87% of Agents Fail. Here's What the Other 13% Do Differently | Lance Billingsley

Summary

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Stay Paid Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: "87% of Agents Fail. Here's What the Other 13% Do Differently"

Guest: Lance Billingsley, VP of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency
Date: July 27, 2026
Hosts: Luke Acree & Josh Stike

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Main Theme

This episode tackles the alarming real estate industry statistic that 87% of agents fail within their first five years. Lance Billingsley, seasoned coach, team leader, podcaster, and author of "The 13%," shares his research-backed insights into what high-performing agents do differently. The hosts and guest discuss actionable steps, team and brokerage structures, the psychology of perseverance, and the practicalities of marketing investment and execution.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The 87% vs. 13% Reality – Why Do Most Agents Fail?

• NAR stats (2016): 50% of realtors fail in year one; 87% by year five ([01:24]).
• The industry and culture too often focus on why people fail, not on studying success.
• Lance’s research: Interviewed 52+ '13%ers,' collectively responsible for over $100B in sales ([01:52]).

2. Core Differences: How 13% Agents Win

• Failure as a skill: The high-performers "figured out how to fail better than the 87%" ([02:12]).
• Laser Focus: Top agents avoid the "shotgun approach," never chasing five strategies at once. They master one thing at a time, pivot quickly if needed, and escalate what works ([02:47]).
  • “How well can I lose? …they are extremely focused on the one thing in front of them.” – Lance ([03:07]).

3. Relentless Action and Consistency

• Many top agents don’t have sophisticated systems or full command of their numbers—they just “take massive action” on what's in front of them ([04:26]).
  • "They were just dumb enough, just brave enough to do like they take massive action…" – Luke ([04:26]).
• Willingness to share success blueprints: “Here’s all the recipes… you just will never get the ingredients.” – Lance ([05:24]).

4. Brokerages & The "Neighborhood Group" Problem

• Most brokerages focus on big-picture operations, cost structures, & staying afloat, missing the power of "neighborhood groups" (specialized teams with shared culture/interest) ([07:42]).
  • Successful large teams break into such smaller, identity-based 'neighborhood groups'—and win.

5. Tactics: The FIRE Methodology

• Acronym: Focus, Initiative, Resiliency, Execution ([09:26]).
• Analogy: Like stoves’ burners—you can’t run all four (or all parts of your business) at full blast. Top agents know which “burner” needs turning up on a daily basis ([10:14]).
• Failure to launch is a common pitfall: agents focus but don’t take initiative, or they initiate but lack resilience to persist.
  • "They figure out that day which one matters the most…" – Lance ([10:46]).

6. Common Pitfall: Chasing Too Many Strategies

• Agents are distracted by “blue ocean” opportunities (e.g., seeing others succeed in different methods and feeling the need to pivot) ([12:37]).
• Masters focus and maximize a chosen channel before moving on.

7. The Investment Mindset

• Agents struggle with delayed gratification—expecting instant results from marketing spend ([15:03]).
  • “You are literally slowly spending your way out of this business instead of staying with something.” – Luke ([15:55]).
• Real business requires patience—understanding the flywheel effect of consistent marketing over time.

8. Tracking, Data, and Quality of Life

• Most don’t track results or quality-of-life impact from each strategy. Tracking is critical—change methods only after genuine measurement and reflection ([18:29]).
• Fit strategies to personality: after 35, people won’t do what they hate; uniqueness is key to channel selection ([20:01]).

9. Playing (and Winning) the Long Game

• It comes down to relentless execution: knowing versus doing is the main performance gap.
• Use team leverage—hire to your weaknesses ([22:11]).
• Everyone is on a "team," even solo agents (Craig Proctor analogy: "Just fill those boxes in with your name." – [23:11]).
• Quote: “Number one failure for all agents is they lack the focus and relentless execution on the strategy that they choose…” – Luke ([23:22]).

10. The Mindset Challenge: Resilience & Mental Tricks

• 13%ers have trained themselves to “run into the wall” again and again—knowing it’s a numbers game ([25:54]).
• Weekly “playoff series” analogy: treat each week as a series—don’t lose momentum over a single “loss” ([29:55]).
  • “I want you to treat every single week like it’s a seven game series…” – Lance ([29:57]).

11. Work Ethic: Treat Real Estate Like a Job

• Most agents bring less hustle to entrepreneurship than they did to bad hourly jobs as teens ([34:06]).
  • “Imagine if I brought that work ethic to this…” – Lance ([34:57]).
• Agents would execute perfectly if paid a guaranteed salary; why not do that for entrepreneurial upside?

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On sharing knowledge:
  "They always, always know I'm going to give it to you and you're not going to do it."
  – Lance ([05:14])

• On executing consistently:
  "It's the same reason you don't have abs... It's not rocket science. You're just not doing it consistently enough."
  – Luke ([24:53])

• On treating the job seriously:
  “If the people that are on this show worked their business like it's a job… imagine if I brought that work ethic to this.”
  – Lance ([34:57])

• On perseverance:
  "Are you willing to make the 98th, 99th, and 100th call when you've had 97 no's?"
  – Lance ([25:54])

• On the cost of distraction:
  "You are literally slowly spending your way out of this business instead of staying with something."
  – Luke ([15:55])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Why most agents fail and the focus of 13% analysis: [01:24] – [03:07]
• Relentless action versus overthinking: [04:06] – [05:14]
• Brokerage/team structure and 'neighborhood groups': [05:38] – [08:28]
• FIRE acronym and execution analogy: [09:26] – [12:31]
• Pitfalls of chasing new strategies: [12:31] – [13:49]
• Investment mindset challenge: [15:03] – [17:50]
• Tracking and playing to your strengths: [18:27] – [22:11]
• Building teams and hiring to weakness: [22:11] – [23:22]
• Reality of knowing vs. doing and agent coaching: [24:54] – [25:27]
• Resilience, mindset & playoff analogy: [25:54] – [32:05]
• Treating your business like a “job”: [34:06] – [36:48]
• Big-picture brokerage and industry future trends: [37:11] – [39:10]

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Actionable Takeaways

• Audit your “burners”: Use the FIRE method (Focus, Initiative, Resiliency, Execution)—don’t try to run every area of your business at max ([09:26]).
• Pick one strategy that fits your strengths, track it rigorously, and execute relentlessly before chasing new opportunities.
• Treat your business with the discipline of a job—show up and do the work, even on tough days ([34:47]).
• Reframe failures as steps to success—keep running into the wall and playing the “series” until you break through.
• If it’s not your strength, hire or delegate it as soon as you can afford to scale effectively ([22:11]).

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Additional Resources

• Lance Billingsley’s 13% Podcast and book The 13% (Amazon, [39:23])
• Follow Lance on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok

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Final Thought

“The difference between top producers and mediocre producers… Top producers take action. Take action on that today.”
— Luke Acree ([41:11])

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Transcript

[Josh Dyke]

Foreign welcome to Stay Paid, your number one sales and marketing a podcast on a mission to help you close more deals, keep more clients, build the life of freedom you're working towards. But that can only happen if you're willing to take action. Today. My name is Josh Dyke, Chief Marketing Officer here at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acrey, president of Reminder Media. And our guest today is Lance Billingsley. Lance is the Vice president of Agent development at Navi Title Agency. We're where he utilizes over a decade of experience in real estate and business coaching to mentor agents. Prior to joining Navi Title, he co owned a top performing real estate team at Realty One Group, earning recognition as one of the company's top five teams, and also served as business coach for Tom Ferry. Lance, welcome to Stay Paid. Thanks for being here.

[Lance Billingsley]

Thank you, fellas. I appreciate you. I love the introduction.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah, Lance, man, I'm super excited to have you on. You have a track record of success. You also host an incredible podcast that I want to talk about. But you've recently written a book and that's why I wanted to get you on the show. You know, 13% and 87% of the agents are failing in this industry and there's 13% that make it. What do they have? And you know, this book that you've written, you know, I want everybody to read, but I would love for you to share. What's the answer to that question? Why are 87% failing? What do the 13% have? What have you found out in writing the book?

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah, I think what's important, Luke, is we go back to 2016 when the NAR themselves are the ones who came out with this statistic. The NAR in 2016, which was a pretty good market, said that 50% of all realtors fail in their first year and 87% fail by their fifth year. And I was asked to do the podcast and Luke, you've been kind enough to be a guest on that show. And I was asked to do the podcast and they said, what are you going to call it? And real quick backstory is I threw out a post that said, why do agents fail? I knew this number but had never thought of anything about it. And I got almost 400 responses of, you know, no leads, no leadership, no effort, no whatever. Right? You can go everything. And it hit me that it's so easy to talk about why people lose, but our entire culture is almost built on that these days. So let's talk about the 13% and let's go find them who are the ones that have done this for five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years. Right. I've been in the industry 25 years this year, so it's been a long time. And I started with local friends in the Phoenix market that were high level, high level, big team owners, big leaders in the market. And then it expanded even to people like you and, and, and golly, just 52 people that we've interviewed about to do our 53rd, 54th. I think we've accounted for a little over 100 billion in real estate sales in that. In that show. So it's. It's been tremendous. And to your point of what's the difference? I think it's two things, really. It is, first of all, the 13% figured out how to fail better than the 87%. That is a core thing that I have figured out consistently. Every one of them has the same problems and the same challenges, and they're busy and they have families and they have faith and they have whatever it is that they spend their time doing. What the difference is, Luke, is they don't do the shotgun approach ever. They are extremely focused on the one thing that's in front of them. They do it, they master it. They pivot immediately. If it's not working off it, if it is working, flood the zone with it and master it. Then put someone on it and go do another one is really how that rolls. So how. How well can I lose? And. And in today's technology, that's a huge advantage with AI and things like that, that can help people figure out how to lose faster. But that then also, instead of going a shotgun approach, extremely laser focused on what they do, they do not try five things at once. They try one thing, get really good. You're a perfect example of that. Lu master one thing. And oh, by the way, let's start a team, right? Let's give you this little team thing. But it's. Let's do this media. See, there's a void. They all have that in common.

[Luke Acrey]

That resonates with me a ton. I don't know if it does you, Josh, of just like. It's a different way to say. Like, you see the sign behind me that says take action. Josh and I have been at our podcast stay Paid here for eight years now. Right, Josh?

[Lance Billingsley]

Something like that. Good for you.

[Luke Acrey]

And you know, probably 700, almost 800 episodes. And that's crazy.

[Lance Billingsley]

Makes my number look silly.

[Josh Dyke]

Kidding me.

[Luke Acrey]

But what, what you find is exactly what you're saying. It's like we framed as like the only common thing we see amongst the successful ones, and I've always kind of described it as they were just dumb enough, just brave enough to do like they take massive action on the thing in front of them and they're not afraid that they don't have it all figured out that it's. They're going to look dumb. Whatever it is. They're just. They take massive action. A lot of times, I don't know if you've seen this, that a lot of the top producing people that I've interviewed, it's like they don't have some sophisticated system or even know their numbers. Totally. That's what I've been shocked about. It's like they don't even know their numbers. Totally.

[Lance Billingsley]

And by the way, they are willing to share it with whoever will listen because they always, always know I'm going to give it to you and you're not going to do it.

[Luke Acrey]

Yes.

[Lance Billingsley]

So here's, here's all the recipes to all of the things I do. And they're going to go here, go ahead, Josh. You take it and run with it and build your team from three people to 200. Let's see how that goes for you. Right. I can give you the recipe. You just will never get the ingredients.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah. Why do you think if, like, why do you think the brokerages haven't figured out how to train and systematize success for these agents?

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah, there's a couple things going on with that. That's a good. That's a really good point. In our market, a couple have Luke in the Phoenix market. We are a test sample. We're a test market. Right. Of a lot of things. Trying that. The problem is there's really the three styles of brokerages. Right. There's the, there's the desk fee, there's the percentage, you know, all those that happening. There's caps, whatever. But they're always surviving for the money. Right.

[Luke Acrey]

If.

[Lance Billingsley]

If you take the average Compass transaction cost. Compass. Almost $9,000 a transaction.

[Luke Acrey]

What is that? I did not know that.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah.

[Luke Acrey]

And.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah. And the average exp. Contract. Contract cost them about $900.

[Luke Acrey]

Why understand what you're saying there. Are you saying it cost them like they don't make money off of it. They. They literally spend.

[Lance Billingsley]

Never made money.

[Luke Acrey]

But no, they're spending nine grand per transaction right now.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah. Because of all the brick and mortar and all the marketing. When you.

[Luke Acrey]

That's why I did not.

[Lance Billingsley]

When your base is Luke. When your base is fifth Avenue, your rent is. Is stupid or the Building you own or whatever that case is. Right. That's the home base of Compass. Right. If you look at exp. Exp doesn't really have brick and mortar. So they're able to do more things. That's how they're able to give you more of the profit or rev. Share. Right. So I mean those, those numbers have been around for a couple years. Pretty, pretty consistent numbers in there. What I'm seeing is this is you what, what brokerages are missing is this. I'm going to give you an analogy. I, I'm in the mar. I'm. I live down the street from one of the biggest megachurches in the country.

[Luke Acrey]

Okay.

[Lance Billingsley]

And they have locations everywhere. And how do mega churches build? They don't. They build on. You show up on Saturday and Sunday and there's culture and there's community and there's sports. And their target, all of them have the same target audience of you and me. Right. They want a male between 35 and 55 that has a pretty good job. You bring everybody with you. But it's not made there. It's made in neighborhood groups.

[Luke Acrey]

Yep.

[Lance Billingsley]

And what the brokerages don't do is they don't ever do neighborhood groups. The teams are that. So, so when a team becomes a neighborhood group, I can join a team that's all women. I can join a team that's all faith based. I can join a team that's all soccer parents like. I can join those teams in my market. I can join Hispanic, African, American, Indian, Asian. Those are all exist in my market. Those are the neighborhood groups. The brokerages have yet to figure that out. And when they figure it out, they will hold on to those people. They're just in grind. How do I stay afloat? Operations. The best of the best teams, even the big ones, the 200-300-4 have figured out how to break you into neighborhood groups. That's how they win.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah, it's super insightful, especially because I'm writing this book on teams as you know, in the industry and there is this rub like I have interviewed now some CEOs, you know, pretty big organizations out there that have teams and the brokerages have not figured out totally how to adopt the teams. And, and some have, but a lot have not. They see them as a threat and so they, you know, see it as something that's going to, you know, recruit agents and stuff like that. And so they really haven't adopted that model. I'm curious, right? So 13% in your research of the book and, and what you Wrote, you know, have you found strategies that, like, tactically that are consistent? So principle wise, you see, the consistency is the willingness to fail and the hyper focus. But in deeper layers than that, tactically, are there strategies from a marketing, sales, recruiting, whatever it is standpoint that you saw really come out of the research?

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah, there's. So I use an acronym in there. It's.

[Josh Dyke]

It's.

[Lance Billingsley]

The acronym is fire. And. And I use the analogy of a four stoner, a four burner stove, right? Is. And I were talking off camera about, hey, you've got a new baby and I've got to be accountable. And I still want to go to the gym, but I've got two businesses to run and I've got like, that is where, thank goodness, we are all blessed on this show to have gotten to that point, right. That we're able to make those decisions. A lot of people aren't. And what I realized with the, with the burner analogy, Luke, is there's always the one that you go to no matter what you're making, right? For me, it's the front left. No matter what I'm boiling, no matter what I'm burning, I always front right. You got. You damn east coast guys are out of your mind, for crying out loud.

[Josh Dyke]

Yeah,

[Lance Billingsley]

Josh and I, I thought we just had our hairlines in common, man. So for me, it's the front left. And it doesn't matter if I'm boiling a small pot or a big pot. And what I have realized is, so fire stands for focus, initiative, resiliency, and execution. I cannot have all four running at max speed, at max volume, or I will burn everything down. So if I turn up my focus, my execution has to be basically off, right? I can't focus and execute at the same time. And what I learned from everybody, Luke, is they figure out that day which one matters the most, right? Like, I can have the idea of putting in a new, I don't know, a new marketing plan for my team of 20 agents. That. That's great. It's a great idea. We also know I can fail to launch. We also know that I can talk about it for three weeks. I can also know that I can go to this company, this company, this company, go. My headshots not right. I don't like the colors. Like, that's. There is no initiative on that. I've never. I've walked up to the stove, but I never turned on the back burner. I just turned on the focus and never did anything with it. And that analogy runs really deep with the 13%. They become focus. They initiate and go. All right, it's launch. Launch it. Let's get it going. The resiliency is that figuring out how to fail really well at it. So most agents go, all right, I'm going to initiate my plan. Launch it. No one calls me. No one is. No one answers my emails. No one is picking up my mailers that I'm sending. No one's answering the phone. Why am I doing this? This is really, really hard. I'm failing continuously. And my mind goes, go back to what's safe, bro. Like, go back to working at the department store. You had insurance. You had. You had normal hours. You didn't work nights, you didn't work weekends. Like, the stuff that we go real estate. And then once they figure out their resiliency, they execute it on. They execute on it in full 100 mile per hour, one lane. They're not pivoting all over the place. It is go. And then what they do is, once they figure that out, they go back to the burner and go, all right, refocus. What should I do next? And you live that, right? You guys live that every day. And what you do is pain.

[Luke Acrey]

Point has always lied is in getting stuck in one of the. The area.

[Josh Dyke]

Starting too many burners.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah. Starting too many burners. Not focused enough or not executing and overthinking. You know, probably for us, the biggest thing is the blue ocean. Like, you just, in your head, you see an opportunity and you think, I'm missing out. So it's like, maybe you're executing on referrals. And then you see an agent over here talk about how they crushed it in farming, and you go, I got to get you a farming going. And it's just like, yeah, but you shouldn't, actually, because your referrals are only at 20%, and you could be at 50%. So just stay focused on referrals. But.

[Lance Billingsley]

And the death nail to that, Luke, is I'm gonna go try mailers. And all I need is one deal to pay for it. Yeah, I wish I had a quarter for every time I've ever been told that. In the thousands of people I have coached and taught, if I just get one deal, it's gonna pay for it. All right, well, that's. That doesn't seem like a really good business plan to me. Like, that seems like a hope. I'm wishing someone, like, swims by me and picks up the bait. Right? Is. What. What are we. What are we talking about? So you'll See, like in my market, we have people who. Unbelievable with mailers.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah.

[Lance Billingsley]

And that's still all they do, but they've mastered it and it's become repetitious. And they're not online lead genning. They're not like, they're not door knocking. It's the same thing every time.

[Luke Acrey]

You know, Andy out of California, I think he's Beverly hills area and D.C. he has a team in California. I mean, this guy is just unbelievable. Now it's a different world, but I mean, he makes 10 million bucks a year in profit. Not GCI, like profit, like just insanity. He speaks a lot of Tom Ferry stuff and everything, but I interviewed him a couple days ago and I asked him, are you on social? He's not. He doesn't use social media. He doesn't actually believe that you're making a ton of business off of doing Instagram and YouTube. He has dedicated his whole business to geo farming. He sends out. What did he say? He spends $800,000 a year on mailers, I think is what he said. He's sending out thousands, thousands of mailers and then referrals. And you go to your point, the reason why I'm sharing it with people is like, here's a guy making more money than all of us, right? Super, super successful. And he literally is dedicated to two things and that's it. He doesn't believe in Instagram, not because he doesn't see it as an option, but he just doubts that it actually produces. Like, then you have the opposite. You have Shannon Gillette right there in your market who just absolute dominates on Instagram and YouTube. Just slays it, right? And you go, it really is that ability to focus. Stick with it.

[Josh Dyke]

Here's.

[Luke Acrey]

I'm curious to think or get your take on the problem I see in the industry now I'm biased because I'm a marketing company, and so I'm trying to get agents to spend money on their marketing and stay with it. I believe agents are so uneducated from a business perspective about the idea of investment and planting seeds to reap a harvest. That takes time. And that's the fancy way to say it. The. The real crass way to say it is like they're not willing to put out 20 grand and not get instant return on that 20 grand and not realize that, hey, real businesses all the time, Josh and I at Reminder Media, we spend millions a year in marketing that we're just like, okay, that was 100 grand spent there and we have to wait 8 months, 12 months, 14 months sometimes before that returns. They don't understand the concept of investment, of being able to float. And this is. And I get it because they're living paycheck to paycheck, so I feel I want to help them in that. But they've got to realize that in business, you have to be willing to invest and you're going to have a little bit of float. Let's say you invested in Facebook advertising. You're going to have money out the door, a couple thousand dollars going out the door, if not more. 16 grand. You might not get a deal for 10 months. But if you stay on it and it's going to feel like, oh, my gosh, I've spent 12 grand and I haven't gotten a single deal. You're getting the flywheel going. And once you get it going now, all of a sudden the return comes in and it starts working. And if they would just actually stay focused and not give up too soon, I. That's where I see agents lose all the time. They spend the six grand, they cancel within three months, they cancel with it. And you're just like, God, you are literally slowly spending your way out of this business instead of staying with something. I don't know if you. That resonates. You can tell my soapbox, but it drives me.

[Lance Billingsley]

So, no, it's good. I got two things on that. The first thing I heard you say, I'm going to go to your team. You know, you have your team thing you're doing. I believe our job as team leaders is, I'm going to use a similar analogy, is to plant seeds for trees that will never sit under. Right. I'm. I'm trying to help Luke grow and scale his team under my team while he does his thing. And my job. Maxwell tells us the fifth level of leadership is. Is leading you so well that you can leave me and go lead somewhere else. Like, that's what our jobs is to, to. To your point, on. On paying it to the future. What I think is going on, that in my experience with teams and independents or whatever of people that are doing that are working through your challenge, is they don't have any data metrics before it, and they surely don't have any after. They are just spraying and praying. For lack of a better term, Luke, you know, that is. Okay, let's do this. Okay. Well, how's it going? Well, I didn't get any deals, but I just need that one. See, one deal and I'll pay for that $3,000 a month.

[Luke Acrey]

Right.

[Lance Billingsley]

I Just need one. Meanwhile, they have no tracking on the back. And going to Luke and going, hey, look, we've tried 90 days of this. The data is telling me this lane isn't for me. What's the next lane over that we can pivot to? It may be directed specifically at a niche. It may be directed specifically at a target. It may be a zip code, it may be three streaks, it may be two coffee shops. But are you tracking it on the backside? And I know you guys do that well, but I think most agents get that information and go. They don't see anything other than the one line that says net revenue.

[Luke Acrey]

Yep.

[Lance Billingsley]

I'm.

[Luke Acrey]

The point is they do not track. It's a great point. They just don't begin with the end in mind or track and measure what they're doing. And think reverse engineering wise. I have found maybe I am. I have found most strategies work. If you want to go after FSBOs, you can make fizbos work. If you want to do geographic farming, you can make geographic farming work. If you want to do referrals but live by referral only, that can work. I've met agents doing them all and they all work. So then I go, well, what then determines whether or not you should do what strategy? And that's where it gets a little bit more nuanced for me. Where I go. You, Shannon Gillette, just are amazing at social. Like, you like it, you don't mind doing it. It takes a lot of hard work, consistency, discipline, all the things that are required. But you realize that you Tom tool man, you built your business off of fizbos and expireds because you like cold calling people. And so a little bit then comes down coaching wise to the only reason I would move from one strategy after testing it for 90 days is is if you absolutely hate your quality of life because of that, what that strategy is doing, meaning you are a relationship person. You want to be referral only Garrett Maroon comes to mind for me. A client of mine does 80 plus deals a year, doesn't want to cold call. Right. And then you know you want to do that and then you have the opposite. No, this person loves, doesn't mind circle prospecting. Well, what do you think of that? It like how like yeah, picking something you enjoy. In essence.

[Lance Billingsley]

Amen. That's where I was going actually is the data tells us after the age of 35 you don't like change. Right. And the average realtor in the United States is 51, 52 years old. They do not like change. Right. Don't, don't take away my mls. I can do a private listing, but don't take away. Right. Don't take away my plano. That's what I know. Right? That's how that works. Here's what I also know, Luke, is I will never do what I don't want to do at this point. After 35, after 40 years old, I'm over 50. You look at it and you go, if I don't want to call, I'm not going to call. If I don't want to do Instagram, like your guy in California, I don't believe in it. Now, could he, could he go. The thing that, the thing that the 13%. And clearly he is. But he's a unicorn in his market. He's a unicorn in his, in his volume. It's. It's not a normal, traditional. It's not, it's not an end to end agent that we deal with. You and I deal with on the daily. Right is if I'm not going to do it, I have to be unbelievably good at mailers, if that's what I like to do. And following up with door knocks. But I don't want to do social. I have to outsource it.

[Luke Acrey]

It.

[Lance Billingsley]

And to your point is I've got to pay my 6,000 or 8,000 or my 10,000 or whatever that number is, I've got to pay. But if I, if I'm locked in over here in this lane of doing mailers, and that's what I built my business on, this is just another, this is just another burner on a stove in methods. To use the analogy again is I'm going to turn it up a little bit, but I'm going to let you turn it up for me. I'm not even going to run it. I just hire a chef at that point. Right. So are you thinking in terms of. I'm really, really good at this lane. I'm going to go Chantillette's. Chantillette's not going knocking on doors, right? Like, she's not cold calling on expireds and fizbos. It's not going to do that. But I have people, I have teams that I work with that that's all they train on. And then they're like, okay, now that we've got that good, done really, really well, let's go sprinkle in IG or TikTok or AI or whatever the flavor of the week is. Let's go sprinkle that in. And then what they really figure out is, okay, I don't like door knock, so I'm gonna go hire two door knockers.

[Luke Acrey]

Yes.

[Lance Billingsley]

That are going to do that. Like, they. If there's one thing, Luke, and you know this really, really well, the best of the best in this industry hire to every weakness that they don't want to do.

[Luke Acrey]

Yep.

[Lance Billingsley]

It's consistent every time. All the super teams I've worked with, every one of them was at a point, they're like, what do I do now? And the answer is, you're trying to do transactions, trying to do. You're trying to do marketing, you're trying to do media, you're trying to do recruiting, you're trying to do retention all at once. Hire that ops person.

[Luke Acrey]

Yes.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah. It's $120,000, but you make 8 million.

[Luke Acrey]

I talked to Craig Proctor the other day. Craig has been in the industry 40 years. I don't know if you know him or not, but he, of course, yeah, he's, you know, one of the legend coaches out there. And I talked to him the other day, and he had this great example of, like, everybody's on a team whether they know it or not. I said, you're on a team, even if you're a solo agent. And he had this diagram that it basically was you in the center, and then there was these boxes outside kind of circling you.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah.

[Luke Acrey]

And those boxes were like, the transaction coordinator, the marketer, the customer service, the sales. He goes, every single one of you, as a team, for all of you that are independent, just fill those boxes in with your name.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah.

[Luke Acrey]

Because you're doing all along. You're the transaction coordinator, you're the customer service, you're the marketer, you're the ops person. And he goes, what you have to ask yourself is, which one of these do I not want to do? And that I can leverage out. And that's how you get scale. And I was like, yeah, it's such a great way to kind of practically look at it. It's like breaking down your business and components. The summation that I come to is like. And I think this is what you're saying out of your book, too, is like, number one failure for all agents is they lack the focus and the relentless execution on the strategy that they choose. Probably driven because they're not willing to fail. Probably driven from a deep psychological need to not face rejection or they don't have a big enough. Why? I mean, you could get really deep. That goes back to someone's even childhood. But ultimately, it's like, hey, why are you failing today? Why are you not at the level you want? You know already? It's the same reason you don't have abs. It's the same reason you're not in the shape you want to be in is because you're taking in too many calories. You're not exercising enough. It's not rocket science. You're just not doing it consistently enough. I coached an agent I don't know a day ago, two days ago, named Luke Overton. Just shout out to him. Killer agent. Year in the business, 28 deals in Mississippi. Doesn't never been an agent before, doesn't know anything. He's a great guy, likable and everything. And he's trying to get 36 deals this year. And I go, well, how much prospect are you doing? I go, two hours a day. I said, hey, man, be honest with me. Like, like, very honest. Are you doing two hours of prospecting every day?

[Josh Dyke]

Wow.

[Luke Acrey]

I'm kind of sporadic. I'm doing more like one. I go, exactly. I said, hey, man, if you want to be an A player, you want to be on my team, you should be doing four. But that's up to you. That's what you want in your life. Like, it's up to you. But honestly, like, that's it, Luke. It's like, you're doing all the right things. You don't have to overthink it. You're asking me for Legion. You're asking me for all this stuff. I said, you don't need any of it. You're doing all the right stuff. You're just not doing enough of it. And. And the reality is, as soon as you can get committed to that, you'll. You'll get to your 36 and beyond. But that's a personal decision. But that's the reality. And I think most agents listening to this need to hear that. Reality is that you know what to do, but you're just not executing. Relentless.

[Lance Billingsley]

Knowing versus doing has always been the rub. Right. I, I, I, Josh. I feel when he said no abs and not in the shape you want, he was kind of attacking me. I just. I just want to throw that out there. Yeah. I mean, it's. Why isn't he talking? This little pretty thing up in my left corner, my screen is attacking my. My condition. For crying. Don't flex while you get your drink either. I see you.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah, exactly. There you go.

[Lance Billingsley]

Here's what. Here's what I know, and I hope everybody is listening. You come out of the womb and your mind protects you from danger. Don't like, don't touch that fire. It burns. I won't know it burns until I get close to it. And parenting style can be, you know what? If you fall out of chair, I bet you don't do it again. Or it could be, oh, my gosh, don't fall out of the chair. Right. I have to protect you as long as your brain does, too. When we get in 10, 99, and you're a business owner, your brain naturally protects you. In a business, Luke, that the best of the best convert 3 to 4% of every 100 people they talk to. It is built on failure. But the difference is, are you willing to make the 98th, 99th, and 100th call when you've had 97 no's? And your brain goes, what the hell are we doing? Why are we doing this? This makes no sense. No one likes us. We've made no money. My spouse is bustling on us. Nothing's going well. Why are we doing this? And here's where the rub is. Luke, Luke. If I said, do me a favor, put your hands behind your back and your chin up, find a wall and run up 20ft as fast as you can and face plan into that wall. Your mind. You both laugh at me. And your mind goes, that's stupid, right? Why would I do that? If I said, luke, would you do it for a grand? No. Would you do it for ten grand? Maybe. Maybe. Would you do it for a hundred grand? Your brains, it's the same brain, but your brain's now negotiating and going, well, for a hundred grand, I'll do it five times. It doesn't. It doesn't matter. For ten grand, your mind goes, well, define running fast. Like, which? Like, define how high my chin has to go up. Like, when you say I have to run like, it's the same. What we don't do as agents is we run in and we run in. We run in, we run in. We never adjust.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah.

[Lance Billingsley]

And we never turn and we never change this shoulder or this side of our face or this shoulder. It's the analogy of you are not going to get up every time, but when you do, you got to get up and do it again. Right. I've been using a little bit of an analogy in this is. And bear with me, right in the middle of the NBA finals, Right. I don't that like that. The game coming back, I never seen. I'm old and I've never seen anything like it ever in my life. So. So I have, I teach, I talk to agents and teams and all that time they're like, what do we do to survive? Like, I know that it's hard. I know that I've got to run on that wall. I know there could be a 1000, 10,000, $100,000 commission check at the end of it. My brain knows that it's the only reason I keep doing it. But how do I survive it? And here's what I think. Look at what's just happened in the playoffs. You had the spurs at home lose a game they should have won. They lose another game they should have won. They win another game they should have lost. And last night they blew the biggest lead in the history of the NBA. But what do they have to do tomorrow? They have to show up. You guys, as agents that are out there, I want you to treat every single week like it's a seven game series. Here's what I mean. I can't win every game and I can't win every day. Did I win today and did I, did I revenue? Did I generate revenue? Did I get in front of people? Did I build trust in my, in my community that I'm the person that they should talk to? If not, you've lost game one, you got to play game two. Now if you lose game two, here's the problem in playoffs, if I lose the first two, I now have to win four out of the next five. Am I operating with that mentality, Luke, where I show up and I go, hey man, I took two days off and went and played golf with my buddies and hung out with my girlfriend and we like, I spent a couple days, I gotta grind the next, I can't, I, I know the kids are off for the summer and we got summer school and all that going on. I gotta grind. I'm down two games. Are you breaking it into pieces that you can recognize every day? And when your brain starts to go, what are you doing? It's not that the spurs have to wake up today and go, oh my God, regroup.

[Luke Acrey]

Yes.

[Lance Billingsley]

They've gotta wake up and go. The most devastating thing that could ever have happened to us in any profession in this sport. We've got to regroup and do it again tomorrow. It is the exact same thing that a team owner has to do, that a broker has to do, but more important, the infantry, the day to day grinding agent that's out there doing this. When you lose a game like that and it's devastating, a 4 million dollar deal falls out of escrow. That's devastating when you thought you've cashed that check already and it's hard to recover from that and you're going, man, that kind of deal. I can pay for my kids college, maybe I can help buy us the house want and it's gone. How do you respond tomorrow? That's the difference. Do you cocoon and crawl into your bed and Netflix for three days? Because with three days I've lost the week and I've lost the playoff or do I get up and go, all right, game four, let's go, we lost game three. Back at it, man. Let's go back and grind. I think if people just. That's how you trick. That's the resilience key. Absolutely. In the fire analogy is I have to trick my brain into yes, it hurts and I run into that wall, Luke, but there's a reward at the end. Get up and run again. Get up and do it again. Okay, I didn't get a deal today. Get up and do it again. And the 13% do that. And then they scale and they don't, they don't lose their private life, but they may invest in their business life for three months and turn down their stove of private. Right. I believe there's also the star of analogy of your family, your faith, your fitness and your friends. Right. Which or your finances, whichever one you want to add in there. Right. All, all easy Fs is I can't go. My faith can't always be up. Or my fitness, to your point, fitness can't always be up every day, all day. So I'm going to turn that one down and I'm going to focus on my business. But my faith, I mean, my family has to turn down a little bit. Then on the weekends I turn up the family, I turn down the business. It's that stove analogy that it's always. It's this trick of the brain. Yes, it's gonna hurt, but get up and run again, you've got 97 more chances at it.

[Luke Acrey]

Right.

[Lance Billingsley]

That's what I think.

[Josh Dyke]

I'm gonna go get abs after listening. That was good.

[Lance Billingsley]

And I'm ready at arms, Josh. And we're gonna make a perfect human.

[Josh Dyke]

I love the analog, like the, the weak analogy of this, of the playoff. Like that is. Yeah, I've never heard that before.

[Luke Acrey]

I love that it is something that's. We see Josh on the call in show is the hardest thing for a lot of these agents that are calling in for help with their business is controlling the narrative in their mind because they Are either feeling depressed, discouraged, down because they think there's something they should be doing that they're not. And they don't realize, no, you're doing the right thing, keep going. You just got to keep running into that wall. Or they literally have sold themselves that the grass is greener on the other side. Like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. The grass is greener. Do I really want to do this job? The squeeze, you know, all that stuff. And it's really, you know, I don't know why I think God designed it this way for some reason, but it's. There's so much joy and fulfillment that comes on the other side of hard. Like your burden. Because blessing, right when you go, that's in the book. But you, you are so thankful you win. When you stick it out in a relationship or whenever, it's like you don't like it, but you're thankful that you did because there's joy on the other side of, of the hard. And that's just how we are designed. And so what people, they, there's their brain, becomes a great salesman that tells them, this is not worth it. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. It's not worth running into the wall, to use your analogy. And they don't realize that, well, you leave here and you go somewhere else, there's a new wall wall that you have to run into. Every business, everything in life has a wall. And it's just, you're gonna keep, if you keep bouncing, you're just gonna go through your whole life always hitting a wall and never realizing that, hey, man, the key is actually breaking through that wall. And it feels hard. The joy is overwhelming.

[Lance Billingsley]

I hope that your listeners get this. And I know you've had a ton of higher level people than me, but here's what I absolutely realized in this, in this industry is even in real estate school, you are taught, treat it like a business. Treat like a business. You now own a business. That means you're always on. And if someone calls, you answer the phone and you treat it like a business. I used to teach that, right? I used to. I mean, even business planning classes, right? And you do a business plan class. Four of the 200 people show up. And of those four, they're not doing it by February 1st. So, like, that's how this goes. I get it, right? A P and L. P and L is not Paul and Lisa. It's an actual thing that you like. It's this organic document. Like it's something people don't do. Here's what they do, though. I left my corporate job to go get into real estate. Why? I have no ceiling. I have. I control my own hours. I theoretically don't have a boss. Like, I have all this freedom. And when I was five years old, if I could have drawn up the best job ever, it would have been this. What do you mean? I have. I can make all the money in the world. And. And I. And I don't have a 9 to 5. But here's where they miss. Every person that's listened to your show, Luke, including you, including me, including Josh, is we all live in our life. Had that horrible job. Right? They had that job that 16, 17, 18. I was work. I was working at Taco Bell on Friday nights during football games and never went to games. And we. You guys smile because you know exactly what I'm talking about. But yet I did it for a year and I did it for $5 an hour. But then I get into real estate and I don't bring that work ethic with me because I now own my own business. If the people that are on this show worked their business like it's a job, you still have to run the business aspects. You have to have a business plan. You have to have a P and L. You have to have an accountant. You have to have LLCs. Like, you have to have things that matter. But imagine what your life would look like for that $5 an hour job that I put in probably 20 hours a week for. For a long time. Imagine if I brought that work ethic to this. Yeah. And I woke up every day and I said, okay, like for instance, Luke. If I said, luke, Josh, we're going to dial real estate people every day from 8 o' clock to 5 o', clock, and I'm going to pay you $150,000 a year to do it. There would be no question. And by the way, guess what would happen? Your focus, your initiative, your resiliency and your execution would never be in question.

[Luke Acrey]

Yep.

[Lance Billingsley]

You would show up. You would do the job when people told you no. You'd make another dial and you would do it all day. Why? Why is that different? For a job that I can make triple that, quadruple that, and I don't work that way right.

[Luke Acrey]

Am for yourself. You show up at 8am for a boss, but you won't show up at 8am the lack of a guarantee.

[Josh Dyke]

It's like that lack of the.

[Lance Billingsley]

Right.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah.

[Josh Dyke]

Yeah. It's.

[Lance Billingsley]

It's. Why the. It's. Why the W2 like agent thing is always kind of sat out there. Redfin tried it. I wouldn't shock me if one of the big monsters do it it again at some point and nibble at it.

[Luke Acrey]

I mean totally different podcast will have to have. But that is where the industry said it. There will be, there will be employee agents. They just, they're just trying to figure out the lead flow right now. They're trying to capture the lead flow in different ways.

[Lance Billingsley]

Well, Zillow's talked about that for years. Right. They wanted to do that with the Flex program. So I mean that that's existed. I think the chat. It's not necessarily the lead flow, Luke. I think the channel challenges the quality of agent I'm going to get. I mean do I want a $50,000 a year agent that's not working for any commission but a bonus? That was the redfin plan. Here's $50,000. You've got to sell 50 homes and then after that we give you 1500 every single time after.

[Luke Acrey]

Now you're, you're right. Redfin sales get the top producing agents. Zillow is actually doing a great job because they're, they're essentially have almost employee type agents. They don't really.

[Lance Billingsley]

With no overhead.

[Luke Acrey]

With no overhead. And they're doing it because they're giving them all the best leads. They're giving them all.

[Lance Billingsley]

I think you were talking this earlier. We were talking about the teams. I think we wake up in four or five years and you have, it's kind of, it's kind of like the airlines. You're going to have an American and a United and Southwest is kind of hanging in there and JSX kind of shows up and JetBlue is in trouble and but, but you're going to have the big two or three that are there and then you're going to have a bunch of these little boutique team ridges that have been trying to launch in the last couple years and they're going to see that that's the only way they're going to be able to dictate what they do and dictate their revenue. And they're still going to feed off the Zillows and the homes and the Realtor. They're going to feed off those leads. But I think you're going to have this long tail of boutique brokerages that figure out how to do it. And I'm going to tell you with the next. To me, the next scalability is if you could take two or three boutique brokerages in one Market and share your leads and now become kind of this super brokerage without giving up any of my identity. That's the play that you're going to be able to make a ton of money and that is a sellable product.

[Luke Acrey]

Yeah, that's actually, we're have to have

[Josh Dyke]

you back on and dig it.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah. Josh, we got a lot to talk about, buddy.

[Josh Dyke]

Yeah, this has been awesome. Lance, really appreciate you coming on, sharing your wisdom and motivation. Thank you. Close out here. Let people know how they can find you, your podcast, your book.

[Lance Billingsley]

Yeah, podcast is Everywhere. It's a 13% podcast. The book is super easy to find. You can go to Amazon, type in Lance Billingsley, or you can type in the 13%. My first, we've, we've had almost 2,000 purchases and downloads in the first 45 days. Came out of the shoots number one in real estate, number one in real estate investment, number one in self employment for almost a week. So that was a pretty cool thing. A lot of good friends of mine stood up and, and like Luke, going, hey, man, let me support you on a little $15 book. I mean, you're doing a book. There's no money in it, that's for sure.

[Luke Acrey]

There's no money in a book.

[Lance Billingsley]

Zero money in a book. But it's, but it's great for everything. So, Josh, thanks for asking me 13% easy to find on LinkedIn under Lance Billingsley. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, I'm in all those. But yeah, it's. I am a blessed, blessed man and being able to have a good buddy like Luke. We've. Since you were on the show, you've always been good to me and always been cordial to me when we were in person or on text messages.

[Luke Acrey]

And Josh, sorry I told you didn't have abs, man.

[Lance Billingsley]

I'm sorry, I just, I was gonna say Josh. Other than Josh and I not being in shape and you've insulted us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Dyke]

Thanks for joining us.

[Lance Billingsley]

Hey, Josh, what are you doing next week? You want to start a podcast with me? It's. It's two bald men. Two bald fat guys. Thank you so much.

[Josh Dyke]

Thank you all so much for listening. You can dive deeper to this episode. Get the links that Lance mentioned as well as a video [e-mail] and if you enjoyed this episode, we'd love your support. Head on over to YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel. Give this video a thumbs up. The best way to support the show is share this episode with somebody that you know, if you want to get a hold of me or Luke, you can email us podcastremindermedia.com and of course find us on socials. We are at staypaid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Josh Dike.

[Luke Acrey]

Guys, I'm Luke Acre. Lance, man. Appreciate you, brother. Great wisdom, everybody. Go get his book. It is worth it. You should be in the 13%. And if you're headed the to towards the 87%, you desperately need this book. Action item from this is think about the fire acronym, right? What do you need to do right now? What stove, what burner do you need to turn up? Is it focus? Is it initiative? Is it resilience? Is it execution? And are you doing too much right? You're. You have too many maybe of the burners going on right now, and you don't know what phase you're in. So I challenge you. Take a look at that. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every business, it's top producers. Take action. Take action on that today,

[Lance Billingsley]

Sam.