Making Agents Rich Episode 46

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I think all of us were wasting a lot of time there for a while as we have talked about before, this perfect storm of as the real estate market was tanking and the Internet social media was kind of making this big wave. A lot of us went all in on the idea of technology and social media and Internet marketing because it was free or very cheap and we weren't quite sure how to deal with the new market.

Jonathan:	You are listening to the Making Agents Rich Show. This is episode number 46. We're back to the live shows and I've got Darin, not Darin's robot with me. What's up, D?  

Darin:	What's going on, Jonathan? What's going on -- what's it? MARers? MARses? MARists?

Jonathan:	No. I like the R so maybe like Richie Richsters or something like that. I don't know.

Darin:	Ah. Yeah. Okay. We'll work on that. 

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Jonathan:	We got to come up with a name for our clan I guess, right?

Darin:	Uh-hmm. Absolutely.

Jonathan:	So, Darin, before we get into the Numbers Never Lie or anything. We're back to live shows and you've come like shot out of a cannon with some ideas. What are we going to be talking about in just a little bit?

Darin:	We'll be talking about time, Jonathan. Time.

Jonathan:	Our most precious asset?

Darin:	I think so. Let me ask you a question that I heard on the Andy Andrews podcast. Best-selling author. Really enjoy his stuff. He was asked a question and I want to ask it to you. If you could either win the lottery or live twice as long, which would you do?

Jonathan:	Hmm. Well, I would rather win the lottery. Not that I'm a lottery player but I don't want to outlive the people I love. 

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Darin:	Okay. 

Jonathan:	What about you? What would you do?

Darin:	Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question. He said that he would rather live twice as long because he feels like he has this calling and he has to serve and so that he could learn more things and share more things, gain more wisdom and pass on that wisdom if he could live twice as long. And so very understood, very valid.

	But I think I'm with you. I think I would take the lottery because I don't feel the need to live to be 150 or 200 years old. That just doesn't excite me. I'm more about the quality of time, not the quantity of it. 

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You know, in the Persinger family here, in the Persinger clan, which all of us just got together for that cruise recently, our motto is the YOLO stuff. But we have a little add on to it. You only live once but if you do it right, that's all you need.

Jonathan:	I like that. YOLO. I didn't even know what YOLO was until I had to ask Rachel, "What's all this YOLO stuff?"

Darin:	Yeah, right? It's a little cheesy. But that's our add on. If you do it right, that's all you need. Who cares?

Jonathan:	I'm with that, man. You know, it's interesting, and we'll probably talk about it more later but I was listening back because we did a couple of reruns not too long ago. Have you listened to those too?

Darin:	I have not listened to the reruns.

Jonathan:	You don't like listening to your reruns? Anyway, it was good stuff. I don't even remember which shows it was. It was probably 41 and 42 I think. But it's just interesting to see how far we have come from even those days. What was that? Like a year or two years ago where we were recording those other shows?

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	Part of that is this idea of guarding our time, right? So we're going to be talking about that in a little bit. Should we jump into the Numbers Never Lie, Darin?

Darin:	Let's do the Numbers Never Lie.

Jonathan:	So we're switching it up this time. I don't know how you put up with me, Darin. I mean, I don't bring anything to the show and for the first time I'm finally bringing a Numbers Never Lie. But you're usually doing all the heavy lifting. 

Darin:	This is true. This is your first Numbers Never Lie segment. I'm a little nervous for you.

Jonathan:	Oh, you know what? It's actually my second because we did the $23 not too long ago.

Darin:	Oh, that's right. That's right. You're totally right. I apologize.

Jonathan:	So that just goes to show that with a little bit of vacation time, I come back super charged and ready to chip in.

Darin:	Absolutely. You're really bringing it. 

Jonathan:	Right, right. So, all right. So let's jump into what number I have for you today. The number, Darin, is 75,828,198.

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Darin:	It's a big number. I'm going to guess the contract of some football player. 

Jonathan:	Right. Over five years. 

Darin:	Yeah.

Jonathan:	Well, you know, it could seem like that was a number and, yeah, it might match up to that. But actually that 75 million number is the dollar amount worth of listing leads that our Seller Getter community has gotten. As a whole. It's not one agent. But 75 million in listing leads and only since about, what was it? Maybe November that we started? So only like four or five months.

Darin:	Yeah, late November, December. 

Jonathan:	What do you think about that, D?

Darin:	I think, one, since I didn't know, that I probably need to be paying closer attention to our numbers, huh?

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Jonathan:	That's okay. 

Darin:	That's what you're there for. 

Jonathan:	Right. You're being counter.

Darin:	Yeah. I think I've said this before on the show that a lot of times these are kind of our business meetings since we don't have structured business meetings on stuff. So a lot of times, you're getting to hear us figure some stuff out over the podcast, over the radio show here. 

	So, one, I probably need to pay closer attention to numbers. Number two, that gets me excited to start setting goals for the community actually because now I look at that and go, "Okay. I want to get to a hundred as soon as possible." And I think that's something for us to talk about. We need to set up some sort of chart, graph inside Google Docs or we can track that and set goals for the community so that we're working with them on that. Get this to a million as soon as possible, then get it to a quarter million. That's what I get excited about when I hear that number. 

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Jonathan:	Well, you know, what it does for me is I can never really quantify the help I was giving before. You know that. And so when I see this and I see that we've helped our people who obviously they pay us so it's nice to help the people that pay us in a bigger scale. It got me to thinking about just, you know, we talked about in episode 41 about that thinking bigger because I can see the impact that you and I are having on these agents all across the country, the impact we're having on their business. It drives me, it pushes me to even want more. 

	Like you said, you said a hundred but I'm like let's get this thing to 150 mil. Let's just take it all the way up there. I'm already thinking bigger than that because that's how we're going to help people. So it just excites me and that's why I wanted to share it with you guys. 

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Darin:	Yeah. I'll share something with you real quick because one of the original people on Seller Getter, Jim – I am not going to drop his last name since I don't have his permission. But he was sharing with me recently that from those initial postcards, he put two listings under contract that are going to be selling, and it generated another buyer lead from one of those listings. And in total, it's about $20,000 of commission income coming his way. 

Jonathan:	From that first set of postcards or –

Darin:	Yeah. Oh, and another thing as I look at my notes here, he got another seller lead a month after sending the postcard. So that person was hanging on to it for that long. I don't know how many seller leads in total he got but he put two under contract and got another buyer lead, $20,000 of commission income.

Jonathan:	And it makes me think that we are not charging enough for the Seller Getter leads.

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Darin:	I thought that's what you would think but I wanted to share that with you. He shared that with me recently so I wanted to pass that news on to you. 

Jonathan:	Man, this is just a testament to -- even the name of the show, Making Agents Rich. It's not like we're talking about it or doing it. This gets me excited and motivated to do everything that we're doing, Darin. I'm having fun, man. Are you having fun?

Darin:	I'm having fun! I'm excited. 

Jonathan:	That's what counts. All right, so with that, I guess we could jump into the featured segment if you're ready for that. 

Darin:	Yeah. Sure. What are we chatting about again today?

Jonathan:	Well, today, we're talking about being ruthless about your time management. It's something that I have noticed you're incredibly good at and I'm just trying to get better at it. So I'm here to learn from you today, Darin. Tell me how you do it. 

Darin:	How am I ruthless about my time management? I guess share with me your perception of why you think I'm so ruthless about it. What's your perception here so I can get a view of your reality?

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Jonathan:	Okay, well, I think that – well, from what I see of you, I think that you're not one of those people that answers emails as they come in so good for you. Kudos to you for doing that. And you're okay with letting things sit. I like that too. I don't mind letting things sit. See if they work themselves out. 

	I think that you don't waste your time. I don't think you waste your time as much as you used to. I think you've got it down and I think you're tighter now than you used to be. Am I right or am I wrong?

Darin:	Yeah, I'd say definitely I have more clarity about I think in regards to that last one where you said I'm not wasting my time as much as I used to. I think all of us were wasting a lot of time there for a while as we have talked about before, this perfect storm of as the real estate market was tanking and the Internet social media was kind of making this big wave. 

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A lot of us went all in on the idea of technology and social media and Internet marketing because it was free or very cheap and we weren't quite sure how to deal with the new market that we were facing. I just worked out a lot of what really works for me, what doesn't work through tracking and measuring and so, yeah, I was probably much busier four or five years ago than I am now, knowing what works and sticking with that. So that's part of it.

I would say the reason why I'm ruthless with my time management is – I guess let me give you some background here. Before I got into real estate full time, I was working at a water park where we were deep water certified and we had ridiculously dangerous water slides. 

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	The owner of the resort wanted to be very innovative. He even commissioned new innovative slides to be designed that had never been built anywhere before. 

	I was running that water park and it scared the hell out of me actually, Jonathan, because we're basically making these really dangerous things and then saying, "Okay, stick your four-year-old in here."

Jonathan:	Oh, God. That's scary.

Darin:	Yeah, it was so scary. I was dealing with big things like spinal injuries. We're having to pull people out on backboards and sticking them into the back of ambulances. I had to defib someone that was having a heart attack and died and I had to bring him back to life. Dealing with maybe a little bit smaller things like concussions or shoulder dislocations or someone slipping in the bathroom and breaking their arm.

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	I was literally dealing with life and death situations there for a while and so when I got into real estate, I was just like: it's money. It's not someone's life or death. And then, first, when my best friend, Tommy, died, that really puts things into perspective. I wasn't great at time management, being focused. All I wanted to do was either go wakeboarding or snowboarding. I worked as little as possible so maybe that was kind of managing my time but I didn't really give any thought to it. 

	Tommy was in a really bad car accident. He didn't die immediately. He was in a coma for about nine months and hung on for another year or so after. But what I had to do in order to go visit him was my time got trunked down because he got moved from Mississippi up to a hospital in Milwaukee so I was able to go visit him every single night.

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	I would make a two-hour commute down from Reedsburg down to Milwaukee, hang out in Tommy's room for a little while, and make the two-hour commute back. I lost a big chunk of my day and night and so I was forced into efficiency. I was forced into time management. 

	Shortly after that, my 17-year-old nephew was killed in a car accident and all of a sudden time got – I had even more clarity about the importance of time. It's those kind of things that make me go, you know, this isn't a big deal. I'm not going to stress about that. The time with my family is most important. Time with my friends is most important. Time with me relaxing, doing the things that I want to do and not stressing out about all these little details about some stupid little project or task. That's not what I'd care about when I'm lying on my deathbed. 

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Jonathan:	I'm with that. I like that. 

Darin:	I guess that's where – the time management wasn't necessarily a switch that I threw or a book that I read or a system that I learned. It was things that were happening in my life that said time is precious, time is limited. These moments are few. Prioritize what's the most important. That's it. 

	I guess here's the thing. As a last thought, I'll leave with this, with you on this, and then if you have any questions about anything else, but I see people that get so bent out of shape, so dramatic, so over the top about something and they're writing these little diatribes on Facebook or whatever it is. They get so worked up about the littlest thing and I just sit there and I think, "I really hope I am not around you when something serious happens."

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	When some serious shit goes down, how are you going to respond to that if you're flipping out about this little thing?

Jonathan:	Yeah. It might break.

Darin:	Oh, just – it scares me to see people get so worked up about the littlest things. I just have to assume that nothing super tragic has ever happened in their life if they are treating some of the things that they treat with such seriousness. Does that help you clue in to how I view time management?

Jonathan:	Yeah. Don't sweat the small stuff, right?

Darin:	Yeah, there you go. Thank you for summing up my life story. 

Jonathan:	The story of my life.

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Darin:	That's what it is though. You're totally right. Don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff. 

Jonathan:	Yeah. When you start looking at the big picture like the time with your family, your friends, and you don't know how much of that time you have, it really all is small stuff. 

Darin:	Well, I'll give you a story that I was having. This is an actual conversation I was having with my niece, my goddaughter who is 21 years old. We talked about on this last vacation, the last time I saw her was when I flew her and her little sister to visit Katherine and I here in the Seattle area last year in January. So we're talking about it's been a year since we've seen each other. 

	I just go, "Courtney, if this is the pattern that we're on, then I most likely, best case scenario will get to see you 50 more times in my life. I just don't know if I'm okay with that if I only to get to create 50 more memories with you. We have to do something different about this."

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Jonathan:	So what are you doing about it?

Darin:	Well, don't tell her parents but I think my brother listens to this every once in a while. I'm trying to talk her into getting a job out here. She graduates college in a couple of months and I said you can come stay with us so you can put down on your resume that your address is local if you want to start looking for jobs out here. So that's what I'm trying to do.

Jonathan:	Nice. So you've got a plan. That's cool, man.

Darin:	Yeah.

Jonathan:	Cool. Cool. So should we jump into some tips about being ruthless about your time? Some tips to help our listeners maybe reclaim some of that wasted time that they are putting out there sweating the small stuff?

Darin:	Sure. Tip number one, and you've probably heard me use this word before but you got to have clarity. You have to know what it is that you want for your life, for your business, for the world that you live in.

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	You have to know what it is that you want. 

Jonathan:	That's a big one. You don't know what you want. Here's what I don't get about that is how is it that there are so many people in this world that actually do not know what they want? I don't get it. 

Darin:	I think this is the biggest problem with technology is we dive into technology as a break from reality, of a distraction from our own thoughts and feelings. You have to sit there with your own thoughts and your feelings and get that clear picture about what you want. 

	Every morning, I sit in my Manhattan leather club chair and stare out at the woods and just spend time thinking. I review my rules of the way I want to live my life. I have 14 rules for the way I'm going to live my life in 2014.

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	That gives me clarity as I move through the day. If you don't spend time thinking about that stuff, you're bound to give in to every little thing that comes along the way and wants to distract you and throw you off which kind of slides into tip number two then.

	Don't give in to the immediate gratification or the distractions that exist in today's world. You have to think bigger, see further. Look at the big picture of things. Like I did with my niece, we were talking about 50 years out from now. We're talking about me being on my deathbed. It might seem a little depressing but what would really be depressing is if I'm laying on my deathbed and I've only hung out with her 50 more times in my life or even less. That's even more depressing. 

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Jonathan:	Do you have a third tip for us, bundle of joy Darin?

Darin:	Yeah. You know, my objective for this show would be that everyone go hug a loved one after it actually. That would be the biggest thing, right?

Jonathan:	I like that. 

Darin:	Because that's the most important stuff. Third tip, I would say start trying this. Start trying to make your schedule for two weeks out. Some people are living day to day. It's kind of like living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of people are living day to day. They have no idea what they're going to do until they wake up in the morning and then their email tells them what they're going to do, whatever is sitting in their email inbox. 

Start to make your schedule for two weeks out. For example, if you know in order to meet your business goals, your objectives, you need to have three appointments per week, go and block those periods out so that you know where to fill those in.

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For two weeks out from now, go, "Okay, I'm going to have appointments on Tuesday and Thursday night and one for Saturday morning so when I get a buyer lead or seller lead, I'll say, 'Here's my time available.'" Schedule that out for two weeks at a time. Start to see how that works for you just so that you can start to protect your time a little bit better. 

Again, see a little bit further than what you're doing now. Maybe it's day by day or maybe it's just week by week. Two weeks out at least gets you to start thinking a little bit bigger, see a little further out. 

Jonathan:	All right, so to recap the three tips. Tip number one, know what you want and have clarity. Tip number two, don't give in to those immediate distractions and gratifications. A little red indicator on your Google or on your Facebook. Don't be looking at that stuff. Leave it alone. 

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	Tip number three, make your schedule for at least two weeks out. Is that right?

Darin:	That's what I would say. Yeah. Why not?

Jonathan:	All right, so a little bit earlier, we kind of threw in a Numbers Never Lie and teased you a little bit but I just wanted to bring that back to show Making Agents Rich is not just a show but it's the products that actually help you get rich. One of those products is the Seller Getter. You can check that out over at sellergetter.com.

	The way that helps you is simple. If you're looking for a systemized way to get listing leads so that you can get appointments and close more deals, then the Seller Getter has been built and has been tested and is doing that for agents all across the country. You know what, Darin? That 75 million number was a little bit low and I'll tell you why.

Darin:	Why?

Jonathan:	Because we don't have like a Zillow or some sort of way to get values for the properties in Canada. 

Darin:	Oh.

Jonathan:	That 75 million is probably like 100 million really. 

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	Listen, gang, if you want to get seller leads consistently and have all the follow-ups and everything you need to get in front of more sellers, go over to sellergetter.com even if you're not ready to invest. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you can get a free report that outlines the seller getting system you can start using in your business right now. 

	What can we expect for next show, Darin?

Darin:	All right. Next show – I've been getting a lot of emails about this, agents wondering how can I grow my business? How can I increase my sales production? That's what we're going to talk about in the next episode, number 47.

Jonathan:	All right, so this wraps up Making Agents Rich number 46. Thank you, guys, tuning in and we'll see you on the next one when we're talking about how to grow your business when you're already too busy.

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Want to know the secret to being a millionaire real estate agent? Go to makingagentsrich.com now to download a free report on the 15 Habits of Highly Successful Real estate Agents.

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