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Most real estate agents got into this business believing it could create financial freedom. So why are so many struggling to make enough to actually support their family?
This week on The Counterculture Agent, Shaune Corbett and Devin Dubuc tackle an uncomfortable reality in real estate. Is the market really the problem, or is a difficult market exposing agents who never built a repeatable business in the first place?
We’re breaking down why so many agents are winging it, what separates a real business from simply chasing the next transaction, why consistency matters more than the latest strategy, and the simple, low cost activities agents can repeat to build sustainable production.
If you’re blaming rates, inventory, your brokerage, or the market for your production, this is a conversation you need to hear.
The Counterculture Agent, presented on Loan Officer Success Live.
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Jennifer Rodriguez
Jennifer Rodriguez is the engine behind LOS.Live and The Mortgage Giants, leading everything from graphic thumbnails and episode descriptions to cross-platform distribution. With years of experience as an Office Manager and Executive Assistant, she brings organization, strategy, and innovation to every production. Mentored by Growth Leader Devin Dubuc for the past six years, Jennifer collaborates on branding and podcast strategies that help loan officers nationwide elevate their business. Known for her positive energy, adaptability, and commitment to growth, she is the trusted voice guests connect with throughout the podcast experience.
What is Loan Officer Success Live?
This isn’t another sales tips podcast.
This is Loan Officer Success Live - where mortgage and real estate pros come to master modern growth without the burnout.
Hosted by Devin Dubuc, Loan Officer Success Live is a deep dive into the psychology, strategy, and systems that build legacy-driven businesses in today’s market. Whether you're a high-performing loan officer, a rising agent, or an entrepreneur scaling fast, you’ll learn how to attract clients, grow income, and lead with brand, not brute force.
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All right, guys, welcome back.
Today we've got an uncomfortable question
for every real estate agent that's
watching this one.
So if your spouse stops working tomorrow,
could your real estate business actually
support your family?
Hey,
because today we're going to talk about
something the industry doesn't love to
talk about.
Most agents simply aren't making enough
money.
And I think that makes this conversation
really interesting.
I'm going to look at it from both
sides.
Sean sees it as a top producing real
estate agent,
and I see it every day with loan
officers, realtors,
and referral partners in the mortgage
industry.
Hey,
welcome back to the counterculture agent
with Sean Corbett presented on loan
officer success live.
Sean, let's dive right into it, brother.
I love it, Devin.
Looking forward to it.
I appreciate it.
Same, same.
So, you know,
you'd come to me with this topic and
you basically said most agents don't make
enough money to support their family.
Why do you believe that?
You know,
I think in your space is probably the
same thing.
I don't think there's really much
different, right?
We're in a unique business model where we
basically front load all of the risk.
None of the money is made until the
closing takes place.
That's right.
you today, but it's a lot of risk,
right?
It is compound that with in our business,
NAR as of two thousand twenty five
reported that the average agent made fifty
eight thousand dollars a year.
I don't know how much you can get
done after expenses.
If you start with a gross of fifty
eight given to the agent,
you probably have a hard time even after
expenses, even buying water every month.
Right.
It would be a challenge.
I would assume that loan officers have the
exact same type of scenario where the
majority of them,
and it's like any business, right?
It's a normal number.
It applies across real estate.
It applies across almost everything we do.
Twenty percent is selling eighty percent.
But here's where the problem is.
It's not the twenty percent,
because even within the twenty percent,
most of them are not making enough money
to survive and take care of a family.
That's what is the anomaly about our
business.
And I've gotten it down to it's somewhere
around five percent.
And when I say five percent,
I'm talking there at least one hundred
fifty thousand dollars a year gross
commission.
That's really not even enough to handle a
family of four like I have six, really,
because it's two of us and four kids.
So I don't know how you would feel
about making one hundred fifty thousand a
year, but we would have a hard time,
you know,
keeping up and being able to eat.
So that's really kind of what I wanted
to focus on.
Well,
I think you hit the nail on the
head, you know,
and you talk about on the lending side,
we're actually finding more recent data is
supporting that ten percent of the
originators are actually able to support
themselves and ninety percent are starting
to fall behind.
That's been the big topic.
in our industry because we've got a small
group of people that are really taking
massive market share and we've got the
majority that are out there struggling uh
to find opportunity and that's tough and
that brings me to you know my first
question for you do you think this is
primarily because the housing market's
been difficult or is a difficult market
just exposing their business that was
never strong enough to begin with
Yeah, it's a loaded question, right?
There's a lot of directions we can go
with that.
So COVID generally,
people that started during COVID got an
explosion of opportunity with little
effort.
They did.
they got the benefit if you came in
about twenty twenty twenty one you got the
covet benefit right so you got the
explosion of opportunity everything came
easy except for if you only worked buyers
then it was a little bit of a
struggle that's right any type of house
for sale it generally would sell without
really much effort that's not real life
yeah um so those were jaded and then
they stayed in and a lot of those
got out after the three to four years
of absolute desert
Right now, I would say sometime last year,
we hit the twenty five year low of
total volume of of turnover and houses
that actually sold.
And when I say twenty five year low,
that means that the number of turnover
houses sold was lower than it was all
the way back to like two thousand.
So in two thousand,
they had the same amount with, you know,
ten, fifteen percent less population.
Yeah.
So that's an incredible kind of factoid to
kind of deal with.
So when you don't have transactions,
you don't have turnover.
That means agents don't have work to do.
And same thing with loan officers.
Absolutely.
living it.
We experience it.
So that pressure kicked a lot of people
out.
And that also drove down the average
agent's income, of course.
So fifty eight thousand dollars a year is
your average agent.
I've been fortunate.
I moved to a brokerage myself.
We talked a little bit about value
propositions, you know,
and I'm not I'm really not a recruiter
for the brokerage specifically.
It's just because it's not for everyone.
But our average agent where I'm at is
three hundred thousand a year.
Okay.
The top three percent of agents make two
fifty or more.
Okay.
Why does that matter?
Because at two fifty,
you can actually survive.
Okay.
You know, at two fifty,
you take out your expenses,
you have enough money.
Generally,
you're probably still rolling in about ten
to twelve thousand a month of
money you can live on right actually
survive there uh but that's only the top
three percent ouch I always feel like it's
a more polarity than it is even for
you right I mean you talked about top
ten percent no way the top ten percent
as agents because I'm telling you about
the seven percent below that three percent
are not
which is the way our business was
originally kind of designed as just the
way of how it transformed and more,
you would have a stay at home mom
that wanted something to do.
So she would go become a realtor and
then she would join the social clubs and
they would do all the things together and
get all kinds of free things and they
would sell their one house a month and
they would be in the, you know,
the top honor club for the quarter,
you know,
and we look back and we think it's
you know funny all they did is made
enough money to buy their beamer yeah they
didn't actually supply or provide anything
to the family you know those days that's
not a that's not a that's not a
career it's not a career it's not great
and why do you think that doesn't work
in today's market
Again, there's always, you know,
different ways.
And I think you're saying it never worked,
right?
It was never a true sustainable income,
right?
But at the end of the day,
what does it really take in twenty twenty
six?
Right.
Loading into twenty twenty seven to create
success for yourself in this industry.
You know,
how would I turn that back on?
Okay.
I'd like to see you kind of dive
into, you know, we pointed out a problem.
We have an issue.
People do not make enough.
They're not producing enough.
We have a high turnover.
We have people that don't make it beyond,
you know, two or three years.
I know where I'm at.
It's like a ninety five percent quit rate.
It's a stupid.
You know,
if you're not getting two to three years
down the road and you start generating
twenty to thirty transactions a year,
you're not going to be able to support
it's not sustainable yeah so how is it
in your space for those loan officers that
come in because it's it's a tough market
to come into it is you and i
look at it like if you can make
it here just wait until the market opens
up again you know that's where you're
you're going to be positioned in the right
it's better than no question there than
the other way right where you're doing
lots of work and then all of a
sudden it gets it hammers down and
nothing's happening
It's funny you say that because we've seen
a lot of that type of shifting.
And what I mean by that is we
have seasoned loan officers,
veterans that have been in this industry
for decades that have had to get out.
And a big part of that is because
during that pandemic time that you talked
about where rates were two point seven
five, you know, were lower.
They let their foot off the gas because,
quite frankly,
they could walk out the front door and
trip over a loan.
Right.
It's like, oh,
somebody's walking down the street.
What's your rate?
Six and a half.
Oh, great.
Let's talk.
Right.
I mean,
that was how simple that it was.
And unfortunately,
a lot of these seasoned veterans,
they lost that motivation and drive to go
out and actually build a sustainable
business.
And so some made it through,
but the masses, they fell out.
We've seen a massive drop off in
originators.
I think it's more than forty percent.
It might be up to sixty percent at
this point in time of loan officers that
were licensed during the pandemic that are
no longer licensed.
But what we've also seen, Sean,
is a new group of originators that have
actually started in this market that are
having massive success.
So why do you think that is?
So in my space,
there's a number of things that we do
have to do no matter what you are.
So you still have to have the right
number of conversations.
If you don't have the right number of
conversations,
you're ultimately not going to have the
right number of opportunities in order to
have the right number of conversions.
Absolutely.
I think if I could give general advice,
I would say beyond the conversations is
get extremely specific about your avatar.
And no one really does this.
An avatar is who is your ideal client?
Who, if you talk to them,
could hit it off you'll talk the same
language you're in the same space of life
you know you're what you buy and what
your experiences are are going to be very
similar that's generally a great place to
start you don't have to start there but
that's a great place for the average agent
to start because some agree focus on
seniors some focus on you know first-time
home buyers and they might be a
forty-year-old and they've already
authored third house but but they know
that emotionally and everything they're
going through and they want to walk them
through that and experience that
That is it.
Riches are in your niches, right?
Amen to that.
your model and who you are around that
that includes your your branding language
um your advertisement your facebook
promotion when you do conversations and
youtube and you post your videos here's
the first thing i would do with a
brand new buyer never bought a house right
or here's the three things everyone always
fails when they're preparing to buy all
these basic videos check it out and give
you ten videos in three seconds that's it
just read the script get on there
Be organic and be who you are.
Don't just read.
Really feel it.
And then they're going to connect with
you.
Well, and Sean, to your point, you know,
when you're going to chat and asking for
that information,
you can actually be even very specific
about who you're trying to connect with.
Right.
So you can go in and you can
prompt and a prompt is literally just a
communication.
You actually speak it directly into chat
and say, hey, this is my avatar.
These are the people that I'm interested
in.
This is the market that I serve.
What are the most frequently asked
questions about real estate inside of this
market?
Right.
And what's going to happen is chat's going
to come back and it's going to say,
hey,
here's a list of twenty frequently asked
questions.
And then you can say, OK,
now let's break that down and let's put
together a thirty second video clip that I
can go out and I can do on
how we can help you with these frequently
asked questions.
And then you publish that and you get
it out there.
The other thing you talked about was
consistency.
And that's the same thing on my side
of the table in the wedding space is
doing outreach consistently.
And this is where a lot of people
get it wrong, right?
We forget that we have to be in
front of more people to create great
successes for ourselves.
So again,
he who has the most contacts typically
wins in this industry.
So at the end of the day,
What I found with a lot of these
newer originators that are starting in
this market,
it's that they're not afraid to get out
there and hear no a lot of times.
And at the end of the day,
that's going to lead them closer to those
yeses.
And it's the consistency that's really
helping them build the market.
And that other side of it,
which is what you're talking about,
they're not afraid to get on social media
and talk directly to the audience that
they're trying to connect with.
I'm going to tag something you said,
who has the most contacts.
I would follow it up more,
who follows up with the most contacts?
So that's right before I have about
fifteen hundred people in my primary and
secondary is how I categorize them within
my phone.
OK,
I have a thousand names on my phone.
I have four categories.
This is all in my book.
Primary, secondary, other and agents.
OK,
so the primary is people that know me
and I know them.
We know each other well and I could
call them and it wouldn't be weird.
And I'm overly simplifying it.
Secondary are people that may know of me
and I know of them.
but it might be a little weird if
I reach out,
but it'd be okay if they got a
newsletter.
I can stay in touch with them.
And I have in that group,
primary and secondary,
and other is like a doctor or numbers
you have to have in your phone.
I put them in that category.
I don't need to reach out to them,
but I need to know,
I need to be able to call the
number or my plumber or electrician or
whatever.
And then the fourth one is agents.
I've been tracking agents for about four
years and I think I've got somewhere
around fifteen hundred agents in my phone.
That I've got permission from them.
I can reach out to them.
I can contact them and I can invite
them to events and stuff.
I've always done that because I'm trying
to build a very large agent community.
I have a big get back opportunity.
I want to continue to grow that.
So that's the reason why I do it.
Most people don't want to waste their time
checking and keeping up with agents.
You would have a reason to,
and I have a reason to,
but most agents don't.
So I touch everyone in my...
primary and secondary four times a year
and it does it automated i have an
automated system to do that and it sends
a thinking of you message that's the way
you stay in front of them and it's
one way that's right you can you can
make it you can automate some of this
you can't have a personal touch because it
comes from my phone number and it says
their name and it says i'm thinking about
them so it inevitably fifty percent of the
time i get responses yeah
And they're going to bring up at that
point something in real estate.
They will every time they do it.
I love it.
You know,
something we teach our teams is to just
do video outreach.
You know,
what we see a lot of the times
is let's just talk Facebook, right?
So Facebook, it's somebody's birthday.
It's Sean's birthday.
And we see on the timeline,
three hundred people post happy birthday
to Sean.
Right.
The way we like to stand out here
is we actually just do a quick video
on Facebook.
We'll pick up the phone.
We'll go to birthdays.
We'll see whose birthday it is on that
particular day.
And we'll run through and we'll do five
birthday videos to people that are in the
database.
Hey, Sean,
just wanted to say happy birthday to you.
It's different.
And what you find a lot of the
times is they actually engage back with
that communication and it starts that
dialogue,
but it lets them know that you're thinking
about them.
And it's just a different way of
connecting that a lot of people don't
think to do.
And it's probably generic, but my system,
if it has a birthday registered on my
contacts, it will send them a message.
Not quite as good as what you're doing,
but I'm doing it at such a scale
by myself.
It just makes it a lot more efficient.
Makes perfect sense.
The other thing is,
I'm going to tell you this.
This is really important.
This is for loan officers too.
You need to actually differentiate
yourself and where do you add value,
right?
Where do you make a difference for the
client?
what is a compelling reason for someone to
work with you you know having a brand
around first time home buyer that creates
some that creates a compelling opportunity
but maybe instead you say hey if you
work with me i'm going to warranty that
house for you for you know for two
years or something offer something that's
really unique and you really tangible yeah
add value right
add value or if you know if i
don't communicate with you yeah
communication is the number one complaint
by all clients because clients don't know
it's a problem until they get an agent
right because agents what happens they
list the home and they don't you know
they don't talk to them for three months
and they're like what the heck are we
doing we sell the house you know and
they disappear not because they're trying
to avoid them they don't have anything to
share they have no plan
You know,
and that's ninety percent of agents.
And the clients don't know communication
is a problem until they get in and
realize we're not hearing from them.
You and I know it's a problem because
I can't get agents on the phone.
They never even answer their freedom.
Yeah.
Always happens with shocks.
It always shocks me.
I mean, I do podcasts like this.
I've got a book I just finished.
I have a community I run.
You do sales than anyone I know.
And I'm always available.
I'm like,
how can you possibly tell me you're too
busy?
I would I would give you so much
anxiety.
If I told you what I do in
a day.
But anyway, I respect it.
Well, and at the end of the day,
you're right.
It's the no plan plan that a lot
of people are on.
And, you know,
this is something that we coach on and
follow religiously.
And that is the communication aspect.
So, you know,
our specific philosophy and strategy is we
have theme days.
And again, I tell people all the time,
I don't.
necessarily care if you make that outreach
call on that theme day you just have
to make the outreach call so you know
mondays are our touch base calls tuesday
is what we call just ask that's when
we're reaching out to our agent partners
our clients and our listing side and title
side to give everybody an update on the
file uh wednesdays is when we do our
outreach to past customer database
thursdays is touching base with our pals
which are pre-approved and lookings
And we have a little strategy here, Sean,
we call touch the lead, touch the partner.
Because some of the biggest complaints we
have are communication,
following up on leads, right?
And closing on time.
Let me tell you something.
Those are three of the most basic things
in this industry.
But if you can't get those right,
you're not going to be able to make
connections.
And more importantly,
you're not going to build a referable
process.
And that's what it's all about is building
that referable process with the strategy
for outreach that keeps you in constant
communication with the people that need to
be hearing from you.
love it no those are all great ways
of staying consistently touching that will
create opportunities every single time if
you do it and you do it long
term this is the problem we do have
the shiny object syndrome all agents
Yeah, absolutely.
So what I want to tell people is
you need to make sure and perfect your
core programs.
That would be like your CRM, your brand,
consistent social media postings,
touch systems, you know,
get all that exactly right, consistent.
Then we can do a shiny object, right?
You know, we can add, you know,
I want AI to start doing some things
for me and having, you know,
I want to try that lead generation system
and things like that.
Right.
I generally find pay for lead systems are
typically about three to four steps well
past before we start generating
opportunities in our own sphere.
You know, everyone wants to jump right in.
They've got a little bit extra money.
They started in real estate.
I'll start paying Zillow.
And they don't have any systems in place
to be able to give their clients a
consistent experience.
Right.
You know,
you've got to make sure you have things
when the contracts are ready to be
written, who's writing them.
who's setting up the checklists of being
able to qualify and make sure everything
is done.
All the things,
the core things you have when you have
a client so they have a good experience.
Most of them just jump in and get
in the car and start writing offers and
just wing everything.
That's it.
If I could tell any real productive agent,
if they wanted to change the outcome,
the only way to change the outcome is
to lock in the outcome by defining it.
And that's creating systems and processes
that will always give you the same
outcome.
But but ninety nine percent of agents,
every transaction is completely different.
They will tell you this.
But what they forget is eighty percent of
it is the same.
Yeah.
Focus on getting that eighty percent
perfectly locked down.
That's it.
Well, there's brilliance in the basics.
Yeah, there's brilliance in the basics,
right?
And the basics are creating a process that
can be followed consistently and
religiously.
You know,
one of the books that we always recommend
for this is Traction.
I don't know if you're familiar with this
or not, right?
But what Traction basically does, it says,
first off,
figure out who you are and what you're
about, right?
So come up with your core values,
the things that are most important for you
and how you want to communicate with
people.
And then come up with your plan.
And that plan has to be a plan
that not only you know,
but as you start to build your team,
everybody on the team understands it,
right?
The core values represent how that plan is
going to work.
And your process is what everybody has to
expect to do when they're working with
you.
And that's what you're talking about.
is you're basically sitting down and
saying, these are my non-negotiables.
This is what it looks like when you're
doing business with me.
It's going to be consistent every single
time in this order.
And once you have that identified and know
exactly how you're going to lay down that
plan,
now you can start to grow and this
is where you're talking about hey if we
want to buy some zillow leads that's great
let's buy some zillow leads but at the
same time we need to make sure that
when we're buying those zillow leads we
have a referable process so that as we
start to communicate with clients they're
going to have a system that they love
and they're going to fall into the format
right this is what we do i love
sean he's got a system and he's going
to start referring people to sean because
he loves the way that sean does and
runs his business
Yeah.
And your clients will give you five star
reviews because the outcome is what you
said it would be.
That's a predictable system.
You know where they're going to end up.
I'll say something that will really land
home.
Going from fifty eight thousand to one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars does
not take three
And everyone thinks I'll just work three
times as hard.
It doesn't work that way.
You know,
you have to create repeatable systems that
produces the conversations and the
appointments and the clients,
whether you feel motivated or not,
you have to do the same thing every
single day.
to find someone that does have systems and
processes that is defining that for new
people it's good to join a team it
is a successful team a team that that
does have some standard systems in place
and you know we were talking about and
this is why I'm not as excited about
Zillow and some of them is because they
are capture everyone strategy and not
everyone is a good fit amen
And you know, off market, right?
So off market is where investors buy and
they buy something within a buy box.
The buy box has very specific criteria.
It's gotta be this price, this age,
this zip code, and they're very specific.
And when they get in that buy box,
they even know the exact percentage that
they can offer within that space.
If you can even think about your avatar
of your ideal client to fit within that
space,
then only focus on that space and stay
on it for, you know, three,
four months in a row.
It will bring fruit.
It will connect you with opportunities.
Cause what happens is,
is let's say you start posting in Facebook
groups and you're connecting with them and
your focus is that first time home buyer.
You know,
we just rolled out a program where we
can get you in at no down payment
and your first year we can get,
you know,
at
amen whatever the magic thing is you know
do you know if anyone would really benefit
from running through this program and you
just start creating these conversations
they're inevitably going to say oh i'm
looking or yeah i have someone that that
really needs i just heard somebody at work
that was talking about purchasing a home
right i mean it's gonna happen it will
create those conversations especially when
you come in and it says sean corbett
new home first time home buyer specialist
You know,
when you really just start defining.
I had a Marine.
It's funny.
I did a podcast with him.
He was new.
I don't normally do podcasts often with
newer agents, but he was new.
And he had never built anything.
He didn't have a brand.
He was just his name.
And I said, okay, well,
then people really have to know you or
they're never going to call you because
you don't give them any reason to connect
with them.
And he's like, well, I was a Marine.
I said, okay, well,
then call yourself the Marine agent.
And this is what people think.
Well,
that'll alienate me from everyone else.
I said, no, it won't.
What happens is maybe it will lower from
a hundred people that might have some
interest down to ten that have full and
absolute interest.
And they don't think this way.
Right.
It's the same thing I have with the
MLS.
Same thing.
MLS will have ten thousand people that
don't want to buy that house.
which means that he devalues the house,
which means that the price drops and the
days on market also devalue that it
devalues the house every way possible.
It becomes, um, what do they call it?
Like seasoned inventory or delayed
inventory.
There's a name for it.
If it's on the market and no one's
buying it, it's not as valuable, you know?
So for him become the Marine agent and
your connection is really high.
What I hear with that, Sean,
is you're in a fishing boat and you
go out to sea and you've got no
depth finder that shows you where the fish
are.
You're just fishing for anything.
You didn't even bring a particular bait.
You don't have no idea whether this fish
is going to like the bait that you're
throwing out there and just throwing
something out and you're hoping to catch
something versus the guy that goes out and
has the exact rod, the exact string,
the right type of lures or hooks,
the exact bait,
and they drive right to where the fish
are
They drop the line in and they're picking
up fish left and right because they use
the right tool for the job.
And in your case,
what you're saying is a lot of people
are afraid to do that because they go,
wait, wait, wait.
But I could miss out on this type
of fish and that type of fish and
this type of fish.
But if you don't know what you're fishing
for,
you're going to have a really hard time
catching it.
That's exactly right.
You know,
if you're trying to catch everything,
you'll catch nothing.
You have to overspend.
in order to get the percentage high enough
on the conversion.
You have to overspend.
It means you have to be so many
places at once and you have to build
a brand that's incredibly expensive from
scratch.
Or you can just target who you want
to work with, number one.
And number two,
They're going to have that connection with
you because they're going to be like,
you're offering what I'm looking for,
right?
You're offering what I'm interested in.
You're speaking my language.
You know, you fit what I'm looking.
So I think it's a great way to
do it.
I wish agents would really hyper focus on
doing that, you know,
and that would save themselves
Well,
people are going to connect with you.
If they know who you are and what
you're about,
they're going to connect with you.
And you're going to find the people that
go, man, I like this guy.
This is what I'm about.
Or he's advertising what I'm interested
in, right?
And this is what we talk about on
our side of the table as well all
the time, right?
You know,
if you want to go out and you
want to build a business on investors,
we've got great DSR products, right?
You know,
we've got great investment bank statement
programs.
That's a market you can go directly after.
And I've got a good friend of mine
who's new to the industry down in Lincoln,
Nebraska.
And he literally just started popping
himself into local investor groups on
Facebook and making friends with these
investors, answering questions.
And then subtly,
he'd post a video on his page about
DSCR.
What do you know, Sean,
the next thing in the next couple of
months,
he starts closing massive amounts of
investment property loans.
Why is that?
Because he focused on one group and he
displayed exactly what they would be
interested in.
And he was friendly inside of the group.
So he made friends with all these people.
And then when he started posting, hey,
by the way,
I help with this type of stuff on
his main page.
They were already friends.
They were already connected.
They were seeing what he was doing.
And now all of a sudden he starts
building a business model that actually
functions and works.
person, right?
I want to make sure everyone has this
mentality.
If I become the Marine agent,
I become the first time home buyer.
I become the DSR.
Once I do that,
then no one else will call me.
And that is not true.
Absolutely not.
You're still going to get referrals and
referrals come to you because of you.
That's, those are referrals because,
because of you, those are going to get,
even if special,
I have people that ask me, you know,
Hey, do you do this?
Do you do that?
And because I'm not advertising that they
don't know if I do it or not.
So of course, ninety percent time,
I'm like, yeah, I can solve that problem.
Yes, absolutely.
So I think that's a really good value
add.
The other problem is agents spend money to
solve discipline problems.
What does that look like?
They do, right?
So I'm not selling enough houses,
but I'm not doing any systems.
I haven't focused on my brand.
I don't have my CRM set up.
I don't have my touch systems set up.
I don't have consistent, ongoing,
regular social media posts.
But I'm going to go pay for Zillow
ads.
You know,
or I'm going to pay for something else.
And what they do is they overspend in
order to cover their spend.
Maybe they make a little bit of
profitability.
The only thing it does is it makes
them busy, but they're not profitable.
I had this so upside down into the
last year.
I always thought going to a more expensive
split brokerage versus a flat fee is okay
as long as you're closing transactions.
And I used to focus on that because
my agents close transactions,
people are doing flat fee agents,
and there's no support.
You're supposed to already have everything
set up so that way you can save
money per transaction.
they would go over there and they wouldn't
close any transactions i said great you're
saving money but you're not even producing
anything what's the benefit i i've really
changed my mentality to figuring out how
to become more profitable per transaction
instead of just closing transactions to
close them spending a hundred thousand
dollars a year on zillow and then bringing
back a hundred and twenty five thousand
right that's not enough that should
That's not a sustainable business model,
right?
It's no profit in that.
That's it.
Yeah.
You're spinning your wheels.
You're closing things.
You feel productive.
It feels very productive, right?
But at the end of the day,
the cost per transaction doesn't add up to
the amount of effort that you're putting
in.
So what you've got to do at that
point is divide it out and see exactly
how much per hour that you're making to
do all this busy work.
And I promise you,
when you look at that math,
You're making the same thing as somebody
that's making minimum wage, if not less.
To put a bow on it,
for every agent out there that's doing
fifty eight thousand a year and they want
to go to one fifty plus,
it's it's ninety nine point nine percent a
system problem.
Okay.
It's really nothing else.
You don't have systems.
You're not working any type of systems.
Yeah.
You're waiting for other people to give
you leads or you're not proactively doing
anything.
I mean, you're just praying, right?
Or you're paying for lead generation
companies that will create opportunities.
But if you don't have systems in place,
they may never work with you again because
you have.
That's right.
You don't offer really a solution.
You're a commodity agents right now.
And this is,
this applies to almost every agent that's
listening to this.
You are a commodity.
If you do not offer value proposition,
a commodity means you are working on Chris
jumped in.
I love that.
My man, Chris Quaylar.
Yep.
Yep.
Chris Quaylar is over in our cigar
international event, right?
That's right.
Oddity means that if you were to go
to a store and you had three products
on the shelf and they were all different
brands,
but they did the exact same thing and
you could not tell them apart,
you're going to buy on one reason,
the cheapest one.
Yeah.
That means you don't offer value in the
absence of value price is negotiable.
So it's the same thing for loan officers.
It's the same thing for agents.
When you meet with clients,
if you don't have a value proposition,
that's right.
And I'm telling you right now,
I don't think agents could build a
business even on two or three percent.
I'll be honest.
I'll say some outlandish things.
I don't think that's enough commission to
even support anyone.
So the ones that are trying to do
one percent battle to the bottom,
strip down every service.
They devalue what we're offering.
Number one,
there was an agent not far from me.
It was the number one agent in Dallas
for this is before Ben Cavallaro came over
and started listing all the new builds.
Right.
He's like the number one in the world.
You heard of Ben Caballero?
I haven't, Sean.
I'm hiding under a rock.
Yeah,
he has a system he set up and
he lists new bills.
And he lists, I mean,
it's like closing one every like three
seconds.
It's stupid.
And good for him.
I mean,
he found an opportunity and new bills are,
I don't want them because you're always
negotiable with banks, REOs, new bills,
you're always negotiable.
I don't want to be negotiable.
thing you can do is strip it down
to the simplest form and he figured out
a way to do it and it makes
it so builders can control their entire
listing through his system so he didn't
have to do anything so he so he
was able to scale and build it and
sell for a very low price anyway um
it's a it's a it's a group called
your home free and they are um they
sell your house for free if you buy
through them okay
very successful.
They sold a lot of homes and I've
sold some of their homes and on the
HUD statement back in the HUDs,
it would say zero for the seller
commission.
But if you think as a business owner,
how much are you going to put in
to the effort of posting and promoting a
house that has zero money to be made
on it and will cost you money to
sell?
How much can you really put into it?
And then you end up,
you sell more houses than anyone,
and that's a great opportunity.
But if you sell more houses than anyone
and you're having to do it at this
consequence, at some point,
everyone's going to be mad because you
can't promote it.
You can't put anything into it.
And then the sellers aren't going to be
happy because you can't sell the home.
Well,
Chris has got a good question for us.
I'm going to pop this up here and
then I want to fill one too.
But if you were a brand new realtor
today, you had no database, no clients,
no money for Zillow or paid leads,
what would you do every single day for
the next ninety days to build a pipeline
organically?
Great question, Chris.
And aren't you supposed to be a pickleball
today?
What are you doing, man?
It's a great question.
a devon answer as well but you know
my my view is i created um i
wrote my book called the simple sphere
system and it walks through how to build
something on those three core principles i
talk about at little to no cost it's
duplicatable meaning you can do it forever
and it's um uh
And it's, it's something that you can,
you can do,
like you have the capability of doing,
it's not something that someone else has
to have special skills to do.
For anyone out there might always start
with,
you have to focus internally on your
sphere, everyone's gonna say this, right,
you always have to start start internally
with your sphere.
And then you have to start building
systems based on reaching out to them
systematically, everyone can do this.
Real quick, Sean,
I just want to elaborate on that,
because he says, Hey, I have no database,
no clients, what's my sphere?
Oh, that's right.
You try to cut it all, right?
We're going to have to build one.
Yeah.
You know,
if it were me and I started with
nothing, I would join a team.
So at least they have systems,
opportunities,
and places for me to start building
opportunities.
That's right.
At the same time,
you cannot rely on that in order to
build a sustainable income.
I don't care what brokerages is,
there's not a brokerage out there that's
going to make you two hundred fifty
thousand dollars a year in leads they're
providing.
Never going to happen.
Right.
So you have to build your own and
you have to build a database.
If you don't have a database,
your contact list,
your network is your network.
That's right.
You have to build that.
So join your church.
Join Pickleball.
Go to Safari International.
Connect with people.
Start building relationships.
Chris is probably one of the most
networked guys out there that I know.
Same thing to that.
But I would start building right there.
That's the exact place where you have to
start is build your own.
But I would join a team,
even if it costs you fifty percent.
Fifty percent of opportunity is better
than zero percent of one hundred percent.
That's it.
ads.
You have to create opportunities.
You have to sit on.
I think the open house tour can work
really effective if you learn how to
effectively do it.
When I do an open house through my
system,
I do a one hour open house and
I'll get thirty to fifty people come
through my open house if you do it
right.
You can build your own database.
That's a podcast for another day.
But I am going to take that on
the lending side because we see this all
the time.
In fact,
we see the independent broker guys that
are maybe closing one loan a month or
maybe closing one loan here or there.
And they've got a higher split and they
think, hey, I've got this higher split.
This is going to make so much more
sense.
I'm going to make so much more money.
But the problem is they have no process.
They have no systems.
They have no team that are behind them.
And so what we're seeing happening a lot
of times is we'll bring these guys or
gals over to our team and we'll introduce
them to a very specific process.
We'll provide them a loan officer
assistant can help them structure their
loans so they can stay focused on going
out and actually building their business.
We provide them with a high-end processor
that knows the systems inside and out.
And then we give them a structured system
and a game plan that they can follow
and execute every day.
We have a two-hour call window we call
Cageless Callers that we do Monday through
Friday where we bring people on and we
–
coach them up, we get excited,
and then we do our outreach calls together
to set future appointments to go out there
and build our business models, right?
And these are the type of structured
things that you don't get when you're
brand new to the business or you're
sitting as an independent broker,
not doing any outreach.
And this is why you join a team.
And this is what Sean's talking about.
Now, we're not saying that down the road,
you can't become an entrepreneur and go
out and build your own brokerage, right?
But if you're finding yourself stuck in
one...
small space and you're not growing and
you're not getting bigger, right?
Join a team that's going to help you
get to that next level,
provide you that structure,
provide you that back-end support system.
And in some case,
we even provide what we call orphan loans,
where we give them clients that we've
closed in the past for loan officers that
are no longer with us so they can
do outreach to those clients.
And we find that even if they're
outreaching to a sphere that's not theirs,
they still pick up ten percent
of those that they can actually transition
back into future opportunities so i think
you're right on the money sean if you
are not already established you don't have
a system join a team learn from them
build your processes build your systems
around that and then you can start
focusing on what that next step looks like
once you get brilliant in the basics
Let's get the psychology right.
I know we probably need to wrap it
up.
You're saying the right things and going
from someone with a larger cut from you
might mean that they have systems and
things you don't have to think about.
That's right.
The ones that give you really good splits,
that means you're a hundred percent on
your own.
Get after it.
You have to build it all.
You have to set it all.
And you don't even know what a success
Amen.
But the psychology of it is, Devin,
when you started as a loan officer or
in the business,
did you have a line of one hundred
people ready to give you loans?
Absolutely not.
No one did.
I didn't have fifty people ready to sell
their house.
We all started with zero.
OK, so keep in mind, psychologically,
we all started with zero.
That's right.
Because someone has a bigger network than
you.
I promise you someone moving to a new
city that has the right systems and
processes knows no one.
They will beat you.
So you have to start with the basics
every single time and you can build your
own systems and you can build your own
database and every week make a commitment.
I'm going to add twenty people to my
to my contact list and I'm going to
put them in.
I'm going to roll them and I'm going
to stay in front of them and I'm
going to send them my personal newsletter
or the video that I created for them.
That's going to add value to their life.
I mean, there's some easy things.
That's right.
That's right.
Just get a little bit better every single
week.
And eventually you'll look back,
see where you are.
You're having massive success.
And it's just the brilliance and that
basics of what it is that you need
to do to build a long-term successful
business.
We all started at zero,
just like Sean said, right?
So at the end of the day, Sean,
what's some closing words?
What do we want to sign off with
today?
Everyone started the same, right?
And I'll tell you the difference between
successful agents and unsuccessful almost
every single time the successful agents
know their outcome.
They know their outcome because they have
system and processes
Amen.
Treat everyone in the same space.
You'll finally figure out that.
Eighty,
ninety percent of your transactions are
going to do the exact same thing every
single time.
And I know their personal story is
different,
but they still have the same core problems
in place.
You still need to get a survey.
You still need to get an appraisal.
You still need to get it listed.
You still need to promote it.
You still got to do an open house.
You still got to put a sign in
the yard.
There's so many things that are exactly
the same every single time.
That's right.
that then you'll be able to predict your
outcome and it's not meaning that i work
you know forty hours this week if i
work a hundred and twenty hours then i'll
go from fifty eight to a hundred and
fifty thousand it doesn't work that way it
doesn't
It doesn't.
I love it.
I love it.
Well,
and when you do get to the point
where your business is starting to take
off,
that's where you start to hire additional
support.
And that's how you find yourself doing
more business, right?
And we know that you've got a Jennifer
that helps you in the background.
I also have a Jennifer that helps me
in the background.
And that's what allows for us.
We do.
We love the Jenny's.
That's what allows for us to,
to move on to those next levels.
So guys,
thank you so much for dropping in again
to the counterculture agent with Sean
Corbett.
We're going to keep these things coming
back every single week.
If you have a topic that you're interested
in hearing about, drop it in the chat,
drop it in the comments,
make sure that you subscribe if you're not
subscribed.
And I think Sean,
we'll see you guys on the next one.
Thanks for dropping in today.
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