 I hope you're doing well today. Today I wanted to do this video to break down exactly how I've made a million dollars in real estate in 2017 as a single agent. So today is Saturday, February 24th, and I'm working today. I'm actually in between appointments right now, so this morning I had to go all the way down to Fort Morgan, which is about a 30 mile run from my house. So as I'm driving, I had a lot of time to think, and so I was sitting there contemplating on the drive there and back about all the incredible things that's going on in my business right now. Last year I sold actually over $40 million worth of property, 130 deals. This year so far I've closed $9 million worth of properties. I'm closing on another million next week, so I'll be over $10 million on the year, which is really where I was at this point in the year last year, which is fine because right now I'm spending about half of my time building this other business around speaking, coaching, and writing, and so as I was driving down there and driving back, I really was thinking really hard about how I've gotten where I am and why all these incredible things are happening in my business and that they continue to happen on a consistent basis. So consistently I'm making $100,000 a month, and it just made me want to do this video because I was really kind of breaking it down in my mind how all this happened. So I wanted to give you three reasons that I feel like are essential to building a million dollar a year real estate business, and really a lot of it is focused around mindset. Real estate is simple but not easy. The fundamentals to do real estate and be successful are simple. It's hard to implement those simple tasks consistently over time, and that's where a lot of people fail in this business. So the first thing is you need thousands of clients. If you're going to make a million dollars in real estate, you need thousands of clients. So at some point it has to be about a lot of clients. The second thing is you have to effectively communicate your message and who you are and who you project yourself to be to these clients and prospects. It has to be from a place of genuineness and pure. The third thing is follow up. You have to have a very effective follow up system. So you need thousands of clients. You have to effectively communicate with these clients, and you have to follow up with them forever for the rest of their life. Because the name of the game really to make it to a million a year is relationships. How many relationships do you have with property owners in your area? That's market share to me. Market share equals how many real relationships you have with property owners in your area. Whatever agents has the most real relationship with property owners controls the market share. It's the future earnings of that real estate agent and I just believe that that's where market share is. It's not how many transactions, how many listings, how many buyers you have. I think it's how many real relationships with property owners you have. So the first one is you need thousands of clients to actually reach a million dollar a year business. So the first thing I would say about that is that you can't spend a lot of time on any one thing. I think a lot of agents are spending too much time on one thing here, one thing there, and they're letting it really clog up their day, and they're not really being as productive as they could be if they would just think speed, right? Think speed until you're in front of a potential client, then think quality. Too many agents are just thinking too much quality. They're just doing too much quality, quality, quality, not enough speed, right? Moving from situation to situation. Another thing I see along that same line is people that have a couple of properties under contract, it really just blows their mind and it eats up all their time and they spend everything they got, all their energy on these couple of deals that are under contract. I don't understand that. I never have. I can't see how a couple of pending deals take up 40, 50 hours a week. I spend five, 10 minutes making a few phone calls to see exactly where we are on the deal, letting everybody know, and then I'm done with that for a while. At some point, you have to be okay with letting the process take care of the process. Just let it happen and focus your energies on building business, getting more clients. We need a quantity. We need thousands of clients. I really believe, really strongly, that if you talk to 10 to 20 property owners every day, that if you do this every day for years, that you will eventually be the number one agent in your area. If you're effectively communicating that you care about them and they're not just worried about doing another deal, if you sound differently than all the other agents who are actually there, the way that most agents communicate with prospects and property owners is that they're just one of listing, they just want a deal, they just want an appointment. I think that's the wrong strategy. I'll get into that in a minute. For now, I want you to understand that property owners in your area are unlimited. You can't talk to all the property owners in your area ever in your lifetime. They're the highest quality prospect they buy and sell. They'll give you business now and they'll give you business later. You develop the relationship long-term forever. You follow up with them effectively. You communicate with them exactly what your true intentions are, which is to help them. You're going to blow up. That brings me to the second thing, which is effectively communicate with these prospects, these property owners and your future clients. You really want to communicate your true intentions, which is this. Most of you guys are great people. You care about others. You want to help your professional, your hardworking, your dependable, your knowledgeable, your everything that a really top-notch real estate agent is. You're the total package, but you're having trouble communicating that to your prospects. They're not getting that when they talk to you. I think part of the problem is the mainstream real estate training that's out there teaches you to go after the sale, try to make the appointment, try to land an appointment, try to get the listing, try to get the contract, try to get them to sign this, try to get them to sign that. I think it's just the wrong strategy. A lot of people base your production on the day on how many appointments you set that day. I don't think that that's what you should be concentrating on. I think you should concentrate on how many real relationships and good conversations you had with property owners. I think that is what you should base the success of the day on. I think that when you're in the mindset of let's set the appointment, try to get a listing signed, I think that you turn a lot of people off that you don't even know about. I think you're losing people because you can only talk to so many people a day. Out of those people, you're losing a lot of them based on your high pressure tactics, your strategy of trying to set appointments and make deals happen. Those people have already decided when they want to buy or sell. You're not going to talk them into buying or selling a property today. Your job is to make them feel comfortable with you, show them how much you care, show them how different you are from all the other agents that they have to choose from and give them a reason, provide value to them and give them a reason to pick you out of all the agents to pick you to be their agent when the time comes, when they decide it's time to buy or sell. I think that a lot of people mistake my strategy here with being just a long-term strategy. How are you going to get deals now? How are you going to get business now? I'm telling you from experience that with this mindset of thinking long-term with your clients and focusing on what their needs are and how you can help them instead of, hey, I have a buyer for your property, do you want to sell or some other high-pitched, do you want to sell tactic? I think that long-term what happens is you accumulate these thousands of clients that you need to become a million-dollar ear agent, but in the meantime you run into all kinds of people that want to do deals right now because like I said they've already decided when they want to buy or sell. If you're talking to enough people you're going to run into those people that have decided now is the time and if you hit them at the right time they don't already have another real estate agent they're working with then boom there's you a deal and it happens all the time. So you can build your business long and short-term at the same time it's very effective it's very low pressure and people actually like you and want to deal with you whereas if you're just trying to set appointments people are canceling appointments because you were kind of high pressure it's awkward right you're just trying to get in front of them you know when they really don't want to be in front of you yet they're not really ready to do anything have a good conversation with them and capture their information and follow up with them forever and let them call you when they get ready deal with the people that you run into that are ready to do something now and save all the rest of the people for later so that brings me to the third part of this video which is the follow-up okay so we have we need thousands of clients we need to effectively communicate with these clients and you have to effectively follow up with them forever the way that I do that I don't have a CRM I don't have any fancy thing that I do I just send a weekly email to my database every week on the same day forever and I've been doing this since 2007 so 11 years on every single Wednesday through thick and thin through markets crashing hurricanes me changing companies me going through you know really low points in my life all kinds of you know vacations all kinds of reasons that I could have made excuses not to let this email go out but it's went out every single week on the same day since 2007 and will for the rest of my life that is the foundation and glue that holds all of my clients and all my database together and keeps them in tune with me and the market right and they can call me when they get ready so you need thousands of clients you need to quit putting so much quality into everybody and everything that you meet right let the process take care of a lot of that stuff and spend most of your time going after new business which is talking to new property owners 10 to 20 a day right you need to effectively communicate that you don't care if they do a deal or not today you're there to help them if they do want to do a deal now or later and you know you want to truly help them right you want to be there for them you want to go to launch with them you want to develop that relationship and provide value long-term through the weekly email which is how you're going to follow up with everybody in your database so I hope this helps you with how to actually make a million dollars in years a real estate agent it's something that's really been on my mind I wanted to get it out so when I was driving this morning it really gave me some time to think about it and what the key factors would be behind a video like this so I hope you enjoyed it click subscribe if you haven't clicked already and let me know if you have any questions we'll talk to you guys soon