No Broke Months For Salespeople - The Mental Skills of Being a Top Performer

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Aaron Hodson is a keynote speaker, business strategist, and CEO of SellWell. He’s spent 25+ years in the real estate industry in various capacities — from selling homes to becoming CEO of one of the fastest-growing real estate companies in the world to coaching high-level sales agents and executives.Aaron has stood in your shoes as an agent: door-knocking, making calls, and doing the hard work. He sold over 5,000 homes using his methods, and today, he wants to share those methods with you.Tune in on Aaron Hodson here in the No Broke Months Podcast. To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

It's very easy for us in this industry to start focusing on the what-ifs, you know, all the future things that could potentially cause some problems. And I was no different, you know, trying to be ahead of the market, trying to really sort of focus on what direction I needed to be. But what I wasn't focusing on was what I was doing right now, because I feel like there's so many distractions out there and, you know, it's easy to try and find those instant wins or that instant gratification type of opportunity. But, you know, it's really having the ability to stay focused on what you know absolutely is going to work. Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real

Estate Agents podcast. Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month is no broke months. Aaron Hodson is a keynote speaker, business strategist, and CEO of Sellwell. He's spent 25 years in the real estate industry in various capacities, from selling homes to becoming CEO of one of the fastest growing real estate companies in the world to coaching high-level sales agents and executives.

Aaron has stood in your shoes as an agent, door knocking, making calls, and doing the hard work. He sold over 5,000 homes using his methods, and today, he wants to share those methods with you. Tune in on Aaron Hodson here in the No Broke Months podcast. My name is Dan Roshon. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast, which is a show for real estate agents to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Today, I'm joined with Aaron Hodson. Aaron and I are going to be talking about the mental skills

of being a top performer. Aaron's going to talk to us about the skills that he's seen in others that allow for them to have the mental fitness to succeed, and maybe the skills or lack of skills that other people struggle with. Aaron, welcome. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. It's my pleasure.

So Aaron, so just give us a little background story. So you've been doing this for a long time, 25 years. Yeah, I've just hit my 29th year in the industry, Dan. I'm starting to feel every bit of those years. Yeah. I've just hit my 29th year in the industry, Dan. I'm starting to feel every bit of those years. I've sort of been in all aspects of the real estate industry my entire life. I mean, I got into real estate when I was 21. I had a really good start to my career. I made just over a million dollars in my first 12 months, and it wasn't through skill.

It was through just getting out there and trying some stuff that nobody else was prepared to try. And you're going to say it was your good looks that got you there. Yeah. Well, I would like to think it was that, but it kind of wasn't. It was more just, and I think being a little bit young and naive, Dan, we're prepared to try some things that we wouldn't normally do when we're a bit older and a bit smarter. But my story is a little bit different because I'd been selling real estate for about three years. And I actually made a decision that I was going to quit. I was going to go do something different. I was working 90 hours a week. I was doing about 10, 15 deals a month. I was doing really, really well, but life was miserable. I just really wasn't enjoying it.

And so I actually made the decision I'm going to either re-engineer my entire business or I'm going to go do something different with a lot less stress and having to deal with the mental gymnastics of being in real estate. And so really what I started to do was look at my business and think, how do I get it down to a reasonable amount of hours, like 40 odd hours a week? And this is something I could probably stay in. So I just rebuilt everything in my business. And then within 12 months, I was averaging 60 deals a month. So it changed everything from a different philosophy. And I think the secret behind that was I wasn't like everybody else trying to chase deals. I was just trying to get my life back. So

I was looking at the action to improve it rather than how do I make more money from it. And then I basically spent the next decade being the top agent in the country and then got real smart, bought the company that I work for and realized I'd bought myself because I was 80% of the company's volume. So that was my four-a into business ownership. Grew that to be the number one brokerage in Australia. I had about 130-odd agents working for me doing about $2 billion a year in volume. So I was a full-time psychologist. That's pretty much what I was doing. I then sold that in 2007 just before the market crashed. I say I predicted it. I didn't. That was my lucky time where I had an opportunity to do that. I then took an ownership in Harcourt's International and was sort of tasked with expanding that globally. And this is my 10th country that I've lived in. And

my last, I've been here for quite a while now and nearly a decade here in the US. And this is kind of home for me now. And then obviously when I sold out of that whole group, I was actually going to go and retire and have some fun with my life. And that lasted, when I sold out of that whole group, I was actually going to go and retire and have some fun with my life. And that lasted about two weeks until I decided I really needed to get back into doing some things. Loved the real estate industry, love what was going on. And we had the ability to help some people. So we're just traveling the world speaking. And then we started a bit of an online thing, you know, just with COVID hitting. And that just sort of turned into a huge win for us.

Doing things a bit different, building businesses around the individual. And ironically, what we're talking about today is the number one skill in being successful. It's generally what we think determines where we're going to end up. So, you know, we don't sort of subscribe to a certain method. It's more about trying to find people's unique skills and talents and building a business around that. So that's 29 years jammed into a very short window. Lots of fun stories along the way too, Dan, with some of these wonderful countries that I've lived in. So the mental skills of being a top performer. So, I mean, you have an extraordinary amount of experience. What would you say defines those skills?

Short vision. And I know this sounds a little bit weird, but I mean, I think, you know, like it's very easy for us in this industry to start focusing on the what ifs, you know, all the future things that could potentially cause some problems. And I was no different. I was always sort of, you know, trying to be ahead of the market, trying to really sort of focus on what direction I needed to be. But what I wasn't focusing on was what I was doing right now. And something that we brought in years and years ago, just for a strategy of my own was only implementing one week business plan. So we could actually stay in the moment, focus on what we needed to execute now. And so generally, the mental toughness is more about what we choose not to focus on than what we do, because I feel like there's so many distractions out there. And, you know, it's easy

to try and find those instant wins or that instant gratification type of opportunity but you know it's really having the ability to stay focused on what you know absolutely is going to work so yeah so i've been around for about half as long as you a little more than that and so um you know i've probably observed some of the same things and one of the things that i've observed is that there's always, always, always, always something that is at fault. And, you know, within the community, and, you know, whether it be interest rates, or legal issues, or supply and demand, or government interference, or whatever the case, there's always a culprit that we can point a finger at and say, well, this market sucks because of, boom, that. Would you agree that, you know, double my experience? Would you say that that's true for the time before me as well?

It's 100% true, Dan. I mean, I think one of the things that I've always known, especially with the, you know, sort of the mid-tiers, we're always looking for some evidence to prove our own excuse. And then if we can go and find something that supports the reason why something's not happening, we'll believe it 100%. And the mindset challenge is we own everything. Everything that happens in our business, we own it. And whether you can control the outcome, you can sure as hell control your reaction to what is happening, but you're 100% right. I mean, there's always going to be evidence to support what you think and having the decision to either come up with a strategy to get around it or even choose not to invest in it. And there's a lot of things

that are going on in the market right now that we're choosing just not to have any investment in because it doesn't really directly affect us. We just have to come up with ways to circumnavigate it if it does become a potential problem. Right. And so it's, you mentioned before about, you know, what you think about is, you know, what you're going to create, and it's going to cause the, you know, your emotions and your feelings and impact that and, you know, sort of like, you know, they say when you ride on a motorcycle, don't, you know, look straight, because that's where you're going to go is the way you're going to be looking. Yeah. Do you agree with that? 100% yeah yeah um you know it's an interesting thing because I think we're in an industry now Dan where I think the you know the oversaturation of stuff is is always giving us something else to focus on and one thing I've always really stressed with anybody that we work with you've got to have

your key five success markers the places you go when you've got nothing else to control like what is it that you're going to lean on when all of a sudden it feels like it's really starting to cave in on you all these different things that are going on around you. And it's actually interesting, I'll share something with you. One of the things that I've always done with my keynotes, and it was, and funny enough, it's not for the answer, it's for the response that we get from people. And I've, I always sort of call out a couple of realtors, the ones that look like they've got a reasonably good attitude and can deal with some sort of negative stuff. And I always say, look, if you had no choice, when you had 30 days to list four properties or you're going to drop dead on the spot, what would you do? And a lot

of people, they have a lot of weird and wonderful different responses. But the reason I always ask that question, and nearly 15 years of doing that, Dan, not one agent's ever come back to me and said they doubled down on what they're doing right now. They always go to something else. Nobody's ever going to say they're going to spend more time on social media or they always go back to the things that they can control. And so sometimes the mindset is the starting point. It's not where you end up. It's what actually drives you into those things you need to do every day.

And for me, that's just a really good way of putting people into perspective. And there's so many things you can't control, but there's a lot of things you can. And I think the ones that really have those foundations, right, that are places to go when things are a little chaotic, that's the safe place. And that's something that I always see the ones that really stand out in this industry have those things to lean on. You know, they're not always looking for something new.

They're looking for things to elevate, but they're also got some things that they'll double down on daily because they know it's always going to produce a result. Right. So look at like what's working. Look at your strength zones. Look at your zone of genius, your God-given skills and triple down, quadruple down on that rather than looking for that magic bullet. Dead right.

I mean, it's interesting because I've always had a theory in business for me. And if I find something that works, I always find a way to do twice as much of it. I'm not trying to find the next thing. But if something works and interesting, one of the biggest mistakes I made is when I built my business, the things that I did to get to a certain level. And this was that three-year mark where I was having some issues about whether I was going to stay in it. The things that I did to get to that level, I stopped doing because I got to that level. And I thought there was other things that I needed to bring into my business. And sort of the timing around just going back to the essentials

of what actually worked in my business, what was what produced the majority of my income, it was good relationships, focusing on people that I could actually work with, spending more time on keeping people in my business and trying to get more people into it. And just understanding it was market proofing it because when it down markets there, you have this network of people that will always support you where we're just in this sort of theory now where it's just more people, more people, and we're eventually going to get the results. But unfortunately, our industry doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you've got to protect what you've got. The right people, the right people rather than more people, more people. Yeah, more people, more people. And I think

part of my luxury, Dan, was I've worked in 10 different countries and some countries are smaller populations. You don't generally get the opportunity just to keep burning through people. Once you've got somebody, you've got to really hang on to them. So unbeknownst to me until I've started working in China and the US and places like that where population is endless, you just keep going. You kind of learn a really secret trick, which is once somebody's in to the point where I'd tell my clients that, once you're in my business, it's way harder to get out. Like, this is a lifetime thing.

We're in this thing together. Because, you know, 5,500 transactions in my career and 5,000 of them would have been referrals because it was just the easiest way for me to run my business. I didn't have to keep working so hard. All I had to do was keep maintaining what I already had. And that just became a big game changer for me. Something that we've always known, Dan. We've always known it, it just seems a little hard for people to do it. And for you, that was the relationships and pouring into those. And is that what I understand? A little bit more than just relationships. And I

think there's a variation between having a good relationship with somebody and knowing how to leverage a relationship that you've got. And it's a little bit of how do you step out of being a realtor and start going into that, actually being a good human being with somebody and showing tremendous value. And a statement I always like to use is, and this is something that will resonate with a lot of realtors, is we're always brilliant when we're getting paid. When we're in the transaction, we're dynamite. We communicate really well. We do everything exactly the way we're supposed to. And that's how people sort of interpret our professionalism as a realtor. But everything you do before and after determines what you're like as a person. Now, most realtors are going

to put their head down and go, okay, I look like a bit of an ass because the minute I've been paid, I'm out the door and I'm off and moving on to the next person. For me, that's the complete opposite. Once I'm out of the transaction, you're going to get a ton more value from me because you're now the referral source. It's how do I flip from being the realtor into now being that good person that you can actually build a relationship with. It takes client profiling, takes really understanding exactly what those personality types are and how you can leverage them. And it saved me a fortune and it really helped me build a lot of consistency. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. You are freaking amazing. And because you're amazing, I'm going to ask for a quick favor.

We'll just take you 30 seconds for you to leave a favorable five-star rating or review on your favorite platform. Then what I'll do is I'll enter you into a raffle where we can meet 45 minutes for a free coaching session. And I'll also give you a copy of the book, Real Estate Evolution, which is the 10-step guide to CPI consistent and predictable income. Oh, by the way, I'm the author of that book. So if you'd like for me to coach you, give you some nuggets and help you in your business, go ahead and leave a review and you can enter into the monthly raffle to win. What do you see as the commonalities, because you've lived in different cultures,

different societies, different ethnic groups, etc. What do you see as the common trait amongst all the cultures, if there is one that you would say is a common trait of success that allows for success? What comes to mind? This is a brilliant one, Dan. It's preparation. Okay. The ones that succeed are the ones that put the effort in upfront. And I think historically in real estate, we get a great opportunity. We show up, we cross our fingers, and we just hope it's going to happen. I've worked with a ton of really, really successful realtors in my career and every one of them has that one key thing. It's the effort they put in before they show up really determines where they're going to be. One, it eliminates a lot of, you know, potential sort of objections and things like that,

the effort that you put into it, the prep work that we put in prior. And for me, that was probably part of my success strategy as well. I knew to sort of eliminate a lot of my inexperience when I was newer was to do a lot more preparation up front. And in every country that I've worked in, Dan, the ones that really shine are the ones that have a system, a plan, a process for every single thing in their business, including what goes wrong. Everybody's got a good plan for the stuff that's going to work really, really well. But having plans built into your business when things are going to go a little sideways and preparation helps with that.

You know, sitting down with a client, talking about what potential issues are and what your solutions are to solve that. When it does happen, it's no longer a stress on your relationship. It's just a method and a way to solve it. So hands down, my number one, two, and three is preparation. The more prepared you are, the more success you're going to have in your business. Yeah. And the CPI community, because it's a income community, we talk about being proactive in the approach rather than reactive. If you're handling objections, and I could teach agents how to handle objections all day long, yet

I believe that when you're getting the objections it's almost a yellow or maybe a red flag to say wait missed opportunity being you missed the opportunity to proactively prevent that to occur because the things that are going to happen are they're the same things you know there's no you know uh there's no like real real big surprises you know you know home goes wrong or somebody, you know, showing a home and they leave the lights on or leave the curtains on and or you're overpriced and, you know, whatever the case may be. It's all, you know, things that we can prevent by a consultative approach up front rather than a reactive approach on the back end. It's probably the worst industry in the world for it, Dan, was we don't do a lot of that setting the expectations and going through that. And interesting enough, to sort of add on to that preparation,

it's the ones that actually run their business like a business. And that, for me, has been one of the real clear differences between the ones that are struggling and the ones that really succeed. The ones that are struggling aren't running like a business. They're CEO of their own company. They show up whenever they like. There's no structure. There's no plan. The ones that run their business like a business always have that avenue. But it's the same sort of thing. You and I are in the same sort of space. And I sit there and I think, I can teach you to go through any objection, but what if I can give you a plan

on how to eliminate the objections before they actually happen? And I still swear by this. I think every objection you get put in front of you is because you've given them a reason to ask it. If you show up unprepared, I'm going to ask you how many homes you sold, how long you've been in the business. If you've got crappy marketing materials, or you've got a really crappy CMA that you put in front of somebody, sure, they're going to ask you how much you're going to spend on advertising. If you actually put the effort in upfront, you do have the ability to eliminate or at least lessen the depth of those objections when they come in. I mean, there's some stock standard ones that people will always ask, but if you can eliminate all the fluffy stuff around it, it does make our jobs a little easier. And I had one of

those big aha moments when I was doing it thinking, why didn't I just do this at the beginning? It would have made my life a lot easier. And it also saved me a ton of time because a lot of people say, well, there's a lot of effort goes into it, but how much effort goes into fixing a relationship when you've broken it because you haven't done the right thing up front? Right. And I think that, you know, one of the things about preparing up front and avoiding the obstacles of the marketplace, because, again, they're all the same, they're all the same. You know, it's about how are you going to present yourself before you get to the appointment? You know, and I know you're talking about outside of the transaction and the relationship of just being a good human being. Right. But then within the transaction, of course, you've got to do a great job there. And when you follow a process, whether that be the CPI process, that be whatever.

I don't care what process it is, right? It's like, I say, I like, I love chocolate chip cookies, right? Does that mean that I can't get a peanut butter cookie and it'd be really good as well? You know, Hey, I'll take a peanut butter cookie, but my favorite is chocolate chip, right? So just find a way that works for you, embrace it. And then, and then repeat and rinse basically. That's such a good thing to say too, Dan. I think everybody that's listening needs to really re-listen to that. Find something that works for you. And I think something that I've sort of been very aware of in my entire career is that

everything we've ever heard of in this business, when it comes to growth, prospecting, all that sort of stuff, it works. It works. It just doesn't work for everybody. Your job is to go find what works for you. And I never make a secret of this. There was nothing in my business that was absolutely unique and different that I did that was completely special. I didn't reinvent the real estate industry. What I did was took a lot of things that people did that I just didn't like the way they did them. There was no execution behind it. It was just replicating the same crap over and over again. And so I took a lot of things and thought, like, I don't like the fundamental of this, but if I change it, this could work very, very different.

So, you know, reinventing the open home structures, reinventing communication plans, reinventing every single thing in my business so that it worked for me. And understanding the better I was and the more I had belief behind what I was doing, the more people invested and bought into it. It's like, you know, the only thing we can ever do, go and copying somebody else. And it's not what they was doing, the more people invested and bought into it. It's like, you know, the only thing we can ever do going copying somebody else. And it's not what they're doing. It's how they're doing what doing it, which determines the result, you know, and I think scripts are quite dangerous, because if we all go and replicate the same script, we can all say the same words with a subtle different tonality. And there's a very different result, like you got to find your

thing, you got to find what makes us, us unique and different. Otherwise, we are all just the same. Yeah, I believe in when you're talking about scripts is about understanding the psychology of words, understanding the normal linguistic patterns of what what causes this pattern of words to work, you know, and it's more about like learning how persuasive skills of sales more than, you know, a script to say, they say this, you say that. Now, whatever that script may be, odds are, it's going to be following some persuasive skills if it's a good script. But wouldn't it be better to understand, okay, what's the presuppositions in that? What's the, I'm not going to dive into it because it's way too much to go through in this conversation. But wouldn't it be better to understand how the framework and the words work together rather than just study and memorize what to say? Because that doesn't work. Of course.

And you've also got to understand the personality that you're talking to. If you've got someone that's a bit more jovial, a little bit more happiest, certain scripts aren't going to land in the same thing. If you've got someone that's more detail orientated, certain things are going to fall a very, very different way. So it's, that preparation comes in again. A lot of what I was doing in the preparation before a meeting was understanding the person I was talking to. What's their job? What do they do? What's their history? Are they going to be more detail orientated or are they going to be a bit more jovial, which is meaning I'm going to need a little bit more clarification and make sure they understand what I'm talking about. Like that preparation is the difference. But, you know, for me, understanding body language,

human responses to certain things that you would say is one of the greatest tips you'll ever have. Because for me, body language isn't about reading the other person. It's watching how people react to the things that you say gives you the ability to change. And, you know, one of the things that I think I changed dramatically for me was understanding what my product was. When I first got into the business, doing really, really well as a young person, I thought my job was selling houses and it wasn't. My job was people. So I've spent the best part of 20 years studying human psychology because that's my product. The more I can understand what people are going through, the better I can adapt what I do to meet what their needs are. And as realtors, understand what you sell. You never

know. If it's just about getting people bound to you, then that's what it is. It's binding to you, not what you do. What's been the biggest change, evolution in the real estate industry over 29 years that you've observed? I mean, it's been a lot, but pick one. What's the biggest, most impactful that you can say? So, I mean, there's been, when I first started selling real estate, Dan, I had the roadmap on my lap. There was no such thing as a GPS. Like we had all that fun stuff, never got lost either, which is kind of mind blowing given now that I get lost every time I put a GPS on. But honestly, I've actually was doing a couple of sessions a few months ago and we were talking about very similar things. And I think everybody can agree, technology, the way business is done

has definitely changed. But interesting enough, it's not the right answer. The thing that's changed the most, and I would say more in the last 10 years, is people. We're way more judgmental, we're more inclined to be looking for the negative and everything, and yet we still have not changed the way that we're dealing with people. We have to sort of re-engineer the way that we communicate a little bit, because I actually think the biggest change has been in people. I mean, you're seeing the byproduct of this with certain lawsuits and things that are coming out. I mean, that sort of thing would never have been contemplated 10 years ago, because there was a lot of things that were just accepted. And especially over the last

five years with COVID and all that sort of stuff that happened, the change in human nature is being dramatic. They're a little bit more judgmental of everything. They're always looking for the negativity. They're not sort of looking for the benefit or the reason why. Everybody seems to be looking for the reason why I wouldn't want to work with you. It's a one-star review model. But without a doubt, technology, from a real positive standpoint on technology, if you look at it from a time management saver, I would have done I would have had a way nicer lifestyle if I was you know I had the technology that people have today I could have got away with working a lot less hours because there was a lot more manual labor in it sure but the real smart people will understand

that people have changed more and if we can change with the way that people are engaging with us and how they're buying into what we're doing that's going to be the game changer of the future. Because our product's always going to be the same thing. And it's people. You already know, 87% of all real estate agents fail in this business. And you also know it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a real estate agent

and you're looking for consistent and predictable income, I invite for you to get your free copy of Real Estate Evolution, The 10-Step Guide to CPI, Consistent and Predictable Income for Real Estate Agents. And you can do so when you visit www.therealestateevolution.com. I'll share with you your book that I authored to show you the way. Thanks. Who do we need to be or what do we need to do to be able to adapt and accommodate and connect with the way that people have changed over the last 10 years? How do I need to be different? How does the listener need to be different? You know what? I think we have to have a lot more honest engagement with people. One of the

very first things I'd do when I met a new client was I'd have an expectation meeting with them, and not in the same context as what most people think. But I'd always sit down with them and say, hey, look, going through a transaction like this, and we can talk about what we're going to do with it's either a buyer or seller. We're going to talk about that later. But the first point of priority for me is really understanding exactly what you expect of me. And when I say expect of you, I know that most of the time when something goes sideways, it's because the relationship breaks down. I want to be real clear on how you want to be communicated. What's the fastest way to get a response from you? What are things you will and won't accept? And then the vice versa, I'm going to have certain things that I expect of you as well. Like, we're a

partnership. Nobody gets anything out of this until we get a deal. So, you know, understanding that, you know, our trust and leaning on each other is really, really important. But honestly, it's being authentic and genuine. I think, you know, there's a lot of things that we try to hide, like, you know, whether it's inexperience, certain little things that we maybe don't know how to do. But the day I started being the best version of me was the day everything changed. And I also realized really quickly, I was a way better person than I was a realtor. So why not focus on what you're really, really good at? And over time, you get very, very good at selling houses when you do a lot of them. But the whole process of selling a home is pretty easy. Hardest part is getting somebody to stick with you for a career.

But for me, it was really just giving people the best version of me, like taking care of my health and really making sure that when I showed up, they got the best version of me every time. Never showing up tired, unprepared, late, none of that sort of stuff, because that's the first impression I can't change. So what? How did you, you said, you know, when I, when I finally discovered how to be the best version of myself, was there something that happened that caused you to make that, you know, that change or can you share that with us? And I, I love talking about this now that I'm a lot older, Dan. I think if I was doing it a few years ago, I might've been a little bit resistant, but it was a small moment for me, three years in the business. I was the number one agent at that point. Ego was out of control. And

I thought everybody judged me based on how good I was as a realtor. And that's where my ego went. I thought, I'm making all this money, I'm doing really well. But deep down, I wasn't super happy. I was getting overweight. I was working 90 hours a week until I sort of really sat down and looked at my business. And not once had I ever heard somebody come to me and say, look, somebody referred me to you because you're a great realtor. Every time it was the same thing. Someone referred me to you because they said you're a really good person to deal with. And I thought, I've just got this whole thing wrong because the only people that care whether I'm a good realtor is my competition. Most of my clients had no idea

of my success, no idea how many homes I'd sold. And my head sort of went down that path. And it was just a real reality check because I thought, like, I've got this completely wrong. I thought people judged me based on my success. But the only people that knew that were my competition, general public didn't know. So the ego-driven stuff that I was doing was completely flawed. It just didn't work for me. So the change of not worrying about that just enabled me to be just a lot better person, a lot more open and honest, a lot more planning,

this sort of desperation in the sales tactics. It was just a lot more of removing timeframe, not caring when somebody was going to do something and just supporting them on their journey. If you were to give advice to a top producing agent right now who's frustrated because they're spending those 18 hours a day and they're not able to, you know, they figured they cracked the code. Congratulations. Here's how you make sales.

But they are still struggling with those time constraints. What advice would you give them? And I've got a really good one to share with you. And it's something that I do with every new client that I bring on. The first 30 days is all about removal. Because I think one of the things we do, we keep stacking. We keep piling things on, but we never remove the things that aren't providing great results. And a simple little tip that I'll share with everybody, my most important meeting every

single week is at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon. And it's not to go off to the bar and have a few beers. It's to go back to every single thing in my days and remove the stuff that isn't adding value to my business. And the reason I do that, there's no point in me working with a new client and giving them a whole lot of new things to do if they've got no time to do it, because there's going to be no results. So the first thing is called clearing space. We do this in our weekly planning where we do a weekly business plan. And the last thing we do at the end of the week is we go through and review all the things that didn't work and what needs to be removed.

And all I'm trying to do is basically gain more hours in the day. You know, the chaos never goes away. Problems never go away. You've either got to remove them, fix them, or just move on to the next thing. So if you're spending a couple of hours a week on growth, you need to be spending the same amount of time on removing the things that aren't producing results, whether it's people, clients, marketing, things that just aren't doing the things you need to do. And that's probably where the most toughest mental skill comes in, man, is knowing when to walk away from something when you know it's not producing a result. And I think

most of us struggle with that. I've spent way too much money on things that I was crossing my fingers hoping it was going to get the results. But the smart business owner will go, you know what? The smart business owner will go, you know what? Not working. I've invested some money. It's not producing the result. Cut the losses, move on to something else. And eventually you're going to land on the thing that goes,

this is staying forever because it's always going to work. Yeah, it's almost like the sunken cost. And, you know, it's like you either invested time, relationship, money, effort into something, believing in it, and then it doesn't produce what you expect. And it's like, well, I already put all this time and effort and energy into this and money. It's got to pay off. Right. Where it's like, no,

just freaking cut ties and move on because, you know, chuck that up as a learning opportunity and roll with it, right? You know, and I think you've probably heard this one a few times too, Dan, but I've had so many realtors come to me going, look, I'm not going to stop that. You know, I've been spending a lot of money on it. And three years ago, I got a listing from it. So I'm not going to stop it. It's like, well, the next one you get, it's not even going to cover half the amount of money you paid on it. But I think that's the business mindset of knowing when to walk away. The individual mindset is like, I'm so invested,

I got to keep this thing going until I get my return on it. But that's just like staying in a crappy relationship. Things don't change. If it's not working, it's not going to work. And I think that's always a major part of it. Like if we're not clearing space, and my first step is always backtracking. Let's go back, clean some space, get some time so that whatever we do add, you can actually put 100% of your energy into it because more chaos is just more chaos. It never really solves the problem. And honestly, Dan, this is probably going to shock a lot of people. The most successful realtors that I work with don't work more than 40, 45 hours a week on purpose because they run a business. They delegate, they have people that do certain things in their business, but their job

is to go out and produce revenue and income. Once you start getting above that, there's some issues in there. There's things that shouldn't be happening to a certain degree with some flexibility, obviously. When it gets crazy busy, you're going to have a couple of good days. But I think that's the real key is maintaining that strength of leadership in your team. And if you're the leader and you're working 80, 90 hours a week, you've got a problem somewhere, whether it's lack of support, lack of whatever it may be, there's an issue in there somewhere. And that's what I went through where at 90 hours a week, I wasn't valuable to anybody because I was trying to keep my eyes open, waking up in the middle of the night trying to remember what I'd forgotten. And I think that's just the natural lifestyle of

a realtor. So planning, preparation, and making sure that we're removing the things that aren't working. With one small caveat though, Dan, and I always say to people, what we've got to really focus on is giving something time to work. So one of the rules that I always implement with my clients is whatever we put in play must stay in play for 90 days for a couple of reasons. Number one, you need to be aware of the cost. So if you've got enough money to run it for 30 days, don't do it. Don't waste it because it's not going to be in there long enough to get a result. And at the end of the 30 days, you assess it based on your complete return on investment. If you're spent $10,000, you've got $10,000 back, turn it off, get rid of it. It's not producing a result. If you've got a relationship you've been working on for 90 days, they're not responding,

they're not engaging, sure, move on to the next one. But you do have to give it time. So for me, it's a 90-day rule. If I'm going to invest money in some marketing, I need to budget it out for the 90 days. I've got to be able to afford it now. Don't hope a deal is going to come in because if it starts working and all of a sudden you can't afford it, you're just going to build business for somebody else. So those simple little rules for me makes me super prepared for what I'm about to do, but I also give it time to work. And I appreciate the time that you're spending with us today. How can somebody get in touch with you? Pretty simple, Dan. AaronHodson.com if somebody wants to sort of reach out and find out what we're doing.

Yep, just my name at AaronHodson.com. Lots of great information on there. We do things a little bit different, more in the consultancy space, really helping businesses and teams grow from a different mindset, structure business strategies and things like that. I feel a little bit past teaching people how to sell real estate because I feel like we all know how to do it, but the effort on actually how to run a business is where the real point of difference is. And that's where we've got a very nice niche market and the certain things that we handle from everything on the whole business aspect of running a real estate

business and how to make it consistent. Because one of the things I always say to people, my volume is one thing. And I actually don't like sharing that with people because I actually wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I was younger, I was a lot more motivated, but it's a bloody nightmare to run a business of that size. The thing that I'd like people to focus on, and this is why I love your podcast and the title, is the one thing that I was more proud of than anything was for nearly a decade, my income fluctuated less than 10% each month because that's the way I designed it. And when I saw the podcast title, I thought that is the dream for everybody because the one thing that throws a realtor off is panic. We've got nothing coming in next month. We go and do dumb,

desperate things. If you could have consistency of income, it removes the frustration and the desperation to do dumb things you know you shouldn't do. So super proud of what you're doing, buddy. But for me, that's exactly where it comes from. You know, we get our heads in the right place. We get a strong mindset. We know what we can control. We know who the best version of us is.

There's really not much that can get in your way. All right. Thank you again for your time today. You are amazing. CPI agents, I want to wish you to have the best day of your life. Be grateful, make good choices, go help somebody and go find a list today. God bless you. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today. Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices,

help someone, have the best day of your life, and you'll find a listing. in a stable market for a long time. Within 18 months, he'd created so much success where he was actually able to buy the brokerage as a real estate agent. Dan is a leader of vision, focus, and passion. His enthusiasm is truly infectious. He just came out with a book for real estate agents to kind of help people pivot. We went through and talked about how to succeed

in adversity, some of his big traits out there.