Leverage—The Who, How, and What of Real Estate

So, if you would choose sellers over buyers in the hypothetical situation we described above, why aren’t you placing seller clients at the core of your business? There are so many great reasons to devote all of your time and effort to taking and marketing listings. The Millionaire Real Estate Agent grasps the incredible advantages of making, obtaining, and marketing seller listings their primary lead-generation focus, and they do so almost exclusively. Over time, they will hire one or more buyer specialists to work the buyer side of the business and concentrate their energy on the high-return, high-leverage business of listings. (And once that is fine-tuned, they may then hire a listing agent to work the seller side as well.)

Listings are the second L in the Three L’s of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent. All the Millionaire Real Estate Agents we worked with and interviewed devoted their time to listings first. The buyers they worked with were usually the result of their seller focus or their focus on referral and repeat business. Make listings your primary focus. Listings will help you gain more control over your time and money, and the rewards you reap from your efforts will be the highest they could possibly be.

LEVERAGE: THE WHO, HOW, AND WHATOF REAL ESTATE

LISTINGS

The interesting thing about the third L, Leverage, is that if you focus on the first two L’s and do a great

Receive

Net

Earn

Think

LEADS

job, you will eventually have no choice but to LEVERAGE either make less money or jump into becoming leveraged. An effective focus on leads and seller listings eventually brings you to a point where you have more business than you can possibly handle alone and will create the opportunity to start focus-

Figure 12

ing on leverage. And that is how it

should be. Until you have maxed out on what you can accomplish through focus on leads and listings, you should not be hiring another person. Why? Red Light, Green Light. You do it when you need it.

Let’s revisit our mountain-climbing analogy. If following the path to becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Agent is like climbing Mount Everest, then leverage can be likened to the hiring of Sherpas, the native climbers who assist on almost every attempt at Everest’s summit. Only a small handful of climbers have ever successfully climbed Mount Everest alone. None of the Millionaire Real Estate Agents we have worked with or interviewed claimed to have reached their current level of success alone. Look at it this way: Leverage answers three key questions in your business: 1. Who is going to do it? People 2. How will they do it? Systems 3. What will they do it with? Tools

You might say Leverage is the “Who, How and What” of your real estate business when you are not the only one doing it. Bringing people into your sales business to work with you has the potential to tremendously impact your

“Our staff is the key to our freedom. With our team, we no longer have to deal with every little problem.” Ronnie and Cathy Mathews Millionaire Real Estate Agents Houston, TX

Sales volume—$99.5 million

business. Now, the challenge is to add the right people, because that impact could be positive or negative, depending on who they are and what they do. Great talent is irreplaceable. Great talent often meets and exceeds your standards and has the capacity to grow with you and the business. Poor hires, on the other hand, can do a lot of damage. Good talent should not be confused with great talent. Good is good and great is great. And, although good can really help, great can actually change your business forever. Therefore, it is crucial that you avoid settling for people who

merely fill gaps and who do not have the capacity to grow. An agent and longtime friend of mine once jokingly explained why most agents were satisfied with good, rather than great, talent in their business; he said, “Gary, after you’ve hired bad, good is great!” That’s true. But the greater truth is: “Once you’ve experienced great, good just isn’t good enough.”

In the very beginning you will seek people leverage to help with administrative duties, answer the phones, process transactions, and place the advertising and marketing you create. They are transaction coordinators, contract managers, marketing specialists, and bookkeepers, and sometimes they are all those things rolled into one. Eventually, if they are talented enough, “Take the leap of faith—hire someone. It will open you up and free you up.” Valerie Fitzgerald Millionaire Real Estate Agent Los Angeles, CA Sales volume—$160 million

they will help you create and implement systems to run your business more efficiently and consistently.

When you look for people leverage to help with the administrative side of your business, do not underestimate the importance of this first hire. We’ve found that great administrators have the ability to run a real estate business and may eventually become the person who takes your place when you move on to Receive a Million. Why? Because they are not real estate agents themselves, their ambitions should not run counterto your own. The opportunity to manage a million-dollar business as its CEO is a great career path, and, as the owner, you have less reason to fear they will eventually walk away with your business. Finding a replacement for yourself is the final step on the path to becoming the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and we’ll discuss that tricky maneuver in detail in the final stage, Receive a Million. In the interest of getting the big picture first, to help you Think a Million, you should bear in mind that Receive a Million may well begin when you hire your first great administrative person.

I’m convinced that one of the greatest Realtors of our time is Ebby Halliday in Dallas, Texas. Ebby’s first assistant was Mary Francis Burleson. Today, some thirty years later, Mary Francis is president of Ebby Halliday Realtors, a thriving real estate business with more than twenty-five offices around Dallas. Never underestimate the importance of your first hire! Sharon Gibbons was my first hire in 1983, and, like most first hires, she was in charge of “doing it all,” from typing to answering the phone to you name it! By the late 1990s, Sharon had taken over the entire financial department. And who knows what responsibilities she’ll have next year or the year after that. If you do it right, your first hire could be a lifetime hire.

So your first step to leverage will be administrative help who will eventually help create and implement systems. Systems are simply the repeatable processes that allow us to duplicate magnificent results easily. You may create a listing-appointment checklist or a ten-point marketing plan for your listings. Whatever the case, it will be defined by your standards and repeatable by others. Your administrative people leverage should also bring tools. Tools are what they do their work with, from phone systems to computer networks to websites and marketing packages. As you progress, you’ll want to spend less and less time selecting and implementing tools. Your people leverage can take these tasks away from you and allow you to concentrate on the dollar-productive activities like lead generation, going on listing appointments, or hiring and train-

“You must have a vision and build a talent pool to deliver it.” Chris Cormack Millionaire Real Estate Agent Ashburn, VA

ing additional talent.

Only after you have great Sales volume—$70 million

administrative help (who in turn bring systems and tools), and they have helped grow your business to a point where there are more clients than you can handle, do you begin the process of hiring real estate salespeople leverage. Buyer assistants come first (probably in the form of a