S3 E13: Your Success Is Not Convenient!
Meet Mega Agent Bernie Gallerani from Nashville, TN. Bernie goes into detail how anyone can start at zero and get to 48 transactions their first year. He explains the things to watch for to ensure success. Watch this Tesla Roadshow!
Ren Jones (00:00):
Welcome to Roadmap. How to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. And it’s another Tesla show. This week, we’re driving down to Nashville, Tennessee. Specifically the suburb, Hendersonville, where we’ll find Mister Bernie Gallerani. Bernie is setting the world on fire. His goal this year is 450 transactions. The month of August alone, he has 63 closings. That’s $750,000, folks, three quarters of a million dollars. We have an exciting show. We’re here in Nashville. I’m going to go see if Mister Bernie Gallerani’s here. We’re going to talk to him today about how to be great in real estate.
(00:58):
Bernie!
Bernie Gallerani (00:59):
Ren Jones! What’s going on, man?
Ren Jones (01:03):
Good to see you. All right.
Bernie Gallerani (01:04):
Thanks for coming over.
Ren Jones (01:04):
Glad to be here.
Bernie Gallerani (01:04):
I’m excited to show you what’s going on around here.
Ren Jones (01:07):
I’m excited about it. You’re goal, what’s the goal this year?
Bernie Gallerani (01:10):
We’re on track right now to close 450 deals.
Ren Jones (01:14):
450?
Bernie Gallerani (01:15):
Yep.
Ren Jones (01:15):
Holy.
Bernie Gallerani (01:16):
So we’ve got 278 closed in pending right now. We’ve got 71 pendings on that, which 62 of those will close in the month of August. So we’re wrapping-
Ren Jones (01:30):
Good month.
Bernie Gallerani (01:30):
Oh yeah, it’s good month. Yeah, I think we had 700 and like $85,000 pending for the month of August, which is a good month.
Ren Jones (01:40):
That’s a good one. I remember one time coming down, we went to dinner and at that point you’d gone on two appointments. We got a quick bike to eat and you had two more appointments. You were doing four that day and we were meeting for a meal.
Bernie Gallerani (01:55):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (01:56):
Now a lot of agents can’t conceive of that idea.
Bernie Gallerani (01:59):
Yeah. Well-
Ren Jones (02:00):
Very efficient. Well, half an hour in and out.
Bernie Gallerani (02:03):
Yeah. It depends based on the questions, right? So yeah, 45 minutes contract signed. I always tell them ’cause we’ve been trained that way is I’m going to be there 20, 25 minutes based on any questions that you have. So your questions might be 10 minutes as 10 more minutes. You know what I do now is I actually put a 30-minute alarm on my phone. So when I get out of my car, it’s a 30-minute alarm. And a lot of times the tour of the home takes longer than I expect. So that alarm’s always going off while I’m in the listing presentation.
(02:35):
But when it goes off, I know I’ve already been there 30 minutes and I told them 20 to 25 minutes. So I then start really working, speeding up that process because it’s easy to get tapped into conversation. So I put a 30-minute alarm on my phone every time and it goes off every time I’m there because by the time I do the home tour, it is either five minutes or it’s 15 depending on the property. So it goes off, I just click it off and I know that my time’s up and I’ve got to go for the close.
Ren Jones (03:01):
Nice.
Bernie Gallerani (03:01):
So it works.
Ren Jones (03:02):
Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. And there’s people that do that always say that the shorter the listing presentation, the more powerful it is and the better you have of getting the listing.
Bernie Gallerani (03:17):
Yeah, well more-
Ren Jones (03:18):
Effective.
Bernie Gallerani (03:19):
Let’s reverse that.
Ren Jones (03:20):
Okay. Reverse it.
Bernie Gallerani (03:20):
The longer the listing presentation means that you’re talking more and the more you talk, the more objections you create for the seller. So by shortening the presentation, they’re sticking to the script. It allows you to say what is needed, not what you think you want to say, and ultimately gives you a higher percentage of closing the deal. Because you’re not talking too much every time we say something that is not in the script, we’re creating the seller to think of what we’re saying and then the seller says, “Oh, well that’s a great point. I wanted to ask you a question about this.” So it creates more objections and you’re like, I wish I hadn’t said it out. Kind of like, can’t I just shut up? Stick to the darn script, Bernie.
Ren Jones (04:04):
That’s great. That’s great. Now I came in here Thursday morning briefly. Walked in and you had your team all here in a circle all doing gratitude around the room briefly and, you were standing over here in a black pants, a dress shirt and a tie.
Bernie Gallerani (04:23):
Yeah. Every day. Other than shooting this today, because we’re on the weekends here. So yeah, every single day I dress in a suit. Monday through Friday, always in a suit. But the message-
Ren Jones (04:37):
Why?
Bernie Gallerani (04:37):
Well here’s the message. First of all, I have no idea who’s going to call me and say, come and list my property.
Ren Jones (04:42):
A lot of people watching this right now, they go in a golf shirt, they wear something kind of like just, what would you call business casual.
Bernie Gallerani (04:51):
Yeah, yeah. Here, here’s the thing. Right? That’s okay if they want to do that. I had a good friend of mine who’s in the construction business and he said something this about four or five years ago, he goes, “I notice you always wear a suit to work.” And I said, “Yeah.” And he says, “If you came to list my house, I wouldn’t expect for you to be in a suit. I would still list with you.” And I said, “You know you would, because you’re in the construction business and that’s acceptable to you. But in the world that I live in, if a doctor calls me, a lawyer calls me, a business professional calls me. I don’t want to be judged based on the outfit that I’m wearing.” So our standards are higher in, but we’re shooting to sell 1000, 2000 homes a year. So we want to be different in the business.
Ren Jones (05:36):
Good.
Bernie Gallerani (05:37):
Our industry wants to, we want to make a difference in our business.
Ren Jones (05:39):
It’s pretty exciting, pretty exciting. And this room is exciting. And I don’t know if you… You have dream boards. Just do it then do it again. Everything they want places they want to go, things they want to do things, they want to have signs, scripts on the wall.
Bernie Gallerani (05:55):
It’s something know I learned from Mike is, you know, have to envision everything that you want. And so we instill in all these agents, listen, why do you come to work every day? Why is your family taking a sacrifice for the effort you put in here? And I want you to not only build your dream board, but I want to do your family to help you build your dream board. So Amy over here that has the fox den on her cubicle, I’d walk by with her regularly probably at least once or twice a week. And I’ll say, “It’s interesting, I’m not sure why you come to work every day.” And she’ll go, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Well you have no goals or dreams.” She goes, “No, I do.” I said, “Well, let me see.” So she finally put, they are there. So she put some things up there, and of course some of the agents get pretty creative on there, but-
Ren Jones (06:39):
Before MGB Roadster, that sounds good.
Bernie Gallerani (06:43):
Yeah. So it’s interesting. And then you can see some of these other boards that are over here that people have up in front of their prospecting centers. And so yeah, it’s a lot of fun to watch them reach their goals. And I just love watching people grow. So our agents minimum standards here and what first year on our team, they have to sell 24 homes to stay on the team. Second year is 36. We don’t push a mandatory number after 36, but we do tell them that if they want to keep their job after 12 months, there has to be 24 closed transactions. So everybody here’s very motivated to keep their job because we provide such great service and coaching for them.
Ren Jones (07:25):
Plus they make a lot of money. Some of them are probably above 36.
Bernie Gallerani (07:30):
I have two agents in here that’ll both sell 75 to 85 houses this year.
Ren Jones (07:35):
75 to 85.
Bernie Gallerani (07:37):
Each one of those will do that. I’ve got several in here that’ll sell 40 plus.
Ren Jones (07:42):
That is exciting.
Bernie Gallerani (07:43):
My newer agents in here are all going to do 35 to 40 deals. My one-year agents, again, they have to sell 24. So if they land on 19 or 22, we will coach them to 24, have a sit down and talk with them. Every month we have a bottom three. So our goal is to identify that you’re on the bottom three. And we discuss that with them. And we also tell them, our goal is to get you off the bottom three. We’re typically going to give them about 60 days to get off the bottom three. If they don’t make progress in that, then we just let them go.
Ren Jones (08:17):
That’s fair.
Bernie Gallerani (08:18):
Because I only want to hang out and be inspired by people that inspire me. So I want to come to work every day with every one of these people and say, “I’m not here just to inspire you, actually, you are here to inspire me. I want to look at you and say, man, you’re working really hard, making an effort every day to better your life.” That’s the kind of person I want to work with. And if I find a bunch of those people, then my office is better. And if there’s only one or two of us in here, then I feel good about it. So our goal is just to better people and find people that want to better themselves.
Ren Jones (08:50):
That’s exciting. What a great environment.
Bernie Gallerani (08:52):
Yeah. Good.
Ren Jones (08:53):
I can work here.
Bernie Gallerani (08:57):
This space right here will hold 16. So we’re going to build it to 16. I think we need three more agents in here. And the other thing I want to just point out too is we own another office. So we just talk about that side.
Ren Jones (09:07):
I saw them on the board on, I came in on the TV, on the monitor.
Bernie Gallerani (09:10):
So we have cameras on both sides of it. And so we do our gratitude in the morning and they do their gratitude with us in that circle. And our goal is to build this system in two different locations. So I own this office and I own the one in Brentwood. And then we just work together and coach together. And all the agents in here have professional coaching through our system. So it’s about rising them all to the top.
Ren Jones (09:36):
And you have some accountability. You also have a monitor of John Ames.
Bernie Gallerani (09:42):
Yeah. So that’s great.
Ren Jones (09:43):
Saint George, Utah.
Bernie Gallerani (09:44):
Yeah. So we have actually several agents on there and we just connect them all through Zoom. And so we invite them in and then every day these agents from around the country will come in and we’ve had probably six or eight different MFO agent teams on there. And they all just pop on and we can see each other and hold each other accountable. So it’s a lot of fun. Our goal is to make the best environment for everybody that we’re connected to and the people that we’re connected to is to make our environment the best that they can make it. So we want it through the Mike Ferry system, we want to help agents identify that the way the system used to be is not as effective as the way it could be. And we feel that we have the right things to help agents financially become more independent. And we want to infuse that into their DNA through our system. Everybody that we have that’s invited on that TV has the same philosophy as keep empowering people to be better agents.
Ren Jones (10:46):
Go big or go home.
Bernie Gallerani (10:47):
That’s it.
Ren Jones (10:49):
Well, let’s go out and do the Tesla Road show.
Bernie Gallerani (10:51):
Awesome. Let me grab my cup here.
Ren Jones (10:55):
Hey, you have some nice cars too. You have some, didn’t you?
(11:25):
So your first year, it’s been a while now, 49 sales, your very first year. You moved to Nashville, you knew one person here and they didn’t need to buy or sell.
Bernie Gallerani (11:39):
It’s interesting to start a business when you don’t know anybody.
Ren Jones (11:45):
And yet you were able to do 49 sales in one year in a new city. Can anybody do that?
Bernie Gallerani (11:53):
Well, yeah, anybody can do it. Because think about this, if I didn’t know anybody, that was a concern I had, right? ‘Cause I didn’t have any friends other than this one guy. And so what I did was I signed up for coaching right away.
(12:06):
So I signed up for coaching. And what I learned through coaching, which is something I think that is pretty easy to say today, that it really just came down to finding the things and being told, “Hey listen, if you want to go out and find clients to buy and sell real estate, call expireds, call FSBOs, call cancels or withdrawns, knock on doors, call in and around listings and sales.” So I mean, I didn’t know that that’s not what real estate agent did. Because I wasn’t a real estate agent until at this time when I moved here.
(12:42):
So I got to be honest with you, to sell 50 homes, I didn’t know that was good or bad because I didn’t know what was expected as a real estate agent. My coach should go out and knock on doors, call expireds, call FSBOs, call withdrawns and cancels and you’ll have a great business. And I just did all of that. And it wasn’t until I went to a retreat about seven months later where Mike Ferry had me on stage doing a rookie panel. And it was like, wow, I can’t believe you sold over 30 houses in seven months or six months. And I’m like, okay, well I guess that’s good. I mean, I didn’t really know any different.
Ren Jones (13:21):
You’re just looking for listings and you didn’t get in that first year, you didn’t get bogged down with buyers. A lot of people, they get a couple listings and they start working on the listings, end up taking somebody out, showing property. Pretty soon they stopped looking for business. How do they avoid that trap? That’s a big trap because you get a bunch of listings all of a sudden you have a long list of people that want to be taken around to look at property. What do you do? How do you make that happen? Because if they could do 49 sales, they’d make three, four, $500,000.
Bernie Gallerani (13:52):
About two months into the business, I worked with my first buyer. I ended up with getting a referral, believe it or not, on a buyer. And I worked the buyer and I was talking to my coach about it. He goes, “Listen, I’m not going to encourage you to work with buyers. They take way too much time, as you can see, you can list properties and spend a lot less time and make more money.” I would say in 13 and a half years, I probably haven’t worked probably less than 15 buyers total in that time. And I haven’t worked a buyer in the last, I’ve worked maybe one or two buyers now in the last probably year.
Ren Jones (14:31):
Where they come up and I go, I want to buy this house. Can you write it up? Okay.
Bernie Gallerani (14:36):
Well, and even then it goes to my assistant and she does all it for me. So I don’t really do anything there.
Ren Jones (14:41):
But how did you avoid it in that first year? ‘Cause we got people watching right now, they want to know, as soon as I get a few listings, all of a sudden I got all these buyers and I even have my listings. They want me to take me, or who should they let handle the buyer?
Bernie Gallerani (14:53):
Well, one of the things that I did in about three or four months into being a real estate agent, my real estate coach convinced me to get a buyer’s agent. So it wasn’t going to cost me anything to have a buyer’s agent. I just paid him a percentage of the deal.
Ren Jones (15:05):
Gotcha.
Bernie Gallerani (15:06):
And then, so when I said was like I gave them a 50% split, I said, “Okay, I’ll give you my buyer, you cultivate them and work them, get them in your car, write contracts, negotiate the deal and I’ll give you 50% of the commission.” So it just allowed me to work more on listings. And I realized that the more listings that I was able to take, more sellable listings that I was able to take, the more buyer calls I would get. And if I focused on that, then my buyer’s agent that I just hired would have a lot of business. And so that’s kind of how I played it for many, many years, was just out focusing on putting signs in yards and getting sellable listings. And then I kept my buyer’s agent busy and he worked with me for about six years and that’s how I ran it. So I really wasn’t an open house guy. I didn’t do any, hardly-
Ren Jones (15:53):
Stayed on the listing.
Bernie Gallerani (15:54):
Stayed on the listing.
Ren Jones (15:55):
Now here’s the lure that happens. You list a $350,000 house, okay? Your guy is going to now need to take them around and show them $700,000 houses. That’s a $21,000 gross commission check. And a lot of agents go, I’m not referring that. I’m not giving up. Ah, I’m going to work that because it’s a big check. So I’ll only be what, let’s say you-
Bernie Gallerani (16:21):
Yeah, by the way, that’s a conversation that a lot of agents have had and talking with me regarding the business that I have. So let’s just say it’s a $21,000 commission and I that 21,000 commission, I give it to the buyer’s agent, I’m going to make 10 five. He’s going to make 10 five, right? So we’re going to split that minimum. So $10,500, if I’m out listing three to five properties a week, I’m going to make $30,000 or $20,000 that week listing and selling property.
(16:48):
Plus I’m going to make 10 five, correct? If I’m spending a week working with a buyer to earn 21,000, I’m giving up 30,000, $20,000 in income. So I calculated that if I just listed sold property, I was going to have more buyers to send to this guy, which means I was going to have more checks coming to me. So I calculated this way. If I was going to make $20,000 a week listing and selling properties and $10,000 a week, giving him the buyer, I’m making 30 grand a week. If I don’t prospect to take listings, then I can make a 21,500. So I’m giving up 10 grand. So I was losing 10,000 bucks a week by working with that $21,000 commission.
(17:26):
So I gave half of it away and spent my time on listings. And what it allowed me to do was the more listings I took, the more buyers came in. So it just kept accumulating itself and accumulating itself. Where today we’re cashing in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission checks because we have the system. So mainly after 13 and a half years, I still just list and sell property. I prefer all the leads to the buyer’s agents that we have in our company. And I know the money’s enlisting and selling property. That’s it.
Ren Jones (17:58):
Okay. Right. So somebody watching right now, they’ve sold, they’ve done four transactions so far this year.
Bernie Gallerani (18:04):
By the way, I love this car. I don’t want to go too fast ’cause I don’t want to get a ticket. We’re filming this.
Ren Jones (18:17):
So they’re doing a deal a month, maybe they interrupted two deals a month and they want to get there so they can start right now. But they have to let the buyer find the buyer agent that they know and respect going to handle a good, handle it well work out a deal. And then they have to have that discipline. So if they’re making the calls, ’cause your folks, they’re dialing away on some system.
Bernie Gallerani (18:42):
So all of our agents, everybody in our company uses Vulcan7, your company. And they all mandatory, and I say mandatory, I mean if you’re going to work on our team, if you’re going to be a part of our group, you’re going to spend time on Vulcan7 and you’re going to make X amount of calls. And through our coaching service, they sign an agreement with us through our coaching relationship that says they’re going to make X amount of calls. They’re going to spend X amount of hours on the Vulcan7 product, and they’re going to call around neighborhoods and expireds and FSBOs and all those kinds of things through that system. So every agent in our company spends two to three hours every day as a minimum calling around neighborhoods.
Ren Jones (19:25):
Because of the high level of accountability. If you’re a solo agent watching this right now, how do you create that accountability? What would you do? Now, you were probably quite a self-starter. How do you create that level of accountability? So you do it. So that person watching right now, that’s at seven transactions for the year right now go starts doing four a month.
Bernie Gallerani (19:47):
So I’ll answer it a different way because the accountability I give my team is different than the accountability I put upon myself. Okay? So I think that if people are watching this, we have to understand that they’re not going to have a me or a Mike Ferry or you looking over their shoulder saying, you know, do this, you’ll be successful. Right? The human nature is they’re going to go back to the old habits that they had. It’s always a challenge to change a habit. I have this great quote and I think I coined it, so if you want to steal it, go ahead. But I make sure you give you the credit for it. Is that success, your success is not convenient. What you work towards is not going to be convenient. It’s going to be inconvenient.
Ren Jones (20:31):
I like that. Your success is not convenient.
Bernie Gallerani (20:35):
Your success, it’s going to be convenient. You and I, right in our ages have a behavioral pattern that we’ve had for X amount of years. If somebody’s listening to this and they’re 25 or they’re 35, or if they’re 55, it doesn’t matter. But we have all of these years of a behavioral issue and now all of a sudden we’re saying, change this behavioral issue. Come in here and spend time on the phone. Learn scripts, learn dialogues, stay focused. So to answer your question, how do we get them from selling three or four houses or five houses to six or seven houses? I always believed that I was a glorified telemarketer. And I said that to my team. I’m a highly paid telemarketer and I count how much money I make per every person I talk with and how much money I make per hour while I’m on those phones.
(21:21):
And I’m just a telemarketer. I’m the pesty person that calls you at late night and has a really bad script. You’re like, “Oh, that person wasn’t very good.” I’m that person, only I’m selling houses making 15, 18, $20,000 commission checks. So I would say this to the listeners is you have to be able to identify that your money is made on the phone. It’s your friend. You have to be able to create an environment where you’re locking yourself in a room and prospecting and lead generating for three, four or five hours a day. I tell my team, when you’re first starting out in real estate, you don’t have the right to take a day off. That doesn’t exist when you’re trying to get a business off the ground. If you and I own any business, we were cutting grass, we were working a restaurant, we were plumbers or contractors.
(22:10):
Our job is to get that business off the ground. It’s in its infant stage, it’s a child. We have to protect it and watch it grow and see the fruits of its labor through the effort we put into it. And the challenge with real estate agents today is they come in and go, “Well, I don’t want to work that hard.” Well, you’re starting a business. So you have to be able to go into that mindset or that environment and have the right mindset that I’m going to put three, four, five hours every day on the phone. I’m going to do it six, seven days a week until this thing’s feeding me back an income that I’m fairly satisfied with. And then you want to take a day off, you take a day off.
Ren Jones (22:49):
Well, what’s twisted as a lot of them work six, seven days a week, lugging buyers around and making 38,000 a year.
Bernie Gallerani (22:55):
Well that’s because they’re working with buyers.
Ren Jones (22:57):
I know. And they’re working even harder than they would if they made calls in some way except for the-
Bernie Gallerani (23:04):
Here’s why here, here’s why. And I think I’ll answer it this way. Listing property and handling objections and working on that side of the business, I believe is much more difficult than working with buyers. In time, working with buyers still is your time. Take the time not working with buyers and learn the skills so you can have better free time. So the reason you see me dressed like this today after talking earlier about being in a suit every day, and you and I have been friends a long time and we’re doing this on a weekend and on the weekends I don’t work anymore.
Ren Jones (23:41):
Yeah, it’s Sunday.
Bernie Gallerani (23:42):
It’s Sunday today. So I don’t work the weekends anymore. And the reason why, and I haven’t really worked weekends for a lot of years, is because I have a controllable schedule Monday through Friday. And if I’m going out listing and selling a hundred properties a year, if I choose to, someone says, “Hey, I want to be with you on the weekend,” and I don’t really feel like working I can say no. And I do that quite often actually, where if I can’t move it around during the week. So I would just say that the agents that are working those buyers, they’re working the buyers because they’re lost and they’re not prepared on the scripts and the dialogues to learn. Listing and selling property takes practice.
(24:23):
It takes a lot of practice. And so I have agents that work with me on my team now that want to list properties and they also work with buyers. And I say, “You can’t be successful with both of those.” So if you’re going to be successful with listing property, you’re going to give it buyers. So we wean them down off the buyers business so they can spend more time in the listing business. And it takes about a year to be fairly decent at listing properties.
Ren Jones (24:50):
And it’s so competitive. I think the buyer side is, competition’s not as fierce. But when you’re competing, you know, go on 10 listing appointments, you can’t go and get one at two out of 10.
Bernie Gallerani (25:03):
Well, you’re not going to be as successful at it because you don’t do it enough. But if you practice on it, you get better. Here’s the great news about, and I tell this to people in my group, you’re getting paid every day or every week or every month on working on your education. This is our college education. I didn’t graduate from college. I went to one semester of a junior college when I was 18 years old. And I took the real estate opportunity as saying, I’m going to learn and practice these scripts so I can get a PhD in how to sell real estate. And my business now will make well over 3 million in 2018. And I contribute that success to the scripts and the skills and the practice and getting on the phones. But success isn’t convenient. It’s not going to show up when I want it to show up.
(25:54):
It’s not going to show up because I say I want. It’s only going to show up because I’m putting in the time and I have the right mindset towards it. So I know it’s frustrating for those that are listening, I’ll just say it like this way, take a step back, learn the scripts and skills. Eliminate the time with buyers unless they want to buy. I think a good question for somebody that wants to make a transition is this, if somebody wants to buy a house right now, I want to buy in the next seven to 14 days, work with them. That’s it. Cut everybody else out, refer it to somebody else, or somebody says, “Hey, I’m flying into town from Wisconsin and I’m only going to be there one week.” And I have those clients that will come in, they’ll go, “I’m flying in, I want to look at these three houses. I’m going to buy something.” Work with those people. If they’re not that, cut them out and spend that extra time working on listing property.
Ren Jones (26:45):
Perfect. I remember this gal, she had single mom, four kids. She was a great listing agent for only one reason. She couldn’t take buyers around. There was no time. So she became a great listing agent. If you absolutely can’t work with buyers, you win.
Bernie Gallerani (27:06):
Yeah. I would say make a decision, you’ll never work with them again. That’s a great point. If you make a decision, you’re never going to work with a buyer again. What are you forced to do?
Ren Jones (27:15):
Yeah. It forces you into listing and you have all the time in the world to do it. I mean, you can go on two, three, four appointments in a day or you go on four, but typically you could go on two or three pretty easily.
Bernie Gallerani (27:28):
I have a great agent that works on my team and she’s in her early twenties and she’s just such a dynamic person and salesperson. And she’d come to me over the last year and a half and said she wanted to be a listing agent and she couldn’t give up the buyers. She couldn’t do it. It was out. She was making her money. She’s making a hundred grand a year at 21, 22 years old, right? So she comes to me about four months ago and she goes, “Man, I really got to get serious about this.” I said, “Okay, well what are you thinking?” She goes, “I just want to get better at being a listing agent.” I said, “Then you have to give up the opportunity to work with buyers.” So we made the decision or she made the decision to do that. So we cut her entire buyer lead flow off and she panicked a little bit, right?
Ren Jones (28:12):
No doubt.
Bernie Gallerani (28:13):
She panicked a little bit and I kept trying to keep the steady ship. And I’d say to her, “Listen, you just have to stay focused on practicing.” And she’s going on three to five listing appointments a week now where she was going on two a month because she’s being forced. She’s taking properties and she’s actually making as much now and she doesn’t work the weekends and-
Ren Jones (28:34):
Woo.
Bernie Gallerani (28:35):
Yeah. And it’s a great success story for her. And she’s just made the decision a few months ago and now checks are starting to pour in and things are really working for her in her favor. So I would just say to anybody, give it time, make the decision. Divorce yourself from buyers and make the decision to just work the listing side of the business and it’ll all work out for you.
Ren Jones (28:54):
You’re going to have some people watching this saying, “I think I’m going to move to Nashville and work on Bernie’s team.”
Bernie Gallerani (28:59):
Hey, I would say this, if they’re motivated and they’re excited, they’re full of energy, we’ll-
Ren Jones (29:05):
There we go. Yeah, if you can hop over the hurdles, got to have it all together.
Bernie Gallerani (29:10):
Got to have it. You got to have it all together.
Ren Jones (29:13):
Great. Good deal. Hendersonville.
Bernie Gallerani (29:17):
This is the church I go to right here. That’s where I was this morning when… So this is Hendersonville and we’re actually kind of on the north side of Hendersonville and I just kind of made a loop around here.
Ren Jones (29:29):
Gotcha. So anybody can do it.
Bernie Gallerani (29:33):
Yeah, anybody can-
Ren Jones (29:34):
If they’re focused, if they’ll give up the buyers, if they will commit to three or four hours of talking to people, closing, learning the scripts, the skills, what to say, how to say it, and get involved in something that continually works on that, whether it’s coaching or whatever it may be.
Bernie Gallerani (29:54):
Yeah, I mean it doesn’t… Listen, I mean, accountability is a powerful tool, right? And you want to find someone to hold you accountable. I have one of my agents that’s in accountability group right now, and she chats with me about it a lot. And I said, “Well, tell me about it.” She goes, “Well, it’s just kind of text your numbers.” And I said, “Well how do they know whether you’re doing your numbers, if you text them your numbers? So they’re really paying attention.” She was like, “No one ever questions anymore.” I said, “Well good is the accountability?” Right? I’ve never been into that kind of accountability group that says, “Hey, text me what you’re doing.” Does it really matter if I text you? If you’re not going to hold me accountable, what good is it? Right? Accountability is accountability motivation. But I love the one that says, motivation is like bathing. You got to still do it every day or you’re starting to stink. You got to have the motivation every day. What books are you reading? What people are you associating yourself with and what-
Ren Jones (30:47):
Books are you reading, Bernie?
Bernie Gallerani (30:49):
Well right now I’m reading actually wealth books. So I’m reading books right now that have to do with how to invest my money and how much money I need for my retirement. It’s interesting, in reading these books, it talks about saving x amount, saving X amount, accumulation effect of that. But it wasn’t too long ago where I was earning 200,000 or 300,000 a year and this year we’ll just hit sly of just less than $4 million. And so you look at this going, man, you think about, well, some people want to retire at 55, some people want to retire at 60. I look at this go every year, I’m making more money. So yeah, retirement seems to get further and further away as the more money you make.
Ren Jones (31:29):
I have a feeling it might not be on your list.
Bernie Gallerani (31:32):
So it’s fun, but I’m reading these money books and looking at where my money and my portfolio’s going to go. Am I going to buy commercial properties, which I own some in rental properties, which I have some also. So I’m really into the money stuff right now. Early on in my career I at sell of real estate, I’ve read a lot of different motivational books and those were awesome. Mike Ferry helped me to understand too that you really want to diversify yourself in different kinds of reading to entertain yourself. And so I’m looking at doing stuff like that now too.
Ren Jones (32:10):
People watching, they’re at that pivot point of getting up to speed. What would have book would you hand them if you had it in your hand?
Bernie Gallerani (32:19):
I mean, there’s two really good books come to mind when you say that. First is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
Ren Jones (32:23):
Okay.
Bernie Gallerani (32:24):
Which I’m sure you’ve read.
Ren Jones (32:25):
Oh yeah. Can’t go wrong there.
Bernie Gallerani (32:27):
And You Squared.
Ren Jones (32:30):
Ah yeah. I remember.
Bernie Gallerani (32:32):
You Squared. It’s a 40 page book.
Ren Jones (32:34):
I know.
Bernie Gallerani (32:35):
And by the way, this was all just farmland. I remember three years ago coming by and this guy out plowing like this corn fields, not corn, but whatever he was, he was going over here and now there’s a whole housing-
Ren Jones (32:46):
Isn’t this city, the fastest growing city in the US now?
Bernie Gallerani (32:48):
It is. Yeah.
Ren Jones (32:49):
100 a day or something like that.
Bernie Gallerani (32:53):
Yeah, it’s exactly right. A day. So it talks about quantum leaps and I love when they talk about quantum leaps that you know say, well if you build your business at 10 or 20% a year, and I was always into the idea that you needed to build your business 10 to 20% a year until I read this book. And there’s no rule that says you can only build your business 10 to 20% a year. So when I started wrapping my mind around the fact that I don’t have to have a plan, you don’t have to have the plan for the process, you just have to have a plan for what the end result looks like.
Ren Jones (33:32):
Makes it show up faster.
Bernie Gallerani (33:34):
Well, because you start putting limitations on yourself when you start thinking, well I can only grow… That this is a 10 to 20% growth process. Right? I remember three years ago, I’m thinking it was three years ago, I sold 184 houses. The next year, which was the year after that, I closed 297.
Ren Jones (33:56):
So that’s a big jump.
Bernie Gallerani (33:57):
That’s a huge jump.
Ren Jones (33:57):
It really is.
Bernie Gallerani (33:58):
So when you look at that and go, okay, well that certainly broke 20% rule. So you look at that and go, okay, well why can’t I go from 400 to 800 or 800 to 1200? So this year we’ll close, it’s happening in the mid of the mid 400s. So looking at what we’ll do, our group is set up today with the agents we have, but we’re going to close somewhere in the mid 700s next year. So I would just say as far as books go, read a lot and don’t limit yourself. Because if I wanted to do 1000 or 1200 next year, it’s certainly possible.
Ren Jones (34:37):
It’s all mindset, it’s just having a clear vision of where you want to go and know that you can be there and you’re going to be comfortable when you’re there, because you want it and you see it.
Bernie Gallerani (34:46):
I think I may have shared this with you in the past. I did about eight years ago, I did a I can’t fail plan and I can’t fail plan said if everything went in my favor, right? So I’ll add this, I say life happens for us, not to us. Everything that happens to us is actually sets us up for success.
Ren Jones (35:11):
So it’s a gift. Yeah.
Bernie Gallerani (35:12):
It’s a gift. So I built this plan of selling 1000 houses and what that would look like and how many people I would need and then how long I thought it would take me to get there. And at that time I think I was selling probably 80 homes, no, probably 120. But anyways, so I was selling probably around 100 houses I guess at that time. So I thought, okay, well in five years I’m going to do 1000 transactions. That was my I can’t fail plan, which means everybody I hired was the right hire. Every agent I brought on the team was an exceptional agent. I didn’t want to look at the downfalls of it, only the upside. And of course, as you know, that’s not real life. So I built this I can’t fail plan. And it had me doing 1000 in five years. Well that was whatever, eight years ago. So I’m at 450 deals this year and I’m like, okay, well I’m kind of missed that mark, didn’t I?
Ren Jones (36:08):
So what? Joe came out all right.
Bernie Gallerani (36:13):
No. So here’s the thing though, let’s just say next year I get to 700 and the next year I get to 1000. Maybe it took me 10 years, five years longer. But because I built that plan, I could see that vision. And what I did was I calculated that money and I remember looking at that amount of money at that time, I think my commission has changed quite a bit, but at that time it was like three million to my family. And I’m like, man, three million doing 1000 deals, man, that’s just fantastic. And I got really excited about that, right? And so I look at it today and I go, man, I’m really putting myself in the position where that 1000 is very realistic in the next 24 months. So I think I would say to anybody is read a lot, don’t limit your vision. Empower people around you. You can’t do 1000, 1200, 2000 transactions without empowering other people. It’s all about leveraging through other people and helping them grow.
Ren Jones (37:13):
So comment on that because there are people, nobody can do it as well as I can so I don’t delegate, and I don’t let anybody do it because I’m the only one who can do it. How do you let go and get that delegation going? Any thoughts on that? Because that’s a challenge for people. But I do. They do half their assistance work because they can’t let go.
Bernie Gallerani (37:34):
I know that I have to let go because I can’t accomplish my goals and my dreams and hold on to the smaller things. In order to have a 10 million company, a commission company, you have to be able to delegate through other people. And so-
Ren Jones (37:52):
Hire good people, right?
Bernie Gallerani (37:53):
You got to hire really good people, right? Hire slow, fire fast, right? That’s the kind of the thought. But I believe that that is their issue. The agent’s issue is saying I can’t let go. I interview agents for my team all the time who come in and I’ll say, “Listen, I have closing coordinators and listing managers and marketing people. We do all that stuff for you. Just got to come in and be a salesperson.” “Well I like being hands-on with my clients.” “Well no, we have somebody that’s actually going to be hands-on with the clients, but it’s not going to be you. There’s somebody that’s professionally trained to be hands-on with the client.”
Ren Jones (38:28):
So you even have that when they come in, even though they are not already in a process. They want to be that hands on and they have to let go of that.
Bernie Gallerani (38:37):
Well they can’t. So for me personally, I knew I couldn’t build the kind of business that I wanted to have in unless I was able to let go. So you have to let it go and hire good people. I believe that if you hire the right people and you have the right systems, they will do a better job than I will. My listing manager does a better job at listing and managing that than I do. My closing coordinators, I was just giving one of my closing coordinators a prop because she’d closed like 230 deals for us last year just on our team side. And I said, her name is Rachel. I said, “Rachel, you’re a better closing coordinator than I could ever wish to be a closing better closing coordinator.” So how can I offer a better service to my client if Rachel does it 230 times?
Ren Jones (39:26):
I agree with you. Yeah.
Bernie Gallerani (39:28):
And so same with the marketing person. The person that puts the signs in, I mean, haven’t put 30 signs in yards. So she’s a better signing person than I am. She’s a better, she builds flyers for us. She’s better at that than I’ll be. So I think have, for all of these agents that want to grow a bigger system, you have to identify what your talent is and you specialize. There’s another, Gary Keller has a great book called The One Thing, right? The one, talks about doing your one thing. You have to do the one thing that you are good at and that you can excel in and let everybody else do the one thing that they’re good at. So you just hire good people. And when you have a group of really good people, there’s no way you as an individual can do it better than the whole group who specializes in that area.
Ren Jones (40:15):
These are great thoughts, powerful stuff. I appreciate it.
Bernie Gallerani (40:18):
I put park on that.
Ren Jones (40:20):
Yeah, we’re in park. Yeah. And there’s no engine running.
(40:40):
Thanks for being here. The Roadmap Roadshow, Tesla Roadshow here, live from Hendersonville, Tennessee with Mister Bernie Gallerani. Glad you could be here.