Alright. Good morning, guys. Welcome to the Real Estate First Friday. My name is Matthew Haj, executive vice president. I'm joined by my co VP, Louis Fuhrman. And if you are yes. If you are, joining us for the very first time, welcome to Real Estate First Friday, where each week, we are analyzing people's businesses, kinda going through macro trends, and helping you understand actual items that you can implement inside your business to help you grow and, of course, define your version of success. And so we, are in the studio today with this. This background looks pretty pretty This is really great, doesn't it? Right? Zoom is They've they've done an amazing job with these, AI backgrounds for us. You know, we had to bring them out in motivational Monday. It's always an amazing scene. You know, it's we can't be showing, like, we're below elevation at all times. Like, we're above elevation this week. Yeah. We got tired of, of seeing Robert's cool background, so we figured we had, we had to make that work. Oh, and also, Robert's here. Yeah. I got an AIRP too. So we're excited to bring, Robert in today. As you know, we've gone through a series of bringing in, special guests who've been talking about specific things that they're doing in their business. And just as a quick recap, a couple of weeks ago, we had Pamela Tucker and her team talking about how they farm a geographic area and how they do open houses in their system. We had, Angie Cole talk about, you know, how she has a, system to generate additional leads and the systems you put in place to leverage technology to help you grow quicker. And so this week, we're doing q two preparedness and things that you should be doing right now to make sure that you either launch into q two the right way or keeping your momentum going from q one. And if you didn't have a great q one, we're gonna talk about some things that you can do to hopefully turn that around as we know that we are in a tough market, but there are still people winning at big levels. We wanna make sure you have access to that information. So a lot of that's gonna be the Ascend initiative that we've got going to Marathon. You'll hear some about that today. But real quick, I'll turn it over to Robert, kinda get your initial thoughts. Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Excited to be the special guest here on Real Estate First Friday. We're doing a little, corporate planning ourselves for q two. So the guys came out and joined me in beautiful Montana. You can see a little little different view of the mountains today, from the house we've got them on the other side of the club. But, yeah, man. Look. I think I think really what we're seeing right now is this massive opportunity for people who are willing to put in the work. Right? We're we're coming through this this window of time where transaction count has been muted, depressed. Right? We're in what I would call a bust from a a number of transactions annually. You know, the NAR numbers came out for February. And while nationally, existing home sales were up a little bit, in most of our territories and geography, it was actually down. So what what, NAR calls the south was down seven and a half percent, which is basically Texas over to, like, Virginia down to Florida, down seven and a half percent year over year in February. And then the west, which is, you know, California and Nevada, we're down around four or five percent. And so while the the headline number, the national number was up, we're seeing down. So a lot of our agents are impacted by that. But I think what we're really seeing is, unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of people start to give up. You know, a lot of people across the industry, they're not communicating the way they would. They're not keeping up with their post on social media or their reach outs and and warm touches and pop bys because things are getting tough. And so what what that's doing is it's setting up a situation where the agents who are putting in the work, who are being more diligent about that, who are getting out there in communities and they're doing the door knocking, they're holding the open houses, they're continuing to do those activities even though it feels like they're not working right now, are setting themselves up to take those extra couple of deals. Because every time someone gives up and stops loving on their sphere, stops holding those open houses in their in their farm, stops sending or cuts back on those mailers or door knocking or whatever, they're doing that's creating opportunity for somebody else. And so what I'm seeing across the data, because we get to see a lot of data. That's one of the cool things about being the size brokerage we are. You know, we announced that motivation Monday what our Real Trends submission looks like. We're gonna find out our ranking next week. This is kind of a cool thing. So we actually got an email back from Real Trends that said, hey. Last year we took your word for it. This year you gotta prove it. You gotta prove it. Because you're in the you're in the the the top rankings now. There's more scrutiny put on your application. And so we had to have our accounting firm write a letter, to real trends backing up our numbers, which obviously our numbers are accurate. But interesting, last year, we submitted it. We signed an internal certification. No problem. But once you get into that, I don't know, top fifteen, top ten, wherever we're landing, there's a different level of scrutiny. But the idea there is we're seeing a lot of data. You know, where there's only eight or nine, maybe ten brokerages in the country who see more data than we do at this point internally, and we're seeing this. The agents who are putting in the work. Right? And we can see it. I can see who's ordering listing power tools. I can see who's emptying their boxes because we see those text messages come in. The agents that are doing the work are seeing better results than the folks that aren't. And that's not just inside of LPT, that's across the industry. And so really what we wanna talk about today and what the whole, Ascend marathon that we're having starting the next couple weeks here once I get back to Florida is about those actionable items. Right? Let's all come together as a group. Let's spend two straight weeks together, five days a week, multiple Zooms a day, live, talking about those little activities you can do. Those little things that you can do to go move the needle because that is one of the beautiful things about this business is if you do decide, hey, I want a better result in the future. I'm gonna go take some action today. You can go take that action. There's not a a ton of buried interest. Right? You're not you don't have to go buy fancy systems. You have to go spend a ton of money. You can literally take some LPT tools and go out there and spend a day and make an impact and make moves inside your business. That's one of the beautiful things about real estate, but it's also one of the curses because if you don't do that, if you don't find that internal motivation, if you don't step up and put in the activity, by the time you realize the impact it's having on your business, it's too late because there is a massive lag between when we take those activities, when we we we do those actions, and when we see the result. And so talk about that a lot. That's why so many people fail at this business when it is such an amazing business and so much opportunity. And I believe one of the best industries in the world, in in any industry to achieve your individual definition of success. Right? I talk a lot about that. It's a big part of why I founded LPT to help entrepreneurs realize and achieve their individual definition of success. And I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that real estate is one of the best industries to do that, but it's also one of the hardest because of this massive detachment between the actions and the activities and then the end result. Right? The the wins. The wins come so much later and there's not a direct line between the actions and the wins. We know they correlate. Like, undoubtedly, we know the actions lead to the wins, but it's not a straight line. It's not a connect the dots, and that's why so many people can fizzle out and get frustrated. Yeah. That's why the starting point is doing the actual work, but then the first barrier becomes the motivation because the wins come so late, because there's such a delay. Especially q four of last or q four in every given year in q one. Like, those are the toughest quarters. You know? Q two becomes the most important quarter in real estate because that's when things start clicking over. But as agents start approaching q two, you start losing that motivation because all the hard work that you've done in q four and q one, you're not feeling those results. And this is an intro a a very pivotal moment right now inside of the industry because there is such a demand right now, guys. Like, we foresee that there is going to be a shift. We just have to keep the motivation there, continue to do the hard work, be purposeful with your approaches, make sure that you are organizing your trajectory, organizing your road map. And we are doing a lot of things here at LPT to make it a little bit easier for you guys. The Ascend marathon that's about to hit, like, be plugged in, be committed. We're gonna drop the nuggets. We're gonna give the actionable items for you guys to implement inside of your businesses to just make it that much easier to stay inspired, stay motivated, and continuously putting in that work because it will click over. You know, it's inevitable. People need to purchase houses. People need to sell houses. It is inevitable that it will happen. But if you are not committed today, you will lose that trajectory when it happens. So stay focused, guys. Yeah. And so, two really good points. I wanna kinda unpack a couple of things. So we talk about, you know, when you get started, you're generally excited to do something. You've got that motivation. It's a little bit easier for you to go out there and do the actions. It doesn't weigh on you quite as much. Cause you're it's new. It's you're excited. You wanna go ahead and do it. Then after a little while, you have to start shifting that into commitment and to discipline because you're not gonna feel as excited about it on day one hundred as you do on day one. And so if you allow your motivation to kind of guide your action, you're always gonna have that drop off. And So understanding the cycle of, like, hey. When I first start something, I'm gonna feel excited. It's gonna feel this way. And then eventually, I'm gonna have to put the levers in place to leverage some of the things that really wear me down. Like, maybe there's a particular function that you're saying, like, hey. I this is just not my speed. I can't do it. I'm gonna leverage that out to maybe someone on my team or, you know, third party, but I'm gonna stay connected to these things. And you build this process so you can make it sustainable. And that's where we see people drop off. And as we come into this busy season of q two, we know that there's a big part of people, there's a large portion of agents who get busier from a transaction standpoint. And so if you have forty hours a week and you're saying that's the the time of time I'm gonna be working per each week, and now I'm spending twenty five of those hours, you know, showing houses or doing an actual, function that, you know, transaction real estate, then you lose the amount of time that you were previously had to, you know, generate business. And so you go through this lull, and we talk about this all the time is it's a great period of time to make a lot of money, but it's also set to you for a period of time where you're gonna have to go through that valley. And so we wanna put actionable items in place within q two to help you stay productive, to keep your pipeline full while also still increasing the, you know, the the capacity for volume on transactions you're doing today. And so real quick, I want to just ask some questions, Robert. So with that being said, you've gone through businesses where you've, you know, started them small and have, you know, grown to thousands of per transactions per month. And I know you were leveraging employees and all those other things. But what was those kind of kind of mindset? What were those critical steps as you recognize? Hey. I'm about to hit a choke point. I can do more. I have to make trade offs. Like, how do you approach those moments and how you decide what you keep doing and what you leverage out? Yeah. So there's this concept I've always used in my life, and, you know, you really saw it at LPT through some of the marathons we've done in the past. So I call this idea of overwhelming effort. You know, like like, when there is a choke point, when something's not going right, this idea of doubling down, tripling down, like, just overwhelming effort. You know? What am I going to do? I'm going to do an unreasonable amount of work. I'm gonna do an unreasonable amount of effort. And there's a couple of reasons, I guess, the way I'm wired, why I think that way. One, I never wanna look back and think I didn't give it my all. Right? Like, I'm not gonna I'm you know, failure is not failure is when you quit. Right? Failure is not when something doesn't work out the way it was supposed to. And so I just always had this instinctive thing inside me of like, you know what? If I feel like things aren't going the way they're supposed to, I am going to put forth an unreasonable overwhelming effort for some period of time so that no matter what the end result is, I didn't fail because I didn't try. Right? I didn't I didn't fail because I didn't give it my all. Like, if my all is here, I'm gonna go twice as much so that when I look at myself in the mirror two or three years later, I don't think back and say, man, you were right there and all you had to do was give it a little more and you didn't do it. Right? And so just this idea of overwhelming effort, you know, that that's the way I like to think about it. That's the language that really resonates inside of my brain. I am going to overwhelm this problem with effort. I'm going to give an unreasonable effort. You know, I'm going to do things that other people will think are foolish or silly or unreasonable or unnecessary or whatever it is. But I'm gonna look at myself in the mirror in the future and say, whether it worked or not, I gave it that overwhelming effort. Now here's the funny thing. When you give something overwhelming effort like that, very rarely does it fail. Right? Like, it becomes a a self fulfilling thing. Like, it's a foregone conclusion. When when you go that overboard, if if the minimum level to succeed is here and you can figure out a way to perform way up here, Right? Whatever that is, all of a sudden you get the results. And and I think that's something I kinda figured out along the way. And and again, there are windows of time. And and look, I I talk a lot about work life balance. I talk a lot about, like, I'm very purposeful with my time. You know, I take Reagan to school every morning. Took her to school this morning in Montana, dropped her at, you know, eight twenty nine our time, one minute before the door opened and watched her go inside so I could make it back up here up up the mountain for real estate first Friday. But then there are when there's a time when I, you know, kind of the family, it's like, hey. Look, Jill. There my wife, Jill. There's a there's a window right now where I gotta go all in. And so for the next three or four days, I'm not gonna take Reagan to school. I'm not gonna maybe do bedtime. I'm gonna just plug in. Now it's rare. I do it in small spurts, but when those windows of time hit where I feel like I have to give that overwhelming effort to the business. Right? And then on the flip side, I'm gonna give overwhelming effort to the family either in the window leading up to that or the window on the other side of that, which means I'm gonna make some personal sacrifices. Maybe I'm not gonna ski. Maybe I'm not gonna, you know, do whatever it is, you know, read the book I'm trying to read or watch a TV show that I'm trying to watch. I'm going to give overwhelming effort to this part of my life because I need to give overwhelming effort to this part of my life so that when I do look in the mirror, in in the next phase, I can look back and say, you know what? I gave it everything I had. And I think this is one of those moments. And that's, again, is why we're doing the Ascend Marathon. It is that window of time where I would challenge you to sign up for overwhelming effort. We're gonna give you the tools. We're gonna show you the ways. I'm gonna take you deep into why I designed every piece of collateral in that box. I mean, you know, it's funny. We see people look at the box and like, oh, well, you know, whatever. Listings on a business card, that's dumb. Listings on a thank you card, why would someone do that? Like, I'm gonna take you behind the curtains and talk through every piece of it psychologically. I will promise you ten years later, every piece in that box works amazingly. But again, it's about that overwhelming effort. And that may mean like, hey, normally on the box, I only do a couple of things I like. But during the marathon, I'm gonna do what RP wants me to do. I'm gonna do the item I think is the dumbest first. If I think it's stupid to send out thank you cards, I'm gonna send the thank you cards first. If I think it's stupid to door knock, I'm gonna door knock first. Right? Or if I look for excuses not to door knock, hey. This neighborhood doesn't allow door knocking. Well, guess what? The neighborhood next door does. The neighborhood you live in might. You're already in there even if it's behind the gate. There's always somewhere you could put those door hangers out. Right? We look for reasons to not take the actions we don't wanna take. So be ready for overwhelming effort. Be ready to bring overwhelming effort to the marathon, to the spring buying season, to what I see what I see as an inflection point in our industry coming off of three years of a bust. I'm not promising you when it's gonna hit, but I'm telling you we are nearing an inflection point one way or the other. And this overwhelming effort campaign that we're gonna do together. I'm a be right there with you. Right? I'm a be doing two or three Zooms a day for two weeks straight with you guys. That's part of my commitment to the overwhelming effort for this. And all the the prep and all the time that goes into building out that content and prepping those slides and being ready to pour into you guys for two weeks straight. That's our commitment to overwhelming effort. You need to commit on your side to overwhelming effort as well. And I can promise you, you will have a different result coming through this inflection point because I've seen it time and time again. I've been doing this for twenty years. I've built lots of businesses in different industries. I've seen failures. I've seen successes. I've pushed through. I've kept going. I will tell you there is there is no replacement for and there is no bigger secret weapon that we can deploy than this concept of overwhelming effort when we hit an inflection point like this. Guys, you guys heard it so many times just now. The two words overwhelming effort. Do not let this Zoom call end and you push that to the side because it's so important for that to resonate. The natural and here's the reality. The natural instinct is when things get tough is to do the bare minimum. You have to be purposeful with that level of overwhelming effort. It's not gonna happen organically. It's not gonna happen naturally. You have to have it in the front of your mind. And as Robert mentioned, it ends up working at the tail end of it. You put in that overwhelming effort, you will see the results at the end of it. And it's crazy because the worst enemy is your own enemy. And we get tested so many times inside of this industry to be discouraged, to not be motivated, to not keep our eye on the bull's eye, to not put in that overwhelming effort when things get tough and just abort mission, you know, not do anything. Just do the bare minimum. Don't allow that to happen. You know, stay focused, Stay committed. We are here next to you. We are here to help you get through it, and you will see. You put in that overwhelming effort, it will lead to positive results. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that, you know, the concept of of understanding where to focus your energy is always big. I remember when I first started in real estate, I started off as part time. And so I was still working full time, at T Mobile, actually, and I was doing real estate part time. And I ended up becoming at my brokerage rookie of the year. Most transaction closed. And people were like, how are you doing in such a short period of time? And it was because when I came into work or I came into the office, I was super focused on the task that I need to be done. And people who were there who had all the time didn't treat it as valuable. They were like, oh, I've got the time. I've got eight hours in the day. I'll, you know, get the same amount of work done that I was doing in thirty minutes. And so again, it's just about where you focus your efforts. And so you may say, okay. Look. I'm ready for this. I'm ready to put the overwhelming effort. Where do I then now put that energy? What do I point it at so I can start moving the needle? And what I would say first is, if you feel motivated to do it right now, think about your organizational process. Do you know your numbers? Do you know how many people you need to talk to to hit your goals? Right? If I need to talk to fifty people to start working with ten and that results into one contract, do you know what that is for you? And if you don't, take some time to start finding what the target is. Right? Because you can't just throw effort out there and you're gonna burn yourself out. You have to know where to to focus it. And so we talk about this all the time, having an organized approach, having a target to shoot at so that you can say, hey. I'm doing well at this or I'm not. Here's what I need to to spend more time, you know, crapping my in, honing my skills at, and here's what I'm doing exceptional at. It gives you the road map of what you need to do to define your own version of success. And so as we head towards this two week marathon, which is gonna start on April fourteenth, we would encourage you to, one, have your tools, purchased by, April first. But more importantly, have a plan to say, hey. I'm gonna take thirty minutes a day. I'm gonna take an hour today to digest this information. Time block it into your schedule for those weeks so that you can make the most of that marathon, and you can exit that marathon with a lot of momentum and ready to continue to capture in q two. Yeah. I wanna hit one more point and, again, some real talk here. Like, I think one other reason that that as entrepreneurs, maybe we don't do some of this is there's this this almost like internal embarrassment. And this comes down to who are you surrounded by? Who's your peer group? Who are the folks that are watching you? Because unfortunately, as humans, we do. We we judge ourselves based on how, how we view other people viewing us. And I'll tell you, I went through this. Right? I, you know, I grew up single mom, whole county, didn't have a lot of wealth. Most of my, you know, my, peer group was not entrepreneurs. They were not worried about, hey, hey. Let's go build a business. And there was a lot of, you know, looking down on me or thinking I'm the idiot because I'm out here doing this work or I'm out here doing these things that they viewed as foolish or unnecessary or a waste of time because it didn't fit into their definition of success. And I think one of the things you really have to understand is, again, I'm just gonna paint a picture. You're out there door knocking. And in your mind, you're you're rating and you're thinking like, hey. How is my peer group or how are people judging me? Right? And it's like, oh, this group over here is looking at me saying, oh, what what's this guy doing? Out in the heat, wasting his time, putting these stupid door hangers out. Print doesn't work. None of this works. Like, he should be hanging out with us at the bar. He should be doing whatever with us. If that's the little voice in your head, it means you have the wrong people around you. Because what I will promise you is there is another person out there who sees it and says, that's inspiring for me. I'm not putting enough into my business. Right? I wanna achieve more. Right? The group over here, they don't wanna achieve more. They're happy going through life, going through the motions. They're gonna look down on you for putting in an overwhelming effort. They're gonna look down on you for doing activities that don't have an instant gratification and instant result. But there's a different group over there that you're actually inspiring through those efforts. Right? There is someone seeing you out there doing it and say, that is a hard working guy. Right? He's putting the effort into his business. He doesn't stop. It doesn't matter. The rejection, the lack of results, whatever it is, he doesn't stop and that is inspiring to me. And what I want you to realize is ten people looking down on you or thinking whatever they're gonna think about you for taking on a challenge like this and putting that overwhelming effort, ignore them. Think about that one person who you may inspire. Because if you can inspire one person in this lifetime, if you can make a difference in someone else's life, if you can get somebody else to work a little harder in their business, no matter what it is. Right? Forget real estate. Forget whatever it is. They see you putting forth the overwhelming effort. And if you can inspire one of them to take one little extra bit of effort in their life, whether that's in their marriage, their job, being a parent, whatever it is. Because as crazy as that may sound, you being out there door knocking in the same neighborhood week after week after week, holding open houses week after week after week, maybe that little spark that someone else needs to get inspired. And so I want you to push out the other ten, twenty, fifty, ninety people who in your mind are gonna look down on you for this challenge, look down on you for the overwhelming effort, look down on you for working so hard when you're not getting the immediate gratification and find that spark and that motivation, that realization that there is one person you inspire through this. Think about what that can do for you and make that be the burning piece on top of what you're doing for yourself. Right? And because while doing it for ourselves and our own families should be enough, there is a piece of us as humans that it just isn't. We do. We we judge ourselves. We rate ourselves. We grade ourselves based on what other people are thinking. And I want you to understand that the one person you inspire is more powerful than the hundred who may look down on you for the actions you're taking. Awesome. Love that. It's powerful. Yeah. I think I think that is the final word. Yeah. I think that's is amazing. Awesome. Well, guys, we hope that you feel inspired. We hope that you feel encouraged to define your version of success and know how to achieve it. Again, like Robert said, there's many people who are gonna, you know, persuade you away from that. That's not your people. So thank you so much, Robert, for giving us that insight into your personal life. We all have twenty four hours in a day, and there's a lot to be accomplished here. Okay, guys. So we will see you on motivational Monday. We're gonna be, rolling out details around the Ascend, Spring Marathon. And so that's gonna start April fourteenth. And then next week, Friday, on real estate first Friday, we have Suni, who's gonna be joining us from California, from the big blockchain. They had a huge brokerage, and so we're excited to have him on next week. With the Best Sac Home Group. Best Sac Home Group. Best Sac Home Group. Best Sac Home Group. Best Sac Home Group. One of the top agents in California year after year after year. So Nate's absolutely amazing guy, one of the top coaches in the country, a partner in the reside platform. He's gonna be a great one for you guys to have on, on real estate first Friday. And I'm glad you let me pop in here Yeah. Awesome. Enjoy your own day. Yeah. Alright. Have a good day. Guys. Thank you.