#450- The Mail-Right: The Leading Career-Killing Mistakes Real Estate Agents Make

#450- The Mail-Right: The Leading Career-Killing Mistakes Real Estate Agents Make

The Leading Career-Killing Mistakes Real Estate Agents Make

Don’t let common career-killing mistakes ruin your real estate journey! Explore crucial insights to help you thrive in the competitive market.

Are you a real estate agent looking to elevate your career? Our latest show reveals the leading mistakes that can jeopardize your success in this fast-paced field. We discuss common traps like inadequate marketing and ineffective networking that many agents fall into. Gain valuable insights on how to avoid these errors and boost your business potential.

#1 – Zero Lead Generalization Strategy

#2 – No Video Marketing Strategy

#3 – Relying on One Type of Lead Generation Funnel Supply Technique

#4 – Not Finding Your Niche

#5 – Zero Digital or Social Media Marketing Strategy

#6 – Working With The Wrong Type of Broker Partner

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:07.050] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We are working on episode number 450. John and I will talk about the leading career-killing mistakes real estate agents make.

[00:00:24.630] – Jonathan Denwood

I find this. That just rode off your ton.

[00:00:32.510] – Robert Newman

It’s funny because we all have that chance to take off-ramps. Somebody very central to one of my mentors told me a long time ago, it’s like, listen, you can do eight things. If you have ten things you should be doing for a career, it’s usually great professionals do eight of those things. But they’re great professionals and do one or two primary tasks well. They get good at one or two of the ten things they should be doing. I found that to be true. With him and me, it was two different things. I was diligent about cold calling, and I became a top 10 person, and he was diligent about building relationships. Now, there were about eight other things that were important in that career, and he and I were both shitty at them. Anyway, I am interested in seeing your take on this. John, before I randomly go off here, let me ask you to do us all a favor and introduce yourself. Still, when presenting yourself, why don’t you share a mistake that you made early on in one of your many iterations, like something that you did that caused a big problem in one of your businesses?

[00:01:58.730] – Robert Newman

And so everybody knows John is a serial entrepreneur, not digitally. So there everybody’s clear. But he’s owned businesses before in England and here and runs businesses. Own is not quite the correct language.

[00:02:14.040] – Jonathan Denwood

I find four businesses.

[00:02:18.150] – Robert Newman

It certainly qualifies you to say what was a big fumble for one of those businesses that might have jeopardized the business. Take it away, John.

[00:02:31.690] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. First of all, I want to say you were missed last week. I forgot my co-host, but I had a good chat with Danny, the agent for Arizona. Okay. So, if you have yet to listen to that episode, my beloved audience, you want to go and have butchers of that. Mistakes. You put me on the spot, as you always do, Rob. Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes I want to tell the audience. There have been so many. I think, yeah, I got burnt out, and I got… I didn’t realize it was coming from me. I was doing ridiculous hours, and I had, for some time, had to give up on coding because I had a mental, not a breakdown; it wasn’t that total breakdown, but I just got totally burnt out, and I just had to leave it for over a year. And then I decided to take a pay cut and only do a couple of projects and farm all the rest out. And it’s been that way for about six or seven years because I was huge into JavaScript. It’s a programming language, folks.

[00:04:05.330] – Jonathan Denwood

I was taking on some significant projects in the early days, and I just got totally burnt out. I couldn’t even look at a keyboard for some time.

[00:04:18.280] – Robert Newman

What’s the lesson, though? That’s a mistake. Was the mistake taking on too much work? Was Yeah, it was overdoing it.

[00:04:24.570] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t know. It’s a difficult one, folks. Most people give up too early, but there’s also you can end up just flogging a dead horse. And it’s a difficult one, but you’ve got to have some people who can be totally honest with you. And you have to understand that you’re giving it your best shot, but it’s time to call it a day. You’re just flogging a dead horse.

 

[00:04:56.450] – Robert Newman

I think it’s important that everybody understands that John and I are not claiming to be agents. I think that you all should understand that what we are claiming to be is two guys that have run more than one relatively successful small business. They’ve stayed in business, and sometimes for small business, that is as much as you can ask for it. John and I have both done that. We’re taking some subjects and we’ve done some research. Honestly, many of Many of the things that are on our list are things that would screw up any business owner. Number one on my list that isn’t even on this list is one of the leading mistakes that real estate agents make is they don’t treat their career like it’s their own business. It’s not really on the list. But ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, the fastest way to put yourself out of being a career salesperson in real estate is not realizing that career salespeople who work mostly on commission are always running their own businesses. Always. I’ve done that my entire life since I was 17. The minute I started to understand that my income was 100% up to me and that it was my business, my life changed a lot.

 

[00:06:14.900] – Robert Newman

It was a major deal for me to take responsibility for my performance and to say, This is my business. I’m just contracting my business out to other businesses, and that’s that. John, number one on the The list that you put here, which I appreciate, zero lead generalization strategy. Generalization.

 

[00:06:37.610] – Jonathan Denwood

It should be generalization. Sorry, I misspelled that.

 

[00:06:42.950] – Robert Newman

We should not be allowed to list subjects makes it neither you nor I can pronounce.

 

[00:06:49.340] – Jonathan Denwood

What do I mean by this? I want to see if you think you agree with this. I think obviously there’s a group of agents where a A certain level of income is all they’re looking for. There’s another group of agents that can start getting a certain level of traction through their network of relatives, friends, people in the community that they know, and they can start to get the ball rolling as a real estate agent through those connections, and that’s fine. And it’s similar to other forms of commission-only selling. It’s great and dandy, but there’s a certain point where those connections can be exhausted, that you’ve used up all the initial lead generative possibilities, and there’s nothing to move the game on to the next level. You’re not doing anything that will move the game forward. Is that making sense, Rob?

 

[00:08:03.780] – Robert Newman

It is, and it does, and it’s true. Zero lead generalization strategy. Okay, so that means that you don’t have a lead strategy outside of sphere of influence. Is that what you were putting down here?

 

[00:08:24.380] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes. Okay. And no strategy. There are strategies out there, as you know, that are about building out that sphere, that one-to-one sphere. But I’m talking about people that haven’t even got a strategy to widen the one-to-one sphere.

 

[00:08:48.110] – Robert Newman

Got you. Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. Basically, nobody is taking the time. The way that I perceive this, there is One of the great joys of my career is I’ve taught thousands of people how to sell. You start pretty small, usually in my worlds, because I came from call centers. So what you’re starting with is how to read a script. You’re just like, that’s the basic, right? But then you get into objections, rebuttals, then attitude, mindset. And eventually, a few years later, you’ve got a professional salesperson that you’ve trained from the ground up. But you start with the script, a single microcosm of all the other things that come from selling something. And then if you’re really, really lucky, eventually you get to a point where you don’t need scripts anymore. But the first step is to, I agree with you, 100% is to say, Hey, you need some strategy. I would say, in my opinion, is understand that you can love houses, you can knock on the doors of houses, you can own the house. But until you understand that sales is a huge part of real estate, you’re a million miles behind the eight ball.

 

[00:10:09.850] – Robert Newman

Sales and marketing are part of a real estate career, which means that you’re going to have to learn a lot about both in order to be successful. That’s how I’m recognizing your comment here. A lot of agents don’t have training. I’ve never even picked up a book, never even read a sales book. I I’ll be with number one here. Obviously, even the most successful of those agents, when you hit a down market, which we’re in right now, we have had so many years of tailwind, and now I’m getting so many calls where people are just like, Oh, wow, it’s slow, and what do I do? And well, I hate to say it, but when things are really good, smart marketers and salespeople set aside money, time, and energy to consider how they’re going to keep things going when things slow down. Number two, John. Number one, Mistake. Leading career killing mistakes real estate agents make. No video marketing strategy. Why is that so important?

 

[00:11:26.290] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, we’re going on last two to probably more than two years. Periodically, we’ve hammered away. I was talking to Danny last week, and he hasn’t really got any digital marketing. He just calls particular people that have removed their property from the market. And that’s who he targets, and he’s very effective at it. But I think you got to… I honestly feel this, Robert. Those that are going to be really successful in real estate are those that combine traditional marketing techniques of building personal networks in their community that can also combine that with digital digital marketing. And I’ve noticed that there’s not many real estate agents that can combine the one-to-one traditional sales, building personal network mythologies and then combine them with digital marketing strategies. But I think in the coming years, the only ones that are going to be really successful are the ones that can combine both together. And one of the key elements of that digital marketing strategy has to be video.

 

[00:13:13.090] – Robert Newman

Well, we’ve talked about this so much on the show, and for those of you listening today, go ahead and look. We might as well… We’ve talked about it so much, we should change the name of the show from Mailright to the Real Estate Video Marketing Podcast. We’ve talked about it that much. It’s rare that it comes up on a podcast. It doesn’t come up on a podcast. But I’m going to explain this another way, John. I’m going to do a video series on my own channels, and I started to do the research because You could spend about, let’s call it 200 hours understanding video, 200 hours, which sounds like so much time. And honestly, 200 hours is one month of cold calling at 40 hours a week or three months if you’re going to do 10 hours a week or something like that. It sounds like so much time. But when you start to look at the rest of the efficiencies around video, you will end up saving 75% of the hours that you spent cold calling by producing video. 75%, that would be thousands of hours. There’s just In terms of efficiency, there isn’t anything like doing video, like in putting it on YouTube and getting it promoted.

 

[00:14:39.490] – Robert Newman

There’s just nothing like it. The reach that these tools give you, no matter what the investment of your time is, is so dramatic and so extensive, there’s no way that a real estate agent, new or old, should not be leveraging that marketing reach to propel propel their career, or at a minimum, propel their branding message at a minimum. And by propelling your career, it’s getting out there and positioning yourself as an expert in something and then really capitalizing on the lead flow that comes through from doing that and taking a lot of pride and understanding what it is that you’re about and making sure that other people know what you’re about. So video marketing strategy is a major career-killing mistake right now, I think. I agree with that. I agree with that. Number three, relying on one type of lead generation funnel supply techniques I think the addition of funnel and supply is a little interesting in the subject. But let’s just say relying on one type of lead generation technique. Unless you specifically meant a funnel.

 

[00:16:01.750] – Jonathan Denwood

No, but I just see it that way. I touched it when we were talking about video. You see a lot of agents that have one power skill, one mythology in lead generation. That might be calling expires, cold calling on the phone Zoom, door knocking, Facebook Adverts, Google Local Adverts, video. I don’t really care what it is, but you get a lot of agents that have one core methodology that generates almost 90% of their leads. And I think it’s dangerous. I think it’s extremely understandable, but it’s extremely dangerous relying on one methodology for generating almost 90% of your leads.

 

[00:17:10.700] – Robert Newman

To be fair to most agents, most agents have two. But I would say 95% of agents have two streams. Here’s what they are. Everybody, here you go. The two streams are your sphere of influence, which we’ve already talked about. Then all of you usually feel pretty good if you hire another or take a stab at another lead generation technique, or at least you think you are. A lot of agents buy a website and think, It’s a lead generation tool because they’re sold that, whatever. I’ve got videos up to just saying about the proliferation of this information, some of which, unfortunately, is actually put out there by the companies making these products. But it isn’t… Most likely, you’re not going to have a very strong lead generation strategy unless you’ve really focused a lot on it, spent a lot of time with it. And by the time you’ve done that, that number two strategy, whether that’s a website or buying leads from Zillow, because Sphere and Zillow are two separate lead sources, and everybody’s like, Oh, my God, I have two separate lead sources. Except, obviously, sphere is really only prevalent for people who are working their sphere like it’s a career.

 

[00:18:27.240] – Robert Newman

And many of you are not. Just be honest, you’re You’re not calling up the hundred people that you know the best on a regular rotation, reminding everybody in the flow of conversation that you’re a real estate agent. And even those people that are doing that, which are very rare, they are seeing a massive slow down. Usually, you’ve got to have another lead source in place. Zillow would be good. But really, John, when you’re looking at lead sources, it’s like, Video is a channel for us, or Website’s a channel for us, the podcast is a channel for us, and I feel, and local is a channel for us. I feel pretty shitty about my lead generation. Email is a channel for us. That’s five. I’m not feeling great about it because I think I should be focused on… So I’m doing a test on video marketing. You always, as a business, want more leads than you can handle. Do you agree or disagree, John?

 

[00:19:25.590] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, that is the place you want to be. I’m nowhere near that, unfortunately. It’s oscillating, but hopefully, I have some plans for 205 to help with that.

 

[00:19:43.620] – Robert Newman

Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re not there, you just want to keep aiming at it. You’ll know if you’re ever there. Trust me, you’ll know. If you do get there, that’s the time that the business itself requires you to expand. That’s the whole idea of building Sometimes when you do something so well, the business itself points at you and goes, You have to do something different because you can’t handle what’s happening right now. That’s an interesting time when the business starts to dictate to you that you have to grow. I agree with number three entirely. I think that some business courses that I spec out, I’ve never finished college, but I’ve actually spoken at colleges before about the subjects of marketing and sales. I believe that one of those courses used to say that you have to have five to seven ways of generating business for your business, five to seven different channels. So if everybody’s wondering what you should be targeting, I’m going to say 3-7 or 3-5 ways of doing lead generation. Now, keep in mind that if you have an email campaign, that’s way number one. A video strategy, that’s way number two.

 

[00:20:57.410] – Robert Newman

There’s a lot of ways to have a lot of different long Lines in the water, a really good website with deep content. To finally use John’s language, Funnel, a direction that you can send people down a rabbit hole that ends with call me. That’s a funnel, a very bad one, but a funnel. All right, number 4.

 

[00:21:18.980] – Jonathan Denwood

Shall we go for our break first?

 

[00:21:21.740] – Robert Newman

No. Yes. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be right back. Stay tuned. Sorry about that, John.

 

[00:21:29.300] – Jonathan Denwood

Sorry.

 

[00:21:30.180] – Robert Newman

Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Jonathan Denwood, master of the learning machine systems, WordPress, and now real estate CRM systems worlds, and I, Robert Newman, real estate SEO guy, guru, are bringing to you our take on lead Leading Career Killing Mistakes That Real Estate Agents Make. For us, this is episode number 450. We would be pleased if you listened to one episode, but we’ve done 450. All right, John, we were just going to break, and when we did, I was about ready to say not finding your niche. Why don’t you jump out of that?

 

[00:22:24.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think of all that it’s one of the most important points in this discussion. Because in my own business, finding the right niche has made a big difference with my other business. I think with the Mailright system, it’s a good platform, but I think I need to polish the language. We have made progress in ’24, thank God, but it took a long while for me to really understand who my target audience in the industry was much longer than it should. But I didn’t know actually doing these podcasts and working with you on the podcast has helped with that. Obviously, if I had that knowledge beforehand, but I didn’t. But my other business, the more I aim it at a niche, that really understanding the clients, why they chose my other business, what they find attractive about it. And I think everything I’ve just said will apply if you’re a real estate agent. Obviously, if you’re starting your career the first couple of years, you literally have to take whatever comes your way normally. But the sooner that you get to a level where you can work out what your niche is in the local market and really aim at that niche, you will find things come together much easier and much quicker.

 

[00:24:11.570] – Jonathan Denwood

We’ve discussed this video quite a lot, haven’t we, Robert?

 

[00:24:16.360] – Robert Newman

Yeah, we have. So not finding somebody… Continuing to be a generalist. I got off the phone yesterday with a generalist of 20 years, a generalist. I definitely agree with you. A leading career killing mistake is, okay, John and I, really, so let’s really get specific. Beggers cannot be choosers. If you’re cold calling, door knocking, and sitting in rooms, and just praying for a single client. Yeah, you don’t want to specialize. You just want to be looking at all of your interactions with clients and looking for opportunities for things that you enjoy, about the transaction, about the person, about the client type. Do you like working Do you like working with divorce people? Do you like working with single people? Do you like working with probates? Was there something about the scenario? When I say like, was there just like maybe you found yourself in an extraordinarily hard situation, but when you finally managed to solve some problems for the customer, you felt really good about that. It’s not like you loved everything about probate or about somebody that came to you when their parents died and they needed to do something with the family properly authority.

 

[00:25:30.700] – Robert Newman

Obviously, there are things about that that would be tough. However, what I suggest, what John and I have always said is, listen, be looking for that thing that you love more than another. John is an amazing example, and I’m not such a bad one either. I never wanted to specialize in real estate, ever. I don’t know what John’s opinion was about it, but he targeted learning management systems, then he targeted real estate systems, and he learned as he went along. Now he’s actually an expert that has paid the price and understands the niche, understands who he’s talking to. And me too. I didn’t get into this 16 years ago going, Oh, my God, I want to serve real estate agents. As a matter of fact, the first two years I spent on the phone with real estate agents. I was like, Why would I ever want to do this full-time? Here I am, 16 years later, I got good at it. I got really good at it. I started to understand my audience, and with that came empathy, and with the empathy came the desire to serve them more. Here we are. Real estate SEO and real estate agents is what I focused my last 16 years of my working career on.

 

[00:26:42.500] – Robert Newman

I’ve done a lot of other things. I have. I’ve done e-commerce, I’ve done James Suckling’s website, I’ve done a thousand other things, but I focus a lot of my energy on real estate, and so does John. We’re saying that because in this, I love us as podcasters, John, because in this, you and I have both walked our talk. We are leading by example, both of us. I feel like we are very qualified to talk to everybody who’s listening to the show about finding a niche. I really do. We’ve both paid prices, we’ve both sacrificed, and it has paid off for both of us to some degree. Number 5, zero digital marketing or social media marketing strategy. I think that’s fairly self explanatory, but give us a couple of examples about what you… What is that? What’s the strategy?

 

[00:27:38.600] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s linked in your niche, and it’s linked to video, and it’s linked to supply and leads that go to your website. I think with social media, I think if you’re publishing to various social media networks, I think that’s fine. And at Melright, we’ve got a part of the Melright system allows you to do that. But there is only going to be one or two of those social media platforms that really gel with you. And I can’t tell you which one those are, because certain platforms gel with certain types of people, and other people they don’t gel with. But one of the key things, I think one of the key things is people totally misunderstand the volume of posting that you’re going to have to do to get a result. And I’ve been doing tons of work on YouTube, posting a lot of video. I’ve been doing a lot of work on LinkedIn. This is with my other business. Been doing Doing a ton of work on LinkedIn, doing a ton of work on YouTube, and I do a fair bit on Twitter. I don’t particularly… I’m okay in using Twitter. I don’t use it a lot for conversation because part of me despises the platform because I think it encourages some of the worst aspects of social media.

 

[00:29:28.980] – Jonathan Denwood

And my My partner, Adam, he’s really big into Instagram and Facebook. I do post a little bit on Facebook, but really, that’s more personal stuff. But there are really more concentration at the present moment has been LinkedIn and YouTube. But I also post to the others. But most of the lead generation is coming through LinkedIn and through YouTube. But you do have to post a lot more than you think. Just posting once a day, you probably won’t. And definitely, if you’re just posting once a week, you’re not going to get much from it.

 

[00:30:16.860] – Robert Newman

Yeah, I agree. I’m doing some YouTube advertising, and it bleeds on my Facebook page, but I have an old post there, and I doubt there’s… I really don’t get any conversion off social. But then again, I don’t really use social the way that other people are. I get all my conversion off Google, but I am a Google guy. And of all that conversion, my conversion breaks out to like 80% YouTube, 5 or 10% local. I get a lot of calls off my local profile. Well, not a lot. I get some calls off my profile. And then a handful that never even seen my route, like 5%, never even seen my YouTube channel. They just go to my website, which happens, and then another 5% on email. That’s the way that our lead generation at InboundRAM breaks out. All right, so last up on our list, and I don’t have much to say about that. I’ve said it so I’ve heard it so many times. It’s like, yes, social can be important. It’s a language that people speak. Understand if it’s the language that you want to speak and choose your channels or choose… And I’ve chosen Google.

 

[00:31:28.160] – Robert Newman

All right, at least right now, working with the wrong type of broker partner. That’s an interesting one.

 

[00:31:34.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think there’s too much emphasis on the split for understandable reasons. I think if you’re a top producer with your own lead generation funnels that have been proven, and you’ve done all the things that we’ve discussed in this episode, the split is going to be the really driving part. If you’re not You’ve got any plans to become a broker yourself, and for legal reasons, you need a broker, the split. We’ve talked about some of the virtual brokerages. Now, for The bulk of agents, the other 90%, I think obviously you’re there to make money. But just the split, I think you’re making a mistake there. I think the culture culture of the brokerage, do you gel with the principle of the brokerage? Do you buy into her or he’s vision? Are they doing anything to help you? In lead generation? Do you fit in to their marketing strategies? Are they marketing really well? These are the things that you should be thinking about. And a lot of agents, they just concentrate on the split.

 

[00:33:08.340] – Robert Newman

I agree with you, and I’m going to put this into language that I understand. Thirty years in sales has taught me two important things. For a very long time, John, I worked for other people, and I used to resent myself for it because I am somewhat of an entrepreneur. But as I was working for other people, I realized something important. I was learning something in those environments. There was a lot that the people I chose to work with for any length of time had to teach me. The people that didn’t have to teach me much, I never worked there for very long. Towards the end of my call center career, when I started to be the person telling Sprint and MCI how they should run their call centers and knowing more about the subject than they did, I was like, Yeah, I think I’m at the top of my career, and I was actually a little bit bored. I got into digital marketing and had to learn all over again. I started age and image. But here’s the thing. When you hit the point that the environment or the people that you’re working with have nothing left to teach you, it’s either time to go out on your own if you want to keep your career progressing, or it’s time to change the relationship with the businesses that you’ve been working with because they are no longer providing value to you.

 

[00:34:36.180] – Robert Newman

Okay, that’s it. Businesses treat individuals like commodities, but as an individual gets very, very skilled, they can turn around and treat the businesses like commodities, too. If you are really good at something that you do, you actually oftentimes do command a certain market respect. If you can always Please go out and talk. If you get put inside somebody’s home and you walk out with a listing every time, even if that person is only vaguely interested in listing their home, obviously, every broker in the city would want to do business with you. But if you’re so good at doing that, why are you doing business with a broker at all? Just do it for yourself. Establish your own brand name, teach your own salespeople your tricks of the trade, build up a business on your own where you take the percentages and not not brokers. So I agree with this 100 %. However, the opposite is true, everybody. If you are new into a career and you don’t know how to sell, you don’t know how to prospect, you don’t know how to do social, you don’t know how to Do anything in real estate, you just think that you have the gift of gab and you think you might be good at sales, and you chose real estate because you heard there was a lot of money.

 

[00:35:53.000] – Robert Newman

All right, you need a strong partner that teaches and trains you all the basics. How loyal you are to that partner once they’ve trained the basics to you is up to you. That’s a personal choice. Choosing that partner can be incredibly relevant. Some partners, like some of the eXPs and reels out there, are attempting to do multi-level marketing stuff. If you do do that, then you might want to pick Ricky Karruth or Kyle Handy people, people that get on the phone with you and actually train you person to person or through webinars or through digital methods, and they really hold your hand. If you find somebody that you feel is really comfortable as a digital mentor to you, then perhaps one of those scenarios would work. But perhaps you’re more of an in-person person, and that’s fine because Keller Williams and other people like that have massive written in-person training in showrooms, and you can go sit at a desk, and you’ve got the discipline of walking out the door, you don’t have to work from home. I couldn’t agree with this more. Working with the wrong type of broken or partner, I think is probably in my opinion, John, I think of everything on this list, it’s one of the number one way that you’re going to kill your career?

 

[00:37:18.180] – Robert Newman

I do. Because if you pick somebody who, let’s just say you work better on your own, like I do, but you are forced to go into the office, you’re You’re forced to work with people. You’re forced to follow that broker’s methodologies, and it doesn’t work with you at all as a person. Are you ever really going to get your career off the ground? No, probably not. The second that you do, you’re probably going to bail on your broker partner.

 

[00:37:44.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Can I say something to follow through? Of course. I agree with most of what you say. The only point I slightly disagree with you is that there are a group of agents that are very good at what they do, but they don’t to become a brokerage. Because being a principal or brokerage is a lot of hard work. When you’re managing groups of people, Some of them might be direct employees or their subcontractors. These people’s problems become your problems.

 

[00:38:22.670] – Robert Newman

Sure.

 

[00:38:23.650] – Jonathan Denwood

And a lot of people can be very effective, but they just don’t want the baggage that comes with running a brokerage because they see the toe it is upon those that run brokerages. Because a lot of people Yeah, I was going to say some other stuff, but I think that’s the real point I want to make.

 

[00:38:53.260] – Robert Newman

I think that one of those things about everything on this list that we didn’t, that there is no mention of. I think that’s important to have that conversation. You need to understand how much and how hard you want to work on your primary career. I made a decision a long time ago because I’ve spent too many hundred hour weeks working for other people, that I wasn’t going to do that with Inbound Riem. And I don’t. I work about 30 to 35 hours a week, and that’s about what I want to work. And that includes sales calls. And you know what? I like some of the time I waste that extra time, and some of that time I do really incredible things with it, help other alcoholics travel the world. The list goes on. But I open the door to those experiences for myself. And I think that’s part of that conversation around number six and what you just said. If you’re going to progress or you want to hit a different goal than me, retire, let’s say, early, cut your ties with real estate, sell your business. I can go on and on. Every single one of those decisions require that you keep moving up the escalator, that you keep growing your business until you can get off the escalator at a point that that satisfies your needs as a human being.

 

[00:40:15.070] – Robert Newman

That’s part of whether you’re going to do the broker thing or not. I just said, Listen, I think that there’s just… Business is not illogical. It’s logical. It’s just you can take it to a certain place or you cannot. Everything Everything that you don’t have is just a set of skills that you haven’t acquired yet. The first thing you need is just the mindset that you can do anything you want. I love that about you, John, because you set your mind, you target something, and you just go do it because you know, I think, that getting lost in the debate about what you should and shouldn’t do is a waste of time. Just go do it. Make the mistakes, do it, and then you’ll learn it, and then you’ll know. Do you agree or disagree?

 

[00:41:03.770] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I’m a bit of a slow learner, but I’m a plodder. I used to bother me, but it doesn’t now. I just plod along. As long as you can keep your costs, control your costs, so you got the time to learn, to adjust, that’s fine. The only thing, because of my age, I’m now 61, But it’s in God’s hands. I can’t retire. But on the other hand, even if I could, I would be bored out of my skin. So as long as I can work the hours I want and then do the things that I want to do, I’m a pretty happy, but I’m not an unhappy person, and I’m not that unhappy. I’ve had a couple of really good years financially and everything’s fine. It’s moving in the right direction. As long as you have your health and you’re not losing your marbles, everything’s fine. Yeah.

 

[00:42:13.900] – Robert Newman

I love that for you. And honestly, I love that for me, too. And your attitude about it is roughly the same as mine. It’s not so much… Somebody said something that I was watching, and it hit me the right way, which I’ve often said: I don’t live to work; I work to live. But you know what? These little pithy sayings that we say don’t encompass something. You need a purpose, you need to get up, and you need to do something. The question is, how much time do you spend doing it? Guys like Elon Musk are all about what they’re doing: the mission.

[00:42:53.820] – Jonathan Denwood

Okay, that’s great. Well, I think, to finish off, the mission. I think I have seen people in Silicon Valley, and I have some people who’re not close friends, but some are very wealthy. I’ve got their mobile numbers, and they usually take the call when I call them. But they’re not close, close friends. I’m not going to kid you or the listeners. But then I think they would say I’m a friend, not a close friend, right? And they’re fine, but they’ve introduced me to people. Making money is a good thing; at a certain level, it gives you a degree of freedom, right? But past that certain threshold, I think it becomes an addiction. I think it can become an addiction, like gambling, drinking, drugs, whatever the addiction is. The need to generate money becomes a need to feel devoid.

[00:44:09.290] – Robert Newman

I agree. That, in some ways, and For those listening to the show, it’s more of an epidemic in real estate than most other industries. Real estate is one of those exciting careers where if you wanted to, if you even had just a couple of listings, you could spend all your time working. You could be over your house, you could manicure the lawn for them, you could wash their windows. There’s no limit to how far you can go if you want to work. But I don’t know. We’ll leave it up to you to decide how vital your mission is rather than how strong John and I think your mission should be. I will just say that the last thing on working with the wrong type of broker partner is important, especially if you’re in the part-time bucket like John.

[00:45:07.110] – Jonathan Denwood

I couldn’t work for a broker that I despised, didn’t fit into their culture, and didn’t think that they aligned with their marketing messages just because I was earning 2-5% better split.

[00:45:25.910] – Robert Newman

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. With AI and everything else that’s happening right now, guys, training and being able to disseminate all the information on the internet into your inbox is getting easier and easier. You have to learn, watch, review, and then do it. All right. We have given you 10 or 15 extra minutes of complete and utter tangential nonsense. We hope you enjoyed it.

[00:45:58.480] – Jonathan Denwood

He’s going to. You should not blame me for that. Do you realize that? No, that was mine.

[00:46:03.240] – Robert Newman

That was mine. That was mine. All right, John, if you would like people to learn more about you or talk to you about… Have a casual conversation about lead generation or anything else, maybe your journey; how would you like them to reach out to you?

[00:46:20.990] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ll go to the mail-right-mail-right. Could you look at what we got offered on the Com website, book a call with me, and chat? I would love to tell you about Mailright, and then I will leave it. There won’t be any hard sell. It’s just very informal, and that would be great. Back over to you, Robert.

[00:46:42.990] – Robert Newman

So, ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a weird, challenging year in real estate, which means it’s been a weird and challenging year to be a real estate marketing company owner. And that will help you. I am still taking calls personally, and I usually do so with the contact forms on my website, which is inboundrem. Com. So if, for some reason, you wanted to talk to me about anything, that’s another thing. When it was busy, I was already on the phone 8-10 hours a day and was turning away many appointment requests. It is not so busy right now. If somebody wants to talk with me about something, you could do so by emailing me at robert@inboundrem.com or going to inboundrem. Com, looking at my services page and filling out the contact form. All right, that’s it, everybody. I appreciate your time. Today’s show has been recorded in October of 2024. If you watch this show in 2025, the industry will probably have changed, and I may not be… You can’t get me on the phone anymore. All right. Everybody has a good one, John.

[00:47:49.910] – Robert Newman

Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Well, I’ll catch you next time.

 

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