KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Finance Expert & Business Mentor Sharon Lechter

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Welcome, welcome, everyone for another episode of Realtor Hacks, Tips and Tricks. I've got myself here, fresh off the plane from Mexico, as you can see, I'm a little burnt. My name's Hallie McCrory. I'm a real estate agent and team lead in San Angelo, Texas, and recently expanding our business to Dallas, Texas. And I've got my lovely co-host, Casey Stiers on, the downtown guru of Raleigh, North Carolina. And actually she is like the guru of all of North Carolina. I just saw she got a home under contract in Wilmington. I don't know like the Outerbank show.

They did a ton of filming there, the URAD Island, etc. And it's crazy to me to say this, but I'm so excited to announce our guests today. She is an internationally recognized as a financial literacy expert. She's a keynote speaker, business mentor. She is a, I think, a five times, right? Five times New York bestselling author and a successful entrepreneur, philanthropist. And she's even advised two different presidents, you know, in their time on the topic of financial literacy. And you guys probably know her from co-authoring international bestseller, Rich Dad, Poor Dad,

and I think 14 other books in the Rich Dad series. And then my favorite part or one of my favorite, you know, facts about our guest here, she was asked by the Napoleon Hill Foundation to help re-energize the teachings of Napoleon Hill. And her bestselling books with the foundation include three feet from gold, outwitting the devil, drink and grow rich for women, one of my personal favorites, and success in something greater. and she recently, I just watched it, recently has been featured in the thinking Think and Grow Rich movie that just came out.

It was awesome. So guys, please welcome Sharon Lecter. I'm so excited to have her on. Well, I am delighted to be with you too. Thank you so much. I'm very happy that you're doing this for people. Yes. No, we're just, we're ecstatic.

Casey and I both got to see you speak at 10x ladies. I was just telling Sharon that that's actually where we met. Casey and she said power of association. Rocky agrees. Yes, he does. Sorry. It's God you've been going all day. Yes. So as I said, we have this show to, you know, give hacks, tips, tricks, you know, try to help real estate agents be more efficient in their business and, you know, share the things that we've learned along the way, you know, to help people, you know, find success quicker in their businesses. And who better than Sharon Lector, literally the financial expert of America, of the world, international, to come on. And I know you are super familiar with real estate, very familiar with the EXP model.

I mean, we have agents from all over and all different brokerages come on. But yeah, I mean, you said it best. Assets are sexy and real estate is an asset. That's exactly right. real estate is one of the best assets that you can have because you don't only get the tax benefits but you get the appreciation you get to be able to leverage it so you don't have to put it all down the bank gives you money you have 100% of the ownership 100% of the appreciation 100% of the tax benefits so it is kind of the ultimate leverage when it comes to financial

security and momentum that's what we say all the time yeah love it and I feel like casey and I both practice what we preach. We have, you know, we're both invested in real estate. And I think that's a goal for a lot of real estate agents themselves. I mean, we get at least a two and a half to three percent discount on it. So why not? You get money back. You make a commission. You're being paid to buy something that's going to make you money. That's right. Exactly right. And with the XP, which I'll put a plug in for the organization, because my husband and I joined the XP, because I was really frustrated with a number of real estate agents and insurance agents that get all these large commissions and then they spend it.

They don't build their own personal wealth. And so when I saw the XP model with Lisa Copeland, I was hearing her talk about it, she was visiting me up at my ranch and she was on the phone. I said, what are you into now, Lisa? Tell me about it. And so when I looked into it, I said, you know, this is really a good model to help successful real estate agents build their own personal wealth as well. because there's multiple ways to make revenue.

And so my husband actually, because I was in a crazy busy, he was speaking, he actually took, he's an attorney, but he took the real estate exam. And so we have a group within the XP as well. But it's so important to think about your personal balance sheet is your business. You're in charge of your own personal wealth, and most people don't pay attention to it. You know, there's a term, Henry, high earner, not rich yet. And we have a ton of Henrys in the world, and people are making a lot of money and spending it as soon as they make it. And we have to invest it back into buying, building, or creating income producing assets.

My favorite word, assets, get used to saying assets. And yes, assets are sexy. And the older you get, the sexier they become. But real estate agents are perfectly positioned to have access to real estate acquisitions. you know, you know what's coming on the market. Sometimes you know what's off market. When you become a real estate investor and people know they come to you first. And so it's a wonderful way to build your wealth.

And certainly when the economy goes haywire like it has the last year and a half, that's when opportunities come. Don't get afraid and hide under the covers. Say, okay, successful businesses, solve problems and serve needs. We've got a few of those going on right now with inflation and people coming up with adjustable rate mortgages coming due. So it's a time for you to actually be prepared and be prepared to solve some problems

and in the interim be able to get some real estate investments along the way. Yep. Absolutely. And that's how we get most of our flips as people come to me first and want me to sell. And I'm like, what you got? Okay, wait. Let me look at it. Exactly.

And it is, you know, we talk about how you two met at tonight's ladies, power of association is so important, you know, as in particular in the real estate business, because one of your greatest marketing tools are your satisfied customers, right? So you have a relationship. You've served them, not just sold to them. So you've served them and they're happy and they tell people that they talk about that you did a good job for them and you get additional clients. That power of association going and then going to new groups, new networking groups,

gives you the ability to establish your personal brand as somebody that can be trusted as well as a real estate agency so you can build your network that way. It's all about networking. You know, it's the power of association, both as a mentor. You guys, you know, you're part of Lisa's group, so Lisa is a fantastic mentor and has that energy and commitment to support you when you need it, but you also have the freedom to build it on your own and become a mentor for other people. And I love the mentoring program with N-E-XP as well.

I do too. I'm really thriving in that area. That's me too. Love it. So I guess we had a couple questions. So I guess in terms of real estate agents, I guess in the past we've talked about how, you know, real estate agents, they're 1099. We're within kind of a corporate structure. So it's easy, I think, for real estate agents to get law.

and forget that it's still their own business, right? What, if any, do you have any tips for real estate agents to better run their business like a business, but still, you know, feel the corporate feel? Well, you either build a business or you build a job. And certainly as a real estate agent, you can easily build a job. And that's why the formula at EXP allows you to build a business, allows you to bring in other agents, allows you to build your network so that you have the opportunity to have multiple streams of income. If you are a sole agent out there, you're a solopreneur, and it's hard to build a business around that, because you have to be present.

And if you don't sell something, you don't get paid. And that's the beauty of the XP model. But you have to treat because your position as a real estate agent is you have total freedom. So you can choose not to do anything if you. And that's the problem. So the good news is you have freedom. The bad news is you have freedom. And that's because you have to have discipline.

And that's when you hear the mentors at the AXP, they're constantly talking about knowing how to schedule your day, knowing how to focus on what you want to get done, and make sure you have a system. Because successful businesses are based on systems, not people, and have a system for how you're going to run your business so that it can grow and scale. Absolutely. I love that.

Structure your day. Yep. That's what I've been shout out to my business coach, Andy Blackwell with the XP. She's truly, I was having issues, I guess scaling my business and going from just production to also, you know, this new team building aspect that EXP offers. And she really helped me put those systems in place. And I can I can vouch for what Sharon is saying. I mean, it makes all the difference. and makes, like we said, makes you more efficient in your business and helps you to run it that way.

So I love that. Yes. Do you have any comments, Casey? No, I mean, like what she said, discipline. And that's why people joke that teachers make the best real estate agents. And that was my background share. And I was a kindergarten teacher for 13 years. My day was discipline and structure all day long.

Carried that over and kept the same day. daily structure, it just has switched out what I'm doing during those times. And being consistent with it. The market has changed. A lot of people, you know, it creates an opportunity for those agents that are committed to the business because a lot of agents are going to be filtered out because they're not willing to do the work. And whereas, you know, nine months ago, open house had 30 people in a single day and 10 offers before the open house is over.

And now you have open houses and nobody shows up. And so people got a little comfortable, got a little comfortable with how easy the world of real estate was. And now they actually have to start using some creativity to be able to rise above the fray. And it's filtered out a lot of agents here in Raleigh, like that we're able to just go out. I mean, it hasn't really slowed down much,

but it's really filtered out the people that just had so many people who joined my team and was like, well, I just want to show houses. I won't hotly eat. We all do. So, yeah. Always makes me laugh. Okay. I think there was a lot of peniles around being an agent because it was easy.

You could make some money. And then you actually roll up your sleeves and do some work and, you know, get disciplined. And so I think that's a good step. You know, people that they don't belong in the business. that they're not willing to work hard and do what needs to be done to service their clients. Yeah. I think that's a common misconception about real estate is that it's like this, you know, easy, easy job.

But I think people see that it looks easy from the outside, but nobody sees, you know, behind the scenes of what we actually really do and what we deal with. Yeah. People see that how people really like quickly see that when they get their license and try to jump into it. They see the house like I post it. today and they're like well i can do that i can do that it's a 50 houses we looked at before we got to that one exactly okay sharon i have a personal question but i think it will be relevant for everyone um so what what is your opinion on diverse like or obviously we like to diversify our

assets um with exp we you know you can invest in real estate you get stock options um what what do you think? I mean, I feel like everybody's going to be different, but what do you see as a good diversification of your assets? You know, are you a fan of like doing crypto, stocks, real estate? We already said real estate's a good one. I would just, I'd love to know your thoughts on that. Sure. Well, personal financial planners will tell you to diversify. And they're talking about across paper assets, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. I teach diversification across asset classes, businesses, you know, paper assets, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, real estate, intellectual property, taking what you know and sharing it in a format that becomes an asset for you.

And then that includes digital currencies and you have the opportunity for collectibles, which don't give you cash flow. So all of those things are considered assets. And you really, what happens is when the economy goes down and something goes down, it doesn't pull everything. So that's the way you can protect yourself against a deflation or inflationary period is to have diversification across all asset categories. And well, EXP allows you to have a revenue stream on, you know, the transactional side of real estate, the stock, as well as you're building the business. All those are the same asset, really, because if, you know, it goes down, they all suffer.

So you want to look and be able to diversify against other businesses, other real estate, other investments, other paper assets, so that you have the best. position to survive any kind of an economic transition. Right. Is there a surprising asset class that you like or that you think is profitable? Well, I am a, my husband and I are absolutely superpowers in helping people create intellectual property. And that's where you take what you know and you share it and it becomes an asset.

And so what you're doing is simply taking a, making your, self and your wisdom and your education available to other people 24-7. They don't have to call and talk to you. They can buy your book or they can buy your program. And that's how you create wealth from what you know, your experience, your life experience. And everybody has an expertise. You're all experts. Nobody's had your successes or your learning opportunities. And so as you continue moving forward and you convince yourself that you're an authority, you can then start sharing that with other people are going, we all had things that stopped us in her tracks. Could have been a death, a divorce, a financial setback, or an illness.

But you're still here. You're still for a reason. Whatever you've been through, you can share how you got through it, other people going through it as well. That's using your knowledge, your wisdom, your experience, and converting it into intellectual property. That's an asset that you can earn money with. Dang, that's good.

Shout out to Casey. She's writing a book right now. Good. There you go. We in the ride net and buckwise. And I am on chapter three, I guess you could say. My goal was to have it done by April. So we'll see.

Get to work. Get to work. Turned reader is what I'm talking about, how I struggled. And then I am where I am now. I feel like what you said was like a good, you know, mindset hack, though. I think a lot of people, myself included, I'd be like, well, I don't have the authority to write a book. I don't have anything unique to share, but everyone really does.

And I think that's a good mindset, you know, shift to think about. And like you said, everybody has their own unique experiences and struggles. And no one person is the same. So everyone really does have that value add to give. Oh, everybody. Years ago, a young gal came to me and she was a real estate agent. agent and she was in her parents firm. And so she was kind of low man on the totem bull. And they had some older agents there. And she said, I don't get any respect. They pat me on the

head. And she was the highest producing agent. But because she was the daughter and she was younger, she didn't have much respect. And so, you know, I said, do you have buyers that ask you the same questions all the time? Oh, yeah. She rolls her eyes. How about sellers? Yeah. So I said, go write an e-book on, you know, your recommendation for buyers. How to find a house? or your recommendation for sellers how to prepare. And so she did, taking her own knowledge and her experience, and she called me back about six months later. She said, I can't believe this.

She's still the top producer. The people in the office now come and ask her for her advice. She has a regular radio spot, and she has special appearances on TV simply because she wrote the book. The book became the elevation of her personal brand in the industry. Nothing else changed. She just wrote the book. she was still the top producing agent, but now she felt so much better about herself because

she saw the benefit of sharing what she knew and that it helped other people. And in the process, people within our office were asking to buy copies to give to their clients. And so simply taking that step to share what you know can help other people. I love it. It kind of reminds me of Haas Pratt, Casey's mentor, and he's in our organization, kind of reminds me of him how he's known as the listing boss now. And I don't know if he was known as the listing boss before his book, the listing boss. But if he wasn't or if he did, it doesn't matter because he's known that now. And everybody, you know, has his online courses. We all give each other his books. I mean, I passed the copy he gave me around my whole team. That really reminds me of him.

look at him. He's super successful. That's exactly how Haas Lantz. He launched his coaching program with his book and it really elevated his authority within the industry because of doing that. That's what he said when he pushed me to do this. He said, do something. It's going to resonate with your not aliens. What do you? Not your avatars. My aliens.

It's right. You have Avatar the movie. Yeah, my avatars. Because most of my contail comes from my teaching and my previous students. And then it went from referrals. And it just went after that. And again, that's a perfect example

of the power of association, Casey. Because you establish a reputation with that in an industry as a teacher so people know and like and trust you. Therefore, when they see that you're in real estate, they're going to come to you because they already know you. I mean, teachers are one of the top-rated people that you're supposed to trust.

And it just spous. Every week I get at least one person that's in the teaching world. That's like, how did you get where you are? What made you decide to pull that? And that's when I said, just read a book instead of repeating yourself over it and tell them to buy your book for three, four, five dollars. And there you go. So, it's like, okay.

which book do you recommend for realtors that you've written? Well, that depends. It depends on where you are. If you are holding yourself back from fear and that you're afraid you're not good enough, you have an imposter syndrome, I would recommend outwitting the devil, because it talks about how to blast through that fear. If you are a woman and just kind of insecure a little bit, I would suggest that can grow rich for women.

And if you kind of get to the point where you've had a failure and you're holding back three feet from gold. A lot of times, particularly women, we make a mistake and we let it define us. And mistakes and bad things that happen to us are occurrences, not definitions. And so you need to kind of just like, okay, that happened. What am I going to learn from it and keep moving forward? Okay. So I heard you say imposter syndrome.

I feel like this is a big thing right now. people think imposter syndrome's just like, oh, you know, I can't do that or kind of like that direction. But recently, I've learned that imposter syndrome can also look like I feel like I'm not doing enough. I feel like I'm not giving enough or that what I'm when I'm giving 100% it's not enough for other people around me. Have any advice for handling? Struggling with that really hard now. And whenever I think I miss to sit down, if I sit down, I feel guilty. And I'm like, I need to be doing something. Here, what can I? And I think that's common for real estate agents. So I'm wondering, you know, do you have any advice for real estate agents to conquer that type of imposter syndrome?

Well, inherently, a type A personality is on the go constantly. And you slow down and you feel guilty that you're not, you know, turning up the accelerator. And, you know, when you get to my age, all of a sudden, you realize, you know what, I deserve a little time off. So you, you know, create this. And so I think you really want to time block your time. day because if you continue going at a high rate of speed, you're going to wear yourself out. You have to take care of yourself as well. So when you have business goals, you also want to have health goals, you want to have financial goals, you want to have family. I know, I know several agents who are very successful. And they've been through two marriages because they sacrifice the relationship for

the business. So I really, you know, I've had a 43 year marriage. And so I'm very much an advocate of making sure you have goals as it relates to your family, as there is, your faith, your finances, your fitness, and your business, because the business will be there. You just need to time block so that you take time to remember who you are and take care of yourself as well. Right, because the business, success isn't just your business. Success is all the aspects that you just talked about. Yeah, that's when my husband and I have been working through because we are both, just work, work, work. But, you know, we're about a year and a half in on our marriage. Hopefully we can get to 43. I think we can.

We just got 13 years together yesterday. Congratulations. Congratulations. 15 businesses. Oh, my God, that's right. I tell people that all the time. I'm going to 10X. I went not for the business, but for the relationship aspect. I love it. Well, I know you only have about five more minutes to spare for us, Sharon. Are there any other, like, good, like hacks or tricks that you think would be good for

real estate agents to know, especially knowing that your husband is in this world now, too? Yeah. So in my book, Three Feet from Gold, which was the first book that I did with the Napoleon Hill Foundation, I share what we call the personal success equation. And so I really would like to leave with that. And you can go to personal successequation.com and get a free ebook that I did that helps you walk through your personal success. But it's P plus T, passion plus talent. That's all about you.

What are you passionate about? What is your talent? For me, my passion came from anger. It was mad we weren't teaching kids about money in school. My talent, I was a CPA for more years than I want to admit. And lots of years and experience in publishing. And so I could have combined that and done it on my own. But true success comes from times A, that's that power of association I talked about,

where you have the right people on your team, you have people who are strong where you are weak, and you have a mentor, someone who's pushing you in that direction and helping you get doors opened and steering around pitfalls like Lisa is for you guys. And then times A taking action. We already talked about this. Some people in real estate, they know what they're supposed to do. just don't do it. So you have to have a certain amount of self-discipline to truly be successful. So your passion, your talent, power of association, taking action, and then you wrap it all with

faith, confidence in yourself, faith in what you're doing, faith that is needed and necessary, and faith that you will succeed. And when I'm mentoring people, whether it's in real estate or other businesses, it's usually the power of association in that confidence that need the most work. They've had some success and they've plateaued and started going because they have stopped needing new They stopped going to networking. And they don't have the right people in their world. Maybe you had a mentor that got you where you are, but you need a different mentor to get you to the next level. And so what happens is when you have a down day, you know, that faith is slipping, the right people in your network will lift you up.

So they kind of go hand in hand. So look at your own life and say, what am I dropping on? Do you have people, that power of association can be a negative or a positive? You may have the wrong people in your life. You may have people that are, well, whatever, why do you need to go to work today? Hang out with us. And that's the kind of people that you want to limit your time with. And be hanging around people who want you to succeed, who are going to push you to succeed,

who will take you with them to succeed and have a mentor at all costs. Have a mentor that's going to help you see what you cannot see. Gave me chills. That's so good. Yes. And just you saying that makes me feel even that much more lucky to be in the organization that we are, you know, with you, with us, with Lisa, with Elena and Grant. Just we have an amazing circle around us. And I get feel, you know, just feel so lucky every day that I get to take advantage of that. So thank you. It is a great group. Absolutely. Well, I guess. I offer everybody can reach out to me info at Sharon Lecter.com.

I'm Sharon Lecter on all social media. So follow me and check out the personal success equation.com. And take action. Who do you need to add to your association? And I'll put her in your area too. Oh, sorry, what did you say? I said if you don't have Sharon in your association, you need to add her and her books. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sharon, for coming on here and sharing some of your wisdom. We appreciate it so much. And I know our community does too. We've got all these comments coming in. She's so real. We love it. I mean, just pouring a love. So thank you very much. Thank you for sharing that. And hello to your community. And you're in the right place at the right time. So it's really important to, you know,

know, seize the moment and take control of your financial life as well as helping other people with their homes. Awesome. And as always, I'll put our Instagrams up here as well. Sharon is up there. CB Steyers is Casey's, Holly's Homes is me. That will soon be in Power Real Estate Group. The rebrand is coming very soon.

And yeah, if you guys have any questions on anything we talked about, we put Sharon's email below and you guys can DM us on any of our accounts. I'm happy to share any knowledge and again the hacks, tips and tricks that we've learned. And yeah, we'll be on again next week. It's Chris, what's his last thing? Chris Jones. Yes, he does Facebook. Yep, he does Zillow hacking and he does Craigslist hacking.

He has all these different. He really like hacking. This is the theme of our show. It works. Yeah. And he's, he's got six new clients in the last month from doing what he told me to. So personal testament.

Love it. So we'll be on again next week, same time, 530 Central Time, 6.30 Eastern time, 430 Mountain Time. Yeah, just I still can't believe Sharon's on. And thank you again, Sharon. This is awesome. Karen so much. Thank you so much. You guys take care.

everyone have a great one day thank you