. It was funny. We you were probably in this room too when Gary, Gary Keller was talking about reading a book. And he's like, Well, you know, he now he picks chapters or he picks sections that he's reading or want to understand, where in the very beginning we had this mindset that we had to read it all or complete it to the end, even though we were already done with it or we weren't enjoying it. So he was the first person I think I heard him say, Well, stop, you know, get rid of it, give it away, you know. So now you give yourself uh grace or an opportunity to say, you know what, it's not for me or not. I'll tell you a funny story. I almost always do business books too. That's all I'm doing. But I had one, it was like billionaire mindset or billionaire something. And I was like, oh, this sounds good. And it ended up being like a romance novel. So I was getting going on my pod. I was I always, you know, do rucking uh when I'm usually doing a podcast or a book. And I was getting going, I was getting moving, and I was like, wait a minute, what what did I download? What did I buy?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

That's the tough part, whenever you can't see the cover, right? You can't look at the next cover, yeah.

Guitars Bourbon And Sports Cards

SPEAKER_00 21:57

But I it it's it's my jam, you know, I just enjoy. I know um, and and when you're working at such a high level and so many people, I know you do some fun things too. I want to share. I know guitars, a little bit of fun things you like doing, a little bit of bourbon. What what are we either playing or hanging out with music-wise right now?

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah, I know you're you're into the bourbon uh as well. Uh so my favorite band right now is some guys called the Future Birds. They're out of Athens, Georgia. Um, they're just kind of a fun jam, jam rock band, kind of alternative. And uh our whole family is kind of into them now. Um, but you know, I'm a I'm from Macon, Georgia originally, so it's hard for me not to be an Alman Brothers fan. I I've read every published book about the Alman Brothers, and um I'm just a mega fan, right? So it's hardly a day that goes by where I'm not listening to something from the Alman Brothers, and that influences a lot of my you know interests musically. But yeah, collect guitars, uh collect bourbon. Um I don't buy as much bourbon as I used to, but I bought it a lot over the last five years, and so I've got plenty to last a couple lifetimes now. Um, and then I collect sports cards, which a lot of people don't know that about me, but I have been collecting sports cards since 1986. And um my dad and I collected, and you know, it's just one of those things that he and I did together, and none of my kids are interested in it. So uh I'm hoping maybe we'll have a grandkid one day that shows some interest in sports cards because he or she will have a great collection one day. They will be very rich from that, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:35

So I'm sure there's some tax strategies around cards or certain pieces. Do you have any of them insured? Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

My brother and I, we did a lot of it. You know, we had Mark McGuire's, all this, you know, 89, 90, 91. We were in it. He just told me recently we still have some of those cards. He just happens to have them, and I don't have them actually. So smart on his. But what brought it up, I have, I don't know, you've probably seen on social media, I have an event center in our brokerage office building. It's about 3,500 square feet. And one of the people that actually continues to rent more and more is sports card events. So we've already had one really big one kind of sold out. I was like, ah, is this even gonna work? I didn't know much about it. And it's like people, as I started telling friends, people that I would not think necessarily that are in it's such a hobby where they were like, oh my gosh, that's your event center. I can't wait. So I thought I was gonna be famous for something really cool. Not that. Now I'm famous for having uh card uh promos or events.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, you never know about that stuff. You know, it's just it's like picking stocks, right? Like I remember in uh COVID when all of a sudden all the card craze went nuts. And I was like, I think I've got those Kobe Bryant rookie cards, I think I've got those Tom Brady rookie cards. Like, and going back through it and sending those things off to get graded, I mean, it was eye-opening. Um, of course, everybody in my family wants to, you know, wants me to sell them and they'll take a great vacation. But um, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna hang on to them for a little bit longer. I'm not a seller, I'm a buyer.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

There you go. So if anyone's listening, I heard some good gift ideas for any of your employees, right? We so you might be good on your bourbons, you know, the right bottle you might take it, an eagle rare or something. You you wouldn't turn that away, you know. Maybe a cool guitar or Almond Brothers, anything signed or any tickets or any shirts. So hey, I'm helping them out for next year, Christmas, and all the other holidays. They'll know what to get you.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Good man. Good man.

Joint Ventures For Agent Ownership

SPEAKER_00 25:38

What are you looking at to the future? Are you um joint ventures? What is kind of the growth? Are you still in growth mode?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, we are. Um we we have two joint ventures uh right now. We have a title joint venture, we have a mortgage joint venture. Uh, we're launching an insurance joint venture in the first quarter. Um, you know, I in all these brokerages, I wish that I could sell shares to the agents. And, you know, there's just unfortunately not enough shares to go around in the franchise system to do that. So it really became um a passion project for all of us in leadership is what could we do that will give people some ownership? And um joint ventures has been a really, really big part of what we do for you know, the the tip of the spear people in our organization that, you know, they they've been doing the right things. Um, they're looking for opportunities, and it's really cool to go and partner with them um and grow something together. So we're really proud of that. Uh in terms of what we look at next, you know, I think this is kind of an acquisition market right now as things have have slowed down a little bit on the transaction side. I think a lot of people are looking around and you know, wondering if if they want to sustain this or you know, wait till the next turnaround in the market, which we hope is not too far away. But there's timing issues, right? And so we're continuing to have conversations with um investment groups and owner operators that you know have a desire. And if it fits in with our our footprint and our model and the things that we want to do. And and most importantly, Mike, it's like, is it a place where we want to go? You know, because when I look at my time and what I enjoy doing, um, I don't want to be in the car all the time. Um, and so I've got to be really motivated to go there. And it's not like I'm the savior of brokerages, I'm not suggesting that, but that that is a really important part of my decision-making process is is this a place that I really would want to go? You know, and and um we're we're blessed with some great locations. There's some other ones that I would probably like to be in, um, but they're all motivated by their places that I enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

That's awesome. You know what I think about it too, and you talked about joint ventures, which I've we could have a whole show on the ones that have failed that I have done. But I have like to your point, what is the lesson? What have I learned? And you know, and one of the things that that we all talked about, Gene Rivers, he's awesome. And one of the things he planted a seed with me I love, he said, Mike, slow down, have a net profit number. So, an example, any business you're gonna do, will it net profit as an just picking a number, a quarter million dollars. If it won't net profit that, then it has to be a no. And that's what you have to think about too, is you have to take the emotions of, I love the location, I love the people, I love all that stuff. Uh, as an example, I had a staging company. I wasn't passionate about it, I wasn't the right fit. And when I really looked at the numbers and the analytics, we were like net profiting like$100 a unit. What was our opportunity cost if you really looked at it? And he's like, Well, there's your answer. And one other thing that I, and I don't know if you use this rule or not, I attempt to do this more and more. Craig Zubers talked about it, Jordan Freed's talked about it. A lot of great coaches out there is the 10-year letter. So writing it to yourself, and I know you talked about your kids. Uh, you know, what does it look like 10 years from now? Maybe they're running the organization, maybe they're not running the organization, but they're doing what they want to do passion. And can our organizations fund what they want to do? So those are things that I'm always thinking about. I know you have a beach place, and I do not want to be on another podcast with you saying, I do not have a beach place. Hopefully, this is happening in Q1 or Q2. I'm finally excited about it. But it's taken a while, but that's part of Cody's tenure letter. She loves her toes in the sand. How do we spend three to four weeks in there? Do you have a process in there? You talked about it's got to be a place that you go. Do you have any other thought process that says, and I know that that's a hard question, but we're starting to get to the ages too. I know your kids are a little bit older than mine right now, where you're going, okay, will they be in the business? And we know other leader friends of ours are going, okay, can that cash pay off things that they can do, right? Yeah.

The 1-3-5-10 Goal Method

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, you mentioned Craig Zuber. I we we had the pleasure of working with him for a while as well. And I found my old 10-year letter, and um, and it was so impactful to go back and read it. Um, and it, you know, although it'd been a while since I had looked it, it'd been a year since I had looked at it. And, you know, the old saying, well, you focus on expands, right? I mean, there's a lot of things that I found that I have accomplished or our family had accomplished. And yet there's a lot of things on that list that I thought were important that just haven't been important, right? So it was a good reminder that you got to go back and revisit that stuff. Um, it's funny. Uh I I said this on another podcast that I was on, and you know, we we talked about moving and moving to Savannah, and our kids wanted to move and all of that. Um I think that's been my son's at SMU right now. Uh my daughter is he's a freshman, and my daughter is a junior, and you know, they they're interested in all the things, right? Uh I think that my son had to go away to Texas to kind of realize how cool Georgia was. Um, so he's he's learning that. Um, but he's also gone off to Texas and been exposed to commercial real estate in ways that I probably wouldn't have been able to deliver for him, right? So he's developing a love of real estate in a different, perhaps a different zip code or vein than I would have been able to give to him. And I'm I'm grateful for that because who knows where that goes. And if he chooses real estate or she chooses real estate, that's great. Um, and if they don't, that's okay too. You know, I think we we have to think with developing leaders inside of our organization. And to be real honest, like that could be your kids, right? Um, you know, John Morgan, our son, is gonna go with us to our ALC retreat in Greenville in a few weeks. We've got Dana Gentry is gonna be a speaker, and Craig Zuber is gonna be one of our speakers. So we'll be doing 10-year letters with everybody. So I think you know, John Morgan will get a chance to do his 10-year letter. Um but yeah, I mean, I I I think so many times I've done exercises um with with our agents around this is what we've always done. We get a planner, right? Um, and you know, we go through a planner uh probably two to three times a year, right? And these are just all the notes that we take from the classes that we attend and whatnot. And and the front of that planner, every time we get a new one, we just take about an hour and just brain dump like what are the things that we want in life? And we don't have any assign any judgment to it. Like if it's, you know, I tell agents like if you wanted a pony when you were a kid and you didn't get one, like put a pony down, you know, what whatever it is that you want, write that down. And then you go back through those and you start assigning a one, a three, a five, or a ten to it. Right. And that's the amount of years you'd allow yourself to achieve that goal. And then once you've assigned the number, then you write down what is that first step? Like, what's the first thing you need to do to get into motion towards achieving that? It might be having a conversation, right, with Mike Dooley, who runs a successful sales organization. I might need to, if I'm gonna sell 300 houses, I might need to talk to Mike about how we do that, right? So sometimes your first step is a conversation, but until you have that clarity around what it actually is, it's just letters on a paper, right? Um what I find we then go through and we add up like, okay, how many ones did you have? How many threes? How many fives, how many tens did you have? And if you got a lot of ones, ones are like survival goals. Like they they might be just that blocking and tackling. Um, you you're just an activator, right? You want to just do things. Um, so that can be a red flag. It can be good, but it can be a red flag that maybe you need to dream a little bit more. Like maybe you need to think more about the end in mind. You know, why are you doing all these things in order to get the thing that you want or the things that you want? If you have threes and fives, a lot of time you don't have clarity on how you get there. So you may be just kidding yourself a three could look just like a five. Heck, a three could be a one, right? Like you may just be overestimating the amount of time it's gonna take you to do that. Um, and so you might need to go a little bit deeper on those threes and fives just to understand what it's gonna take. And then tens, uh, tens are typically people that are dreamers, right? They they may actually need to get into action a little bit more. Um, if you've got a lot of tens, your your head may be in the clouds, right? I I have a tendency sometimes to have my head in the clouds, and when I have way too many tens, I have to bring myself back down into reality. Um and then if you got something that's past 10 years, you the chances are you need to chunk that down, right? You need to probably have a 10 and a 5 and a 3 and a 1 inside of that 10 plus year goal, just so you have a chance at getting it. Um and I'd just like to remind everybody, right? Like selling real estate or selling widgets or whatever it is you're doing, you know, I mean, it it's it's work, it's hard work. And if you can't connect what you do to what you want, you know, what are we doing? Um so kind of bringing this full circle to like how do you select leaders? If I can't help them get what they want or get closer to what they want through this opportunity, then it's just not the right thing for them, right? We don't need to continue down this conversation because we're just wasting our time because you deserve to get what you want, right? Um, so that's just the way that I think about you know my my own life as well as if I'm gonna work with somebody, what I hope they think about what they want, you know, why they're doing what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I was smiling real big uh because you actually just like talk through the whole plan. I promise we didn't set this up, but if you think about 10-year letter, and you know I talk about the beach house, chunking it down, and you mentioned, and that's one of my favorite terms too, is it because it does, it breaks it down for them. What's one thing that I could do right now? And I got my Florida real estate license. And I said, okay, if I'm gonna be there five or six weeks out of the year, how do you do an expansion team? What does it look like? It sounds like your son, you might have a commercial expansion team in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah. Uh yeah, I'm I'm hoping I can get him back over this way. Um, but we'll see. Well, he'll make his own decisions, what he wants to do. But yeah, I mean, I'd love to see you buy something down in St. George Island, Florida. That's that's the spot that we've fallen in love with. And uh, you know, you FSU people, you guys keep us in business on the short-term rentals.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

So oh yeah. Well, fun fact. So your football coach, SMU, his wife, actually went to high school with my wife. Uh so they're actually our Kansas and they're from Northwest Arkansas, which is kind of funny. So small world. I know you probably saw all the rumblings where they were trying to get maybe get him at Arkansas. Um, but SMU must really like him. They extended his contract, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Saw that. Saw that. They've had some, yeah, they can finally start paying their players legally, right? They had years in the 80s where they they did that, uh, perhaps not so legally. Um, but yeah, now they've got lots of oil money for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

Oh, for sure. I I've I've seen the TikToks where they talk about what your parents do, and they're like, oh, they own a hundred horses in Dubai or whatever. I don't know if some of them are fake or not, but I just I die laughing when I see those. As we're wrapping up, if people want to find out more about you or where to find you, what where should they go?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Instagram, uh, Facebook, um, I'm I'm on there. Um really being a lot more intentional about creating some content. Uh Leslie, my wife, is is beating beating my pants off right now. She's really, really putting it out there, especially now that she's master faculty for Keller Williams. Um, but yeah, we're we're both engaged in that. How do we help people and um just share share some of the lessons, things we've learned through the years. So a lot, a lot more to come on that too. Are you in Substack? Do you have a Substack page? No, I'm not. Like, I you're you when you came out with yours, I was like, oh, this is cool. I gotta learn this.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

I they they they should start paying me a dollar every time I say Substack, you know. But I I just I have this dream that Gary V, when he comes to Atlanta, that's gonna be, I know you're excited about that in February. He's gonna talk about Substack and other things. I see him on there. The way I best explain it, it's almost like LinkedIn, but more fun, maybe like Instagram, but you're finding other thought leaders and you can kind of just get it out there. And I said to your point, you know, I just want to keep pushing content uh out there all the time. I I led a regional call for California yesterday. I was with some of them, and I was spending time with them. And I same thing, I asked them who knows Substack or who has one. Not a person really raised their hand in there. So if you think about it too, we want to be thought leaders in our space. And I love that you said this is business, right? There's other widgets, there's other things because it's gonna transpose. I heard someone say that the average house is$66,000 in commissions. But if you look at it, we only talk about the real estate agent. And what you and I have learned, insurance people, you can make 12% annually every single time on that same policy, where you can only sell a house really once unless they're gonna move again, or but if they're gonna refi, they might do that, you know, 3x or 4x, what you would do in the transition of real estate. So that's a huge win. I love that. No doubt. Any last thoughts? Uh, anything we did not cover, we should have covered.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Perhaps the best advice that I I received was one from one of our mentors, uh Bob Klinsky. He said, you just got to decide who you want to be when you grow up. You know, where do you where do you see that thing? You know, where what where is the person that's doing the things that you want to do? Because, you know, what you see, you can achieve. And um, so many times, again, back to this idea of my head's in the clouds, like if you can't figure out a way to chunk that down to get the action items to do it, you're you're probably not gonna achieve it. So you choose your you choose your mentors wisely, you know, and um and I I see agents sometimes say, well, I'd really like to be with this person, or I'd like to be coached by this person. And you know, I'm like, well, why why would you stop? Oh, they'd never coach me. I'll be honest, Mike, like we had to work our way into most of the coaching relationships we've had. You know, whether that was Gene Rivers, whether that was Abe Shreve, whether that was Craig Zuber, you know, uh Diana Kokoska and Tony DeSello, like all of these relationships, they had to start personally before they became business, right? So you gotta decide what do you want? You know, who do you want to be when you grow up? Who's got that? Earn the right to be in a relationship with the people that you need to so that you can achieve the things you want to achieve.

Sponsor Thanks And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 41:04

That's a huge lesson. And I 100% agree. Me too. I had to sometimes claw and fight and battle. I think too, I think that's part of the process, is it is you mentioned it, it's a relationship. I think sometimes people think, oh, I put it out in the atmosphere and this person's gonna reconnect with me. No, they they don't have a relationship with you. They don't know people at a high level, the all the coaches you just mentioned, they want to be able to help someone. They want to have continuity, they want to have fun. A lot of them, as you know, don't need the money. And I think more it's about fun. And it's about are they gonna enjoy their relationship and enjoy growing this person? And I think when you start getting high-level coaches, and we've heard Gary Keller say this too, he also picks his mentors. Some of them he might never talk to in a two-way conversation, but he's listening to them or reading their books, and he's gonna pick categories. Warren Buffy talks about financial, he likes that category, but not other ways. He he looks for other mentors, maybe it's you know, God, religion, family, marriage. He grabs other mentors, and I think that's important, as you just mentioned, having multiple coaches. So well, we've loved, loved having you on the real Mike Dooley. Thank you, thank you so much. We know you got a lot going on. Safe travels. Uh, excited to see you continue to grow and and hug Leslie for us and your whole family. Uh, we're gonna dead on. We always say we're gonna get together, and it never happens. And now she's saying she might not come to family reunion. Unfortunately, our youngest daughter, she only has three cheerleading events a year. And this, like during those four days, is when this cheerleading event is in Oklahoma City. So we'll see what happens. You know, they're all they only last about uh nine seconds, you know, but it's like, okay, well, we gotta we gotta be there, we gotta be involved and do that. So I did want to say too, thank you to our sponsor, Mutual Omaha Mortgage. We truly appreciate you guys sponsoring the show and hanging out with us. But thank you so much. We appreciate it, Andy. Thanks, Mike. Enjoyed it. Take care, y'all. Thanks for listening to the Real Mike Dooley podcast. Subscribe, share, stay real. I'm Mike Dooley. Until next time,