S7 E8: MINDSET & UNBRIDLED DRIVE!

Ren Jones (00:05):
It’s that time. Welcome to Roadmap, How To Take Three Listings a Week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a great agent who’s consistently taking several listings each week, each month, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway. That’s carleyhathaway.com.

(00:35):
Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway (00:38):
Hi everybody. Hi Ren. Hi special guest. Real estate is great. So many more people are answering their phones, so my contact rate is going way up. Loving it.

Ren Jones (00:48):
Wonderful, that’s great. I know, Spring 2020 and despite a lot of distractions, they’re a lot of real estate agents selling a lot of property. It’s a lot of fun. Before I introduce our guests-

Carley Hathaway (01:03):
Instead trying to get people to answer their phones, I’m trying to get them off the phone cause they want to talk so much. It’s crazy.

Ren Jones (01:08):
I know, they got a little cabin fever. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we are also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook. They have 52,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. And we will be pausing for a commercial message during the show as a thank you to the Lead Gen folks.

(01:28):
Let’s welcome our guest today from beautiful Omaha, Nebraska. Mr. Jeff Cohn. Hi Jeff, how are you?

Jeff Cohn (01:37):
Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you guys today.

Carley Hathaway (01:44):
I’m excited to have you.

Ren Jones (01:45):
I’m excited to have you and Jeff is in the 21st century, so he’s time machine forward and we’re going to ask him what is it like in the future? Because he operates in the future now, and he’s going to explain what everybody’s going to be doing. So all of you, you have a very special advantage here today. So good, let’s dive in.

Jeff Cohn (02:12):
Let’s do it.

Carley Hathaway (02:14):
Okay, Jeff, so let’s start with, I know you work a different type than a lot of our clients. You run a huge team, right?

Jeff Cohn (02:22):
Yeah, we were the number one team at Berkshire in 2018, receiving that award in 2019. My team went from 70 to over 700 sides in six years. And so I worked as an individual agent from 2006 to 2011, launched a team in 2011 and then just two months ago, we announced that we were launching a brokerage. So what’s funny is we always ran our team like a brokerage, which most teams should. So when we transferred into a brokerage model, our team stayed with us. We even had teams within our team when we were a team. So it wasn’t hard to become a brokerage model. And we’ve already tripled in size in 60 days.

Ren Jones (02:59):
And now you’re Keller Williams.

Jeff Cohn (03:01):
We are now Keller Williams, KW Elite in Omaha with the desire of expanding into a hundred locations across a myriad of businesses. So I’m now an owner of a mortgage company, title company, insurance company, digital marketing company.

Ren Jones (03:14):
So you had to realign your prayer mat to bow towards Austin, Texas, is that right?

Jeff Cohn (03:20):
Right. I don’t bow to anybody, Ren. I only bow to my wife and my clients.

Carley Hathaway (03:25):
So you built this giant team, I’m guessing your team is heavily into prospecting.

Jeff Cohn (03:34):
Yeah, we were built on prospecting. So we launched our CRM in 2011 with BoomTown. Prior to that, analytically, I tracked everything in Excel spreadsheets and I learned quickly that with the right analytics you can make really smart decisions. And what I recommend to anyone listening today is to know your numbers. I actually have a slide I’d love to share. I don’t know if this is the best time to share it. Essentially, our goal with each agent that joins our organization is to help them define their dream life. And they do that by creating what we call our vision boards. And it’s answering the why question, what kind of life do you want? So if someone can actually look themselves in a mirror and ask themselves what do they want to accomplish, we can then help formulate how much money they’d need to generate to live that life. It’s not my job to define their dream, it’s theirs. It is my job to figure out how much money to make and more importantly, what the key performance indicators are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly to get them there.

Carley Hathaway (04:22):
I love that. That’s so important because it’s too easy as an agent to just float around and not figure out what your goals are because the level of money we can make is so high and you have to realize it.

Ren Jones (04:36):
That mindset piece, we got to know what we’re doing. Why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Jeff Cohn (04:41):
There you go. So here’s the slide I wanted to share with you guys and what we report every week in a group setting in front of every agent, everyone has to stand up and report their call goal. But again, that call goal is based on their income goal. And so we’ve broken the numbers down in the bottom right corner. And so we know over tracking numbers nine years, it takes five call attempts to get a contact and it takes 10 contacts to get one actual appointment. That’s where you’re meeting in person to either show a house or do a buyer presentation or a listing presentation. And it takes three appointments to get one sale. And in our market, one sale ends up being about $3,300. So if an agent comes in and says they want to make six figure when we know it’s going to take them 36 unit sales to make a $100,000 a year. Well we also know it takes about 150 calls based on those numbers there to have one closing.

(05:29):
So all we do is take 150 calls multiplied by the 36 unit sales so that they can make that 100 grand. And we divide that number 5,400 by 52 weeks and that tells us how many calls they need to make each week. So they’ll stand up and let’s say they want to make a 100 grand a year, they’ll say, my call goal is a hundred, it’s actually 103.7. And then they actually made x amount of call attempts. So they might say 125. And then they had X amount of connects and appointments they went on, and executed contracts, floaters or contracts they’re negotiating, how many new listings they took and then how many total hours it took them prospecting.

(06:02):
And we know on a dialer like what you guys provide, and we also have used other dialers in the past, you can make about 100 dials an hour with a good dialing system. So to make a six figure income in Omaha, Nebraska, you only have to make an hour of phone calls a week. And I don’t know how long you guys sleep, but if you sleep six hours a night, that’s around 125 hours a week that you’re awake. And so if an agent says they don’t have time to prospect, it’s only an hour to make 100 dials. Anybody can be successful with outbound prospecting.

Carley Hathaway (06:32):
What I love about this model is that it’s so tangible and it’s not like, “Oh, I’m supposed to make 27 contacts a day,” but you see the breakdown of why. And you’re on contact 19, it’s like I will stay on the phone to get there because I can see exactly why.

Ren Jones (06:47):
It’s very predictable and duplicatable. And then, of course, if for some reason there’s a slight adjustment you have to make four or five months in you, you can make that. In other words, if somebody says, “I want to make a $100,000 and they make 30,000, it’s because they’re not doing what you’ve lined up here. They’re not modeling the number of attempts to contact contacts, contacts to appointments, appointments to listings taken, listings taken to listings sold, listings sold to close sales. They’re not doing that. If they were doing that, they could say, I want to make a $100,000 and they would make a $100,000.

Jeff Cohn (07:19):
There you go. So the number one thing when we’re walking them through this accountability meeting, everyone reports their call goal and then if they don’t hit the call… Well, everyone always asks, “Well what do you do if they don’t hit their call goal?” Because these are all subcontractors, what can I do? I remind them what they’re losing out on by asking them one simple question, “Which item would you like to take off your vision board?”

Carley Hathaway (07:41):
Wooh, that’s good.

Ren Jones (07:42):
I love that.

Carley Hathaway (07:42):
Bullets, yeah,

Ren Jones (07:42):
I love that.

Jeff Cohn (07:46):
So it’s not about how much money are you now not going to make, it’s “Hey, what lifestyle are you now not going to live?” And you’ve just broken a promise to your significant other, to your family and all the dreams you have have now been shattered because you chose not to make your outbound prospecting calls. It’s nobody else’s fault.

Ren Jones (08:01):
So you take the Tesla off but you’re allowed to put a Volkswagen back on, a little put Hyundai back on there?

Jeff Cohn (08:07):
Used Hyundai is going on the board, exactly. So here’s the other thing I’d love to share with you guys is our dashboards that track all of this. It’s one thing to talk about it every week, but then to not think about it, people aren’t focusing on it. So I’m going to share my screen again if it’s okay. I’m going to share with you guys an example-

Carley Hathaway (08:25):
And all your agents that are calling can see this.

Ren Jones (08:28):
I saw an island there, is that on your dream board? Is that your island?

Jeff Cohn (08:33):
Oh, did you see it?

Ren Jones (08:34):
Is that on your dream board? Are you buying an island?

Jeff Cohn (08:37):
Don’t worry about that. Maybe I already did. I actually literally just got back from Kauai last night. I’ve been there for two months. We’re working for,

Ren Jones (08:43):
Oh Kauai, where do you stay in Kauai?

Jeff Cohn (08:46):
We’re in Poipu Estates. We rent a house.

Ren Jones (08:49):
Oh, you’re down in the south, on the sunny side. There you go.

Jeff Cohn (08:51):
You know Kauai. That’s right.

Ren Jones (08:53):
Yeah, I know it very well.

Jeff Cohn (08:55):
So in our new office we have about 20 flat screens. About six of them will track all of our leaderboards. We’re currently in a temp space and building out a 10,000 square foot hybrid office of the future. We provide the consumer the option of a one-stop shop solution where you have all your ancillaries under one roof. And you also give them the ability to meet with agents and all the ancillary businesses like mortgage title insurance, physically or virtually. So every conference room’s a smart conference room, you can do everything virtual, but my focus was, when agents are physically there, I wanted a place where they could keep all their stats, to track everything, micros and macros. So an individual agents’ numbers, a teams’ numbers and the entire brokerage’s numbers. We know everything from call to contact contact to close, appointment. You can even track if you got your Pilates workout in today, if you did your meditation, if you ate clean, if you drank your 120 ounces of water, everything is trackable and gamified. So you can apply credits-

Carley Hathaway (09:46):
So you can see everyone else’s stats?

Jeff Cohn (09:48):
Exactly. Which is very motivating. So here’s the first board here, was an example of your call to contact ratios and people’s call goals and how far they fell off from their goals. And then this board here just shows, it rolls up the brokerage’s total volume, its pending and its closed and how much GCI is coming off of it. And then here’s an example of a leader board for closed units. But you track everything. We track… There’s boards just like this for call attempts, for contacts, for appointments realized, for listing presentations, for listings signed. There’s like 20 different boards once you go through all them. So if anyone wants more info, I just-

Carley Hathaway (10:20):
And what we know about highly successful real estate agents is that they are extremely competitive with each other.

Jeff Cohn (10:26):
Like we were talking about before we jumped on, agents are more motivated to be on the top of that board than they are to make commission checks.

Carley Hathaway (10:34):
100%.

Ren Jones (10:35):
One of the nice things about our system is we have that leader board for, and for those of you that have a team and you’re using VULCAN7, if you’re not using the leaderboard to track and create gamification for your team members, take definitely advantage of that. We’ll turn that on for you and your team is going to go, “Doggone, Sally’s ahead of me,” and they’ll catch up.

Carley Hathaway (10:54):
You better believe if someone’s a little ahead of me, I’m going to make 20, 30 more contacts just to beat them.

Ren Jones (11:02):
There you go.

Jeff Cohn (11:03):
Well, one of the things we found from a cultural standpoint is we help motivate people to learn to lose and to learn to fail and to learn to get no’s. Because I know it takes five calls to get a contact. So you need to fail four times to get a contact and it takes 10 contacts to get an appointment. You need to fail nine times to get an appointment and it takes three appointments to get a sale. Meaning you need to fail two out of three of those times. And so instead of just celebrating the sale by giving them a commission check, you need to celebrate the failures. That’s more important to me, to help people get comfortable, failing.

Carley Hathaway (11:33):
I agree with you. When I was first prospecting more regularly, I would count my no’s and try to get as many no’s as I could. And that was the exciting part for me because then I knew I was that much closer to a yes.

Jeff Cohn (11:45):
Analytically, you know. So it’s like, “Okay, they said no. Cool.” Move on to the next one, move on to the next one. And when it comes to calling expireds, withdrawns, for sale by owner leads, you can’t take it personally that they said, no. It is your fault because your dialogue wasn’t strong enough, but don’t take it personally. You don’t have to win every single person. Just win one a day. If you can get one new listing every day, five days a week, 20 weeks out of the month, I think you’re going to be doing pretty well.

Ren Jones (12:05):
And here’s the thing, and the safety is in the volume. So if you set seven, eight, nine listing appointments for the week, which people can do, and you go on three or four or five, which you can do, and you take two or three. If somebody rejects you, you don’t care ’cause you’ve got so much stuff going on.

Carley Hathaway (12:24):
And it’s exciting ’cause you’re like, “Yes, I got another rejection. I’m this much closer to getting a listing.”

Ren Jones (12:28):
Who cares?

Jeff Cohn (12:30):
One of the things, I’ll mention those numbers I shared with you guys, we’ve generated over 101,000 internet leads in the last nine years. It took about a million views on our site, a million paid ads. So that’s a million dollars spend. Back to the clarity mindset, when it comes to Google paid ads, we have the same clarity we have with what the call attempts and follow up needs to be from a lead conversion standpoint. So I know it’s a dollar for a click and $10 for a lead, and I closed my leads, my internet leads at 2%. You can do a lot better with expired and FSBO leads than 2%. And so it takes way less energy.

(13:01):
So if someone’s listening and they’re “I don’t want to be a glorified telemarketer,” I have a newsflash for you. 80% of any successful agent’s time that’s in production, needs to be spent on the phone’s prospecting, you’re building opportunities, you’re putting out your dominoes. 20% is the servicing. So people think that, “Oh, I don’t prospect. I just go on appointments.” Okay, then you’re just an order taker. You’re never going to grow if that’s all you do.

Ren Jones (13:24):
And one day if you just sit there and show property all day long, one day you’re going to look out in the driveway, then somebody painted your car yellow and put a little light on top.

Jeff Cohn (13:33):
Well that’s the direction it’s going. And you talked about tech and us looking to the future. So my big focus is helping agents protect their commissions, keeping the agent at the center of the transaction as a fiduciary and using technology to help support the transaction. I was talking beforehand, I actually built a virtual reality room at my house. That’s where I am right now. These are $2,000 HTC VIVE headsets. They allow people to actually look at homes with virtual reality, but not the way everyone expects where you just look around in a three-dimensional space, you can literally walk the house. So I have this huge 100 x 100 square foot room-

Carley Hathaway (14:03):
Like Open Door?

Jeff Cohn (14:03):
Yeah, they built it that way.

Ren Jones (14:04):
Is this really in the new stages or do you have people coming in and…

Jeff Cohn (14:10):
Oh no, this is actually happening,

Ren Jones (14:12):
They’re looking at property with you now.

Jeff Cohn (14:14):
So right now we create, I own another company called VRLY, getvrly.com V-R-L-Y stands for virtual reality. We create 3D Matterports, drone fly-throughs, all sorts of stuff, all over the country. And so one of the things we saw in 2017, was that every buyer demanded a virtual option. And so no matter what price point, every house we listed, it got a flyover video with a drone, fly through with a gimbal, it receives a Matterport technology, full HD pictures, and we build it all out in a branded landing page.

(14:43):
Going forward, thinking what’s the future look like? People want to be able to have that same experience in 6 Degrees of Freedom where they can physically walk a house. Right now, there’s not a technological solution for homes that already exist without spending crazy money. But we do build that option for homes that haven’t been built yet using a CAD blueprint. So the exact same experience someone might have in Matterport or looking at an existing home, we can create that experience virtually and allow someone to actually walk the room. So before you ever build a house, before you ever dig the ground, you can actually walk the new house that you’re going to build.

Carley Hathaway (15:12):
How amazing is that?

(15:13):
And that is way of the future. If I can walk through the house and see everything and then think about agents that aren’t doing that anymore. They just walk into a listing and presentation and be like, “I hold Open Houses.”

Jeff Cohn (15:24):
So listen, when I walk in, so first off, these goggles are… Right now, you don’t have to spend this much money. You can get Oculus Quest goggles for $400 that do 6 Degrees of Freedom. But in the residential real estate application, we go on listing presentations with Oculus Go goggles. You can get them on Amazon for $150 and we load up in that Oculus Go presentation, an actual virtual experience for a seller. So we don’t just say, “This is what we’re going to do.” We pop the goggles on someone’s head that’s never worn virtual goggles before. And right now more than ever with what’s going on with Covid 19, we can say, “Hey, buyers don’t even have to physically come to your house and this is the experience they’re going to have.” Put the goggles on the client and they look around and they go, “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Carley Hathaway (16:03):
You tell me someone’s not going to sign a listing contract when you bring that in?

Ren Jones (16:07):
So Jeff, so maybe this is a plug for something you’re doing or maybe it’s not, but it is-

Jeff Cohn (16:13):
Go ahead.

Ren Jones (16:14):
So if somebody is watching this, they’re running a big successful team, they’re doing 180 transactions or more a year, and they’re looking for a little component like you’re talking about, do you market this through that site of VRLY?

Jeff Cohn (16:26):
Yep, get VRLY, V-R-L-Y, and this wasn’t planned by the way.

Ren Jones (16:33):
I know one plan, why don’t we throw it out there?

Jeff Cohn (16:35):
You can sign up to have this technology just for your office or you can become a service provider where you sell it to everyone in your MLS area. And so you just go to get getvrly.com G-E-T-V-R-L-Y.

Ren Jones (16:47):
And we only charge 10% for every sale.

Jeff Cohn (16:50):
There you go. We’ll figure something out, Ren, next time, we’re good.

Carley Hathaway (16:52):
Five each. Five each. Don’t leave me out.

Ren Jones (16:55):
There are people that they’ve already hit success. They prospect, they take lots of listings, they’ve got a team going and maybe a little piece like this would be a nice add-on right now.

Jeff Cohn (17:04):
And I just shared the link to when an example of what VRLY does, we use it as a verb. Did you get a VRLY? I shared a link to one of my $2 million listings that I have in Omaha. That solution that I just put in the chat, which anyone that wants to look, we can put in the show notes. It costs $250.

Ren Jones (17:21):
Well, maybe you should sell that house to Warren. He’s been in the same place for a long time. He needs to move.

Jeff Cohn (17:26):
He has, he does.

Carley Hathaway (17:27):
I think Warren and I feel a little upset at Jeff. I don’t know.

Ren Jones (17:30):
Yeah, he is.

Jeff Cohn (17:31):
Warren’s not upset with me.

Ren Jones (17:33):
He mourns for you.

Jeff Cohn (17:34):
I think Warren is going to do just fine.

Carley Hathaway (17:36):
I think so. I think he’ll be okay.

Jeff Cohn (17:39):
Yeah, he’ll be all right.

Carley Hathaway (17:41):
So let me ask you this. When you have an agent that’s only been a buyer’s agent and they’re going to come onto your team and they’re like, “I like working with buyers. I like, blah.” What is your motivation to change them from working a lot to working smart and working with sellers?

Jeff Cohn (17:56):
And I’m glad you brought that up, Carley. So when I got in the business, it was 2006 and I picked up the book Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller, MREA. In the book, it delineates roles. So a specialist that just shows houses, a specialist that just works with buyers, a specialist that just works with listings. The challenge with that is the limited mindset in that everyone should work listings. Listings take a half, as I’d argue, a third amount of time than a buyer takes. A buyer, you’re physically having to go with them. A listing, you go on an appointment, you put a sign in the yard, and really you can hire other people to do the rest at $15 an hour. That’s what I do. And so everyone should take listings. The problem is you can’t do a great job for a seller unless you’ve actually represented a handful of buyers. I’d say the minimum number would be about 20. So I let anyone that comes into our organization work both sides. But I recommend that they don’t take a listing on their own until they’ve done around 16 to 20 sides.

Carley Hathaway (18:45):
And then they start to transition.

Ren Jones (18:46):
The CEO should work at the loading dock for a day or two to get a feel for the whole business.

Jeff Cohn (18:51):
So there you go. Yeah, Undercover Boss, right Ren?

Ren Jones (18:54):
That’s it.

Carley Hathaway (18:54):
You got to go flip burgers.

Ren Jones (18:56):
That’s it. Because when you work buyers, you really learn the market and you develop some confidence so that when you go list property-

Jeff Cohn (19:07):
You have to hire buyer’s agent. If you don’t want to have to be in production, and I’m speaking from experience in 2014, I quit selling. I’m out of production 100%. And today I have over 100 agents that work with me and over 10 admin. And anyone listening can build this. I just did this in nine years. I launched the team in 2011, so there’s no reason someone else couldn’t do it. The reason people don’t do it is fear. And so they choose to continue to be a cog in the wheel, like you said, Ren, with a yellow car with a light on top instead of actually focusing on building their business. And I would even argue eventually, you shouldn’t go on listing presentations either. You should line up the appointments and send someone else out to go on the actual appointment and you should keep 75% of the commission or just give the agent a fee. Or sorry, just a little flat rate if they sell the property and you keep the rest.

Carley Hathaway (19:51):
But I like how you start on the most basic level, which is hire a buyer’s agent and then go from there because that is the most basic. We shouldn’t be representing buyers. We should only be taking listings and then grow from there, deciding how big you want a team or maybe you don’t. It’s up to you.

Jeff Cohn (20:07):
What I tell people is I actually recommend, do you mind if I share this slide? This is a really good one. I think your audience would enjoy this.

Ren Jones (20:12):
Sure.

Jeff Cohn (20:13):
So this is the slide of how an agent should spend their time in their first four years if they want to have the choice in year four to be out of production and run a CEO model.

(20:21):
Year number one, they’re going to spend 2/3 of their time working broker leads. And that could include your VULCAN7, Outbound Lead Gen, and a third of their time doing cold leads and sphere of influence. Year two, about 1/3 of their business should come from each category. Year three, 2/3 should come from their sphere of influence, 1/3 from the other categories. Year four, they should have the option. And so many people say, but I love the appointments and I love negotiating.

(20:44):
And I’m like, “No you don’t. You just love it because you have to do it. You’re lying to yourself.” Most people don’t love it. Who loves having to go meet with a client or answer phone calls and text messages if they didn’t have to? So I train people to be in a position to make the choice to not do it. But if they do actually love it, then cool. So I go on appointments, the house I put on my VRLY that I shared with you, that’s my listing. But I don’t service it. I spend one hour and on average I make $8,000 an hour and I keep 75% of the commission. I give the other 25 to an agent that wants to take a teed up, already signed listing agreement, and I just turn it over to them to service it from listed to closed. So I would want your audience to hear that and say, “Okay, well I like prospecting.” Cool, then keep doing it. But don’t go out and service it. Give the leads off to someone else and keep a majority of the credit.

Ren Jones (21:27):
I mean all the money is in moving your lips and setting appointments and going on the appointment, signing a contract, going to the next one. And then now, and a lot of people say, “Well, I don’t want to delegate because nobody can do it as well as I can.” I don’t think anybody would say, “Have people on your team that are going to do a lesser job.” You have to have a rockstar group that you trust.

Jeff Cohn (21:51):
Well, and I’ve always even said if a person did 1/3 of what I could do, I just need to have three of those people.

Ren Jones (21:58):
There is that.

Jeff Cohn (21:59):
The reason that people don’t create leverage in their business is because they’re too lazy to look for leverage.

Ren Jones (22:05):
Well, I think a lot of them just unconsciously think that “Nobody’s going to do it as well as I can.”

Jeff Cohn (22:11):
They don’t need to do it as well as you.

Ren Jones (22:13):
They have to get over it. ‘Cause nobody wants, and I understand, nobody wants to have a mediocre reputation, but if you look hard enough, you can find people that are as dedicated, if not more. And when you get down to it, you can’t be in two places at once. You’ll actually do a better job if you delegate than somebody who’s over here handling this piece.

Jeff Cohn (22:36):
I’ve always said, Ren and Carly, that true leaders serve their followers by teaching them to be just like them. But it’s not just teaching and training, it’s also holding them accountable to be just like them and helping provide leads to them if they don’t know how to create leads. So any team that wants to grow, if they’re looking to scale, some people say, “Oh, I’m good at 10 deals a year.” Congratulations. I never was good with that. I’m not good with 800 deals a year. So if you’re a person that wants to grow, you have to have a strong training arm, coaching arm, accountability arm and lead gen arm, all the systems and strategies and technologies to help you be successful. And that’s why I’m a VULCAN7 client.

Ren Jones (23:14):
Love it. So if you look in the camera Jeff, and you look at the folks out there right now, they’re doing two buyer sales and they’re taking one listing ’cause they met a buyer that needs to list or something. If they wanted to turn this around, what are two or three little simple steps so that they turn this around?

Jeff Cohn (23:31):
If you’re wanting to pivot-

Ren Jones (23:32):
Every week take a listing, every week, every week.

Jeff Cohn (23:34):
Yeah, it’s easy. Stop working with buyers.

Ren Jones (23:39):
There you go.

Jeff Cohn (23:40):
Honestly, that’s the answer. So here’s the solution because you’re scared, right? It’s fear of loss. So how much commission dollar do I lose? You need to figure out what those leads cost you, but more than just the cost of the actual lead acquisition, what does the time cost you? Because it’s not just return on investment, it’s return on time, which I’ve tracked. The average buyer takes me 20 hours, the average seller takes me 10 hours. So if you can simply list twice as many homes, you’re going to make way more money for your time. You could make four times as much income if you quit working buyers, but you don’t have to lose the income. Just have a buyer’s agent and pay them a 100 bucks, 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks, whatever you want to do per sale. Or keep 75% and pay them a 25% referral fee.

Ren Jones (24:19):
And that’s another weird thing. And they’re like, “Well, I worked this buyer because I sold their $800,000 house and they’re buying a 1.4 and I’m not going to let my buyer agent have it. Yes you can. You don’t do it 50-50, but you’re only going to be able to show them three houses and they’ll pick out one. Just say, “Tell you what, I’ll give you six grand or I’ll give you 20% or I’ll give you 25%.”

Jeff Cohn (24:45):
People will do that all day long. Everyone thinks it needs to be a 50-50 split. It does no.

Ren Jones (24:50):
So you’re telling me for 1.4 million, you won’t do it for five grand or six grand.

Jeff Cohn (24:55):
Here’s the other limiting belief is people say, “Well Ren, if you were wanting to buy in Omaha, Ren wants Jeff Cohn.” And the truth is, Ren does not want Jeff Cohn. Ren wants the best systems and processes and technology and the strongest negotiator. I created that. So I’m going to plug Ren into what KW Elite represents. Ren’s going to get the Jeff Cohn experience but not have to deal with the Jeff Cohn personality. He’s going to get this really nice agent that’s going to treat him really well and answer all his questions and make him feel special and tell him he still looks good. He’s not going to get somebody that’s going to be pushing back like most high Ds are. So I would recommend you look for creating a vehicle where you can leverage those types of positions.

Ren Jones (25:32):
I love it. This is some powerful information. People are going to be excited to watch this. They should watch it over and over again. There are a lot of good ideas here. And going back to your earlier piece, know your why. Know why you want to do this. Get your dream board, look at it every day. And if you don’t make the contacts, then you have to take down the Tesla and put up the Volkswagen.

Jeff Cohn (25:53):
So my first 12 months, 2006 in November, I got my license, no idea what to do. I’d ask people, “What should I do?” They said, “The market’s getting worse. It’s a really bad time to get your real estate license.” I had an undergrad degree in business. My grandma cried when I told her I got my real estate license. 2007, my goal was to make more than what I was offered in a corporate job. I was offered around 50 grand a year with benefits, working eight to five, and reporting to someone else. So I thought, man, if I can make more than 50, I’ll be a success. I lived in a one bedroom apartment. My first year in 2007, all I did was called expired. That’s all I spent my time doing. I got on a dialer and got as many no’s as possible to get some yeses.

(26:32):
And then at 23, I went on appointments. I lived in an apartment and would go list houses. And they’d picked me because I had no other listings and they were going to get all my time, all my energy, all my passion. And they chose me because they knew me, liked me and trusted me after the appointment. But I want to share with anyone listening, if you’re wondering, does expireds really work? Calling FSBOs, does that really work? Do withdrawns really work? They’re just people who were failed by the first agent that attempted to sell their property. It works.

(26:57):
But what the problem is, is most agents aren’t willing to work. So it takes work to get these leads. They’re not just going to land in your on your lap. You’ve got to actually go out there and systematically call and text and email and instant message, send them mailers, door knock and create a whole strategy around it and people will come. You just have to be willing to put in the time and energy.

Ren Jones (27:16):
The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Jeff Cohn (27:19):
My grandpa always said that. I love that.

Ren Jones (27:21):
I’ll tell you, so folks, this has been great Jeff. And folks, if you’re watching on VULCAN7 and you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group that simulcast this show, they are at facebook.com/group/gotobjection. And if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with VULCAN7, go to VULCAN7.com/leadgen for a special price. And finally, folks, Jeff has got all the latest stuff, that he has a secret he didn’t share, and that is when he finishes up his day and he’s ready to just celebrate, he goes to the freezer and gets delicious Graeters Mint Chocolate Chip. This is the one for listing property. The other flavors like Rocky Road are for working with buyers. So get the Graeters Mint Chocolate Chip. Go to graeters.com to find a store near you where you can buy this wonderful stuff that will make you a powerhouse, like the number one. Well, you were number one at Berkshire Hathaway. Are you going to be number one at KW or are you and Lance Logan going to duke it out or what?

Jeff Cohn (28:27):
Lance is a good friend. I’m always going to be number one, even if the numbers don’t show it.

Carley Hathaway (28:30):
Love it

Ren Jones (28:33):
It’ll be fun to see how that goes.

Carley Hathaway (28:35):
Yes.

Ren Jones (28:35):
Absolutely, yes.

Carley Hathaway (28:37):
We got to definitely… We want to check back in with you in a few months and do this again.

Jeff Cohn (28:40):
Yeah, I would love the opportunity.

Ren Jones (28:42):
We’ll see you guys next week.

Jeff Cohn (28:43):
And I would invite anyone to follow me on my Instagram page @jeffmcohn. Thank you.

Ren Jones (28:49):
See everybody next week when we have another powerful, exciting guest. I don’t know how we top this one.

Carley Hathaway (28:55):
I know. Bye.

Ren Jones (28:56):
Thanks again, Jeff.

Jeff Cohn (28:58):
Thank you.