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If you keep thinking and acting like the average agent, you're going to stay stuck like one. On this episode, I'm going to teach you how to make the CEO shift. Go from thinking like an average agent who burned out and stressed out with, you know, business that goes up, business that goes down, and switch to a business owner with scale and leverage and, you know, the ability to create and generate sales without you personally being involved. It takes a mindset shift. You have to make different decisions. I'm going to break down exactly how to make that shift for yourself right now. Let's go. The Massive Agent podcast with lead generation tips and strategies to get you more leads and sell more homes. I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses. It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Wait a minute. The leads are weak. You're weak. I've had better. Better. Oh, have I got your attention now? Here's your host, Dustin Brome. What is up? Welcome to episode 377 of the Massive Agent podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Today we're talking about the CEO shift. How to stop thinking like every agent and start thinking like an actual business owner. All right, so today we're going to break down the mindset shift that you have to have to move from a solo agent to a business owner as far as the decisions you make and the way that you think, because it starts there, right? You. If you don't think a certain way, you're just going to keep making the same decisions that get you where you are now, which is really no further ahead. Maybe you've sold some more homes, but you're no further ahead as far as like an exit strategy or, you know, pulling, pulling back. Being able to like, hand some of the business off to someone else or two systems and processes or both. You. I'm going to teach you how to, how to stop thinking about doing everything yourself and start thinking, who can do this instead. That shift right there is everything, but it takes practice and I'll give you some tips for that. Now, before we get started, I've had. I've had a bunch of people reach out since the last episode about the Platinum Plass. Platinum Pass? Yeah, not the plass. The Platinum Pass. Which is. I took every single coaching program, every course, every resource, every training, every. Every like, cheat sheet that I've ever created over the last seven or eight years. I put it all in one place. One login, one membership and just one payment. Access for life. No need to pay on a monthly basis. Just get literally everything I've ever created all in one program. If you ask nicely, if you send me a message and ask nicely, we still have a few spots that I could open up for you. If you still want to take advantage of the Platinum Pass to get the information about it, you can just go over to massiveagentsociety.com Platinum and see what all is included there. Just one of the programs that we offer in there. So it was it a two month thing? It was a two month over. Over two Months we did the clients from social training. Now of course you can log in and watch everything all this weekend if you want, but if you were doing it live, it would have been two months. So after 45 days, one of our members, Nikki in Iowa, said she had nine deals under contract just by implementing what we were teaching her, especially the how to get, how to get free leads from Google training, which is in there. Just incredible stuff. So massiveagentsociety.com Platinum it that's, that's the jump start. That's the easy button. Every training and course I've ever done put into one place and everything I do in the future, I'm going to put it in there as well and you'll be a member for life. So go check that out if you still want it. I still have a few spots available for those who are really serious about taking, taking control. Speaking of taking control, let's do that. If you don't get your thinking under control, you cannot make the right decisions to then start getting the right results. And being a business owner, I don't think any of us want to continually be on this hamster wheel year after year after year where you're just showing homes, you're writing offers, you're getting it under contract, you close, oh, start over again, you know, get a client, write offers, open doors, get it under contract, negotiate inspection, close it, do it again. And same thing on the listing site. If it's just constant, you have, you don't have a business, you have, you have a potentially high paying job, which is great, and you have some flexibility to set your own schedule, which for most of us is better than, you know, being an employee at Walgreens or something, or Chase Bank. But you're not a business owner if you can't step away from the business for a few weeks or a month at a time and still have everything functioning and still have sales happen and still have offers made and client service. You don't have a business, you have a job. So we've got to take all that stuff off of your plate and put it on the plate of others, other people with systems and processes so that it all happens automatically and then you can scale the hell out of it. So to start the mindset shift required every time, you got to be conscious with this, like this is something that's going to take time because most of us, we're so used to just doing everything ourselves, like, oh, this has to be done, I'm going to do it. Because you're an action Taker and you jump on it, you get it done. That's a great quality to have, but it's also one that will keep you stuck forever if you can't learn to let go and to push and to have other people do some stuff. So right now, today, if you're working on something and then the thing you're going to work on next, and then the thing you're going to work on after that, ask yourself, do I personally need to do this? Is this something that I must do? Or is it something I could have somebody else do? I'm not saying that you must hire it out today, but you need to start thinking about it that way. Is this something I have to do? Should I be spending my time doing this? Or does it make more sense to hire someone or to outsource this to someone else who's better at it, and they can focus on it because that's their sole job. Do you need to do it yourself, or can someone else do it on your behalf? And even start asking, does this have to be done at all? There's a lot of crap we do as agents that is just busy work. We're spinning our wheels. It doesn't really do anything for us. So even question, should it be done in the first place? If so, by who? That will start you exercising your thinking to, you know, to thinking like a CEO. So a business owner versus a solo agent. A solo agent who's doing everything, wearing all the hats, which is fine to start there, we all start there, totally fine. But if you want more, if you want a life where you have freedom, you have leverage, you have flexibility, you want to take a month off and take your family to Europe, but still have sales closing, still have income coming in, still have your bank account increase during that time, you have to start operating like a business owner. And a business owner builds a machine that generates deals even when you're not personally involved. That's what we're building here. We're trying to build a machine that generates business, generates sales. Even though you're not personally involved. You may not even know the clients, you may not even know that a meeting happened. But that's the goal when you have a business, is to have all that happening for the company. A business owner, as opposed to a solo agent, has predictable, repeatable income because you've built systems, you built teams, and you built leverage. When you have predictable and repeatable income and you're able to squeeze more income and more revenue out of the same transactions, that's when you can really do something. That's when it really gets fun. That's when you're, that's when we're talking like you're a business owner when you move in that direction. So let's, let's talk about the habits, the decisions, and the systems that separate successful team leaders or business owners in real estate from agents who are just stuck on that transaction treadmill. I don't know about you, but I was stuck on the transaction treadmill for eight or nine years. And it, When I look back, the most powerful pivot point for me was when I got sick and freaking tired of my wife texting me that my, my, my son, my firstborn son was hitting all these milestones. He was taking his first steps. He took his, you know, he said his first words, and she'd send me a video while I'm at a freaking open house of my son taking his first steps. And I remember how bad it stung. And I, I, like, I, I hate missing this stuff, but I don't have a choice, and I have to do something about it. I planted the seed, even though I had no idea what to do, I had no idea what the solution was, but I planted the seed that I wasn't okay with that, and I needed something that I could buy my time back with. And when you get to that point and it's a real decision that you make, it's amazing what kind of people and resources and opportunities just like they, they conspire in your favor when you are convicted in that decision. So get yourself to that place, whatever you have to do to, to reach that pivot point, and then you've got to start taking some action. Okay? So habits, decisions, and systems that separate successful team leaders from agents stuck on the transaction treadmill. A real. A business owner, a CEO is on a, On a regular basis, every day, you're thinking about what. Not necessarily like, what can I get done, what can I do, but what duplicates? How can I create a system? How can I create a process? How can I, how can I build something to where this thing that needs to happen just continues to get done? You're. That's what CEOs do. They're not sitting there, like, taking out the trash and doing this and checking people in at the front desk and, you know, doing all that, the tasks like they're. You hire people to do those things. The CEO sits back and thinks, okay, what direction do we want to go in? What do we need to build? What kind of projects will, Will make this next step in Our business possible. So successful business owners focus on building leverage you. And here's how systems and processes are key. But for most of you, the biggest leaps forward that you're going to make as a real estate business owner is by hiring great people. You can't have a real estate business without having other people working for you, working on behalf of the business. So one mistake that I see agents make all the time as they start this process is you wait too long to hire you or you wait too long to delegate until you're drowning and then, then you're desperate and it causes you to make bad decisions. Like I remember the first real estate transaction I was ever involved in. My parents and I bought a house to flip. We had an agent who completely overvalued the thing so we couldn't sell it and make a profit. So we're like, shit. We ended up selling, sorry. We ended up keeping it as a rental. And it cash flowed really well. We were making gross cash flow about 600 bucks a month. And which was fantastic. And but I remember we're like, we have a mortgage payment coming up, we've got to get somebody in here. And because of that desperation, like we could, we should have just taken our time. But we hurried ourselves. We found a tenant who was not right. They did not take good care of property. They were just. We thought that they were okay, but we were in a hurry. We were desperate. We made a bad decision and picked a bad tenant who ended up costing us a ton of money because we had to, we had to do a ton of rehab to the place after they moved out. They were, they were not clean people is what I'll say. They were just not clean people. So if you wait until you're desperate, you're going to make bad decisions. You can't think clearly. You can't come from a position of strength. So don't wait until you're too busy and too overwhelmed to delegate and hire. And you may be at a point where you're not necessarily hiring like a, you know, an operations manager or something like that or you know, like a. But you're, maybe you're just looking for your first transaction coordinator or your first video editor who can take a lot of the content editing off of your plate so you can spend more time on money making activities when you know, when you're ready. There's this weird part where you're like, you know, I could probably make this work, but maybe I should just keep going. Don't wait too long. Don't do it when you have nothing else going on but you know, hire before you're drowning. Higher before you're drowning. Delegate the non revenue generating tasks like administrative stuff. Transaction coordination like database management, following up like in sometimes following up on, on leads. I don't necessarily mean you have somebody like calling people for you and saying hey I'm calling from Dustin's office, don't do that. But there's certain tasks in your CRM like assigning people to this, sending people that you can have a database manager. Relationship building, leadership, sorry administrative stuff, transaction coordination and marketing. Certain parts of marketing like the mechanics of marketing, not actually like being involved in the content and being involved in, in writing stuff but, but the mechanics of like taking it and getting it posted, taking it, putting it in mailchimp or whatever CRM or email platform you use to send it out like delegate that the non revenue generating stuff first. That's the busy work that you can, you can pay somebody to do and, and they can do it. Then focus on the highest dollar activities which for most people it fits in one of three categories. Lead gen, relationship building and leadership and possibly servicing clients. Right. You may be at a point where you're still, you just want to, you're still in production and you want to just have time to keep servicing more and more clients but you don't want to deal with all the mechanics of the paperwork and all that stuff. So delegate non revenue producing tasks so you can focus on tasks that do revenate revenue that do generate revenue and the, the best, the most successful business owners in real estate. You treat marketing like a machine, not, not as like a, oh, this is an afterthought. This is something I have to, I better do some marketing. I'm a real estate agent first but you know, I should probably do some marketing stuff. I guess I'll tolerate it. Marketing should be at the forefront of your thinking. It should be, it should be a top priority because marketing is what brings people in. That's how people know who the hell you are and know about you. That's how you build your credibility and you know, that's how you get people to decide that they want to hire you and reach out to begin with. So treat marketing like it's a necessary machine and not an afterthought. The best real estate business owners don't rely on just random acts of marketing, so to speak. Some of you have heard my story before, but when I realized that I was a marketer who sold homes, everything changed for me. I started to actually do and prioritize the money making activities which were marketing and content and posting on social and even running ads. I, I prioritize that stuff because I saw myself as a marketer first who happened to sell houses. And a lot of you see yourself as you're the real tour and you got to do some marketing. If that's you, you've got to flip it. The marketing has to be a necessary thing. It needs to be a machine that you're trying to build, a machine that you're working on and putting the pieces in place for and not just an afterthought. Okay, so have a clear idea of who the hell your clients are and who you want your clients to be. If you don't know who it is you're trying to reach and who you're trying to serve, how are you supposed to create stuff for them? That's the hack to social media. That's the hack to having content that converts is know who you're talking to and have them in mind and think, okay, what can I create for those people that's going to resonate, that's going to help them, that's going to help them to overcome objections or misconceptions, help, you know, help them fix some of the pain points or just jump over some of the pain points. You have to know who you're trying to reach, have a clear client avatar and then build marketing systems and messages on social and everything else that attract the right people that are focused on your avatar, so to speak, to dumb it down without using fancy marketing mumbo jumbo, know who it is you're trying to speak to and who you're trying to attract and then create stuff that they're actually going to resonate with, that they actually want, they actually need, that will, they'll actually find helpful. Simple as that. As far as like building that marketing machine, some of you should be batching your content. It helps a lot when you can say, hey, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from this time to this time and you block it out on your calendar. These are content creation times. And maybe you sit there and you bust out four or five videos or three emails or whatever, but during those periods of time, that's when you create the content and your batch, you know, your batch, recording your batch, creating just so that it, it's not randomly distracting you all throughout the week. So let me put a asterisk on that. I personally, I do my content does better. If it's like a, an idea that I just came up with that I'm Passionate about that I can speak to with energy and passion at that moment. If I can, if I have time, I will do it right then. If not, I'll put it on a list of ideas and then I'll go to that list of ideas when I have time. Like when I have my time blocked, content creation time. And I'll look at it and I'll go through the list and I'll look for something that inspires me. I'll like, yeah, no, don't feel like that. Nope, don't feel like that. Not feeling that today. Ooh, that one. And if it inspires you, it lights you up, it fires you up and you can speak to it with passion, that's what you should do during those times. So remember though, your content that you put out there, it's. It is the machine. It works for you. While you're doing other stuff, you post a video that does well. There's people watching it for the next day or two or three or a week or a month. Even if it's really good content, if it's on YouTube, they could see it a year from now. So batch content time, block it. So you can control your calendar. Even like repost some stuff, repurpose some of your best stuff from before. Like, absolutely. Go back and look at what worked really well four months ago and if you think it's still relevant today, repost it. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. And automate as best you can. I think you should absolutely be using Repurpose. You've heard me talk about that for the last few weeks. Repurpose IO is key. You can get a free trial@massive agentsociety.com repurpose I use it. It's a way to like post in one place and then have it go literally everywhere else natively and and authentically without. Without word marks or anything. Incredible platform. There's a free version, there's a paid version, but massiveagentsociety.com repurpose to help you get more done in, in less time. Automation has to be part of your content posting strategy. And successful business owners. In real estate, you work not just on building systems and leverage, but how do you build recurring revenue and multiple streams of income when you have like, imagine if you sold a house and you got paid every month for it. H. That's pretty cool, right? But what, what we do is we sell a house, we get one commission check. Well, recurring revenue is something that pays you over and over and over and over for something you did before. So referral networks, for example, revenue share or profit share, depending on your brokerage. That's recurring income, it's recurring revenue that's passive for work that somebody else did. Investment properties. If you own rentals, it pays you every month, right? Title and mortgage partnerships, coaching, you know, selling your expertise. These are all options you've heard me talk about, you know, all the different ways you can make money as an agent outside of just commission. But start thinking about how can you squeeze more money out of each transaction, how can you monetize the vendor referrals that you give out there? These are all, these are all things that we teach in the 12 week business accelerator. But like if you're giving all these, this business to a contractor or a roofing company or a plumber, like just ask that, hey, I want a little, a little piece back. And as long as you are disclosing it properly and there's paperwork involved and proper disclosure, like, it's totally fine. Not every vendor is going to be down with it, but some will. And that's a, that's a great way to squeeze more revenue out of the work you're already doing. You also need to, as far as flipping that, mind the mindset. When you're, when you're in the trenches, it's so easy to focus on what's happening this month or what's happening in the immediate future. You need to have at least one eye on what's happening long term. Of course, you've got to be focused on what's happening right now. But if that's all you do, you're never building for the future. And that's, that's the crap that leads to waking up three years from now and you're like, I'm in the same place, I'm in literally the same place as I was back then. I've made no progress. I've just sold a bunch of houses and you know, but I haven't built anything. So you have to, you have to be focused on long term systems, long term wealth building. You know, what's that going to look like? What, what kind of recurring revenue systems can you put into place? And then let's talk about what the last thing here, what most agents get wrong about scaling a business, right? Scaling is not just how do you sell more houses? Of course that's part of it. But more deals doesn't automatically mean more profit. In fact, dirty little secret, you know, like the, the top 500 list or the, the Wall Street Journal top, you know, top agents list. The Real trends. So many of those team leaders or, or, or the, the businesses, the teams there are not profitable. They're in the red and, or some of them. They're only profitable because the team leader cannot stop selling. And if they stop selling, the whole thing crumbles because it's unprofitable. So not all of them. There's some great businesses there, no doubt, but more deals, more closings does not automatically mean more profit. Because sometimes if you're, if you're spending too much on leads or Zillow or whatever, or referral fees even, depending on the situation, you could, you could, your expenses could just outpace how much more money you're making in revenue. And pretty soon, like your profit margin is shrinking as you sell more houses. Not all the time, but it's just. Understand, more deals does not automatically mean more profit. If every new deal requires more of your time, you haven't actually scaled, you've just made yourself busier. So think about that. Look at everything you have coming up. And if you want to get 10 more deals or a hundred more deals, if each one of those is just going to require more of your time, you don't have scale yet. True scale means making more without working more, or ideally working less. You're making more and working less. That's what true scale means. So the first hire is critical. Most agents wait too long. Most agents think that your first hire should be another agent. No, it should not be. Your very first hire should not be another agent. You should be trying to scale yourself first before you bring in other agents to pass business to you. Scale yourself with a transaction coordinator first. Get a freaking transaction coordinator. And it's not negotiable. You need one. Then you need an admin. You need an assistant. Ideally, at some point you get a personal assistant that can do errands and all, you know, random stuff that, that takes your time and energy and focus throughout the day. And they can, you can op, you know, outsource that stuff to a personal assistant. Hiring too late leads to burnout. It leads to bad decisions and, and lost money. So, you know, don't hire too soon. Hire the right people and, and then don't hire too late because then you make bad decisions. A good hire, you know, it's a good hire if they free up your time. Okay, A good hire should free up your time so you can focus on what actually grows the business. Let me say that again. A good hire should free up your time so you can focus on what actually grows the business and the Other mistake I see with agents who are they just think scaling means selling more houses and doing when you stay stay stuck in the. In the tactician role instead of transitioning to the CEO role. I don't know if you've ever read the E Myth by Michael Michael Gerber. The E Myth by Michael Gerber One of the biggest takeaways there is most businesses fail. Most small businesses fail because they're stuck doing the things instead of building a system that does the things. And the system could be like actual software and platforms and stuff and automation and people. So if you're stuck doing all the things instead of building a system that does all the things, you are not a CEO. You could grow it very big. But you don't have a business yet. If you're always in the business, you. You'd never have any time to work on the business. So shifting from agent to CEO means creating systems, hiring great people, training and leading and not just about selling homes. At some point you want to get out of personally selling homes so you can just lead and you can train and focus on systems and buy your time back. So I hope this was helpful this week. The. The mind. The mind. I almost said the mindset shift. Like I'm a freaking Sean Connery or something. Which by the way, my kids, I, my wife and I love showing them like all these, these, these movies that we used to love as kids, like the Hunt for Red October. And my kids love that movie and they think Sean Connery's hilarious just because of his. The way he shares things. Anyways, wow, that's a really got off off track there. Shifting your mindset to thinking like a CEO. You can do that today just by saying, hey, is this something that actually has to be done? And if so, does this have to be done by me? If not, just start thinking, okay, who could I get to do this? What type of a person would do these things? What type of a hire could I make to do these things? For most of you, if you don't have a transaction coordinator, start there because you don't have to bring them on as an employee on payroll. You hire, you just pay them per transaction. And then one of the biggest mistakes I made before I hired my first TC back in the day, I waited too long because I'm like, well, I don't know how to train them. I like it's going to take so much time for me to tell them what to do. And then one day I was just like, wait a minute. They're the professional and So I emailed this one, and I was like, hey, I need your help. I have no idea where to start or what to do. Tell me what to do. She jumps in. She's like, cool to do to help with buyers. I need this, this, and this to help with listings. I need this, this, and this. She. She did everything. And I'm like, huh, that's amazing. So the next time I had a listing, listing agreement signed, I sent it over to her, she went to town. And that's when I first experienced leverage. And I realized, holy crap, this is amazing. Some of you just need to experience leverage for the first time. And then everything I said today just clicks and you get it, and it. It gets into your blood and you're like, okay, now I must outsource everything. And you start thinking about, how can I push everything off my plate? That is a good place to be. Then you just have to work on the timing of what you outsource. Because just because you should outsource something doesn't mean that you can or should today. But having the desire to, that's a good. That's a good place to be. So get yourself. Get yourself there. Start. The easiest way to taste leverage is to get a transaction coordinator. Get a virtual assistant. If you already have a TC and have them manage your email inbox, have them do, like, some comments on social media or something. Like, have them. There's so many different little things you can have a virtual assistant do to let you taste what outsourcing is like, what leverage is like. And like, I got addicted to it, and I'm like, now I want to outsource everything. And. But I will say this. As you go through that process, as there's new things to. To push off your plate and to outsource, there's still a little bit of, like, learning curve to it. Like, for example, I just hired a videographer full time, and he. He came over the other day, and I'm like, awesome, what the hell do we do now? And, like, I struggled. I'm like, I know I should have you do something. But, like, I was just drawing a blank. Well, now, like, I have a whole list of stuff. We know we're getting better, but that part for me, because I had never had someone coming to me and saying, hey, let's record this video that's always been on me and now I have that. There's just a little learning curve to it. That's okay. That's normal. Like, there. There's. There's a weirdness and there's a sloppiness to some of this that you just have to endure there. There's no other way around it. So start thinking about your CEO mentality. Start planting those seeds today. Ask yourself the question, do you need to do that work? If so, do you need to do it? If not, who can do it? Who can you hire to do it? What type of person, what type of hire do you need to make to handle that stuff? And for most of you, it starts with the transaction coordinator freaking do it. You'll be so pissed that you waited this long. I'm telling you, you just will. So I appreciate you listening. If you found value in this episode, please share it with somebody. Share it with an agent friend. Share it with your team leader. Share it with your broker. Share it with other agents in your brokerage. Let others hear this and have the same epiphanies and experience that you did. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. If you have not yet, please go to Apple or Spotify. Wherever you listen to this podcast, leave me a review. Just go like, put the number of stars to rate it and if you would take it a step further, write it in a few words. Tell me what you like about the show, why you're listening, and I feed off that. I love getting that feedback. Otherwise, I mean, otherwise, podcasting is kind of lonely. I'm speaking to a camera lens right now. I put it on the Internet and if I don't get feedback, I'm like, does anybody, does anybody even hear that? Does anybody care? So give me some feedback in a, in a, in a review on Spotify or Apple. And it helps the podcast out because more reviews, the podcast platforms show that to more, more relevant people. It helps us grow the audience. All is good. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you guys next week. Have a great weekend. Take care. It.