KGCI: Real Estate on Air - From Broke to Abundant Drew Swersky's Blueprint for Agent Financial Freedom

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Summary:In this powerful and transparent episode, guest Drew Swersky shares his personal journey from being a "broke" agent to building a life of abundance. He breaks down the limiting beliefs and poor financial habits that trap agents in a cycle of commission-to-commission living. Listeners will get a tactical roadmap for changing their financial identity, implementing wealth-building systems, and making the critical mindset shifts necessary to achieve true financial freedom in a commission-based career.

The reason you're getting your real estate license is usually for the wrong reason. You think you're going to work less. People are just going to magically appear at your door because you're as handsome as I am. And then you wake up and you realize that you ain't that handsome and that you have to put the work in. Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Saffright.

Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host Chris Craddock and I am a super jazz to talk with a friend of mine today who has built a business himself, who has been a leader of a Teller Williams Market Center, who has led hundreds of agents and in productivity coaching, teaching them how to go from zero to productive or how to go from very mediocre to excellent. And now we are doing business together in a new venture. And I'm super jazzed about that and super fun. And frankly, I'm just loving the fact that I get a weekly be an interaction with Drew and kick some butt, take names. It's fun being in business with big, big, gold, big finger people. Goll-lid people. People with big goals. All right.

There we go. So with that said, just a reminder, what we believe about real estate. There's two ways that you make money. There is trading time for dollars, which is the cash machine, which is trading, you're doing deals,

which is always just a cycle there. And then there's the wealth building or finding ways that your time works for you. Wealth is when your money works harder than you work, and that is residual income, that is investing in properties that will pay, over and over and over again, having assets, having portfolios.

And today we're going to talk a little bit about both. So I'm excited. So, Drew, tell us a little bit about your back history, how you guys started in real estate and where you are now and a lot of cool things in your backstory. So, yeah, so what happened was I met, I was renovating my house and my son and I couldn't live there while I renovated. And so I was referred to this woman as a realtor to find me a rental. and she was absolutely stunning, beautiful.

And I, like, I would have rented a dog house from this woman if I didn't have a son just to, just to hurry up and be around her. And so we found the rental and she introduced me to my mentor, who's been my mentor for a very long time. And he said, I should get into real estate. So I got into real estate a year and a half later and she got out and became a school teacher. And, you know, I didn't sell a home my first year. And I was struggling.

I had just married her and she came with two kids and I had a few kids of my own. So it was this bonus Brady Bunch family. And I went to him and I said, hey, listen, I got to get a job. Like I've been in sales for years. I tried it my way. And he said, listen, you did it your way for all this time. Try it my way. And if you don't get anything, any traction in the next three months, I'll either find you a job or give you a job.

How's that sound? And I was like, fine, I'll do it your way. In four weeks, I had four homes under contract for about $2.7 million, which 14 years ago was a solid month. Well, still is. And so I remember being at that fourth settlement. And I was like, man, I can't remember who the client was. I can't remember what title company we were at. I just remember saying one day, I'm going to do for other people what he did for me.

And that's how I got into coaching. Once I established my business and started, you know, to crush it, that's when I got into coaching. because I wanted to pay it forward because that little tweak in what I was saying and what I was doing and what was up here in my head caused me to go from zero to 60 in about four seconds. And I knew that if I could help people do that, I could change the trajectory of their lives like he changed mine. That's great. That's great. So if you were to boil down and really get into what you teach, at one, how does that go back? back to what shifted in your mind. And then what have you seen? Now, granted, let's be honest. If people want to get fit, you eat right and you go to the gym, right? There's no, there's more to

it than that. But most people aren't willing to put in the work on that. Right. And I see that with a lot of real estate agents. They could be better. They know that there's some things they can do. But if you have a clear path, if you have certainty, if you know the steps, it just makes life so much simpler. So how does that play out with you versus like what you? Like what you, you learn versus what you teach now. And then I've got another question. I'll follow a question to that, but I'd love to go over there first. What I learned in the beginning was that the reason you're getting your real estate license is usually for the wrong reason, right? You think you're going to work less. You think that people are just going to magically appear at your door and want you

to sell their house because you're as handsome as I am. And then you wake up and you realize that you ain't that handsome and that doesn't really work and you have to put the work in. And so the way I designed my coaching program was less fluff, right, more work, right? Do the activities, activities equal results. And that was a big thing for me. I thought because I was Drew Swersky and I knew all these people that they would just call me to sell their house and that I didn't really have to do any legwork. And that, that's kind of how it was taught in the real estate class, like unlimited income potential and, you know, things like that and that's not the truth so so let's let's get into like what is it that you see because i know like there's patterns to everything in life so for agents that meet with you

that go from not being productive to being productive what are the characteristic or the traits that you see or that changes in that person and then and then i'd love to get like to the you know of I guess nuts and bolts of like what it is that you're telling them to do. Yeah. So when I first meet with someone, I usually want to flip a switch with them. And I want them to see that the more work you put in now, right, not the less work it'll be later, but it'll start to come to you. But you've got to dig your heels in now.

Right. Now's the time. While you have the energy, while you're all excited about this career and it hasn't beat you to the ground yet, right, like it can on some people. You really just got to dig your heels in, right? And that's number one, meeting with your coach, like being honest with your coach, right? Like I have a coach who, when I call him and I say, he'll call me before our Zoom and he'll say, am I speaking to Andrew Swirsky or am I speaking to Drew MF and Swirsky? And if I say Andrew Swirsky, he hangs up and cancels the meeting because he knows I'm not in a good headsperski.

And so the first thing I work on with my people is getting in the right headspace. That's great. Yeah, he'll cancel our entire coaching call for the day if I'm not in the right head space. Because he doesn't want that negative energy around him, number one. And number two, I'm not effective at that. So he asks you up front, are you in the right head space? Like, who am I talking to today? That's great.

And he still makes me pay for the coaching call. I got to pay for it if you're not. He'll hang up. He'll hang up and then his Zoom will be locked for that whole time. I can't get in. Dang. Yeah. And I love that.

And I'm very similar. And some of my coaching, you know, if I meet with someone the previous week and I say, hey, you got to do this, this and this. And then they come to the coaching meeting and I say, hey, did you do your homework? And they say, no, I'll cancel the meeting. Dang. Because if you're not doing your homework, I can't help you. All right.

So here we go. I want to kind of quasi role play here. I'm an agent. I did four transactions last year, right? Like right then in the national average. I made $36,000 last year. I'm racked up to the hilt and credit card bills. I can't pay my bills.

I'm thinking about getting out of real estate. But I want to give it one last go because I really, this is where I want. want to be. And I'm like, I hear about this guy, Drew Swirsky, and I've heard he's a, he's a miracle worker. And I want to go and let him be the magic bullet here in my life and help me with one last shot before I go get a nine to five working at a bakery or somewhere else. So, Drew, what does the conversation look like on, on day one? So first and foremost, I'm going to ask you to open your calendar for me, Chris. I need to see your calendar. I need to see your calendar. I need to see where you're

position with your lead gen activities, what time you do them, how long you do them. And then I need to see your database. I need to see how healthy it is. Does it, is it just names and phone numbers? Because if it's just names and phone numbers, that's a dating app. That's not a database. Yeah. If it's full health, and full health, I mean like you need people's birthdays. If you need like kids names, favorite, I always get favorite sports teams, right? I want to be able to connect with people on a different level. So I want to see that database, too. All right, so let's have that conversation about each one of these. So calendar, well, I've got my calendar.

I don't really put on there like lead gen time or anything like that. I mean, I do it, but it's not on the calendar. I do it when, you know, when my calendar is free. And so, Chris, I can understand that. And I was you once. And when I finally dedicated myself to doing lead gen the same time every day, Monday through Friday, things changed for me. So how about this?

Next week, let's meet during your lead gen time and let me watch you lead gen. Let me see how you lead gen. Is that okay with you? Because nine times out of 10, Chris, you're probably not doing it. So if I'm there to keep you a little bit more accountable and I do it with you, and we can meet on Zoom, Chris, just like this, okay, and we'll stay muted, right? But we'll lead gen together because I have to lead gen too. And I lead gen the same time every day.

Yeah. So as I'm role playing and just in the. character that I'm playing right now. Man, I feel uncomfortable because you know, now here's the next question that I'm going to throw out. Well, I really don't know who to call,

right? You said that about the database. I've got a bunch of people in there, but like I'm not sure like who to call or what to say right now. Yeah. So a bunch is how they label bananas. How many people do you really have? Well, so I've got like probably about 400, but a number of them are people I haven't talked to in like five years

since I started or like they were open house leads that I haven't talked to in years or whatever. So I don't really know who is actually in there or not. Okay, so next week when we meet, I want you to bring the top 100 out of that 400. And what we're going to do is we're going to narrow down our focus on that top 100, right? because, you know, NAR stats and stats say, for every 100 that you have in your database, eight to 10 of them will either do a transaction or know someone that does a transaction. So I'm going to help you focus on them. And then when we meet next week, I'll help you go over what to say.

Okay. Okay. That's good. Now, I took you from uncomfortable by saying we're going to do it together to give you a little bit more comfort by saying, I'm going to tell you what to say. And we're going to narrow our focus. 400 to an agent that's only done four deals is a scary number. So we need to chunk that down into the, give me your 100 favorite. Yeah, and what you said there that's really good. So I always talk about this with my team is that when we're doing sales,

and anytime we like I always say sales is leadership, right? And so what you're doing is sales, it's leadership. It's leading people to be a better version of themselves. But when we're doing sales, the number one reason why we don't get any, why we don't get buy in is because there's a lack of clarity. And when there's a lack of clarity, it's like when we're a child and the lights are off, we're scared of the dark until the lights come on. And what you said was super helpful because you're just like, hey, I'm going to tell you what to say.

I'm going to give you clarity. I'm going to tell you how to get clarity here. So that was, I'm processing myself as I'm thinking through. Like, that's really good. And people aren't scared. People aren't scared to talk to their favorite people. That's why you chunk it down to your favorites first. You're sharpening your sword so when the dragon comes, you're ready to slay it.

Who better to sharpen your sword on than people that will forgive you for saying something stupid? So do you mind taking us through like the success story? Because I think like a lot of times stories sell, right? Like anybody, if you're listening to this right now, let's be honest, we need to be sold on being a better version of ourselves. And so when I joined my fitness program, there's two calls. week that are like education calls. One is is a story. It's a testimonial of somebody going from fat to fit. Like I needed that early on. And then as as my mindset changed, I needed it less. But every once in a while when I'm feeling less driven or less disciplined, I hop on and

remind myself what I need there. So do you mind just going through like a case study of somebody that came to you and just was a disaster and some of the real hard and true points that you guys worked through to help them get to a place where they're not just doing well, but like legitimately providing with abundance for them and their family. So I have a couple. I have some from, you know, that one of the women that I was fortunate enough to coach with is now in Gary Keller's top 100. And she moved into our area. from Seattle, Washington. It's one of my favorite stories to tell

because she's just still crushing it. And her thing was she had sold gym memberships before where people came to her. And she wasn't used to having to go to people. And so we just worked on casual conversations that you can have with people to bring up what you do for a living.

And she was at a barbecue and I'll never forget. She was like, if I don't sell a home in 90 days, I'm going back to the gym. And I was like, listen, don't worry about it. I got you. just but she was the one that I would kick out of my office if she didn't do her activities. Yeah, be like, yeah, this meeting's over.

But she needed that because she was used to people coming to her. And so I remember she was at a barbecue and she started talking about what she did for a living. And a woman walked up to her and said, oh my God, we have to sell our house. And I know your friends with so-and-so, would you help us? And when she saw the light click, it's like, like you said, being in the dark versus a light switch, when that switch goes off, people can be dangerous. And after that switch went off, and after she saw that paycheck compared to selling gym memberships, she began to speak to everyone. She put it on the back of her laptop. She would go have coffee in Woodbridge, Virginia, and it would say, ask me about real estate, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. And she began to build this database. And her database went from 25 to 100 that year. She sold 31 homes, and now she consistently sells above 60 homes a year. And I'm not her coach anymore, but I'm not a coach anymore, but she'll still call me when she's in the dumps and say, hey, I need a kick in the pants.

And I'll say, well, did you do your activities? And she'll say, no. And then I hang up on her. And then she calls me back. And then it's a vicious cycle. I love it. I just love the. So I heard that on a podcast and we talked about it with our team probably in like year

three of Redux. And one of the girls on our team just brought a little sign that says, ask me anything about real estate. But she didn't say, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. Just said, ask me about real estate and put it on there. And she got like three deals that year just from working out of Starbucks for an hour a day when she was doing her admin work. And I look back and now that you're saying that, like especially offering a cup of coffee, I'm like, man, if I had a real estate question, if somebody's offered me to buy my coffee when I walk in, I'd probably say yes. Especially at Starbucks right now. I mean, we all need somebody

to buy our coffee at Starbucks, seven, eight bucks a cup. Yeah, so all the people that are listening right now that are struggling, they're like, how am I going to afford that? But I'll tell you what. It's working. She was parking you're ever going to do. And I have another quick story, right? Sometimes, you know, there's that story about the army and burning the boats, right?

And I had an agent walk in my office and she had just quit her job. It was almost six figures. benefits and you know we sat down and she had to have that burn the boat moment and some of us like recently Chris honestly recently since I made my move right to where I am now I had to burn the boat moment and and I try to coach my people to self-discover that burn the boat moment and it could be anywhere as like being in the grocery store line and having to put things back because you can't afford them your burn the boat moment could have been where you gain so much weight and you're finally like man, I'm too big. I'm uncomfortable. I need to go work out. We all have them. But if you don't

recognize that burn the boat moment, you can't go back to it when things get tough. And so with one of my other favorite agents, we just have, I can remind her of her burn the boat moment. Like, you've got to do the activities and you don't have a choice. You're not going, there's no boat taking you home from this war. Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's incredible. When you, when you just got to, like, sing or swim, I've realized that in my life, life, the most stressed I always ever have is when I'm in a sink or swim moment, but the most productive I ever am is in a sink or swim moment. Absolutely.

You know, it's interesting. One of my E-CAD teachers, professors in college would talk about that. And they're like, listen, you know, the reality is when people have to sing or swim, they learn to swim pretty darn fast. I was like, I've been, you know, now I know I've been there. But tell us this, because obviously, we don't. you know, obviously I'm with AXP, Drew's with EXP, this is not a

pitch for, like, at all. Like, we just don't do that. We're pretty agnostic when it comes to the brokerage piece here. But with that said, I know that you now, and it's not an EXP exclusive thing, but you are now doing productivity coaching for agents.

And I think that there is an open, open door regardless of where you're from. But like, just tell us about, Where you, what you were doing and then what you're doing now, what the opportunity is, if anybody's looking to be coach, like do productivity coaching or anything like that with you. And what that process looks like, because if somebody is looking, maybe somebody wants to be a productivity coach and build a business. Like, what does that look like? Or if they need to be coached, then they can reach out to you. So how does that plan?

I finally get to do what I love. I was a team leader at Keller Williams for three years. and I was miserable. I was only allowed, it was supposed to coach the top 20%, as you know. And my wheelhouse is anyone that doesn't, isn't there. I love, like I said, I love to help people find their burn the boat moment. I love to see that switch go off.

I love to see the eyes go from glazed to unfazed. I love that. And so that's what I'm doing now. I am doing it every Tuesday at 9.30. I will open it up. But anyone that's on here, I'll have them email out, the Zoom link for it. And then if anyone wants to reach out to me and do it on a different level, we can work out a way to make it happen. I'm easy.

Yeah. When you're coaching people, what is like the typical avatar, like number of deals that somebody's doing? And like, what is the, is it based on number of deals or is it based around finances? Like, what is the process? Like, what is the goal that you're trying to accomplish with folks? So for me, I always found that like from zero transactions to being stuck in the messy middle, right, which is in our area, I can't speak for all the other. In our area, the messy middle is usually four to six and a half million where people tend to stick and then they're stuck there year after year. And I like to help people get out of that. But really just zero to messy middle. I love helping. Yeah. Yeah. And then where do you feel like people start? I mean, obviously, the goal post changed.

I still remember when I was listening to a podcast early on in my first year, and there was a team, they did like $50 million. I was like, oh, my gosh, if we could do $50 million, that would be incredible. But like where do you see people go from feeling like they're kind of stuck in that messy middle? Where does freedom start to happen? Like what is the volume number in our area that you're kind of seeing? So I always see people start to live their quote unquote best life after 10 million. I always see one like I coach an agent and they're stuck at six and and it's oh, I work so much.

I do this. And then we work on leverage and we work on making lead generation fun. And after they hit 10 million, then I see they're living a little bit more. They're at soccer games and they're not missing. And it's like a phenomenon that it's like hard to explain. like you're making more, you're using leverage, and you're working less, and you're happy. So usually after 10 million, and then they start to develop a team and then they get up in the 20s and 30s.

But really, after 10 million in our area, you start to see that, like I said, go from glazed to unfazed. Gleased to unfazed, that's great. That's great. Well, very cool. We've only got a couple minutes left. What's the question I didn't ask you that I should have asked you? I always want to ask someone why they do what they do.

Why do you do what you do? That's a great question, Chris. I'm glad you thought of it. Hey, it's the coach in me, I guess. So for me, right, I want to love what I do. I don't know where this came from. My dad said I was always like that if I didn't like a sport. Like I didn't play it hard.

But when I love what I do, I'm dangerous. right i'm dangerous and and and so why is to to help others and to pay it forward how steve gaskins who was is my mentor at the time he paid it for he did he did for me and i mean i love to go to weddings of my clients i love to see my clients buy a new house i love when my clients say hey let's go to lunch i'm treating for the first time like i don't know that's why i do it just somebody can you know get get exactly what i got out of life That's awesome. That's awesome. That's incredible, man. Yeah, I love, I love the idea of, it's like what Ziglux says, you can have everything in life you want if you have enough other people get what they want. And, you know, so often I was doing a training this morning and we were talking about scripting and role playing and all the different pieces there. And the ones that were struggling were the ones where what they were saying was about them. The ones that were doing really well was like they were asking questions on. on how the sellers felt.

And so, you know, when we think about others, life just gets so much easier. One last quick question, last book or podcast or something that you read or listened to or whatever that just absolutely made you think in a much bigger way. Other than uncommon real estate, of course. So for me, the one thing that I do every morning

is I try to find something different in that realm that motivates me, your podcast. I still listen to the millionaire real estate agent. And I also like Eric Thomas. He just gets me fired up in the morning. Like I want to be a ball of energy and I want to be surrounded by positivity in the morning. So I usually try to listen to something like that. That's awesome. Well, very cool. Well, if anybody wants to either get into your coaching program, productivity coaching, if somebody wants to learn to be a productivity coach and wants to reach out to you, or if somebody just wants to send your referral or just get in your world, you get to know you a little bit better,

or just understand how you think. How does somebody find you? So email is probably the best for me, and my email is kind of long, but I will gladly share it right now. It's my first name, Drew, not Andrew, Drew at dot co-ragan.com. That's my best email. My cell phone is 202-438-9106. Cool, cool, cool, cool. We will put that in the show notes, so he will be findable. Thank you.

All right. Well, Drew, this was excellent. I know that you've changed a lot of people's lives, and I know that you care about a lot of people. I know you care about the people that entrust their careers with you. So I'm just super thankful that we were able to spend some time together. And I hope you continue changing lives. Awesome time. Thank you, Chris.

Hey, thanks for letting me be here, man. It means a lot. And I hope that people out there can just remember you give it out of slices, you get it back in low. Love that. Love that. All right, everybody. So please, what we would ask for is an honest review. You know, other people will find it when they see more reviews. So please give us an honest review. If you could take two minutes, not even two minutes, 30 seconds right now and do that. That would be great. And if you are listening, you can go to our Facebook group, Uncommon Real Estate. You can reach out and let us know if there's any topic that you want us to discuss. But in the meantime, Drew, this was spectacular.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chris. Go kill it, everybody, and go live uncommon. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other Uncommon Real Estate Industry Leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to Chris Craddock.com.