How to Recruit Top Producing Real Estate Agents with Jim Remley

Josh
 Good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal scout on today's show. We're going to have a conversation about realtors and about becoming investors and all of the topics around real estate and from a guy who's done it a few times. With that, Jim, welcome to the show. 

 Jim
 Hey, thanks Josh. It's a real pleasure to be here, my friend. 

 Josh
 Yeah. So let's start with this. Where the heck are you guys located? Like where's home for you. 

 Jim
 I'm sitting in my office in a beautiful Southern Oregon. We're just over the border from California. So we're Medford Ashland markets. Yeah. So it's greater. 

 Josh
 Awesome. Awesome. All right. We meet in a coffee shop over in Southern Oregon and we're just hanging out and we're like, Hey, who are you? And what do you do? 

 Jim
 How do you typically respond? How do I answer that? I run one of the largest real estate companies in Oregon would do 1,000,000,004 in business. This year we have 225 agents just ranked three ranked in the real trends, top 500. That's one of the top 500 companies in America for real estate transactions. We're a population base of about 80,000. We're competing with companies in LA and New York and Atlanta and Chicago and everywhere else. We're not, we're in a tiny little town, so that's kind of my synopsis of what I do manage this group. 

 Josh
 Awesome. How large is that crew? 

 Jim
 225. We're all brokers in Oregon. So 225 brokers. 

 Josh
 Okay, awesome. There, is there a specific focus that you guys do and are there things that you're like, there's no way we will do this, right? 

 Jim
 No, we're kind of, we do a lot. I mean, we're definitely got some big players when it comes to the investment world. We have some investors that are coming in and buying lots of properties and we've got, we have a great commercial department here. So we work a lot on commercial. We have a huge residential apartment. We sold 3000 properties last year. We're touching a lot, doing a lot of things. 

 Josh
 Okay. Since we're going to have coffee together and we're hanging out, I go, man, how'd you get started? That sounds like, managing and running a group of 225 people. That's, that's a pretty big team and an organization like how'd you get started? 

 Jim
 So I'm a college dropout. I dropped out of college at 19 and got my real estate license. My buddy talked me into getting my license. He didn't finish, but finished. I was working a lumber mill at the time. I quit that job and went, dropped out of college and got my license for six months. Like a lot of agents I struggled, but after that for six months, I got my legs under me and I took 150 listings on my next 12 month period got listed and top 1% of agents nationwide and then opened my first company at 24, grew that to 17 offices in Oregon. I sold that in oh six, luckily before the market crashed. I took some time and I spoke for NAR for 10 years and wrote a couple of books. I got recruited to come down here to Southern Oregon to help rebuild this company down here. 

 Jim
 When I got here, we had 39 agents and now, like I say, we've grown it. 

 Josh
 So, all right. So first year, 

 Jim
 Yeah. 

 Josh
 What was the difference between the first six months of struggle? Cause she's like, you kind of brush over this. I got my legs under me and then I took on a hundred listings. 

 Jim
 Right there. Right. That's a. 

 Josh
 Big stretch. Yeah. What was the, what was the pivot like? What, what changed? 

 Jim
 It's a good question. The pivot for me was, desperation, Craig's inspiration kind of thing. I was ma I modeled the top producers that every top producer I could find. I read all the books back then. We didn't have podcasts. I attended live seminars, listened all the tapes. I, I understood that I couldn't exactly model everybody. That's the kind of a, a bad thing to even try to do. I'm not going to be Josh. I'm not going to be some other person, but I can take a couple of ideas from Josh. A couple of ideas from Brian, a couple ideas from him, Tom, or whoever, and put those together into my own system. What my system ended up being was I, 80%, I knew it was going to come from my sphere, but I was 19 and nobody's in my smears. Mine were selling. So I's as well. 

 Jim
 What can, what else can I do? Other than that? It's always, my sphere grows up. I focused a lot on for cell boundaries. So I focused on expired listings. I focused on farming and I did some things that were cutting edge. At the time we created, I created the first team, one of the first teams in the country really hiring an assistant. We, we, one of the things we did, we took the entire county database, which at that time was microfish wasn't computer database then. I bought a microfish machine and then a 3 56 K computer, which cost $3,000 at the time in 1980 $9 or no, the 19 $90. I had an assistant transcribe all that data into one of the first Excel spreadsheets you can buy. And we transcribed 68,000 records. We computer as the county database, before the county computerized. We did a ma you talking about trying to find deals. 

 Jim
 We, we did one of the first mail merges. Like if I guarantee you one of the first Melbourne's just in our market area by a mile five, 10 years out of it. We started doing 8,000 pieces of elements and we absolutely crushed them. 

 Josh
 Wow. What did, what did an assistant in 1990? What was it per hour? Cause I'm sure that took hours and hours to do. 

 Jim
 Oh, I got it. Yeah. I don't even remember what we're paying. I think it was like $7 now or something. It was expensive, 

 Josh
 You heavily invested that now for a guy, where you at the lumber mill, where he likes swinging axes and we're like, we're big, suspenders and such like that. Like that's what I, 

 Jim
 Well, I was it's no, that's more out in the woods, but I was dealt. What's called pulling green chain and that's basically taking lumber off a big chain. That's coming down a conveyor belt and moving it into big bins, basically. Great again by size and quality of extremely physical work. Very, very hard. 

 Josh
 A guy, sorting wood and, big toothpicks to, six months of struggle, right. To then I'm going to invest heavily into a $3,000 computer back then I'm going to have this vision to do this huge mail merge, hire someone there's the mindset there that something happened in the mindset, something happened in your personal life that kind of sparked that or that like gave you that kick in the butt for that. Like, what was that? 

 Jim
 Well, it's a couple of things. One of the things I stumbled into just by random accident was in the newspaper. There was a pub once a year and the newspaper, they would publish all the people that were losing their properties to the county because of a failure to pay taxes. Yeah. I looked at that list and I fought, these people still have like 60 or 90 days before the public auction, I'm going to physically write them a letter. Yeah. I did, I wrote them all a letter and I ended up getting a bunch of listings from it. I ended up buying some properties on the river for get this $1,200. 

 Josh
 Nice. 

 Jim
 I bought two lots on the, and ended up selling it for 10,000 immediately. I was like, there's some gold here. If I could just figure out how to mine, the setup, how to mine at a bigger scale than I can do this all year long and not just once a year. That's exactly what kind of apifany that I had is I got to do this at scale. So that was, 

 Josh
 Anytime we have a guest on and they say something that I don't know what it is or they use terminology, I just have to ask on behalf of my, my audience. Right. What is a newspaper, 

 Jim
 We used to read back in the day. 

 Josh
 Yeah. It's crazy. Right. 

 Jim
 It's crazy. 

 Josh
 Newspapers, phone books like that as a real estate. I got my real estate license when I was 20, 21 years old and literally newspaper and phone book where some of my best friends. 

 Jim
 Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I. 

 Josh
 Would have to read the white pages. 

 Jim
 Yeah. We had a reverse. Director's going to say that again. It was called coal or something. Yeah. I would open that thing up and go street by street. I could call everybody on the street and just go, bam, bam. And made thousands of calls to. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah. What was your, do you remember your first kind of cold call script? Let's hear it. 

 Jim
 My cold call script was, Hey, my name is Jim Lee. I'm with century 21. I'm just curious if you're curious about your home value and that was it. It'd be like, no, I mean, I, at the time, but I would say I had a pretty good hit rate. I was probably, I, cause I tracked it out to be about one out of every 20 would be. Yes, maybe. Yeah. I would end up with a lot of CMOs that went nowhere, but when you're young and hungry, you can make it work. 

 Josh
 Yeah. CMA is a competitive market analysis. Right. I just want to make sure audience and even myself just know terminology. I want in 20 hit that's pretty good. 

 Jim
 Pretty good. Yeah. Because back then, there wasn't as much of the, it, wasn't what we call ISS and the business and ISA, today's an internal sales agent who works for teams and that's all they do. If you're in some Metro markets, homeowners are getting calls constantly with ISI. The hit rate is not going to be the same as it used to be. Right. Yeah. Now, work when we coach people, we're moving more to text technology and doing things that are more innovative today and old fashioned cold calls. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Did you have a rotary phone? Cause that will really work your arm out. 

 Jim
 It was, it was a push button. 

 Josh
 It was a push, 

 Jim
 But, but no mojo dialers. Now we have Tyler's systems and everything and we didn't have any of that. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now people are sitting, on a recliner on their couch, in their living room and they're just making a hundred calls a day. 

 Jim
 Yeah, exactly. 

 Josh
 As you're doing this, you went from, toothpick sorter to struggling real estate guy to you did your first couple of deals and you had this epiphany to hiring teams, right? Like teams was like the turning point of your business. Right? What, what were some of like for a new agent let's say in today's world, what should, an agent who's starting to get their legs under them did some transactions, they got some cash and they need to make a hire. What's the first good hire for an independent sales agent. 

 Jim
 First hire definitely has an assistant. I mean, you're definitely, I want an assistant, but I would say there's somebody that's in between hiring an assistant, which most people don't do, which is using what's called a TC. TZ is a TC is a transaction coordinator. There is now virtual transaction coordinators around the country too. They come in and they kind of Birch act as a virtual assistant to manage your transaction and all the little details. Most real estate agents are terrible at details. We're more people, and we're salespeople, we're not detailed oriented. That person comes in and they make sure all of the signatures are collected and inspections are ordered and all the little things. And, and you can do that on a per transaction basis, like three or four or $5 a transaction they'll handle that. You bring in an assistant, the mistake I told him about. 

 Jim
 I'd say that a lot of agents make is they bring in an assistant and then make them a TC, which is a terrible use of their time. You should never make your assistant at TC, Michigan virtual. You can virtualize the TC. That can be a virtual off of, but an assistant should be doing 100% is helping you with lead generation and managing your current client database. I mean, that's what we should be doing. 

 Josh
 Revenue producing activities. 

 Jim
 Exactly. Right. And they should become a profit center. When I'm coaching people on hiring an assistant, you got to look at it. This isn't a cost. This is an investment that will give you a rate of return. There's going to be an ROI on your assistant. It's actually measurable if you start to really think about it. So, looking at that from a whole different perspective, like when I hire somebody I'm paying them $50,000 a year, then they should be making me two or $300,000 a year if I do it. Right. You know? 

 Josh
 Yeah. Huh. That is so awesome. I love that because I think the mindset, I'm going to hire an assistant and they're just going to do all the s**t I don't want to do. Right. They're going to, they're going to do the transactions. They're going to do the paperwork and thank God. All I could, all I have to do is focus on sales. That's limited thinking because you could duplicate yourself, having someone sit next to you could turn them into a sales machine. 

 Jim
 Yeah. Well, and what happens is if that's all you're doing, then it just more burden falls on your shoulders because now I've got to produce another million or two in sales to pay for them. That kind of mindset is where people burn out really fast, but you gotta be looking at it as how can I, how can these people be a profit center that adds to my bottom line, but also take some of the burden off me. I always tell agents and I've had some incredible success stories with this. I have a team that worked for me, a couple of gals, just crushing it, doing 20, $30 million in business. They're also like, like most people that are doing 20 to $30 million a year fully work and they didn't have, they were doing it all themselves and didn't have an assistant. I, I, I told them, well, you have to understand is that, you have to give up control to increase capacity. 

 Jim
 That's the hardest thing for top producing agents is giving up levels of control. The more you can let go of control, the greater your capacity will become because we're all limited by a certain capacity. Your capacity could be, I could do. You might be capable of doing $10 million with no assistant, no TC. My capacity might be, I go on just five. It's just who I am. You know, everybody has different capacities. So, but once you hit that limit, you physically can't do it more without sacrificing something. Either your life style, your kids, your family, whatever your health, something's going to go wrong. I got to bring in somebody else to give me more depressed. 

 Josh
 I'm going to get a little personal with you. For me. I hit my capacity. I was working a full-time job. I have, I'm married with a new kid. Right. I was building a tech company and I had a fitness technology company. I had a couple of hundred clients that I was managing burnt out. I wound up in the hospital. I thought I was having an ulcer or something like that. Right. Like I thought I was dying. Th I hit my capacity probably far before that happened. I saw all the signs, but have you ever an experienced where you hit your own capacity and what did that look like? 

 Jim
 Well, it's an interesting story. Actually. I I've definitely hit capacity at different points in my life. The most recent time is I started having what I thought were heart attacks. I might just would start pounding and I go into a full blown. What felt like was cardiac arrest. I mean, I thought I went to the hospital three times. No kidding. Got fully hooked up to EKG. Machines, went through a complete stress test. I mean, every kind of scan that can be done on my heart because I was convinced was my heart. I could feel my heart. I could feel where it was in my heart. That was going wrong. I tried my cardiologist. There is something wrong. I mean, I can feel it. Anyway, with robbery testing on a man, it's like, dude, there's nothing freaking wrong with your heart. Your heart is perfectly fine. 

 Jim
 My doctor said, this is a panic disorder. You're having a panic attack disorder. And I said, b******t. I've, I've ran massive companies, billion dollar companies. There is no freaking way. I'm having panic. 

 Josh
 That this guy, 

 Jim
 Not me. I deal with stress when I am the stress machine. I am. 

 Josh
 Man. 

 Jim
 So anyway, but they were right. It was all, it was panic attacks. So, I had to find ways to relieve stress. The one of the ways was, having a great team around me that started to relieve a lot of that pressure and starting to work less and give yourself permission to, recharge, rechart rest and recharge is underrated. 

 Josh
 It's underrated. Someone told me this is you could only grow to the capacity of which you can recover. I, I never, until recent, I'm 40 years old and I'm just freaking figuring this out now. Like I never cause I'm the man. Right. I never needed to rest. I never needed to recharge. I never, until I started blowing up all my kids or I started like, I've wound up in the hospital or these kinds of things. And, coaches, counselors, therapists were like, Hey Josh, what's your rest look like? W what do you mean? I'm building multiple companies. There's no rest. Your body will shut down, or you'll have panic attacks. I really appreciate you sharing this story. Do you mind if we dig into this I mean, I'm putting you on the spot we're recording, so you might as well. I thought, cause I was a pretty tough guy growing up. 

 Josh
 I thought panic attacks and, depression and panic in general was that of weak people until it happened to me. When it happened to me, I thought it was everything. But panic. I thought it was everything but depression and all that. I realized that I'm not as tough as I was. Actually for me, the toughest thing was asking for help. Right? What did you do once you started discovered that you're not He-Man. 

 Jim
 Or. 

 Josh
 Superman, whatever, whatever it is and that you had to get help in. What did help look like for you? 

 Jim
 Good question. I, it took me a long time, like two years before I came to grips with. 

 Josh
 You're stubborn too. Aren't you? 

 Jim
 I mean, I went to the doctor multiple times and said, I want every blood test known to man, because there is something physically wrong with me that I feel like this. Anyway, when I finally got past that, I just decided that I had to, start to peel away some of the stress. For me, it was about finding ways to peel away. I will tell you the number, one thing that controlled the stress for me is because there's only so much you can take away when you're still performing island. Great. You're still gonna have some level of stress. Yeah. The number one thing that changed for me was I committed myself to working on twice a day and I work out twice a day religiously. And it was the number one thing. 

 Josh
 Twice a day, 

 Jim
 Twice a day, 45 minutes in the morning, 45 minutes a night, every single night. That was the thing that tramp, that transformed my panic attacks. I quickly stopped having, there was an interim period. What I, when I did, the CBD, kind of that kind of thing helped, but only then really take the edge off. I did get prescribed medication from the doctor, like anti anxiety stuff. I just didn't like the way it personally for me, I know it works for a lot of people for me. I didn't like the way it, it, I didn't like the way I felt mentally. I didn't feel as sharpen. I feel like I need, in my day to day, I gotta be super sharpen on. CBD worked, it took the edge off, but really what solved it was exercise twice. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Or you shredded let's see those muscles. 

 Jim
 No, I'm not really sure about that. I remember it's 80% diet and I still haven't got that figured out. I got some muscle, but it's hidden under a couple of years of fat, 

 Josh
 You know, it's funny. I I'm, I'm a stubborn guy too, right? Like, I'll be like, no, I could push through. You're, I'm the kind of guy who I'll go to the doctor, for two years, no doctor you're wrong. It's my heart. I want to transplant. Where could I sign up? Give me a new heart, get me back in the game. I want to play until, I crashed, did you ever have a crash moment where it was just like forced to go? I surrender and I need, I need help. 

 Jim
 I think it was well, probably the third time I was in the hospital. 

 Josh
 Maybe. 

 Jim
 I'm hooked up to all these machines and I'm like, it's my art. And they're like, it's not your heart. That was probably a for me, ? It kind of a funny story too, during the pandemic, my wife and I watched rewatch the Soprano's right. Anybody that's suffering from any kind of panic attack disorder or you're having panic attacks rarely go back and watch every episode of Sopranos. Cause you forget that in the first episode of the Sopranos, what happens? Tony soprano has a panic attack. 

 Josh
 And he said, 

 Jim
 Well, yeah, that's the reason he went to therapist. He thought he was having a heart attack. He's taken to the hospital, multiple tests. You think, oh, I made me feel better. Like, oh, here's the toughest guy, on TV, he's up and panic attacks, I guess it's okay for me to have one of my wife looks at me, like see Tony surprised. So anyways, kind of like, 

 Josh
 That's a great show by the way. Like I, I loved that series. And did you watch the ride? What was it? The one before they, did you watch that with how Tony grew up? 

 Jim
 Yes. 

 Josh
 What was your thoughts of that? 

 Jim
 I didn't love it. I mean, I liked the, I liked his kid playing him was cool. I thought he did a great job, but I thought the story was not that strong. I, I, it, wasn't more, it should have been more about the family and they kind of went in the side. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I think the only thing I liked about the, whatever that was is you got to learn about the uncle and his story and all that. Or, you got to learn about like why there was certain like fights in the family. Oh, all right. Sorry. Back to deals. I love talking about, mindset and I love talking about, because behind every deal-maker or behind every deal's a deal maker. When I interview, I've interviewed a thousand deal-makers and what I find is there's always like, there's always internal struggles that once fixed internally massive growth externally for me, a broken man breaks things. Right. Once I started to get my mindset, right. Things started to work. Nope, no s**t. Right. W in your journey, if you can look back in your journey, what were some major mindset, milestones that you think that you started to overcome? 

 Jim
 Well, one of the, I mean, first when I was younger, my, I came from a family that my mom and dad divorced, which common for everybody. Right. Neither one of my parents owned a home and they didn't own a home until, and so I became a realtor years later. Right. When I actually started to look at this growing up, neither one of them owned a home, but also their parents did not own a home. And their parents' parents did. I mean, a generational poverty basically. For me, when I got in the real estate business at nighttime, I bought a house within the few months. Of course you're gonna buy a house. I was the first person in my family in generations that are in the home. That alone was kind of a, a breakthrough event, just like you can buy a house. Right. I quickly looked around at the most successful wealthiest people that were in my circle. 

 Jim
 Every one of them was, had their wealth was pretty much centered in real estate. I knew quickly that if I'm going to actually become, have generational wealth, myself and people talk about generational wealth is kind of a new thing now, but it starts with, you gotta be wealthy, number one, and then you can get the generational outs. Just for me to kind of break through and have financial security, I knew I started having, I would need to start buying real estate. What I think the, the unrealistic expectation of young people is that I'm gonna start buying real estate instantly on cashflow and instantly have this kind of, Instagram lifestyle, which is just not true. I mean, I am in a financially free today because I made investments 30 years ago that are now paid off, ? So that's, it takes time. And that's just part of the process. 

 Josh
 Yeah. When you look at 225 brokers and people that work in with you, what do you look for in terms of capacity? Right. Everybody has different capacity. The goal is to break through their capacity by building systems, processes, and people kind of around, but what are some for top producers? How do some top producers have a higher capacity? Like what are some key characteristics where some people have higher capacity? What, what are some things that you see patterns? 

 Jim
 Well, the number one thing that top producers have, in my opinion, that non-top producers are lacking is high IQ, emotional intelligence. You can have, and I've had this, I've hired literal PhDs that have come to me as realtors. They have a PhD from Harbor, wherever some high-level PhD, Stanford, and yet they can't sell their way out of a wet paper bag. They are intellectually smart, but they have low emotional intelligence. So these are the highest performing people. People like me that are college dropouts that are still high-performers in universe, every is, or has high emotional. That's like a thing in the gray book, Daniel Goldman, which is the book, emotional ecologists, which everyone should read. You gotta think about that and say, if I'm pretty sitting at like five or six or seven, or even, once a year, but I want to get to 30, people think about, oh, I gotta have this tech or that Jack or this stuff. 

 Jim
 The other, let's start with emotional intelligence and say, how can I become more emotionally intelligent number one, because that's the number one trigger. 

 Josh
 Give me an idea. I want to increase my emotional intelligence. I read the book with you, right. We will go out to coffee again. I read the book and I bring my notes back. Like what would you say is like maybe, Hey, Josh, here's a quick tip on how to build your emotional intelligence to increase your capacity. 

 Jim
 I would say number one is you're investing in relationships, not market share, right? For me, and you, like, if, if you were somebody that I had met, like we're meeting now, and I said, Josh, what do you want to do in the next months? I mean, aspirationally, what is it you want to get done? And, and we're not talking about real estate. I'm just talking about using them in bank. What do you want to get done? Right. I mean, what do you want to go? What do you want to travel? You want to do with your business. I want to, I'm going to try to engage you and ask you questions that are meaningful to you, but I'm doing this in a real authentic way, because I really want to know now when I know this information, what do I do with it? Right. I got to do something with this, right? 

 Jim
 I take this information back and I put it somewhere. I put it in my CRM or my database, but I'm not just doing it because I know I've been told to do that. I'm actually looking at this and saying, now, how can I help Josh with at least one of the goals that he told me, he has set one of his aspirations. He wants to go ride, a bike to wherever he wants to change his diet. He wants to exercise more. He wants to on this vacation or whatever. Now I'm going to really focus in on how can I help Josh? That is taking my relationship skills to a whole nother level. We are working on more of a, I'm trying to move relationships from here, down the ladder all the way up to the top. I want Josh to think of me as a friend and somebody that really cares about. 

 Jim
 When I do that, and here's what happens with the top producers, people that are 50. I coach some of these people at 50, 70, 80, a hundred million dollars in business. They say, Hey, I just closed the transaction today. They never say, I just closed a client or a customer. They say, I just sold my buddy a house. I just listened to my friend's house. Everybody that's in their spirit is their friend is their buddy, because that's how they look at relationships. And that's the whole different mindset. When you're looking at people as a notch on your belt, or just a customer or a client. That's the first, that's the first red flag I see with unsustainable teams on sustainable performance. These kind of flashes in the pan that will not last top performers. Always a relationship. 

 Josh
 Yeah, that is great. Great advice right there. Jim, let me ask you a question, man. I care about you and and I want to know aspirationally for you, Jim, where do you see yourself in 12 months? What, what things do you want to accomplish? 

 Jim
 That's a great question. 

 Josh
 That's a great question, right? 

 Jim
 Just by saying, I feel better. I want to start talking. Right. I want to know what's going on. Right. So it's a great question. 

 Josh
 Yeah. 

 Jim
 So. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Where do you, what do you want to see? What's your answer? 

 Jim
 Well, I, I would say my wife and I, well, first five years ago, I bought an RV park. 17 years ago, bought an RV. 

 Josh
 I love RVs. 

 Jim
 Yes. So, so I've ran this article. It's a great story about the RV park. Recently a year ago we had an opportunity to buy another one. So we bought another RV park. For us, we're getting these RV parks style in, and I'm kinda now passionate about the RV park kind of world. I, our goal for me, maybe not in the next 12 months, the next 24 months is probably to buy another one and just keep kind of building that little empire of RV. You know, we enjoy it. 

 Josh
 I have a buddy, they helped buy and sell RV parks. So I'll do an introduction for you. 

 Jim
 Look at that. We got a win already. 

 Josh
 Yes. All right, cool. So, I mean, that's what we do. We love doing, putting people in deals together. Do you have an RV yourself? 

 Jim
 Oh, yes, of course. 

 Josh
 Yeah. What do you have, tell me about your RV. 

 Jim
 Well, I've had a few over the years right now, my wife and I just have we've got a little retro on, we bought her in the pandemics 24 feet and we just, it's easy tow and it's just a little funnel, get away to the coast and those mountain trips and everything else. 

 Josh
 Yeah. It's super cool. I have three kids and a dog. We just sold ours, but we had a 38 foot bunk house. 

 Jim
 Yeah. 

 Josh
 It was a Keystone passport. It was super awesome. Renovated. The whole thing. It was fun. Now we want either something drivable to make it . Cause 38 foot, it's hard to pull on a bumper. 

 Jim
 It's long. 

 Josh
 Yeah. All right. Sorry. Back to deals. So, so you're building this coming. You got, you actually got brought in to help build out this company. When you started, when you started with this company, there was 35 people and now there's 225. Yeah. How in the world? Team building is obviously one of your strong suits. How do you go, how do you go 10 X and almost, I'm not good at math, but close your team. Like, what are some of the things that you did. 

 Jim
 Well, if you're one of the things that I am passionate about and another answer, your question is brokerage coach. I love helping brokers build companies, right? That's something that I do a lot. It's just a fun thing for me. One of the key with building any real estate company is you've got to look at yourself as like a professional coach. You're in the professional coaching world. Like you're an NFL coach, you're a NBA coach slash owner. In that coaching ownership role, you're just like those coaches, your number one thing that you do is to build the team through recruiting and retention, right? You gotta have a great bench and your bench is going to be like the people that are first year or second year, third year agents. You've got to have your, your starters, your, your rock stars, your groups that are going to come out here, you need special teams. 

 Jim
 You need, it's a very good analogy for what we do. The number one way that I've built this company is simply by recruiting and creating a culture of excellence where people want to be at this company. I call it our company like the, from my day, the LAkers, a real estate, I don't know, that's a flight, Not so much anymore, but of my day, they'll be like real estate. I went, I wanted to have this incredible kind of experience for agents to come into so that it's recruiting and retention is what it's all about. That's how you build a successful company. In order to recruit, in order to retain, you got to have a great company. You've got to have great staff, great tech, great marketing, great branding, great training. There's a lot of things that underline that. 

 Josh
 Yeah. When you started, you were with a big firm century 21, I remember your cold call, right? Let's just say, we're having coffee again. I read the book, emotional intelligence, I'm getting smarter and you're coaching me. You're like, Josh, you got something less increase your capacity though. We hang out and you're taking a look at what I'm doing. What are some things that make a, a good broker? This is funny. How D how do you not go broke as a broker? Like, what are some things that you would suggest for me as a broker, trying to build my business. 

 Jim
 As a, as a brokerage owner? Well, the first thing I would do is you have to say, what is it in my market that's needed? And, there's gotta be a niche. If I say, I'm just going to be hiring another real estate broker in my market, that's boring. It's me. It's a me too kind of thing. That's just like, I'm going to copycat every other broker. I want to say, what's my niche. If I'm in a big market, it's especially important to have like a niche. Like this is what I'm targeting. This is what I'm going to be. Number one. Having something unique, not only for the marketplace, right, but also for the agents to buy into. I'll give you a quick story around this real quick. We opened an office in Ashland, Oregon, which is just above us and just to work, we're just literally over the border from California. 

 Jim
 In doing that office, went to every top producer in that market. And we met with them. We said, Hey, we're opening an office here. Can I tell you what our vision of the offices? Let me tell you something vision of what you're trying to build is super important. Being able to communicate that vision of the people buy in other people's visions all the time. I mean, when you look at the biggest companies in the world, Steve jobs had a vision. Disney had a vision. He's visions are what people buy engines. So we said, here's our vision. We want to build a office. It's kind of different. It's like a coffee shop, calm experience. We'll come in. There's big screens. You people can see what's happening with real estate and all the screens that are happening, you can grab a cup of coffee. They can sit down on couches and just kind of chill out because it's kind of a touristy town. 

 Jim
 The top producers were like, that's amazing. We want to be a part of that. We recruited like 20 people before we even opened the doors. As a tiny space, it was like 1200 square foot space. Most people work in virtually and it worked beautifully. Now we're in a big 4,000 square foot space, and we totally dominate the market with 30 bucks a market share, but it's, and interestingly, our vision evolved over time. Having that vision is what we sold to. I would encourage owners to say, if I'm, if I was to sit down and ask you, Josh, what's the vision of your real estate company? Give me that in like a teaser, like a movie teaser, what makes you unique in the market? Why should I come to work for you? That's more challenging to answer that most people have really given thought to. I would say what most brokers, brokerage owners are doing now, which is exact opposite of what you want to do. 

 Jim
 They will always go to commission and they will say, we've got the lowest commissions we're going to get, we're going to give you all your money. You know? So, so where does that lead? Now? I'm giving away 95%, 97%, 98%, a hundred percent. Now I'm literally living on a margin of one to 5% and I'm going to go broke. That's the fastest way to go broke. You got to go to the exact opposite and say, how am I going to have so much value that people are going to come to work for me and totally be totally cool with paying whatever, a realistic number. Yeah, 

 Josh
 No, that's good. It shows that is how you compete with the big box brands, right? It's sell the vision of what you're trying to do, that what the value is to them and why they want to be a part of this mission. That's how you grew up from 35 people to 225. If I, if I looked at, your base, the back of your baseball card, right? Your stats or name some of the stats that you've accomplished in your career, that you're pretty proud of. You said you did 1.4 bill and transactions that's awesome. 3000, residential deals like what are some other stats that you're like, man, I'm really proud that me and my team has accomplished this. 

 Jim
 The number one stat, I think I'm most proud of. I think what the ultimate measurement tool for every real estate brokerage or should be. When coach too is per agent productivity, this is where we should measure ourselves because I can have 500 agents and dominated market. If they're all doing one transaction now, what does that mean? Right. There's a lot of companies operating now, that's their model to them. That's not my mom. I want to, I want to give people a place where they can Excel and really achieve their goals. One of the most, one of the stats I'm most proud of is I have one of the highest production Parisian production numbers in the country. Our agents are doing six to $7 million, depending on the year, the time of year six to $700 annually per agent, some more, some less, but that's kind of the average. 

 Jim
 That's one of the highest averages in the country. I mean, it's a big number. I actually am proud to say, I'm actually coaching some of my brokerage coaching students that are up above $10 million per acre. They push beyond where I'm at and they're actually at 10, $12 million per agent. That's the goal for all of us is how can we push these numbers higher? Does that totally approves the pudding? Right? You can sell all the Kool-Aid you want, but if it's working, it's going to show up in your Parisian partnership. If it's all just BS, then they're not going to sell it. 

 Josh
 How do you measure that? Like, what are some things that you look at? Are you looking at listings closings? Like what, what do you mean? 

 Jim
 Sure. We're only measuring closing, so we're amazing GCI. We're saying what's closed and how many millions of dollars closed per agent per year? 

 Josh
 GCI? What does that. 

 Jim
 Gross? Closed income. Gross commission. 

 Josh
 Copy that. All right. That's the thing that you measure per agent and you take a look at who's producing. Yup. I know this might be a tough question, but like, all right, we go to coffee and you're like, Josh, you were crushing it, but your, it looks like you're in a little slump. What's what's going on. Right. We go out to coffee, I had a bad year coach and we take a look at it. What are some things when you see a, an agent's production dipping, in their life, like, what are some things that you're going to ask me or coach me through? Like, what are your thoughts? 

 Jim
 That's a great questions. I just had this whole conversation this morning on my, one of my coaching calls, but I call this the downward spiral. Right? Yeah. So, and I tell agents this, and I tell them on a way that I want them to feel okay about it, because just like you and I experienced like anxiety, every single agent, whether I don't care, how big a producer or non Brewster they are, every single agent will go through a downward spiral at some point in their career. Right. It's a matter of being self-aware enough to recognize when you're starting on that downward spiral. Right. The question mark is, okay, what's what is what's involved in a downward spiral that I can recognize. So first it's an attitude shift. Like my attitude I'm coming into the office. I'm not looking for positives. I'm kind of always going through the negative. 

 Jim
 I'm not looking at solution. I'm always looking for problems. So attitudes shift is first second shift. What will happen as a work habit shift? So now I'm not working as intently. I'm not as focused. I'm not as diligent. My work habits start to shoot which leads and kind of simultaneous with a commitment share. I do have a client, I'm not as committed as I used to be. I'm not giving the best service. It's not raving fan level service, which leads to a performance shift because of the client's senses. I'm not as engaged. They're going to be not as engaged with me. So my performance kind of will suffer. My results will shift as well. I'll start to close less deals, take less listings. That's kind of the downward spiral, right? To break out of that, if I was sitting in and you were experiencing, inspire, when I say Josh, it looks like you're in this, where do you see yourself? 

 Jim
 You feel like if I get any of that, make sense to you and say, oh yeah, for sure. I'm, here's where I'm at. Now what are we going to do about it? Right. My things you can reverse out of that is you've got to take some actions. One of the things you can do is to say, I'm going to suggest you do something that excites you. Let's look at the whole real estate kind of plethora of things we can doing. What, what do you want to do that excites you the most about this business? Let's get you focused on that. Let's do some goal setting, but not in a school setting. Let's create a plan of action every single day and create what we call our five non-negotiables. What are the five things you got to do every single day when you want to, or not, that will help you win the day early. 

 Jim
 I always say, the last thing is really important is let go of outcomes and just focus on output because you can't control outcome. All you can do is focus on what you're doing every day. By having that daily plan of action, that's, what's going to take you that excellent. 

 Josh
 Let go of outcomes, focus on. 

 Jim
 Output, output, what you're doing every day. What you find is that when you start to have some wins and you start to have, something good, things happening, more good things happen. Momentum builds woman. 

 Josh
 Yeah. What are your five non-negotiables. 

 Jim
 Five non-negotiables. For me exercising twice a day, absolutely. First of all, it has to happen. 

 Josh
 Yeah. 

 Jim
 Another one would be, I've got to go big and go small every day. What does that mean for my office? It means that I'm going to go big with a message. That's going touch everybody in the office. Right? That could be a video, could be an email. That's going out some big communications, right? I'm going to go small by touching somebody individually in the opposite and say, Hey, Josh, just, how are you doing today? What's going on with you? So that's going big and going small. I got to do that every day. Number three, I'm going to probably take some time to look at my market stats, and look at where we are strong, where we're weak and probably take some action related to that. For instance, have I noticed that we're, our listings are trending down. I'm going to look at what can I do strategically to help our listings. 

 Jim
 So that's third. Fourth for me is making five calls to my own agents. I don't know that kind of goes along with going small, but retain, I, I consider retention as recruiting all the time. I'm recruiting my agents and fifth and probably the second exercise for me. The most important thing is making outbound recruiting calls everyday. You gotta be recruiting other people every single day. It's either active recruiting or follow-up recruiting. If you want to be a great brokerage leader, you have to lead from the front and do the things that you're telling your salespeople. What we're telling ourselves, people can do is get out there, make calls, texts, people, engage in conversations. They look at you and you're just sitting at your desk. You're not know you need this. That's not okay. You got to do what you're telling them to do. So that's means I want the phone. 

 Jim
 I'm prospecting just like their prospect and just in a different way. And that's a real hurdle. 

 Josh
 That's awesome, man. One of the things you mentioned is you had to break some family modeling in order to build towards generational wealth. The first step of generational wealth is self wealth. Right? 

 Jim
 Exactly. 

 Josh
 When it comes to south wealth, making it, keeping it, growing it right, is important. What was the hardest challenge for you in self wealth? Because it's one of the things you said even before recording, it's just like you got your own dog food, right? Like you mentioned that when it comes to self wealth, what are some key things that you focus on and that you teach other brokers? Okay. 

 Jim
 W one of the simplest things that I learned really quickly, one of the first investments I made, I bought a house for $30,000 in 1980, managed to get imagined nice. When I bought it, I thought, oh, this is good. This is my first round. All I'm excited about buying it. I buy it and like a day or two, after I bought it, the renter calls me and says, I have a Rass. Like, oh, okay, well, I get something over there to deal with the rats in the house and we'll get that to Europe. So I get that fixed. A couple of days later, she says, the toilet's not flushing. Right. I need somebody to over there. So I called the plumber out. She says, oh yeah, a week later, there's something wrong with the roof. I think, the, it just, doesn't never ending kind of stream of calls. 

 Jim
 I was like, I can not do with this. I'm just going to sell this property, man. I turned around, I sold it for 35,000, took the 5,000 thought I was a win. I just, honestly, I can't, I, I don't, my personal model is I'm not a flipper metal. That's not my model. I don't, I'm not the kind of guy that's going to flip. I'm a buy and hold forever kind of guy. I was like, I've got to fix this. The way I fixed it is I decided I've got to just hire a property manager and pay the 10% and never have to think about this again. The next time I bought a property, I found a local property manager, a small company that I knew I could talk to and kind of knocked control, but have a really strong conversations with. I said, I'm going to give you every property I buy. 

 Jim
 Over the next five years I bought 70 properties and I put them all with him and he grew and I grew, and I never had to deal with any of that stuff. And that was the lesson for me. Like I do not manage my own properties. Yeah. 

 Josh
 I am so aligned with you on that. I, I am not a manager. I'm not a property manager. I'm not a manager period. I'm a, I'm more of a visionary leader. The idea of someone calling me about rats and phones and this and that or whatever, I'm calling it quits, dude, like I'd sell everything, right. I'm out. That is, that's so good. The fi the modeling that I had grown up, I grew up in a construction site, swinging hammers, right? Not the sharpest tool in the shed, digging footers in Florida heat. Right? The hardest thing for me, and this was trained by my dad and his dad, probably in everybody for a thousand generations was keep it in house. Do it yourself. Right. This idea of farming out releasing control is terrifying. Right. I find myself even recently, I was like, I need a fence. 

 Josh
 I can build that. I brought out the shovels, I got all set up and I looked at it. I go, what the hell am I doing? I made a few phone calls. The fence is up. I paid someone to do it. And it was brilliant. Right? Like they did a better job than I could do that. For me, that was hardest of the breaking the generational. I think it's like breaking the generational modeling to build generational wealth. Now, I assume you have kids, if we're talking about generational wealth. All right. Copy of that. What advice do you have for them? What age range? Give me an idea of age ranges. 

 Jim
 Of 16 to 20 bucks. 

 Josh
 Okay. Let's just say they listen to this one day and we can, we could leave a piece, a golden piece of wisdom for your kids about general generational wealth. Even think I could speak better in this for a living. Right. What piece of advice do you have for your kids? 

 Jim
 Well, number one, buying real estate, obviously buying a home as fast as possible. I am not, I, I believe investing in things you control. I mean, that's what I believe. I don't, I've lost so much money in the stock market over the years. I am an eternal optimist I'm I was mowed for the underdog. I'm the guy bought, about singer sewing machines. I bought my, I bought Montgomery ward stock. I bought Congress shoes cause I just listened to . I thought none of these companies could go bankrupt. They're just, they're just having a bad day. All of them went bankrupt. All of them went to zero. I, I lost so much money. In the lesson I learned from that is I need to control what I own in terms of my investing world. I I'm all in, on real estate. So, 90% of my wealth is in real estate. 

 Jim
 Yes, I've got some money in 401ks and things like that. 90% of my wealth is in real estate. That's what I would coach my kids to say, do what you can control. Now, my son, my oldest son is a software engineer. I'm very proud of him. He went to MIT or OIT were in the Institute of technology and now has great job. He might be able to be in control of a tech company someday. And that would be him owning that. That's a different thing, you know? For me, it's business ownership or real estate ownership. Probably both, I think the really build wealthy probably have to be a business owner and you, and then in real estate, that's my opinion. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Nah, I'm so aligned with that. Someone asked me the other day, are you invested in the stock market? And I go, I have no control. Absolutely no control. Now Elon Musk, he has control over the stock market because he can say, Hey, I'm buying something and it'll shoot through the roof now, nevermind. It'll dip. Right? I don't. I say, Hey guys, I'm going to invest in whatever. Nobody gives a crap, right? It's not going to move the needle at all. What a great piece of advice invest in what you can control. So we've got a few minutes left. Let me do this before we go. Any further, you wrote some books. Tell us about your books, man. Give a, give a plug about your books. 

 Jim
 So I've wrote a few books. One of them is make millions selling real estate presentations. I make millions and sell your home in any market. Those are three books that I wrote published by Amicom. Amicom where people can find me and learn more about coaching. If they're, if they're a real estate agent or brokerage owner is they can go to my coaching website, which is E real estate coach.com E like elephant. We've got a ton of tools there for people to check out. 

 Josh
 Cool. All right. There's a broker out there and they're like, what? I'd really like to grow to 225 agents or brokers, like that sounds interesting. They go to say the website again, 

 Jim
 E real estate coach.com. 

 Josh
 Okay. What kind of resources are you going to find there or is it one-on-one? Is it online courses? What does it look like? 

 Jim
 For brokers, I joined, what happens is they get their entire brokerage gets access to a coaching platform that I put together for agents. If you're looking for your agents to grow their productivity and attract more agents, they all get plugged in. You as a broker are with me twice a month in a group setting of other brokers from around the country. We're in a group setting group coaching environment. We spend an hour together, guided coaching, and then we all, we, the biggest part of this it's accountability coaching. At the end, we use the kind of a scrum management method. We do a sprint and at the end we say, okay, what does everybody really to do for the next two weeks? Like, what's your commitment. I'm going to, I'm going to rebuild my marketing department. We're gonna rebuild our website. I'm going to do WhatsApp. 

 Jim
 I'm going to recruit five people. When we come back, two weeks later, everybody raises their hand and they say, what'd you get done? Now you're facing the group, not just me as progression with the entire group. It's like facing the team. It just helps people elevate really rapidly what they're doing. It's super fun. And we have just a good time. It was great. It's great. Fun watching everybody grow together. 

 Josh
 Yeah. So thank God. You didn't have a heart attack. Right. You went three times in and the doctor's like, dude, you got a good heart. All right. You got a good heart and you're going to be in the game for a long time, but 20, 30, 40 years, however long down the line, you and I are sitting on a rocking chair, drinking some whiskey or whatever, and we're looking back and we go, we did it. What does that mile marker for you where you're like, I did it kid. 

 Jim
 I think that this company that I'm running is my high point of achievement in the real estate brokerage business. I don't, I don't have an aspiration to go rebuild another company because I've done it twice. The second time I did it better than the first time. I think that's, that's, that's my high point for real estate brokerage, ownership. I would like to say that I had have also built in my lifetime, a successful group of RV parks. That's my, kind of my next big challenge and, continue my coaching and hopefully to see some of these brokerages that I've helped coach grow and expand. Cause I, I get a lot of excitement and joy of just watching that. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I can tell you love coaching. That's one of your favorite things, isn't it? 

 Jim
 Yeah. I enjoy it. 

 Josh
 Have you read the book, a trillion dollar coach, a bill, something it's a really good book for, if you have a coach's heart, like yeah. He coached a bunch of tech companies, Silicon valley, and such like that. It's a good book. It's trillion dollar. 

 Jim
 Thank. 

 Josh
 You. Yeah. Hey, you're welcome. That just came to mind. One other question, kind of personal question. I grabbed your phone and I like scroll through your playlist, top played song, let's just say you had the same phone for the last 20 years and I find the song that you've played the most in the last 20 years. What would that song be? 

 Jim
 Definitely be Def Leppard, probably photograph or, one of those definitely. Definitely for guy. No, 

 Josh
 Just kidding. I do not sing that for us. All right. Cool. Cool. All right. During this interview, we talked a lot about deals, how people can find you, some of the cool things that you're doing, what questions should I have asked you that I screwed up and did not ask you? 

 Jim
 Well, you asked a good question. Did I get very good interview or I don't know. I think he, I think he covered a lot of ground there, man. I think, I don't know that there's a great question that you missed. I think for new agents that are entering the business, which I get a lot of questions around new agents, like what can I do to, to rise quickly? I guess my advice to them is the number one thing you can do is to focus in on your sphere of influence as fast as possible, grow that database because five years after you entered the business, you're going to wish you had done that because it's the number one thing missed by most agents is not growing that database and not acting on that problem. So that may be a good question. 

 Josh
 Okay. It comes to building your sphere of influence and the niche, right, you're like got to have your niche, 

 Jim
 Right? 

 Josh
 Give me one piece of advice on each of those. 

 Jim
 Serbian plastic, spare flies, you have to use CRM technology, right? So CRM is absolutely critical. I mean, we're transferring over and starting to use Salesforce in our company. So, whatever you're going to use, don't look for perfection. They're all flawed. Every single one of them, people get hung up on this, doesn't have this feature. It doesn't matter. 99% of what you're going to use inside CRM is it's going to show me the phone number of the clients and when I should contact them next, and then we'll have a drip campaign, all of them have that, right? I don't need to worry about perfection. That would be the on the sphere side, gotta have CRM and I gotta be using it every single day has got to be up on my computer. My number one go-to thing. I'm looking at the fortune 500 companies of America. 

 Jim
 All of the salespeople that are making 200, $300,000 a year are required to use CRM solution. You have the same requirement as the second half of your question. 

 Josh
 Snitch, no niche. 

 Jim
 Oh, niche. I think for niche, you got to go, what's your path, what's your passions. If I, my passions, waterfront properties or golf properties, or something rural and rent your building, whatever, find what you're passionate about. Don't do it for the money. Do it for the passion. The money will follow. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I got to ask this. Yeah, but as a generalist, look at all the money I'm leaving on the table. I could do residential. I could do commercial. I could work with investors, right? A new agent. I'm a new agent. I'm like, look how many opportunities I have out there convince me of the niche. Okay. 

 Jim
 I actually think that a new agent should be a generalist in the beginning. And I believe that. They should, especially if you're a community like mine, if you're a population based on a smaller population base 80,000, a hundred thousand, very difficult for a new agent to come in and say, I'm going to specialize in new construction, they'll crash and burn and fail immediate. Or I'm going to be a commercial specialist. They've kind of got to go do it all. Generally guide their business to them, to that direction. I want to be luxury specialist sprayed on a store, going into luxury. I'm going to grow that over the next five years. A great analogy to this is I graduated medical school. What do I do? I'm going to go work as an intern at the hospital and I'm going to be a generalist. I'm going to be an intern. 

 Jim
 When I get out of there, maybe I'll go to a special ed specialist. I think that it's kind of the same thing. Get your legs under you. Then you go deeper in this specialization. 

 Josh
 Super cool. One more time. Where can people go to find you. 

 Jim
 E as in elephant real estate, coach E real estate, coach.com. Also you can find me with that tag on any social media as well. 

 Josh
 What does the east stand for? 

 Jim
 Electronic electronic. 

 Josh
 Super cool. All right. Fellow dealmakers in the audience, thanks for listening in as always reach out to our guests, say, thanks for being on the show. If you're a broker or an agent you're looking to grow your business and do better, be more profitable, better production, reach out to our guests and say, Hey, I heard you on the deal scout and want to do a deal with you. That's a purpose and mission of the show. Now, if you're looking at a deal or working on a deal, and you'd like to talk about it here on the deal scout, head over to the deal. Scout.com. Fill out a quick form. Maybe get you on the show next till then we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Bye everybody.