KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The 8 Pillars of High-Earning, Low-Stress Real Estate Success

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Summary:In this episode, Knolly Williams reveals the foundational "8 Pillars" that allow agents to scale their income while simultaneously reclaiming their personal time. Moving beyond simple sales tactics, the discussion bridges the gap between professional excellence and personal fulfillment. Agents will learn how to align their business systems with their core values, focusing on high-leverage activities that produce massive results without the typical industry burnout. It is a masterclass in building a business that serves your life, rather than a life that serves your business.

So people, systems and tools make up a body of what we call leverage. Leverage. So people is who will do it. You know, who's going to do that task? It's people. Systems is how are they going to get it done? How are they going to do it? That's the system.

And then the tool is what are they going to do it with? Welcome to the Success with Listings podcast where we help you get success in the real estate game, the easy way. Now you can get off the roller coaster of Feast and Famine and out of the rat race of competing with every other agent in town. Hi, I'm Nollie Williams. I took over a thousand listings during my first 10 years from the real estate game. And in this podcast, I show you how to have success with listings. Let's go. So this is a system that I created called spiritual business mastery.

Okay. And I'm going to share with you a story. on how I started with this concept. So when I was 12 years old, I've been fascinated with systems since I was young, very young. And when I was 12, I used to get a subscription to a magazine

called Small Business Opportunities. There were no other 12-year-olds that I knew that were reading that magazine, okay? But I loved it. Small business opportunities. By the way, the same year when I was also 12, my mom enrolled me into computer programming classes. So I learned how to program at 12 years old. And I didn't like it. But I loved this small business opportunities magazine. And it was basically a bunch of ideas of businesses that you could start. But they were businesses in a box. They were franchises. Okay. And so the interesting thing is,

is that if you look at a chick filet, okay, just just write down, write down chick fillet, whether you like them or not, okay? Chick-fil-A, did you know that, well, just think about it. What kind of success rate do you think a chick-fil-A has if you were to just a guess? 85%. 85%. Who else? Let's ask this question. The average mom and pop, if I was just start, you know, Nali's Chicken Shack. What are my chances of success? You know, yeah, not as high as Chick-fil-A. Not as high. So statistically, we know that at least 50% of businesses fail, especially within the first five years. And mom and pop restaurants are notorious for failure. They have about a 50 for 50. And,

Some statistics are even more dismal. Chick-fil-A has a 95% success rate. Only 5% of Chick-fil-A's fail. Okay. And truth be told, if I were to, there was a red, anybody ever heard of Red Robin? Red Robin burgers? There was a Red Robin that failed in Austin. And I was like, what is going?

Like, dude, come on. light. And what we found out was that it was the son of the owner was skimming money off the top. So he was cooking the books and skimming money. And that's the only reason why they failed. And so I got fascinated with this idea over the years of why do small businesses fail, whereas franchises, by and large, succeed, like Chick-fil-A. And over the years, I've created this system called spiritual business mastery, which is what you'll find in every single franchise. I didn't invent this, by the way, but I added some things to it. But I don't know that a franchise will articulate it this way, but I've noticed that there are eight pillars that every single franchise has

that quite frankly, just mom and pops don't. And so when you look at it, first of all, they indoctrinate them. Okay. They're indoctrinated. So that's, that's mindset. So they basically indoctrinate them on, it's the Chick-fil-A way. This is how we do it. This is, you know, they tell the story of the owner and how they came about and why this is the best chicken sandwich in the world and yada, yada, yada, whatever, whatever. That's called indoctrination. And they do that in such a way where they create a mindset around the operator that changes the way that they think and operate. And gets them to the belief that their store is going to be as successful as all the others. And then they tell them these are the activities that you should be focusing on.

These are the specific things that you should be doing every day. And if you do these things, there's no way you can fail. You got it. You have to succeed. By the way, we, you know, companies aren't run by themselves. They're run by people. Okay. And AI, which is going to get, we'll talk about that next.

But they're run by people. And so here's our hiring standards. These are the kinds of people that we're looking for. Now, quite often what you'll find is that entrepreneurs get stuck in the people phase and they believe, I had a dialogue with Jason about this, but they actually believe that they, you know, their thought is that if they have to find the right person, like they got to find the right individual. and that starts sounding expensive. If you just say it, if you just say it out loud, man, I got to find that key hire. That just sounds expensive. Okay. But what we've discovered and what has been discovered in the

franchising industry is that you can have the most complex systems in the world and you can hire minimum wage people to operate to run those systems for you. Because it's the system itself that is broken down, which is the next phase. It's broken down. to a granular level that if if you know if I have a McDonald's you know I learn how to operate the fryer it is a very complex machine but they've gotten it down to where all you have to do is press a button okay yeah now if they didn't have that button it would be a problem I'd have to have a professional fry operator or whatever just like if I was to have a brewery well yeah I've got to have a brewmaster or a

pit master if I got a barbecue place. But now if I have a button that I can press and it makes the perfect cup of coffee or then why do I need the barista? Or if I have a button that I can press and it makes me a great brisket, I don't need that pit master anymore. Okay. And that's what franchises actually did when they created systems. And now you just need somebody that can notice how to press a button. Okay. And guess what? You don't have to pay those people as much. Right. And by the way, People system and tools, which is the next thing. Tools are like AI and software, CRM, everything that we use in our business is a tool. Okay. So that's the next pillar. So people systems and tools make up a body of what we call leverage. Leverage. So people is who will do it. You know, who's going to do that task? It's people. Systems is how are they going to get it done? How are they going to do it? That's the system.

And then the tool is what are they going to do it with? Okay. So if you can master, I keep saying you, if you have someone that sets this up for you, the people, you know, has the people systems and tools. And actually, if you've got the systems and tools in place,

it would dictate the kind of people you need. All right. If you've got the right systems and tools in place, you can hire the lowest cost worker to do that thing because but you've got to break it out very granular i'll show you that in a moment so the next pillar is money which actually should be numbers that should really be numbers but it's not very sexy entrepreneurs like the word money in there somewhere so i threw money there because that is really the score but numbers you got to know your numbers you know what are your what are

your numbers and we've talked about that already. And then accountability. So the key is that, um, so let's go back to Chick-fil-A. They indoctrinate them with a mindset. They tell them what to do. They, they tell them who to hire. They give them the systems to operate everything. They give them all the tools. When you buy the franchise, you get the friar, you get the oven. You get the milkshake maker. You get the, you know, pickle separator. I don't know. Whatever you get all that stuff. Okay. You get all the tools. You get the tool. You get the tool. You get the tool. You get the and then they tell you what your numbers should be. By the way, if you're doing this, this and that,

you should get this many customers because you're in this area of town and da-da-da-da-da. So that's the money part of it. That's your numbers. Now, what happens at Chick-fil-A if they stop meeting their numbers? Like, let's say their numbers go off, like they're not really making the numbers that they should be making. What happens?

Well, I'll tell you. First, they're going to get a phone call. Like, hey, we saw your reports yesterday. And they do it day by day. You know, some businesses do it weekly, some do it monthly, and others do it quarterly. So in the franchise business, it's daily, okay? Just like in retail, it's daily, okay? Those of you that know work retail, you know what I'm talking about.

So they say, hey, well, your numbers are down. What's going on? Oh, well, and then they guide you. That's called accountability. Now, what happens if week after week your numbers are, still down. Guess what happens? You're going to get a not a phone call, but they're going to, somebody's going to fly in. You're going to get a personal visit from somebody. That's called accountability. So just imagine if you had someone looking over your numbers every single day and questioning you

about it. Hey, Jason, uh, I see here you only made this many calls. Let's talk about this. What's going on? Uh, what, but every single day. That's called accountability. Okay. And that's the reason why most real estate agents are going to be more successful when they hire a coach. Because accountability, you will, and that's the same thing with any sport, any profession, anything. If you have a coach, you're going to go further. It's just that's the way it is. Because you're not, there's the human being, the homo sapiens does not have the ability to be completely accountable to itself, to him, to herself. Okay. It's just it doesn't have that capacity. And so when we introduce accountability,

we now have this other little wheel that helps us to succeed. Okay. We're going to go a lot further with accountability than without it. And that's the reason why when Jen talked about having these accountability groups, that is so vital to success. And I think that you can actually recreate the accountability that you'd have with a coach if you have an accountability partner. It can't be an accountability buddy. Okay, that's something else. Not a, not a buddy, a partner that will really hold your feet to the fire of what you say you want. And then the final pillar is training. Okay. They're going to go if you want to start a Chick-fil-A, not only you're going to spend all the, whatever it costs to buy that, but you're going to have to go to school and go to weeks and weeks of training to know how to operate that business. Okay. So when you look at mindset, activities, people, systems, tools, money, accountability, and training, if you incorporate all that into your real estate practice, you now have a business that runs like a franchise, like a chick filet. That's what I have. My real estate business has always run like a chick filet. And it's impossible for it to not succeed. Like it can't fail because of because of the way it's set up. Okay. There's no other reason is that's the only reason, right? And so what I'm going to be helping the inner circle with is helping all of you set up your business this way because it's not hard to set up at all.

It's actually so easy. Okay. So the last thing I want to show you is let me, let me zoom in here on the four bodies. So the four bodies, so it's been discovered. that the human, the homo sapiens has, you know, we have multiple brains. I don't know if you guys knew that. But there's actually been three brains that have been discovered by scientists in the human body. We have the brain that lives in our head that most people know about. We actually have a gut brain that has, they say, about the same IQ as a canine, the same intelligence, not IQ, but the same intelligence level as like a German Shepherd.

Okay. that's the gut the the and and interestingly the majority of serotonin and a lot of other chemicals are created in your gut okay the majority of it and the gut and the brain the head have a symbiotic relationship but that that's actually a second brain and then there's a brain in our heart the actual heart itself doc childers did 40 years of research around this the heart is the first organ to form in the human body. And it actually has its own brain. And so when Jesus talked about this, when he said, you've got to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your mind, with all the soul, and with all your strength, he referenced all four bodies that we have. Okay, we have a mental body,

we have an emotional body, we have a physical body, and we also have a spirit body. And I like the way Wayne Dyer says that. He says, your body is no more than a garage where you temporarily park your soul. That's all your body is. It's a garage. And of course, we take good care of it. Why not? Because we wanted, you know, we wanted to have a good housing for that soul. But make no mistake about it, that is not who you are. And so we do have that mental body. We have that emotional body. We have a physical body. And then we have that spirit body. I have a book for each of these, the mental body. I like the power of your subconscious mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. For the emotional body, I like letting go by Dr. David Hawkins. I love that book. For the physical body,

there's a lot of different, it depends on what you subscribe to. Dr. Morris has a really good book, M-O-R-R-S-E, that is sort of the fundamentals of understanding how your body works, all your cells and everything like that. And it's called the miracle, I think it's the miracle detox source book or something like that. And then the spirit body is, you know, for me, it's the Holy Bible, scripture, right? So the spirit body.

And I tell people all the time, they're like, man, I don't really like to get in the Bible. Well, if you don't, if you don't love the Bible, you know, just focus on the New Testament. If you can't do that, just focus on the book of John. And if you can't do that, just read the words and read. And because not everybody has a passion for the Bible like I do. But you'll notice that right in the center of this awe and the center of it is you, okay, with a big question mark. And that is who you are, who you came here to be, who are you being?

Not what are you doing, but who are you being? Okay. That's the center of this whole ecosystem. system, if you will. But again, from studies, what we've learned is that if you take all of this information, you can go from having a business that has a 50, 50 chance of success, or maybe the average real estate agent has a 13% chance of success. You can actually, if you incorporate this, you can actually have a 95% chance of success as Chick-Fle-A. has proven, okay, Chick-fil-A's already proven it. We don't really have to go very far guys

from models that work in any business, including ours. And I like models. I like systems and models. And so that kind of concludes that this is a big picture training that I wanted to give you on really the fundamentals of not only the five pillars, I mean the five areas of your business, but also the eight key pillars and the four bodies is a work that I call spiritual business mastery. So when I see someone coming to me and they say, hey, can you help me do the right activities? I'm like, well, have we done the mindset yet? Because I can certainly help you set all this up. But if you don't have the right mindset, if you haven't been indoctrinated, you know,

if you don't have the right training, right? If you don't have the right tools, some of these things are pretty replaceable. Like tools are going to come and go. Systems, not so much. Okay. They're going to, the way we do the thing is going to change a little bit. But the system itself is not going to be. It's not going to really change. Well, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Successful Listings podcast. If you are serious about taking your real estate career to the highest heights, making more money and helping more clients while working less hours and spending more time with your family be sure to get your copy of my free book triple my listing absolutely free at success

with listings.com now you want to be sure that you subscribe to the podcast and check out success with listings.com to get your copy of my free book hey i'll see you on the next one