← Stay Paid Podcast
Stay Paid Podcast
Stop Setting “SMART” Goals—Why the Best Agents Set Stupid Goals (Verl Workman)
00:30:11
Ditch Smart Goals—Set Stupid Ones with Verl Workman Tired of chasing “realistic” growth that never moves the needle? Verl Workman says it’s time to get stupid. In this game-changing episode, Verl—a speaker, author, and the CEO...
Loading summary
Transcript93 lines
- [00:01]
Luke Acree
Welcome to the staypay 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 Steich
Welcome to Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Steich.
- [00:13]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
Joshua Steich
And before we bring on our guest today, we would love it if you take a minute to subscribe to Stay Paid on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. And while you're there, drop us a review. We will make sure to read it here on the show. Our guest today is verl workman vs verl is a distinguished speaker, author and the co founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems. With nearly three decades of experience, Verl has delivered over 1,000 seminars and keynotes to real estate and sales professionals worldwide, empowering them to achieve remarkable results through his expertise in sales, marketing, management and technology. Verl, welcome to Stay Paid.
- [00:47]
Verl Workman
Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. What a cool name for a podcast though. Stay Paid. Like I love. I just like, let's start with that. How do we stay paid?
- [00:55]
Joshua Steich
That is the goal.
- [00:56]
Luke Acree
That's what we've been trying to figure out. Like we started seven years ago. Like wait a second. It's a labor of love. That's what it is. It's a give back to the industry. We're still trying to. No, I think, you know, it's been an incredible probably brand builder.
- [01:09]
Joshua Steich
We were talking about it earlier before we jumped on.
- [01:11]
Luke Acree
It's hard to. And this is like all marketing, right? It is so hard in some cases to get a tangible one to one when it comes to marketing because not all marketing is direct response. But some of the best marketing you ever do is more brand. It builds relationships, it builds mindshare and over time it pays huge dividends. It's, it's why you see a lot of the biggest brands in the world, they spend money on things. You're just like, is it really makes sense to sponsor that stadium? Does it make sense to have your name on it? But you see, yeah, they're just looking for roas, man. They're just looking for how do I get my brand out there in every way and judge the overall return on ad spend? You know, for my P and L. But you know, with that being said, I could talk about that forever. I'd love to get your take, man. The industry is in a shake up right now. So you have Keller Williams just took a big time investment. I think it was Stone Point Capital, but they took an investment there, which is interesting. And what's happening in with Gary Keller in them. You got Redfin just got bought for like 1.75 billion from rocket. You got Zillow with the super app. They, I heard that they have like 20% of their users now starting to use that super app, which they're going to try to push that to 70 something percent. And that essentially goes from what I would call pushing the lead to the local agent to pushing the lead to. Right now maybe it's a Zillow flex team, but soon it will be probably a Zillow agent or a Zillow team. I mean it's just so obvious where it's going. So what is your take on the shake up in the industry, especially the whole Rocket Mortgage thing? Like, are you like, do you think real estate is going to compress or what's your take there?
- [02:46]
Verl Workman
Well, there's a, that's a lot of stuff in a, in a short package. Let me start with the first thing you mentioned. You talked about Keller Williams. So I have tremendous respect for Gary Keller. I think that he's one of the brightest minds in our industry and he's a sharp businessman. And when you see, see activities by leaders that, that, that they're strong indicators of what's really going on. So when you see somebody like Keller Williams take on an infusion of capital, I think, well, okay, so why do you take on infusions capital? Number one is because you need it or number two is because you see that you're going into an area or a time when you're going to need it. So you're preparing for the future. And so he's built this tremendous brand and has a tremendous following. And so now all of a sudden he's taken on infusion capital. Okay, so what do we learn from that? We learned that he's anticipating major changes in the marketplace and wants to have the capital to be able to either fund the staying power or fund the growth that happens. I believe that when there's uncertainty in the marketplace is an opportunity for people who are innovative to take market share. And I think that's what's, I think that's what Zillow's positioning to do and Rocket Mortgage is they're taking advantage of the uncertainty of the lack of professionalism in real estate agents and they're finding ways to get direct to the consumer. So if they can eliminate the real estate agent from the transaction and go and meet the customer where they are by providing really great value, the agent becomes more of a commodity and a door opener rather than a trusted professional. That's delivering great services. So it's the beginning of the ramifications of the consumer speaking to the industry, saying, we don't believe the agents are worth what they get paid, therefore let's create a class action lawsuit. Let's see if we can get in their pockets. And now all of that stuff is settled out and starting to settle out now. Now the wheels are starting to move in the change of the industry. And I don't even think we've begun to feel the impact of it.
- [04:32]
Luke Acree
It's so interesting. I mean, I think it was Charlie Munger who said all problems in business or really anything, can be traced back to a misalignment of incentive. And you go, the industry could be so much better than it is. If you made it harder to become a real estate agent, if you required certain steps, maybe you had to serve under someone who's already been a real estate agent for two years and you had to do this apprenticeship, almost like a residency of a doctor.
- [04:59]
Verl Workman
And.
- [05:00]
Luke Acree
And you would go, why has it the national association of Realtors enforced better standards over the decades to clean up the industry? And you go, well, what's their incentive? Their incentive is dues, right? Or, you know, whatever. Like, and I'm obviously adding Luke Acre's take on it, but it's like a misalignment of incentives that has crushed. And ultimately they're paying the price for it. Because you look at there's 1.5 million members or something like that, there's only 600 something thousand financial advisors. And you go, how do we need one point when there's only 4 million home transactions happening, maybe 11 million sides or so or whatever, how do you need a 1.5 million? And I love it because I love the real estate industry. I love that there's a lot of realtors, but there's so many bad real estate agents out there. And you see this in that the top 10% are doing 90% of the transactions. It feels like it's. It's insane. I don't know. What's your take on that?
- [05:57]
Verl Workman
Well, I think that the best trainer of real estate is the game. And unless you do a lot of transactions, you can't be good at it. And the whole concept of, you know, most people get their license because they want to save money on their own purchase or commission on a house. And so they go through their 90 hours or 100 hours of real estate school, get their license, go do a transaction, and now they're a realtor and they hope that they can Pick up their, you know, their soccer families or their neighborhood or their family real estate business. And. And we make it look easy for him. And so I got my license in 10 days. I did 90 hours in 10 days and got my license. And the same time my wife's little sister moved in with us, she started hair school. Thousand hours and a year and a half later, she graduated and could cut my hair. Think about, exactly, think about that right there.
- [06:39]
Luke Acree
You could end the show there and go, man, if we would have fixed that problem.
- [06:42]
Verl Workman
Mic drop. Anyway, so, yeah, so lack of professional is a big deal. They also. The other thing is, is that think about, think about the consumer today and the specialization that, that they are, they're being trained with. So this whole coming up in the world, they, they have like, my wife has a specialist that cuts her hair, a different one, that colors it, a different one that does her Botox, somebody different that does her nails, somebody different that does her feet. We have a different. We have a different person that does every aspect. It's all the same. Cosmetology license with specialties. When we shop at the grocery store, we go to a Whole Foods instead of a half foods. I don't even know what that means. When you go to the dentist, he doesn't do everything. He sends you to the orthodontist or he sends you to the oral surgeon to get your wisdom teeth out, where he used to be generalist and did. When you go to your general doctor, the general doctor's there to just diagnose and then send you to a specialist for what you really need help with, whether it's, you know, you don't go to an orthopedic that does knees, ankles, backs and brain surgery. You go to an orthopedic that specializes in shoulders. The world has moved into specialization, but the real estate industry has stayed in generalization. And I think that is one of the biggest issues is that, well, what do you do? I do real estate. What kind of real estate? Well, I do everything. I do residential, commercial land, ranch, high rise buildings, you know, whatever you need. Hey, man, if you need it, I can do it. Well, you did four deals last year. How can you be good at any of it when you. There's no specialty. So we were talking before the show started about teams. And I think that the movement to teams is the answer to the call of the consumer that they want experts. Like when you just do buyers and you do it 60 times a year. I just don't care. Yours could be better at it than someone who does it. 7. When you do listings and you focus on high dollar listings or you focus, focus on new home construction, or you focus on, you know, residential leases, whatever that is, that specialty is like when you do it hundreds of times, you get good at it and all of a sudden the consumer has a better experience and price doesn't become the objection anymore. So in the absence of value, price will always be the, Always be the objection. So specialization, I think, is the, is the, is the industry gap that we've been missing. You, I love that. You, I don't mind, I can talk forever. But you, you, you mentioned a couple, you mentioned financial planners. Yeah. And like when you have a, have you, have you ever, have you had a great experience with a financial planner and a bad experience?
- [09:03]
Luke Acree
Yes.
- [09:04]
Verl Workman
What was the difference?
- [09:06]
Luke Acree
Knowledge, really. And then they did the unexpected. Like both of them. I expected a certain level of expertise, but one actually did things for me that I had not thought of. A perfect example would be, you know, I've talked to so many people about estate planning and trust and stuff like that. And it was so apparent. The people who had the knowledge versus the people who had the generalization, it was just like immediately. And I don't know myself, but it's just the reason why I make the point is because the consumer might not be educated, but whether you call it biologically, psychologically, you just know intuitively, you know what you're talking about and you are not a bad person, but you don't really know because you can't go deep or you're not revealing things to me that I haven't heard. Surface level.
- [09:57]
Verl Workman
Yeah. So if you think about real estate, we've got, we're in this generalist market where there's million and a half Realtors and the vast majority of them don't do more than seven or eight deals if they're lucky.
- [10:08]
Luke Acree
Yeah.
- [10:10]
Verl Workman
So there's no level of expertise. Well, the consumer wants a higher level. It's kind of like we've been playing high school ball and all of a sudden we put our best high school players into the professionals and the professionals level. There's such a higher level of physicality and intelligence and strategy and data tracking that we know what the opposition like, we know so much more. Like, if you've ever talked to anybody that's played at the pro level, I mean, they have coaches for mindset, they have coaches for strategy, they have offensive, defensive. I mean, they've got everything. Well, we're in real estate. We're like trying to Drop by people's houses with a jar of jam and hope that they think we're experts in real estate. And that whole concept to me is like, like that is not how I want to be associated to being an expert in this business. I want, I want my clients to be the most educated in the transaction. So when they make a decision, it's like the right thing and I'm not part of it.
- [11:07]
Luke Acree
I'm curious because you are, I mean, legend in the industry working with, I mean, super successful teams. Like when you look at the brokerage model, is the, is the brokerage dead in your mind because they're making no money. I talked to so many of these operators and stuff and they're not making money. Like how do you shift as a broker owner right now? And then is there an advantage to being part of a brokerage versus being independent? I'm just curious your take on that.
- [11:37]
Verl Workman
Yeah, it's really been really interesting. Some of my highest performing teams that are, I'll call them team ridges, they're independent broker owners that actually run their brokerage as a team are some of the most successful and profitable businesses we coach and work with. But in the last two years, there's been really a mass interest in putting their licenses with other brokerages to move the liability off of them as a broker owner to somebody else.
- [12:00]
Luke Acree
Interesting.
- [12:01]
Verl Workman
And so I see a lot of people looking at that and a lot of them are going to the 11th hour and then in their guts they don't make the move. I've seen two in the last 30 days that are, you know, 6 and 7 million GCI Commission teams that almost, almost moved, that almost went to like a real or an exp or another brand because it was a low cost. Hang my license there. But at the end of the day, they couldn't do it because they didn't. They weren't aligned in the values or they weren't aligned in the, in the business model of what they were selling. Are you selling people? Are you selling houses? What's the, It's a confusing message to the marketplace. And so they, they, they ended up not moving. And I've had a couple others that have moved and now we're, now they're looking at other pillars of income and different ways of subsidizing the real estate income by doing growth and participating.
- [12:49]
Luke Acree
Like the downline or the, what you call it, the stock essentially, if you join.
- [12:54]
Verl Workman
Yeah, downline, marketing, whatever.
- [12:57]
Luke Acree
What is a good profit margin in your mind for a team? Like I'm sure, obviously there's nuance and differences in certain aspects, but what should you aim for?
- [13:06]
Verl Workman
So the first. Well, it depends. So the big, the big mover on profit margin is how much production is done by the team leader. And so in most of the dysfunctional teams, when they come to us, it's usually the team leader started a team. No one's taught them how to be a leader. They are doing 90% of the business. They got all these people, they're babysitting and they're feeding and there's not a lot of production. Those are usually really highly profitable teams, but they're, they're bankrupt in lifestyle, so they have profitability with cash, but they've done it at the expense of their family, faith, friends, fun, fitness and all the things that matter more in life. And so I'll tell you that we want our teams to run at a 50% gross profit after the cost of sale, which means after you pay your agent and you have a cost of lead generation, the cost of delivering the product at 50% and then the net profit if you're between 20 and 35% net profit at the end of the year. And that depends on personal production. If you do more personal production, your margins go up. So as we back off of personal production, our volume goes up, but our margin goes down a little bit because we're not doing it ourselves. So if you're making 25% net net and you're not in production anymore.
- [14:11]
Luke Acree
Yeah, so I was going to say that's fantastic because I think Acre Brothers. I wish Stephen was on to confirm. I think we're around 20%. We feel we're not doing maybe a little higher because Steven's gotten a lot more into production. Exactly what you're saying. Like we built up to like 13, 14 people were bab. A bunch of people. Steven's crushing it. Solo production. And then, you know, we went through the journey of losing a couple top producing agents and then said, okay, we're going to do more of a Seal team. So now it's like five people on the team. You know, we've closed 60 this year so far and I mean, it's been harder, but the profit margins are there and we're, we're functioning well, but we still. Stephen hasn't been able to get out of production because, you know, I guess split wise, what would you recommend? Split wise? If you could just do it from the start, like if you were advising me for an agent I'm bringing in, what would you say a split would be? Knowing we provide all the leads for the agents and we're providing obviously the transaction coordinators and stuff like that.
- [15:11]
Verl Workman
So first of all, I tell you that if you hire agents and you tell them you provide the leads, you're going to hire entitled children who never learn how to hunt. And so I would say that providing leads is a qualification. If they do the activities that earn them the right to receive leads.
- [15:26]
Luke Acree
Love that.
- [15:27]
Verl Workman
And so every agent, I say is responsible for putting 25 new leads in the database every month. And so they're responsible. And if they'll do. Which is what, like one a day? Right. So we prospect every day for an hour. You have to add one new person to the database a day. And if they do that, then they qualify for lead distributions. That's first kind of a mindset is lead distribution is a reward, not an entitlement.
- [15:48]
Luke Acree
Love that.
- [15:49]
Verl Workman
The second thing is, is I separate buyer's agents versus listing partners because I want specialists on buyer's agents. We do 40, 60 on the first two deals in a month, 45 on deals three and four, and 50, 50 on five plus. And then we have a 10 things to be on my team sheet that says the minimum level of acceptable performance is two deals a month. So if you have five agents doing 24 deals, you're doing 100 transactions on your buyer's agents. That's. I mean, that's a, that's a kick butt team right there. Doing 60 is. I want to know where the gap is. So what's your percentage of listings versus buyers?
- [16:20]
Luke Acree
Oh, right now, actually, I have that number. Let me pull that up for you.
- [16:25]
Verl Workman
This would be awesome. We'll do like a life coaching.
- [16:27]
Luke Acree
Dude. I know, this is sick. Like I'm, I'm selfishly getting the info. See, this is why I wanted Stephen. I think some emergency happened. Who knows what actually happened? 35 buyers, 27 listings.
- [16:39]
Verl Workman
So that's. That ratio is not bad. So your listing side versus buy side, you should, for every listing you generate, you should close 1.5 buy side transactions.
- [16:48]
Luke Acree
Okay.
- [16:48]
Verl Workman
And so if you had 30 listings, you should sell 45 buy side transactions. And so usually when those ratios are off, it's that we have generalists, not specialists that specialize in buyers. And I don't have enough focus on building the listing inventory. For every listing you generate, you should create between five and six leads a month. And so if you have 10 active listings, you have 50 to 60 leads coming in. Every 25 leads that are generated on the team, we add a buyer's agent. Everything we do is non emotional. Meaning I have a system and we have data that backs up the formula that gets us to profitability. So we spend a lot. Yeah. So it's just like greatness is predictable and so is average. So you want, you want to go from 60 deals to 160 deals, you got to stop setting average. You got to stop setting like smart goals. Smart goals are stupid and we've got to push way beyond what we believe is possible.
- [17:42]
Luke Acree
What do you set stupid goals when you don't set smart goals?
- [17:45]
Verl Workman
Yeah, we set stupid, smart goals are the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
- [17:48]
Luke Acree
Well, what do you consider like a stupid goal? Like what, what is your, I'm curious, your take on that? Because isn't smart? I don't know if I know it off the top of my head. It's specific. Measurable.
- [17:58]
Verl Workman
Attainable.
- [17:59]
Luke Acree
Attainable. Time bound or realistic? Realistic time bound or something like that.
- [18:03]
Verl Workman
Okay, all right, let's just have. Let me ask you guys. Yeah, yeah. You do all these interviews with all these great people and your show is awesome.
- [18:08]
Luke Acree
Thank you.
- [18:09]
Verl Workman
How many people have you interviewed that have just fricking knocked it out of the park and killed it by setting attainable and realistic goals?
- [18:18]
Luke Acree
No one, probably. In fact, the thing that has shocked me the most about interviewing a lot of the successful people is, and this maybe comes across the wrong way, they have no idea what they're doing. It's what, what's so crazy is that they were just willing to just massively take action, look like an idiot, fall down, do it again and again.
- [18:36]
Verl Workman
And.
- [18:36]
Luke Acree
But that's why they always end up to a certain level. But they can't cross that next chasm of like, it's almost like they're playing in college but not in the NFL. Right? Yeah.
- [18:46]
Verl Workman
So think about like attainable and realistic. Why did anybody create an acronym about attainable and realistic? Like, you know, I'll tell you who created it is people that have jobs that don't want to be held accountable next quarter for too big of a number. And so they sandbag their goals by setting attainable, realistic goals and then they hit them and then they have a 5% increase next quarter. And so because they're not shooting for the moon and getting big things that, you know, it doesn't cause them to work too much. I think that smart goals are for losers. And like, I don't even, and I don't even mean to hurt anybody's feelings, but okay, so here's my, I have.
- [19:22]
Luke Acree
My take on that. I mean, I want to hear your. But you know what I think has killed the. The reason why you have to have smart goals. Stuff like that is the legal. In HR and employment and stuff like that. Because we expect. We have about 300 employees or so. It is so hard to get rid of people and add people with the legal environment and the HR environment and all this stuff if you don't have absolutely specific concrete. Now, luckily, real estate agents and what I'm not advocating for is treating people wrong or doing something the wrong way. I'm advocating for like, you should be able to have huge goals. And when someone doesn't hit that, move them on and them not complain. But anyways, keep going. That was my little rant.
- [20:04]
Verl Workman
Well, yeah. Okay. So, like, I remember going to parent teacher conference. So I have like six kids and 12 grandkids. I'm like, super dad, and I go to fifth grade parent teacher conference. And I. My. My son, who's dyslexic, we didn't know at the time, add like his dad, like his teacher, you know, he's got needs improvement in all the areas because they don't do abs and Cs. And. And she's like, okay, Nate, let's set some goals for what you want to do in the next term. And he's like, I want very good. I want to be the highest score in all the categories. And she says, oh, I think that's really. I think that's really sweet, but why don't we set some more realistic goals? I'm like, you're telling my kid that he wanting to be great is not okay, and you'd like him to set goals to become a little. A little bit better than average. And I'm not okay. I pulled my kid out of the class.
- [20:47]
Luke Acree
Good for you, man. Good for you.
- [20:49]
Verl Workman
As a high school kid, I went and saw. I saw. I won. I won the DECA Club happenings book sells contest. And I got to go to the University of Utah, and I saw Zig. Zig and Tom Hopkins and Dr. Schuller. And I went back to my DECA Club teacher, and I'm like, I'm going to be a motivational speaker. And my teacher's like, oh, son, you know, there's no real career path for that. I need. You should have more realistic goals. Like, who crushes the dreams of children by telling them they need to have realistic goals? That's what a smart goal is. It's like the dream crushing people. Anyway, so that's my, like, Roger Bannister he's like, I want to, I want to. I want to run a four minute mile. And he was told that that's physically impossible. The human body is not designed to run a four minute mile. Then he runs it and then within a year, 18 more people do.
- [21:34]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [21:35]
Verl Workman
Michael Phelps is like, you know, at 15, he makes the Olympic team. You know how rare that is? And like, he's like, I'm going to win eight gold medals in one Olympics. Well, that's not possible. You know how many things have to line up? It's totally unrealistic. Smoking crack. Goals. Stupid. Goals are goals that are so stupid you're afraid to say them out loud because people will make fun of you. You. Here's what stupid stands for. Strategic. Like, I want to strategically do something that nobody else believes is possible. I want them to be transformational. I want them to change my life, my children's life, and my posterity's life. They need to be completely unrealistic. Let's colonize Mars. Like, what idiot says that out loud? They need to be purpose driven. Like, what's the core value inside that will cause you to do the thing that's hard when everybody else is quitting? You're engaged, like, because you don't. Your purpose is so clear. They need to be innovative. You can't. Like, I don't know how many years you've been at the same level of transactions, but, like, if you want to double, we can't double. Go 60 to 120 by doing the stuff that got you to 60. We have to innovate. We have to change. We have to do things different. We gotta shake it up. And then we gotta do things drastically different if we want to perform at a higher level. And then the goal has to be dynamic. The moment you think you're getting close to it, I'm moving it. I never want you to achieve your goals. I want you to wake up every day and feel like they're at a reach. And I want you to fail up. So that's, that's my take on, on goal setting. I. I just think so.
- [22:57]
Luke Acree
Good.
- [22:57]
Verl Workman
Yeah, man. We've, we've. I'm just tired. I think that. And this probably. I was on a different podcast. I know there's another one out there. I don't know which one it was.
- [23:05]
Luke Acree
And it wasn't as good as this one though.
- [23:07]
Verl Workman
No. Like, it wasn't like having a real conversation. But somebody asked me, what did you learn most when you wrote the book? Raving Referrals. I'm like, well, I learned that I'm a hypocrite. And they're like, what? Like, you know, I talk about setting these smart goals, and every time I say it, I don't believe it. And I just decided that, screw it, I'm not gonna say it anymore. And I'm gonna push my kids and my team and my people and my people that I coach to set unrealistic goals, and then let's figure out how to make it happen.
- [23:36]
Luke Acree
There's something really true there because it resonates with me so much from this perspective is, you know, I'm still Young. I'll be 37 this year. But I remember, you know, 13 years ago, just believing and being almost like you guys would complain that I would go 400 miles an hour without thinking. That was like, the, you know, 360feedback I would get. As life has gone on and we've had our successes and have been, you know, faced the. Whatever, you know, you want to call it, the beat downs, tampers your belief in, like, just thinking and living that way, and you start to be realistic. But the problem is, in human nature is, like, when you set a bar here, you always come below the bar. Like, you could literally set it realistic, and you're going to do less than realistic. It's so weird how that functions. And I've seen that in our own business of being like, hey, we've lost that little bit of spark of, like, we're going to colonize Mars, and you have to get back to there. And it takes a radical person that is unwavering.
- [24:40]
Joshua Steich
We're going to colonize Mars. So we're going to balance the budget.
- [24:42]
Verl Workman
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [24:45]
Joshua Steich
Wait a minute.
- [24:46]
Verl Workman
Wait. I'm gonna do both.
- [24:47]
Luke Acree
Yeah, exactly. So there is something just so innately true about that that resonates with me of the more successful we got, the more structured we became and the worse our business did. And I don't mean structured in terms of, like, wisdom. I mean, like, you're just trying to play within the rules and the lines versus trying to break them and trying to set realistic goals for people and realistic budgets and. And all this jazz because, you know, you have people that are complaining next to you or whatever. It's like, I can't hit that. And then you're just like, I got, I guess, if 80%. And this is why Elon Musk is so good, because he doesn't care. He doesn't. He just. He does it anyway.
- [25:31]
Verl Workman
I mean, I think. I think he does care. I think exploring new frontiers is how. How his DNA works. And so, like, the three of us are wired very differently than a lot of the people that we employ. There's a reason that they have jobs instead of entrepreneurs, and they need to feel the wins in order to feel like they win the day. But that doesn't mean that we can't continue to drive to unrealistic places. So I don't believe. I think if we're always hitting your goals, you're not setting them high enough and that it's okay. And we. We have to change our culture to a culture of, hey, we hit our goals, let's reward it instead. Instead, we need to change our. Our culture to we. We. We're doing better than we've ever done before. We still haven't hit our goals. What do we have to do to hit it? And how do we change it? How do we change behavior? I want failure to be part of the culture. If we're not failing, we're not growing.
- [26:20]
Luke Acree
That's so good. Yeah, it's really good, bro.
- [26:22]
Joshua Steich
That's amazing. You mentioned your book. Where can people pick up raving referrals?
- [26:27]
Verl Workman
Well, you get it on Amazon. That's the easiest place. Go to Amazon and get raving referrals for real estate. We've added. There's. There's so many cool things in there. Okay, let me give you the. I'll give you a really. Can I give you a little premise?
- [26:38]
Luke Acree
Yes.
- [26:38]
Verl Workman
The premise is this. We wrote a program called 8651, how to close 86 deals a year, working with 50 people, one hour a day. In the Raving Referrals for Real Estate book, we took that concept and we've taught people how to activate their database, how to really generate a serious referral business. So I'd say if you're not closing 86 deals a year per agent just out of their own database, whatever you're doing for referral business, stop it and follow my program. Because it works. Like, let's get. What if all your agents did 86 deals a year with zero cost? Lead generation.
- [27:09]
Luke Acree
Yeah. That's crazy.
- [27:11]
Verl Workman
Game over.
- [27:12]
Luke Acree
Yeah.
- [27:12]
Verl Workman
And so we teach the art of the ask, how to activate communities, different groups of top 50. There's so many good tools and resources in there. And the thing is, is I'm tactical. Like, I don't tell stories without the now what? And so one of my favorite authors is a guy named David Horsager, and he wrote the book called the Trust Edge and the Trusted Leader. Whenever he talks about building a culture of trust, he always, and he says it like this, how, how, how, how, how, how, how. And if you don't give me the how, how, how, how, how, how, how, I don't want to hear about it. And that's the book. The book is filled with just the hows. It's not just here's the concept. It's here's the concept, here's the how to, here's the story of someone doing it, here's the tool or the resource. Now let's go get it, man. That's what it's all about.
- [27:52]
Luke Acree
So good.
- [27:52]
Verl Workman
That is fantastic.
- [27:53]
Joshua Steich
We'll include a link to that in the show notes. And then how would you like people to connect with you?
- [27:57]
Verl Workman
Your best way is just follow me, get on LinkedIn or on Instagram, earlworkman and private message me or say, hello, I have a phenomenal team. And we'll, we're, we're here to help people. Like, my goal is you'll hear about it in the book a lot. But we talk about serve regardless of opportunity. And if you find that you're in a situation where you need some help or you need some guidance or you need to figure out how to structure your brokerage so you move your profitability back from the team leaders to the brokerage, like, reach out and like, we'll just talk to you and if I can help you, I will. And if I can give you some insight, I'm happy to do that. We'll serve this industry. I think the industry's in pain right now and everyone's trying to figure out how to make money. I'm trying to figure out how to help more people and if I can help, then I'm all in.
- [28:35]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that's so good.
- [28:36]
Joshua Steich
Appreciate that. You can get the links to all of that in the show notes of this episode over@staypaidpodcast.com if you enjoyed this episode, I want to show you support. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Drop us a five star review. And the best way to support the show is simply share this episode with somebody that you know. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcastmindermedia.com and of course you can message and follow us on Instagram. We are aypaid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I am Joshua Steich.
- [29:02]
Luke Acree
Guys. I'm Luke Acre Vero. Amazing man. Looking forward to doing way more content with you and learning more about your coaching and stuff like that. I got to talk to Steve at Acre Brothers. Go. Hey, man, I think you guys are awesome. I think we need to go through his coaching program.
- [29:18]
Verl Workman
We need to get some stupid goals, right?
- [29:20]
Luke Acree
Exactly. That's what it is. That's my action item. Like, we close every podcast with an action item, right? Because the difference between top producers and mediocre producers is top producers take action. My action item for you guys is. You heard it here first. Stop setting smart goals. Start being a little stupid in your business. I'm going to need your help, probably a little bit burrow, but I know you got to be strategic. It's got to be transformational, it's got to be unrealistic, it's got to be purpose driven. But give me the I and the.
- [29:43]
Verl Workman
D. What were the innovative and dynamic.
- [29:46]
Luke Acree
Innovative and dynamic.
- [29:47]
Verl Workman
Change differently and change the goal as soon as you get close.
- [29:50]
Luke Acree
That is your action item, ladies and gentlemen. Remember the difference between a top producer, mediocre producer. In every business, it's top producers take action. Take action on that today, Sat.