The Dream Business

Hi, I’m Kelly Johnson, founder of the 4X formula and the big question is this: How are real estate agents like us able to create a constant stream of commissions and a constant stream of leads while enjoying life without wasting big budgets on branding, without working crazy hours, without worrying where the next deal’s coming from in today’s real estate market. This podcast is here to reveal the answers.

Hey, all you 4Xers out there. I’m so excited you’re with me today. Today I’m going to take some time to talk about what I refer to as the dream business. I talk about it all the time and I think that’s really like when you’re setting your goals and you’re going through your different things, there’s parameters that you set to get excited about your business and earning an income is one of them and all that kind of stuff.

But at the end of the day, if you’re not kind of shooting for something that you can visualize and that has some sort of concrete structure underneath it, then you’re just kind of setting the same goals and you’re just trying to kind of keep the goal in the same thing, but it’s just as hard the next time. And then next time you set the goals, it’s just as hard the next time. So this is why I believe this is a dream business.

Now you may have some different parameters that you can add to this and you may have some other kind of things that you’re excited about for what would mean a dream business to you. And that’s totally cool and that’s totally awesome. All I’m saying is think about it, write it down, make it part of your “why” and make it part of your goals. Visualize that, think about it, all that kind of stuff that is really, really important. So do that. I don’t want to take away from any of that. I just want to tell you what I believe to be a dream business and then you can decide whether you agree or disagree or whatever. Totally up to you, doesn’t matter to me. I’m just going to tell you.

Okay, here we go. So the dream business, first thing that I think is really important in a dream business is consistency. Consistency. The reason I think that’s so important is because when you know you have checks coming in or you know that you can create enough business to have money coming in every single month, that is a pretty good feeling. That gives you a different posture that allows you to operate a little bit differently like when you’re doing your day to day operations and you’re running into maybe some difficult clients or are you running into difficult situations, or situations where maybe you just need to walk away from them. Sometimes you can do that when you know you have money coming in consistently.

I can tell you this with me and I actually took some time to think this through a little while ago and I have gone over 17 now, almost 18 years basically, where I have not missed a month getting paid a commission check. It’s been over 17 years now where I’ve never missed a month.

Now there has been some months that maybe just one paid out and throughout that time because I went through 2008 and went through all the crazy market crashes and all that kind of stuff. But even through that, I never missed a month. So that’s my little… You know, if I could brag about something, I can brag about that. And it’s true. And so, consistency. I’ve enjoyed that even though there were times where even the consistency wasn’t enough at some point or sometimes, but anyway, consistency is really, really, really important. I think that is a huge facet to what a dream business would be.

The second thing: Over 50% of your business is referred to you. Can you say that when you do your numbers at the end of the year and you kind of track where your business came from. What you should be doing, if you’re not doing it, you should be! So when you track that, at the end of the year, and you come to that place and you can kind of look at, “Okay, where is all my business coming from, where did most of my business come from? If you can say over 50% of your business came from referrals, you’re on your way to having a dream business. That is a huge part of having a dream business. That’s exciting! 50% that’s what I have right now. And I believe that’s a dream business. I’m excited about that.

Number three: Exceeded the goals. Now if you set goals every single year and you exceeded your goals every single year, would you not call that a dream business? Wouldn’t that be exciting to you? Wouldn’t that be something that you kind of go, “Whoa!” And even if you set your goals and you kind of thought that you stretched right and you thought that you kind of push yourself a little bit and you kind of, you know, maybe put yourself on the edge, a little bit of comfort zone even, and then you exceed that. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that something that most people would dream about having? That’s a dream business.

Now the thing is when you start to have consistency and you start to have 50% of your business refer to you, when business starts just getting referred to you and you don’t even know what’s going to come, it just comes all of a sudden. And it’s just coming.

You can set goals based on what’s going on in the basic parameters of a year, but you don’t know. Like all of a sudden, you’ll hit tap into this vein of referrals. All of a sudden! And they’ll just start referring business to you. And that is so exciting and it causes you to exceed your business. So if you’re setting your goals based on proper parameters, proper principles, then that’s great because what’s happening is you know you got to amp it up to kind of get those goals if you’re stretching yourself a little bit. But the bonus, when the bonus happens and you get that extra business from past stuff you did, from all this kind of stuff you did back here that you didn’t think was paying you. And then all of a sudden one day

– Oh, I’d like to sell now.

– Remember we talked six months ago?

– Hey, I just got a call from my friend Bob and he said that he needs to get some help, some real estate. He’s going to give you a call. Would that be okay? Do you have time to help somebody else?

I’m like, “Yeah! Heck yeah! I totally do.” And that’s bonus stuff. That’s how you start exceeding your goals. So if you can exceed your goals, that’s exciting. That’s a dream business.

Okay, next: time off. Taking time off. Last year, we went to England, I went to Paris, went to Cuba, went to California, we went camping a whole bunch, bought a new trailer, did a whole pile of stuff last year. I had one of my best income earning years last year and best netting year as well. We traveled more than we ever have and so to me that’s a dream business. If I can travel and my business doesn’t get affected and business is happening while I’m away, stuff is getting generated, stuff is completing, people are sitting there going, “hey, I’ll just wait until they get back and then we’ll list the house.” When you have that going on in your business, that is really, really, really exciting. And that is a dream business, honestly.

The other thing is you need to take time off. You can’t work 365 days a year without some sort of time off or some sort of break. You need to recharge. We’re human beings, we need to do that. Not only that, you need to reconnect with people. People you love and you’re gonna spend time with them.

If you’re working really hard and not taking time off to enjoy it, then what is the point? What’s the point man? How much money do you need? What is enough? So you gotta think about this stuff. Anyway, take time off. But if you can take time off and it’s guilt free and it doesn’t affect your business. But if you cannot go away for two weeks without your business being affected and you’re afraid of losing business because of it, then you don’t have a very good business. You don’t have a dream business for sure. And you could be a guy that’s a high level top producing dude and if he can’t go away for a month without his business, absolutely collapsing, then he doesn’t have a business. So just know that about what a dream business is. Take time off. You got to take time off.

Net more money! Net more money, net net. Not just make more money. Nothing to do with gross commissions. Gross commissions are important. That’s how you set your goals, but you need to make more money than you need, okay? You got to get out of survival and you’ve got to move to thrive. Thrive is when you’re making more money than you need, and you’re netting more money than you ever have. You don’t just start spending way more money just because you’re making way more money. You gotta be smart about it and you got to invest it and you’ve got to put into other things so you can leverage yourself. You’ve got to 4X yourself. That’s the key to the whole thing. That’s the magic. That is how you get free. Okay? So anyway, netting more money is huge.

There’s a lot of people that make a lot of money, but it’s just going right back out. And I know I used to do it too. I just throw money at it, throw money, throw them out. I need to get more business. Okay? Throw more money. All this starting to go down a little bit? Things are getting a little bit slower? I need more listings? Throw money at it, throw money at it. And I used to think that was the only solution.

It’s not if you build your business properly and you’re implementing the right things along the way. All of a sudden, all this time and effort will start to pay you dividends. Dividends! Like 4X! Like four times! Because it comes to you as a surprise. You didn’t even really pay for it. You just put the time in properly. And if you are gonna invest in little things, invest in little things that get these things to happen. This is business you want, this is business.

Okay, real quick on the 50% referral, here’s the other thing. You’re dealing with people you love working with, right? Because if you start to pick and choose your clients and they start referring business to you and get good relationships with them, who are they referring? People like themselves. And then you get to work with them. That is a dream business. When you’re dealing with people you like and you enjoy and that you relate to, right? That is exciting stuff. That’s a dream business.

Okay, back to this number six. Oh yeah: Systems! You can work in your business. Working in your business is you, everyday, doing the daily stuff. Daily stuff, daily stuff, daily stuff…. Now, this is the thing with the 4X Formula. You got to go through the course, get to learn all the stuff, understand what builds a perfect business, which creates the perfect four dimensional 4X Agent type of business, and you can become a 4Xer.

You need to know all that kind of stuff, but then as you’ve done that and you start to leverage your time and you start to calculate out what your time is worth… When you start to understand what your time is worth, you start to think about where you’re going to spend your time. You start to think about who you’re going to spend your time with. You start to think about where you’re going to put the most amount of your time. There’s an 80/20 rule in time as well and effort that you need to apply.

Now there’s activities that you need to do to keep nurturing your business that are $10 an hour, $20 an hour, $30 an hour activities, and if you’re worth $100 an hour, which you should be, once you calculate things out and you start making the right account of money, you should be worth $100 an hour in real estate. When you get to that point, you start to pick and choose, but you need to have systems in place so that you can duplicate yourself and you can start to plug people in to those systems. Okay? You plug people into those systems and then once you do that, you’re now leveraging your time even more. Your 4Xing in your business. It’s very exciting.

Number seven. Oh yeah. Here’s another one. This is a funny one actually: It looks easy. You know what’s funny about that is I have had 11 clients actually become licensed real estate agents. I’ve had 11 of them turn into real estate agents. I guess I make it look too easy. I don’t know. That’s the thing though. But if people are sitting there going, “What the heck? Every single time we have an office meeting, the guy is talking about new listings and he’s talking about buyers, every single office meeting and he keeps getting these phone calls. I can hear him on the phone. Hello. Oh Hey Bob. Nice to hear from you again. Yeah, sure. We can meet you 10 o’clock on Saturday. Like it. Why is it so easy for this guy? He’s so lucky.”

You don’t understand. It has nothing to do with luck. It’s been planned out. We’ve put systems in place. I’ve been nurturing referrals, spending time on that, treating people wonderfully, keeping in touch with them. I’ve been doing all the right things and I’ve got a consistent business. I exceed my goals every year. I take time off and I enjoy it. So when I’m talking to people, I have a better attitude because I’m recharged a lot. I’m netting more money so I’m in a good mood all the time, right? Nothing can hurt me when I’m going through all this. When I have a dream business, things just get easier.

Believe it or not. As it gets easier, it gets easier. I do a whole podcast on “the liftoff of the business.” I do a whole podcast on the 80/20 rule. I do a whole podcast on a lot of these things that have a lot to do with all of this stuff. And I’m telling you, when it looks easy, people want to deal with you. When you make it look easy and you relax them, they become relaxed. They become like, “Wow, this person’s going to take care of me. I just can tell this person is going to take care of me.” And because we make it look effortless, not to the point of devaluing what we do for them. I mean effortless in the sense of we’re in full control. And that’s the next one.

Number Eight, I call it: Turn on the tap. The translation to this is “control”. But you could turn on the tap. I’ve had lots of times in my years in real estate where you kind of look and you’re starting to look ahead in your business and you kind of “Oh wow. Um, gosh, I think I need to amp things up a little bit and I know what to do. I know exactly what to do, where to go into my business, where I’m gonna start making phone calls. I know some marketing activities I’m going to start to do and I’m going to amp it up.” And next thing you know, 30 days later I’m busy and I’ve got things booked into the next months.

Again, I know exactly what to do. And we go over this in the course. Go to 4xformula.com to learn more and get a clear understanding on what a dream business is and get a clear understanding on how to build the dream business from A to Z. We do everything. We go into every single facet of building the real estate business. It’s not rocket science, it’s not. But it needs to be paid attention to all little facets, all the little details, the devil’s in the details. You got to go through all those little nitty gritty things, but once you have all of that and you built all that, you’ve got a platform to build your business on and you can build the dream business. If you think this is a dream business, all of these things then come with me on the journey.

We’re launching the course really soon. It’s really exciting. I am really excited to launch this course, 4xformula.com We’ve got a bunch of podcast episodes on there. Got some free scripts for you. We got lots of neat things on the website right now just to kind of get things cooking. Pretty soon we’re actually going to be launching everything. The first people that sign up, they get on the waiting list, they are going to get some extra bonuses. It’s going to be exciting for them. And I just want to let you know that real quick, but I just thought, you know what? I talk about the dream business all the time so I thought I would take the time to actually clarify what I mean by that. I hope you have a great day. Take care. All the best.