Dustin Brome (0:00)

This week I'm going to share with you some of the worst advice I ever got as an agent. When I was a brand new agent, this advice almost put me out of business. I almost failed the industry. I'm going to share this advice and I'm going to show you how you can avoid making the same mistake. The Massive Agent podcast. We 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, better. Oh, have I got your attention now? Here's your host, Dustin Brome. What is up guys? Welcome to episode 389 of the Massive Agent podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome here in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm going to tell you about some horrible advice I got as a brand new real estate agent. I've been in real estate for 14 plus years now. I think in January it'll be 15 years and I, some of the first advice I got I started to take to heart a little bit. But then at a certain point, luckily it didn't feel right and so I started to push against it and started to go a different direction. And in hindsight, had I con, had I not done that, had I not pushed back against this advice and gone a different way and listened to what my mentor was telling me to do, I probably wouldn't, like none of you would know who I am. I probably would have failed out of real estate pretty quickly, like within the first two years. So I'm going to share this advice with you in a second and share why it's so wrong and what you should be doing instead. So I remember walking, walking one day into my office. Okay, so let me set the table here. I was part of a team. If you're watching me on video, I'm doing the air quotes, right? I was on this team, not like one of these big, high powered, super dialed in real estate teams that we have today. It was my broker, another guy who is mainly an investor, and then this one agent who used their office space and together we were a team. Basically what it meant was for 50, 50, but for a 50, 50 commission split, they would, they'd provide signs for me, they'd provide key boxes and they'd, they'd teach me the ropes, they'd show me how to be an agent and I could go on appointments with them and all that stuff. They'd help me, you know, navigate, offer Writing and all that stuff in the beginning and in hindsight, like that was. That was a great use of my time for the first two years being team, because I learned so much faster than if I was trying to figure it out all alone. Real estate is lonely enough. And this is a theme. I'm going to circle back to that, that statement in a minute. Real estate is lonely enough. Doing it all by yourself. So I went into the office one day and I'm working on my Facebook page. And this was back in the. What was it, the early 2010s, like 2011, 2012ish. And just getting my. Trying to get my social media dialed in. We were doing a lot of Craigslist. I remember getting listings, putting them on Craigslist and all of that. But social then was not what it was today. But I'm friending people and doing some posts on Facebook. And I remember my mentor told me, he's like, make sure that you don't let other agents see what you're doing. And so he instructed me to. He suggested that I create Facebook friend lists of other agents so that I could exclude them whenever I post. Because his thinking was, if. If I'm connected with and I'm friends with other agents or other agents follow me, they could see what I'm doing, they could steal my ideas. And at the time, that sounded totally reasonable, but. And I started to go in that direction, at least for a little bit, but it just. It didn't seem right to me. And, you know, it took me a few years to of really like, pushing back against that and going a different route out of necessity because I needed to learn from other agents aside from just this one guy who was in the office. My original mentor. Loved the guy. Great guy. Taught me a lot of good stuff, taught me some bad stuff. But it is what it is, right? Nobody's perfect. Had I just listened to him and shut out all other agents, I would have completely screwed myself in so many ways. And so that's what I'm going to share with you today. Agents are collaborators. They're not competitors. And I know there's certain situations where another agent is technically a competitor, like if you're both going up against each other for the same listing, for example. But outside of that, like, other agents are partners. You should be looking at them as partners and not as, you know, people that are going to steal your ideas. So let's dive into this. Okay, I'm going to show you. I'm going to share with you why this advice is just so freaking horrible. And why the opposite is actually true. And how the opposite has. Has led to me building the business I have, the brand that I have, and the career that I have that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. So let's talk about. Other agents are going to see your stuff. They're going to steal your ideas. Okay. That at the time, with me not knowing dick about anything as a real estate agent, that sounded reasonable. Like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. And it was, by the way, real estate is my. Is the first entrance into entrepreneurship of my life. Aside from some lemonade lemonade stands as a kid. We even had like a plum tree in my backyard growing up. So I'd grab some plums, throw them in a little brown bag and sell that out on the street. So like, I sold some stuff. Did a little network marketing too, actually, before real estate that like, dabbled with network marketing. I really like the idea of leverage and building a team and all that stuff. But real estate was my first entrance into entrepreneurship. And so I didn't know any better. I'd been an employee my entire life. And so when he's like, yeah, you don't want other agents to see your stuff, I'm like, oh, you're right. This is business. Right. Got to keep it all close to my chest. And in hindsight, it's so freaking laughable. Here's why. Let's say you connect with an agent and you do a post with some idea and you're like, here's what I'm going to do. Or. Or like, hey, here. Here's what I am doing. And then they're like, oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to post the same thing. First off, so what? So what? The people who see their, who see their post, probably not the same people that's going to see your stuff. It's just a. It's just a weird way of looking at things. And if two. And if one person sees you post something and then they post something similar, so what? I don't even see what the big deal is about that. Like you should be. Hopefully you've heard this term, stealing like an artist. I. Most of my content, I, I got inspiration from somewhere else for sure. Like I, I can't even remember anything or where an idea that I have is 100% original to me. Like some part of what I'm. What I'm. Like these videos that I'm doing. I saw someone else do a version of or. Or it reminded me, oh, I could I could. Instead of doing that, I could do this instead. That's more relevant to my audience. But I consume a ton of other content to help me be better content creator. My friend Chelsea Pipes says this all the time, and I love it. The best content consumers are the best content creators. So you should be taking, you know, you should be modeling other people's stuff, taking inspiration from like, not straight up copying word for word. You don't, you don't need to do that. But even if you do, I don't even think it's that big of a deal in a, in a content creation context. So somebody else steals your idea and does it word for word. So what? Like, I don't understand how that hurts me. It doesn't. I. I've never seen a scenario in which that really hurts me. I did a video. This was a year or so ago. I did a video I thought it did pretty well. One of my buddies, Sean, did the exact same video, the exact same script, verbatim, word for word. Like, completely ripped it off. And I saw it and my first thought was, that's cool. Like, that's actually. It made me feel good that he thought it was good enough to, to rip off. Like, that. Was I mad? No, not at all. In fact, I was kind of. But I messaged him. I was like, your video is getting more views than mine. Like, what? What the hell? But it was a friendly thing. Like, what do I care if someone else gets some success from an idea that I have? Like, how is that a bad thing? Like, that's a good thing. It didn't take any money off of my plate. Like, it didn't take any business away from me. It didn't take any money out of my pocket. So that whole line of thinking is just so ridiculous. But beyond that, beyond that, and hang on with me here, because there's a bunch more that I'm going to get to benefits of collaborating with other agents. Stuff that you probably haven't even considered before. And I guarantee there's parts of your business that are lacking that would be solved very quickly by collaborating with other agents in specific ways. And I'm gonna. I'm get to those here in just a sec. But somebody rips off an idea because I post something and they're like, oh, I'm gonna do that too. Okay, fine, great. But here's the thing. Most people will never actually freaking do it. So the thought that if I, If I put something out there and other agents see it, they're gonna steal my shit. No they aren't because they're lazy. Most people will never, ever actually take action on the thing that they intend to do. So I could put out something that it's like, hey, here's all my inside secrets, by the way. Like, all the content that I do is basically that, like, I don't hold shit back at all. I want to give all my best stuff away. So. But let's say that I'm like, you know, here's the super secret insider thing that I can't believe I'm sharing because it's so proprietary. Well, and 10,000 agents see it. Maybe five of them will ever do something with it. The others, they'll Forget about it 10 seconds later as they scroll like there. No one's. People don't take action. Other, other people aren't agents and human beings in general, we have a big problem with action taking. And so even if I have something that I don't want someone to copy and then I think they're going to, they're probably not. They're just not going to do it. So I just think that's such a stupid, ridiculous argument. Now here's what that thinking that you don't want other agents to see what you're doing. Here's where it really kills your business. All right, now, first off, the scarcity mindset is not good for business. It's not good for life. It's not good for your soul. It's not good at all to be living in scarcity. But specifically and tactically, here's what you're missing out on. If you're like over in the corner, you know, not. Not connecting with other agents. Now you're listening to this podcast, so obviously you're, you're understanding that you can learn from other people and their experience. That's exactly what happens when you start to network with and connect with a ton of other agents, not just in your market, but outside of your market. You. I know some agents that are like, I connect with a ton of agents, but not in my market. But there's the scarcity, right? They're competitors. I'll get to in next, I'm going to tell you exactly why you should be connecting with and making friends with as many agents in your market as you possibly can. But let's just talk about agents outside your market. First off, you can learn from them. You can learn from agents who are ahead of you on your path. Like, if you're trying to. If you're a solo agent and you're burned out and you're like, how do I build a sales team? Like, I really need to start building some leverage and get some help around me. How do I do that? Well, if you're, imagine just being all alone, trying to figure that out, with no one to learn from, no one to kind of grab your hand and say, oh, here's how, here's how I figured it out. Here's my blueprint here, just do this. This is what worked for me. But if you have those friendships and those relationships, you can lean on those people and look, Listening to podcasts, watching social media content is great, but being able to actually text somebody or call somebody and say, hey, I. How did you solve this? Hey, I have this issue with taxes. You know, how did you solve it? Or how do you deal with this lead source thing? And then they'll tell you and it saves you potentially years of heartache and trial and error. So, like, learning from other agents is, is, it's such a no brainer that just trumps everything else. And here's why you should be connecting with more agents in your market. I, I noticed that as I started to friend and connect with other agents in my market and I start to see their Facebook posts and they start to see mine and you know, like, you start to get to know someone or you think you do, and, and then pretty soon, like, I'd call, I'd have a buyer, I'd call on someone's listing and they're like, oh, hey, it's you. Like, we've been Facebook friends for a year and a half. Oh yeah, how was your. I saw that you just got back from Disneyland with a family. And so if I call with a buyer and they know me, they just have a little bit more trust or, you know, they, it's going to help you get offers accepted more. Because if, if it's an unknown random stranger saying, I have a great buyer, they're super well qualified, their lender's amazing, blah, blah, blah, that's great. But if you know the person and then they tell you those things, it holds more weight. So I started to notice that if I knew the listing agent, I was getting offers accepted more. Not necessarily because my offer was so wildly strong. I mean, it had to be in the ballpark, of course, but it's because of the relationship that we had. And they trusted me when I said that these buyers are solid and here's what they're looking to do. And here's the lender they're working with. That relationship is so, so, so powerful to Help you get more offers accepted if you know more agents. So I just, I think it's insane to not network with a ton of agents, no matter where they're at. Beyond that, I didn't know when I started out in real estate that one day I would be networking with and connecting with agents who became business partners. And I got to share some of the revenue whenever they sold houses. I didn't. I just thought I'd be selling houses and then I'd sell more, and then I'd sell more, and then I sell more. I just thought I'd, you know, the hamster wheel would grow and spin faster. That's, that's all I thought for the first seven plus years of my career. That's what I thought it looked like. But if you have any desire to attract agents either to a team that you're going to build or to your brokerage or both, you should probably know some agents. You should probably have a relationship with some agents. They should. You should probably be known well and liked by, by a bunch of agents. Otherwise, you like, how are you going to attract agents if no one knows who the hell you are, if nobody likes you, if you have no relationship with other agents, if you're just sitting over in the corner doing your own thing, good luck with that, you know, and then you decide, all right, I'm going to start a team. But no one knows who you are. It's just a, it's not impossible, but it's such an uphill battle. So if you, if agent attraction and if you're at a brokerage with revenue share, where you can attract other agents and, and, you know, share in the revenue whenever they sell houses. Like, like that's how my business is structured at my brokerage. You need to know and have a good relationship with a ton of agents. And so like when I, when I switched from marketing to buyers and sellers to really like marketing to, and talking to and helping other agents, my network of agents just exploded naturally. Right. So then all of a sudden I'm part of a business model where, where I can help those agents find, like, here's what's cool. I just prescribe my brokerage to, to agents in certain situations. I'm like, oh, you're struggling with that? Oh, I didn't realize that, like, this is a big, this is a big issue for you in your business. Well, we actually have something that'll solve that. Like, have you ever considered this or that? And then, you know, as long as that's a fit, they join and we're business partners. It's incredible what that could like. Had I not built this massive eight massive network of agents through social media and through this podcast, I wouldn't have been able to have the success that I've had with Agent Attraction for sure. Like beyond that. And the last, last piece of this, it's so much more basic. Like, let's zoom all the way out. This is where I'm going to tie the bow. Or close the loop on something I said earlier. Real estate is freaking lonely. Imagine trying to do it all by your damn self and refusing to let other agents teach you how to do it better. I just think that's insane. It's, it's wildly short sighted. It's stupid. Okay? It's just stupid. And unfortunately I see agents do this all the time. Sometimes it's not even conscious. So if you got to audit yourself here, you have to know, you have to be self aware. Are you an agent that has been like keeping other agents at arm's length or do you actively go out of your way to make relationships and build friendships with other agents? Real estate is lonely enough when you, when you're friends with other agents and you can like, even if you vent and you're like, hey, with one of your, let's say you have an agent friend in Miami and you're like, oh man, I just had this client. They were such assholes. This happened. Or the lender just dropped the ball on this and they actually understand. Like having other people know what you're going through and know what this business is like is so powerful because then it doesn't feel lonely anymore. It feels like you're in business for yourself, but not because by yourself. To take it a step further, if you're part of a real estate team, you have even more of that if you're part of a real estate network or, you know, like with, with, with the network and organization that I've built like these. If you're part of my network, you're a business partner of mine. You have my cell phone number. Like if you. I had an agent book some time with me the other day. He had a big listing coming up and he just wanted to, like, he just wanted to get some ideas on how to market the property. And he kind of wanted me to reassure him that it's going to be okay and that he's good enough to go after such a big listing because it was a big one for him. I think it was three times the size of his most expensive sale to date. And, and at the end of that call, he's like, he's like, this was so helpful. Like, you know, I didn't even tell him anything groundbreaking or like, I don't. I didn't have any massive secret. But we just talked through it together and I gave him some ideas. He gave me some ideas. And like, I think I gave him some ideas on the marketing side of things because I get excited about that. But he's like, this was so helpful. He, like, I'm ready. I'm ready. So I have no doubt he's going to get that massive listing like, that. He's in business for himself, but he is not in business by himself. So if you're an agent who feels like you're in business for yourself and by yourself, stop it. That's a choice. You don't have to be locked in your basement office with no interaction with other. With other industry professionals. That is a choice, and it is a horrible choice. Start networking with other agents. Make friendships with other agents. If you are friends with agents, this business becomes more fun. It becomes more bearable, and you learn more from those. You get to learn from the mistakes of others. You get to avoid certain landmines that other people have stepped on that. So to sum this up, should you be connecting with other agents or should you be, you know, shielding yourself and hiding what you're doing from other agents? There is literally zero upside. There's literally zero upside to not collaborating with agents if you are not collaborating as much as you possibly can with every agent everywhere. And of course, there's agents that you're not going to like and they're not going to like you. That's not what I mean. Right. You don't have to be friends with everybody, but you should be trying to. It just makes business more fun. It makes this. It makes real estate easier. You get to learn more from others. You get to avoid mistakes. You let other people make mistakes, and then you can avoid them, and then it's just more fun. So find what you need to make real estate fun again. For me, it was. Well, it's happened at different times. There's been numerous different phases of my real estate career. This current one, switching brokerages. This last time when I left exp and came to real, I've been having so much fun every single day because of, because of the growth, because of the culture, because of the agents, because of just how it's all structured. And like, we. We work together to achieve a common thing. It makes real estate fun again. So find Your version of that. Maybe you already have it. Maybe you just need to reach out and grab something. Maybe you just have to reframe the way you're looking at your current situation. Maybe you already have something like that, but you're just looking at it wrong. Find what you need to make real estate fun again, and I guarantee your sales will grow. If you are having fun, you will do well in business. You will make money. You'll be selling houses if you're having fun. So find out how to make it fricking fun. And I think collaborating with as many other agents as possible is a great way to do it. I mean, I think I skipped one. I think I mentioned referrals when I first. So I should probably should tell this story earlier when I was really starting to get some traction and I figured out the marketing thing, I was blogging first. Like, social media came after blogging because I'm like, wait, I'm creating these articles now? I just need people to know about them, right? So creating the content is just step one. Then actually getting people to see it is step two. So that's where social and ads came in. But as I, as I started to build out this, this network of other agents and, you know, starting to work for me, I started to get other agents in other places. They're like, oh, I know Dustin. He's the Salt Lake guy. And so, like, I became known as the Salt Lake agent who was doing stuff on Snapchat. And I started to get a bunch of referrals. It's. There's, there's zero reason to avoid connecting with other agents. There's every possible reason and upside in the world to connect with and collaborate with other agents. Do it as often as you possibly can. Make this fun. If you're not having fun in real estate, I'm telling you, it's a choice. You can put yourself in a different position, put yourself in a different chair, join a different company, join a different team. Start a team. Join a coaching group that gets you excited, something that just reinvigorates you. Whatever that is for you, please do it. Thank you for listening. And if you're not yet taking advantage of keeping current matters, what are you even doing with your life? Seriously? KCM builds you and forms you into the advisor that you. That your clients trust. So being a real estate advisor is so much better than being a salesperson. I don't know if you realize this. I don't even think agents are salespeople unless you're like, sitting in the office just you know, taking walk ins and someone's like, I want to buy a condo today. And you're like, cool, like what do I need to do to get you in a condo today? Like, that's more salesperson. But most of us don't operate that way. We're. We're service providers. So we're service providers. And part of that service that we're providing is advice and guidance and education. And I've never seen a better tool than keeping current matters for helping you to understand market insights. What's happening with interest rates? Where's the market going? Is it going up or down? Are we in a seller's market? A buyer's market with all the graphics and scripts that KCM gives you is just insane. So go to try kcm.comBAM to check it out right now. And speaking of BAM. Love BAM. Best media company in real estate for sure. Level up your business with BAM X. Their exclusive membership with courses, masterminds, and a network of ambitious agents. And exclusive events, by the way, that will push you higher and help you sell more houses. Join today over@massive agentsociety.com Bam X. Thank you all for listening. I'll see you guys next week on the Massive agent podcast. Episode 390 is coming up. Holy. I should probably plan episode 400. If you have any ideas for what I should do, you let me know because that's a big one. Thanks, guys.