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- [00:03]
Lindsay Anderson
Are you ready for next level growth in your business? Welcome to the Lindsay Anderson show where we pull back the curtain on the exact strategies, tools and mindsets that build million dollar empires. If you're hungry for more time, more freedom and a whole lot more impact, you've come to the right place. Buckle up because we're about to ignite your business journey. Now here's Lindsay.
- [00:33]
Hey everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. I'm so excited for today's guest, Mr. Dan Lesniak. He is a bestselling author, real estate broker, trainer and ironman athlete. He began his real estate career in 2012, achieving over $22 million in sales during his first year. He later helped grow the Keri Shull team which has become one of the top real estate teams in the nation. Lesniak is also the co founder of Hyper Fast Agent, a coaching service designed to help real estate agents and team leaders scale successful businesses. So excited to have Dan on the show today. Welcome to the show.
- [01:15]
Dan Lesniak
Dan, welcome. I'm glad to be here.
- [01:17]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah. So 22 million in your first year, how did you do that?
- [01:23]
Dan Lesniak
Well, I specifically targeted a really small area. Right. So the irony of it is sometimes you think you gotta be like the agent for everyone or whatever business you're in, it kind of applies. But when you niche down, you can really focus on that group. So I was part time, I had a government contracting job for doing submarine warfare analysis.
- [01:44]
Lindsay Anderson
Exciting, interesting.
- [01:46]
Dan Lesniak
And I got my license because I didn't get the jobs I was trying to interview for after going to, you know, MBA school and all of that. Some of the comments and feedback I got back were technically you're good and you can problem solve, but we don't know if you have the right sales skills for this strategy consulting job. So go get some experience doing that. And at the time I was buying another condo and I thought, well, maybe I'll just try to sell a few homes. And because I had a full time job, I couldn't go out and try the sphere of influence strategy because no one knew me as a realtor and I didn't want my work to really know I was putting a lot of time in this. So I decided to just try to get the, the condos in the building I lived in or like 200 of them. And I started there and just did everything I could to get in front of that audience. Door knocked, met the managers, the people that worked the front desk. I would do like move up events. And what happened is there wasn't a dominant agent there yet because the building was like four years old. So when builders sell buildings, they typically their staff, their agents move on and they don't reach back usually and keep in touch with their clients. So it's a, it's an opportunity if you find a neighborhood that's two to three years old to start farming them because there's typically not a dominant agent. And that's what happened. And the inventory was low, just like it is now back then. So most of the buyers were move up buyers but couldn't find what they want. So then I'd have to go to the adjacent townhomes or bigger condo buildings and get creative and try to prospect for people that want to sell. And I ended up doing like a lot of off market deals where I was finding the place, getting them under contract there, then selling their home. And so I had a lot of open houses, a lot of activity, started doing a lot of marketing in that one area and it just, it just.
- [03:26]
Lindsay Anderson
Snowballed out of all of that. Like, you know, we talk about niching. I'm sure you're also aware a lot of agents really resist that. A lot of business owners in general really resist that. What is your biggest piece of advice out of like all of that that you would give an agent who, who wants to see that kind of success?
- [03:42]
Dan Lesniak
Well, it's ironic sometimes, but you really have to go smaller a lot of times and really know your niche because then you can design your marketing, your value propositions to really be targeted. Like if I tried to go after all 200,000 homes in Arlington, it wouldn't have worked. So like by concentrating the force in a smaller area, it worked. It doesn't have to be just geographic. It could be like groups of doctors or attorneys or people at the country club. There's all sorts of different niches that you can be involved in as long as there's enough market share. So with 200 condos, if 8% sell every year, that's 16 sales times two sides. So 32 opportunities and I got like 50% of those. So as long as it's big enough. Right. It can't be like a group of two, but as long as it's bigger, big enough, you know, going smaller usually is a lot better, especially when you're starting out.
- [04:39]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, and how much of that is? Because the nature of the business and all business, I would say, is relationships. And so you become kind of like famous for lack of a better term in that circle and the word spreads around and it's easier to refer you, but speak to relationships in terms of niching down.
- [04:57]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah, it's easier to get known in a smaller pool. And Gary Vee talks about this, some of his social media strategy back in the day. Like, be the mayor of your town, right? So go do interviews of local business owners and they put it on their social and vice versa. And like all of a sudden, all the people that are like looking at the dog shops, the restaurants, the bars, whatever it is, like they start to know you as the guy or gal that's associated with that area. So. And then you start to build relationships and people refer you and it, it just builds on that. It's easier to get momentum if you're starting smaller and going big. Right. You gotta get out there. Right. So going big in a small area works better than doing it in the big area, especially when you're starting.
- [05:40]
Lindsay Anderson
So when you were doing that, were you like, did you wake up every day and you had like a to do list? Were you just kind of going over there to hang out? Like, were you putting in some hours? What did it look like for you?
- [05:50]
Dan Lesniak
So in the mornings I would craft marketing. I got like the building email list. I would scour like Craigslist. Nowadays you'd use like Facebook Marketplace and Zillow and FSBO sites to try to find people selling in the area or adjacent areas that you know, were by owner. I would spend time talking to the different managers because a lot of times they would tell you who's thinking about moving and then you could go knock on that door. So just all sorts of things like that. When I was starting out, you know, I did direct mail to that area and you know, direct mailing 200 people is like a hundred bucks a month to hit them once, right? And you. I would do it two or three times a month. So just hit that one group of people like six, seven, eight different ways.
- [06:33]
Lindsay Anderson
I think that's really smart. Now you're really interesting because you're a real estate agent, but you're also with exp and you're really skilled and talented. And this is where we had our first conversations around, you know, agent attraction. Can you, can you speak to the two sides of your business there?
- [06:48]
Dan Lesniak
Sure. So we, we owned our own brokerage for eight years. We left Keller, we were number four in the world at Keller Williams in 2014, left, started our own brokerage. We're completely happy doing that. And then a couple years ago, someone, you know, finally got in front of me and showed me the potential of revenue share and, you know, I saw the ability to build this residual income, impact more agents, and also have a platform for the agents on our team to grow, you know, and even if they outgrow the team, they could still stay with us at exp. So I made the move there September of 22 and really focused on recruiting agents. I started with alarm list people I knew, and then I think in my first six months, I sponsored 35 or so agents in my front line. And then when I kind of ran out of the warm list or people that knew me from social media, I. I picked up on cold calling. Right. Because, you know, I've called expireds before as part of my buyer and seller business. Right. And calling, calling agents is a lot easier. Right. The numbers are more accurate. They answer, and they're, they're usually not as upset as some of the, you know, sellers that have been called eight times that morning before you call them. So that has been pretty effective. I think in my first calendar year there, I sponsored about 50 agents in my front line. Now it's looking like 25 in the second year. And the group has grown. That's about 350 people now. And Carrie has, you know, she's nested with the team under me, and her group's around 250 people. So we're, you know, we're getting paid as if we have like 600 agents. And that has been something that's really helped our family during the pullback in the market the last two years. And it's putting us in great collaborative relationships with agents. And we have agents now in like, I think, almost 20 states. And it's been fun, it's been game changing.
- [08:47]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, interesting. And you know what I really liked about you is like your cold call mentality. Can you speak to, like, you gotta build up those cold calling calluses. Speak to me about the world of cold calling.
- [08:59]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah, cold calling is interesting. I've studied Jeb Blunt a lot, read a lot of his books on prospecting. And the bottom line is humans are hardwired to really associate social rejection with death. It goes back to our caveman days. If you got thrown out of the tribe, your odds of surviving were a lot lower because you didn't have them to help you gather resources and protect you from wild animals and all that, or other tribes. So back in the day, social rejection, rejection was almost a death sentence. And that part of our brain is still wired that way. So people, when people tell you, no, I don't want to, like, look at another brokerage or no, I don't want to interview you to relist my home. You're. If you're not trained in certain techniques, you'll literally associate it with death. Right. So there's different ways to kind of overcome that. The biggest thing that happens is it triggers your fight or flight response, which is that was designed to help us survive to like either kill the animal we needed to eat or run from the one that was going to kill us. So the blood rushes like to all your muscles and away from your neocortex, which you need to think so at the moment, you know, when they tell you no or give you an objection, the moment you need your brain to work the most, it's the least capable and you can really feel it in your solar plex. Like I've, I've learned this recently and it doesn't just apply to the business world. You know, like if you're in an argument with a spouse or loved one, right. That limbic system triggers it. So if you can learn to identify it and feel that solar plex tightening and then just give a pause, right? It goes away if you let it. If you don't, it just keeps on, you know, putting you in this fight orf flight mode. So you just have to have a pause so on. You know, when someone tells you no or I don't think so or this is why I wouldn't do it, you need what's called a ledge. It's just, it's just something to give you some time and space and all it really is is asking some type of open ended question. So if I were to ask you to, you know, have you ever considered exp. And you said no, it doesn't seem that different from anything else. A good follow up that be. Oh, that's interesting, tell me more about that or oh, I understand why you might think that. Can you, can you tell me specifically what's making you think that way? And just questions like that then get, get them talking because it's open ended and now you have that pause and your rational brain can, can like take over. Right. So that's, that's kind of one of the specific techniques that I use the other, the other thing to look at it and I really, I've been really heavy on calling expired listings lately to help boost, you know, personal production and sales.
- [11:53]
Lindsay Anderson
Okay.
- [11:54]
Dan Lesniak
And you know, recently I got like a $10 million builder account that Carrie and I are partnering on that she did amazing by the way, in a listing presentation with that builder. But the mentality really is to think of there's a whole bunch of people out there, whether it's expired listings or agents you want to recruit, and a certain percentage of them need what you have to offer. Right. Of those expired listings, 30 or 40% are going to relist in 30 days. Maybe it's with an agent they already know or they saw marketing. Maybe it's with someone that called them. Same thing with agents, right? Like 30,000 agents are joining exp every year on, on the gross side. Now they don't grow that much because of attrition, but 30,000 are joining. So of the million or so agents, and I don't know how many are active, probably way less. Right. A certain percentage of them are going to join. And your mentality should be, I have a good product to offer, it will help other people. Some people are going to do it. I don't know which hundred on this list are going to join, but three of them will. And my job is just to get through that list and find the ones that are going to join. Like Brian Crothers talks about this in building an empire, if you gave two people a deck of cards and said find the aces, the person just scrolls through really quickly looking for aces and pulling them out. They'll beat the person that has white out in the pen and tries to make a six into an ace. So, you know, your job's not to be a convincer, it's to be a sorter. And really that applies with all types of business, right. There's people that your product and service and you just have to find them.
- [13:25]
Lindsay Anderson
I agree, Dan. That was all that was really great information to the tip about, you know, being rejected. I think those individuals in sales can really, you know, respond to that because that's why people are so scared of sales, because we just, we, we really hate being rejected. So I love how you kind of painted that out. Can you apply that? Because I know you're also really great on social media. So being on video and like basically being judged and getting over that hump on social media, can you speak to strategies you did to overcome that?
- [13:59]
Dan Lesniak
Well, it's really just repetition. I think with any of these skills. And if I look back six or seven years ago or eight years ago, I'd probably hate the videos that were there. And now I've just made so many. It's like second nature. I think recruiting, I think prospecting for buyers and sellers, I think it's really all the same, right? There's a certain amount of what you do percentage, whether it's calling. Making videos is going to work. You can bend the numbers, right? As your skill gets better, maybe you go from it takes me talking live to maybe I can go from 20 agents that I talk to and I sponsor one or book an appointment. One maybe, maybe I can get that to 15 or 10 over time as my skill goes up. But you'll never, you'll never get the same thing with videos, right? Maybe, maybe the first 50 you make, no one watches. But then that 51st one catches fire, right? For whatever reason, you got better. The algorithm liked it. As, you know, as you're making videos, you know, you might make 50 before you get a good one, right? If you start cold calling, it might be a month before you book your listing appointment. But now you have increased your skills, increase your confidence, and then the next one might only take 20 videos or you know, one week of cold calling. So it's just about getting the repetition to improve your skills and confidence and make the numbers better. So you really have to focus on the actions when it comes to these and make your goals action oriented and not get emotionally tied to the results.
- [15:32]
Lindsay Anderson
I kind of feel like that. That's our theme here, right? Like emotions, they're great, but like they can kind. I mean, how would you put it? They kind of on those sales calls, they can put you behind. Like they can't serve you in some of these ways. Can you speak to that?
- [15:46]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah. If you get too emotionally tied to the results and you have a streak of days or weeks of no results, you're just going to beat yourself up internally and not get what you need. And then, then it'll make your performance go down. If, if you were results focused and you were recruiting agents and you had a great day, you recruited two people in the first hour and booked appointments with them. So you stopped cause you felt good. Well, maybe your next call was going to be someone that knows a huge brokerage. So you can't get too tied to the results when things are good and when they're bad, you know, it works both ways.
- [16:21]
Lindsay Anderson
Have you always been like that, Dan? Like, were you just kind of built that way or was it through study and repetition of your own that you came to. Yeah, I need a system. I need to learn how to deal with rejection. What. What's the before Dan look like?
- [16:33]
Dan Lesniak
No, I've struggled with it. I mean, I can't sugarcoat it. It's. It took a while for me to get to that place and I still struggle with it. It's just something you deal with and battle with and have to overcome and, you know. Yeah, I definitely think in the past I got two up during the good times, which then it puts blinders on you and then too down in challenging times. I always kept working hard, but I think the emotions behind it in the past have probably prevented me from having even more success.
- [17:12]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, can you speak to the uptimes? Like, I think we talk a lot about the down times, but yeah, you people do have a tendency to like, unplug, like coast along. Can you speak to that and how you handle that right now?
- [17:24]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah, I think in the uptimes the tendency is to. There's a couple things that can happen that really don't keep your ego in check. You know, it's easy to assume that past performance will guarantee today's results, and that's not true. It's also easy to think that if you venture into something else that your success over here will help there, and that's not true. Every day you really have to wake up studying what you're doing, studying how it could be better and not getting caught up in the successes that you've had, because that necessarily won't get you to where you want to go next. Sometimes it can even stop it from.
- [18:04]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, I love that. Now, the real estate industry is obviously going through a lot of changes right now. What do you see as the future of real estate and what you're doing here?
- [18:13]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah, so I don't think home sales are going to go up a lot next year. It seems like for the last two years, all the pros and realtor associations, they're all like, yeah, next year it's going to go up 10 or 15% on the transaction volume side. I want to be optimistic about it, but I just don't see why that would happen with where interest rates are with people's financial situation. So I. I don't think we're going to go from 4 million to 5 million or even like 4.5 million home sales next year. So I think if you're an agent, like, yeah, you want to hope for that. But plan is if the market is going to stay the same and really focus on getting market share. And obviously if you're at one of the copycat models that has revenue share, like, focus on that, but, you know, just realize that it's not going to be as easy as it was before.
- [19:08]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, well, Dan, you've had so much success. You've done so many things and brought us a lot of insight. Tell me, what is one thing that you wish you would have known before you got started.
- [19:20]
Dan Lesniak
I mean the easy One is join exp. If I'd done that 10 years ago, that really shouldn't count.
- [19:27]
Lindsay Anderson
So no, I don't think I can count that one.
- [19:29]
Dan Lesniak
Yeah, I mean it's hard to say because I had a really my first year was just beyond what I was. I would say to have more humility we more about that because when as I look back and look at bad decisions or challenging times, I think humility would have made those times a lot easier. And this industry is going to have ups and downs. So if you can really approach it with humility for your agents, your clients, others in the industry, I just think it makes things a lot easier.
- [20:08]
Lindsay Anderson
That's a great answer. All right, Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your expertise today. Before I let you go, I'm going to turn the time over to you. Let us know how to find you and anything else you want the audience to know.
- [20:19]
Dan Lesniak
All right, well, thank you so much. If you are a real estate agent and just want to talk shop or exp or you're a home buyer or seller, you know, dc, Maryland, Virginia, even Florida license in those areas, you can just send me a text message 703-638-4393 or you can DM me on Instagram. It's just the Dan Lesniak.
- [20:39]
Lindsay Anderson
Thanks Dan for coming on the show today.
- [20:41]
Dan Lesniak
Thank you.
- [20:44]
Lindsay Anderson
There you have it folks. Another awesome episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. A big thank you to Dan for coming on and sharing his expertise today. As a reminder, I have a workshop coming up. If you're looking to generate high quality leads with social media and you're a realtor or you are an insurance agent or you are a service based business owner, you do not want to miss this masterclass. All you need to do is head over to Lindsay a.com workshop and I'll share with you my simple four step system for attracting high quality leads all through social media. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. Cheers to you and your success.
- [21:25]
That's a wrap for today's episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share how you're leveling up your business. Want more? Connect with Lindsay Anderson and get the tools you need to crush your goals@lindsaya.com until next time, keep pushing, keep growing and turn those business dreams into reality.