How Tim Burgess went from $23,000 a year to about $390,000 by building a system

Tim Burgess00:00

I jump into real estate. My very first month in this business, knowing nothing about it, I listed 17 houses. I sold 92 homes my first year, and I almost quit. There was no system at all. Kind of flying by the seat of my pants, calling for sale by owners, expireds, and doing every day what needs to be done.

00:15So then we developed a system, and over the next 14 years, I averaged about 390 grand a year working less than 40 hours a week.

Loida Velasquez00:26

What’s going on everyone? Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Vulcan7 Podcast, where we bring you some of the best in the industry to share with you their tips and strategies on what you need to be doing to succeed in this business. With that being said, if you haven’t caught up on the previous episodes, make sure that you watch them on YouTube or you listen to them on your favorite streaming platforms.

00:47Now with that being said, for today’s episode we have an amazing guest. He has been a guest previously on the podcast and we’re gonna be breaking down the three pillars that you need to master in order to succeed at a high level in this business. So with that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and bring him on.

01:04Tim Burgess. Welcome Tim.

Tim Burgess01:07

Oh, thank you so much for letting me be here.

Loida Velasquez01:09

Absolutely. So obviously we have had you previously on the podcast. But if this is the first time that someone’s watching you, go ahead and give them a little bit about your background and maybe how you even got

01:21into real estate.

Tim Burgess01:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the whole sales world, I answered an ad in the newspaper looking for a job. That was about three and a half years prior to jumping into real estate, but I ran into a very, very wealthy person and he mentored me on success principles. Not necessarily real estate, but on success.

01:38Get your mind right. First thing he said is, “You’ve gotta get your mind right.” So three and a half years later, after hanging out with mega millionaires, I jump into real estate. My very first month in this business, knowing nothing about it, I listed 17 houses. I sold 92 homes my first year and I almost quit.

01:55I did. I hated the business because it sucked all my time. So I almost quit the business, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t have a system. There was no system at all. Kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Calling for sale by owners, expireds. Doing every day what needs to be done.

02:10You call, you talk to people who have a need for your service, and almost quit the business because of no system. So then we developed a system and over the next 14 years I averaged about 390 grand a year working less than 40 hours a week.

Loida Velasquez02:23

That’s amazing. So something that I wanna ask, and I’ve been asking a lot recently to my guests, is what did you do prior to real estate?

02:30Did you have a different career? Just so that we can get to know you a little bit.

Tim Burgess02:35

Yeah, that’s it, I drove a truck over the road. I was in the network marketing business. I think everybody’s probably tried that at one time or another, and I bombed so bad in that one. And I held…

02:47You know, I quit school in the eighth grade and I wandered around for 16 years before I met this really wealthy guy. So I had one job for less than a full shift. I actually quit. So I was never really cut out for that job thing. But when I ran into this very wealthy man, and I mean he was very wealthy, over 150 million in net worth, he just taught me some really cool things about building your own life, not somebody else’s, which is what all these real estate agents are doing.

03:13You’re building your life. And he talked about three things that I’d have to get right. And in real estate the first thing I got right was my mindset. Obviously I had to have the right mindset or I’d have never sold 92 houses.

03:26And then the next thing was the skill development.

03:30Well, I didn’t have any skills per se when it came to real estate, being a real estate agent. I passed the test, but let’s be honest. You pass the test, that just means you have a license. It doesn’t mean you know what to do with it.

03:44And let’s be brutally honest here for a minute.

03:46But I had a skill that he helped me develop, and that skill was called effective communication. So I knew how to connect with people to create like and trust, so I didn’t have any problem getting people to sign a contract and listing their house with me. But then the system part that kicked in after that first and second and third year, that’s what really made real estate a lot of fun, and you could earn a lot of money and still have time for your family.

Loida Velasquez04:10

Exactly, yeah. And I love that we’re gonna be breaking down those three. And first, let’s begin with mindset, because whether someone is newer in this business or they have been in this business for a while, I’m sure you see it all the time in your coaching business, where agents kind of get to a point where they either wanna give up, but they wanna push through to the next level.

04:28So let’s break down mindset and just kind of like how does someone get out of that funk that maybe they’re going through?

Tim Burgess04:35

Yeah, and that’s the hard part, especially for the agent who’s been in a while. Say you got a five or seven-year agent, and they’ve been in that struggle, the daily grind, and they think they need to make the 400, 500 phone calls every day,

04:47and they’re power dialing stuff and all this stuff, and it’s really kind of like beating your head on the wall and throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks.

04:54I never operated like that. My mindset was completely different, that I expect for sale by owners and expireds to pick up the phone.

05:02I expect them to have a congenial conversation with me. I expect them to give me an appointment after I make the connection, and I expect them to sign a contract. Now, if you talk to most agents or most people in the whole world of sales, do they have that solid expectation that that’s gonna happen? No, they don’t.

Tim Burgess05:20

They don’t have it. So I mean, we’ve seen, and we’re on social media, we’ve seen 300 phone calls for one lead or two leads. The other, last Tuesday, and I call people still. I jump on their webinar. I call people live so people can see what I’m doing. So it’s real stuff. I made four phone calls, talked to three people, scheduled one appointment.

05:40I didn’t make 280 phone calls or 300 phone calls or anything like that. I didn’t have to, and my mission every time I’m on the phone is I’m gonna schedule one appointment, and ultimately, we did that. But that’s a mindset first and foremost, and then I know people say, “Yeah, but you had to take the action, Tim.

05:59You had to take the action. You had to take the action.” Well, of course, intelligent action comes into play. You can’t sit around and do this. “Mindset, I got the right mindset. Ooh. Do I have a listing yet?”

06:11That doesn’t work. So the intelligent action comes into play, but make sure, if we don’t have the right mindset, the action won’t be very intelligent.

06:21Because everybody takes action every day, right? Everybody takes action. But is it leading them to the results they’re looking for, or is it making it so they’re really active but they’re not really productive? So the first thing I did was the expectation in the mindset. The expectation. And not the expectation of what I expect from the for sale by owner, expired, canceled, withdrawn, or whoever I may be prospecting.

06:45The expectation of myself. What am I going to do each and every day? What am I committed to? Not just a goal. Everybody, I mean, we’re toward the end of January, right? People set a goal in December that they were gonna lose weight and go to the gym, and by now the gym parking lots are all empty again.

07:00That’s what a goal gets us. Let’s talk about a real commitment to your business, a real commitment to your life, a real commitment to your future, ’cause that’s a whole different mindset than just a commitment to my business for this day. So by getting my mindset wrapped right and proper around that, and then another big thing with the mindset was making sure the client’s at the top of the pyramid.

07:25See, every person in real estate owns their own company. Every company is shaped like a pyramid. You have less people at the top than you have at the bottom of any company anywhere. It’s just the way it works. So some people get the mindset that I’m at the top of my own company. I’m at the top. I’m above the bottom.

07:39I’m at the top, man. And that’s the wrong mindset. I’ll just tell you straight away, it’s the wrong mindset. I had that mindset in network marketing, and I was chasing the money all over the place and consequently didn’t do very well. When I got into real estate, I made sure that the proper person is at the top of the pyramid, and that’s called our client.

07:57See, our job every day is to help that client get an outcome, true or false?

Tim Burgess08:02

Yeah. So if they don’t get an outcome, is there any income? No. So their outcome is the most important part, so the client’s at the top of the pyramid. Right underneath that is the company. See, I don’t know anybody who wants to hang their license under the umbrella of a company who has a bad reputation or a bad image in the marketplace.

08:24Well, who is it up to, to take care of the company? That’s up to each one of us, isn’t it? That’s up to all of us to take care of the company and make sure the company has a positive image in the marketplace. So client comes first, company comes second, team comes third. And a brand-new agent will go, “What do you mean team, Tim?

08:40I don’t have a team.” Yes, you do. My bet is you’re not gonna write your own mortgages, you’re not gonna do your own title work, you’re not gonna do any of that, so these people are all part of your team. So now when you become a productive member of the team who’s growing from within, you build a stronger team, don’t you?

08:55‘Cause you’re a part of the team. So client first, company second, team third, self fourth. So self is at the bottom of the pyramid. Now, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. “I didn’t start my own company to be at the bottom of somebody else’s pyramid.” That’s the wrong mindset. See, the bottom is the most important part.

09:15I don’t care if you’re a CEO, CFO, president, vice president, grand poobah, major shareholder, doesn’t matter. If everybody puts themselves at the bottom, which is where the foundation is,

09:27and we grow from within, we build a stronger foundation. Well, if we build a stronger foundation because we’re growing from within, we also build a stronger team because I’m part of the team, aren’t I?

09:38So if I build a stronger team and I’ve got a stronger foundation, doesn’t that mean I have a stronger company? And if I have a stronger company with a better image in the marketplace, then I get to satisfy more clients and everybody gets to share an increased profitability. I had that so backwards in my own mind that I repelled more business than I actually got in my entire network marketing career.

10:01I repelled business because I was at the top, which means everybody else had to be under me. That’s the wrong mindset for any business type. Our clients are at the top. We just happen to be blessed, and I look at it that way, to serve that client and help them get the outcome they’re looking for.

10:17Because if I help them get the outcome, the income is automatic.

Loida Velasquez10:22

Exactly. Yes. I love everything that you’re saying, even with starting with the foundation. And let’s say we have an agent that’s listening, maybe they were previously a part of a team, but now they’re going solo, and they’re kind of struggling

10:34holding themselves accountable. What can they work on? And also, how can your coaching come into play? And is that something that you also offer your clients?

Tim Burgess10:43

Absolutely. The first thing I would do is build a solid daily method of operation. We call it a DMOP, and that’s actually playbook number three.

10:50We’ve got 12 playbooks, video tutorials. The playbooks are just solid as a rock. Just follow the playbooks and you’ll earn at least 100 grand. That’s guaranteed in our system. But with a solid daily method of operation and some discipline. Now, I’m not talking about the discipline that you received in fourth grade when you got in trouble and you went home and got your butt beat.

11:11That’s a different mindset. Get yourself out of that. When I’m talking about this discipline, it’s the simple discipline to give ourselves a command and then stick to it. So when your daily method of operation says you should be prospecting at 9:30 AM, pick up the phone, remove the distraction, stop making excuses and being whiny.

11:30Just do it. That’s how… I mean, it’s a little brutal. Maybe that’s a little bit too much in somebody’s face for that, I apologize, but that’s how you do it.

11:41We’re distracted by the phone and by this, and we get this little dopamine rush when it goes ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and the notification

11:48goes off because I’m important. Somebody’s calling me and somebody needs me. I’m important. No, you’re not that important, dude. Or dudette. No, no, you’re not. It just, your notification went off because you got 1,400 of them turned on. So turn them all off, step into this session with some discipline.

12:08Remove the distractions, and just prospect for 30 or 40 minutes. That’s it. And then take a break. And you’ll find you’ll produce better results in less time than you’ve probably ever produced if you’ll follow that simple little procedure right there. Think about how much more we would produce if we didn’t allow distractions to get in our way. So that’s how a new, or an agent coming off of a team,

12:35or even a new agent, you come out of the gates creating really good habits. Really good habits. And one of those is focus, which is something we’re sorely missing in our society today. Don’t we?

Loida Velasquez12:52

We are. Do you think that a lot of agents overthink everything?

Tim Burgess12:58

Absolutely. Absolutely. I see it all the time. All the time.

13:03They’re analyzing what? For what? I sold 92 not knowing what I was doing. I didn’t fill out one contract properly when I listed 17 houses. The first month, 17 for sale by owner houses. It was during the winter, it was the month of December. We were just crazy calling for sale by owners. We called them all.

13:24We called expireds. We called everybody who had a need for our service. Had a little girl at home, had a mortgage to pay, had stuff that, I mean, there was a reason behind, there was an emotional why behind it, and we took intelligent action. I stopped calling people who didn’t have a need for my service.

13:41I stopped doing anything if they didn’t have a need for my service, and during the business hours, I didn’t do it.

13:48It’s not hard, right? I didn’t allow myself to be distracted. That 10:00 AM water cooler thing with all the agents, no, no, no, no, no. Ain’t got time for that. Unless, oh, somebody wanna list the house.

14:00Somebody wanna talk about listing the house. Now, okay, now I got time for it.

14:04There’s just a little bit of control there, but to follow a solid daily method of operation is how an agent, excuse me, that’s breaking away from a team, or a new agent that’s just starting out and they’re scared,

14:15I remember it. I know it. You get your license and you’re looking at your license going, “Excuse my language, what the hell do I do with this thing?”

14:24Okay. Now, wait a minute. Let me shake it. Maybe it’ll be 100 grand. No, it’s not gonna work that way. Now that you have your license, now you get to go through the mindset, skill development, and then build a system.

14:37Without a system, think about it, what business succeeds without a system?

14:43I mean, think of your grocery store. It’s a good thing they have a system in place around here ’cause people are clearing the shelves these days. You end up with a couple inches of snow and boom. I heard West Texas, out in Fort Stockton, they got an eighth of an inch of snow.

14:58An eighth of an inch.

15:00It shut the entire area down. They didn’t know what to do. They don’t see snow. But the whole point, without a system in place, those shelves don’t get restocked. Do you, I mean, do you think somebody really walks through the store taking an inventory? “Okay.

15:16Hey, John, we’re running low on butter.” No, it doesn’t work that way. The system, because when they scan it to buy it, the system knows it needs to replenish that and get it back on the shelf.

15:31The system takes care of that. What part of a system can you allow in your real estate business that’ll make it easier?

Tim Burgess15:40

That’s why we put 12 playbooks together, because I almost quit this business. I sold 92 houses and I had never earned more than $23,000 ever in my life.

15:51And I think it was 260 grand was the GCI, was the total money brought in, and I was on some wacky 50/50 split at the time, which didn’t make much sense, wouldn’t make sense today.

16:02But anyway, that’s the way it was. I didn’t know any better. Whatever. I never earned 139 grand.

16:10No, I earned 23,000 bucks.

16:14I was having months that went way beyond that amount of money. And I still didn’t have a system. That’s why I almost quit.

16:23Because I didn’t know who my two little girls were.

16:26I didn’t have time to enjoy going to their dance recitals or their soccer practice or whatever else they were in. I didn’t have time. I remember listing a house on New Year’s Eve and another one on New Year’s Day. That’s stupid. I don’t need to do that. But we did that, which jumped us out, but then when we really put a system in place, I was listing more houses.

16:51I got smart. I went more high-end. Instead of calling the, I called the for sale by owners with the higher price tag first.

16:58So I started strategically doing things like that. So we started earning more money by selling less than 92 houses and getting a ton of time back in my life.

17:09I stopped working weekends. I know some people right there said, “Oh, I’m not listening to this guy anymore. You gotta give your weekends away.” No, you don’t.

Tim Burgess17:16

No, you don’t. Nobody called me on Friday night to show them houses on Saturday anymore. Why? Because I set the parameters of how I work with buyers.

17:26The sellers don’t want open houses anyway, and I didn’t wanna do them. Go talk to any seller out there and give them a choice, “Hey, do you really want an open house where we can let a bunch of people walk through your property? They may be qualified, they may not be qualified. We have no idea who they are, where they come from or anything else, but let’s just open your door to strangers.”

17:42Yes. Does that sound like a good idea? And the majority of them are gonna say, “No. Do we have to do that?” I said, “Absolutely not. It’s in your best interest if we don’t.” They thanked me. They didn’t criticize me. The sellers we worked with, they sang to me. They thought they had to have an open house.

18:01That’s how I got all my Sundays back. That’s how I got to go to soccer games and really spend time with my little girls. Aren’t so little today, but nonetheless, instead of the real estate business owning my life, that’s how I got to own a real estate business, is because we systemize, we put parameters,

18:18and this is how we operate.

18:21Just like any other business, isn’t it?

Loida Velasquez18:23

Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve talked about mindset, we’ve talked about systems. Let’s touch on skill development, because that’s also a big pillar when it comes to just succeeding. So go ahead, and where do we even begin with skills?

Tim Burgess18:37

Skill development, number one, there’s two. In the whole world of real estate, there’s one thing and one thing that’s gonna stand out for every person much more than anything else, and that’s your ability to effectively communicate. Now, when I say effective communication, people think, “Oh, I can talk to people.”

18:52That’s not what I’m talking about.

18:54I’m talking about learning to effectively communicate. So are we actively listening, not just to the words, but are we actively listening to their tonality, their body language, and the words, all three of them? Because if we’re not, we’re not catching what they’re really saying.

19:10So we have to go through active listening skills. The best way to get skilled there is to have really, really, really good role play, which is why we role play four days a week. We role play Monday through Thursday, every day, man. And so the agents that are enrolled with our system, they get not only those four role plays every week, they also get two success principle training calls, make sure they keep their mind right, and any Q&A they have around the system, and they have our cell numbers.

19:36They can call us anytime they want. So they get all the one-on-one training they want as well. So the skill development number one thing is the outbound phone call. You have to be able to connect with somebody, and the only reason this thing was ever created was to save time, and we can’t get time back, so let’s use our time wisely.

19:56So people say, “Well, I can drive around. I can do this, I can do that,” and I’m not saying you can’t, but by the time you drive to one house, I can call 20. True or false?

Loida Velasquez20:06

Exactly, yeah.

Tim Burgess20:07

Exactly. So the outbound phone call is the number one thing we should practice and get really good at. Number two is our follow-up phone call, and that’s where most all salespeople lose more money.

20:19They… and this is, I just read this. The average salesperson, and this is the average salesperson across the board in all of sales, so let’s go to real estate and say especially real estate. The average person leaves more money on the table than they actually earn because of poor follow-up systems.

20:38That’s insane. If you create a lead and they tell you it’s gonna be 30 days before they do anything, that’s one of the questions in our script. “Well, how long do you think you’ll be trying it on your own before you actually consider the services of a good quality professional real estate agent?”

20:52“I’m gonna do this on my own for at least 30 days,” or at least this or at least that. Then if they say 30 days, people wait two weeks to call them back. Excuse me, that’s stupid. You created a lead, then you need to talk to them four times in the next seven days. Talk to them four times, not hide behind your text message and your emails.

21:12Talk to them four times in the next seven days, and now you have to learn how to do that without being annoying and with creating a lot of value, and you have about 60 seconds to do that from a psychological perspective. If you go past the 60 to 90 second mark, you just became annoying. They’re gonna block your number.

21:30So we’ve gotta practice this and get good at it. So your outbound phone call, your follow-up phone call, and then your listing meeting and your listing presentation, get really good at them. That’s all I knew how to do, and I didn’t know how to do the contract ’cause all of them that I filled out the first couple months were wrong.

21:47There was not one of them that was complete, but what did I care? They were listed. And somebody just… “Yeah, but they weren’t valid listings.” They all closed. We’re good, man. You know why? ‘Cause the office admin caught the mistakes and then we got them fixed.

Tim Burgess22:01

No big deal. People panic.

22:03“Well, I gotta learn how to do this contract all the way before I do anything.” You spent three months learning a contract and you still haven’t listed anything and you’re broke. Let’s be brutally honest. The numbers, they don’t lie. 87% of agents don’t make it past the second year.

22:19I wonder why.

22:21Wrong mindset, wrong attitude. Not much skill development happening, not much practice, and where’s the system? Nonexistent. So your outbound phone call, your follow-up phone call, your listing meeting, your listing presentation, you get good at those four things. Get really good, and you can make a lot of money in real estate, and you don’t have to know anything else because I didn’t.

22:41I didn’t know anything else. Fill out a contract? They didn’t teach me that. My first broker didn’t teach it to me, so I’m out there cowboy styling. Yeah, says address. Well, shit, write the address in. That ain’t hard. But I missed a lot of those blocks that were important that needed to be filled out.

23:00I just didn’t fill anything out in them. Didn’t write N/A in them. Never forget it, probably two weeks into that first month in the business, my broker’s pulling his hair out. He’s got like four of my contracts, four of my listing agreements in front of him, and he’s going nuts on me, and he’s not being real kind about it either.

23:20Here I am, a new agent. I’ve just listed more houses than your brokerage has had in years.

Loida Velasquez23:25

My bad.

Tim Burgess23:26

And you’re yelling at me. Probably isn’t gonna work out real well. But I finally looked at him and said, “Send your secretary to get them fixed. I have a listing appointment. I’m leaving.”

23:39And I went and got another listing that didn’t have the contract filled out properly.

Loida Velasquez23:43

They

23:43were not ready for you, Tim.

Tim Burgess23:45

But I listed, here’s what I had right. The date was right, the address was right, the price was right, and everybody’s signature was on it.

23:53And the expiration date was on it. The rest, oh yeah, there’s a lot of other stuff you need. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t know how to fill out a contract, I’m just saying I didn’t.

24:02That’s all. So you might wanna learn that one too, but you can always go back and get an initial somewhere. Get the signature on the contract. Get their commitment to a six or 7%. Yes, six or 7%. Jose, a young kid we’re working with, he’s 19 years old. He just listed a for sale by owner property $185,000 less than what they were asking.

24:26185 grand less, at a full 7% commission. So please don’t try to tell me, “People won’t pay it. People won’t pay it.” Oh, yeah. “People won’t pay it.” Yes, they will pay it once you learn how to increase the value that you bring to the table. If you don’t know how to increase the value you bring to the table, you’re right, they might not wanna pay it.

Loida Velasquez24:45

Exactly. Yeah. So let’s say we have a lot of agents listening right now, and they’re like, “You know what? Everything that you’re saying, Tim, right now, it’s resonating with me. I feel like I need to sign up for your coaching. I need that accountability, that role play, that shift in my mindset.”

25:00Tell us more about the coaching program and just what agents can expect.

Tim Burgess25:05

Yeah. Well, in our mentoring series, you can expect, first of all, put your hard hat and your seatbelt on ’cause you’re going to grow. You don’t have a choice unless you just abandon us, because we call people. People fall off and don’t show up for a week or two, we call ’em, say, “Where you at?”

25:21So four times every week we role play with somebody, either myself or another gentleman who I believe is one of the best in the world at teaching you how to deliver a script so you don’t sound like a scripted telemarketing idiot. Let’s be honest, a lot of people sound like scripted telemarketing idiots, and everybody knows you’re scripted telemarketing and you don’t get much done.

25:41So four days each week, we make sure you know how to deliver the script, use the effective communication, learn to listen. We make sure that happens four days a week. And then twice a week we also have the success principle training with Q&A wrapped around the 12 playbooks. We have 12 playbooks, not one.

26:00There’s 12 playbooks. So there’s 12 playbooks with a video tutorial, and if you’ll just follow the playbooks and the video tutorial, you can expect to do 20, 25 deals. A young lady named Chelsea in South Carolina last year, just from that she did 19 deals, and she’s new. Just from the video tutorials and the playbooks without coming to the mentoring.

26:20Her time slot just didn’t allow her to show up for the mentoring. She called us a few times. We helped her out the best we could, of course, with the limited amount of time we spent together, but she did 19 deals. I think what the average agent did last year, 3.7, I think

26:34something like that.

26:35She did 19 just from that. Now, the people that have been around this business know that you’re looking at anywhere from 1,200 to 1,400, 1,500, sometimes $1,800 a month for this. That’s insane. We’re nowhere near that. We’re under $1,000 a month for 24 calls every month, plus one-on-one training, plus 30 years of study in a book called Think and Grow Rich.

27:01I’m celebrating next week 30 years that I’ve been in this book every day.

27:06So if you know this book at all, you know it’s all wrapped around success principles. And every successful business, whether they know it or not, they’ve adopted those principles. They either did it on purpose or they did it by accident.

27:18But some of the greats in like Shark Tank, Daymond John, a young lady named Barbara Corcoran might ring a bell for most real estate agents. She not only subscribes to it, she tells you every time she actually does it, she increases her net worth, and she’s actually in the Think and Grow Rich movie.

27:34So it doesn’t matter where you apply Think and Grow Rich, you’ll do better than if you didn’t. So our mentoring, we accomplish all of that. A person’s gonna grow from within, personal development, mindset. We’ve gotta get the right mindset. They’re absolutely going through skill development six times a week.

27:55And the system, just follow it. If you’ll follow the system, you’ll get the results. Kinda like the big golden arches. If you follow the system, you get the results. If you don’t follow the system, they just take your franchise away and don’t give you your money back, right? So the mentoring… I’ve been through nine other coaching programs, and that’s why we call this a mentoring system, because it’s not a one call per week therapy session where, “Hey man, how’s it going?”

28:23“Ain’t going so great.” “Well, try this. I’ll talk to you next week.” Click. It’s not that at all. We just had a young man join us, he’s out of Dallas, Texas, and he was in another… I’m not gonna name any names, but he was in another system, $1,300 every month, one phone call a week. And he found out about us.

28:42We connected, we went through our system. He said, “You’re really doing that for $888 a month? You talk to me 24 times a month?” I said, “Absolutely, 24 times a month.

28:52And you have my cell number. Now, you have any issues at all with the system, any issues at all, call me.” And then he said, “Well, I don’t wanna bother you.”

29:00I said, “Well, you can’t bother me. It’s impossible to bother me. If it’s 2:00 AM and you call, I might not answer the phone. It’s a bother.” But it’s impossible to bother me. So we go to the whole next level when it comes to mentoring because of the nine other programs that I went through and I saw the thing…

29:17I’m not saying they’re bad programs. That’s not what I’m saying. They’re missing pieces. They’re missing very important pieces. Like what do you do when you knock on the door? You’re going to a listing presentation, you knock on the door. If you don’t do something immediately next and they answer the door, two personality traits will never list with you because you just alienated them and you don’t even know what you did. So these are the things we get into, because understand we’re going in home sales, so there’s a psychological thing we have to go into as well.

29:48How do people operate? If I do this, what’s the natural phenomenon that they’re going to do?

Tim Burgess29:54

And we need to understand that so we can… When you go on 10 listing appointments, you list eight houses. Time’s valuable. You can’t get it back. You can go earn more money, you can get more love, you can go buy more groceries, get some more gasoline, but your time you’re never getting back.

30:09So if you go out on 10 listing appointments, you should be listing eight houses. 80%, that’s what we shoot for. 80% listing ratio. ‘Cause then you’re in control of your business.

30:24Yeah. That’s awesome. And that’s what this is all about. That’s what our mentoring is all about.

30:28You’re in control of your life, you’re in control of your business. Your business doesn’t own you, and the environment you live in doesn’t own you either. You own the environment. That’s a whole different mindset.

30:39It’s a whole different mindset for most, but that’s the biggest thing that we help.

30:44We help people. We have people… I mean, recently, Brian, he went through our system. He was in for two years. So he got to the end of one year, wrote a check to stay in another year, and after the end of the first year, he got rid of all of his PTSD medication. Now, you think about that for a minute. What’s that have to do with real estate?

31:04Well, if he doesn’t have the right mindset and he’s under medications for things that are taking him away from his productivity, it has everything to do with his life. He can’t operate well in business if he’s

31:16not thinking properly, but that’s something that we’re very proud of when we help somebody.

31:22We didn’t do it for him. We just led him down the path. Think right. So he’s thinking different, and instead of holding onto images of the past, and this guy has seen some of the worst of humanity,

31:34instead of holding onto those images, he’s now holding onto an image of what he’s building into his future.

31:40Think about the difference between holding on to these images of the true hell that this man has seen.

31:47And now he’s holding onto images of the bliss that he’s building for him and his lovely wife into the future. And because of that one shift, he got rid of all of his PTSD medication.

32:00And then, yeah, and then signed on for another year. So when somebody signs on for the second year, you know your mentoring’s doing something really positive for them in their lives, or they’re not gonna sign on for the second year. We have one man that’s been with us seven years. Seven years. Seven years over and over again. Why? Because he keeps growing. When we met him, he earned about $19,000 a year, and today he’s a millionaire.

32:25And that’s what it’s about, to help another person become more through the teaching. And by systemizing your real estate business,

32:32man, you can have a lot of fun and earn a lot of money. You don’t have to give your life away to earn six figures in real estate. You really don’t.

Tim Burgess32:39

And some people are coaching that you’ve gotta be available Saturday mornings and Sundays, and evenings. No. No, you don’t.

32:48When I was on the phone, we’ve all heard the alternative close, right? Just ask an alternative question. I didn’t say, “What evening would be good for you?” I always ask this: “Would mornings or afternoons be better for you?”

33:01Mornings or… “Well, I can’t meet in the afternoon.”

33:02“Well, what time can you meet, then?” “Well, I can be home as early as…” See, I look at it this way. Once again, expectations, right? This is one of the largest decisions that they will make about their life, their home, right? They’ll take off early to go to the dentist, won’t they?

33:22Yeah, they’ll take off early to meet with me then.

33:26I used to think that way. And that way I would do more appointments in the afternoon, less appointments in the evening, so in the evening I’m at dance recital with my kids.

33:36So I have a life and I have a business, and systemized.

33:40Okay. Could we have done more business? Sure. I could have given away my weekends and my evenings, and I could have done more business. I didn’t want to.

33:49I didn’t want to. You know, a kid that quit school in the eighth grade’s up near 400 grand every year working less than 40 hours a week. I got time with the kids.

33:57I go to their soccer games, I go to softball games, I go to dance recitals, I can go to taekwondo. Oh, man. Life’s good. That’s awesome.

Loida Velasquez34:05

Yeah. Yes, yes. No, it’s so awesome to hear all of these success stories because I’m sure someone that’s listening, they can probably relate to everything that you’re saying or even the different scenarios.

34:17So for someone that is interested in reaching out, connecting with you, your program, what is the best way to do so?

Tim Burgess34:24

You can get ahold of me. You can always call me direct. I answer my phone. I’m not one of those that, “Oh, my God, I don’t know that name.” No, I answer it. That’s 513-484-1247.

34:38Our website is maximizingresultsllc.com. Yeah, I know there’s a lot of letters there. Type ’em in. It won’t hurt you. Burn another calorie. It’s all good. Maximizingresultsllc.com. You can leave a message there or text me, once again, on my phone, call me on my phone. We’re happy to help you get where you wanna go.

35:00That’s what it’s all about, helping another person become more than they would’ve become without our influence. And if we can help them live the life they wanna live, that’s the number one fulfillment that we receive, is by helping another person.

Loida Velasquez35:13

I love it. Awesome. Yeah. Well, Tim, thank you once again for coming on the podcast.

35:17As always, it’s great to have you on. Even though we have personally never met in person, I feel like whenever that does end up happening, we’re just gonna sit down and we could probably talk for hours about real estate and everything. So really appreciate you coming on here and everything that you have shared with the audience today.

Tim Burgess35:33

Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

Loida Velasquez35:36

Okay. All right. And everyone, we’ll see you on the next one. Bye.