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Stay Paid Podcast
$70M CEO’s Perspective on Scaling a Company to New Heights
00:36:42
We’re exploring how to identify your next big move and scale your business to new heights. We dive into the incredible story of a company that grew from a start-up to one of the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies in America, now valued at...
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- [00:01]
Luke Acree
Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
- [00:11]
Joshua Steike
Welcome to Stay Paid. My name is Joshua Steike.
- [00:13]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
Joshua Steike
And before we bring on our guests today, we'd love if you take a minute to subscribe to stay Paid. You can go to stay paid podcast.com subscribe.
- [00:20]
Luke Acree
Help us take care of our families. We don't make any money from this podcast, so I don't know why I said that, but yeah, come on.
- [00:26]
Joshua Steike
Speaking of money, I wanted to give a shout out because if you guys leave a review on the. On the show, we'll read it here on an episode. This comes from actually a local agent that we.
- [00:36]
Luke Acree
Did you. Did you write this review yourself?
- [00:38]
Joshua Steike
No, this is from Tim Gy.
- [00:39]
Luke Acree
Okay. I love Tim. Tim's awesome.
- [00:41]
Joshua Steike
Tim. He sent us an email, said, hey, I just want to let you know on our, on our podcast, their podcast, it's called Bricks and Risk podcast, Tim and Sean Mooney do that episode. They did like a top three favorite podcast and they shouted out stay Paid.
- [00:54]
Luke Acree
Yes. Number one.
- [00:55]
Joshua Steike
As Tim's number one podcast. Matter of fact, you should be paying for this information.
- [01:05]
Luke Acree
What'd you say, Justin?
- [01:07]
Justin Brock
You guys should stay paid yourself.
- [01:09]
Luke Acree
Exactly, man. It's like a charity over here.
- [01:11]
Joshua Steike
Reminder.com Go sign up for reminder. All right. Our guest today returning is Stephen Akery and Cody Smith with the Acre Brothers Realty Team number one team in Lynchburg, Virginia. Welcome, gentlemen.
- [01:22]
Stephen Akery
What's up, everybody?
- [01:24]
Justin Brock
What up?
- [01:24]
Stephen Akery
What are you doing?
- [01:25]
Luke Acree
Number one reviewed. Are you guys number one reviewed too in Lynchburg? Well, that's not. You need to be in the state of Virginia. So we, we'll. We'll do a show on reviews, you.
- [01:35]
Justin Brock
Know, might be awesome.
- [01:36]
Joshua Steike
And our guest of honor returning is Justin Brock. Justin stands as a leading authority on all things Medicare and health insurance. His agency, Bobby Brock Insurance, is a national powerhouse that assisted over 50,000 Medicare and health insurance beneficiaries and was ranked one of the fastest growing private companies in America on the Inc 50002023 list. Through hosted events, virtual trainings, and a thriving Facebook community of over 13,000 members, Justin has established a marketing empire dedicated to helping agents scale their businesses. Welcome, Justin.
- [02:05]
Justin Brock
You know, Josh, I like the way you say in insurance. It's a very unique way to say it, and I like it.
- [02:12]
Joshua Steike
How do I say it? Because I make fun of the way Luke says things. So make fun of me.
- [02:16]
Justin Brock
You say it again, Josh. Say insurance. Insurance, you say you changed it. You changed.
- [02:23]
Luke Acree
Now you're still.
- [02:24]
Justin Brock
What did I say?
- [02:25]
Joshua Steike
Insurance. Insurance.
- [02:26]
Justin Brock
And I don't know, it was just. It was very smooth. You know, it sounded good. Don't change.
- [02:31]
Luke Acree
Guy has a voice for radio. It's. Your dad was in radio his whole career, right?
- [02:34]
Joshua Steike
Still in radio. 72 years old and shame on me.
- [02:37]
Luke Acree
I didn't really know that till we started the podcast, like seven years ago that I had no idea for the first.
- [02:43]
Joshua Steike
It's a local Christian radio station in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
- [02:47]
Justin Brock
So.
- [02:47]
Luke Acree
But it wasn't.
- [02:48]
Justin Brock
Heard of it.
- [02:48]
Luke Acree
It was number one. Right?
- [02:49]
Joshua Steike
The number one at length.
- [02:51]
Justin Brock
Wow.
- [02:51]
Luke Acree
So not.
- [02:52]
Stephen Akery
Not bad.
- [02:52]
Joshua Steike
Yeah.
- [02:53]
Luke Acree
So I gotta. We gotta get your dad on the show, too. That. That would be really awesome.
- [02:57]
Joshua Steike
That would be interesting.
- [02:58]
Luke Acree
Your dad's tips on how to host a good show. That would be fantastic. Want to talk today about shifts, right? Because there's a huge shift happening in the Medicare space. There's. I mean, you could say there's a huge shift happening in real estate, too, with the commission lawsuit that came down from. From the government to nar. And then, Justin, you recently went through a little bit of an acquisition where, you know, you, you know, sold part of your business. So there's a shift there in your personal life. So I want to kind of dive in on that. Can you talk to us a little bit about the sale and that process? Because, you know, we're not necessarily interested in selling, but everybody has a number. And I'm curious for myself as a business owner, it's like, what made you want to sell? Was it taking money off the table? Was it worth it? How has it been? I know it's only been, you know, not even a year yet, but how's that shift been for you?
- [03:49]
Justin Brock
Yeah. So entertaining. It. It wasn't like when we started building, we were selling. I didn't even, you know, early on it was like 250,000 seemed like a huge goal. And then your horizon just expands as you gain access to more and more information and you hear more and more stories. And, you know, I remember the first time I heard of a friend of mine in the industry or somebody that I considered way ahead of me at the time, you know, selling and hearing it was 50. He had $50 million to sell his agency or his call center. And. And I was. That was when I started thinking, okay, I. I might would sell, you know, but still, I would kind of go in and out of like, this emotional high and low of business because you get emotionally attached to a business you're building, but at the same time, like, what you have to keep that foresight of, like, what. What am I really trying to do? And what I'm trying to do is make sure that the distance between my family's, you know, perceived safety from, you know, negative impacts of the world is, you know, there's a bigger and bigger distance. That's the way I feel like. And so at some point, it's like locking in some of that success when the EBITDA multiples get really, really high. Makes sense. You know, we. I sold during a Democrat administration. Regardless of whether you're, you know, Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter. You know, there's. There's obviously, you know, good arguments on both sides for different things, but when you look at regulatory environments, the regulatory environment for, you know, Medicare Advantage in a lot of our verticals, as well as, I think real estate is a little more harsh under, under that side. Anytime you get people that are selling something or marketing the ftc, cms, you know, those governing bodies seem to be a little, you know, rough. So, like, that's kind of the thought that went into it was. Let me hedge my bets against the unforeseen. Albeit I'm typically pretty optimistic about the Medicare landscape, I think even a lot of the shifts we'll talk about here in a minute present tremendous opportunity for many people. They also present problems. And I think it's interesting, I think this administration's thrown a lot at the Medicare world and somehow we're still kicking. And so I think I feel like I'm a little more optimistic maybe than I would have been before because what we've just been through.
- [06:10]
Luke Acree
Well, how big's your agency now?
- [06:12]
Justin Brock
So. Well, so we're interesting because we started as an agency. I was building an agency. I was listening to podcasts, like Stay Paid podcasts and others out there along the way out in my car, going door to door, started that way, started building some internal W2 employees, built up service team. And then I started marketing online. I was reading Gary Vaynerchuk books who would say, like, document your process without any kind of like what you guys do here and stay paid. You're not, you're not making money from the podcast, but you're creating content to draw attention in for other things. So I started putting content out for agents. And so we built this entire other value ladder for the agent community, which kind of turned into an FMO and some other paid services. But now we actually, through our collective agents, serve over a million Medicare Beneficiaries, but our internal agency is about 52,000 clients with like my W2 career agents. And then we have a couple thousand like 1099 agents that serve a collective over. Over a million policyholders under us.
- [07:18]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that's, that's pretty amazing. Now, are you sharing with people? It's okay if you're not, you know, we want the spicy details. Are you sharing with people, like, was it a multi million dollar deal? What was the type of multiple? Or did it set you where you don't have to work again?
- [07:30]
Justin Brock
So I have a. I'll. The way I share it and have shared it publicly a couple of times is we were, you know, we were basically at a $70 million valuation roughly, and we did a 51% deal. So.
- [07:44]
Luke Acree
Get out of here, dude. Get out of here. So how do you keep the motivation when you gotten a multi, multi million dollar deal? You, you still own a bunch of the business, right? But how do you keep motivated? Because now you come in the next day, you're, you're not in control necessarily, even though you are, because they can't do anything without you and you have millions in the bank. How does that feel and how do you deal with that change?
- [08:11]
Justin Brock
Well, our platform company that we partner with, it's Amerilife, you know, they, they created the structure where you could hang on to, you know, equity and they just, you know, buy a majority. So there's a lot of comp. You have to put a lot of confidence in the idea that they're going to leave you along as long as you're performing, which is a logical idea, like somebody that buys a big asset if it's growing, you know.
- [08:35]
Luke Acree
Yeah. Why touch it?
- [08:36]
Justin Brock
Why touch it? Right. And so, so far that's been our experience is, you know, as long as we're growing and, and we're not, we're not doing anything like, you know, illegal or crazy. They don't mess with us. So, you know, you know, I think there are always things that can happen in the marketplace and shifts where they might, but it just doesn't really make sense to have an asset that you paid, you know, 10 to 11x.
- [09:03]
Luke Acree
They're pretty hands off. They're not dropping people in your. Like, there's a couple different models, but like in the private equity space, a lot of times they'll come in after they buy you and they replace all management with their managers. Right, because they want control. So they have their guys that they bring in or girls that they bring in. This one is more. They're investing in the entrepreneur. They're betting on you as the resource. And so they just want to give you capital and resources to take it to the next level. Do they like, are you reporting basically to them quarterly numbers and stuff like that, or. It's pretty intense. Every week you're having to touch with them.
- [09:36]
Justin Brock
They're reporting to us. So they took over that. There's several things that they did take over that kind of helped us because we're a sales and marketing organization. Yeah. Like, you know, a lot of agencies in the Medicare world, they think they're a Medicare agency and same. About the same accord. Like people will think they're. I'm a real estate professional. Professional. Well, yeah, but what do we really do? We market and we sell. Right. And so that's what really, really want to be good at is I want to. I want to get in front of people. I want to retain customers. I want to, you know, appeal to them and build rapport through marketing. And then I want to have, you know, representatives that can sell them, close them and retain them. And. And so the more we can focus on that, the better we can do. So one of the things they came in and helped with finance, you know, because I was still involved in just the accounting aspect of it, day to day, the reconciliations, you know, all of that. And so some people say, well, you know, do you really want to trust them to do all the accounting? But like, it's in their best interest. You got to understand these PE companies, what they do is they buy companies and then they go. They want to package together, grow to.
- [10:39]
Luke Acree
A bigger finance deal.
- [10:40]
Justin Brock
Yeah, they need you to grow because if you're growing, they get to make more money off of your growth. So. So anyway, so we've. We have them doing the accounting side of it. They're helping with hr, some of those things. So they're reporting back to us. We only reach out to them. Mostly we do an annual budget. So, yeah, we're start doing that for 20, 25. It's a little interesting like when you're new because, like, it's, you know, you don't. They don't have a lot of historical data to go off of. So you're kind of. They've seemed to be pretty relaxed. The first one you do and then you do. They. They come or you report to them. Like, if you want to hire someone, you want to. You give raises, all that. But so far they have never. They haven't told us no on anything.
- [11:23]
Luke Acree
Dude, that's an incredible Relationship. What about. So what'd you buy yourself or what you do for yourself after you got a multimillion dollar deal like that? I got to know, like, did you buy anything? A car or watch, something?
- [11:35]
Justin Brock
I did a couple of things. I did buy a Lamborghini Hurricane.
- [11:39]
Luke Acree
I did go. There you go.
- [11:41]
Justin Brock
I've already sold it. I had it for five months. And I was like. I was like, this is stupid. The new wore off and it was like, it would sit there all the time and it was cool, but I was like, I don't really want to drive it. I'm in Tupelo, Mississippi. It's not exactly a Lamborghini. Roads, Roads around here. But then, you know, I did buy a watch. There was. I'd bought several before, but I bought another watch. And then, then I took a lot of vacations with the family, so I did that.
- [12:09]
Luke Acree
On your Instagram? Yeah, you were going all over the place, which is. Is awesome. So, you know, gives you that freedom. Isn't it funny how, like, you buy the Lamborghini and you drive it for five months and you're like, yeah, this, this wears off. It's time. And it's just the testament, like the. What you read in the books, what you know to be true from the people who tell you money can't really fulfill. It's really about, you know, the journey and all that stuff. It's the process. That's. That's what it is. Do you find, like, was it harder to come back into work? Is it harder to come back today? Are you more motivated than ever? I'm just.
- [12:38]
Justin Brock
Right now I feel more motivated than ever because our business is doing so well. And part of the reason I wanted a deal where I could hold on to 49% equity is I was making a big bet that our business was just blowing up. And this year, you know, though, we've had some shift in the Medicare landscape with, you know, certain, you know, even the ACA landscape where certain holes in the boat where you're leaking some revenue here. We've had this overwhelming brokerage growth, like, on the recruiting side that's offset it. And then our W2 agents on the Medicare Advantage med subside have continued to go up. So. So, like, we. We're still growing even with some of those weird things that are happening in the marketplace. We were like 34 to 36% net growth year over year for three years before this. This year to date, we're at about 17%. But we actually believe because of the, the revenue cycle of Some of our changes in growth that the first quarter is going to bring us back up to about that 34, 36%. So, so that's, that's still the goal is to hit that again and we believe we'll do it.
- [13:41]
Luke Acree
So have you grown that by people like adding more sales people? Is it been what's the secret of growth?
- [13:49]
Justin Brock
Historically it was more loa, so more internal salespeople, but this year it's been, we've done a little bit of that, but there's a little bit more cost when. There's a significant amount of more cost when you hire the salespeople because you're paying them wages, you're all that. The recruiting side though has really blown up for us. So the FMO side we also have a kind of a software product, a Lee aggregation system that you know, we lease and we've gotten up to about 690 accounts on there. This is cheap thing, it's like 97amonth but it adds up. So we've had some revenue come from that. So.
- [14:23]
Luke Acree
And that's a high margin business too if it's software usually.
- [14:26]
Justin Brock
Yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean once you get them, I mean there's a lot of add on, on the back end of that where people will pay us for additional build out. So it kind of turns us. I would, I don't like to say like a marketing agency. It's more of like done for you stuff like we'll set up Facebook ads for them, things like that. And one of the reasons, you know, we had talked at Medicare Con about getting more involved with you guys is we make a lot of recommendations to people to do things like use reminder media, you know, like so it's it, it makes like a lot of our, the marketing side of what we do is like here's what we're doing and then here's how you can replicate it. And a lot of that requires other vendors. You know, like we use like we've worked with you guys, we've worked with just other market like thinks, IO like all these other vendors out there that we kind of partner with on variable things. And so anyway that's huge.
- [15:15]
Luke Acree
That's the correct model. It's what we're trying to do. Steven and Cody, obviously on the real estate side with you guys, it's like it almost is like a perfect comparison that you guys are the practicing real estate agents and you know, very successful. Here's exactly what you do and obviously we're a lot of what you do product Wise. But then that gives such credibility. I have found, I don't know if that's how you guys purchase. I've found in purchasing things like that is no longer do I need the data dump of features and fluff. Like, I can do my research on that and look at all your features and all the program plans that you have. And I don't really need the, what is called, like the slogan type commercials. What I want is show me the practitioner that is using it and the blueprint of exactly what they're doing. There's no 100% success rate, but I want to see the practitioner. And that's why I think your model, Justin, is just blowing up, because you're the practitioner and then you're showing them, hey, this is what we're using and you're making money off of that side, which is pretty phenomenal.
- [16:16]
Justin Brock
Yeah, we, you know, I mean, there was a period of time where column the. I guess the big predictors of the way marketing was going to change. I would call, I would credit, like Russell Brunson, Gary Vaynerchuk. Early on, I was reading their stuff and Gary was right. He told me to start documenting the stuff online to people that want to replicate some of your success. And you would have, you know, build this. This great core audience. And that's what we did. We would go on and just kind of talk about what we were doing in our little. In our, I say little. Little internal agency, which you get out there and you realize like, same thing in real estate. Most people are solopreneur. They're. They're an individual agent out, you know, beating the streets, working their ass off. And even those that get to. It's actually almost worse if they get to making too much money in that model because they have to, like, really move backwards to scale. So like in insurance, you get a solo agent. If they get to about 200, 250,000 and then recognize what the next step is, from that point, they have a much better, you know, potential. Starting to build that next layer. A lot of times we'll run into a solo agent that hits, you know, 750, 800, 900,000amillion. And then when you start trying to show them what a replicable model on cost per acquisition looks like, they're like, well, that. That closing ratio is bad or this is bad. And they're like, I had this the other day at one of our workshops where this guy who's making a million a year with like one assistant time to tell him, like, yes, but to get to 15 million. The economics don't work the way you've done it. You've, you've, you have ran past the mark. And of course like in some cases, some people would say, well he's making a millionaire, he's fine, he's working like a dog, you know, like to do that. And is that. And then when he comes and sees a guy like me, 36 years old, sells 51% at tens of millions of dollars and then has 15 million in revenue coming in whether I come in the office or not, it's like, did I really do it right or did I do it the hardest way possible? You know, and so anyway, like that's what we try to do is help them identify that earlier and you know, and how to build an appropriate agency and hopefully take the mistakes that we made and the mistakes that we've seen other people make and learn from those ahead of time. You know, your parents tell you all the time, learn from my mistakes.
- [18:36]
Luke Acree
You know, we just don't trust them.
- [18:38]
Justin Brock
We just don't trust them. You know, and it's in. Trust is a big issue. Like it is, it's like an intellectual ceiling that a lot of people have where they've been all these people putting content out online or frauds. And I'm not saying that they're not some out there that are, I mean, but if you see the people that are persistent, like there are some people that are legitimately building good businesses and also enjoy the scaling aspect of teaching other people how to replicate some of that success.
- [19:04]
Luke Acree
Yeah, 100%. And it's usually in the consistency that you can vet out the frauds. It's just look at how long they have been, you know, producing the content and what they've been saying and you know, who they, you know, tend to point out. You can, you can see that. I'm actually curious because it's kind of on the same topic. So you got part of Brandon Dawson and Greg Cardone's platform, I would say. Right. Their whole process. I forget what they call it. 10x360, we went to the 10x360 event. You remember that Stephen? We went to that event. Man, I was so close to buying like their model. Yeah, the platform, like, and I still am to this day. That's why I'm selfishly wanting to pick your brain on what you've seen in growing your business. It's like they have created a platform for those who are not aware where Grant obviously has built a multi hundred million dollar business Multiple businesses. Brandon Dawson sold his business for like 77 times EBITDA and then now has helped scale a bunch of other businesses. They will bring you in, they train you on their platform, they call it 10x360 where they have HR down sales, down operations and they've laid out the whole platform for this is how you should run your business. And these are the metrics that you should aim for. Like a metric, like revenue per employee as a type of metric, as a guide of every employee. I forget what Brandon says. Maybe you know, Justin is like, he's way up there like 300,000 per employee or 400,000 per employee.
- [20:39]
Justin Brock
RPE is like, like when you go bowling and you put up the bumpers on the lane, right. So it bounces back and forth. Right. So it's like a bumper of. And his is 400,000 to 600,000. Okay to be 500,000 but he, he will push it to 600K. Now that is on the high side. You know when they show a lot of graphs out there, there they really try to get, you know, the average businesses and they do a lot in like the home services business. Like they do a ton in that market. Because I'm in, I'm still in Brandon's bmlp, the Business Mastery Leadership Program, which is pretty solid. I mean it's basically all the people that have platformed are in that leadership deal and we like on ongoing post platform you pay like 40,000 a year and you get two spots in it. But you go to like three workshops a year and there's like weekly coaching. But it's a high level group of people. It's cool though. A lot of home services, there's some real estate guys in there, a little, couple of insurance. I'm probably one of like three insurance guys in it. But for employee like they try to use a 250k mark for like home services. They do say financial services should be a little higher than home services just based on, you know, the number of employees you need and the caliber of employee that you need in your a lot. In financial services, a lot higher percentage of your employees are income producers versus you know, hired hands. Right. So you know, we, we try to use some of that information. It was a really good help for us because we can actually use that information to teach insurance agents and agency owners, you know, because.
- [22:13]
Joshua Steike
Oh yeah.
- [22:14]
Luke Acree
So dual use, not only use it for yourself but then redistribute it in a way.
- [22:18]
Stephen Akery
Yeah.
- [22:18]
Justin Brock
And that would be something I, you know, with all the Things that you guys are doing with so many, you know, businesses, you know, it sounds like what, what the Accree brother's realty team is probably doing some of. And what you guys do, it could be like, you know, you're, you're looking at that. The value of it is in, hey, what can I use for this to help with my business, but how can I use it to help other people with their business too?
- [22:42]
Luke Acree
I don't know what you guys think of this Stephen and Cody and stuff, but it's like my struggle. The reason why I'm thinking about the platform, which, you know, I don't want to spend all show talking about his platform, but it's the pain point I'm trying to solve is focus in a business and getting everybody on the same page moving in the same direction. Did you find, Justin, that because it was a platform that you were adopting, it gave your team, your leadership team. And you know, I don't know how your leadership team breaks down, but it got everybody moving to the same direction or was that not a benefit that you saw?
- [23:19]
Justin Brock
So one thing that we and I, one thing we've been very fortunate at, and this is something like Brandon's team. BMLP is heavily about the culture of the company and it's heavily focused on, you know, creating this culture of excellence and camaraderie that, you know, is mixed together. I don't know if he uses those words, but that's kind of the way I see it is it's, you know, high performing, high intensity, but we do it because we love it and we want to grow this, you know, and giving that feeling of your employees feeling invested, though they're not vested, you know, but they feel invested in the success of the company because it benefits them. And so what, you know, I was very fortunate that we built, you know, kind of a family feeling business. Like it felt like everybody that worked for me was part of it and they felt very invested in it. So when we do introduce new programs like, or bring in outside people, we do have certain people on the team that could be cynical of, you know, ideas, but we're able to work around that through honesty and honestly. I think a lot of Brandon's leadership, you know, training has helped me address those people in a way that makes the most sense. A lot of times they're your high performing people. Especially my high performing administrators might be more cynical of like leadership training or sales training or things like that. But it is, they have, you have to understand, I have to get them to Buy in as, like, look, you don't have to immediately respect this person that I respect as much as you respect me, because I think my team respects me pretty heavily. But just know that I've bought into them and know that you don't have to, you don't have to respect every single thing about them. Right? Like, that's not, that's not what learning from someone doesn't require that. I think I'm going to adopt Luke's entire strategy for life. You know, it just means that obviously there are things I can learn from Luke, right? And so, like, let's, let's take the time to learn from these people and pick these things up that are going to help our business. So I don't know, I feel like adapting, you know, them to those things is really just having. Is just being like, fully honest with them that that's your intention. Right. So I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's my answer.
- [25:33]
Luke Acree
No, it's super helpful. I think of, like, you can. A lot of people, they hate the message because they hate the messenger. And it's like, you don't throw out a message just because you don't like the messenger. Like, the message can still be true. And, you know, you see that in politics, you see that in business. I mean, everything in life, you see.
- [25:52]
Justin Brock
It, you see it with people like Grant and Jordan Belford and the, you know, these, these influencers. I have a good friend that also sold his business this same time as me. He's very young, he's about to be 28 years old. And he told, you know, he made, I don't know, 20, 30 million dollars, right? Already he's. And he told me I don't have to agree with everything that Jordan Belfort says or Grant Cardone says or so and so says to learn from those people. And he told me that years ago. And it's, it's been something that's true. It's like, I don't have to buy into everything to be able to pick up some gold that they say, like, I don't have to buy into everything Jordan Belfor did because he's got a pretty checkered past. But we all can agree that straight line selling, when you use it ethically is still a good practice. You know, he was, he was fundamentally right. He probably could have used it better. But that's the way every. Everyone is. I can learn a little bit from everyone.
- [26:52]
Luke Acree
Yeah. So true. Do you find, Stephen, that same truth of the high performers are the ones that are a little bit harder to get to. Buy into a new way.
- [27:02]
Stephen Akery
Yeah, and it's interesting, too, because it's like. It's because they don't have the same kind of vision as you have. Like, they get to a point they do want a lifestyle, you know, change kind of thing. Usually when they're top producers, they want their time back, but they also want to make the same amount of money. And you have this level you were talking about, you know, hey, I want to. If you want to get to 15 million, though, this is what you have to do. But they don't necessarily want to get to 15 million the same way that you got to 50 million. They just want it. So it's hard to communicate, I think, to those top performing agents because you have to speak in their language. And that's, you know, that's super difficult.
- [27:38]
Justin Brock
Somebody sent me a video this morning, and it said, are you hungry or do you just want to eat? Yeah. Yeah. I think it kind of. Kind of what you're talking about there, you know, like, do you, you know, do I want to get to 15 million or do I want to make a million but not have to work, you know? And, you know, there. There's a little bit of a. There's a little bit of win in the. There's a little bit of win in, like, not realizing the insanity that you're going to have to go through to get to something so that you just, you know, that that whole three feet from gold concept, like, you might be 300ft from gold, but if you believe you're three feet from gold and every day you're just, like, chiseling away, Then you look back one day and you're like, man, I wouldn't do that again. But I'm glad I did it, you know? And that's. There's. There's a lot of value in. In that, you know, And I do feel bad sometimes that I'll find someone who's. Who's gone so hard past a point that to come back and build it appropriately or appropriately as I see. And I'm still learning. Like, there's probably times where I'm going to get to a breaking point, because that's what that's 10x360 is all about, is breaking points in your business. I'm going to get to this breaking point, and I'm going to be like, oh, I'm going to have to come back down to rebuild to this point. And then you have to decide, do you want that you know, do I want that bad enough? And, you know, that's everybody. That's a personal question for everybody, I think.
- [29:05]
Luke Acree
Yeah.
- [29:06]
Stephen Akery
And I think that's why it's so important that you know who you're surrounding yourself with. Because, Luke, when we were talking the other day, we were just talking about how belief is the most important thing. And when you're in the business long enough, you start to see all the pitfalls and all the obstacles that you're going to deal with. Like, when I first jumped into real estate, I was just like, there are no obstacles. I can do this. I just believe, you know, and then you get into it and you're like, oh my gosh, this is going to be super difficult. And it's hard to keep that belief. So you need to be around, you know, the Brandon Dawson's and the Grant Cardones because they just give you that belief that you can do it. It's so important to surround yourself with those people.
- [29:41]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that's probably the most impressive thing about Grant is just his level of belief and appetite at the age that he is and all that he's been through. It made me think when you were sharing what you guys are sharing, it's like, do you guys believe in work life balance? Like, if you want to build anything, great. Like, do you believe in this concept that you can, you know, spend like Tim Bushnell on your team? He's done, what, 51 deals in 12 months? 13 months, whatever that number is, which is insane in real estate, like just crushing it. Yeah. And he was, I was talking to him the other day on a session and he was just like, well, I really need to have a date night with my wife at least once a quarter and I need to be home. I need to find a day where I could be home at least one day a week. Because he's working basically every day and it's like, okay, well, that's the question of work life balance. It's a personal, like the obvious answer was a personal decision for everybody. But my question to both of you guys is really, can you build anything big and great if you're not all in just obsessive about it seven days a week? I don't know. I'm curious what your thoughts are.
- [30:43]
Stephen Akery
I think it's always going to be that way because, like the ceilings of achievement, like we were talking about that this morning, is like, you get to a point where if you're trying to grow, you're going to get to a point where you don't know what the next step is. So then you have to spend massive amounts of time and failure to get through that ceiling. Um, and so like, if you do want to keep growing, there can't be that balance. If you get to the point where you're like, I am going to stay steady in my growth, right where I maybe don't want to achieve the 15 million, but I want to produce, you know, 1 million and then 1.1 million. I think there can be that balance, but not if you're like, if you're hungry for the 15 million. I just don't see the balance that you can gain because you're going to get those ceilings of achievement different to so many people.
- [31:22]
Justin Brock
Go ahead, Justin. No, so I mean, same thing. I agree. I mean, I think there's the Atomic Habits I think is the book that talks about you're always leaning into one or the other. You're always leaning into work or leaning into. And when I quote a book, guys, I don't read them. I'm just gonna tell you guys, I get the high notes. I'm like, I like, I know I have a lot of friends that read books and I'm like, they're like, have you read Atomic Cabinets? I'm like, tell me the good part of it. And they're like, oh, work, life balance, you know, and I'm like, great now to read it, but, but like that's that the concept apparently is, you know, that you're always leaning into one or the other. And so I find, I find a lot of seasonality in that for me. You know, just post that deal this year, you know, I was traveling a lot and I was able to kind of mentally check out for a little while. And I've come back in the last couple of months. I've been heavily, heavily engaged. And so because I think if you're trying to have like day to day or week to week work, life balance, you're even when you're doing things with your family, you're going to be thinking about work. So it's not like you're truly present. You're just going through the motions, you know. And so versus like when I was, you know, after the sale, you know, we took a week trip to the Bahamas. We took, we did a VIP Disney Universal Day. We did that again later on. We went to Florida for a week and then we went to, went to like water Sound or watercolor for a week and then we did two weeks in Greece and rented a yacht in the Mediterranean. We're doing like all the, like, super fancy travel stuff. And during that travel, for the first time probably in a decade, I felt like truly, you know, 90 unplugged, whereas most of the time I'm like 90 plugged in all the time. So it's. So I just. I don't know. I think you have to decide. I think everyone has to decide what's important. And of course, you know, kudos to my wife for dealing with that because, you know, while some people could look at it and be like, well, there's been benefits to dealing with it because you guys are doing really well. Like, it's impossible for them to see what's going on in your head. That she just has to love me enough to deal with it. And, you know, because I'll tell her, I'll be like, I know you're not on this. Yeah, I know you don't understand, like, the timeline or the frequency that's in my head or like, what I'm going to is I try to paint it, but I don't know that they truly are on the same wavelength. But she loves me 90% of the time enough to deal with.
- [33:58]
Luke Acree
Well said.
- [34:00]
Joshua Steike
Awesome. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on the episode today. Cody, Stephen, Appreciate you guys.
- [34:07]
Luke Acree
Geez, I can't believe we're already at the end. Dude, I could keep going. I got so many more questions. No, no, no. This is great. Yeah, we'll wrap it up here. We got to bring Justin back there. You're a stud, dude.
- [34:15]
Joshua Steike
Justin, thank you so much for joining. Before we close out, let people know how they can connect with you.
- [34:19]
Justin Brock
Yeah, you can hit us up. We had a great splash page@justin brock.com. we're always trying to grow on Instagram and YouTube, so at thejustinbrock or YouTube.com Justin Brock.
- [34:30]
Joshua Steike
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you all so much for listening. You can get the links that were mentioned here on the episode as well as all of the show notes in the video over atstay paid podcast.com. while you're checking out the video, make sure to subscribe to reminder Media on YouTube there. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us atpodcast reminder media.com and of course, you can follow us on social media. We're at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Stike.
- [34:53]
Luke Acree
Guys, I'm Luke Acre. That episode flew by for me. So much great information. Justin, man, really appreciate you coming on the show. You are freaking so humble for being so successful and it's Very obvious why you have had success. I would encourage people re listen to this. There's so many golden nuggets in there for you, but one that I would share with you that you got to have at the forefront of everything that you're doing is that you have to know where you're going and you have to know what you're trying to build. And what I loved about your story is he talked about he was just trying to make $250,000 and then he saw that somebody sold. I forget what you said. It was 51 million or 50 million, and all of a sudden you got new alignment of oh, this is what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to try to build that. And I think that is a flaw that's out there in the industry that you think you have to set one goal that's the same for the rest of time versus always coming back to your intentionality of what I'm building and knowing what it is, even if it's down to, hey, this is what I'm building in 2025. This is where I'm trying to get to based upon the new info that I've learned. Most people go through life unintentional. You need to be intentional about what you're trying to do because it's the only way to do it. And when you face adversity. And so my encouragement to everybody in your action item today is, do you know where you're going? Do you know what you're trying to build? And do you know what you're trying to accomplish for the end of 2024 and as we end into 2025, do you know what you're trying to accomplish? If you don't, you gotta start there because you won't accomplish a target or you won't hit a target that you don't know exists. Remember, the difference between mediocre producers and top producers in every single business is top producers take action. Take action on that today.