KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How Utah Real Estate Agent Boo Maddox Sold 203 Homes in 1 year

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Welcome to the Return on Life podcast where we discuss all things financial and freedom through the game of real estate, focusing on building a fulfilling and purpose-driven life. Welcome to the Return on Life podcast. I'm Randy Dick, and I've got a great guest with me today, but I'm grateful, grateful that you're here. If you like what you're hearing and the content that is being pumped out here, you've got to hit the subscribe button or follow us on Apple or Spotify. My guest today is a young fellow. In fact, I've been in real estate longer than he's been alive, which is kind of crazy when you think about that.

But Boo Maddox, and by the way, you might wonder what, what is this name, Boo all about? But we're going to talk about that as we dig deep into this. But Boo's been licensed for about 10 years. But get this, get this. One year, as a solo agent, he sold 203 homes by himself, without an assistant, without any support and help. Think about that.

203 ends. How in the world do you do that? Just think about that. So an incredible guest. He's really into family. He's got four kids. He's got a beautiful wife. His wife is in real estate too.

And he is part of the Perry group. Now, you're going to love, love, love this guy. He's got so much value to bring. So hold up a chair. Get comfortable. And let's go. boo welcome here hey I appreciate it that's quite the intro now you got me feeling just a little bit nervous because I hope I can live up to it I think you can live up to it you do a freaking

Instagram live every morning why can't you live up to this uh you know that feels a little bit easier than someone else asking me the questions when I pace it myself I found it to be a lot easier so we're going to see if I could be a good guest or not for you today hey well before we get into the return on life podcast and all things that are we're going to talk about we're talking about real estate, of course, we're going to talk about being an underdog. That's a really important theme these days in the world of life, just being an underdog. We're going to talk about some excuse me, mindset and then finish it off with the return on life piece. But before we get into that, I want to know a little bit about how and what's the purpose of doing IG Live every morning

and what do you do on IG Live? Because there's a lot of realtors on here going like, holy cow, every morning? Yeah, so good question. So it started off with a challenge from an agent in my office who I'd absolutely recommend having you on or having him on to your show at some point. Sonia Costa has been in the business for 13 years.

TEDx speaker. I mean, every accolade that you can possibly have in this business, this dude does it. So we started this just a couple of weeks ago, actually. We created a lot of long-form content. We've done a lot of short-form content. So we wanted to see what our next skill set that we wanted to add.

was. And so we started going live on our YouTube channel and then have started switching that into now we would go across across multiple platforms. So we're live on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, really any platform that we can be on we want to try to be on. And it's been interesting to see how much more. And part of the urgency that we felt in trying this was that I feel like a lot of agents are figuring out how to do short form. How do we stay ahead of what the trends are? How do we figure out a way to get in front of more people? And I think all of us understand that every single time we get into Instagram, every single time we get into TikTok or YouTube, it pushes the lives to the very top of the feed. So how can we try to stay front of mind, top of mind at all times? And that's by

going live and pushing the skill set just a little bit further every morning from 930 Mountain Standard Time to 10. That's crazy. You know what I love about that? It's not so much doing the live. It's about the commitment. And everything in life is about commitment and discipline and just doing that daily because it's not easy. I'm sure there's days you go, oh, geez, we got to go live. now. So what do you do? And every entrepreneur, you don't have to be in real estate, but every entrepreneur needs to be active and involved on social if you want to really make a difference. So what are you doing and sharing every day? Yeah, so our number one focus, my new role as the team lead here, I have 50 agents. We've added 50 agents or so, so far this year. We started with

four in January. We're up to about 55 or 60 at this point. We just signed a lease to extend our square footage, another 7,700 square feet. So I have about a hundred seats or so that I need to fill by about the middle of next year. So for me, it's, I have found a lot of enjoyment and a lot of success in showing agents in our marketplace exactly what it is that we're all about. So I want all of my opinions. I want everything that means something to me to be out there every day. So what we've started doing is we go into all these Facebook forums that we see real estate mastermind. I mean, all of these different places that agents go in there to complain, to lament, to be excited about different things. So we cover anything that we see in there.

We each pull about two different topics that we have seen other agents post, and we give our two cents on them. And it's been interesting. In a couple of weeks, we've picked up, we're getting multiple hundreds of views every single morning at this point across multiple platforms. And the idea and hopeful goal with that is that all of those are agents. That's our number one focus with it is an agent attraction to the team model. right on right on and how long are your lives we're usually going about 20 to 30 minutes is kind of the goal that we've set for ourselves fantastic that is that's a really great piece in fact that would work well not only for just attracting agents to your team but also real estate so you go live

with everything real estate related you know what are buyers and sellers thinking what's happening in the marketplace buyers are having the same political right yeah buyers are having the exact same conversations they're out there it's very easy for you to go and take it and say like I think the biggest there's a bunch of advantages to social media that people don't understand but my number one goal with social media is I want my end user which right now is agents but for agents it's clients but I want my end user to know what I'm about what it feels like to transact with me and what it feels like for me to represent you or to be your team lead and so if you can put yourself in a position to put all of that out there then what happens is you're going to start

attracting the people that that resonates with you're going to start to fill your pipeline instead of just with 20 people a year that you kind of like working with, but you're excited that you're getting paid at the end of it. Instead of that approach, you're going to work with people that are so much more enjoyable energetically to work with that by the end of it, you're going to have a pipeline full of people that at the end of the year, you're like, I just got paid insane money to work with 30 of my closest friends. That's the advantage to social media is that it's attraction based instead of forced base. So for us to be able to make that switch, it's a major focus for all of my agents. our office of 50 agents puts out somewhere between three to 400 pieces of content a month because I believe in it that strongly.

Pretty incredible when you think about it. When you can be touching hundreds, you said hundreds a day versus, you know, you could never meet with 100 people a day, right? You're lucky if you could meet three or four people a day. Now you're meeting with thousands of people a day. Yeah, and I think social media has skewed our approach on, like we have a video that gets a thousand views and we're like, I wish it would have been in 2000, but we're when you contextualize this.

And when you think if I was speaking in front of a room of a thousand people, just how many eyes that is, how many lives that is, I think it has skewed our perspective and it has taken us out of context that 100 people watching my live every single day, I would be terrified to go and speak in front of 100 people in person at an event. And if I did an event that I got 100 people to, I would be blown away that I was able to have that level of pull. Great point. Great point.

Let's talk, let's stay in this. vein a little bit. Let's talk about what has changed over the years in real estate and what is maybe some of the coolest, biggest changes or factors in the game of real estate. Yeah, to me, social media has to be at the top of that list. In my office, I push everybody on having a short-term prospecting mindset. And to me, the short-form methods of prospecting are your door-knocking, your open houses, your cold calling, all of your traditional methods of finding people. The reason I call them short-term is for two reasons. Number one, they can find you a deal in the short term. They can produce a deal for you in the next 60 to 90 days. But then I also think that they need to be viewed a short term because

if your goal, if your entire business is built on knocking doors, you're not going to have a long time in this industry. So for social media to come along and for us to have a free lead source like social media that does take time to develop, but is ultimately a free lead source that is what I think makes social media so special and such a valuable tool that most agents don't understand is twofold. Number one, the second that you stop door knocking, your prospecting stops for that day. The second that you stop cold calling, your door, your prospecting stops for the day. The second that your open house is done, your prospecting is done for the day. Social media is an ever-revolving billboard that will continue to bring people in and it's the only lead source

that I know of that will make your phone ring long after you put that time and energy into it. So it's massive. The other thing that I think most agents get so backwards with social media is they don't understand the skills that are acquired from learning how to create content. Me going live every day for 30 minutes a day, my skill set has improved public speaking so quickly, so quickly. And I think, like, I look at all of my agents in here. We have a lot of new agents. A lot of them don't understand how to explain interest rates in 30 seconds or less in a captivating fashion. How do you teach them how to do that, not on live ammunition?

They learn to create content and create it in a way. So to me, the skills that if you can learn how to explain interest rates in 30 seconds in a way that doesn't make somebody swipe away on Instagram, when that skill translates to the real world, the power that that has, the impact that that has, who cares how many deals you generated from it? Look at what it did for your skill development. Yeah. I love that. You know, it's a combination of skill, time, and then putting yourself out there. And many people want the skill, but they don't want to put the time in or they're afraid to put them. out there. But when you bring those three together, magic does happen. And I love that you talk

about short term. I call it the fishing hole. And I call it the fishing hole because my dad would always take me fishing and he would take me to the fishing hole where I could actually see the fish. And it was like, oh my goodness, there's fish. And all then you do is put the hook in and I'd bring out a fish. So I love these concepts. But there's no better concept really, I think, than social media, but you've got to do it consistently every day. And you've got to put yourself out there. Yeah, and from a time perspective, if you look, this is a free service. So where does that mean that the time and the energy and the resources needs to be deployed? It has to be deployed at the upfront. It can't be deployed on the back end because this is a free service. So where is the

time spent? It's on the upfront. And that's where all the resources for social media has to be allocated. The second point that you made is people are afraid to put themselves out there. But I have really bad news for anybody that's listening to this. Your voice sounds like what your voice sounds like. You look like what you look like on camera and in person. Nothing's going to change. So if you are afraid of what you sound like or what you look like, but boo, did you get my good side or my bad side? That's what I mean. And I tell all of my agents that like this is kind of a good news, bad news situation here. And it took me a while. It took me a while to get over that. But at some point, you're going to realize if I put something out on social media and somebody comes

to my team meeting to look at us, I look the same as I do on camera. I see. I see. sound the same as I do on camera. So the good news is you can't change it. The bad news is you also can't change it. So you can either get comfortable with it or you can act like that's not what my voice sounds like or that's not what I really look like in person. It is what it is. Right on. Hey, one more question here. What is the platform of choice for you? If you could pick one or two platforms, and it sounds like you're on all of them, but what is the one or two that you would pick? So I think it depends on who I'm trying to attract. I think if you are trying to find buyers, YouTube is by far the best platform that I have seen, but it takes a ton of time up front to get it started.

For me, where I'm trying to grow my team, I've had the most success from agent attraction through making content on Instagram. I try to source a lot of content creators because I believe in it. I help other agents find full-time content creators to add to their staff. I have had a lot of success where they are, which is TikTok. So for me, it just depends on exactly who it is that you're trying to go after. I think if you are an agent, YouTube for buyers, Instagram for sellers, and depending on your age demographic, Tony, who I was referencing earlier, does a ton with the Latino community, 45 and older. He finds a majority of his buyers on Facebook, and him and I get in fights all the time about

if Facebook is relevant or not. Because to me, I feel like Facebook patronizes me. And it's like, hey, congratulations. You got 10 interactions on your last Facebook post. And the same video performed really well on Instagram. That's not where my demographic is. But I think it comes back to identifying your demographic, figuring out what their shopping patterns are and their scrolling patterns are, and then making sure that you're in front of them

on those specific platforms. One more question when we stay in this lane here. If there's one piece that would make you more competitive than all of the other competitors, and there's so many competitors today, there's more realtors than ever, there's more entrepreneurs than ever, what would that lane be that would make you more competitive and above the rest? Yeah, I think it comes down to the amount of quantity that we are putting out of content. If you look, there's three different priorities when it comes to content creation.

There's the turnaround times, there's the quality of the content, and there's the quantity of the content. My opinion is that from 2010 to 2020, every entrepreneur, every business, everybody that was putting stuff out on social media, wanted a museum style feed. They wanted it to look polished. They wanted it to look perfect. And I think that that has changed. And so if you look, the majority of content creators, the video content creators that you are hiring are all going to stress quality. But that's not what sells anymore. For me, I would rather pay $500 for five videos that are pretty good rather than $500 for one video that was really good.

To me, the amount of reach that you get from five videos versus one is always going to put that at the top of my list until that trend changes. Yeah. And I'm going to be honest. When I'm scrolling, I'm looking for the video that looks like somebody's going to blow up and bomb versus the perfectly edited with all the things coming in from the side. I just want a real video to watch. Well, yeah. And look at how we're shopping right now. We're not shopping based on who has the best video.

We're looking for the practice of whatever the product is. that we're shopping for. We want to see how stuff is being used. We want to see how agents interact with their consumers. We want to see what it feels like to be represented by you. Not, hey, congratulations. Like my big pet peeve right now with social media content is every agent post the same damn picture.

It's a picture of them at closing, holding a key with their consumer saying, congratulations to the Johnson family they just closed. That's not what people want to see. They don't want to see the end of the process. They want to see the middle of the process. So show the process. And the way that you do that is by making it grassroots. roots. It's by making it guerrilla-style warfare. It's not by making some prim and polished

post that three people are going to see. Great stuff. Hey, folks, we're just going to move on to another piece of our conversation here. We're going to jump into the underdog theme. But before we do that, I want you to click the subscribe button. I want you to follow us on Spotify or Apple if you're getting valued at this. And I'm going to tell you right now, that last 10 minutes was gold. So click and subscribe for other great guests that we've got coming on. Boo. And by the way, listeners, if you stay to the very end, you're going to find out what Boo's real name is.

Yes, trust me. My whole team's going to be listening because they don't know it. You got to listen right to the end. Okay. Underdog. And this is a word that's really near and dear to me. I love the underdog theme. Movies are made about underdogs.

We love going to the theater to watch these underdog movies. And I'm going to ask you the question. Have you ever been in a situation where the adversity was so incredible, so challenging, and you found that underdog spirit within you? And what does underdog mean to you, boo? Yeah, so this is a loaded question. You asked me if there was any no-goes before we started. And I said I don't have any, but this is one that I would say is flirting with the line for me.

Because I think that this is a hard one to put into perspective, but I'm going to do my best and hopefully everybody doesn't judge me for what I'm about to say. So as far as an underdog, if you look at it on paper, I am the furthest thing from an underdog. I have been walking around brokerages since I was 10 years old. My dad is massively successful in real estate and does more land development in the state than anybody else. I mean, this dude writes earnest money checks for $5 million to go and buy land pieces that are 60 and 70 and $80 million. So he has established the legacy. So it was from an underdog perspective. I don't know that I'm an underdog, but I think that what comes along with having a parent that is successful. And my theory is that successful parents does one of two things to you.

It either completely corrupts you and turns you into a lazy sack, or number two, it lights a fire under you to try to prove everybody wrong and to prove that you are here, not because somebody forced you to be here. And so I would say the underdog that I have, like part of what motivated me to go and sell 200-something houses in 365 days, was to not only, it's not even for the public, I would say. I would say it was to prove to myself that I am worthy of being here, that I am here because of my own skill, that I am here because of what I have been able to accomplish, not because, and I think the biggest advantage that I had was I had some doors opened up for me early on,

but my dad didn't sell 200 houses in a year. That was, that was me. And so for me, I think that am I an underdog to the public? No, probably not, but to myself, I have felt like I have had something to prove. since I was a little kid when I decided I wanted to be a real estate agent at 10 years old. Love that. Worthy. Worthy. What a great word we used. You know, and I've been an underdog in my entire life too, but if you ask people that know me

personally today, they would say, no, you're not an underdog, Randy. How can you be an underdog? And I say, well, listen, you don't know what's going on in the back office of my head. You don't know that I'm bringing it forward to fight through the adversity, and it's the underdog spirit, the DNA within me. And I believe the DNA is in all of us. Every one of us has an underdog spirit. We just don't know it at times, and we don't even know what it is. And sometimes it comes out in ways that make us fight through something, whether it be the complex of I have to prove to myself that I'm really worthy to be in this room, or worthy to be part of this or that.

So I really appreciate your response there. You also mentioned something, you know, one of the things that's so challenging is once you've been on top, just like the Perry Group is like killing it and crushing it, everybody wants to take a shot at you. And just to stay on top is more difficult than the climb. Being on top is more difficult than the climb. How did that fit into your, your makeup?

up of who you are today. Yeah, it's a really good question because I think staying on top is sometimes harder than getting to the top. As somebody that had to climb to the top, I think that that process can sometimes be more enjoyable. I think sometimes you feel like you can take different risks than you can when you are at the top. Absolutely. And I think that for us, part of what is instilled in the peri group's DNA is that just we are our own competition. We don't pay attention to what everybody else is doing. We don't pay attention to what everybody else is saying about us. We are perfectly okay with what everybody is telling us. But what we are not okay with is just being on top and just trying to cling to it.

We are okay dipping to number two or three or four or five in the pursuit of approaching this in the best way that we know possible for our agents. And so if you don't approach it from that perspective, if you're so worried about clinging to the number one spot, you're going to give it up. You're going to lose because you are not taking the same risks that somebody that's number 10 is trying to take to get to number one. So always be willing to challenge the status quo, always be willing to say, hey, is there a better way to do this?

And I think that that's what makes the peri group special. And I think that's why we'll stay on top, at least in the state of Utah, for a long time to come. I would love to hear you share some of the dynamics that you have within your peri group. And when you've got that many highly successful and highly charged salespeople, how do you keep them all happy? How do you keep them all motivated? Gosh, you got to have a bit of an underdog spirit within the team as well. Share some of the things that you do to keep everybody moving and motivated. Yeah, it's a good question. I think the first thing that you have to understand

is that you're not always going to be able to do that. You are not always going to be able to keep everybody happy. So making sure that just because we have a couple of agents leave over a disagreement on splits or a disagreement on office hours or something like that, doesn't mean that the model is broken. I think it also requires you to have a strong emphasis on bringing in new blood to the organization at all times to replace those that you might lose. I think that's what makes models like EXP.

I think that's what makes models like real so invaluable to us as a team that if an agent does leave, as long as they stay within the brokerage, we are still incentivized to help them and take them on and it doesn't sting as bad when they do leave. Because I do think that just like, if you look at it from an agent perspective, If 100% of the offers that you write are getting to the close line, you're doing something wrong.

If you don't have a certain amount of cancellations along the way, you're either not pushing people enough or you're not selling enough. I think it's the same thing here. If I don't have 5 to 10% of my agents leave every year, every 18 months, we're not trying enough new things. We're not challenging the status quo enough. We're not pushing as hard as we probably could be. And so for me, I think it's an understanding that people are just going to leave.

People are going to outgrow. People are going to do something else. and that doesn't mean that the system and the model is broken. But I think it's also creating an environment where people feel like this is where they can be successful more than on their own. I like that. And success, I really believe, is in the EXP real model because nobody wants you to succeed more than the person that sponsored you and helping you along the way. Collaboration is at such a high level at these kind of brokerages because there's so much incentive to help one another. I love that. I love that. Resilience and grit. I mean, these are two pieces that are so important to anything entrepreneurial and especially in real estate. How do you build resilience and grit in your agents?

It's a good question. I think I'm a blind optimist, so I do want to preface with everything that I'm about to say with telling everybody that I know I am an obnoxious optimist to a fault at a point. I think the important thing is to help agents understand that even when they lose, they can still be winning. Just because a deal goes south, if you learn something, if you learn something that will change the way that you practice your business, you will be more successful for that transaction than if it had closed. And I understand what everybody that's listening to this is thinking, it's like, well, yeah, but what if I have to feed my kids? What if I have to make my house payment? What if I have to pay my dues next month? And I don't have $1,200 to do that.

So I understand that there are some context needed for this, but I think at the same time, the reality of it is is that you will get better feedback from the people that choose not to work with you than the people that you will work with. And if you're willing to accept that feedback and put it into your business, you will be so much further ahead than those that are. To me, resilience is not losing, but it's picking yourself back up after you take those losses. That's going to happen to all of us. That's going to happen to all of us. how you react is the resilience portion of this. So if you can approach this with an optimist mindset and just say, hey, yeah, the sky's falling today, but I'm going to be okay tomorrow because of what I've learned, you're going to be

so much happier in this industry. If you just accept that A, it's going to happen, and B, I'm going to learn something from it, you're going to be great in this. Yeah. You know, resilience to me is like a shield, you know. It's my shield against adversity. And, you know, when things are coming at me, I can just put up my shield and it deflects off. and I can stand tall and be strong behind that resilient.

Well, I think it's important to use that analogy and tell everybody, hey, stuff's still going to hit your shield. You're still going to take arrows. You're still going to take a spear. You're still going to take a sword to the shield. It doesn't mean that the model is broken. It doesn't mean that you suck as an agent. It just means that that's the secret sauce. That's where you, if you want to stand apart in this industry, it's how you take those blows to your shield that will determine how well you do in this business.

So true. Hey, we're going to move on to our next piece of the podcast. It's going to be on Mindset, Mindset and All Things Sales. Remember, if you like what you're hearing, subscribe, follow us on Apple and Spotify. And remember, we've got Boo's real name coming at the end as well as the speed round. You're going to love the speed round as well. So mindset is probably the engine of everything that we do as an entrepreneur and as a realtor. how important is mindset for you and if I asked you today hey boo what is your mindset

EQ today is it a one out of 10 or a 10 out of 10 I'm assuming it's high but what would you say it is hmm I would probably put it at a solid 8.5 out of 10 okay I feel like I do things really well I feel like I don't get down very often but I also think that there is a lot of imposter syndrome with what I'm doing and I have had to fight that for kind of the first time in a long time, which has been an interesting conversation to have with myself. Imposter syndrome. Let's unpack that a bit. First of all, for people that may not know what that is, what does that mean to you? Well, if you don't know what it is, I'm sure you've felt it, even if you haven't put something to the feeling, even if you

haven't labeled the feeling, I think that you'll still know what I'm talking about. When you sell 200 houses in a year. You don't worry about any appointment that you're walking into. You don't worry what anybody's saying about you or thinking about you or perceived thoughts about you. But when you step into a new role, and I think that this is going to happen anytime an agent decides to retool their business, anytime an agent decides to try something new in this business, you are going to feel imposter syndrome before you feel success in this. So for me, I got asked to speak in front of 30 team leads from across the country last week from an agent here in Utah. 38, 30 team leads that flew in that have all been doing team lead stuff for a lot longer than I

have. I'm 10 months into this. I am brand new from the team lead perspective. I still don't know what I'm doing and I'll be very upfront and honest with people on that. And so all of a sudden I'm getting asked to speak and getting asked to represent the number one team in the state of Utah. And I'm thinking, what do I have to teach these people? What do I have to tell these people that They haven't heard 150 times at 150 different conferences that they've been to or something different from a YouTube video that they could have picked up. Like why am I the one that is being asked to be here? And I think any time an agent says, hey, I've been buyer heavy for the last two years.

I want to step into listings. It doesn't matter how many buyers you've had. All of a sudden, you're thinking, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I have the ability to tell a list, a new seller, I got you. I'm going to help you sell your house for more money and in record time. you don't have that confidence. So anytime that that confidence gets called into question, I think is when you start to feel imposter syndrome.

You know, one thing that is or can be a bit of a problem around that is that when we're really, really good at something, so you're really, really good at selling 200 homes, we sometimes allow our egos to think that we're good at everything. And I've been there before where I've had incredible success in one lane, and I think, well, I can do this lane too. I can do anything because I'm so good over here. And oh my goodness, I got taking advantage.

I got my legs cut out from under me. So I think we have to be very, very careful. And just having that thought of, hmm, is this my lane? Am I being an imposter in this lane and then qualifying that? And so there's often that I will qualify why I should be in this lane and why I feel confident in that lane because you need to verify it. And you also need to have people around you to verify. Third-party validation is so important in sales,

but it's also important in what you're doing too, which I'm sure you're getting a lot of third-party validation for being at it for 10 months already or just only 10 months and having great success. Yeah, that doesn't mean that those feelings go away, though. I think it just helps you to acknowledge what your skill set are and where you're lacking. but I think it's super important to tell everybody just because you're feeling imposter syndrome doesn't

mean that you're in the wrong spot doesn't mean that you're not supposed to be there and doesn't mean that you are not plenty capable of everything that you're setting out to do I just want to make it abundantly clear that any time you try something new in any business in any facet of life like I when I when I was selling that many houses I was not paying attention to my kids and we're going to get into that here in just a minute but I felt like an imposter trying to be a dad again I felt like an imposter trying to be a husband to my wife again. Anytime that you retool, anytime that you reinvent, anytime that you set out to try something new,

you are going to feel this before you feel success at it. It's important to move through that and just understand that this is part of that learning curve that we all have to go through, even if you've been in real estate for 10 years and you try something different. Yeah. Mindset is a lot about just discipline and doing things. consistently. And how important is the daily schedule to have the right mindset for success? It's a good question. And I wish I had a better answer for you, but I do think that it's important

to have a couple of non-negotiables and let the rest of your day fall, however it's going to fall. I think it's important to have daily goals or daily practices that you want to hit. I think it's super important. I established office hours in my office for all new agents when they first join us until they hit four transactions in a quarter. And the reason for those hours is because I want agents to have a dedicated morning routine. I want them to have the things that when the rest of the world feels like it's being chaotic, you have some things that you know are going to be my mainstays. So for me, I started my office hours at 10 o'clock. Why did I start them at 10 o'clock? Is there some magic to that number? No, but that's the time that I can get my kids to school, drive them to

school every single morning and still make it to the office before the rest of the agents. So having that established in a world of chaos, which I would say the world of real estate is absolute chaos at any given point is very understated and undervalued in our industry. I like that. You know, I had a morning routine that was really important to me. And I also had it with my agents as well. But I was a lot. I wasn't near as as lenient on time.

Well, yeah, and I think that it's tricky. Like, I think it's hard to find the balance. But to me, the reason I have those hours in place is because I think that's what a lot of successful top producers should have. And I have two main goals in our office. Number one, I want to get new agents into production quicker than what the industry averages. And I want them to stay in production for longer than what the industry average is. I think the only way that you can do that is by having a morning routine that you can rely on and bank on that involves the people in your life that are important to you. Yeah.

And not just being, like I tell all of my agents, I don't want you texting buyers at 8 o'clock in the morning. I don't want you emailing people at 9 o'clock in the morning. I want you to spend that time with yourself or with your people. Yeah. And then at 10 o'clock, trust that your business is going to be here to pick up as soon as you walk in the door. Yeah. A cadence of your day is so important.

You've got to have that cadence of the day. One thing that I did in my office for years and years was I had everybody, I started eight, and then I pushed it back to 8.30. But at 8.30, everybody had to be there alive, dressed, smelling nice. And then we had what we called a stand-up meeting. And it was just a short meeting, 20 minutes. But I just wanted to get everybody there dressed ready to rock and roll and a little bit of encouragement. And let's go at it.

And so just creating that cadence. But I was shocked at how difficult that was for people. Just shocked. And you could really see, you know, the quality of the work and their production, depending on cadence that they could keep. Yeah, this whole office hours idea has been very interesting to see. I thought when I first started that the splits would be the reason because we have team splits. They're somewhat aggressive because we pay. We're the number one spender on Zillow nationally, so we have to be somewhat aggressive on our team generated splits.

I thought that would push more agents away. The office hours, I think, has pushed and discouraged more agents from joining our team than anything else. It's shocking to me because I'm like, wait, this is a total of 20 hours a week. This is 20 hours a week in the office and you're balking at this. I think it's been the best gatekeeper for me that I possibly could have had. And why are we able to get agents into production quickly? It's because the agents that are signing on saying, hey, I'm good for this, are agents that are willing to take their business incredibly serious.

And it's been very interesting to see agents that come in adapt to the structure and how quickly they get into production. I love it, boo. You know, we think that we should build a dictate our own hours and so forth. But gosh, if we were actually being managed as agents, there was somebody overseeing us and managing us, most of us would get fired within a couple weeks because of our schedule and the amount of actual hours we work. We work. Most of us would be fired in two weeks. So I appreciate that.

I really think that is a valuable to anybody that here is in leadership. I would highly recommend that you incorporate what Boo just shared as far as getting people to the office and putting them on a schedule. Very good. Very good. Okay, we're going to move on to the last piece of our podcast before the speed round, and it's called the Return on Life podcast. And if you like Return on Life Podcast, got to subscribe. Got to hit that subscribe button or follow us on Spotify and Apple. But I really want to get into this.

You know, so often we chase the ROI, the return on investment, and we forget about what's most important, which is life, the return on life, the ROL. And I know you've got some great things to share, Boo. When you hear return on life, what does that mean to you? It's a deep question. And it's a question that I didn't pay enough attention to earlier on in my career and I wish that I would have because when I when I set out and I started selling I had no

other focuses in my life other than proving to myself that I was supposed to be in the room and so everything took a back seat to that I used to tell everybody that the way that my wife and I have our life set up is I sell houses and my wife does everything else and it wasn't until my daughter was born grew up a little bit she was about three years old during my busiest year ever and she looked at me and I was incredibly frustrated by how her and I were communicating And I had to take a step back and I'm thinking, okay, do I blame the three-year-old for not being able to communicate with me or do I blame myself for not being able to communicate with my three-year-old? And all of the sudden, all of the money that I was making that year was completely irrelevant to me. It did not matter how well I felt like I could communicate with buyers.

It didn't matter how well I could communicate with a seller. None of that matter because I couldn't communicate with the people that I actually cared about. and it broke me. And it ended up breaking my entire business in order to try to pursue that ROL. And so I think it's super important. I think it can be done if you build it with the right intentions at the beginning. But for me, when I realized that I couldn't communicate with my daughter, I had to, it was a mirror for me. It was a, it was a scary mirror.

It was a haunted mirror for me. When I realized, hey, I can't communicate. I can communicate with the world, but I can't communicate with my world. terrifying, terrifying place to find yourself. And so now as I've built this up, part of why this is so important to me is because now I'm on a mission to show myself that I can do both, that I can build a successful business, that I can build a thriving agency while not losing those things that are the most important to me.

And it's been a successful 10 months so far. You know, I can totally relate to that. And I think probably every successful entrepreneur, business owner, agent can totally, totally relate to that. And I think part of it is we're addicts. Absolutely. We're addict. No, that shot that you get in your arm, like there is no better anything that I have ever tried than putting a deal under contract. Like that is the stuff right there. That is the drug of choice. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's the drug of choice until you find

something else that means more. Yes. Until you figure out that, hey, I would rather be able to talk to my daughter and understand what her day was like more than I would like that drug. You know, my wife and I'm happily married, I've been married 37 years, three kids, just an amazing life I've been given, really, really blessed. But, you know, there's times that my wife and I would have arguments about this, you know, and she would, and I would say, I'm doing it for us.

I'm doing it for us. But it just doesn't feel like it to them. No, you're not. It's for you. You're stroking. Your ego is all about you, Randy. And I go, no, no. But she was right.

She was right. And so that addiction, you know, having more money than you know what to do with, all of that just drove me to throw everything out of balance. And I was chasing the R-O-I. not the ROL. And of course, at some point, things come to head. And it certainly did for you, did for me, which is a good thing. We woke up and recognized that. Yeah, can we both admit that it's a cop out when we say we're doing it for us? Can we both admit that that's just easier than saying I'm doing this selfishly? Because that was the scary moment for me when I realized that my

daughter was excited to see me, not because I sold 30 houses in a month, but because I just, dad was home. That's the stuff. Those are the people. That's that's what means more to me than anything else. And all of this that we're building, don't get me wrong. I wake up very excited to go to work every morning, but I wake up even more excited to take my kids to school than I do landing a new developer or landing a new buyer through content or agent joining my team. It means a lot to me, but it doesn't mean everything to me. Yeah. So this is all really good in principle how do we put it into action how do you make that work in real life and balance it because i'm sure we've got a lot of listeners here right now going hey well that sounds really good but

the only way i can buffoo in the table is to do this and do that and sacrifice all these other things how do we put it into practice how do you put it into practice boo yeah it's a thoughtful question because i think what it requires is it requires effort the amount of of, we talk about this when we go live probably twice a week. If you look at a new agent's business, we use the airplane analogy, the amount of thrust that it takes to get an airplane off the ground versus what it takes to keep that airplane flying once it's at 30,000 feet is entirely different. Make no mistake about it. You are going to have to force this issue. You are going to have to force yourself. So for me, part of why driving my kids to school every morning is so sacred is because

that was the first thing that I did to start peeling back some of that time. That was the very first thing that I said, okay, you know what? I can't, I can't show up for my family like I need to, but I'm going to start forcing the issue and how do I do it? I started driving my daughter to school. And I'm going to get emotional talking about this because it was those first couple of weeks were just silent drives. Those first couple of weeks were just quiet because we didn't know how to talk to to each other. But over time, you start to learn a little bit more and you start to learn a little bit more and you start to find different music that they like and different topics that they want to talk about and different things that are important to them.

But you're not going to get there until you create a reason and then you force the issue. And I think that the second part of this I want to tell everybody is if you don't feel like you can, then take a leap of faith. Trust yourself. Because my argument would be that if you want to provide for your kids, getting to know your kids will give you more of a why than anything else that you can possibly do. Getting to understand what is important to your wife or to your significant other will help. you figure out how to do more in less time. Like how did we grow this team like we did in 10 months? I am working less than I was when I sold 200 houses in a year. But what has happened is that I still have the same goals. I still have the same lofty expectations of myself. So now what am I forced to

do? I am forced to do more and less time. And what has happened as a result of that is that my skill level has increased dramatically. So the only the imploring that I would do for anybody that's listening is take a leap of faith first things first feel the imposter syndrome because that's going to come second and then trust yourself that you got this trust yourself that just because you were putting other time and energy into something doesn't mean that you can't still just be if not as equally as successful if not more successful if not more successful if you've been listening that was worth the price of admission wise wise words boo so much wisdom in that I really appreciate that.

I'll just add to that. What I've found that works so well for myself is that I schedule all of my family, all of my personal appointments in my schedule, and they're like, people ask me to work at that? No, I've got a client appointment at that point already. I book all of my holidays in January, and I pay for them in advance so I can't skip out on them. like treat your family as they're the most important client and your friends as the most important clients in your schedule well the advice i tell all of my agents is that if you lose a buyer because

you were spending time with your family i will personally go and help you find another one because you didn't want to work with that person anyway i love that i love that oh okay so we're talking about return on life we've talked a lot about our personal relationships what about what about self-care What about self-care? How important to self-care in that as well? Yeah, I think that's an underrated thing. Now that I'm 31, I've had to start paying attention to what I'm eating a little bit more. I've had to start paying attention to how I'm lifting weights a little bit more. But I think just as important as scheduling time with clients and just as important as scheduling time with your people, if you don't schedule time with yourself, you are going to lose out on a very valuable opportunity. If you're not taking time for yourself, whatever that is, whatever that looks like, it's different for everybody.

if you are missing out on that, you are going to miss out on a lot more than just money, than just prestige, than just awards or accolades, you're going to miss out on truly getting to know yourself. And I think why so many agents, when they hear me say,

you got to trust yourself enough to take time for your people. It's the same thing. You got to trust yourself enough to take time for yourself as well. That is awesome. Awesome stuff. Hey, one final question before we get into a speed round.

And so we've been all over creation. talking about all good things about entrepreneurship as well as real estate. And you're young. You're only 31 years old. Gosh, you got the whole world ahead of you. But if you could go back in time, let's say a decade, what would you have done differently or what would you tell yourself as a 21-year-old? Yeah, the first couple of years I was in the business.

I didn't pay attention to social media. I didn't pay attention to building a brand. So it would have been putting time into building something that nobody can take away from you. building something and putting effort in time, even if it feels like it's a slower process, I was so anxious to get into this. In my first seven months, I sold 58 houses without paying attention to how I did it. And I think if I had put more time and energy into that, I would have scaled my business even quicker than I did, but it would have felt like it took longer.

Does that make sense? Does that like, does that? Total sense. I can totally relate to it. I did the same thing. I came out of the blocks just flying and didn't spend enough time building a brand. and even the database. I didn't take care of the database.

And the database is a freaking gold mine. Yet I didn't. I'll remember everybody. I'll do this. No. Anyways, yes. Great, great advice. Great, great advice.

Boo. Okay. Here we go. We're going to go to the speed round and we're going to find out really boo's real name. Boo's real name. But before that, you need to subscribe and like us on Spotify and Apple. we're going to leave that question for second last. So first question, what is your favorite Utah ski hill to board or ski?

And I think you're a snowboarder, correct? Yeah, I prefer snowboarding. I'm a big fan of my Utah County boy born and raised. Most of the ski resorts are in Park City or Park City adjacent. There's a little well-known hill called Sundance. It's Robert Redford's private spot. To me, it's quieter. There's less people on the mountain.

and because of Utah Lake, sometimes, every now and then there's usually about two or three days a year where they have the best snow in the entire state because of what's called the lake effect. It keeps all the snow clouds right in the Utah Valley and it just dumps. And so there's times where Brighton and Park City and snowbird and all these well-known resorts don't have the same snow that little Sundance does. Wow, wow. Before real estate, I was in the ski and sporting industry. So I know Sundance. Hey, by the way, you're a slatter though, aren't you? I prefer snowmobiles at this point.

I don't know of another machine or anything that you can do. If I have time in the winter for myself, I am on a snowmobile because I think it's the most free thing that you can possibly do in this world. Right on, right on. Text, talk, or in person? What would you prefer? Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm selling something, it's always in person.

I'm one of those agents that absolutely believes that I am better in person. If you're trying to get a response from me, text is you usually, best and then calls are third place for sure nothing like being in person man not get me in front of somebody and we'll get you a contract right on hey what's your favorite band or singer um big zach top fan right now okay little country guy if you put him on it sounds like you're listening to 90s country radio which always reminds me riding around in my dad's truck so i anything that sounds like some old school country music i'm in i love that love that take out backyard barbecue home cooked meal or fine dining.

Yeah, so this is, I would say this is the new progression for me as far as carving out time with my family. My wife, because of our schedules, I'm normally done by about four or five o'clock as the office manager, team lead, whatever you want to say. I don't take appointments into the evening. My wife, though, is still actively showing clients at this point. So I have kind of taken the role. We've had a little bit of a rule reversal, and I'm the one that cooks dinner every single

night, and I'm proud to say I'm pretty good at it. I feel pretty good about the product that I am putting on the table for my kids. a big home-cooked meal fan at this point. Awesome. Okay, here's that big question. Before we get to the final question, Boo, what's your real name? See, I wish I had a better excuse for you. I wish I had a bad name.

I wish I had something like that. My real name's Stephen. Yeah, Stephen Jr., that's probably why the nickname kind of stuck is because I worked for my dad who was Steven Sr. And so everyone just started calling me by my childhood nickname. I wish I had something like a boy named Sue or something like that. And so I didn't want to tell people my real name. But it's just, I've never been able to avoid it.

So at some point, when I was selling, I said, let's steer into this. Because everyone remembers the grown man named Boo that they met. It's branding. It's personal branding. It is. It is. Absolutely. Okay.

Last question. Trick question. If you were a scratch and sniff sticker, a scratch and sniff sticker, and I came over and I rubbed your shoulder, what would I smell? Ooh. You ever seen the black ice air fresheners? No. It's black ice air freshener.

It throws me back to my senior year of high school where I had more fun with friends than I ever did. And it's just, it's the throwback smell for me. It takes you, takes you to place. Takes me back to a simpler place where the biggest concern was whose house are we throwing eggs at tonight. Love it. Wow. Boo, you've been, or should I say Stephen? No, I like boo.

I like boo. You've been an awesome guest. There's just been so much that you've dropped. that is just so, so valuable to all business owners, all entrepreneurs, underdogs, realtors. So thank you so much for being a guest on the Return of Life podcast. Hey, thank you for joining me on the Return of Life podcast. I'm excited that you're here. I need you to hit the subscribe button on the YouTube channel and follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Comments, reviews, guests that you think should be on this would be so important for us. So we want to hear from you as well. And of course, we're on all the social platforms where we are always discussing everything that is above.org, return on life.