A blog for ambitious Real Estate Agents who want to learn the business mindset, systems, and growth strategies to increate their revenue without compromising their lifestyle
The CEO Blog
I didn’t come up with the idea of touching your database. I want to be clear about that.
When I was with Keller Williams, they talked about touch points constantly. It was everyday business. Touch your database. Touch your sphere. Hit your touches.
So I knew about touch points.
But somewhere along the way, I started asking a different question.
Touching people is one thing. How do I actually connect with them?
Because I can tell you to touch a client 36 times a year, and you can lay out 36 touches by Friday. Thirty-six emails. Done. Box checked.
But 36 emails from somebody you don’t know is called spam.
Thirty-six touches from somebody who knows your kids’ names, remembers you were thinking about Alabama, and invited you to their birthday party? That’s called family.
Same number. Different depth.
That question, touch versus connection, is where my database was born.
It was a Tuesday morning, and Marcus was sitting in his real estate office with his broker standing over his shoulder. The conversation had gone like this:
“Marcus, you did $2.8M in volume last year. Congratulations. But here’s my concern: You’re exhausted. Your staff is exhausted. And if you took two weeks off, your entire business would collapse. That’s not a business. That’s a job with commission.”
Marcus tried to argue. He said, “But I’m making good money.” His broker looked at him and said, “Money isn’t success if it’s consuming you.”
That phrase stuck with Marcus all day. He went home that night and added it up. He’d worked approximately 80 hours a week for 50 weeks. That was 4,000 hours to make $180,000 in net income. He was making $45 per hour. A project manager at a Fortune 500 company makes more than that with half the stress.
There’s a thing that happens in restaurants that I think about a lot.
A health inspector doesn’t call ahead.
He doesn’t ask if it’s a good week, if your best cook is back from vacation, or if the walk-in got fixed yet. He walks in on a random Tuesday, at 11 in the morning, while you’re slammed, and he grades the kitchen exactly as he finds it. Not the kitchen you meant to build. Not the kitchen you’ll have next quarter. The one standing in front of him.
And here’s what nobody in real estate wants to sit with: your business gets one of those inspections too.
Life is the inspector.
He shows up as a car accident, a hospital call, a parent who falls, a kid who needs you at school, a week where your body just says no. He doesn’t grade your best month. He doesn’t care about your GCI or your awards or how good you are in a listing appointment. He walks into your operation on your worst morning, opens every cabinet, and writes down what falls out.
I got inspected last week.
I failed one line item.
This is what I love about numbers. They have no opinion about you.
They don’t know you’re tired. They don’t care that you’re anointed. They just tell you a story.
And the story those 24 hours told her wasn’t “you’re lazy.” The story was: you have to be able to make money independent of your time.
You will never be rich trading time for money. I don’t care what the career is. Doctor, lawyer, agent — if the dollars stop when you stop, you own a job with a nicer title.
The tragedy of this industry is that we accepted it as normal. Traditional real estate told us to trade hours for dollars, and we swallowed it whole. So we stopped searching for another way. We didn’t reject leverage. We just quit looking for it.
Most agents aren’t running a business.
They bought themselves a high-stress, 24-hour job where they trade their life for their commission.
And then we hand them a plaque.
