Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Thinking of Getting into Real Estate? with Guest Eric Gorton EP 11

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford and his band of mayhem makers. From stripper poles to the oval office, business lessons are everywhere. This Week:We discuss the how to build a personal brand in the real estate space as well as some advice for anyone getting into the business. With Special guest, top producing luxury agent Eric Gorton. With Colt Amidan

from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford what's happening everybody welcome again to another fun-filled edition of the power move with john gafford with With me as always, are you done drinking, Colt? Are you just done with it now? I told you guys. Are you completely done drinking? I am getting ready for the Olympics. Next summer Olympics. The

Equestrian Olympics. Cool question. Well, we got some topics. If anybody can actually ride a horse and is good enough to ride a horse in the Olympics, do me a favor. Can you reach out to us and just let us know how absolutely ridiculous it is the cult thinks the horse does 97 are you kidding i am named perfectly for that sport no the endorsement deals i'll get everything the the only endorsement you need to get that what was it in uh and uh the blades of

glory the the mane and tail whatever it was because you need you need to grow that hair back out is what you need to do. I mean, let's face it. Greatest? Is that what the great sports movie ever? Look, just because it's called Great Clips doesn't mean that it's going to give you a great clip. Oh, my God. That's a little high and tight today.

Super high and tight. I paid way too much. A little soup with the dude. Dude, I paid too much fucking money. Did we hear it? What was that noise in the background? Who was that? And speaking of maybe a bad idea, Chris Connell not with us today, but we brought in real

estate expert, one of the number one guys in my company, my man, the king of Henderson luxury, Eric Gordon. What's up, buddy? What's up, my man? Welcome to the Power Move. And I'm actually glad you're here, bro, because today we're going to talk about something a little different than we normally do. Well, we normally talk about all kinds of nonsense, but today I did an Instagram story and I asked specifically, doing the podcast today, what should we talk

about going into detail? And I got two people said the same thing. They want to talk about the importance of building a brand within the real estate industry and how you get started doing, building a brand as a new agent. But first of all, I've got to say, for those who went to the game last night, I mean, neither one of you guys went. I went to the game last night. I'm going to tell you, absolutely amazing. Winners and losers from last night's football game. Well, first off, the game he's talking about is the Raiders.

The Raiders game. Raider Nation from Monday Night Football here in Las Vegas. Final was insane. I did watch the final. You watched the end of the game. Yeah, I watched the end of it, and it was unbelievable. Yeah, it was, I tell you, being there, it was one of the most electric sporting events I've ever been at.

It was interesting as you get there, you had the anti-vaxxer people that were protesting the stadium, protesting, I guess, the Raiders wanting to have you get vaccinated before you come in. They were protesting that. We don't have counsel here today, so let's not go too deep into it. No, I'm not going to go too deep on it. I mean, was there someone there basically checking your cards?

Yeah. I heard people weren't also. So if you don't know you had to be vaccinated, go to the game. Yeah, well, the know, you had to be vaccinated to go to the game. Yeah, well, the Raiders are requiring you to be vaccinated to go to the games in person. You didn't have to wear a mask, which was awesome, to see a stadium full of people unmasked. But here's the thing. And I'm going to say as we talk about this, which is, you know, look, I believe in personal freedom. I'm all about the personal freedom, which is I believe you have the choice whether or

not you should get vaccinated or not. I believe that is a personal choice that you hold. But I also believe that it is a business's right to require you, if they feel strongly the other way about it, to require you to have to do it. You can't have it both ways. You know what I mean? You can't say it's my right to not have to do this. And then it's my right to, but I should be able to go to your place and you shouldn't get to tell me I have to do that. Policy is policy.

Yeah. A hundred percent agree with that. And I think last night what you saw was you saw a lot of people and, you know, anti-vaxxers out there. And again, I'm not saying good or bad left or right. I'm saying just, you know, freedom of personal choice is what I'm talking about. And I think, but I think the anti-vaxxers definitely are falling in the losing category last night because the whole idea of, well, if we just band together, they'll break under our whim. Bro, there was 65,000 people in that place last night. You are not breaking a business. You know, everybody sits there and says, well, we're breaking.

First off, you already paid for your tickets. Yeah. So they've already been paid. Well, and the people that didn't want to do that, they could give them back. That was an option for the Raiders. They could forego their season this year. But there is, for every one ticket, there's 30, 40 people that would take that ticket off. It was rocking. I'm going to give it up to the Baltimore fans last night.

I will definitely take my hat off to them. Unlike the Seattle Seahawks fans who were passing out, throwing up everywhere you want to look in the stands because they did not know how to drink. Baltimore fans, congratulations. I saw none of that last night. You guys held it together. It was very impressive. So good job on that aspect.

You know what I love? So we went to lunch with Scott today, who's another agent, and we started talking about Ice Cube and Too Short, and he's like, Ice Cube was there? Yeah, dude, he played halftime. He played the whole halftime. That was the most important thing. A lot different than what we thought it was going to be. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, we thought it was going? Yeah, dude, he played halftime. He played the whole halftime. That was the most important thing. A lot different than what we thought it was going to be.

Yeah, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we thought it was going to be Imagine Dragons, and they busted out with Too Short, which I love when they play Too Short. I love when they drop that, because that's like, you want to know who the ex-strippers are in the crowd?

Just look around for the girls. For the girls that are singing all the words to Blow the Whistle. Yeah, honey, I know you used to go by Jasmine and shake it on Satellite Show Bar 2. I know that you said. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Oh, come on. We do not talk bad on the gentleman's club. No, we love all people, whether you take your clothes off for money or not.

Colt's neighbors encourage that type of behavior. It doesn't make Colt a bad guy. No, no. And I went to the strip club. You know what I just realized we have to talk about? Oh, my God. I didn't even realize this. You and Eric have something in common.

Before we even get to real estate, man, you guys have something amazing in common. What's that? I mean, other than good looking. You're both neighbors to alternative lifestyle porn stars. Okay, we're not even going to talk about it. How can we not talk about it? Oh, man. That's all I live for is my neighbors.

For those who didn't know, Colt lived next to a gay porn star for years. And we did a whole show where basically, if you look back in history. Pros and cons. Pros and cons of living. Well, pros and cons of I have the ex-gay porn star neighbor. Yes. And now I got two ladies that just lay out naked we'll call them ladies of the evening night yep we're doing a pros and cons uh yeah okay see there's

the rub isn't it eric where are we going there's the rub isn't it this is our opinion not no no no there's nothing wrong with that but but er Eric had some hot chicks laying out next door to him at that poll that moved in, right? Yes. Had some hot chicks. And yes. And he turned over and they weren't hot chicks. Turns out there was a lot more sausage in the party than we thought was. Right.

And they actually participate in the industry. I think the best part of the whole story, I'm sorry, Shelly, if you ever hear this, I had to talk about it. I think it's the best part. So Eric and his wife actually use the Google machine, right? Oh, that's what you don't do. I will tell you that from experience.

To look up this person that's living next to them, looks up the Google machine, and finds some of the films that this person started. Finds some of the films that this person started some of the footage it just um it was certainly a shock at least shelly goes into full this is cgi yeah like i was like this is fake and i don't know how they concocted this yes did they concoct it? No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't.

I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't.

But so Shelly thinks they've now solicited the work of industrial light and magic. Exactly. That whole. The Hollywood. The Hollywood. They'll come in. To make this. There's a lot of shindling going on.

Yeah. To make this six second or six minute porn clip on whatever If you ever question what your neighbor does, don't Google or put it in Twitter. Twitter's where I got it. Oh, that's where you got it? Yeah, because I'm like, this guy's got a couple million followers on Instagram, but I wonder how many

on Twitter. I didn't find out, but I found out a lot of... I know him a lot better than I want to. And that's when the magic happens. That's completely when the magic happens. Eric, before we get into anything, do you feel like I could be an Olympian on two sports? Do you think I could be a, what are they called?

Speed walker? You don't even know what it is. You don't even know what it is. You want to be a speed walker. A speed walker. There's no way. No, I've seen you walk. Okay.

All right. Secondly. Both in and out of intoxication. Okay. Well, secondly, being a questioning rider. Definitely not. Oh, God. Listen this out, Eric.

Listen, because you're going to agree with me. The horse does 95% of the work. So if I spent a year learning how to ride a horse, it's all about the horse. Not necessarily. Yeah. He's from the city. If you haven't heard from his accent. I'm not from the city.

Okay. I probably grew up closer to farms than you did. And so you could also be, is there tandem horseback riding? Me and you are going to go in question. There's no tandem horseback riding. Although and you are going to go equestrian? There's no tandem horseback riding. Although, you know what? Maybe there should be. Maybe there should be.

Maybe there should be. Maybe there should be. All right. Well, sorry, but I'm still going to go for my dream. So the person that sent in today that said, hey, can you guys talk about how to build a brand as a new real estate agent? So far, we've talked about anti-vaxxing transvestite porn star neighbors and you're a question. You're going to dream. I feel like every show divulges to those three topics. Pretty much as how it goes. Have you ever episode 11, I think 10 out of 11,

pretty much have gone there. So Eric, what you don't know is you need to throw out some really scramble words like some really smart words because yeah that's always teaches us yeah if you're if you've watched it and yeah i think i can hold the candle to what connell yeah i think he makes up words that we're just not smart enough to know he's the most interesting man on earth he is i think and i think right now he is riding a tiger that's why he's not in week no uh caitlin broke her ankle last night yeah and uh just doing something in the kitchen and you know what that's why i love caitlin that's why i love connell's wife still wheelchair to the game last night she still went she went to the game in a wheelchair last night. Right after she broke her knee. I actually called him yesterday, and he said,

I just dropped her off at the hospital to get x-rays, and I'm going to go back in a couple hours. My wife wouldn't let me leave the bedside. No. Drop her off, leave, and come back. My wife would do that to me, though. My wife, if I could break my neck, and I did, my wife would be like, I'll be back in two weeks.

I'll be two weeks, see how you're doing. In Mexico. Yeah, in Mexico. Judith? There's no question that she would do that to you. I personally think, my belief is, potentially Connell broke her leg. Not like domestic violence,

but as a way to get better parking at the stadium. Because I can see him. Maybe threw some balls on the floor. She falls, he's like, no, I got the handicap placard and now we're gonna park and i didn't tell you we're going to disneyland tomorrow he already had it he's at disneyland had that plan now she's in the scooter they're going to disneyland that's it well let's get into it boys and let's talk about real estate a little bit because i mean obviously we've got three real estate pros in here and if you're not if you are in real estate great listen to this if we've got three real estate pros in here. And if you're not, if you are in real estate, great.

Listen to this. If you're not in real estate, pay attention to because there's lessons in this for every profession or anything that you want to do. It's not just about being in the business that we're in. But, you know, it seems like real estate is the business that everybody thinks is going to be very simple to break into. Look at all the money these guys on Million Dollar Listing are making. I'm going to go do that just because I get a license and it's going to make me wildly successful.

So is that not true then? No, it's not true. But I used to do something several years ago. I haven't done it several years back when I was friendlier with the board and not necessarily as adversarial as I tend to be with them currently. I used to do a new agent symposium. And in that symposium, I would come out and I would talk about these are things that are going to get you crushed in the business. Now, the first thing you have to understand if you're thinking of getting the real estate business is when you go in that classroom and that person is standing up front, I'm talking about to get your license. That's the classroom I'm talking about. Number one, they're not going to teach you anything in that class that has anything to

do with selling real estate. I promise you, Eric, how many times have you used the meets and bounds method to close a deal? Goose eggs. Zero. It's just not something you're ever going to use. So keep real estate school in mind for what it is. You're learning to pass a test. That's what you're doing. The second thing you need to understand is 90% of the people in that room.

So if there's 100 of you in real estate school today 90 of them have something in common colt do you know what that is uh they are on their last leg of life no no no they will they won't be in the business in 12 months they'll be complete one thing they have hands why they're in the class yeah mathematically they will be completely out of the business inside of one year. That's the number. So when you look at the low statistics of success for what real estate agents actually do, understand going into it, that's the hill you're climbing. That's the road you're going to climb. Now, the next thing I'm going to say is, if you're becoming a real estate agent, is where you go to work is incredibly important. And you have a couple of

choices of how you could do this. All right. And I don't know what you guys' feelings on this, but these are my feelings pretty, pretty strongly. And I'll see if you agree, disagree, or have a different input. So number one, you've got several different kinds of brokerages. All right. You've got brokerages that are designed strictly. Well, the splits are one thing. We're going to splits later if you want to do that, but let's just talk about how they're designed. A lot of brokerages are designed to run as puppy mills. They have large new agent training programs and they're just kind of there to get you in and get you done. And somebody I know that has a very large team, when I say large team, I'm talking about like a hundred agents at one point on a team. It was ridiculously large.

And this is what he said to me. It always bothered me. I said to him, I said, man, you know, God, how can you have like a hundred, 120 agents that are working brand new like that? And he said, when people get a real estate license, they have one person in their pocket that already wants to buy that That person they already know. It's their friend, their mom, their brother, whatever. And that's the little nudge they needed to get pushed over the hill to get that real estate license. And if I can just get my 50% of that one deal, I don't care what happens after that. And I thought to myself, holy crap, that is terrible.

My dad used to run dealerships. Car he would always say- Car dealerships. Car dealerships, yep. And he would always say, you know, there's certain people in town, we won't say names, but they run brokerages this way. The Smiths. Yeah, they run brokerages this way. And he goes, you always, you get, you just hire. And out of your hire, 20% will succeed and be successful.

But that other 80% will sit there and sell to their cousin. They'll sell five or six cars and then they're out. And that's the same thing with real estate is you can take 50%. I mean, some of these guys, by the time you take franchise, it's more 60, 65%. Yeah. So they make more money off of you as a new agent than, say, a middle-level agent that's worked their way on to better splits or stuff like that. Well, you know, so avoid the puppy mill, I think, is the first choice.

But you've got to make a decision, and you've got to be honest with yourself about who you are. And the majority of people don't fall into the category which I'm about to describe. If you're coming out of an industry where you were heavily sales trained, I mean, you received a ton. If you used to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door, okay, I'm in dude. You're a machine. You know what you're doing. You're a timeshare agent. You're a grinder. I'm in. I mean, you've probably got the sales aspect. Come out of the car business. I love people that come out of the car business because they teach them how to grind. I love that. One knock on that is they're not used to a 30, 45 day close.

A perpetual closing process is something they have to learn. But if you're someone that has a massive amount of not just sales, but also business experience, you were in management of something, you ran your own company, you did something. You're transitioning out of one thing into another. Then I would say you really just need those classes. You need that stuff to learn the flow of the transaction, to learn the paperwork and to learn the legality of the situation is not how to get sued. Those are the, that's your 10% that succeeds in that, in that, in that arena. That's who makes it out of that group. Then you got everybody else that thinks they're that person. And these are people that, I don't know, used to hand off bottles of tequila

at a big nightclub in town and were making $150,000 a year for holding a sparkler. But don't discount those people because a lot of those people have relationships with people that are actually gonna buy or sell. I'm not discounting them. I'm putting those people in a different category. Those are people that have this kind of sub-sales experience working in the nightclubs.

I love hosts from the nightclubs. In Vegas, those guys that run around all day and try to get you to come to their nightclub, I love those guys. They will talk to anyone. Some of my most successful agents that work for me have come out of that aspect. But those are people that need to go in category number two. They're also not business people who run their thing. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't want to say one is better than the other. I'm just saying person A can go this path if they choose, and person B needs to go the other path.

And what the other path is, you need to get on with a team. Now, what a team is, is a team in real estate is basically where you have a team leader that is mentoring you very intricately over what you're doing, and they're also providing you with leads, right? Now, the difference between a team and a brokerage that you're working at is if you're going to a class and there's a guy standing in front of the room, and he's teaching a class on how to be a real estate agent to a bunch of brand new agents. And he's going to make X amount of dollars whether you ever close a deal or not. If you go to work on a team and now you're working for a team leader that's making an investment in you, they're actually spending money on leads that if they don't turn into deals,

you are losing money. You have a much higher probability of success being taught by that guy. Absolutely. Or that gal, whoever that might be. Working on a team that makes sense. So, I mean, Eric, you have a team. I know, and dude, you've been bringing on some people doing very, very well. Absolutely. So what do you look for in people, like a realtor that comes on a team?

What do you look for there? What are you looking for? So there's a lot of different aspects of what you look for. You obviously look for people with good personalities, people that you feel are personable, that can mesh with people that are coming in and out of their lives and know that they make a difference of, you know, a sustaining difference. But the last thing you want to deal with is people that are very needy,

that don't want to learn on their own. Right. So there's, there's a lot of different, uh, there's a lot of different personalities that want to come in and out of the real estate business. Quite honestly, I've hired people. They've never done a deal and they've gone away just as quick. Right. So I make an invest with investment with people with a little bit of money, a little bit of time. And then usually within the first 90 days, well, cause you kind of did,, you kind of done both ends of this because years and years and years ago, you were the sales manager at Merit. I was.

So you were just making X amount of dollars whether people performed or not. Yeah, plus commission on top of that. So yeah, there was some incentive for me to stay. But you weren't losing money. You were losing money. So now somebody comes to work for you. It's all about losing money. Now you're losing money. Now now somebody comes to work for you. It's all money. Losing money. Now you're losing money.

Now you're losing. Exactly. The one thing that I heard Eric once say to one of his team members, or I don't know if you're telling me. Get the fuck out? Yeah, pretty much. Get the fuck out. Hey, hey, hey.

No. But, you know, the one thing I hate that both of you guys are very good. You do this with the company. It's the hair, right? Yeah, you guys both have amazing hair. I don't. But, you know, I heard Eric once said, you know what, like, I'm taking you on. I'm really excited, but I just don't want to give you false hope. Like, this is not like the TV show. This is not, I hope you succeed, but you have,

there's a bigger chance. You know, I think you're telling, was it Spencer or somebody that, you know, that may have been one of the, you know the several that you've heard me interact with. But the last thing you want to do is set a false, unrealistic expectation. You want to tell them up front that there's a very high probability that they're not going to succeed in this business. So, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you can put in 100 percent of the effort that they need you to, but unless they're willing to get to that next level, make the calls, make the engagement, go to the networking events, shake the hands and, and do the work that's necessary. You know, it's fighting a losing battle. I think that if you are a new agent, you really need to look at what are your leads? Because everybody will say they have leads and there is an array of what, what, what considered

is considered a lead, right? Like you guys actually give real leads. You guys spend, I mean, I don't know how much you spend, but I'm sure tens of thousands a month for, for your leads where other people say, well, here's somebody that just tagged me on Facebook. You know what I mean? So I think a new agent needs to really look at that team and see if they're a real team and if they really are invested in. Well, again, that goes back to one of my points, which, you know, one of the points that I would

make in my new agent symposium was one of the biggest mistakes you can make is assuming that your friends and family owe you real estate deals. Like just because you got your license, all of a sudden your friends are going to just show up in droves and be like, oh, class of Wednesday. Yeah, let me hire you to help me. That's a great point, John, because when I first got into real estate, I refused to work with anybody that I knew from a friend or a family. Because you'll screw it up. I'd screw it up.

And then all of a sudden I don't have that friend or my family member to count on in the future or to be my friend or family member. I really want them to be close to me as opposed to just going on a real estate deal. And the deals kind of get ugly at that point because they're not a lot of times honest with you. Maybe they have some financial hardship that they don't want you to know about. But here's the thing. They know you're new. They know you're new.

So are you going to bullshit them? They're going them be like oh you know i went to school and now i have my license and the ink is still wet so i know how to do house and that's some of the things that you and i bring to the table because you know at least with our agents especially from a newer aspect if they don't have much training they can fall back and tell the people that they're dealing with listen my team member or my team leader has 22 years worth of experience behind me there's never going going to be a line or a T crossed or a dot, a I dotted that they don't know about. So you're in excellent hands. Yes, I'm going to be your

point of contact, but there's never going to be anything done that doesn't go past the eyes of my team. Well, all of that comes to point number one, which is if you're a brand new in the business, don't bullshit people into selling to make it look like you've been doing this longer than you have don't it doesn't it doesn't serve any purpose but associate yourself with a human that has been doing it for a long time so you can leverage their experience a lot of people think you need to leverage a brand like dude just because you work at a brand that i see on tv and i still know you've been doing this from tuesday i still understand that. Well, no disrespect to you. There's people that work

at Simply Vegas. I've never heard of them in my entire life. Not saying that they're anything bad, but just because they work for Simply Vegas doesn't really impress me. Let's talk for a little bit. Let's see kind of what your qualifications are. I think the brand carries a little cash.

Don't misconstrue what I say, right? It absolutely does. Man! And you're absolutely right. And you want to invite them on. But there are people that, just because they work for Simply Vegas, that is supposed to hold some water.

No, but you know why it holds water? And I'll tell you why it holds water. I'm going to counterpoint your point, sir. It holds water because this. Because most real estate brokerages out there, their hiring qualifications are, do you have a pulse and can you pay my monthly fee? If you pass those two tests, come on down, be part of what we do here. We turn away more people than we take in because you have to have

certain production requirements. You have to have certain experience. We don't have a new agent training program here. The reason we don't have it is because I don't believe in it. I can look at the math and say, that's a 90% failure data set. I don't want a new agent training program here the reason we don't have it is because i don't believe in it i can look at the math and say you know that's a 90 failure data set i don't want to be i don't want to participate in that business it's a waste of my time and my money but if we we go after strictly experienced agents so the reputation of our company maybe you've never heard of the agent but the fact that they're working here people understand they do a certain amount of business because they wouldn't be able to work here if they didn't because unfortunately twice a year the purge comes absolutely and it is what i was just going to say next 20 people there's

been certain people that have worked here that john and i have sat down and we know the people that aren't going to make it towards the next page yeah right so Right? And I think it is. I always tell people the brand, I mean, we're not talking about personal branding now. We're going to get there. We will. But when I go to refer a outside source deal, like my brother in L.A. wanted to sell his house, I will not go to anybody at Keller Williams. See, now you're smashing other brands.

The thoughts and feelings of Cole Tomadon do not reflect the pose of the power move. It's not that. It's because I don't know who's their top agents, right? And I know they do take new agents. Where if I go and say, okay, I need a boutique shop that's dealing with higher-end stuff, I know I could really pick our office.

You could pick anybody and get quality stuff. And unless you know who's doing what at these brokerages, again, not a bad mouth in anybody. It's a huge benefit for us, especially working at Simply Vegas. We have that back agent to where every single person that we work with, which is over 500 agents at this point, if you need an agent in another city, chances are one of our agents has someone that they

can refer that's going to be lights out the exact person that you need. Well, here's case in point, right? About reputation carries itself. Who would you say are the most famous real estate agents in the country right now? Who's the most famous in the country? Hilton. No, no. Agents.

Actual agents. Not companies. Actual agents. What's his name? Tamar Mauricio. Oh, not Mauricio. From the agency. Mauricio Urbanski. Yeah, no. Agents. Actual agents. Not companies. Actual agents. What's his name? Tamar Mauricio. Oh, not Mauricio. From the agency. Mauricio Urbanski.

Yeah, from the agency. What's Paris' father's name? Rick Hilton. Case in point. Rick Hilton. Rick Rappaport. I was going to say all the guys on Million Dollar Listing are the most famous right now. Ryan Serhan, those guys.

And I don't want to get into specifics with who and what and how much because some of that's NDA'd, but multiple times people that appear on those shows have reached out to us with las vegas clients because of art that who our company is and that makes me incredibly happy that the reputation we have out in the market like the guys are the most famous real estate agents for whatever reason from television across the country seek us out when they have a client for Las Vegas. And that's what I was kind of saying is they're not looking for really, as much as a brand is, who's doing what. And your brand is who's doing what, right?

Like, you know, you look in L.A., you got the agency does stuff, things like that. But, you know, I think it's so important for people to realize, don't look at just the name. Look at who's the broker and finagle your way onto a team, like a top team. If you can get into a top team like one of your guys' team, you go from having a 10% success rate to having an 80% success rate. And again, that's why we really focus on teams here. It's why we really focus on if you're a new agent.

So one way you can come to work at our company is if you do that. That's why I started in the business. Million years ago, when I sold out my position in the tech firm, I was just kind of sitting around Tampa doing nothing. Kendra Todd was like, you can't sit around and do nothing. I'm like, well, you don't really know me very well because I'm really happy doing nothing. But I was like, she's like, come so real soon. It'll be fun. And that's how I got in the business.

And when I started, I was on a 50, 50 split to Kendra, who was one of my dear friends and I was still in a 50, 50 split to her. Um, and that's how I started. And I believe that being in that really close one-on-one mentorship situation is what's best for you if you're coming out. However, if you want to, you know, you want to plant your own flag, you know, better than I do, you want to go out. That's awesome. We're we're going to take a quick break and when we do we're going to come back and talk about the importance of how to build a personal brand as a new agent what you need to do who you need to focus on and how you get your name out there in a repetitive way we'll be right back hey it's john gafford if you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com.

We'll share any links of things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout. Back again, back again for part two of today's power move again sitting in for the esteemed chris connell esquire is the also esteemed i mean maybe esteemed i mean eric gordon sort of

east coast you know it'd be perfect you know what you could do for me real quick? I need you to do me a favor. I need you to summon your inner. I'm talking about like, this is the guy I need. Ready? Let me tell you who this guy is. This is a guy that's been running a sandwich shop, right? He's been running a sandwich shop on the east side for like 40 years. It's bitter. Come on, dude.

Comes in every day. Takes the train in from Brooklyn every day. Busts his ass 14 hours a day in this thing. Killing himself. And then he has to go home every night to see his wife. She hates him. I've heard this story before.

Yeah, he drinks. I'm not going to get into that. Makes him drink, whatever. But I need that guy. I need that voice. And I need you to just lean into that microphone and say, that's a pow guy. I need that voice. It's heavy. No again. And I need you just lean into that microphone and say that's a power move kid. Ready? Do it. Now that's a power move kid.

I think we might have a way. I think we might have a winner. Yeah. We've been searching for the right sound when somebody says something profound. I think that could be it. I'm going to have to jazz that up a little bit. That's a power move because right now we have right. Right. Right. Now we go with the yeah. It's just cool. the first two times yeah it was the first two times now that is a

power that's it yeah i think i think it was actually better when when when uh connell had it on his phone before we had it on the actual board as we go along but if you're just joining us back if you missed part one of this we are talking about if you are new into the real estate business if you are new in any type of business, how important it is to develop a personal brand, get your name out there, and build a business for yourself. And I'm going to tell you, one of the reasons that I want to have Eric in here, you know, Colt, probably not your best example of this. No, I'm just kidding. One of the reasons that I wanted to have. Whatever, I'm on Best of Las Vegas.

You are on Best of Las Vegas That is true, we'll talk about that You're fucking over 40 The hairline says 40 But the body says 38 He thought it was Best 40 under 40 Like 40 hours It's like that episode of Entourage

Where they were going to put Arnie Gold on the Best 40 He was like 46 Don't tell anybody But Gordon, man, you have done such an exceptional job We're going to put our gold on the best board. He was like 46. Don't tell anybody. But, Gordon, man, you have done such an exceptional job of branding yourself within these select neighborhoods in town. There's a neighborhood here called the Fountains in Las Vegas. How many homes in the Fountains? 198.

198 homes in this guard-gated neighborhood. It's beautiful. I love the neighborhood because it's one of the few places in town where you're driving through there and you're like, I feel like I'm not in Las Vegas. Henderson. Henderson, sorry. 198 homes. Well, for those, for people that don't live here, I guess I always kind of round up. I round up to Las Vegas when I'm talking. It's what I do. All the same. But Anderson, so you have 197 homes in that neighborhood. How many, 198, how many of them have you sold? I've successfully sold 126 of them, and I currently have four in escrow. Of this one neighborhood? One neighborhood.

And that is just, that's what we call in the biz, absolute domination. I was going to say power move, but okay. That's a power move. I'm not doing the fanfare. And the most impressive part is there is somebody that lives in that neighborhood that claims they're like the most luxury broker in town, right? Yeah. And there's also been several realtors that have come and gone. There's still a couple of realtors that live in there that still haven't done one transaction.

So I pride myself on making that my bitch. So, yeah, I mean, so when you come into the the business and i love the story of how you got there and i think it within the story of how you got there is a great lesson for everybody that's new in the business and how they're doing that so you're brand new in the business so you got the business i mean you were you were a dice dealer i was a dice dealer for six years doing the 99 cent chip cocktails golden gate when you're running out so awful doing that i started downtown for nine months to went to the Barbary Coast because it was the quickest game in town. I was a dice dealer, so you needed to have speed in order to be a successful dice dealer. And was at the Barbary Coast for three months until I was going to choke myself

and then finally got hired at the Monte Carlo, and I thought I'd be there forever. I mean, that was like when I got that one, It was like, I have arrived. So yeah. So you guys, so you make the jump out of being a dice dealer. Was it just to the late nights, the cigarette smoke? What was it? It was a mixture of it all. Um, but as you guys know, um, I was diagnosed with cancer in 2002. Yeah. Right. So, you know, going through it, FMLA family medical leave of absence from the casino business, I knew that there was more to than just watching the dice go by. So that's what kind of prompted me to go out. And because I had a couple of months off from going out and punching a time clock into the real estate, I mean, into the casino business, I decided to take my real estate exam.

Nice. All right. So you start out, you get the real estate license done. You get the license done. Did you learn how to sell real estate in school? Not in the least bit. And upon getting my real estate license, which I did it really on the low tip. I didn't really tell my wife or anybody around me that I was going out and getting my license. Everybody would go to work and school during the day. And then I would go into class and get it done because I didn't really know if I wanted to do it. Right. And at the end, towards the, maybe a week before, maybe two weeks before I got my license, I broke down. I told my wife and I basically said, Hey, listen, I'm going to do this. And I, I really am gravitating towards it. It's starting to make a lot more sense. And I think I could be

good at this. Yeah. That whole meets and bounds method just really coming together for you at the end. But let's look at one of the points in that. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about what you're going to do. Don't pontificate about all the greatness that you're going to have. Put your head down. Keep it to yourself. That's what I did. Get it done. And then when you have some success, then you can close. Because quickly, prior to doing it this final time or the last time that I got my successfully got my real estate license about four years before I thought I was going to get a real estate license before that. And I went in literally two weeks into the class. I was just like, this is not for me. And I bailed out. Right. It was always something that weighed heavy on my head. What was it? What was it? What was the difference maker between the first time

and the second time? You know, I got to tell you the truth. It was the people that were teaching me. I was taught by an older woman with a very raspy, smoky voice. Like the Simpsons chick. Yeah, it was just like... Was it Marge Simpson's sister? A lot of the demographic people that were successfully teaching me. I'm going to teach you how to sell real estate. Older women that were

kind of blue hairs. And I kind of put myself in that position where I was like, this isn't the industry for me. I'm still young and feeling vibrant, and I didn't think that was going to be the calling for me. Nice. All right, so you get the license.

You get it done with Shelly. She approves it. Shelly being the wife, the bird. The bird. The wife of Eric, Shelly. You get the stamp of approval from her. I do. And now you're ready to take over the world, but you got no money.

You got no budget. You got no clients and no experience. Nothing. What do you do? So I had a very good friend that had a wife that was doing real estate back then. And she was trying to recruit me into coming into work for Century 21, which we all know that was- Brown jacket, baby.

Exactly. Well, the brown jacket, but 50-50 split, franchise fees, everything that they basically broke down to me was all the money I was going to pay them and what I wasn't going to make at the end of a successful real estate transaction myself. Yeah, you start with a check that's this big and then when you're done, it's this big.

So upon going through that, I had a cousin that was actually doing real estate and he was working with a company called Merit Realty, which I'm sure you guys remember. Yeah, sure. Right. Merit was a younger company. It was a boutique type environment of just young hustlers, man. I mean, this was, I mean, you walked into Merit Realty. It was like that scene out of Boiler Room. Exactly. Where it was just, right. Just everybody on the phones making 300 phone calls a day and it

wasn't uncommon to basically pick up the phone talk to somebody you're in your car and you're writing a contract that afternoon right so it was really really exciting as we refer to those times here in vegas that's called the boom is what we refer to that back to affectionately as the boom time and most people think that what we're going through right now is the same as what we were going through. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No way, not even close. Not even remotely close. And in addition to that, right now you're dealing with about 20,000 licensed agents.

Back in the day, there was about 6,000. Yeah. All right? So the competition was way less. Yep. It was a free-for-all. So here you go. How do you get these neighbors?

What do you start doing? Well, it was, you know, for the first year, year and a half that I was in real estate, I was on a 50, 50 split. I basically went into it and I aligned myself with, you know, a couple of mentors in the merit realty sphere that basically taught me everything that I needed to know about real estate sales. Now, you know, I was always told that as a young guy, that I had the knack for sales. I never really saw it because it was never really my focus, but I had a good, um, a good line, right? I had a good way of, of promoting myself and whatever I was trying to get past and make you fall in love with. I had a good, well, real quick. I mean, I think, I think for those of you at home or if you're listening to this in your car,

wherever you are and you're wondering, would I be good at sales? Yeah. I think the easy litmus test for that is, how are you with people? Yep. I was just going to say, as a guy, could you pick up on girls? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. If you're a guy, can you walk up to girls you don't know? And I'm not saying you got to get them home and do weird things. But have a conversation.

But yeah, can you strike up a conversation and hold their attention for longer than eight eight seconds in addition to that how do you sell your parents right yeah do you i mean just with my son alone who actually works with me right now he was he's been selling my ass since he's seven years old and he's gotten a lot of things that he wanted and i'm not talking about material things yeah it's certain things that that he was able to get his point across and make a legitimate sense and he was a good salesman from literally from the time he was able to get his point across and make a legitimate sense. And he was a good salesman from literally from the time he was in second grade. Yep. Yeah. My daughter has that same skill. I was just going to say my daughter, same thing. I sit there, I go, he sold me on it. Let's see if he can sell your teacher. That's what I'm saying. That's it. So

it's, well, you know, what's funny is with my kids, man, I actually teach like, this is going to be terrible. I'm a terrible parent. Great case in point. I'm going to give you a case in point of how I teach my kids because it's more, it's like, again, it goes back to there's what a man can do and what a man can't do. And I'm more interested in what a man can't do is right. It's like that day, my son comes home and he's put off because he goes to a Catholic school. And I understand the way that, you know, everybody handles discipline differently. And the way that they seem to handle discipline at this school is,

if one kid does something wrong, they punish the whole class. It's like that, you know, they're going to have that soap party, like what was a full metal jacket where they hit the one bad kid with the, you know, they punish the whole, he screwed up, so I'm punishing all of you. That's what happens. So he comes home and he goes, I said, what are you doing? He goes, I got to write a stupid essay today. I go, what's the essay on?

And he goes, well, I have to write an essay on, you know, this kid was talking in the back of class and she turned around and couldn't figure out who it was. So she's like, you got to teach him. You know, we got to do an essay now. And the essay is, you know, based on what you did wrong, what you can do to be better behaved and this and that. It's got to be two pages. And I said, did you do anything wrong? He said, no. I said, could you do anything better? He's

like, I wasn't doing wrong. I can do something better. I said, go write two lines that say, I wasn't the one that was doing anything. I'm not going to apologize for something that I did do because I'm not perfect. And when I do do something, I want the apology to mean something. So in today's instance, I couldn't have done anything differently and turn that in. He looked at me like, what? I'm like, dude, that's pushing the bounds.

But what did the teacher do? Nothing. We didn't hear a word about it because it's about, like you said, pushing the bounds. When my kids want something from me, you got to close me on it. You got to, I mean,

when Roma learned another cat, I got a PowerPoint presentation. And it was the size, it was, it was, which is why we now have two cats that I'm allergic to instead of just one. Cause she's a good closer. Right. Yeah. But back to you, man, you're good in sales. You got this done.

You now have license. You took the 50, 50 split, but I'm more concerned about when you broke about on your own and started developing your own image within these high-end neighborhoods. Now, the thing I like is how did you first start getting into the fountains? What'd you do? So there's a couple of different things that I did. I think the statute of limitations is up on the mailbox. Initially, I started making friends with the guards that were at the gate, right? I always knew that, you know, every night I passed by the gates of the fountains in particular.

And that was my baby right up front, right? That was the one I started with. I've since broken into, you know, the other neighborhoods that are in the Green Valley area, closest to our office. And, you know, I deal with real estate in a lot of different, or in a lot of other different neighborhoods,

but the fountains was my baby right up front. So I started making friends with this one particular guard who worked the swing shift, right? So I would stop every single night and I would bring him a cup of McDonald's coffee every single night, right? Winter, spring, summer, fall, he got a cup of coffee, right? So we just started, and I never asked him to let me into the gate. I just stopped. Hey, what are you doing? I really love this neighborhood. I'm in real estate. If you ever know anybody that's looking for a house, give them my card. He never did, but he just accepted the coffee at that point. Yeah. Right. Thanks for the coffee.

Thanks for the coffee. But you put, so here's the thing though, rather than try to do the sledgehammer way, bust through the gate, it's let me be smart and get the gatekeeper to become my friend and he'll open the gate for me exactly there you go exactly okay so after that um i started with no budget i literally had no budget i mean no budget no budget right so i started printing you know the words that i wanted to say on a free printer printer with copy paper black and white ink or black ink and basically putting a piece of tape on it, filling up a mail carrier, and then encouraging this gatekeeper to let me in the neighborhood with my son.

And we used to hand deliver these words on white paper with black ink and basically put, hi, I'm Eric Gorton. I specialize in the neighborhood and the found. At that point, specialize was far from working. Sure, sure where I specialize in not having money for postage. That's what I did. Right. So I basically walked around the neighborhood. Okay. Let's talk about that though, because I want to talk about, let's break that

down because you know, people say there's two schools of thought, fake it till you make it. And then, like I said earlier, don't bullshit people when you're new. Cause they'll see it. But here's the thing. If you say I'm specializing in the fountains, was there any place else you were going and handing out stuff? Were you going anywhere else? No. So I don't find that to be bullshitting anybody. You were specializing in that place. You were like, this is what I'm going to work. This is how I'm going to work. You didn't say I've sold a bunch of houses to this point. You said, this is what I specialize in. That's exactly right. And much to what you just said, prior to getting in there, I did my due diligence.

I pulled up the tax record of every single person within the neighborhood and I Googled them and I wanted to know exactly what they did for a living, what their wife's name were, if they had any children, did they have a dog, what kind of car did they drive? So I tried to know every single thing that I could know about the homes that were in the fountains. See, here's the problem. Most new people starting out right now, they're coming into the business and they think,

oh, I'm going to get a website with an AI bot and it's going to do it all for me. I'm going to post Facebook ads and it's going to convert everything for me. Dude, if you're listening to this, man, you want to, I mean, dude, Eric's big time. I'm not, I ain't lying to you. The guy makes, I mean, I signed his checks for Christ's sakes.

I mean, the guy makes great money. If you want to get to that level, that's the, that is the level of dedication that it takes to get that done, to actually go into the tax prop, research each and every homeowner. I mean, to the point where, and it's funny because you've taught your son to do the same thing and he's made the comments that some people have said it's borderline stalking what he does, but make it your business to know who these people are. You know, I always talk about networking with intention, doing things with intention. If you're doing something with that level of intention in a neighborhood, whether

you've ever sold a house or not, you are a specialist in that. That's exactly right. I think that that's the biggest mistake residential people do. Again, I don't do residential, but I get a call probably every two or three weeks. Oh, I'm in the neighborhood showing properties in my neighborhood. What's your HOA fee? What's it cover? What's this? Like having not a clue of anything.

Right? And I think that's a huge, you're doing that in front of your clients. You know what's even more crazy? When you mispronounce the name of the street. Oh, yeah. I mean, seriously. You're in the business. You're doing research.

You came into a community where you're showing another home, and you can't even pronounce the name of the streets, right? Like, that's rudimentary. Well, you know, this goes back. Last week, I put up a story on my Instagram, and I was talking about I was in my office, and my office is adjacent to one of the conference rooms here in Simply Vegas. And I heard an agent from the other office that said this,

this is what they said when they were talking to their client. There's a good agent. It's been around for a minute, right? And this guy said, the client, I heard him ask where the bathroom was. And the guy, this is what he said. He goes, oh, you know, I haven't been working this company very long and I never work out of this office. I'm sure where it is let me go see if i can figure it out and i'm like dude that is the word you look like such an amateur when you did that so you need to if you want to be positioned and considered an expert in anything you need to know every variable of what can happen from where the bathroom is into your office how to print on the copy machine how the name how the street names are pronounced.

I mean, you need to know everything there is to know about that particular neighborhood, about your office, all of those things. Make that investment up front as a new agent and learn this stuff. You better know what the HOAs are. You better know what taxes are running. You better know where the closest grocery store is

or the closest gas station. It just amazes me when people come in the neighborhood and they're like, so where do you go for this or that? I'm like, your agent doesn't tell you any of this. 06.15 You know, I don't know. Again, I'm not a residential guy, so I don't be completely wrong. People come and see my houses, especially in the fountains. And they come with an agent. The agent walks behind them on the the phone. On the phone. Right? They're on the phone the whole time.

Stinging stuff like that. These people leave the house. All of a sudden, 15 minutes later, I get a phone call saying, hey, listen, I hated that house, but I hate my agent even more. I'd like to work with you because I love the neighborhood. Yeah. Oh, no, no. That for sure happens more often than not. If you're ill-prepared, like I say, a lot of the grief that real estate agents earn in the, in the marketplace that were overpaid, this and that,

a lot of that is well-earned. It just is. A lot of those are problems that could be avoided that we just don't do a good job of demonstrating our value proposition. And what's worse is if you, if you do that around somebody that's really good at doing it, you are you're gonna wind up with the client because the clients aren't stupid if they're if they're if you are an amateur and you are standing there with somebody that's an expert the expert is going to wind up with your client whether they intentionally probably won't intentionally be doing it but there you go i mean i i try to help cause not that to happen um when i used to houses, people would come in and at the end of it, no matter who the agent was, I would always say, Hey, just so you guys know, Bill's great.

You're in great hands. I always say that. Cause yeah, cause I can, I could feel, sometimes you can feel the people's clients slipping away and they're like, it's like, it's like if you would go to a bar with a date and start hitting on another, another girl, it's just not, yeah, it's just not, not very smooth to have that. That agent doesn't want to do a deal with you at that point. No. So I just had that on a building we were doing. I was like, this guy's amazing. We've done a lot of deals.

This guy's a residential guy that should not have been doing any deals or anything like that. But after, he's like, that was so nice. They came out, and we were so excited. Like, I want to sell him this property. And I needed that property to sell. Like, it was something. But it is,

your clients are smart enough most of the time to understand that. I got a call today from someone saying, Hey, can you sell my house? I said, no. And I go, what's wrong with your agent? He just, he doesn't say the right things always, or he doesn't do this. Like pretty much, and this is an expensive house, you know, selling an eight, $900,000 home. But that brings me to my next important point about establishing a brand, which is pick a lane and stay in it. Stay in it. There are way too many agents out there that are like, think they're the Swiss army knife of real estate. I can help you with commercial needs. I'm a luxury agent. I can help you find multifamily. I could, dude, I'm telling you the master of everything is the master of nothing. Pick a lane and do it. I mean, I think that's why I think people that gravitated, you know,

you sell everything, but I'm really just fascinated about your rise to the fountains because I think the lessons for a new agent developing themselves lie in that story. And so you, you decided this is what I'm going to do. This is it. I mean, this is going to be my neighborhood. This is my niche. My, me and my son are walking around. We're handing out these, these, we're doing the, we're doing the handouts. It's how it's going.

And this is how it's going to work. Yep. So I basically, you know, for the first almost two and a half years, I didn't get not one phone call, not one phone call. And I was in there every single night driving around. I was walking my dogs through the neighborhood twice a week. Right. I had my son, you know, helping me handing out literature.

I would shake as many hands as I possibly could. And then finally about, I mean, almost 30 months later of consistently doing this, I got my first phone call and said, hey, listen, I realize that you've never sold anything in here, but I'm willing to give you a shot, but you're going to do it for an extreme discount. And I was like, done. Yeah, you're like, I'm in. I did it. I did an open house that first weekend.

Someone walked in, bought it, and I double-ended the deal, and I made the whole transaction. There you go. But see, okay, so here's the lesson in that. Again, your new person, 30 months of consistent work. Not two mailers and it didn't work, so you give up.

Yeah, not two mailers and I give up on it. Every once in a while, I do a B-roll piece of advertising, like print advertising, that including postage would cost me like $240 for 200 homes. My wife wanted to kill me. I remember at that point I had a discover card. I don't know if you guys remember that, right? I would put it on my discover card and try to hide the bill. And I remember one time I had a $300 charge on my

discover card and my wife flipped out on me because quite honestly, we had no money at that point. We had no money. At the end of the month, we were lucky to have an extra four or 500 bucks after the cars were filled. We had milk, we we had diapers we had two small children at that point my son was seven my daughter was three right or four right so we had literally no money to do anything so for me to take a chance and do a piece of print advertising it most of the time it didn't even work well i think i think well that goes back to kind of what I talk about persistence and things. I think this is another reason why. So, yes, you want to build a niche in a neighborhood.

But this, again, is why it's important to get on with a team that has a good lead source. I tell all new agents that come to work for us, this is going to be like riding a 10-speed. I've had agents come on my team and sell a $1.8 million deal in the first week. I've had that happen. But in general, cause I've been doing this for a long time as well, as far as having a team goes. And I know you have to, I tell people 90 days is when it catches. It's like riding a 10 speed when like, it's not between gears and you're like, Oh man, you're putting like crazy. And all of a sudden it's like click and it catches. And then you start going good. If you just consistently work it for 90 days, at that point, if you continue the consistency, you will always be busy for the rest of your

career. That was what my question was going to be. How many months were you in the industry before you got it? So that was, that was just a paycheck. I started receiving paychecks immediately. So yeah, cause he was working at merit on their lease. He was at merit first month out the gate. I did five transactions. Second month I I did six. But bear in mind, big transactions back in the day were $175,000. And it was a different time too. But what would you, the new agent, like I tell people, just expect six months of no income. That way you're set up good. You're not going to come in and make $100,000. Dude, all you had to do was answer the phone. I'm sitting in front of the house.

Great, I'll be right there. Yeah, I'll be right there. It doesn't happen like that. Not anymore. What would you say a new agent to this day? If they were, say on not even a team. I would say at least 60 to 90 days, you've got to stay consistent and be ready to work every day, all day.

Shake as many hands as you can. Hand out as many business cards as you can. Don't go after the people that you know immediately. They're going to gravitate towards you, but put reliance in the people that you've put your faith in because to have a team member and don't rely on just because they have internet leads that that's going to be the end all be all. It's not. You have to align someone that has a good relationship with, or excuse me, a good track record of going out and getting listings a good you know sphere of influence of people that are going to come to them and maybe they're too busy so they pass it off to you and you're be able that would be a good lead you know you know what else i think

is super important to align yourself with is whatever team you're going to work for they better have amazing swag i mean the presentation, when you go to the listing presentations, better be of an amazing quality. The buyer books better be of amazing quality. The business cards can be of amazing quality. There's a thing most people don't understand, which is if you are in the real estate business, people are hiring you to market their properties. That's what they're hiring you to do is be a good marketer. And if you have a crappy cheap business card, you're sending out stupid three by five mailers with Turkey recipes on them. You are bad at marketing. You're not good at this. So as a new person, align yourself, somebody with excellent swag, excellent materials.

So you look professional out of the box. Your business card is the most important. That's going to elevate. That's going to, that's going to, that's going to accelerate your success pattern because as soon as you do get a couple of deals under the, important. Well, that's going to elevate, that's going to accelerate your success pattern because as soon as you do get a couple of deals under the belt, now you start leveraging the power of social media to talk to your sphere, to engage with your sphere, to remind them what you're doing.

Now, I want to spend the last part of this talking about branding because 20 years ago, quite frankly, you didn't have enough money to build a brand. Coke was a brand. Pepsi was a brand. You just did not have enough money to spend the amount of money you would need

through corporate advertising to get people to understand you as a brand. You just didn't have enough money. Now, with social media, it's easy to do. Easier. Easier. Easier is 100% right. There's right ways to do it

and there's wrong ways to do it. So I'm going to give you the wrong ways to do it really quick the things that drive me nuts um first of all is going to be this number one don't do the stupid canned social media don't hire a service to post your social your your real estate social media when they show some picture of a bathroom from thailand when you live in the desert that says, would you love to live in this bathroom? Yep. I loathe that type of social media. It's it's doesn't do anything. If you want to remind people what you do, and I'm talking right on the camera, this, if you're new, whatever you do, take your phone with you. When you're looking at property, when you're don't walk, don't neglect your clients. Don't do that.

But if you see something interesting, take your phone out real quick. I'm just going to take a real quick picture of this. If you see something funny or interesting or strange or cool or beautiful at a showing that you're actually out, don't take a photo. Take a video real quick and just say, hey, look, I'm out showing property. Look at how cool this is or look how crazy this is or whatever. It's interesting because remember, why do people go on social media? They don't go on social media to be necessarily, they don't want a commercial. They want to be entertained.

So you can educate through it by entertaining, but you've got to entertain first. So cool, interesting, fun stuff that gets there. This is my second pet peeve and I'm going to turn over before they should do the humble brag bitch. I loathe the humble brag bitch. It's a realtor special. It's something that only our industry does. And I don't know why they do it, which is this. When people write stuff like, oh my God, this freaking title company. Yeah. You know, they have screwed this up so bad.

None of my other five escrows. There's, there's, there's the brag and the bitches up front. And then you can humble brag that. Don't do that, guys. Don't complain about your clients. Don't complain about your job. Don't complain about what you don't complain about your job don't complain about what you do think about it if you had to have open heart surgery would you want to

would you and you went online to check on this guy that was going to do open heart surgery he was like man had to look at another stupid heart today another lame day in heartville today oh this sucks i can't believe i gotta work on saturday i'd be like no dude i don't want you talking to me so be positive through what you're posting on social media. So Eric, what are your best tips for social media? Social media, absolutely video makes a difference. When people are just propagating and putting it out there as if they're just putting photos

because they've taken 16 photos and they picked the best one and they put the best of life out there and they put some witty term underneath it, it just doesn't work. People want to see the real you. They want to know what you're going through on a daily basis, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. And when I say bad, if you're having a shitty day and you have something to put out there, just put it out there. But don't humble brag bitch. You definitely don't want to throw anybody under the bus. But if you're having a day from hell, well, you know, maybe just promote it a little bit. But say tomorrow will be better, right?

But people want to know what you're going through. And they want to know that you're a real person. They don't want to see the fake lifestyle on real estate. Yep. Colt, what say you, sir? I mean, mostly I'll talk about personal branding. Why I think it's important is because you don't know what's going to happen to that company.

There were, there has been multiple, multiple good companies out there. Merit, like they don't exist anymore. Okay. Dyson and Dyson was a huge luxury firm throughout the Southwest. And there will always be a reason why you leave a brokerage. It might not be now, it might not be, you know, maybe never. But for example, I'm at this brokerage because of the owners. Okay. They're pretty spectacular.

But I am. No, I am. And if somebody left here and just, I got a normal blanket type of brokerage in here, I would probably leave at that point. right? And if I leave, I don't want that to be such a hiccup for your clients. Your clients should not, it should not be a huge decision when you leave. They shouldn't know. Well, that's a final lesson for everybody listening at home. If you're thinking about going into real estate, one of the most important things you have got to do is read your contract from your broker. Some of them, so many of them are still predatory in nature. They treat you like an indentured servant once you sign the bottom line. have got to do is read your contract from your broker. Some of them, so many of them are still predatory in nature. They treat you like an indentured servant once you sign the bottom line.

Should you ever want to leave, they can keep your money, they can keep your listings, they can keep your contracts. Your contract, whatever brokerage you work at, for the very reasons that Cole just talked about, should be flexible enough that when you want to go, you can pick up your business and go and simply change a couple of logos on some cards, change a couple of logos on some sites. It should be as hard as it is because if your broker is not performing for you, you shouldn't have to stay and perform for them. That's how it is. Well, guys, that's it for today, man. I hope you learned something. Thanks so much for Eric for sitting in, sitting in, man. And hopefully some of you guys got something out of the story. I know I always did. We didn't even talk about why you

work here, which is pretty amazing. Eric actually works at the brokerage. I'll tell it before we sign off. He works here because I went and did a listing presentation in the fountains years and years ago. And the guy that worked there told me it was the best listing presentation he'd ever seen. Said it was amazing. His wife wasn't there. She was flying back in that night, said, call me in the morning and come by and pick up the paperwork. I said, sure. And I called the guy at 10 o'clock in the morning and he said, oh man, sorry, John, we just, let's do another recording. At which point, at which point I basically went to Eric and I said, dude, if I can't beat you, you got to come work here. And that's how, that is how Eric came to work here. He's been here forever since. And we're very lucky and happy to have him here at Simply Vegas.

If they want to catch up with you, Eric, how do they find you? You can find me anytime at the website gortongroup.com or look at me on Instagram at Eric Gordon. Okay. Colt. I figured out my handle. You figured it out? I'm like, I know my Instagram handle.

Colt underscore Amadon on Instagram, Amadongroup.com. Okay, and it's on Android too, so give him a couple of minutes. If you sign up and look for him, he won't know. But yeah, like I always say when we sign off, man, if you like what we're doing, tell a friend. We appreciate it. Make sure you like and subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple. If you like what we're doing, tell a friend and we appreciate it make sure you like and subscribe if you're watching us on youtube make sure you uh subscribe if you're listening to us on spotify or apple

if you like what we're doing tell a friend if you hate what we're doing tell two because it doesn't matter if they're talking good or bad what matters colt as long as they're talking about as long as they're talking about us see you next week guys hey it's john gafford if you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com. We'll share any links that we've things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram,

you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.