 I didn't want to be running trust accounts and like all of that good stuff. I was like, someone else can do the hard part and I can just show up in market and sell. Cool. Man, this is, uh, you took us on a journey here today. Like I, I feel like I've been on a roller coaster for the last 20 minutes. So that's good. Imagine living it. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of road to 10,000. Uh, you got me, Ricky. Karuth. You got my guy, Juan Carlos. And today we're talking with, uh, I'm going to butcher this last name. Okay. This is Jess. We'll just go by Jess. How do you pronounce that last name? It's Linna Val. Linna Val. Yeah. Linna Val. Good to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. So what is your claim to fame? What, what has brought you to this moment? What destiny has, you know, swirled around and then all of a sudden boom, you're right here talking to Ricky and Juan. What's going on? Yeah. I mean, there's a whole story behind it, but, um, basically what I do now is I help real estate agents scale from six to seven figures. How in the world do you do that? That is pretty, I would say that's probably an impossible task. Well, it's not impossible with the right people. So a lot of what we do is, is around creating an inbound lead flow system by creating relationships at scale. And then once they get to a point where they have essentially an unlimited tap of business comes the leverage, the scaling, the automation, the delegation, the team building and that stuff. Phenomenal just what you're doing is you're building these systems for them so that they have leads coming in on autopilot. So we're not an agency. We're a mentorship company. So what we do is like we teach the agent how to be fully self-sufficient. It's kind of the idea of like we teach them to fish so that we don't have to sell them fish. So everything that we do is geared around teaching them not only how to use organic social media, but also paid traffic to be fully self-sufficient when it comes to the lifeblood of their business. Perfect. So would you consider yourself a real estate coach in that manner? I consider myself a real estate mentor. I don't really love the the title of coach because I think that it's a little widely misused. And I would say. Why is that? Why is that? What's the misuse of it? I think that there's just an element of anybody can call themselves a coach. Anybody can call themselves a mentor, though, right? Yeah, but I define mentor a little bit differently. So the way that I see a coach is and I think that there's a place for both for both. Absolutely. But the way that I see a coach is someone who essentially, you know, walks behind you up the mountain, cheers you on, makes sure that you keep putting one step in front of the other. The way that I see a mentor's role is basically you've already climbed the mountain. You've already done it. You have the plan, the systems, the like, like the whole thing already done and mapped out. And all you're doing is you're telling that person, like, essentially, put your feet in the footsteps that I've already laid for you. Got you, got you. So the mentor has already made it to the top of the mountain, you say? I would say so. And then they're they're just reaching down to help help the people up the mountain. Yeah. Whereas a coach starts at the bottom with you, right? Maybe they already climbed in. They came back down or how I'm trying to understand the dynamics. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that there's a lot of there's a lot of people and especially like the I mean, I'm I love the coaching industry. I think it's amazing. But I think that there's a lot of people who haven't necessarily had a really successful business that are showing that are coaching businesses. And so I think that there's also an element of alignment that sometimes can be missing. I know that I've had people who I know very well that have never, you know, have never had a seven figure business, but are, you know, claiming to have all the secrets and tricks to get you to a seven figure business. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So going back to your real estate career, tell us about that. So I started in real estate as like a baby. I was 21. I was straight out of school. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My mom's been a realtor for 35 years, more than that, maybe now. And she basically said to me, why don't you just get a license and see I think you'll be good at it, right? Same way that like most people get into the industry, whether it's when they're young or when they're older, it's somebody says to them, I think you'd be good at it. You're good with people. So I got my license and I think that I kind of got that taste that my first deal was a million dollar deal. And so I thought that real estate was going to be easy and that it was always going to be like that. And I kind of got addicted to like the game a little bit. And I started at a training brokerage that taught a lot of traditional lead generation things, door knocking, cold calling, flyers, billboards, farming, stuff like that. I am especially 21 year old me was incredibly introverted. And so the idea of me having to pick up the phone 100 times a day or knock on people's doors and like pitch myself was my idea of hell. Facebook was this brand new thing. Nobody really knew how to use it properly. And I started actually just prospecting on Facebook. I I call it now like prospecting in your PJs. Like I got to stay at home and sit on my couch and just, you know, build relationships and give give people, you know, advice and help and things like that, which turned into clients. So that may cause my PJs all the time. Yeah, I agreed. But I think that there was an element of me wanting to hide behind the screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so so what so what was it? Like did you DM people in your market where you're running Facebook ads? So Facebook ads weren't even a thing then. So back then it was literally classifieds and a newsfeed. There was like no other part of Facebook. So I would go into the classified section. People who were like, you know, looking for housing or like things like that. I would DM them. I would start a conversation. I'd give them some advice. And then, you know, when there was an opening, I would offer. I would offer to help them. Beautiful. So what year was this when you started real estate? 2005, 2004, 2005. We're in there. OK, OK, OK. Cool. So you got in. They were saying, go doorknock, go knock, go go call people, you know, go talk to people. You're like, I don't want to get into that kind of stuff right now. So yeah, I'm going to do this Facebook thing and kind of see where that goes. OK, so where do we go from here? You know, I built a solid six figure business. I was still like I was in my early 20s, right? So I was I was definitely not like super business minded at that point. I tried to learn the business from a lot of different angles. I worked for builders. I did resale for a while. I specialized in resort property. I learned the business from a lot of different angles. And then probably nine, 10 years ago now, I had kind of like a bit of a shift where I was like, you know, if I'm going to do this and I'm going to stay in this industry, I need to stop kind of messing around. I want to actually see what I can do here. And I want to see whether or not I can really create something that's going to give me a little bit more freedom. And I built I married my I met my husband who has a marketing background and the two of us essentially made this shift of, OK, you're not a realtor anymore. You're a marketer. And there was a kind of this mindset shift of instead of looking at yourself as like I sell homes for a living, it was you're a marketer. And your prime objective is to have more people exposed to you and to provide a really great service that then, you know, creates evangelism after that. We started testing a whole bunch of different things. We went outside the industry and started looking outside other service based industries and what was working. The coaching industry was one of them where we were saying, OK, like what what has been working in other industries? Like real estate for the most part when it comes to, you know, marketing practices and tech and things like that. So we went outside. We went outside the industry, pulled some things back, really started testing things. And we we went from essentially nothing to seven figures in six months. And I was the only selling of GCI. OK. Yeah. And I was the only one selling. So obviously I got incredibly burnt out. And so it got to a point where I was like, I can't do this on my on my own anymore, which is what which is when the like the team and the scaling started to come in. I built a team before in my in my mid 20s and I done it 100 percent the wrong way. And I ended up kind of being the assistant to everyone else on my team instead of actually the team leader, because I was so young and everyone on my team was older than me. I had a lot of experience, but also but but also I never run a successful team at that point. So again, I went outside the industry, learned a tremendous amount about other teams and how teams were built in other industries and how other businesses were scaled and brought a lot of that back into real estate and scaled my team, I guess, more like a little bit differently than a lot of people do within the real estate space. Because I think there's there's one model that I think a lot of people use, which is, you know, you get so you get so busy and then, you know, you bring an assistant on and then, you know, there's kind of like there's like a typical way that people scale. I did I did it a little bit differently because my skill sets were different. And I think that, you know, that's one of the things that I think makes us a little bit different in terms of the way that we scale things is that we don't have there's not there's not one set model for how you should scale a team, the way that we teach it. It's very much OK, like you can be a visionary. You can be an integrator. You can have different skill sets and the team is going to look really different depending on where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. So we build the team around the person rather than just try to fit the person into a mold. So, Justin, that's a really that's a real cool concept. Now, in regards to you now hitting, setting seven figures, designing this new team infrastructure, where are you at and what year? Because I want to know like the timeframe of things. But this is really cool how you built the entire thing out. Yeah, I would say, I mean, we're twenty twenty one now. I would say probably twenty twelve, twenty twelve. And now in twenty twelve, how how did you design your team specifically being that you are the marketer? Did you bring on agents and then you marketed for them? Were you still taking on listings yourself? Give us that infrastructure just so the audience understands like how. Yeah, so for sure. And I I never separated like by your agent listing agent. We always just kind of separated in terms of OK, if the if that person has a relationship with you, then you're going to work with them like on both ends. Like if they're upsizing, for instance, like we're going to work with them, you're going to work with them on the on the buying side and the listing side because that's the relationship there as opposed to kind of moving people around and passing people off. We found that that worked better for us. It does. That's obviously not the case for 100 percent of teams. There's definitely teams that we work with that have, you know, the team lead runs with the listings. We kind of got to a point where, you know, I was doing a lot more of the like, you know, relationship building, some of the larger some of the larger acquisitions for, you know, investors, things like that. And my team was doing a little bit more of like the day to day. I started out with me and a marketer. So I was still doing all the administration. I was doing all the selling. And then I had my husband, who I originally built the business with as the back end, who was building landing pages and who was doing the lead jet and who was sending out emails and things like that. So if there was something that, you know, even if it was on the fly, I was in the car and I was like, hmm, that's a good idea. I wonder if that would work. I could literally just pick up the phone and he'd say, well, I'll get it. I'll get it out and I'll get it running and I'll see if it works. So there was a lot of testing that went in. And there was just a lot of creativity that we had space for because we weren't relying on anyone else. It was literally he could build. He could build a beautiful landing page in an hour. So it was we were able to move a lot faster than a lot of teams normally can because of him. And then, you know, we, you know, I got to a point where like, I was super burnt out, my phone would ring and I would cry and I would hand him the phone and say, I need you to answer the phone for me. Like I need a minute. And so the first person that I brought on was another agent. It actually wasn't an administrator because I didn't feel I didn't feel overwhelmed by the paperwork because I'm introverted. I felt overwhelmed with like the people. I just felt like there was too many people. There was and we joke around on my team now that like, Jess can only human so much, right? We have to like watch how how much human ingress has to do in a day. So so for me, the right the right step was to bring on other agents that I could kind of funnel the leads out to. And I could start to more focus on bigger relationships, builder relationships, things like that, that we're going to draw that were more like larger scale income generating activities as opposed to just, you know, obviously servicing the clients really mattered. But they were able to kind of do a little bit more of the running around. Perfect. So we so we went from just doing it all to now just outsourcing the marketing, holding on to the sales and the administrative and then you outsource some of the sales so you could focus on the administrative, the relationships, customer relations. How big did you grow the team up to? Did you have several agents working for you or was it just a couple? We kept it pretty small. So at the end, it was three agents, including me and a full time marketer and a full time administrator. Phenomenal. And then at the peak, how much were you guys doing in production with that team once it was in place? Yeah, we were doing about 100 to 150 million a year. That's awesome. That's awesome. And then and then so are you out totally out of the sales side of the business at this point? What year did you? OK, so you transitioned into this mentor, real estate mentor. So so so what year did that happen? Did you start the mentor business before you totally quit real estate? Right? How did you transition into this? How long have you been doing it? And so so forth. So I transitioned at the end of 2017. OK, it for me and the most common question that I get asked is if you had such a great real estate business, why would you do that? And the answer was I wanted to be location independent. I really didn't want to be stuck in one market. And yes, I could go away for a month at a time here or there. But I wanted the opportunity. And as soon as I started this business, the very first thing that I did is I moved to LA for six months just because I could. It was literally just one of those like I got to exercise my freedom here a little bit. So and it's funny because now like we're we're back where we started. But we also because obviously COVID we're we are still a little bit stuck here. But we're looking at, you know, other places that we can move to, whether we do six months here and six months somewhere else. So that was a big part of it. The other part of it was very much I didn't feel like I think it was a little bit of an existential crisis. Like I was like, I don't know that I was put on this planet to sell real estate. Like I feel like I fell into the industry. I never fully chose it. I love it, but the happiest that I ever was was when an agent would come and knock on my office door and say, help me. So I think that from a from from that standpoint, I personally felt like I transitioned out of the business before I physically transit transitioned out of the business. Yeah, no, that's good. That's I'm still in transition. I get it. I've been transitioning since 2017 myself. I started coaching agents for free. Yeah, I'm still doing it. I'm still selling single agent. I'm still doing a million a year on the sell side, just single agent one assistant. And I'm coaching all these agents and stuff. So I'm still trying to figure that part out. So I mean, I think you probably just said like a cold turkey situation. You were just like, I'm done with this. I'm going to do something different. I'm going to move to LA and figure my life out. So no, that's cool. And Jess, just curious, does the team still operate and run without you being there? Are you completely just closed out shop? And some of the teams, some of the team is still together. Cool. And do you own and operate this under your own brokerage or you operate under a different block? No, I operated it under another brokerage. I never wanted to be a broker. There's I always felt like there was just, you know, way too much responsibility to from a brokerage standpoint. I didn't want to be running trust accounts and like all of that good stuff. I was like, someone else can do the hard part and I can just show up and market and sell. Right. Cool. Man, this is you took us on a journey here today. Like I feel like I've been on a roller coaster for the last 20 minutes. So that's good. Imagine living it. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I could tell you some. I could tell you my story and it would it would be similar. So well, cool. I mean, OK, so that brings you to today. So let's just take a brand new agent or struggling agent, you know, with your mentorship, you know, where do we go from here? Like, what would you tell someone, you know, who's not where they want to be or brand new, you know, what's your advice? So the way that we work with brand new agents, because we have a couple of different programs, like our brand new agent program is 100 percent organic. I don't teach brand new agents ads because a lot of the time I think what happens is agents will spend too much money before they make money and they just end up throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall to see if something's going to stick. Right. So with a brand new agent, obviously, we teach them a lot of organic social media, how to create basically inbound client flow using organic social media by just showing up as an authority. We teach three different three different content types in order to build those relationships. And we teach authority content, personal content and social proof, which for most people will do it and will at least get your sphere and the people around you to not only recognize you as an agent, but also recognize you as someone that can help them as opposed to just the agent who's like, I got my license and my mom won't use me. Right. So there's a certain element of like showing up as an authority and creating value. You know, there's always that Gary V, like jab, jab, jab, right hook. It's the same thing. Like we always say you want to give, give, give and then ask. So a lot of that is kind of the new agent stuff with the with a business that is existing. Usually what we would want to do is all of the organic, mark the organic social media stuff as well, because most agents are not using social media particularly well. They're posting just listed just solds and pictures of staircases and kitchens, right, for the most part, instead of how to cook shrimp atoufe. What color to paint your walls on the ball? And by our tips in the spring to win the multiple offers. 100 percent. It's springtime. It's time to clean your gutters, right? So a lot of it, a lot of the one of the first things that we do is we'll say, OK, look, you've probably been a generalist for five to 10 years. Now, let's actually niche you down so that you can dominate a market segment. We don't niche down in terms of location anymore. We teach niching in terms of demographic or life transition. So, you know, first time buyers, upsizers, downsizers, you know, dog owners and condos, something that's going to that's going to segment the market down and and have common or have trends and pains, problems, fears and desires. So we start with that, figuring out what that whatever that niche is going to be. And then we market research. So we we teach them how to actually pull this marketing messaging from the market itself. And the reason why I think that's so important is most. Most agents think that they can create their marketing in a vacuum and that they already know everything that they need to know. And the truth really is, is most agents actually don't know what is actually driving their clients move moves. Moving is not fun. People don't move because it's just some joyful thing that they want to do. It's actually like quite painful to move. So we need to understand, like, you know, just like any other sales, current situation, desired situation. And then, like, what does the bridge between the two of those look like? So so it's niche down market research. And then from there, we create a nine point messaging sequence to take that person in an automated way from stranger to client. That can be used in social in the social media stuff, but it also gets used from, like, you know, your front and lead generation ads don't have to be complicated. But once you get someone into your world, the key really is this. OK, how do we use this psychology so that you don't have to be again me? Not I mean, I got to a point where I love the phone, but I don't want to sit and call people 200 times a day, right? So how do we use retargeting ads and email campaigns and messenger campaigns and things like that so that you can go out and sell or go golfing or do whatever it is that you're going to do while your while your system is actually converting those people from strangers to clients now. Now, just do you believe in teaching this to the realtor so now they become the marketer? Yes, or do you believe in outsourcing it so that a company or an actual marketer on a salary would do this work for them? So I am a very big believer that you can't outsource well and you can't hire well until you know how to do the basics, right? So usually what we do is we teach the agent how to do it and run it themselves and then how to hire someone and bring someone else on how to run that person through the program. Because when when somebody comes into into our programs, like we don't charge that person for it in men or a marketer to go through the program with them. So that person would then have someone else on their team that is running it. I mean, I really think that I mean, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on agencies over the years and a lot of the time, you know, I knew more than the agency knew or the person who was running my ads or they were running the same ads in, you know, in Florida, as in Texas, as in, you know, Toronto. And so a lot of the time, you know, the messaging has to be customized to you, to the market and to the demographic that you want to work with. So the messaging has to come from the agent, no matter what, the messaging has to come from the agent. The content has to come from the agent has to look and sound like the like the agent. But the actual like tech setup can be run by someone else on your team. Like that's no problem. And the way that we do it is it's once it's set up, it doesn't really need to be touched that much. It's it's it's quite automated. The only thing that really would need to get swapped out on a regular basis or is your front and lead gen ads because those obviously those will fatigue. So you can very easily teach someone on your team to swap those out and what works and how to test without it having to be this really complicated, rebuilt process every time. No, I love it. I'm a huge believer in leverage and putting the right people in the right place to help you scale your business. However, if you haven't learned how to do it yourself, it's a little bit harder to identify those prospects as goes candidates. So that's awesome. But Jess, thank you so much for all this valuable info. I have your Instagram pulled up right here. What's the best way for people to get in contact with you? Is it Instagram? Is it email? I would say Instagram or my Facebook group. Which is just the listings lab method for real estate agents. So, yeah, phenomenal. Cool. Jess, thank you so much for your time. We are looking forward to having you on the show later in the future. And if anyone has any questions, reach out to Jess directly. She's an expert in automating and helping you scale your real estate business. Thank you once again. Thanks so much, guys.