How Rick Janson came back from two foreclosures with a system and prospecting

Rick Janson00:00

I literally watched someone turn the water off in my front yard. I had to ride my bicycle over to a grocery store, get two gallons of water, go back to my bathtub, and take a shower because my water was turned off. You hit rock bottom and you realize, “Okay, maybe I don’t know everything. Maybe I could learn a different path.”

00:15You have the choice today to turn yourself around before you ever go to pain, and all you have to do is find a proven system, apply yourself consistently, prospect, set that appointment, build the relationship.

Loida Velasquez00:31

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan 7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry to share with you their tips and strategies so that you can implement in your business immediately. If you haven’t caught up on our previous episodes, make sure to check them out.

00:46You can watch them on YouTube or listen to them on your favorite streaming platforms. So with that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and bring on today’s guest, Rick Janson. Welcome, Rick.

Rick Janson00:56

Hi Loida. How are you?

Loida Velasquez00:58

I’m doing great. We’re so excited to have you on today’s show. For everyone that’s watching that maybe is not too familiar with you, just go ahead and give us a little bit about your background.

Rick Janson01:08

Sure. I got into real estate in 2002 after a career as an attorney with an MBA in marketing. And right out of the gate, I have to admit I struggled, and I struggled because I thought I knew it all, and I was smart in one field, so I must be smart in another. And it took me a long time and a lot of failure, to be honest, to find out that I actually needed coaches, I needed mentors, I needed proven systems.

01:34And when you start applying yourself consistently in a proven direction, you get a proven result. So doing that over time, I started winning awards, like, yeah, eight-time five-star award winner, been featured on the cover of magazines like Top 100 People In Real Estate magazine.

01:51And then over the past couple years, I’ve started diversifying a little bit. So I’ve developed some AI software, both with AI generated voice and AI generated avatars, and now I’m writing a book with a bunch of other people. So it’s keeping busy.

Loida Velasquez02:05

That’s awesome. That’s so exciting, the transformation of everything that you have gone through, where you started, where you are now.

02:12But I wanna take it back a little bit. When you got into the business, because there might be some newer agents that are leaving careers that they have built up, maybe just like yourself. So for you, what was that transition like initially?

Rick Janson02:25

That transition was really rough for me, and giving up the ego of being an attorney to being a real estate agent was really hard, and it might be hard to understand that, but giving up the perceived prestige, which now I’m like, “Okay, whatever.”

02:38But at the time, it was kind of emotionally hard for me, and then financially it was hard too, and that’s one of the reasons we started down the course of writing this book, or I started down this course, and it’s a book called Real Estate Mastery: Your First 90 Days As An Agent. And what the book is intended to do is sort of attack the meme of you don’t learn anything about actually running a business in real estate school.

03:01And one of the problems that I had, and I freely admit, I lost two homes to foreclosure ’cause I was on the commission roller coaster, and one of the things that we don’t do is seek out those mentors.

03:13And so what I started doing for this book was I reached out to 30, 35 top producers, top coaches, business owners, and I said, “Would you be so kind as to sit down with me and give me 30 minutes of your time and pour wisdom into a new agent?”

03:27And one of the things I love about really successful people is they were all so generous with their time, with their resources, with their knowledge. And over the course of these interviews, I started unpacking what it is that you could learn about business that they didn’t teach in real estate school.

03:43Things about how to prospect, how to set up your day, how to build relationships, how to brand, all these different topics. And so we’re packing all of those into this book, and I think it’s gonna be a new pillar for achieving success out of school.

Loida Velasquez03:57

And it sounds like it’s something that every single agent, especially if they’re newer in the business, will have to read, because I agree with you.

04:03After I got my license, and even as I have been in the business, anytime anyone wants to get into real estate and they ask me, “Hey, what you learned in school, is that how real life real estate is?” And I’m like, “No, it’s probably way different and you’re gonna have to deal with emotions and negotiations that they probably didn’t teach you in real estate school.”

Rick Janson04:24

Exactly, and the same thing happened out of law school. Nothing I learned in law school, nothing on the bar exam did I use, actually, that helped me become a successful attorney. And so you get out of law school and you struggle because nobody’s taught you how to do your job. And one of the things I’ve amassed over the course of 20 plus years in real estate is some really good contacts.

04:43I’m blessed with some really high-level people, top producers like Ty Stockton and Liz Leeds, Richard Silver, Bob Pennypacker. These are top 1% luxury agents. And then also coaches like Shawn Kokoska who founded Maps Coaching and Isaiah Colton, people who are… Like Verl Workman. People who a lot of agents will never have access to.

05:07Maybe on a free webinar, but they don’t have access to just say, “Hey, one-on-one, can you pour into me?” So I said the gift that I could give back to the community that’s given so much to me, the gift I could give back is let me pull together all of my contacts and then have them pour into the new agent and then put it forth in the form of a book.

05:23And at the end of every chapter there’s going to be a link to the Zoom interview so you can dive in even deeper and experience that one-on-one that I enjoyed.

Loida Velasquez05:32

That’s so awesome. And as you’re talking about it I’m wondering, when is this book gonna be available so that everybody knows to go and pick it up?

Rick Janson05:40

Soon. So I had the whole book done and then I brought it to an editor who says, “This looks like a great workbook.” But apparently over 50% of books are consumed on Audible.

05:52And so we’re reformatting the book right now for Audible and then making that also something that someone could read as well.

05:58So we’re in the process of doing that. I’m hoping that it’ll be early Q1 2025.

Loida Velasquez06:02

Awesome. And I love that you said that the interviews are also gonna be available in case anyone wants to watch them, which I think is awesome as well. You’ll probably be able to read it, listen to it or watch it.

06:14So you’re gonna get everyone.

Rick Janson06:15

Exactly. Yeah, so some of these… And then we’re also gonna have a workbook to go along with it so that you can say, okay, how do I structure my day? How do I build my brand? How do I cultivate that relationship? What do I put into a drip campaign? How do I nurture and prospect FSBOs, expireds?

06:30How do I circle prospect? Yeah, Ren Jones, the owner of Vulcan7, was kind enough to lend us his time for a chapter. Invaluable. And so all of these things that we’re putting into the book are going to be focused, there’s no fluff. It’s all practical and tactical.

Loida Velasquez06:48

So as you’re interviewing all of these people, was there a recurring theme, whether it’s a topic or something that each and every single one of them said, you know, “Agents need to be doing this”?

06:59What was that like?

Rick Janson07:01

Yeah. And there was no surprise to me ’cause I’ve been in the business 20 years, but I keep saying, hey, there are 35 chapters or whatever it is, and this is your chapter, and the chapter would come back to this. And this is your chapter, and the chapter would come back to this.

07:14And over and over and over, I think two things really stood out to me. One is this is not a sales business, this is not a real estate business. This is a relationship business, and it’s the importance of nurturing those relationships over time and adding value above and beyond real estate knowledge, and forming that deep relationship where they turn to you for everything.

07:35And everybody that’s been successful, every author in this book is very, very successful, every contributor, they all came back to that relationship theme. The second theme, and this is gonna raise the hairs on the back of the necks with some people, comes back to prospecting, and time blocking out for the one thing that actually drives your business, which is consistent prospecting…

08:01And in a proven method, right? Not just saying, “Hey, I’m going to be doing busywork today. I’m redesigning my LinkedIn banner and I’m posting hamburgers on Facebook.” That’s not prospecting. Prospecting is actually getting on the phone, having meaningful conversations with people who own real estate or want to own real estate, and setting appointments, because if you’re not setting appointments, what was the point of even taking time away from your family?

08:27What was the point of getting dressed and going to the office? ‘Cause appointments is where we convert, ’cause that’s where we’re building the relationships, and when we build the relationships, that’s where we get the business and that’s where we get the referrals. And someone mentioned to me, hey, if I take care of three hours of my day, the rest of my week and all of my problems are taken care of.

08:47Because it just generates the cash flow, it generates the appointments, it generates relationships. And so the book covers a lot about, well, how do you do that? And not just one way, but many, many different ways. Because we’re not trying to make you the next Verl Workman. We’re not trying to make you the next Liz Leeds or Miranda Katie.

09:06We’re trying to make you the best version of you. And that’s what the book’s all about.

Loida Velasquez09:11

So for you specifically, your story, when you got started in the business, right, you left your previous career as a lawyer. You’re now into real estate, you’re doing this full time. What did your prospecting, your schedule, what did all that look like for you?

Rick Janson09:26

It was a mess, a hot mess. Like I said, I didn’t have a mentor and I was too proud to pick up a book. I was too proud to pay for coaching, and I didn’t realize the value that could have put in. So I didn’t set up the systems to consistently build my database. Yeah, adding two new people to my database every day.

09:46I didn’t have three outreach conversations. I didn’t have one face-to-face meeting. I didn’t consistently build up my database, my CRM, have drip campaigns. No, I was coding in Drupal and all sorts of languages that don’t even really exist anymore to dominate the web, and then somehow passively get all this business to me.

10:03That doesn’t work, right? Unless you do it at a very, very high level. So my system was a mess, and it wasn’t until I started saying, “Okay, well, let me do something consistent. Let me do something proven so that I know if it’s proven, then to do it consistently, then I’ll get results.” That, I would say, was probably the third theme of the book, is consistency.

Loida Velasquez10:26

So was there a point in time, did something happen in life or maybe you were just not getting the deals that you thought you were gonna get, that you’re like, “Okay, I need to get a mentor, get a coach and really get it together.

10:38Otherwise, I’m not gonna thrive in this business”?

Rick Janson10:41

Yeah. Fortunately I didn’t have a family yet. I was still single, but I hit rock bottom financially and I was like, “I don’t wanna be here.” And I say this, I’m just letting you know, people, I’m not here to brag. I’m not even humble bragging.

10:53I literally watched someone turn the water off from my front yard. I had to ride my bicycle over to a grocery store, get two gallons of water, go back to my bathtub and take a shower because my water was turned off. You hit rock bottom and you realize, okay, maybe I don’t know everything, right?

11:09Maybe I could learn a different path. And I share that with you because if I can bounce back from that, so can you. And more importantly, you should never have to hit that place. And part of the creation of this book, and the fire that keeps me going with this, is that I never want someone to have to hit that level of pain in order to make a turnaround, because you have the choice today to turn yourself around before you ever go to pain, and all you have to do is find a proven system, apply yourself consistently, prospect, set that appointment, build the relationship.

11:42And that’s the whole book, but there’s much more to it.

Loida Velasquez11:46

So 10 years in, right? As you’re already thriving in the real estate business, what did that look like for you? Were you a solo agent? Were you part of a team? Did you grow a team?

Rick Janson11:55

Yeah. So I was an independent broker, and so my goal with being an independent broker was, I’m gonna build the best, I’m gonna have the best photography, best videos, best 3D models, best brochures.

12:06I’m gonna offer the most service and the lowest splits. And so I tried to start building out this completely unrealistic business model. Why? Because I was trying to reinvent the wheel, and now I was successful, but now I was like, well, maybe I can make everybody else be just like me, and what ended up happening was I wasn’t delegating, and so I became the photographer, but then I became the photography editor, and so it’s…

12:27Now it’s spending six hours editing every listing of every one of my agents, which was time away from working out, time away from relationship building, time away from… You know, now it’s starting to have a family, and without proper delegation I started losing… I wasn’t valuing my time at $500 an hour, right?

12:45And if you start valuing your time at $500 an hour, which is a million dollar GCI real estate agent, you stop doing things like editing and you stop doing things like posting on social media and you start delegating. And so now I white label a virtual assistant company so that I can be an authorized dealer of a proven system of finding $6 an hour help, because a coach finally sat me down one day and said, “Rick, do you want to become the world’s best real estate photographer or do you want to take another picture of your kid on a beach?” And the light bulb went off.

13:16I was like, “I absolutely don’t care about window pulls that much, but I do wanna spend more time taking a picture of my son getting hit by a wave and splashing in the sunset,” right? That was fun for me. And so I started offloading, the easiest one for me was photography editing, and now I could upload all my pictures at 10 o’clock, and I got ’em back perfectly edited by eight o’clock in the morning for $40, and I got six more hours of sleep.

13:39And so starting to prioritize, like, okay, what should I be doing and what should others be doing allows you to scale up and grow.

Loida Velasquez13:46

I think that’s a great point about delegation because many times as agents we think, “Well, I do it best. I do the descriptions the best. I take the best pictures, the best editing.”

13:56And it’s almost like we have a hard time letting go and giving that task to someone else. But it goes back to what you just mentioned. Once we put a value and we say, “My time is worth $500, $1,000 an hour. Should I be editing this picture?” Probably not. Because for you, now you got time back where things are getting edited probably overnight while you sleep.

14:17You wake up, you don’t have to worry about it, and you gain more time in your life to spend with your family, do other exciting, fun things.

Rick Janson14:25

Exactly, and that’s also why I started coaching how to leverage AI two years ago. And I’m a strategic coach for Realm Global Partners, which is top 1% real estate agents in the country, around the world actually, so we have over 600 students there.

14:39I freelance teach with anybody who applies with me. But what I teach is how to leverage AI, and you can delegate to AI, and then you take it up a notch, and then you delegate to a VA that’s using AI. So we kind of walk you through those steps. First, we get you time back leveraging artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and other tools.

14:56And once you start getting time back and you start making money, you start allocating some of that money to hire a VA that’s now using AI, so now you start getting 100X, 1,000X improvements on efficiency, and we can actually measure your return on investment.

Loida Velasquez15:09

So there’s always a lot of things coming out with AI, and it’s really exciting that you’re talking about it and that you’re having agents see the possibilities of leveraging it and also using a VA.

15:21So let’s say for next year or even five years from now, where do you think we’ll be when it comes to AI?

Rick Janson15:28

So AI… And I wanna clarify this for people ’cause people are like, “Oh, I’m just worried about AI,” and there are kind of five emotional stages of going through AI. First there’s indifference, then there’s fear, then there’s embarrassment, then confidence and transformation.

15:41And the indifference right now is where a lot of people are still. They’re like, “I don’t need it.” Then there’s a little bit of fear, like, “Oh my gosh, it’s coming for my job.” Then there’s embarrassment, where you start taking some free classes from me and you start saying, “Oh wow, I actually can write that listing description better than I could myself,” right?

15:56I’ve been writing listing descriptions for 20 years. I’m tired of saying open and bright, light-filled floor plan, right? Oh my gosh, if I have to describe another kitchen, save me, please. So now I wrote a custom GPT, which is like having a little virtual listing assistant or listing copywriter. I upload pictures and, based off the rules and the knowledge I gave my custom GPT, it’ll read the pictures and write my listing description for me using the best words, avoiding words and using best formats.

16:23So just even in putting a listing up I can save 30 to 45 minutes and get better output. So now all of a sudden I start getting confident, and the confidence builds. Now I start taking paid classes. Now I start paying for a coach, like, how can I get better? And then you start having fully transformative results.

16:39So where are we gonna be? We’re gonna have people walking through that emotional scale, going from indifference to fear. A lot more people are gonna be coming into embarrassment, but from that embarrassment I’d like to see a lot more people reaching competence, where they’re saying, okay, I’m using AI to get rid of some of these boring mundane tasks, to speed up my copywriting, to improve my copywriting.

17:00That did like 50 cold outreach, personalized quality outreach in LinkedIn in like an hour and a half yesterday, so I could never do that on my own. Getting that efficiency, the whole point of which is to make another appointment so I can be there one-on-one at $500 to $1,000 an hour, making that relationship that converts to a sale, which converts to commission, which is really the only reason that we can keep being in business, is we’re generating cash.

Loida Velasquez17:26

Yes.

17:27So janson.ai is the website, right, that agents can go and visit to learn more about that?

Rick Janson17:32

Yeah, janson.ai is a website I have set up. It’ll redirect you. That’s just the easiest way to set it up. So Janson AI will redirect you to a place where you can start logging on, get some free resources, start exploring what AI looks like.

17:45A lot of free resources there. And then, eventually, hopefully someday we start working one-on-one or in small groups together.

Loida Velasquez17:52

Nice. Awesome. I feel like we’ve talked about so many different topics, but it all has been great information. So as we’re getting ready to wrap up, what would you say are three things that agents need to be doing right now to have a successful 2025?

Rick Janson18:07

I’m gonna come back to the three themes of the book. It’s gonna be consistently prospect, adding new people to your database, set appointments and build relationships. But consistency, just time block. And one of the things that you can do for time blocking is if you’re afraid, like, “I don’t have enough time in the week to do what I need to do,” set up your week first in 15 minute increments.

18:30Book in your gym, book in your prayer time, book in your family time, your lunch, all the things, your grocery store, your workout. Put all those things in the calendar first. Make the life you actually wanna lead, and then look at how much free time is there. Now go back. Now that you have the life you actually want to have, go back in and fill in all the work.

18:52And now you can approach that work with a lot more joy because you’re saying, “Well, I’m already going to the gym. I’m already spending time with my significant other. I’m already going skiing, working out. I have time to go to the grocery store and do laundry.” I have that lifestyle, so the work just enables that lifestyle.

19:07So design the life you want to lead, but then do it consistently.

Loida Velasquez19:10

There you go. Well, Rick, thank you so much for coming on Coaches and Mentors. This has been a great episode. We’re gonna make sure to put all of your links in the description box below. Everyone, thank you for watching, and we’ll see you on the next one.