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I just canceled my NAR membership. After 16 years of being a Realtor, I am no longer a member of the national association of Realtors. I also canceled my MLS membership, my local board memberships. It's all gone. But I'm still an active real estate agent, still making money as an agent in real estate. And I'm going to explain why I did this, how it all makes sense right now. 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, guys? Welcome to episode 442 of the Massive Agent Podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have a bit of a story for you today. Now, this is personal, okay? I'm not telling you what to do. This is something that mo. The vast majority of you should absolutely not do under any circumstance do what I. What I'm about to tell you that I did, but I'm in a different situation. I'm going to explain what that looks like. And so I'm doing this first off just to be transparent and to show you that there's levels to this and that there's. There's something that you can work towards one day. Because I've been putting in the work as an agent for 16 years. I've been paying my. My n. Dues for 16 years. I've been Paying my MLS membership every month for 16 years. And I realized I don't need that shit. I don't need it anymore because of the phase that I'm at in my career now. Like I said, I'm still a fully active agent. I am. I'm still making money in real estate, all of that stuff. My business model has not changed. But so before. Before you get all excited and think that you're going to go, you know, cancel NAR and all that stuff, my brokerage allowed it in a specific situation. So I'll. I'll share that with you. If my brokerage did not, I wouldn't have done this. Okay? What I did is only possible because of the business that I have built over the years now. It. It taught me something about how this business actually works that I wish I understood a decade ago. So, so let me. Let me explain that to you. So in summary here, and to bring you up to speed, I am no longer a member of nar. I am no longer a member of my local mls. I am no longer a member of my. My local boards. I canceled all of it. So that thousand bucks a year going to NAR and the boards, gone. The $51 a month I was paying to my local MLS, gone. That's why I did this, because I'm at a place in my business where I am no longer personally representing buyers and sellers. And my brokerage offers a certain division, it's called the referral division, where I can still operate my business model as I have been for years now. I haven't sold a house in like six years on purpose. Personally, I've been referring them out. I've been doing referrals. So I still get referral income. But I'm not the one out there opening doors. I'm not writing the offers. I'm not personally serving the buyers and sellers. And so I realized, like, wait a minute, my brokerage offers this option here where I don't. I no longer need to be with nar. I no longer need MLS membership. If I was still representing buyers and sellers and still doing deals, I wouldn't have done this. That'd be insane. But because all I do is referrals every now and then, and I help agents all day long to build businesses, I realized, why am I paying a thousand bucks a year in dues? Why am I paying 51amonth towards the MLS? I don't use these tools. Like, sure, I looked up the. I would get on the MLS every once in a while just to look at houses and to set up hot sheets in my neighborhood and whatnot. But like, 51 bucks a month for 16 years, like, that shit adds up. And I'm like, I. I just don't need that anymore for the business that I'm operating today. Now, if. If you are a real estate agent representing buyers and sellers, don't do this unless your brokerage will let you operate without nar, without the boards, without the ML. No, you do need the mls. Okay? If you're an agent doing deals, you absolutely freaking need the mls, regardless. But my brokerage allowed me to. To put myself into what's called referral status. This just put me in line with what I'd been doing for six years. Like, I've only been doing referrals. I've only. I mean, I sold my own house. That was six years ago. I sold my own house six years ago. That's it. So I still earn revenue share. I still Earn stock. I. The business model at Real has not changed for me. It. Just because I'm not serving buyers and sellers personally. I could go into referral status and everything changed. Everything stayed the same about how I'm doing business. If a time comes though, where I'm going to represent a buyer, represent a seller, take down a listing, I can't do it in referral status. I need to move back. I need to join the boards, join nar, do the whole thing all over again. But I just trimmed the fat that I no longer need it because the business that I built no longer requires me to be out there actively serving buyers and sellers personally. I now have agents in my local market and beyond who, who do that. Whenever I have a client, a family member, a friend come to me and they want to buy, they want to sell, they want to refinance or whatever, I refer them out to one of my partners. Because the highest and best use of my time, I. Guys, I told you this is personal. Like, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not. You're probably not even in this position. I'm just showing you how my business has evolved over the years. But I got to the point where, like, my highest and best use of time is to help you build a business, help you sell a shitload of houses, help you grow a big network of agents. And, and so all I. Anything that gets in my way of spending time with agents, with agents who are my partners in my network, agents who are part of the society and in my coaching group, anything that gets in the way of that is just needed to go. And so this option became available in my state. It's not. I couldn't. If I lived in Colorado, I could not have done this at my brokerage anyways. So I just got to the place where I'm like, I. Why am I still. Why am I still doing that? I don't need any of that stuff. So I. So I cut it. So I cut. Is because I've spent the last 16 years building a business that did not require me to be out there in the trenches every single day. So I, I have a few bullet points here. Like, I want to, I want to make it clear it's not. This business that I've built may not even be for you. You may, you may love being out there in the trenches, writing offers, meeting with sellers, meeting with buyers, showing homes, doing all this stuff. I encourage you to keep doing it if you love doing it. If you just do it because you tolerate it. And you're thinking of how do I get out of this? What's my exit strategy? I've just been able to build an exit strategy by making some bold moves. If you've heard the podcast before and heard the story before, when I first got out of production and focused solely on coaching agents, mentoring agents and building a network of agents, I took a massive pay cut. I took a massive frickin pay cut. Much bigger than you think. And it absolutely hurt financially for well over a year. Like it, my credit got destroyed. Like all it was bad because I did it too soon. I've learned that I should have built up a little nest egg. But like I'm an all in or I'm an all in or all out type of person and I just freaking went for it. In hindsight, I'm glad I did. I just wish I would have like thought some things through and the timing would have been a little bit different that I would have planned on it a little better. It caused all sorts of hell. But now because of the moves I've made that I've wanted to. Because for me, when I got into real estate, I never, I never wanted to sell houses until I die. I never wanted to be the agent that is, you know, geriatric with a walker, still needing to show homes because that's how I made. That was the only way that income came in. I never wanted that. I wanted to show homes for, for a while. But then I realized, wait, there's a way to build a business within real estate. And so that looks different. Sometimes you start a team, sometimes you start your own brokerage. For me, I saw a way through the business model at my brokerage where I can partner with agents and help them build big businesses, help them sell a shitload of houses, help them build big networks of agents, help them, you know, get into investing and do all this. Where I had some skin in the game, where I would benefit financially by help. If I help them accomplish that by them selling a bunch of houses, I would get a little piece of the revenue. The revenue was shared with me. That's the path that I chose. It's not for everybody, but I think it's freaking beautiful. I think it's a great add on for any agent who's, who just wants to sell more houses. It doesn't have to be your full time, top priority focus like it is for me, but what an amazing option it is for agents who want a safety net, who want another income stream that's not tied to your production. All the time it, I was one of those agents who had to learn the hard way about boom and bust. The boom and bust cycles that like, you get really, really busy. Like you do all this activity to get busy, and then once you're busy, you stop doing the things that got you busy. Cause you're servicing the clients. Once all those deals close, oh shit, the pipeline's dry. I've got to go now. Now I'm in this, this bust cycle. I'm going to go broke if I don't go out and do a bunch of activity to get me busy again. And, and I learned over time that that's not what builds a business. That builds chaos. That's what builds chaos and stress, I'll tell you that much. It builds stress and anxiety. So I learned that there's a different way of doing it. I learned that there are different options and that's what I help agents do every single day. So the beautiful part is that the business that I built lets me devote all my time to helping agents. Whether it's creating content, coaching, one on one, zoom calls, text messages. Like, I'm constantly supporting my, my network, my team, my, my organization. I get texts all day long every single day where I'm just, I'm helping them. I'm, I'm plugging them into a resource. I'm helping them through something. I'm helping, giving them advice directly, whatever it may be. That is my business now. And I love that. So if, if that's something you want to build towards, you absolutely can. It just takes partnering with the right people that know how to do it, that have the blueprint to do it. I mean, I've certainly built that and can show you that. But if you don't want that, if you just want more houses, if you just want to build, build a business where more homes are sold and maybe takes less of your time, you could do that too. Like, there's no, there's no one box that you have to fit in as an agent. My business right now looks different than most and I understand that. I mean, I, I have people criticize me. They're like, oh, you know, what do you know? You don't sell houses anymore. It's like, no shit. That was the point. That was actually the objective. That, that was the goal. Thank you very much. And they think that, they're like, it's a dig on me. Like, no, that was a choice that I got myself into a position where I no longer have to sell homes anymore. There, there's, there's a big difference between not able to sell any houses anymore or just not doing it and having a choice of whether or not you want to. Most agents, probably, you unfortunately have no choice but to sell houses over and over and over. And that is fine, if that's what you want. If that's what you want, that's the way you like to live. You feel comfortable with it, you feel safe with that model, awesome. If you don't and you want more, there are other ways to do it. That is why I'm doing this episode today, is to shine light on a different way of doing things and what the end result could be. Um, I mean, I. I wish I would have canceled my NAR membership long ago because I've only been doing referrals and in referral division or the referral status at my brokerage, I can keep doing referrals and getting paid referrals. All good. Like, I still get stock, still get revenue share. Nothing about the business model has changed whatsoever. Except now I've saved a thousand bucks a year and 51 bucks a month. And, and I've been able to. This is what's nice. I've been able to unsubscribe from a bunch of emails from local boards from nar, from just a bunch of crap. And that's been nice. And I'm curious. It may be too late for this, but I'm curious, will I get fewer spam texts? I don't think that I will. I'm hopeful that I will, but I think NAR sold my information long ago or whoever. Whether it's nar, the local boards somewhere, the agent, the roster of agents was sold to a bunch of companies, health insurance companies, alarm, ADT and all the stuff, right? And so it may be too late. My information might already be out there, but I'm curious to see and I will report back at some point. If I see the sales calls and sales texts dwindle down, that would be a nice bonus as well. But a lighter inbox has been kind of nice. And I no longer get the magazines in the mail, which, you know, I never really looked at those anyways. So here's, here's the real lesson, okay? The whole point of all of this, you have to, no matter what you're trying to build, you need to build leverage first. You need to build leverage first, and then you get to control what your business looks like. Build. Some of you are in. In that. I'd say most of you are probably in that position where you just have to like, you're just selling. You're just trying to sell more and more and more to. Just to get established and to build a book of business and to get some consistency and to build up a savings, build up a nest egg, build up. Awesome. That's the, that's just the season that you're in. But seasons all come to an end, and there will be another season as long as you want there to be. So first you've got to build some leverage, some intentionality behind what it is you want to build. Part, get yourself around someone or people who have already built the type of business that you want to have. That is key. The type of business that you want to have. Get around people that have already done it, who can show you the blueprints. You can do it way faster, and they just show you where all the landmines are so you can avoid them. So I want, I'm looking at my notes. My notes are absolutely nonsensical. Like, I, I, I don't even smoke weed, but I, I feel like I was high when I wrote these. I don't, I don't smoke weed. I haven't been high in 20 years. Most. Yeah, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna skip that completely. The goal here, and I wanna be very clear, the goal here is, is, is not to just not work. The goal is to get to a place where you have a choice of what work looks like. You get to choose what your work looks like. I got to a place where I earned the freedom to choose whether or not I needed to be part of NAR or not, whether or not I need MLS access or not. So if you are, if you're in a place where you're in building mode, don't do what I just did. Okay? If you're, if you're not producing and you're trying to. This is not your move. But I personally do not need NAR or the MLS right now all. Please do not hear this as permission to coast or to do something rash. Because if you're, if you're not in a position where you have a ton of referrals coming in or another income that could, like, don't just say, oh, Dustin did it. So I'm gonna, I wanna make sure that nobody's, like, canceling memberships that they, that they need just because you're in a, like a low spot in your business. Don't do that. Yeah. Again, I'm looking at my notes and they're nonsensical. So I'm Going to totally switch over here. I don't know who this was even meant to help. I mean, I knew that this was a great hook, you know, for the episode that I canceled my NAR membership and canceled mls, which, which is true and it's been kind of nice. But you have permission to build whatever type of business that you want to build. Okay. There's the industry's way of doing it. A lot of agents are like, hey, I got to sell a bunch of houses, then I need to start a team. And then, well, maybe do you. Look, I've had an itch to start a team. I was this close, actually, to starting a team last year. And then I realized, like, that's just not my lane. I. I am so dialed in with what I'm doing. I. It fulfills me, it makes me happy. I'm not beholden to anyone, but. But myself and my agent partners, I'm responsible for them. But I don't have to run out the door to an inspection. I don't have to run out. I'm not getting stuck in rush hour traffic showing homes. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If you're in that season, I absolutely was in that seat. My season was long. Like I was in that season for what, 10 years? And that's okay. But there are other ways of building a profitable, sustainable, scalable business in real estate that don't require you just doing more sales. More sales are part of it. But I'm in. Now my business looks like. What my business looks like now is I'm looking for partners who I can. And I can help them do a bunch more sales because then it benefits the company, it benefits me, and it sure as hell benefits them to sell more houses. There are, There are options. I. I want you to define what freedom looks like for you. What does freedom look like for you? And maybe you want to get to the place where you can cancel NAR and it doesn't do anything. Totally fine. And there. I know there's some municipalities, there's some brokerages that don't require it now. Cool. Like, that's a choice that you can make. Do you see value in nar, yes or no? If not, and you. And you're able to cut them. Okay, I'm not telling anyone what to do as far as that goes. I have been pretty outspoken on NAR in the past, but again, you. You have to do what's smart for you and your business model. The problem and the challenge that I'm going to give you, the Problem is that I see so many agents not intentional about the type of business, about the type of life that they want. You think that you just have to keep spinning that hamster wheel over and over and over the same way you were the first day you became an agent and now you're just trying to do more and do it faster. Is that the business that you want? And if it is, fantastic. I've talked to a ton of agents. I am partnered with a ton of agents who love working with buyers. They love it. It's fulfilling. It is fulfilling. They love working with sellers, they love working with investors. They love. Awesome. You've got to lean into what, what type of, what does freedom mean for you? And then be bold enough to take the steps to do it. And I'm telling you, if you find the right people who have done the thing that you want to do, you are not doing it by yourself. Get yourself in a position where you are doing, you are in business for yourself, but you are not in business by yourself. That's when it gets really fricking fun, really powerful. And that's where, that's where lives can change. This podcast was meant for whoever it was meant for. I have no idea. But I hope the message got through to you. Please let me know if this resonated with you. Let me know if I can help you. If you are, I should probably give you an update on our Instagram listing blitz program. We're on. We just did week two, the week two call today. We had over 40,000 views in the group last week, which is pretty cool. No, Sorry, that was one agent. One agent had 40,000 views. My bad. We had 85,000 views as a group this week. We had over 104,000 accounts reached. And now we're talking about 10 agents here. 64 total posts. We had seven client con. New client conversations happen. Two contracts got signed within our group of 10. I will be doing this again, this 45 day Instagram listing blitz here in the next. I'll be announcing the next round here in the next few weeks, end of June so that we can get started middle of July again. There will probably be, will only be 10 spots available. So if you want to get on the waiting list, let me know. I don't have a link for you. Just let me know. A lot of you applied last time. You know, you can do that again. You can just go apply now. It just. We won't get to it for, you know, a few weeks here, but massive agentsociety.com blitz yes, you have to apply. Yes, we vet you. This is for agents who have been posting. You are not a stranger to posting. You've been doing a bunch of content consistently, but it just hasn't been converting to business. You're missing something. You're missing that one missing link that that turns viewers into clients. That is what we teach this group in the Instagram listing Blitz. I want you to be a part of the next round. There are only 10 spots available, but go ahead and apply now if you'd like and we'll get to you here in the next few weeks for the next round starting middle of July. Massive AgentSociety.com blitz Please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. And hopefully you were the person who needed to hear it because I kind of rambled today. But I knew I was speaking from the heart and it was meant for. If you're still listening, this was meant for you. You were meant for this message. I appreciate you. If I can be helpful, shoot me a DM on Instagram assiveAgent. Make sure you go to my YouTube channel, the massive Agent Channel. I am putting out a ton of helpful tactical videos every single week, including this podcast on Thursdays. Go binge on the massive agent YouTube YouTube content. I'll see you guys next week on the pod. Thank you so much. Take care.