KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Building a Business That Buys Back Your Time with Joel Perso

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.Summary: In this high-leverage episode, we sit down with Joel Perso to tackle the ultimate entrepreneurial challenge: moving from being "the business" to owning the business. Joel breaks down his tactical framework for scaling without burnout, focusing on how real estate professionals can use systems, delegation, and "Value-Based Time Management" to buy back their freedom. Learn how to stop trading your life for commissions and start building a self-sustaining asset that generates wealth and time simultaneously.  Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Real estate strategy without the spin. Here's what you missed from this week's Friday Focus on KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Seven-figure success starts when you start thinking like a CEO. Welcome to the John Kitchens Coach podcast Experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. You're ready to think bigger and transform your business into a path to lasting freedom. What up? What up, brother.

How are you? Hey, I'm good, man. How are you? Good, good. Welcome, everybody. Thank you guys for tuning in. We built agent to CEO going into 2019, really off of everything that we had been doing since 2004, Kinder had been doing since 2000, right? And so it was just a lot of lessons learned, things that we had experienced, things that we had coached and helped people experience. And it was really all about just evolution.

And that's really where the agent to CEO concept really came from was just about evolving from an agent to really becoming the CEO, the transformation that happens not only in your business, but in your life, right? Because it's not necessarily always about achieving the goal, but it is about who you become on the way to achieve that goal, right? Who do you have to become? What habits do you have to let go? of what habits do you have to create in order for you to get to that point.

So it's just really more so mindset first with everything. It's always mindset first. So the agent to CEO mindset. And I want to get into really what the power hour that I want to talk about. I want to hit on some topics, how it aligns to the agent CEO concept and model. But there were a couple things that were popping, usually on one big first. fire we dive into kind of trending topics things that are happening but i would love to get your take on a couple things jol as we're seeing um a lot of shifts and a lot of a lot of changes i wanted

to um kick off by what i just saw um from real estate news just put out really with you know gary gary gary being gary and there was something that he had alluded to here in the um talking about a couple things to focus on and would love to get your take hot take on this real quick and then any any perspective that you guys have can you Joel can you see the housing wire article yep so Gary's alluded to lead generation will lead to success in a slow market as always right always always be focusing on the lead generation side of things. And there was another statistic that came out earlier that I saw from Chris Smith. I don't know if you saw this crazy article. We'll come back to this. Somebody got a pig's head on their

doorstep. I don't know if this is where it's at. It'll tie to it. No, there was some statistics that I loved that I wanted to talk about now we'll come back to that so but oh I know where it was I'll pull that up here in a second but looking at what what Gary's talking about and there were some things kind of being faced that he was alluding to this isn't the one standby because this is is really interesting hot take okay so um obviously Gary B and Gary talked about there are empires being built right now on the bones of individuals who won't get out of bed and go to work and he said the ones that focus on treating real estate like a J.O.B are the ones that are the ones that are going to thrive and that's the set hours man that's like it's it's is it the 24

seven is it the all-timers what what is it going to really take to to navigate the terrain right now to be able to get ahead not not not not just survive but truly create some separation what does that look like right now what would you say right because just like gary's saying here i mean they're homes are being sold why not us why not us out there getting it and that's that honey badger mentality that's the agent to ceo mindset it's like i'm going to go get my fair share but what's the commitment right you can't be interested and i'm not asking you to be obsessed but what is the level of commitment required right now to create some separation and some momentum in this market. Yeah, I totally agree. We've talked before about this idea of interested, committed,

and obsessed, right? And for the last 10 years, or most of the last 10 years, being interested in real estate success was enough to get you some measure of real estate success, right? You were doing enough deals to make a decent living. You rode the market up and all those agents are riding the market, you know, down too. So being interested, I think, in 2025, certainly 2026, being interested in real estate success isn't going to be good enough anymore. It's about being committed. I totally agree. I think the obsessed, that's the 24-7 that you're talking about. There's always going to be those people. I think that the big teams that have been obsessed, for years are going to keep grabbing market share. But the agents who are committed have an

incredible opportunity right now. Hormozi talks about this. A lot of other guys are too right now. But the bar is pretty low for what your competition is doing, you know, broadly in real estate. And so I kind of like the, I kind of like the idea of like committed looks like the job, showing up every single day, which is the foundation of running a business, which is what we're talking about with agent to CEO, showing up every day, growing your business. When you can fire yourself from one job and make a hire, you do that. But you don't stop. You just move into higher leveraged activities. And then when you can offload something else to a VA, to AI, to an agency, to a fractional, you move on and spend more and more of your time. You're not spending any

less time. The idea that you're going to spend less time is years or decades down the road for most of the people who are going to be on this call and who are going to be at the event. And so, you know, you have to build something that's sustainable. And in order to do that, I think committed is the exact right word. So, you know, are you showing up at the same time every day? Have you mastered your calendar? Are you prospecting in the morning and hitting appointments in the evenings? Are you putting time in your calendar for critical thinking? You which I think that's something you've really been preaching this past year, especially, which I love, thinking about the business, thinking about the problems, thinking about the strategy.

Are you putting some time in your calendar to focus on AI, learning what's possible, learning some capabilities, implementing and integrating it into your business. Yeah, it's absolutely committed. And I think a great way to start with that is, all right, what are you doing for the nine to 12 hours that you're supposed to be working today? Yeah. No, that one of the things that you said right there that I think if more, I want your take on this. Agent to CEO, if you are building a plan to constantly be putting yourself out of a job, meaning like what you just said right there, right? In the beginning, you do everything, right? You have the ideas, you manage the ideas, you execute the ideas. I mean, you do everything. You turn the lights on,

you make the coffee, you take the trash out, you, you know, nothing is too big and nothing is too small. And then you get to a point to where now you have that thought partner, somebody that's, you know, you're able to bounce ideas off, make quicker decisions. You get somebody to help support you on the TC side of things for, you know, a, a paper at closing type of thing, right? There's a couple different facets, a couple different ways to go. You can, you know, then start building out with maybe VA support, right, a, you know, a global support team to help you, then you're empowering them with AI. Then maybe you make a critical hire maybe to help you on the marketing and social side of things, because I want to get into a couple of things that I

was listening to Gary Vee in the sauna this morning about. It's a funny story. I'll tell you that in second but you start to to expand that out and all of a sudden you're not doing tc work you're not doing marketing work other than the marketing strategy the overview the maybe some of the you got to do the content the production side of things but you're not doing the you know some of those activities you're getting the bookkeeping stuff off your plate you're doing you're getting the operational stuff off your plate so you keep working yourself out of a job and then you work yourself out of production and then you work at yourself out to now where you're just head of company, and then, you know, the holy grail is instead of, you know,

you're working in the business, you're working on the business, then you start to work over the business. You're just a true owner of the business. But most people don't think that way because they typically build real estate as a lifestyle business. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just don't know how sustainable real estate as a lifestyle business is moving into the next few years and if you read that article from gary his crystal ball prediction is things ain't getting better till next summer so if that's true that means we got another 12 months of this shit like seat belt on buckle up right so like because i it could get worse it could get worse it really really could get worse before it starts to get even better so it's just some things to

think about and the only way to handle a crisis is to prepare for a crisis and that's the only way to deal with it is you got to prepare for it so i mean what are what are your thoughts around you know that in regards to that type of thinking and your take on on lifestyle yeah i don't i don't think well we'll get to get to lifestyle kind of two parts there um talking about lifestyle but you know in the what does the next 12 months look like um you know a really important piece of the agent to CEO process that it's kind of an undercurrent we don't really address it full there's not a session on putting yourself in a good position but but that's what the process does is put you in a good position we're looking at our finances we're putting

core capital aside we're running lean um you know we're we're leveraging our ourselves with AI, with VAs to keep payroll costs down. We've got maybe additional funds set aside so that we can reinvest. Maybe we're doubling down on our most successful marketing campaigns. There's all these things that bubble up to the surface and strategy that put you in a good position. Shane Parrish talks a lot about this in clear thinking. He uses Warren Buffett as the example and what being in a good position means is you're

never forced into a decision that you don't want to make. The market can't force you into it. The competition can't force you into it. Being in a good position means you're never forced into. So people always rip on Warren Buffett for, you know, holding too much cash, right? Or holding too much cash for too long. But he always is in a good position where the market will never force him to do anything. He'll never get caught where he's got to make a decision.

He doesn't want to sell a big position that he doesn't want to have to sell because of the market is always in a good position. And so what are the things you can do to put yourself in a good position? position. And a lot of the agent to CEO process puts you in a position to win where again, the market's not forcing you to make decisions you don't want to make and the competition's not forcing you to make decisions you want to make. What's part of the market right now? Well, AI is part of the market right now. So what's going to happen there? But again, being in a good position, being in a strong financial position, being in a strong marketing position, being a strong people position. All of these things put you in a position of security, but also a

flexibility that when the time's right, you're ready to pounce on the opportunities. Whereas if we overextend ourselves when we're riding the market up and we don't play a little bit safe, we end up being way out of position when the market starts to turn. And if you're out of position when the market starts to go down, you're going to be out of position when it starts to go up again and not able to capitalize on it. So the agent to CEO process really puts you in a winning position and a position of strength and control over your business so that's the one thing in terms of what was the second part again more about you know a lot of agents have built their business around lifestyle right they'll

generate 300,000 and they'll spend 300 and 4,000 and not like running and falling in love with the P and L right P and L right they're running an L they ain't running no P. So it's it's really making sure that they started really take into consideration and you know one of the three critical things for us that flip the switch for for everything to to know the ability to escape production takes three things and the three things for us and one is is knowing the numbers right and having a clear understanding of the key metrics and the numbers you need to pay attention to so that's where I struggle a little bit or a little concerned because I mean I mean, shit, we've all been guilty at times, right?

Especially entrepreneurs, sometimes we fall in love with and think that the growth of the momentum is going to keep happening. And we forget, you know, the concept that the only, only the paranoid survive. And so we have to be able to step back. And so any thoughts around or pump the brakes or a little caution with, you know, the lifestyle folks? Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think thinking through the idea.

of positioning would be really valuable for people in a lifestyle business. And again, we're defining lifestyle business as you're essentially spending whatever revenue the business creates, either in the business or more likely your lifestyle. So you sell more deals, make more money, your lifestyle increases a little bit.

You're not building an asset in the business. So I think positioning is a really important thing for people with a lifestyle business because maybe it is time to pull back a little bit. So we're saving more for a down market where we're investing more either in the business or in assets. I think there's a great opportunity for lifestyle businesses.

You just can't have both. And so a lifestyle business, if you want it to fund your lifestyle and then fund your retirement, well, then a big part of that lifestyle business has to be generating income to, acquire other assets that are going to help you, whether that's your stock portfolio, retirement savings, real estate, whatever it is. Where I think a lot of people are going to get

caught is they think they're building a business that's going to be valuable, but they're actually building a lifestyle business. And they don't know the difference between the two and there's no intention behind it. Lifestyle business is great. If that's what you set out to do and you've thought through it and you know what it's going to take for that lifestyle business to generate enough income to then acquire other assets or over the long term. Great, but that's a, that's a real option. But if you think you're building a valuable asset, but you're actually building a, on paper, not very valuable lifestyle business, then I think those are the people are going to be in trouble here. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think the only reason to have real estate or build a real

estate team is to just unlock other opportunities. That's the only thing that I believe just because you know, built up, you know, multiple seven-figure figure real estate companies, we actually sold one and y'all would laugh if if you knew what we sold it for. After all of the intellectual property, everything that was there, like it just, there's no value. There's really no value, especially when you take and you build the brand, which is typically your name, because it's so fast to get traction and build trust instead of trying to build a brand that nobody knows, right? I mean, Joel, you experienced that when you guys went, you know, and rebrand when, you know,

you were partners there in Milwaukee. And so I just, you know, I step back and I've seen it too many times. And the real lesson, the real lesson, and it's, you've heard me talk about this because this past October was 20 years with Kinder and I reflected back as a coach, how would I coach these two 27, 28 year old knuckleheads? That's kind of the thought process that I went through, that if I had the opportunity to coach us in 0405, how would I have coached us? And we were so blinders on on status and yeah we were running and gunning but we were spending more than we were making back into the business we were taking taking what we could and we wanted to have some

nice things but we weren't like being strategic in understanding what we're trying to do we were just trying to fuel more growth because we wanted to be number one instead of and this is how I would have coached us I would have said boys what's freedom because that's what you want to chase you want to chase freedom you want to trade you don't want to chase status lifestyle business status what do you want to what you want to chase is freedom you want to have the freedom to do whatever the hell you want to do whenever you want to do it with one with whomever you want to do it whenever wherever just go and it's about having enough money coming into where you're not trading time for dollars because most of us are dancing bears if we don't dance we don't get

paid and we need revenue streams and we need we need investments we need money coming in to where if we wanted to go off the grid for 60 days nothing would slow down nothing would stop and if if if we would have had somebody punching us in the mouth on understanding it's about freedom. It's not about status. Now, would we be on this call? Probably not, right? Like, everything happens for a reason. There's a master plan.

I'm all bought into that. But if I was to coach us in that situation, that's how I would have coached us. And the other- Hey, quick pause before we keep going. This market is shifting fast. And if you've been feeling the pressure, you're not alone. But here's the thing. It's not going to slow down so you can catch up.

I've opened a limited number of executive 101 coaching spots this month for agents who are ready to stop spinning their wills and lead with clarity. If that's you, head to john kitchens.comch and let's make it happen. Now back to the episode. Another element of freedom is my definition of freedom is two things. You have enough money coming in that you're not. trading time for dollars and you're living your perfect day. And the perfect day scenario was ultimately, you know, really who you are at your core. And it's an incredible exercise where

we're playing around with Perfect Day 2.0 because of AI to where you can take a part of the vivid vision, Joel, take a part of the vivid vision and the core identity exercise to really put together through AI and have an AI ask you the questions one at a time. to where you lay out your perfect day. If you guys haven't read Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel, it's almost a requirement. Because when you understand the who not how concept from Dan Sullivan, then you get into the buyback your time from Dan Martel.

And there's a segment in there in the beginning to where he talks about Oprah. And he lays out Oprah's day. And Oprah's living her perfect day. I mean, she literally lives the perfect day. She works out twice a day. She sips rosé in the garden at noon with lunch. She goes on walks with her dogs and her husband. But she works.

She works. And if everybody's honest, if you had to live Groundhog Day, but you get to design Groundhog Day, you would work two to four hours. Everybody that's honest in that exercise, they all work two to four hours. but Oprah works, I think it's an hour, maybe two hours, but she only solves $100,000 problems. Think about that. That's it. That's all she talks about. That's all she does.

She solves $100,000 problems minimum. That's her floor. And when you have to think about that, you're like, listen, like, I know I'm going to work. So what problems do you want to solve? Who do you want to work with? The beauty of that, that's why it's called. a core identity is because you catch yourself. You're like, man, I would never work with this person on my perfect day. Then why the hell are you working with them today? I mean, I would never, I would never eat this on my perfect day. Then why are you eating it? I would never hang out with this person on my perfect day. I would never talk about this on my perfect day. Then why are you? That's where the core identity and that's where the changes start to happen, right? And that's

who you have to become in order to live the life that you want to live. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm super excited about coming together in Cleveland, you know, obviously we can talk about this all night long. Joel, any other thoughts around kind of that concept of the business structure, business dynamics and moving towards freedom? Yeah, I think the, what's so powerful about the perfect day exercise is you can put, you can put dollar amounts to your perfect day. All right. Well, what kind of house are you living in? Well, we can put a dollar amount behind that. What kind of car are you driving? Who are you spending time with? Where are you, you know, hanging out? What are you working on and how much? And what kind of income is that bring in? And how much time, you know, when you're not working, do you need to have income coming in for those? And so we can we can put dollar amounts behind your perfect day. And now you've got the, now you've got the target. Now we can say, I need this much money, which means I'm going to need this many. assets producing this much income to get there, all right, now we have a number. And you talk about this a lot, the freedom number.

And now we can design our business to get us to the freedom number. So that lifestyle business, now we could say, hey, I got a lifestyle business right now. But if I either cut back on the spending or increase revenue without increasing spending, now I can make real progress towards that freedom number, which is going to get me to the perfect day. Or if we're earlier on, we're still a solo agent, we've got a small team, we can say what needs to happen? How many transactions are we going to need to do at what profit margin? How many agents are we going to need to do that many transactions? You can start to design your business intentionally in a way that's going to get you to that end goal, but you have

to get crystal clear on that goal. So the perfect day is the right place to start because we can reverse engineer the perfect day into the freedom number, and then we can build a business around getting to the freedom number so i just i love i love it i love the continuity of it and i love the intentionality and um and and for a lot of people that when you really do that math the freedom number is a lot smaller than than we think at first you know my freedom number doesn't involve having five vacation houses right it's got my house and it's got up the place up north on the lake like that's mine right so it we can get there a lot faster and now if you said hey maybe you don't have to do 30 years of your lifestyle business put in away 10% of your income every year

to finally get there. Maybe you could do it in five years. What would it look like to do it in five years where you put 80% of your income away or whatever that is? But you can start to make those decisions. And then you always say, which I love, you know, commit, commit or you don't believe in, you know, commit and then figure it out. It's figure out what it's going to take and then decide are you willing to pay that price. So maybe you could do it in five years, but you're not willing to pay that price. Great. Do it in 10 years. But the point is you can have intentionality behind it once you do those exercises. No, dude, I love that. And yeah, it's never what's the goal. It's, how much pain are you willing to withstand? It's, it's, you got to, you got to look at

it from that side of the fence to truly know. And, you know, I, I really truly learned that lesson um not very long ago um about about seven maybe seven years ago i learned that lesson seven eight years ago of the i knew reverse engineer but i truly understood it with with ironman and you know sitting at sitting in the in the audience um this is why events are so important right sitting in the audience in l.A it was the last uh content in commerce that digital marketer did it was their last one it was their best event it was better than trafficking conversion it was just content and commerce and they had jesse itzler was the keynote and i tell everybody like jesse is the best from stage and if anybody ever gets a chance they've got to go

they've got you know go see jesse speak from stage and he said something to me right like the 4,000 people in the audience he's talking to me and he says um the worst thing for us as you humans is to accomplish a major milestone in our life and not immediately reset the goal. And I was like, damn, I just ran my first marathon. This was a big deal. Like, running a marathon was a big deal for me because before that, I had only run 5K fun runs, you know, beer runs. That was it, you know, the mud runs, the beer runs.

That was it. We did it for team building. We just had fun. We got hammered. We just had a good time. and I knew he was talking to me right like we've all had that moment right we're in the we're in the crowd and I like man that dude speaking directly to me and you know right after that I got a notification for the 10 year anniversary of iron man Florida and um I was like man what the hell is iron man

like I didn't even know I seen it on TV but I didn't really truly know what it was and I would have AI help me with this now but I had to reverse engineer right 2.4 miles 2.6 miles in the water 112 miles on the bike a marathon oh I got that 26 point I know that I got that because I just did that I just did a marathon I understand what it takes to run a marathon but 112 miles on the bike and then swim over two miles like I couldn't comprehend so I had to understand what it takes in

the pain and the time involved for that to be true. And that's how we have to look at what it is that we're trying to accomplish in our lives. That's why I don't believe you commit and figure it out. Because if I'd have said, yeah, I'm in. But I wouldn't have understood the time. Because here's the thing. No matter what we do in life, it always comes back to time. And I knew for me to be able to finish my, I won't get into the story.

But I ultimately, I tried to run a full Iron Man on my own. And because I ran a marathon on my own. I, you know, trained on my own. I learned. I tried to do it all on my own. And I had that aha in the mirror moment. I'm like, dude, you're the biggest idiot on the planet. You're a coach.

And like, you're not getting a coach. But when I got a coach, he had two rules. We finish and we don't die. That was it because it got two rules. You finish and you don't die. And so how do you build a plan? to finish and not die. And then I looked at it and I was like, okay, what's the time that I need to finish and not die?

And for me, it came out to be about 14 hours a week. And so I was like, okay, where can I build 14 hours into the week? Do I have the support? And when I saw that that was possible, then I knew I could commit. And a lot of people don't. That's why they fall short on accomplishing things is because they don't take the time to understand what it's going to take and then can they commit to that time can they sacrifice to that time um and if more people would take the time to do that they would accomplish so much

more and so it was just a aha moment for me and it's like geez i've been on this planet for almost 50 years and i didn't learn that lesson until eight years ago so it's it's just you know remarkable but that's but that's also staying a student always always staying a student I'll give you the kind of a flip side of that one. Last year at agent to CEO, I did a little session putting some of the principles into a thought experiment that said, if I had to start from scratch and build a seven figure real estate team, what would I do? So I thought about it. This is what I would do if it was me, right? There's lots of ways to do it. This is what I would do. And it was, here's the lead sources I'm going to use. Here's the VA team I'm going to build.

and I had somebody ask me having a drink it might have been Travis I'm not sure anyway somebody asked me that that evening after the event was I'm sure it was trapped it was like why don't you why don't you do it because at the time I was CEO at Sphere Rocket and

you know what we're doing together now wasn't even on the radar really so why don't you do it and I said I'm not willing to I'm not willing to do what it takes to to actually build that team and do that. I'm not willing to do the sales calls it's going to take. I'm not willing to do the evening showings it's going to take. I'm not willing to do the Saturday open houses that it's going to take to do that version

of it, right? I'm not willing to do that. I know what it's going to take and I'm not willing to do it. And that's the answer. So it's same principle, but you said, okay, I can commit to this. And I said, I'm not willing to commit to this. Yeah. Yeah, it's about pain threshold.

You know, are you willing to withstand that amount of pain? So it's really good. And what are you willing to give up to, right? Yeah, that's the big thing. I want to pause for a second. I know I want to kind of keep it to the power hour. I know we got trabb bouncing and out like he's traveling. I know we got a couple other on here.

But if anybody has any, you know, if you guys have any questions, let us know. I mean, that's, we're going to stay consistent with this time over the next few weeks leading up to agent to CEO in Cleveland. but I do want to open it up for you guys. I mean, Joel and I can talk all day, every day. It's what we do for a living. But I do want to open it up if you guys have any questions. Trave, you have any questions. I know Sarah and Marcia are on here.

If you guys have any questions, I mean, you can turn the camera on, turn your mic on, ask, engage into the conversation, or you can throw it in the chat. But anything that's on your mind, anything that you guys are wrestling with. And here's the reality. We're all wrestling with something. It's just being being strong and vulnerable enough to throw the question out there because you're really truly trying to solve the problem. So what I would always tell my team is if you don't have a constraint, you're not trying hard enough. And it was just kind of a way to kick him in the teeth a little bit to be like, okay, what am I truly wrestling with? What is what is stopping me for making progress?

Nine times out of ten, it's us. It's in our heads. And that's why, you know, we start agent to CEO with agent to CEO mindset. And I'm super excited to who kind of positioning to talk to us about mindset to kick things off because they're way more, they're way qualified to talk about it. So, yeah, I'll pause for a second. I do want to come to my sauna experience this morning. But yeah, what anybody has got any questions. We would love to hear it.

it's like traves bouncing in and out no we lost him all right joel any thoughts any other things oh man let's get into i want to hear what you were so you know me V this morning. So, you know me, I cycle, I cycle with Gary, kind of depending upon where, where, where he's at, right? If he's on V friends or if he's, you know, where, you know, all the things that he's, he's into. But when he comes back around to, you know, talking, talking business, talking, um, I'll dabble when he's back into the wine stuff, but more so on the

business side of things, I, you know, tune right back in. And, I was listening to one of his keynotes that he posted about last week, about six days, seven days ago on YouTube. I try to find it on the podcast. He doesn't have it up on the podcast. I think he has a little bit of a teaser. I think he's doing a little bit of teaser trailer. He might be trying to drive from Facebook or Instagram to YouTube.

So he's always testing things. That's why he's so important. to pay attention to because he's such at the forefront of testing things and being able to see things. And I was sitting in the sauna listening to the keynote and there typically is just me in there but got in there this morning. There's another guy in there and I've got the I got the earbuds on and I'm just I'm just like watching watching watching and he taps me on the deal. I'm just like you know dude we're in towels like what are you doing man? And so I say hey yeah. he's like, is that Gary V? And I was like, yeah. He's like, dude, I just, I just found him. And I'm

like, you just found him? Like, what do you? Like, you've been living under a rock for the last 20 years? Like, what are you doing? And he goes, yeah, I'm big into collecting cards. And he goes, I, like, his just obsession with cards and things like that. And he starts going on and telling me. And I'm like, dude, that is so awesome. But that's another lesson. right to where like you let your love and your hobbies and get out and you just create the content around it and you never know who you're going to grab to be able to pull in and uh i'll kind of lead into the whole point of what gary's thinking about and the thing that i know you and i are pushing and we're pushing on all of our clients and so we were kind of going back and i was like

yeah that's cool and you said how about you whatever and i was like as i do i'm I go back to the, because he's talking about, you know, then, then I understood that he loved the wine and I'm like, I go back that far. I go back before Crush It. Well, I go back before Crush It even came out and like he told us to go by the little camera that flipped open and had the little USB port that you plugged in and that was the camera. And I said, I go back to those Gary V days. And, you know, I thought of all the times that I almost pulled the trigger to go to New York

to go there and I'm like, damn, why didn't I just pull the trigger? and go but um the message was was he was speaking to marketing agencies in the keynote you can go find it seven days ago but he's talking about 24 months and essentially what he's talking about is where AI will be in 24 months that you won't be able to recognize the AI influencers from the real influencers and he said that's about the window that we have Not trying to play Doomsday, not saying it's not going to play out this way or it's going to play out this way. What I am saying is that the landscape is changing and it's changing very, very fast. We don't have time to sit back and coast.

You have to be diligent. You have to be intentional. You have to be proactive. And you have to be, how do I need to reinvent myself to where I don't get replaced? I don't get wiped off the table. The other statistic, I'll come back to Gary V. I sent it to the mastermind. And I don't know, Trav, if you got to listen to it,

or Joel, if you listened to it. But it was the conversation with Brendan Bouchard and Ed Milet last week, maybe two weeks ago. And it's a fantastic conversation around doubt and how to overcome and how to reframe. doubt and you talk about two best humans alive on the planet to reframe anything and reframe doubt Ed Milet and Brendan Burchard they're like the best on the planet and they didn't get into it but Brendan said something at the end of that conversation was about a 45 minute

Ed's you can't say 45 minutes maybe 20 minutes with all of his ads and everything else inside of there which is another another thing but brendon said and so brendon's like you can argue maybe one of the most connected humans on the planet i don't know how connected he is into the tech world i would love to hear um you know the the the the the horowitz and and uh you know side side of the world take on everything but he was saying about 18 months i think is what he said maybe 12, maybe 18, maybe 24. I think it was 18 to 24 months. 30% of the current job population will be gone. 30%. So look at the number of jobs reported right now, subtract 30%. That's what's

going to be changed. I don't know if it's gone. I don't know what it is. But 30% of the jobs currently will not be available in 18 to 24 months. That's Brendan Bouchard saying that. That's his crystal ball. I'm not, I'm not, I don't know enough to, to back that up or poke holes in it or not. But I take somebody like him that's saying that with Ed Milette. And then you listen to Gary Vee talking about influence. and talking about legacy branding,

legacy marketing. And Gary's saying 24 months. So what does that mean? What that means is in the next 12 to 18 months, everything's going to be completely different than it is today. So what are you doing? And if you understand everything is a conveyor belt

and there's a constraint somewhere, results behavior feelings thoughts environment that's the results framework so if you're not getting in the rooms and you're not having conversations and creating the right circumstances you don't stand a chance on the results and what gary gary was talking about is like listen you have to have to focus on the creative more than anything. That's what he was talking about. And he's like, listen, there's going to be so much noise. How do you break from the noise?

So my thought, and this is just a thought, maybe a recommendation, maybe you might really want to consider this, is go to VaynerMedia and you go look at every company VaynerMedia is representing who they're working with and then go follow every one of those companies. Gary's take is like, listen, this is the only thing we've bet on the last 15 years of VaynerMedia. views sales because that's it he goes the only thing we pay attention to is how many views are you getting and how many sales is that equaling and he said something that i love he said the only thing that i want you to judge me on is the health of your business

at the end of our agreement, the end of our time working together. What is the health of your business? Joel, you and I know what health means. Health means how much cash do you have? That's it. How much cash do you have? And cash is oxygen for your business. How much oxygen do you have?

What's your oxygen level? And he said, that's the only thing. And people want to talk about this metric and this metric and this metric and this metric and this metric. And he goes, I couldn't be simple to people because they want to like they would have never allowed us in the door. The only thing that matters. And he goes, listen, do not spend a penny. And I thought of you, Trav, don't spend a penny on ads until organically you have something that can actually get views. When you have something organically that can get views, then you put your marketing.

budget behind it but he goes it's all about the creative all about the creative and what you have to to make sure what you're measuring is that your views equal sales and I was like got it like in typical Gary V fashion like he'll say things that I like and then he'll say things that go got it so what I'm looking at and this is what I want to push to everybody is like if you are not dominating or focused priority number one on organic social you have the wrong priority period organic social not paid social organic social and understand the algorithms are playing to interest are you creating enough stuff that's creating enough interest for your target audience that has money right there's buyers and sellers but

there's buyers and sellers that are desperate that need money and there's buyers that have money. Stop playing with sellers that don't need the money and stop playing with buyers that don't have any money. Like you've got to go where the money is. Where's where's your money? Go get your money. Create views and content for the people that have money. And that's that's that's the that's the filter man. And then you got to make sure that those views are going to equal business metrics, which are sales, and that it's going to get your company in a healthy position. That was my lesson, man, this morning listening to Gary, you know, the, the SANA conversation. But it was really like, like, dude, I pulled out the notes and I just started

rifting like crazy. And so, yeah, that's where my head is. Um, you know, always thinking like the CEO, right? This agent to CEO mindset more than anything. And listen, every day is a freaking battle. Like every day is a battle. And everything, and there's a distraction and there's a reason not to go to work every day. Joel, your son, sick. You have, you have a reason. You have a reason not to get after it today. Trav, we're all going through shit. And there's always a reason not to get after it every day. But we also have a bigger reason why we got to get after it every day. And that's the leadership mentality because listen there's so many people that are looking to us for direction so many people that are looking to you for support guidance and joel what's what's the word what is what are

people looking for from from their leaders hope to statistically 52 countries polled the number one thing people are looking for from their leaders is hope is hope Now, hope's not a strategy, but hope in the way to being able to paint a big, big vision. And, you know, you know, I'm a vision guy. Without a vision, the village will perish. And if people don't believe they can accomplish their dreams by being a part of your vision, they're gone. Discipline equals freedom.

You know, the thing with discipline, you know, Mike Tyson said it best, right? It's just doing the things you don't want to do that you know you need to do when you don't want to do it. I mean you just do you just do the things required it's that it remember it's the necessary required actions it's not the required actions it's the necessary required actions it's the things it's it's the it's the it's the it's the right KPIs is what it is and so I started to look your content we know organic social is the number one thing I know the webinar people out there, I know the ad people out there, they won't agree with me.

It is organic social views that lead to a way to create engagement, that lead to conversations, that lead to asking for and setting an appointment, and meeting with people, and articulating your value in getting them to agree to work with you. You don't need to worry about the rest. If you just focused on this beginning part and only the things within your control and stop the noise, that's it. And remember, noise can't find you,

if they can't find you, they can't interrupt you. I was talking with somebody earlier today. Just like, I go put my phone on the chart in the other room and I'll come back three hours later. Cool. If they can't find you, they can't interrupt you. A very high profile, a very expensive coach that she would kick my butt every time I talked to her and it was all around organic social. Like, listen, I know it, I know, I know it is right. And I know it's the answer. because that's where the eyeballs are, right?

We go where the attention is. This is the best framework, and I got this from one of my very best friends, very dear friends, who's actually going to be an agent to CEO, Mr. Blake Sloan, his first time that him and I ever been on stage together. And what he teaches, I think, is perfect. And he calls it the triangle, the social triangle. Number one is people have to know that you're a real estate professional. They have to know you're in real estate.

They have to know. They have to know that you sell houses. They have to know that you help people sell their home, help people get into homes. If you want to work with investors, they need to know that. They need to know if you work with builders. They need to know what you do. You got to pay the bills. Number two is they need to know you're a good human being. So what does that mean to you? What is important to you? Is your faith important to you? Is your spirituality important to you? Is your fitness important to you is your mental you know fitness is your is your emotional is what is important to you what do you love what what what can people know that you're a good human being and the third of the triangle is that you're an ambassador for your community you are showcasing all the things

that you love that people need to know about that they might they can't find on trip advisor about your community and that's the triangle you could do three posts a day, one that you're in real estate, one that you're a good human, one that you're an ambassador for your community. There you go. The second thing that you need to think about, I don't even know if second, I don't even know if this is the right order. I'd have to think about right things, right order. What is your value proposition? Who is your client? Who do you work with? So we have, I have a lifelong client. She's a great friend. Joel, tribe know her name's Renee Velasquez she's in she's in northeastern ohio she's in outside of

cleveland area she specializes in in families that are going through that last transition they've either parents that are that know this is the last move so they got to set it up kiddos that take over or inherit or it goes in being left off to a relative because there's no there's no immediate siblings or things like that. That's her specialty. And so she has to create that content around who her ideal target audience is. Well, we know, obviously, 50 and above is her target audience. Well, guess where 50 and above live?

50 and above live on Facebook. So her platform has to be Facebook because that's where her audience is. Now, you're like, hey, I work with this demographic. They're typically first-time homebuyers or they're in this era or whatever. Da-da-da-da-da-da. I'd be willing to bet they're on Instagram. I would be 100% willing to bet they're on Instagram and TikTok. So guess what?

Your audience and where you need to go all in would be Instagram and TikTok. And focus on what does it take to dominate and create, you know, content. relevant content that is going to get the most views on Instagram and TikTok. Now, you don't have to come up with this all on your own. You have a good friend called AI. Probably easier for you would be Chad GPT. And if you have not read the AI driven leader, you have to read AI driven leader. It's so fun to see everybody that's catching on and reading it and the way they're talking about

and the way they're thinking about it. But if you read Jeff, Jeff Woods book, Jeff with a G, Jeff Wood's book, AI-driven leader, then you'll start to understand how you use AI as your thought partner, and you start to ask it questions. So you can go in and say, hey, you know, this is my market. This is my target audience. This is my clientele. This is who I love working with.

This is my skill set. These are my strengths. These are my weaknesses. I would love for you to help me build out a campaign to target and create consistent content to let people know I'm a real estate agent, I'm a good human being, and I'm an ambassador for my community, ask me one question at a time until you have enough information to be able to help me build out the perfect campaign to be able to target and just let it run. And it's going to honestly, it'll give you everything you need to know, but you have to be

how you think about it and leverage AI as your thought partner, not the thought leader. You're the thought leader. AI is the thought partner. That's going to help you overcome things that you are going to exhaust all your brain cells and energy trying to figure out. So I would appreciate you, brother. Marsha, great. Hopefully.

See you guys. See you guys. Bye. Thanks for tuning. in. If you're done guessing and ready to lead like a real CEO with a custom strategy, real accountability, and proven systems, check out my executive 101 coaching at john kitchens.coach. Fill out the application and book your one-on-one call with me. Be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. Catch you on the next one.