KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Stop Being Unemployed Scaling From Zero to 24 Real Estate Deals

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Summary:Chris Craddock delivers a blunt wake-up call to agents closing fewer than 24 deals annually, labeling them effectively "unemployed" without active clients. This episode strips away the distractions of branding and logos to focus on the only metric that matters: talking to people. Agents will learn how to shift their mindset from "should" to "must" using high-stakes visualization, alongside tactical scripts for calling their sphere of influence and creative "law of reciprocity" strategies to provide value through local business partnerships.

If you're not at 24 deals a year. And again, be mad, be angry, all the other stuff. If you don't have any clients right now, you are unemployed. Straight up, you are jobless and you don't want to be there. We've got to go get employment. 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 Safright. All right. Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate podcast.

I'm your host Chris Craddock, and I am super pumped to talk to you about one of my favorite topics to discuss how to level up your business. Today, we are going to be talking with those of you that are looking to go from zero or less than 24 deals a year to 24 deals a year or more. So if you are doing less than 24 deals, you will always, always, always be suffering from the same problem. And everybody always suffers from the same problem. And it always boils down to not doing enough of the right things, not doing the right things enough.

And I've seen this over and over again. From zero to 24, you deal with one set of problems. From 24 to about anywhere from 50 to 65, and it depends on your level of energy, really, your capacity. you deal with a second set of problems and then you hit a glass ceiling. And then there's this glass ceiling. It starts to go into a volume level where it tends to be like between 90 and 125 million. You hit another glass ceiling and then 200 million is another glass ceiling.

And we're going to be like between that high twos and low 300 millions this year. And so I think we are just now busting out of that ceiling in. I think we're going to go into the next level. And so I'll be happy to share about that level. What I get there? But in the meantime, we're going to talk about the level of less than 24 to get to 24. Now 24, why do we choose 24? Because it's two deals a month.

How do you do two deals a month? Well, here's the problem. If you're doing less than 24, it's about what are you focusing on? So here are the things that you're probably focusing on that you should. be focusing on. So number one, maybe your website or your brand or your colors, your signs, your business cards, what you're posting on social media. And here's the thing I'm going to make a lot of people mad now is everybody thinks social media is this golden goose that is going to make everybody so much money. And social media is good. But the reality is, for

Every one person that makes good money on social media because of all their deals, I'll tell you over 100 that make all their money not by being solely focused on social media. So I just want to throw that out there that that's an important thing to understand. Now, what do you do? Here's the thing. And again, my friend Tom Grohl, he always talks about what not to do. And it's so funny. He's like, man, I talk to entrepreneur after entrepreneur.

I talked to real estate professional after real estate professional, and he's in, they're really not real estate professionals until they can earn a full income from it. But here's the problem. Everybody's focused on their colors and their brands and their business cards and they're just all these things. And he's like, it doesn't matter. None of that matters. You can have the ugliest logo colors that you want.

and you will find out that none of that matters if you talk to enough people. And that's it. And I'm just going to tell you the problem that you're having if you're doing less than 24 deals. And I've seen in all my years of coaching real estate agents, and now I've coached hundreds and hundreds of real estate agents, both on my team and people that I've coached separately. What I have seen is always other than one, there's been. one person and this person had a very, very, very, very thick accent.

So I don't know whether that was the reason. I don't know whether just because English wasn't the first language, whether that was the reason why it wasn't like catching. But this is the only person that made calls and didn't do a ton of business. Everybody else and tons of people where English was not their first language have been massively successful that I've been done. that I've worked with that have been on our team, everything else. So we've just had one person that actually talked to a lot of people,

made calls relentlessly and didn't have a lot of success. But other than that, that was one out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. So what I've seen is this. If you're doing less than 24 deals, it's not about organization. Because if you're doing two deals a month, I'm sorry, you don't have to be that organized. yet you just you don't right once you're doing four deals a month organization is super important but when you're doing two deals a month you don't have to be that organized and i know i'm going to get some like angry messages and whatever but that that's fine but you just don't you can you can literally write

what you need to do on your hand and it's totally fine once once you have one a week and they start piling up on each other, then you have to have a situation where you're going to be organized. So here's what it needs to look like. Every single day, if you don't have two closings a month consecutively that are just like clockwork, what needs to happen is every day you need to time block and talk to more people. And the way you need to look at it is this. If you don't believe me, Let's step back for a second. And I want you to picture somebody that you love and care about. Find somebody in your mind.

Just close your eyes unless you're driving and have a weird picture or just a picture of that person. Now, in suspend disbelief with me, like one of the crazy movies where we know, okay, this would never happen. Just pretend like this is happening, right? You're in a movie that this is happening. A bad guy, right? I think a James Bond villain or whatever, somebody like that grabs that person, puts a gun to their head and says, you have seven days to find somebody and put them under contract to buy or sell real estate or I'm pulling this trigger. What do you do?

Do you sit back and say, oh, the market's just not good right now? so sorry, I liked you, but the market's not good today. Interest rates are up. Houses aren't selling. If you do, well, you probably need to go see a therapist or something because I don't think that's what. I don't think that or maybe you just need to go get a W2 job because if somebody you love and care about is going to die if you don't put a house under contract and you just

say, well, sorry, bad market. We're talking about somebody you love too. We're not talking about somebody that is like a mother-in-law that you're like happy to, you know, we're talking about somebody that you want to survive. So what would we do? I asked this question of my team the other day because because this is it. Like when we're talking about one a week or 50 deals a month or anything like that, you're answering a different question.

The question is, how can I get one deal in the next seven days under contract? That is one a week, but how could I get one deal under contract? And I asked everybody, I said, if the stakes were that high, what would you do? And everybody alike said, man, I would just get on the phone and not stop calling until I got somebody. And I said, okay, so let's think about that. What does that say about how you feel about your stakes right now? And they didn't like that. They're like, oh, man, that's tough.

So what's the deal with the stakes now? Are they just not high enough? Like what is the deal? Because if the stakes were high enough, then we'd be on the phone all the time. And the problem is Tony Robbins talks about this. He says, when all of your shoulds happen and it's not a must, you should all over yourself. I should do this. I should do that.

I should, I should. But then you never do it. And it's not until it becomes a must. I must do this. I have no choice. Like somebody's life is on the line. And the reality is your legacy, your financial legacy, your financial future, your career, like all of that stuff is on the line for you doing this, but you haven't realized that

these are the stakes yet. Sorry, I'm just got to go back to a W-2. I've got to go back to my old life. I'm not going to be successful here because I'm not. willing to have the stakes high enough. So if you want to do that, you've just got to talk to more people. Now, this is the next question. Is there a world in which somebody you've loved, your child, your mother, your spouse, your sister, your brother, whoever it is, whoever that person is you're picturing? Is there a world in which you say, well, I want them to live,

but I don't know who to call? I don't know who to talk to. Is there a world? Is there a world? world in which that happens. I don't think that anybody says that. You may say, who do I call and just start making calls frantically? Right. And there's there's the better path. But at some point, it just doesn't matter. So there was a girl in a real estate team. She would go work at Starbucks. And she had a big sign that she just posted. It was like like a folded like cardboard piece of paper. And on it, it said, ask me about real estate. And she worked from Starbucks on her computer, making calls. And she had that sign on the table she was working from.

And she got a ton of deals from it. But she was just out, but making her calls at Starbucks. And people said, I just stop by and said, I'd like to ask you about real estate. And she's like, okay, you just hopped off a call and they started talking to people. So it's just that idea of getting in front of people. And see, this is that that turning your should. to a must, right? And we'll talk, give me about a couple more minutes to talk about the philosophy and then we're going to talk about how we do it. Because if we cannot get the philosophy right,

how does it matter? If I say to you, hey, I can show you how to get a, if you're a guy, like a six-pack abs or a girl, how to get super, super fit. And until you care about it enough that you're willing to pay a price, it doesn't matter. Like I could tell you how. It doesn't matter. I mean, the reality is you kind of know how. Everybody knows how. Go to the gym and eat less calories than you burn. Now, I get it. There's more stuff to it. But if you want to be super fit, you can, you may not be competing in bodybuilding competitions. But if you go to the gym and you eat less calories than you burn, you're going to be in a place where you're going to get, you know, into fairly good shape. And see, this is, that's the stage where you are if you're less than

two deals a month. You're in the stage where it's just like, hey, you probably need to eat less and you probably need to go to the gym, right? That's the stage we're in right now. But why don't people do that when they want to be more fit? They don't do it because it's, I should go to the gym. Oh, I should get in shape. Oh, I should do this. But it's not a must. So until you do that, then it becomes a must. Then you go to the gym and that's when you get that baseline of fitness, right? But then if you want to get super fit, maybe you want washboard abs, that's when you're looking at like the 25 to 50 deals, right? That's when you need to start getting more organized, start watching your macros, start

shrinking more water, getting better sleep, all the other pieces like that. That's where that happens. But right now, from zero to 24, two deals a month, this is the, what are the basics? And I promise you, you're just not doing the basics if you're not at 24 deals a year. And again, be mad, be angry. all the other stuff. Okay, so now, hopefully we're there. Have you decided that you are ready to do two deals a month? Now, what do I do? All right, here we go. Number one, if you don't have any clients right now, you are unemployed. Straight up, you are jobless. You are the equivalent of the guy

or the girl that's on the street corner with a sign begging for money. That is where you are. And you don't want to be there anymore. So what do we do? We've got to go get employment. So think about this like this. There is, and I know that people have heard this stupid analogy before, but, you know, a crackhead just doesn't ever say,

oh, I don't have any money. I can't find any crack. I guess I'm not going to do any crack today. A meth addict doesn't say, oh, we can't find the meth, don't have any money. They're going to figure out how to get it done, right? They're going to make it work. The same thing, that same drive needs to be that drive, that addiction to success, that addiction to winning, that addiction to not being where you are today, but being a better

version of yourself that needs to drive you to say, I don't care what I need to do. I'm going to do it. somebody's got a gun to my family's financial future and i'm not going to let it be the same way so that needs to be the drive and then you just need to start talking to people now how do you start talking to i got my phone right here so on my phone it's an it's an iphone i have my background is my vision board and i'll just tell you what it says it says there's tickets won't pay for themselves it's got a picture of a dude

with washboard abs his head is cut off because I want to picture my head on there go ahead make fun of me my family always does whenever they see whenever they see that they're like why you have a guy with watchboard abs on your phone I've got a picture of a horse and it turns out the horse looks just like my horse that I have today

I have a backyard that looks spectacular and it says build your dream backyard I've got a picture of a family in the Caribbean. I've got a picture of just amazing, this amazing kind of mountain area. I've got a picture of skiing. I've got a picture of really good food. I've got a picture of sunscreen because I like to be out and have the freedom to be outside. So all of this stuff is stuff that I want to be able to do and have.

And it reminds me why I do this, right? And now next, what I have is I've got a button on my phone. I set my home screen to a button where it says all I've got to do is click on it. And it brings me and looks at my face and does the face ID. And it brings me to everybody's birthday that I'm friends with on Facebook. I have the Facebook birthday tab on there. And so for me, even though I'm not in production, like regular, regular, regular production, I still call my sphere of influence on their birthday.

I wish him a happy birthday. I let them know. I'm thinking about them. I let them know. I love them and care about them. And so I do that. That's what I do. I call through it.

So you call through everybody on their birthday, right? Done. Next, I just had a coaching session with a new agent on my team. She's doing open houses. She's doing things to try to figure out how to get things moving. She was an agent. Many years ago, she recently got a real estate license again.

What she said was, she's like, I just don't know who to call. And I said, what you need to do is make your wedding list. And she was kind of confused because she's married. And I'm like, pretend like you're getting married next weekend. You want to have a big wedding. Money is no issue. And anybody that you like enough that if you saw them in a grocery store, you would say, hey, how are you doing and check in with them, that you'd invite them.

How many people would that be? And everybody always starts off by saying, yeah, 50, 60, whatever. There's a girl in a real estate team. She has like a million friends. And I still remember when we were interviewing her. And she's like, maybe 80 people. And the guy who was there with it, he's like, I know you.

We've been friends for years. Whenever you post anything, you have 300 people like it within a minute. There's no way it's 80 people that you're friends with. And she was like, oh, yeah, yeah. And there was a study that said that if you were to take all the people that you have phone numbers for in your phone, your Instagram, your Facebook. your Facebook, it'd be about 900 people that you know enough about to have a personal conversation with. So let's just say that it's 200, right? So you make your wedding list and let's say it's 200. It probably would be closer to 500, but we'll just say it's 200. You start reaching out to

them like your life depends on it, like your family's life depends on it. Somebody you care about so life depends on it. And every single day you're calling them and you're getting through it. And this is your script. If you haven't ever called them, this is the script. It's, hey, it's been a while. How you doing? Check in. Find out how they're doing.

Talk to them. Even if it's been a couple years, it may feel awkward, but it's really not, right? You talk to your friends that you haven't talked to in years before when you've run into them. So you're calling them, seeing how they're doing. And then you say, hey, listen, I know you know everybody. And the reality is everybody knows everybody because the average person, knows 900 people. I know you know everybody. And so I wanted to call you and ask you, I'm building my real estate business. And I promise you, I won't ask more than once,

but I just wanted to ask you as I'm trying to build my business and you are a friend of mine, do you know anybody looking to buy, sell or invest in real estate in the next 12 months? Boom. And then you just shut up and you let them answer. That's it. So that's what you do with everybody and I promise you so the girl I was talking to yesterday I was like I know you'll have a list of 200 she'll probably have a list of five to 800 because she knows a lot of people she's been here for a long time and she was like oh that's a pretty easy that's a pretty easy script and then here's the deal if you have not called through your list here's what you should do you should find your five closest friends that that you can ask something that's a little bit awkward to and you call them

and you say, hey, I need to call through and really build my real estate business. Would you mind if I just practiced what I was going to say on a friend and just give me honest feedback? And they'll say, yeah, sure, sure. And you call your friend. You just say, okay, I'm going to call you. You call them up. You say that.

Just say, roll play with me. Don't break role play. And then afterwards, just tell me what you think, what you think. And you go through it. And one, you get practice on reps, right? And so one of the reasons why we don't make these calls is because we're fearful of them, right? But what happens is when you practice, you get rid of the fear, right? When you turn the lights on, the fear of the dark goes away, right?

Oh, there's no boogeyman here. It's okay. So that's how you get rid of fear is you get rid of the unknown, you turn on the lights. And so you practice, you do it with five friends. But here's the other thing. Those five friends, once you do that with them, they're kind of invested in you. And they will be thinking, how can I help you? Like, just that's the deal.

Now, let's say you've already done this and you've gone through and you have done this once. Let's say you've been in the business for a while. You've talked to all your friends. Let's say that's the case. Well, if you've done that, you've talked to your friends. Now, what do you do? You find a reason to help them. So what I would do is this.

It's the middle of summer right now. And maybe you call an HVAC company that you've worked with in the past and just say, hey, I've got a lot of friends and I've got a real estate business. If I called my friends and just said, hey, it's summertime, do you need any AC work? Do you need an AC checkup? Do you need anything at all, a service on your AC? I've got a guy and I get nothing from this, but I've got a guy who's just offered to give all my clients 15% off or 20% off of a service for the HVAC system just so that in the middle of August you don't end up

having your HVAC out, right? What are you doing there? You are adding value to the people when they call. We've all been there. I've got this one friend. I love him. He's so funny. He's so charismatic.

I love the guy. But whenever he calls and whenever I see his phone number, I'm like, oh, crap, he's going to ask me for something. What is he going to ask me for? And you don't want to be that guy or that girl where every time somebody looks at you, when they see your name and thinking, oh, they're calling to ask me for something. You need to be the person that's calling to add value, right?

So you've got the HVAC, you get a contractor, you get whatever it is, just find something so that when they see your name, when your sphere sees your name and you're calling, you're adding value. And so Robert Chaldeini in a book, Influence, which is probably one of the best books behind How to Win Friends and Influence people I read in my life, which Robert Chaldeen influence and you've got to check it out if you haven't. But one of the things he talks about with influence is the law of reciprocity. When you give somebody a gift, they want to give something back to you. So that was why one time I, and I used to do this a lot when I was still in production,

I would just go to local restaurants and I would just say, hey, I'm a real estate agent here locally. I just want to give out some gift cards. Would you give like a free sandwich to, like I went to Mission Barbecue, right? Love Mission Barbecue. Would you do? Would you do? give a free sandwich, like a bunch of free sandwiches to me so that I could just give them out to people and just get people in your door and, you know, whatever. People like, yeah, I went to Glory Days, another restaurant locally. And I said, hey, I've seen like free appetizer cards at parades and other stuff. Would you be willing to give me a bunch of those that I could just hand out to? And literally, I would just write a letter to people and send that out. I would call my friends and I'd just

be like, hey, you ever go to Glory Days. Hey, I got a bunch of free appetizer cards. And No purchase necessary. You want one? Boom. Like literally, it cost you nothing to go to these restaurants that you probably already like anyway and ask for something like that. I went to Chick-fil-A, which Chick-fil-A is awesome. And I just asked them, hey, would you give me a bunch of free ice cream cones?

They wouldn't give me the milkshake ones. I asked for the milkshake. They said no. But they said yes to free ice cream cones. So I just called my friends and said, hey, I got free ice cream cone to Chick-fil-A. You want me to send it to you? Boom. Like, literally.

Just be creative in how to give. And I promise you, I'm a Christian guy, right? The Bible says that you reap what you sow. If you are different religion, any belief system you have, people believe in karma. People believe, like, even outside of the religious world, right, you hear what goes around, comes around, right? We believe this. We believe that what you put out into the universe comes back to you. And Robert Chalding calls it the law of reciprocity.

People want to give back to you if you give to that. So just find ways to call and give. And I promise you, if you spend your whole day just calling and giving, at the end of that day, if you spend a week, you have no clients right now. You spend a week and all day long, you're just calling and giving something, giving something. I promise you that if you don't have at least a couple people that have talked to you about real estate, that have told you that they've got a friend that's wanting to buy, seller invest in real estate next 12 months.

If they're not going to do it, call me. And you and I would get on the phone and just figure out what the heck went wrong there. Because I promise you, if you do this, I've seen it work with hundreds and hundreds of people, right? If you do this, all you got to do is put in the work and give and life gets better. You're going to do the two deals a month. That is the deal. You just got to talk to more people, talk to more people, talk to more people. And heck, if you run out of people to talk to there, just do two open houses on Saturday,

two open houses on Sunday. And make sure you walk out with the open with an appointment. Every single open house, your goal is to get an appointment. You do this and I promise you get to two months. And if that doesn't happen, like I'm telling you, I do some coaching. I will do a free coaching. If you actually put in the work and you promise, me that you put in the work and it didn't work, we'll have a free coaching call, just reach out,

we'll do it, we'll figure out how to make sure that it happens. But if you don't put in the work, you don't get the results. Until next time, go kick butt, make things happen. See ya. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up today 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 chriscratic.com.