KGCI: Real Estate on Air - 10 Books That Changed My Life (Out of 627!)

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Welcome back for another episode. This is going to be fun. I went through 627 books to pick out the 10 that I thought were the most impactful in my business and my life growth journey. So that's what we're going to unpack today. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School, which is a business coaching organization that helps agents grow and scale their business without losing their life, so without the grind. So let's get into it. And I'll sort of preface this by saying, I'm not actually a prolific reader of books, meaning like I don't actually pick up books and read them. Maybe a couple dozen books. I've actually gone back and read the books.

So the app that I live in, I mean, live in is Audible. So I have consumed over 600 titles in Audible. And at least I've purchased 627 books in Audible. Probably read a good or listened to a good 80% of them. So this list does not really include all the health titles that I'd like my physical body and a bunch of faith-based books and all of that. So it's probably less than $627 than are just business. But these are the top 10 in business that I would recommend to anyone looking to grow and scale and have a massive impact in their real estate businesses. And this is in no particular order.

The only order this is in is the order that I scrolled through these 627 titles. The first one, and probably one of my top three favorite books, is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And this is in a category of books. I'm going to cheat a little bit here because I'm going to throw in another couple titles. Willpower doesn't work by Benjamin Hardy, compound effect by Darren Hardy. So three titles. But in the realm of how do we get? ourselves to do the things we know we need to do, but we don't do. And how do we stop doing the

things that we know we shouldn't be doing? And it's this concept of, and this is the big takeaway from the book is, it's just doing the little things. Atomic. The atom is the smallest particle, right, of a physical matter. And so atomic habits are the little things that you could do over time to end up in a different direction. And one of the quotes I love, love, love from the book is, you know, we're something to the effect, you know, we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So something as simple as, and I do this pretty much every night, I go to sleep in my gym clothes so I know that I'm going to work out in the morning.

I'm like, what am I wearing my gym clothes for? You know, oh, yeah, I've got a workout today. You know, every day I try to get a 45 minute workout in. And so that's just something that I didn't always do. It wasn't always a habit. The habit was more sleep in late or let my day get the best of me. and kind of launch into email and then the kids and then get into work or whatever. And now there's just a habit around that.

So atomic habits, a must. Like this is get the physical book, listen to it on Audible. I've probably gone through it four or five times already. Number one. Number two is profit first by Mike McCallowitz. I haven't had many sort of man crushes or been involved in too many bromances. This one for sure. I actually got to meet Mike McCallowitz at a high-level master.

mind. He spoke to the room of about 100 business coaches, and then about 10 or 12 of us had a private session where he challenged us to do the clockwork challenge, which is another one of his books. All of his books are really, really good. Profit first, though, basically his mission in this book and overall is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And so most entrepreneurs, most real estate agents don't have a whole lot financially to show for all the hours, all the blood, sweat, and tears, the evenings, they put into their real estate business. They don't have a lot of money to show for it. Not that money is the only indicator of success, but there's just not a lot there. So this book allows you to redefine your business in terms of it's not revenue minus expenses

equals profit. It's revenue minus profit equals expenses. So you only spend money that allows you to earn a pre-decided, a predetermined level of profit, profit first. Okay. Number three, and this is a broader commentary, is the book Unleashed the Power Within. It's actually by Tony Robbins, but the first personal development event that I went to, I guess outside of, I was already coached. I started coaching. I got a real estate coach in April 2007.

I only got into real estate in March 2007. But the first personal development event I went to was a UPW. Unleashed the Power Within. It was in Long Beach, California. And I went on to do most everything except Platon partners that Tony Robbins preach. But inside each of us is this ability to do things that quite literally scare you if you knew what was possible. And so just opening my mind to the things that are possible if I could just get out of my own way. and I can sort of rewire some of these limiting beliefs that, you know, maybe came from my

childhood or whatnot. This is a cornerstone work that I feel like everyone has to go through a UPW or at least read the book, Unleash the Power Within. Number four, and you guys, if you've been around the podcast for a while, you heard me talk about it. Emith revisited by Michael Gerber. Inside of each of us, there are three distinct personalities, the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur.

Most real estate agents spend no time thinking about the future of their business, which is the entrepreneur. The manager helps build out the future, but most of us don't spend any time doing the manager work in our business. And we're just completely entrenched and distracted by the technician work, the doing the transactions, the, you know, saving the deal that's blowing up right in front of us. This book lays out a mindset of building a franchise prototype that could, actually scale without you having to do all the work. Monumentally impactful.

I would say if I had to pick two books in this list, it'd be Atomic Habits and Eymouth Revisited by Michael Gerber. All right. Number five is about six or seven years ago. I went through this exercise. The book is called Living Forward by Michael Hyatt. And it essentially takes you through how to create and develop and live a life that's forward looking.

And so we went through this process in our men's group where we took a full day. It actually took me about eight or nine hours the first day and I worked on it two or three hours to put together this life plan where in the book he talks about, you know, drifting in an area of life. So drifting in your marriage or drifting in your physical body or drifting in your financial world, right, your financial picture. A little bit, kind of like atomic habits, but a little bit of drift. in your marriage can lead you to the point where the kids go to college and you're like,

who is this person? I don't want to be married to you anymore versus this awareness through a life plan where one of the categories that I pay special attention to is my marriage, right? I can get consumed with the kids and my businesses and my wife can get consumed with the kids and her ministry, which is her podcast, Everyday Miracles podcast. If you haven't checked it out, check it out by the way. Shameless plug. Living forward this ability to have a life.

plan and you have accounted for each of the areas of life that are meaningful you, meaningful to you is really, really critical. So that exercise, yes, it's a big investment of time, but it will change forever the trajectory of your life and your business. The next book, number six, is Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. And there's another book, I think it's called Do the Work and the War on Art. So he's got several books that are essentially themed around, you know, if you're playing the game of business at a pro level or the game of marriage at a pro level or the game of parenting at a pro level, you don't get shaken by the highs and lows. So I use the example of Tom Brady in football.

And it didn't work out for him in marriage because he was so focused on football apparently. But the stories about him, when it came to winning and turning pro, he would win the Super Bowl and be back at practice and training the next day, apparently. And if he lost, he would go back to training the next day. So he wasn't motivated by the wins or the losses. He was just going to do the work required to play the game of football at the highest level. So let's take an example in your, in parenting. You know, I'm not going to get thrown off my game. If my kids do something that is, you know, not the right thing to do and just whatever situation they get themselves in, I'm not going to let that down, that low point impact me showing up consistently.

Or when they do something really amazing, right? I'm not going to let that, you know, get in the way of me disciplining them the next day or whatever. So turning pro in real estate, you know, it doesn't matter if you're five minutes into your lead generation time. block and you set a listing appointment, the pro keeps working for the entire time block. The amateur says, I got a listing appointment. That's pretty good. That's a win for the day. Let's go do something else, right? So are you turning pro in the business? The seventh book is, and there's, I'm going to lump a couple in here by Stephen Covey, his lesser known book called First Things First, and then of course seven habits of highly effective people, but the first things

first book really helps helped me and will help you get clear on what your true priorities are for this season of your life. Oftentimes, we will compare ourselves to someone, you know, I'll use an example of, you know, someone who's not married 30 years old and they're crushing real estate. And maybe you're, you have three kids under five years old and, you know, you're not able to invest as much in your business because you've chosen to spend more time nurturing your family for this season, you know, so first things first gives you permission to win at home for the season and maybe not focus on the business as intensely. Unbelievably impactful book. Number eight is Robert Kiyosaki's rich.

dad, poor dad. I actually met who claimed to be, and I think he is, Keith Cunningham, who's actually the rich dad in Robert Kiyosaki's life. I met him in Fiji at a Tony Robbins event. So rich dad, poor dad is all about, you know, looking at, there's four quadrants, there's, you know, being an employee, there's being self-employed, there's being an investor. I forget what the four quadrants are, but you want to be on the right side. You want to be, have leveraged income and passive income. So leverage income is building a business. So when I read this book, I was like,

oh, in real estate, you could be an employee or self-employed. That's the left side, employee or self-employed. So we've chosen to be self-employed, but you're still doing linear income, meaning you're still having to put one step in front of the other to make the commission check.

And then you've got to go out and do it again, then go do it again. When you put systems into your business and you get some leverage through technology or automations or virtual assistance, or a licensed local administrator, whatever it might be a showing agent, you are now building leverage income where other people can be working on the lower dollar

productive activities in the business. So you could focus on the higher dollar productive activities. You can take yourself from earning $20, $30, $50 per hour invested in your business to $100, $200, $500 plus per hour. That's leverage income. And then you take that income and you invest it into things that will produce for you, you know, with you not having to do anything. So there's a cool board game.

I think it's called Cashflow Quadrant that he built out as well. So that's number eight. Number nine is eat that frog by Brian Tracy. And I think it's like 21 rules to prevent procrastination or something like that. The one lesson from that book is that every day in real estate and probably in any sales business, there are a couple frogs we must eat. And in the book, it talks about eating those frogs. early in the day so that you don't have to stare at them all day long.

And I know if you think here for a second, you can guess what they are. It's lead generation and lead follow-up. So those two categories of activities I call new business development. It's our ability to stay still long enough in the morning, two to three hours of lead generation. Those are new conversations with would-be buyer and seller clients. and then lead follow-up for the 90% of folks that you talk to in that lead generation time block aren't ready to go. So we have to do lead follow-up.

And we're just putting nurture sequences in place. We're reminding ourselves to reach back out and touch base with folks. And those are the two biggest frogs that you could eat every day, two to three hours of lead generation and 30 to 60 minutes of lead follow-up. If you could do those things consistently over the long haul, meaning 12, 18, 24 months, you will have a completely different set of decisions to make in the future. That's what I was willing to do in the early days. And that was one of the maybe first five books that I read when I got into real estate.

And I'm like, ah, the frogs are ugly. And I don't like them. I didn't like it. I had massive call reluctance. But I knew that I had to do those activities if I were going to push my business forward. So that was a lasting impression from that book. The 10th, and again, in no particular order, but the 10th book here is by Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine.

This book really takes it from soup to nuts. And Chet Holmes was actually a business partner of Tony Robbins in his business mastery. And I went to both business mastery seminars. One was in Fiji and I forget what the other one was. So Chet Holmes, the entire, I think it's 10 or 12 aspects of business that you need to master to be able to build a business that can scale. And there used to be a set of trainings online. they somehow got them offline.

I wish I would have saved them somehow. But where he taught each chapter of that book, powerful, powerful books still in my top 10. So those are my top 10 recommendations. And I could have pulled out another 10 or 20 or 30. Those 10, though, if you take your time to be with those books. And I'm going to go back, let me just look at these real quick. I'm going to pick the top three.

Atomic habits, for sure. E myth revisited, for sure. Eat that frog, I could almost lump with atomic habits and willpower and compound effect. So atomic habits, emits revisited, and then I would say, like, first things first. I would say first things first. And giving ourselves permission to be in the season that we're in and to set our priorities accordingly. So, and I'll see you over there, continue the conversation over there. Much love, much respect for doing this work.

This is not the easy path of business. So I've just got a ton of respect for you. We'll see on the next episode.