Notes

The Millionaire Real Estate Agent

by Gary Keller
Compiled by Kris Freeberg, Economist
August, 2015

Preface
• Think big and aim high
• Big Questions and the Top of the World
◦ Highest possible income?
◦ Small goals limit potential
◦ Think big, act bold, live a larger life.

Introduction
• Simplicity
• Habits
• Choices:
◦ Practice real estate as a job, or
◦ Run it like a business

Part One: Charting the Course

• “I am just highly leveraged through associations with great talent and have thoroughly documented my
systems.”
• People have lived before you. Slow down and study their journeys before you start your own. Learn
models.
• He listened to Anthony Robbins' Unlimited Power in 1987.
◦ Success leaves clues
◦ Actions produce results
◦ Modeling is the pathway to excellence
◦ To model excellence, be a detective.
• Sound models should be your foundation; then on top of that, add creativity as necessary.
• Reinventing the wheel makes no sense. Using models feels like cheating because it's so easy; but it's
not cheating. It's just wise.
• Natural ability can only take you so far.
• Improved models can lead to breakthroughs.
• Foundational models presented here are based on the “Three Ls”:
◦ Leads

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 ◦ Listings
◦ Leverage – asks three important questions: Who, How, & With What.
▪ People
• Hire administrative support talent first
▪ Systems
▪ Tools
• Four Stages of Growth on the Path to a Million
◦ Think
◦ Earn
◦ Net
◦ Receive
• Regrets: better to say “I'm glad I did” than “I wish I had.”

• Six Mythunderstandings
◦ “I can't” - would you teach your kids that? No.
◦ “It can't be done here” - Truth: “I don't yet know how.”
◦ “It would take too much time & I'd lose my freedom.” - efficiency, effectiveness, leverage.
◦ “Too risky” - hold costs accountable. Watch return.
◦ “Clients will only work with me” - Clients are loyal to your standards, not you.
▪ Duplicate yourself.
▪ Articulate & codify your standards.
▪ Systematize
◦ “Not fully realizing a goal = failure.” Fear of failure = Kakorraphiophobia. Examples: Abe Lincoln,
Thomas Edison, Dr. Seuss, Mark Victor Hansen, Henry Ford. Keep trying. Tenacity.

Part Two: The Four Stages

Stage 1: Think a Million

9 Ways a Millionaire Real Estate Agent Thinks

1. Big Why – purpose.
◦ Day-before-a-vacation miracle: people deliver impressive results when they're motivated.
◦ People who stop working when they have enough are working for the money. People who keep
going work for a purpose that is beyond money.
◦ Personal Growth
2. Big goals & big models
3. Possibilities
4. Action – with Big Models that remove “natural ability” from the equation.
5. Fearlessly – the only thing to fear is not attaining your goal.
6. Progress – they don't think in terms of success or failure; they think in terms of outcomes and progress.
“There is no failure. You win or you learn. Either one is okay.” Pot-making example – perfectionism vs.
practice. The quality is in the quantity; it isn't either/or.
7. Competitively & Strategically, living in the gray areas between the rules. Curveball example. “Start
where the rules stop and challenge your competition to catch you if they can.”
8. Standards - “. . . hiring an effective assistant should easily double your sales volume.” The key to
successful hiring is clear expression & enforcement of standards.
9. Service
• Purpose
• Value Proposition
• Fiduciary

The Three L's of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent

• 80/20 Rule . . . the Three L's are the Millionaire Real Estate Agent's Critical Few, the 20%: Leads,

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 Listings, Leverage.
• Leads: Generation vs. Receiving
◦ No leads mean no sales. Some agents miss this not-too-subtle point and end up spending their time
on other less rewarding things.
◦ Think of yourself as being in the lead-generating business. (Ben Kinney's “one thing” in 2015 is
Lead Generation.)
◦ In a prosperous market, there are usually many agents relying on passive lead generators, casual
referrals, and luck to create business. This is called Lead Receiving.
◦ Too many leads is a good thing. Always keep the lead generator turned on.
◦ Until you have enough leads to exceed your goals, there is no other issue.
• Listings (seller-focused) – see “many virtues” list on page 102.
◦ Hire a Buyer Specialist to represent buyers. But focus on sellers.
◦ “All the Millionaire Real Estate Agents we interviewed devoted their time to listings first.”
• Leverage: The Who, How, & What of Real Estate
◦ The challenge is to add the right people.
◦ Great Talent is irreplaceable. It often meets and exceeds standards, & has growth capacity.
◦ Poor Talent can do a lot of damage.
◦ Good Talent should not be confused with Great Talent. Good can really help, but Great can change
your business forever.
◦ Avoid settling for people who merely fill gaps and do not have growth capacity.
◦ Most agents settle for good talent.
◦ “After you've hired bad, good is great!”
◦ Great Talent could be what replaces you when you Receive a Million – the prospective CEO.
◦ Great Talent will help you create and implement systems to run your business more efficiently and
consistently.
◦ Never underestimate the importance of your first hire.
◦ Systems are the repeatable processes that allow us to duplicate magnificent results easily.
◦ As you progress you'll want to spend less time choosing & implementing tools. Your people
leverage can take these tasks away from you and liberate you.
◦ People are the most powerful form of leverage. Hire carefully.
◦ Only after each new piece of leverage is magnificent, can you add the next.
◦ Hire when you've maximized your personal productivity.

The Eight Goal Categories of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent

• Track both Goal & Actual
• Time periods: someday, 3 year, year, month, & week.
• Most people focus on a couple of New Year's Resolutions and spend the next twelve months reacting to
all the other areas in their life.
• Categories act as placeholders. When you have them in place, it's harder to forget or ignore areas that
need your attention.
• Keller first learned of goal categories from a Lewis R. Timberlake goal setting seminar. Timberlake's
book It's Always Too Soon to Quit is available new at Amazon.com for $.87.
1. Leads Generated
• Most important
• Every email, every phone call. Have a way to notice, to track.
2. Listings
3. Contracts Written
4. Contracts Closed
5. Money
• Gross Income
• Expenses, budget & actual
• Net Income
• Agent compensation

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 6. People – anticipate your need for help & fill it before you're overwhelmed.
• Recruiting
• Training
• Accountability
7. Systems/Tools
• BEFORE your first hire, put systems & tools in place for them to use in their job.
• Job description
8. Personal Education – Millionaire Real Estate Agents are always focused on personal development.

Stage 2: Earn A Million

Four Models discovered from interviewing Millionaire Agents: Economic, Lead Generation, Budget, &
Organization.

• Hobo Shacks or Houses: “. . . most agents begin by implementing their own ideas and models . . .
they begin with creativity . . . the structure of their business begins to look like a “hobo shack.”
• Warren Buffett followed a model: Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis which he read 12 times.

1. Economic Model: Appointments x Conversion Rate = Listings, x Conversion Rate = Sales, x Avg. Price
= Sales Volume, x Commish = Gross Revenue – Expenses = Net Income.

2. Lead Generation Model:

• You can never have enough good leads. Never.
• Book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Ries & Trout – the human mind is an inadequate
container. Saturation point is 7 things.
• “Mind Share” for real estate agents is slim to none.
• When it comes to leads, the quality is in the quantity.
• Millionaire Real Estate Agents do massive lead generation & reap massive rewards.
• Consistency & frequency of your message matter more than the creativity of your message.
• Be systematic and go for sheer volume.
• Your lead-generation plan must always be more ambitious than your income goals. Aim above the
mark to hit it.
• Three key areas:
1. Prospect & Market
• General Public
• Target Group – Haven't Met
◦ 12 Direct Mail pieces
◦ For every 50 people to whom you market yourself 12 times a year, you can reasonably
expect to generate one sale.
◦ If you want 50 sales for the year, you need to mail 12 times to 2,500 people.
• Met Group
◦ 8x8 – see page 146. Eight touches over eight weeks.
◦ 33 Touch
▪ For every 12 Met people you touch 33 times, you can reasonably expect to net 2
sales.
▪ Marketing to your Met group is generally the most cost-effective form of lead
generation.
▪ If you want to make 50 sales a year, you need to have 300 Met people you've put
through your 8x8 program & touched 33 times.
• Allied Resources – 1 on 1
2. Set up a database & feed it
• “At the heart of your lead-generation program will be a large, powerful contact management
database.”

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 • (Note: reading this in August 2015, I am amazed by how little progress has been made in
real estate agent database technology in the 12 years since this book was published.)
• The database IS “your business.” When you hear of someone selling their business, what
they're really selling is the database.
• The size of your real estate business will be in direct proportion to the size & quality of your
database.
3. Systematically market to your database.
• Most agents tend to underdo it.
• Focus on seller listings.
◦ Beyond $250K Gross Commission Income (GCI), seller listings sold > buyer listings
sold, and lead to buyer listings.
◦ If you focus on marketing your seller listings, the buyers will come.
• 14-Step Marketing Plan for Listings: see page 151.
• “The only real difference between agents is that some “list” houses while others “market”
them. Which one are you?
• Sales Scripts & Dialogues: confidence is the key.

3. Budget Model
• “Most agents just can't get their heads around the fact that a budget is a powerful financial planning
tool.”
• When you see your budget as an investment plan that generates a return, it can get interesting.
1. Lead with revenue.
• Make money before you spend it.
• Companies that minimize their start-up costs and debt before they open for business and
start generating revenue quickly have a much better chance of survival.
• Many real estate agents take this same Field of Dreams (“If I spend it, they will come”)
approach.
2. Play Red Light, Green Light: hold the money you're spending accountable for results –
incrementally.
3. Stick to the budget. Keep it monthly and address it weekly. Once you understand it, budgeting
can be fun and engaging.

4. Organizational Model - “Talent to shine, systems to define, train & consult to refine.”
• Admin: hire someone with skills to document, and later implement your systems.
• “Despite my best efforts working with hundreds and hundreds of real estate agents over the years,
only a handful managed successfully to document their systems without outside help.”
• Hire talent:
◦ Curious
◦ Shares your goals
◦ Knows what it wants, seeks actively.
◦ Pushes you
◦ Keeps raising the bar
◦ Language of challenge, achievement.
◦ Stands out.
◦ Question you should ask: “How much can I afford to pay them, so I can keep them as long as
possible?”
◦ Should pay for itself in spades
• A bad hire will cost you opportunities.
• Actual compensation of a good hire is a lot cheaper than the opportunity cost of a bad hire.
• Train & consult.
◦ Most agents practice “seagull management”: little or no training, swoop in, make a lot of noise,
dump on people, and fly off.
◦ Talent doesn't need micromanagement & won't tolerate it.
◦ See 10 principles for empowering people, page 166.

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 ◦ Specify annual, quarterly, monthly, & weekly goals.
◦ Reward in public, correct in private.
• Two D's: Business Drive (systems & tools), & Leadership Drive (ambition, caring, getting things
done, personal energy & charisma).
◦ “Most real estate agents power their sales business by their Leadership D.”
◦ Add Business D to your Leadership D. It makes things happen even when you're not there.

The Millionaire Real Estate Agent Models

• Interviewing millionaire real estate agents, the transition from earning a million to netting a million was
quite seamless.
• The difference between the Millionaire Real Estate Agent and the average real estate agent is that the
MREA never drops the ball on Lead Generation.
• Re: quality, it comes with quantity. Quantity forces the systems, tools, & standards that ensure quality.

1. Economic
• 320 sales at $250K, $80M sales, 3% commish = $2.4M GCI, less $1.4M expenses = $1M
• “The only way to get at these numbers is to track your lead-generation efforts carefully and get a firm
grasp on your conversion rates.”
• “We focus now on lead tracking. As a result, we have increased our speed of response and our
percent of conversion.”
• “Converting calls into appointments is one of the most important things for me to do.”
• Need around 51 monthly listing appointments with both buyers & sellers.

2. Lead-Generation
• Marketing is leveraged activity. Prospecting isn't enough.
• At 12:2 for Mets and 50:1 for Haven't Mets, a range of 1,920 Met leads to 16,000 Haven't Met leads
is necessary to net $1M.
• Four laws of Lead Generation:
1. Build a database.
2. Feed it every day.
3. Communicate with it systematically.
4. Service all the leads that come your way.
• Annual cost of outreach ranges $31,680 - $192,000 at $.50/touch.
• Budget 10% of your gross income to outreach.

3. Budget: Cost of Sales = 29.2%; Operating Expenses also = 29.2% leaving a profit margin of 41.6%.

4. Organizational
• 3 distinct areas of staffing:
1. Admin
2. Buyer
3. Seller
• “Only after a solid administrative staff is in place do we begin to even think about hiring buyer &
seller help.”
• “So many agents make the mistake of seeking sales support first, usually buyer agents.”
• Path to freedom – 7 levels. See page 202
• 9 Compensation Options – see page 206.
◦ Profit sharing requires absolutely open books.
◦ Cap profit sharing at 50% of salary. Beyond that, consider equity opportunities.
• “Top grading” - you never know when you may lose talent in your organization, so whenever great
talent becomes available, you would be wise to find a place for him in your company.
• When you aren't having fun or are feeling overwhelmed, it is time to find someone to help with your
“other” jobs.

Millionaire Real Estate Agent Notes August, 2015 6 of 12

Stage Three: Net a Million

Leads
1. Sustaining
• Marketing is at its best and most effective when it is database-driven.
• Delegate prospecting.
2. Tracking & converting through others
• Ultimately, your ongoing responsibility will be to ensure proper tracking and converting. And this
brings us back to the engine that drives this process – your database.
• When the numbers are always in the open, it is much harder to hide behind excuses.
• Once (troubled agents) discovered the power and benefits of tracking the lead-conversion process,
they never turned back.
3. Protecting your lead generation focus time: block it in your calendar.
4. Discovering what works
◦ So many agents do spur-of-the-moment, idea-of-the-month marketing & prospecting.
◦ The ones who look like marketing & prospecting geniuses do it consistently over time and
meticulously track and source their leads.
◦ For all its creativity and art, the part of marketing & prospecting that is science always rules.

Listings
5. Knowing the Minimum Number of Monthly Seller Listings – varies with market conditions. Keep your
eye on the ball.
6. Listing the Minimum Number Each Month. High performers are amazingly urgent, persistent, tenacious.
No excuses. Tough-minded. Celebrate successes.
7. Getting Sellers to Accept the Team Concept: scripts, dialogues, training to standards that “wow.”
8. Consistently Marketing Seller Listings for More Leads

Leverage
9. Making Time to Learn & Implement the Recruit/Train/Consult/Keep Process
• The turnover rate in the real estate industry is phenomenal because R/T/C/K is so neglected.
• You can not afford not to master R/T/C/K.
10. Hiring “Capacity” Talent vs. “Cul-de-Sace” Talent: growth. Teachable.
11. Achieving Accountability to the Right Standards
• Quality service that is not defined & documented so it can be consistently duplicated is just a hollow
slogan.
• Most common mistake: “follow me and watch what I do” approach.
• Systems documentation is an ongoing process. It's never complete. Steps:
1. Write down what you do as bullet points.
2. Break the list into 6-12 key categories.
3. Make a page for each category.
4. Place all category pages in a 3 ring binder with tabs for each category & a table of contents.
5. Go to the first tab and for each item under it, create a new page with that action as a heading.
6. In each Action page, detail exactly how you want that action done.
7. Add appropriate forms, scripts, & dialogue examples behind each action page.
• Set weekly appointments for individuals who report to you.
• Work from job descriptions & goals.
12. Creating Teamwork with “Rock and Role”
• Key goals = rocks
• Ensure everyone understands their role.
13. Combining Quality & Quantity Service
• Be a minimalist with great communication & timing.

Money
14. Sticking to the Budget, Controlling Costs
• Casual spending and the phrase, “This is only the cost of a commission from one more sale” are the

Millionaire Real Estate Agent Notes August, 2015 7 of 12

 bane of the MREA.
• Inattention to the money and overspending are the norm.
• “Oddly enough, those of us who have the most confidence in our ability to generate money often
have the greatest difficulty keeping it!”
• Separate your deposit account from your operating account.
• Get professional oversight & accountability.
• For any new expense, make sure it's justified. Sleep on it.

You
15. Staying Focused on the 20 Percent
• Teach your team the 80/20 rule.
• 2 choices: be focused or unfocused.
• (See The One Thing)
16. Counter-Balancing Your Life
• Allow imbalance when key goals are at stake, but don't dwell too long in that state.
• Make sure your personal life gets the attention it needs.

Stage Four: Receive a Million

1. Active vs. Passive Income:

• Lawn mowing story: charge $15, pay $10 to a sub.
• Active: you work for money.
• Passive: money works for you.
• Grow and organize your business in such a way that your business works for you.
• Most real estate agents really don't understand, respect, or aggressively pursue passive income.
• Comparison to saving: at 5%, after taxes, $4,000 monthly income necessitates almost $1M in
savings.
• “We believe turning your self-employed real estate sales job into a business is the most
straightforward path you can take to build wealth and passive income.”
• To receive $1M/year from your business, you must:
1. Gross a lot more than $1M/year, and
2. Hire someone to run the business at the same level as you did.
• Work ON your business instead of IN it (Michael Gerber). Transition process:
1. Set & do standards (“I do it”)
2. Maintain standards & share the doing (“We do it”)
3. Sustain accountability to standards (“Others do it”)
• There is no such thing as completely passive income. Even “mailbox money” requires occasional
attention.
• The key is the Three L's.
• “Passive” income is not so much passive as highly leveraged.
• You must still actively account, hold everything accountable.
• Common mistake: mistaking “business passive income” for “pure passive income.” They take their
eye off the ball and go play.
• “Active” is working IN the business. “Passive” is working ON the business. You're still working.
• Entropy: anything left alone eventually falls apart.
• Absentee ownership usually = business demise. If you want to be absent, sell.

2. The Opportunity of the 7th Level (see diagrams pp 202, 273)

• re: the 7 levels, one extreme is you doing it all; the other is an entire team of people & you're just
working on it.
• There is no retirement plan set aside for self-employed business owners. If you want one, you must
create your own by developing a 7th level business.
• If you decide against going to the 7 th level, you should master investing.

Millionaire Real Estate Agent Notes August, 2015 8 of 12

 • Two realities of the real estate industry: unlimited earning potential, and no security structure.
• Having a 7th level business gives you choices.
• Sadly, most agents don't have it.

3. Three Key Hires of a Millionaire Business

• The Three Foot Rule: make sure everything within your reach is magnificent.
• The people who report to you should be magnificent.
• When you surround yourself with “capacity” talent, everything falls into place.
• The huge truth most real estate agents miss: you are only a few hires away from being a Millionaire
Real Estate Agent.
• The Key Three are (see page 197):
1. Lead Listings Specialist
2. Marketing & Administrative Manager
3. Lead Buyer Specialist
• When you have these three people in your life and they are magnificent, the rest will begin to fall into
place.
• Agents who understand this at a gut level turn their sights toward finding those three key people
without hesitation.
• If they're not truly capable, you'll get pieces of their jobs back, and some of their people, in your
space & time, violating the Three Foot Rule.
• When you find them, get a five year commitment from them.
◦ Big Goals are key to attracting great talent.
◦ Retention is vital; turnover is corrosive.
• Weekly meetings with the Key Three:
◦ Reserve two hours a week to meet with them to go over goals and accountability: one for the
person who runs the business; the other for including the other two, like an executive staff
meeting.
◦ Meetings should begin & end with discussion of business goals.
◦ Ask them to bring their own personal goal worksheets.
◦ No other agenda is necessary. Company & individual goals ARE the agenda.
◦ Meetings are consultative. Magnificent talent will bring a lot of their own stuff to the table.
◦ The way to build a great big business is to build a great small business first – around three
magnificent people.

4. Your Role & Responsibilities: Accountability

• You're never released from Accountability until you sell & pass the mantle of Accountability onto the
next owner.
• It's both a mindset and a skill set.

1. Leadership – MVVBP – DNA code for leaders. Leadership accountability means constantly
imparting the MVVBP to your organization, making sure it's still clear, in place, understood, &
executed.
◦ Mission
◦ Vision
◦ Values
◦ Beliefs
◦ Perspective

2. People (weekly meetings, staying focused on goals). If you don't do it, think George Bailey jumping
behind the counter of his failing S&L. That could be you.

3. Capital
◦ Reviewing & approving all budgets
◦ Reviewing financial statements

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 ◦ Handy trick:
▪ Separate Deposit Account from Operating Account
▪ Authorize only yourself to sign checks or move money from the one to the other.
▪ Monthly, transfer into the Operating Account only enough money to cover budgeted
expenses.

Part Three: Staying On Top

• Focus. “No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is
confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great
until it is focused., dedicated, disciplined.” ~ Emerson
• Dr. Joyce Brothers example - $64K question – Housewife, Psychologist, Boxing Expert.

Five steps to great Focus that can open a world of opportunities in business & life:

1. Create a Personal Plan and Then Focus on Process

• Aim high to allow for the unexpected. Think trajectory in marksmanship.
• Always focus on the Three Big Rocks:
◦ Leads – a database-driven approach with a focus on seller listing leads
◦ Listings – get the number you need & market them systematically.
◦ Leverage – magnificent “capacity” talent. Three key hires. Three Foot Rule.
• The Real You will show up when you T.R.Y.

2. Time Block for Focus

• “I do my calls first and my need-to-do's second. My get-to-do's come last.”
• Most real estate agents are in busy-ness, not business.
• MREA's don't have “to do” lists. They have “have to” lists. Through time blocking, they make sure
the “have to's” get done before the “to do's.”
• Stuff that matters most isn't always the most fun.
• This leads people who work off “to do” lists to act like children picking at their food: they start with
their favorites & save veggies for last.
• High achievers look first to take care of lead generation with a focus on seller listings.
• Budget your time:
◦ Your calendar is an achievement power tool.
◦ Set aside an hour each morning to make ten prospecting calls – not nine. Ten.
◦ Time blocking is for your 20%. It's an essential skill.
◦ Agents who never acquire the time blocking business habit end up with time-wasting busy-ness
habits habits and fall short of their potential.
◦ (My observation: this is an Axiological mandate. To prioritize, to do a Pareto Analysis, one must
admit that it's NOT “all good.” It requires making value judgments, which a lot of people are
reluctant to do. Tim Ferriss calls busy-ness “senseless pseudo-work procrasturbating” [4HWW,
254]).
◦ Time Blocking example – see Figure 29 in The One Thing, which he published ten years after he
published this book. Since writing MREA, he came to realize that one should block 4 hours for
one's 20%.

3. Get Accountability to Sustain Focus

• Example – burning things with a magnifying glass – you have to hold the glass still to focus that
pinpoint of light long enough for the fire to light. It's boring.
• No other principle is violated more in the real estate sales business than the basic principle of long-
term focus.
• Why? Intense competition & extraordinary variety of opinions of how practitioners should spend
their time.

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 • “All our experience points to a simple path of beginning with a proven Big Model and riding that
jumbo jet as far as you can go.”
• Admit you can't stay 100% focused all the time.
• Choose carefully where you focus
• Get some accountability to help you.
◦ Most people have a warped understanding of accountability, and little or no appreciation for how
empowering it can be.
◦ Accountability picks up where Time Blocking leaves off.
◦ You need someone else to hold you accountable, and
◦ You have to keep track of your numbers.
◦ You can not do this alone.
◦ Accountability is the relationship choice for champions.
◦ Choose a coach, consultant, mentor, peer, or Mastermind Group, then meet regularly with them
to review goals and results.
◦ When you don't have accountability in your life, failure often comes as a total surprise.
◦ Frequency of accountability matters. Minimum = monthly. Some top performers have daily
meetings with their coach or consultant.

4. Make Sure Your Environment Supports Your Focus

• “Calm down and organize yourself.”
• Environment: you are the chief architect.
• People:
◦ Business associates
◦ Clients & vendors
◦ Family & friends
◦ You are the gatekeeper.
◦ High achievers associate with energizers and synergizers.
◦ They “weed out” unsupportive people.
• Your environment can make or break you.
• (As Tony Robbins says, “Design your ideal environment.”)

5. Keep Your Energy to Maintain Your Focus

• Everything is energy.
• The world doesn't really get going until 10:30 – 11:00 am.
• Therefore, get your 20% done before then. After is when the phone starts ringing and people pop
by.
• Five energy areas:
1. Spiritual – pray & contemplate
2. Physical – Exercise & eat
3. Emotional – Hug, kiss, laugh
4. Mental – Plan & calendar
5. Business – Generate leads
• Learning-based living
◦ Learning is how we come to understand the most powerful, productive ways to use our energy
(sharp saws).
◦ Learning is both empowering and energizing.
◦ It makes achievements appear effortless; but they're not. The effortlessness is an illusion
caused by learning & practice.
◦ Being learning-based gives you a great advantage over your competition. They're expending
more energy using dull tools.
◦ Learning is leverage. Advantages:
▪ Wisdom (knowing what to do)
▪ Competence (knowing how to do it)

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 ▪ Foresight (knowing when to do it)
◦ Learning doesn't expend energy; it gathers it. It's an upward spiral.
◦ MREA's spend 10-15% of their work time learning.

• In your pursuit of excellence, Focus is the linchpin.

• If you can develop the kind of intense focus necessary to become a MREA, that same powerful
focus will be yours to apply to other areas of your life.

Real-Life Millionaire Real Estate Agents: Exemplary Models (notable quotes, IMO)
• Chris Cormack – VA – budgets 8-10% of GCI for marketing - $148K. Most effective marketing is
newspaper ads. 20% referrals.
• David & Judie Crockett – OH – We systematize & document everything. Send out quarterly postcards.
We've focused recently on lead tracking. You don't need anyone who's in any way dysfunctional.
• Rachel DeHanas – MD – systems are the key to success. 47% of buyers come from the Internet, then
signs. Hiring assistants paid off. Publish a monthly newspaper, mail it out to 50K – 75K households.
• Valerie Fitzgerald – CA – fashion model whose gig fell through. Pestered a builder to let her sell his $3M
home. That sale launched her career. Works in L.A. with celebrities. Does a lot of public speaking.
• Mary Harker – TX – Put goals in writing. Built national agent-to-agent referral network. Database of
6,000 people. Magnetic calendar.
• Cristina Martinez – CA – Work ethic, integrity, system. Watch financial statements closely. Works 4
days a week, averaging 10 sales a week. Sends a calendar to clients. No advertising or direct mail.
Just calls. Sales volume $136.3M, GCI $4.08M. Deal a lot with investors, who do multiple deals per
year. Donated $3.1M to her Baptist college. Put God first.
• Ronnie & Cathy Matthews – TX – 1988, 65 employee plumbing & utility business. Clients stiffed them
when Houston economy crashed. Lost everything & had to start over. Return every phone call. Never
made a cold call or knocked on a door or gone to a FSBO. 3,000 client base they send post cards to
every 6 weeks. 5,000 farm area, every 3 weeks. Ask for business. Take care of people.
• Mike Mendoza – AZ – follow up, community involvement.
• Gregg Newman – CA – use color ads. Allan Domb is his hero.
• Elaine Northrop – MD – husband abandoned her. After six months of self-pity she went to work. In the
next six months, sold $1M. Writes her own listing ads, does extensive advertising.
• Joe Rothchild – TX – systems, accountability. Broad marketing plan: newspapers, home magazines,
Internet.
• Bill Ryan – AZ – track your leads so you don't waste money on ineffective marketing. Monthly newsletter
to 3,000 sphere & 12,000 farm area.
• Russell Shaw – AZ – “It's my job to run the business and oversee the marketing.” Was struck with
cancer & had their best year ever because of staff & systems. Does monthly mailings to a 5,000
database. Focus on all the business that is out there. The customer you never contacted in any way is
the real loss, not the one that got away.
• Sherry Wilson – VA – “I never think about my commission. I think about helping people achieve their
goals.” No farm system. No direct mail. Referrals & advertising.
• Tim Wood – CA – focus more on dreams & visions than on goals. Keep it simple. Be patient. “It took
me 20 years to accumulate $1M; 2 years later, $3M; end of this year, $5M.” Hockey stick.
• Don Zeleznak – AZ – works with investors. Stays in touch with about 100 repeat investors. Database is
at about 1,000, but most business is from referrals. Does all his own budgets, tracks P&Ls closely.

Millionaire Real Estate Agent Notes August, 2015 12 of 12