KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Shift Mindset and Time-Block Daily Levers to Stop Staying Broke

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Summary:In this episode of Next Level Agents, host Kevin Kaufmann shares a recorded training session detailing why real estate agents often struggle financially despite working in a high cash-flow industry. Kaufmann breaks down the mental shift required to stop acting like an undisciplined "entrepreneur" and start treating daily activities like a structured job. The episode provides actionable strategies on time-blocking, defining a daily job description focused 90% on client acquisition, and implementing a five-lever lead generation framework to consistently hit 20 meaningful real estate connects per day.

Welcome to Next Level Agents, the podcast that's all about breaking barriers and building empires. I'm Kevin Kaufman and together with my crew bringing you straight up fire. Interviews with top tier agents, game changing thinkers, plus the strategies and mindset shifts to dominate in real estate. Whether it's personal growth, leadership packs, or next level tactics, we've got you covered. So tell me, what does the next level look like for you? Buckle up because we're about to take you there right now. Hey guys, Kevin here. Today's episode is going to be another share from the weekly Zoom that friend and I host for our

EXP group Next Level agents at EXP Realty. I think you're going to like this. Take a listen. Just know that it was actually recorded over Zoom for the purpose of a live audience. But I just thought it was powerful. Then I'm going to share it with you today too. Hope you enjoy it. But why most agents stay broke, I might get excited.

I might get excited. fired up. I've had a lot of coffee, maybe an energy drink or two, so we'll see. But this is something that's like, it reoccur so often is you have like a real estate team or if you're doing any type of recruiting from a school list or agents getting into the business or agents less than two, two, three years in the business where they're still trying to find their way. I truly believe there's some pitfalls in why agents stay broken. They never really make this a career, right? Because you're in one of the best vehicles in the world, cash flow rise. I just met with a buddy of A guy named Kyle, been a business partner mine in the investment space for a long time.

And he actually owns a $50 million company. He's been scaling it for the last five years. He has not taken a single dime out of the company. He has over $2.5 million invested in this transportation business. He's in multiple markets. Last week, his net profit was $125 grant, right? So we were talking about gross profit and net profit. His net profit right now is at 6% of a $50 million business.

And I go, and I said to him, man, I go, I don't know if there is a better cash flowing business than real estate. And I'll say that again. The barrier of entry to get in this business is by far the lowest of any company that I know, any company out there. My son just started a trailer rental business. I've invested 15 grand into buying a couple of trailers. That's more money than I invested in my real estate when I first got into it. Right. So it's cash flow in this business is crazy. But what happens is we stay in one lane. And that lane is servicing clients. We're always trying to get our feet wet. We end up going from one transaction every two months to three to four. And I think the core philosophy, and I have some notes. So if you see me look away, I says I'm looking at my notes. But like I have a core philosophy of why agents stay broke is they believe that they've earned freedom. They've earned freedom in this business. as soon as they got into it.

Everybody wants to get into real estate for two reasons. You got freedom of time and then financial freedom, right? That's why people get into real estate. Well, the truth is you only get freedom of time as long as you're not successful. Right? So until you guys know what I'm talking about here, right? So like you get in the business, you have no clue to do your time. You work all your time and lead generation and then you get busy and then your freedom goes away

and then you have to pay for freedom by hiring staff or leverage to be able to do it, right? So we stay broke in this business because we never actually think about this as an actual company. We always only think about it as a salesperson. We're in this business. We service clients, right? We go find buyers. We go find sellers and we just service them. We want to be in this business from freedom of time, freedom of money.

Then six months later, you do two, three, four deals, and then six months later, you're broke again, right? Does anybody done that? Well, you go do two, three transactions. a month, you make, you make 25, 30 grand, you got a bunch of cash in the bank. And then guess what happens? Two months later, you're broke. And then you go do a deal, you do one deal, you pay your bills again, and you got life back into your business, and then 30 days later you're broke. It doesn't have to be this way. It does not have to be this way. It will be one of the hardest things you do, but you have to shift your mindset around you are an employee of your business. You are not an

entrepreneur, right? We all get in this business. I'm an entrepreneur. I work for myself. No, you're not. You're not. You have to shift your mindset around what you're actually doing. If you were to work this like a job, you would get paid like a CEO. Work it like a job, get paid like a CEO. I've been an employee. What happens as an employee? Do you have a start time or you need to show up whenever you want? Like yeah, anybody used to an old time clock where you had to put in a number or swipe a card to start your day? And if you were late, what do they do? Like, you got a write-up, right? If you were 15 minutes late, four days in a week, you got a write-up.

But some of you were an hour late every day to the time that you say you're going to start. It's just acceptable because you're an entrepreneur. Right? So first thing I would do is I would have a dedicated start time that you actually start your day. that you're starting your business, right? The other thing I would do, do you know, when you're an employee, do you know what time you get to go home?

Some jobs, unless your salary, right? But typically you have a start time, you have an end time. How many of you are running your business right now with a start time and an end time? Right? I can't see everybody. I'm going to assume not very many, right?

I tell myself, I have to be in the office by 8 a.m. every day. I've been in this business for over nine years, and I still start my day at 8 a.m. 8 a.m. I do not go home until my job's done until my tasks are completed. I run what's called the daily six. So every day I write down the six things that I need to complete the day. I don't go home until that's done. Okay. But when I first got into the business, I started at 8. My end time was 6. I was not allowed to go home until 6 p.m. If I was driving to an appointment, appointment canceled, I'd go back to the office. Now, if your office is

that's your home, then maybe some of you need to lock yourself in there, lock yourself in your office. But we have a start time. We have an end time. Guess what else we have as a job? Anybody I want to guess? We have tasks that we have to complete. You have a job description. Now, this is where people get confused in real estate. What is our job description? Okay. Everybody thinks it's servicing clients. Okay. It's not. Your job description, 10% of your job description is service and clients. 90% of job discrimmages is what I call client acquisition. Okay. 90% of what you will do in this business is lead generation.

90%. If anybody's telling you different, they're liars. I don't care if you got 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 clients. 10% of it will be working those 10 clients. The other 90% of your time should be going to get it, right? Because what can you do to service your clients at a high level? You can now hire staff. So my administrative staff service my clients better than me.

I suck at servicing clients, but some of us fall in love with it, oh, we got to be at everything, right? So I hire staff to service clients, okay? So 10% if 10% is going to service clients, then you need systems, tools, and processes to have a high level of client experience. Because client experience is important, right? So you need to have a system, tools, and processes for client experience. And then the rest of your time you need to spend in lead generation. Now, this is, I'm going to blow some people's mind. When we start making money in this business, the first.

thing we try to offboard is what? Is it the administrative stuff or is it lead generation? No, it's lead generation. Right. We try to offboard lead generation because we don't enjoy doing it. I would tell you 80% of people in this business do not like lead generation. I don't necessarily love every day doing lead generation, but I know it's the tip of the spear. So if you know that you're the best at lead generation in your company and you're the tip of the spear, then you have to do that task forever until you're able to train and duplicate someone that can do it better than you or the same as you, but you're going to need money and time to do that. Okay, is everybody following me? Am I blown anybody's mind, right? I'm probably not blown anybody's mind. I think this is the

challenge I come to these things because I say the same shit all the time. Work it like a job, pay like a CEO. So start time, end time, lead generation. Now, what should we be focused on in lead generation. Hopefully this will help you guys. Everybody knows I'm going to say 20 connects, right? That's like the hot buzzword, 20 connects, 20 connects. Everybody hears everybody saying it, 20 connects. 20 real estate conversations a day will change, will change your life. But it does not, it is Dustin's fault. I agree with you 100%, Kevin. 20 connects a day will change your life. But here's the misconception of 20 connects. So people think that 20 connects means you have to get on a dialer on mojo, bang neighborhood searches, buy leads, and those are your 20

connects. We default to believing that 20 connects is cold legion. Now we focus on five legion levers. Okay. So sphere, right? How would you get, so how would you get your sphere set up to make sure that you're getting a portion of your sphere? So what I do is I take my whole sphere. Right now, it's about 900. I take 900. I divided by 75. So for 10 to 12 of outreach as a day is my sphere. So I reach out to 8 to 12. people in my sphere a day, text message, phone call. If they respond back to me with a two-way conversation, that is a connect. Okay. So two-way connection, a two-way connect is a two-way conversation around real estate where I got a minimum of three questions out. That's how I define a connect. And if people might define it a two-minute conversation, follow a boss defines it as a two-minute

conversation. That's not how I define it. If I could get three questions out about real estate, I call it a connect, okay? And it's worked well for me. So sphere, I work my database every day. So my personal sphere is going to get outreached every day, eight to ten of them. Okay. The second one is social media. How do we get connects on social media? We're first, we got to be posting. So a minimum of one post a day.

You need to work up to about three posts a day, but minimum one post a day. And then as you guys are scrolling, do them scrolling, you need to be like and commenting on other people's stuff and then purposely reach out to five to 10 people a day through social media through a messaging, okay, and try to and have a conversation around real estate. I use humor when I do this. So I see something I like on their post. I engage with them. I shoot them a message about their post.

Turn the conversation around real estate. See if they have any real estate needs. If not, I move on. Okay. So five connects a day there. Third, so those are the first two. I have not even talked about cold leg generation yet. The first two are by the people that know love and trust me.

If you're less than two years in this business, 75% of your business will come from people that know love and trust you. 25 will come from, 25% will come from you to the cold lead gen effort. Okay. So cold lead, Jen, what can you do there? Right? So number three is going to be lead. So cancel expires has been huge for us right now. Guys, I would be doing it. Neighborhood searches offering free home evaluations. Huge for us right now. Calling around your open houses and inviting people to your open house offering a free home evaluation. Huge for us right now. Those are the three things that I would focus on as if I was an agent less than three years in the business if I wanted to get a minimum of 10

connects a day. Okay. So now I got probably six or seven connects to my sphere. I got five connects on social media and then I got 10 connects and lead generation. So those three things a day, if you spent three hours to four hours a day doing those three things, you guys will hit your 20 connects every day. And the reason I'm breaking this down and you guys might be like, this is so fucking simple. We've heard it so much. The reason I am breaking it down is because every agent I talk to, they hear 20 connects, but they're like, how do I actually get to 20? Do I have to buy a mojo dialer and bang the phones? No, that's not accurate. What you have to do is be strategic around what your five legion levers are. Okay. What are your legion levers? And then break your legion levers up on

your calendar and time block like a savage. Okay. So fourth one is open houses. Minimum of two open houses a week. And the fifth one is agent referrals. So we do a bunch of the investment space. So we like networking with agents. If they ever have a deal, we want them to send them to us. Okay. So now I got my start time. I got my end time. I know the five legion levers where I find business. Okay. This is clarity. This is focus. I'm not working on anything but these five things. I'm starting it when I say I started it. I'm ending when I say I'm going to end it. Okay. So from 930 to 1230 every day, I'm working those three legion levers and then I have my open houses scheduled on Friday and Saturday. And then guess what? You work it like an employee. If you hired someone to do that for you and you

were and you were paying them a hundred grand a year. Now I want you to flip your mindset. You hired someone. You hired Matt Chick. Matt, I'm going to pay you to do this. I need you to start at 8 a.m. I need you to leave at 5. You get 30 minutes for lunch. During your day, you're going to reach out to 15 people in my sphere.

You're going to send 15 Facebook messages. And then I need you on the phone for a minimum of two hours to get 15 connects or 500 dials. And for that, I'm going to pay you $100,000. Would you monitor me? Would you inspect what I'm doing? Every day, would you make sure I did what I said I was going to do? Would you hold me accountable? Right?

You would. Why? Because you're paying me $100 grand a year. So as we get in this business and we beat our chest that were now entrepreneurs, where, hey, I could do what I want. I can show up when I want. I can leave when I want. I don't have to do that if I don't want to.

Right? You're beating your chest like you're big and bad. If you were to monitor yourself and track your KPIs like an employee, and every day you didn't hit your standards, you'd put yourself on an improve or remove. Anybody remember a pit plan? Yeah, corporate world. They put you on a PIP.

Hell yeah, dude. Hell yeah, dude. Right? You put yourself on a 30-day pit plan or you got to fire yourself. Because guess what? If you're paying someone $10,000 a month and they're not hitting the activities that you set forth for them, would you fire them or did you keep them? You'd fire them, right?

They'd be gone. They'd be gone in a second. But yet we tolerate not having standards for ourselves. We tolerate that. inactivity from ourselves, right? And why do we stay broke? Because we tolerate not having standards around lead generation. God, I'm fired up. I'm trying not to yell at you guys. I'm a high school football coach. I'm like, like I get all jacked, get all squirrely, right? So if you showed up at the time, did the activities, put yourself on a PIP plan,

and you looked at and you looked at your KPIs every day, there's no effing, way you do not succeed. Do you understand that? You understand how powerful that is? If you did that every day for the next four months, there's no way you don't succeed. It is impossible. Impossible. The only other thing that you would have to then do is work on skill set if you suck. And that's training, right? That's what are you pouring into yourself? What self-development are you doing? What books are you reading? Who are you role playing with? Right? That would be the next piece of it. So I know for four hours a day I'm in lead generation, the next four hours of my day, because I'm working eight hours because I have an end time, should be on what? Appointments, right? How many of us have appointments every day? Show of hands.

How many? Very rare. I'm on an appointment every day. I've been in business for nine years, and I can say consistently for the last two years I've had an appointment almost every day. But before that, nah. So guess what I do with my next four hours? Do I call it a day and go home? No, get back in a lead gen. But that's not sexy. It's ugly. It's not fun. You're behind a desk.

But it is what it is. If you want to have consistent closings, two to three closings to four closings a month, working like a job, it'll pay you like a CEO. And then you just stay there. And then you hold standards in your entire life. Unfortunately, I've coached with Dustin for years, so he's definitely rubbed off on me. you can't have a good work life if you don't have a good personal life. When I fix my health, when I fix the relationship with my wife, when I fix the relationship

with my kids, when I poured into all those things, my life got better at work. So first thing you got to do is what are your standards at home? What are your standards around your health? What are your standards around your spouse? What are your standards around your kids? All of you guys should take a pat of paper and think about the person that you're creating. How do they operate? How does that person show up every day?

who would be the best employee you could ever hire? What would their personal life look like? What would their health look like? What would their work ethic look like? And write all those things down. And then let's just go become that person by holding standards in our life and showing up and doing the work every day. Does that make sense?

I'm not blown anybody's mind, but it's okay. Then here's the last part because I want to give Tyler a bunch of time because I know he's fired up too. Okay. Here's the last part. Here's a part that nobody, you're not going to get it. You're going to get it. You're going to get it right now.

It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be hard. I don't know anybody making a half a million dollars a year. That's not like, holy shit. There's a lot of work. It's supposed to be fucking hard. Why? Because you're being intentional and purposeful.

98% of the population exists. You guys are trying to be the 2% of the population that's creating their life. that's creating their life. If you want to be in the top 2% of the people creating a life and being intentional with laser beam focus, it's going to be hard and that's okay. It's so freaking worth it. Your goals, your dreams, what you want to accomplish, what you're building, how you want to show up, who you want to become.

It is so, so worth going through all the bullshit to get there. The insecurities, the lack of confidence, hiring the coach, losing the weight, gaining the weight, missing the 20 connects, getting the 20 connects, losing the listing, getting the buyer. It's all so freaking worth it because you're creating the life that you want to live. And you're creating it intentionally. And once we pull the veil back and we know that we no longer are allowed to just exist, that we have to be intentional, then there's no more excuses allowed.

So that's what this is about. I want you to pull the veil off your eyes, no longer exist, be intentional about the life you're creating, be intentional about your health, be intentional about your relationships, be intentional about your business. No longer allow yourself to not have standards in every aspect of your life. And when you mess up, fuck it, who cares? Nobody cares. Nobody's watching. You messed up. Move on. Recommit, get after it. It doesn't have to be a pity party. It doesn't have to take five weeks. Don't have to derail your whole life. You don't have to go back to smashing six, eight balls of cocaine. Mess up one time to get back on. You know what I'm saying? Like recommit to the activity. Get back after.

it and hold your standards. Bro. That was solid. Love you, bro. Love that, dude. Thank you so much. That's a wrap for this episode of the Next Level Agents. I'm Kevin Kaufman, and we've just dropped some serious heat with my crew to level up your

real estate game. What does the next level look like for you? Subscribe to the podcast now so you don't miss a single strategy. And head over to NextLevelagents.com. Check out our events tab so you can find out all the information. on our next virtual and in-person mastermind calendar. Let's keep this momentum rolling. See you next time.