Start With A Win - Interview With Geoff McLennan

Starting point is 00:00:00 At top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And welcome to Start With a Win at top of the 12th floor of Remax World Headquarters here in beautiful Denver, Colorado. Looking at the snow-capped Rockies. Adam Kantos here. I have a very special guest on the podcast today, one of our amazing agents from New Westminster, Canada, one of the top 10% of the realtors in the Greater Vancouver area, which is amazing because a ton of business is done in the Greater Vancouver area with Remax Advantage. I'd like to welcome to the show Jeff McLennan. Welcome, Jeff. Yeah, thanks, Adam. I'm glad to be on. And this is kind of an interesting thing. The microphone's kind of on the other side of the

Starting point is 00:00:53 table today because you have your own podcast and video show as well, don't you? Yeah, I've got a podcast. We've been doing it for just about a year now. We just recorded episode 42 yesterday. It's called Multiple Offers, a real estate show with competing perspectives. And we basically have three top producing agents on. And we basically just argue because we don't agree on the best ways to go about doing real estate, which we really thought it was kind of cool to have different perspectives because most realtors' podcasts are kind of trying to push themselves. And we thought that was a space where we could be a little different. Well, that's cool because obviously being in the space,

Starting point is 00:01:35 some people call it arguing, we call it negotiating, right? Yeah. People get to hear the different perspectives and why you pick the agent you pick and are they for you or is the other person for you? That type of deal. So it's got to be a fit for the business. That's awesome. So I encourage everybody to subscribe to Jeff's podcast. And Jeff, I'm assuming they can find that on iTunes.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Is that correct? Yeah, we're everywhere. We're on iTunes, Google Play. If you just Google multiple offers, a real estate show, you'll find us. Very cool. All right. So Jeff, you're a successful business person. You help a lot of people, but you've also had some pretty significant challenges in your life, in your business, things like that. Kind of pull back the curtain on that and tell us what are some of the big things that you faced in your life?

Starting point is 00:02:25 Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm kind of a lifelong family member of being in real estate. I knocked on my first door when I was five years old. My dad's been in the business since before I was born. At 25, I decided it was time to get my real estate license, and then I got going. And then I'd say less than a year into being licensed my my whole left side went completely numb uh I lost feeling in my arm yeah and uh I had a little bit of uh loss of feeling in my face um and my my girlfriend at

Starting point is 00:03:03 the time who's now my wife who's much more sensible than me, like, you need to go see a doctor because I was convinced it was a pinched nerve or something. Stuff like that had happened to me before. So I went to this really sketchy walk-in clinic and the doctor asked me one question. He said, what do you do for a living? And I said, oh, I'm in real estate. He said, oh, I get it. This is just stress. And I said, oh, well, I'm not really stressed. I mean, 2006, 2007, the market out here was really good. 2008 was when we had our crash. So things were going fantastic. I said, I'm pretty sure it's not stress. And he said, well, I'm a stress specialist. Don't worry, it's stress. And I'm a young guy at that point in

Starting point is 00:03:45 my life. I want it to be just nothing. So I come home and I'm like, Hey, love, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. It's just stress. And Rach very smartly was like, no, we're going to the clinic and got me in the car. And we went out to a UBC clinic and then put me in the CT scan and they panic. And after the CT scan, the doctor comes out and he says, you know, there's, there's a shadow on your brain. And I said, okay, well, what's the worst case scenario that that could be? And he says, brain cancer. And I'm freaking out because my uncle had brain cancer and I'm in my head going through everything that my uncle went through. And I went through a ton of absolute tests. I had to have a spinal tap done and a whole bunch of scans.

Starting point is 00:04:31 And about a week later, they said, good news is it's not brain cancer. Bad news is it's MS. And I remember thinking, oh, what's MS? So that was the beginning of my journey with, uh, being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and all the challenges that come with that. So that's, I mean, that's a punch in the face, right? Yeah. I'm not going to lie.

Starting point is 00:04:56 I got pretty depressed for a while. There was a good six months where all I was thinking about was a future in a wheelchair and what was I going to do? And yeah, it, uh, it took me to a pretty dark place. The thing that a lot of people don't understand is you eat what you kill in real estate. So you're also trying to do business and build your business. So how did you deal with that? How did you understand the fact that you have something that is potentially debilitating that could affect your livelihood.

Starting point is 00:05:28 You can't go on disability in real estate, really. You're an entrepreneur. You own your own business. So where are you at with that thought when you're trying to figure out your future and, okay, how do I deal with this and how do I support myself and Rachel, myself and Rachel and stuff like that. Where's your head out there? It's been a real journey for, for the first, I'd say for at least eight years after that, my way of dealing with it was to just stick my head in the sand and focus on work. I had to get very efficient on how I spent my energy. One thing a lot of people don't know

Starting point is 00:06:07 about MS is a lot of the worst symptoms are completely invisible. People think about the mobility. For me anyway, so far, the hardest part is there are some days where I just have completely crippling exhaustion. So I've had to put systems in place in my business that my business can still run if I just don't have the energy to get out and go. Because an average day for me, I'm usually in the office by about 8 a.m. And a lot of times I get home around 8 or 9 p.m. But there are some days where I just can't do that. So I've had to create systems. I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and that really helped a lot. The title was a lie. I haven't been able to figure out a way to do four-hour work week, but I have put a lot of systems in place. One of the big questions

Starting point is 00:06:55 in that book is, if you only had two hours in a day, what would you do with those two hours? I ask myself that every single morning of, okay, let's say my body doesn't want to cooperate with my mind today. I'm usually better in the mornings than in as the day goes on energy wise. How do I make sure I get the absolute most important things done first? And then I have a team, you know, my dad and I are partners. And even though he's slowed down a lot lot because he's probably close to an age where he's thinking about retiring, I rely on him to take a lot of the slack when I don't have the energy. And then we have an excellent assistant who I call mom. She's able to help with a lot of the day-to-day stuff so I can really focus on, okay, what's the most important tasks that have to get done in order to make money? Let's take and reach in the middle of this and separate the MS from the business for a second. And let's talk about, if you take a step back and you look at what you've experienced, which I guess you could, we'll label it a massive obstacle for the purposes of this.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And then you have on the other side, you have opportunity. And you've done a masterful job of separating obstacle from opportunity to capitalize upon opportunity and adjust for obstacle. There's this amazing business lesson and life lesson going on right now in what you're saying. I want to point that out to the listeners because people face challenges on a daily basis. It might not be MS. That's a huge obstacle, a huge issue, a potentially huge debilitation, whatever you want to call it. And people so much fall into, and you went through this, they fall into the depression and the focus on the problem. And I mean, what was it that, was there like an aha moment or was it kind of a gradual realization of you going, okay, here's what I got. I'm going to be the very best that I can be, even though that's part of my life.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Where did that realization come and how did you separate those things and make a decision to, you know, go on the offense instead of crawling into a hole and letting this dominate your life? Yeah, there was a real mindset change for me, and it came from reading. I was given the book, and I can't even remember who gave it to me, but I was given the book, Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox. And Michael J. Fox, my whole life has been a personal hero of mine you know he grew up in Burnaby which is right beside New Westminster and he has Parkinson's and A Lucky Man is written by him and it's all about how he stayed optimistic despite his diagnosis and and how he really does have optimism it's not something he fakes and puts on. And I read that book and thought, you know, this is something I can model. I need to change my perspective

Starting point is 00:10:12 because I have absolutely no control over what my disease is going to do to me. I can take medication and I can make sure that I do everything possible to slow it down, but there is no cure. But what I can control is my mindset. And I would say that that book was the turning point in how my mindset shifted and kind of getting me out of a really

Starting point is 00:10:32 dark place where I just didn't want to get out of bed and I didn't want to go to work. And in real estate, it's really easy not to go to work because nobody's telling you that you have to get up and go. But that book was the beginning of the shift for me, for sure. That's amazing. And I got to tell you, Jeff, you are incredibly inspiring in walking through this. Again, everybody faces different obstacles. And what you've done is you've compartmentalized that obstacle to affect you in the way that you know reasonably it will, it can, you're willing to allow it.

Starting point is 00:11:08 But the thing it didn't stop you from doing is going out and seeking wins under your terms. And that's so cool and such a powerful message for everybody listening to this is, look, I mean, you know, we all take the field and play the game of life. And sometimes when we take the field and play the game of life, it's raining or it's snowing or it's minus 10 degrees or it's a hundred degrees or the team is out there and they're beating up on us from the other side, but we're still on the field playing the game of life. And it's how we go on the offense in that game that really kind of dictates what we get out of it personally. And I admire the heck out of what you're doing. It's super inspirational. So thank you for that. But I want to jump into some of your wins now too.

Starting point is 00:12:00 Sure. So you've got this game of life going on with MS on the field and things of that nature, but you have created an amazing influencer status. You've built an amazing way of marketing and delivering value. You're a 2018 BombBomb video influencer. I mean, just all around number 13 ranked by the company BombBomb, which is for those that are not familiar with BombBomb that listen to the show, they have this super innovative way of delivering video email and utilizing just an incredible CRM system for that. socialite influencers. You've got your own podcast. You've got your own video series. You give a lot to the community. And I know that's a big part of your business is helping people and then helping them with the home buying and selling experience. Tell us a little bit about why did you decide to take to online for your marketing? And what do you think has worked for you on that? What hasn't worked for you on that? What hasn't worked

Starting point is 00:13:05 for you on that? And where are you going with that? The biggest thing that has worked for me is using video in online marketing. I'm a bit of a tech nerd. So before I was using video, I was doing all sorts of lead capture and targeted marketing. And that was working, although it's gotten less effective over the years because I think a lot of people... I got in the space before there were a lot of people in the space. Now it seems there's a lot of people competing for, you know, get my free guide and then I'll send you 10 emails trying to get your business and all of that stuff. But the beginning of my journey with video for real estate was actually connected with my journey with MS as well. I was very secretive about having MS for the longest time. I didn't want anyone to know. And I think part of that was

Starting point is 00:13:56 one thing I could control. It was in my power to tell you whether or not I was suffering from that. And I think another part of that was fear of being, I'm not good with sympathy. It's something I really struggle with. So there are many times I've told people about my disease and then you can feel the relationship change a little bit where every time they see you, they want to ask like, well, how are you? And they want you to kind of tell them everything's okay. And that I really struggled with that for a long time. And I kind of got fed up. I felt like I was somebody who was keeping this gigantic secret. And I also wanted to do something for the MS Society because the MS Society had been fantastic to me.

Starting point is 00:14:37 They really helped me in a lot of ways. So I was trying to think of a way that I could give back. And I made a quick five-minute video. I remember exactly how it started. It started with me just saying, hey, I want you to try and think about somebody you know who has MS. For me, it's really easy because it's me. And then I told my story, just what had happened with me, how great the MS Society was. And then I said, I'm doing the MS Walk. Here's a link. If you're moved at all by this or you have family who have MS, please support me. And then I said, I'm doing the MS Walk. Here's a link. If you're moved at all by this, or you have family who have MS, please support me. And that was the only thing I did to fundraise

Starting point is 00:15:10 that year. And I was the number one fundraiser on the walk. That one video generated almost $6,000 of donations, a lot of which came from people in the Remax community. And a lot of the Remax community really banded together and walked with me and we created a whole team. And we've done it a couple of years now. But it really taught me about the power of video because I've done a lot of fundraising in the past. And it's a lot of work. And one little video that then I spent $100 to advertise to people that I wanted to see it. And I'm done. And it was more effective than picking up the phone a hundred times. And it really got me thinking about, okay, well, how can I keep using video? What else can I do with this? And I would say using video now is the main component in my business

Starting point is 00:15:59 and both for marketing my listings and for generating business. It's the number one thing I do to keep in touch with my past clients. And I can't say enough about what a powerful tool it is. I mean, first of all, that's such a cool story. One of the big things that people talk about on video is, I don't know how to do video. And you mentioned you were a techie guy before, but that doesn't mean that you're comfortable on video, right? How did you overcome that, that so many people struggle with? Well, I do have a little leg up on probably most people. In a previous life, I was an actor. I went to film school. That is my background. Okay. But I hadn't been doing anything with it probably for

Starting point is 00:16:43 10 years. I would say the best piece of advice for people who haven't, who want to do video, but they're not comfortable is go take Jesse Peters and Michael Thorne's video bootcamp. It's two days. And in two days, they covered everything I would have learned. I learned in film school that they, that every litter would need to know and, you know, take it before they figure out they're not charging enough for it. Cause it's, it's absolutely fantastic. And the one piece of advice from video bootcamp that I'll pass on that I tell people all the time is try to do 30 videos in 30 days, you know, and they can just be quick, two minutes, you talking about your community

Starting point is 00:17:19 at the end of those 30 days, you're going to be comfortable on video. Like if you do something for 30 days in a row, you're going to be really uncomfortable at the start, but by the end of those 30 days, you're going to be comfortable on video. Like if you do something for 30 days in a row, you're going to be really uncomfortable at the start, but by the end it'll be nothing because you're doing it every day and it's not even a thing. And I think that's the number one thing is you just have to do it and you have to do it a lot to get comfortable. Oh man, Jeff, that's a, that's a great, great recommendation. I too have taken the video bootcamp. I sat through it for two days.

Starting point is 00:17:44 I know. I too have taken the video bootcamp. I sat through it for two days. I know. Yeah. So I completely agree with it. I'm a huge fan of video here. It's interesting. We're on a podcast. I actually have a Mevo going right now where we can record video. But I agree. If a business, a business in general, I don't care if it's real estate, I don't care if you're an auto mechanic, I don't care if you do taxes or really anything, you work in a hotel, I don't know. The reality is people should be creating video and it is such an untapped marketplace right now. It's going to increase as generations come up through business that are more attuned to being on video that are less fearful of it. Because frankly, we didn't have a video camera when I was a kid. So we didn't have

Starting point is 00:18:31 video. It was people would, you know, eventually you got the big one that sat on your shoulder, but that was how we did video. And then the flip camera came out eventually. And my kids grew up on video. I shoot video all the time. I have my iPhone, obviously, and a GoPro and whatever else, but it's an opportunity right now. And it is an untapped portion of business. I go in and I study the statistics on this. Businesses that use video create more business. And that's just a fact of life. And we don't need to get into the numbers here, but if a business is using video, if a human being is using video, they're going to gain value in the business space. So obviously you can't be doing offensive things to people, but it's helpful. And if you help deliver a good, valuable message, absolutely. But

Starting point is 00:19:23 builds transparency. You went through this transparent process of deciding I'm going to be transparent with MS and, and you know, how your life is going and things like that. And it, it kind of like pushed it aside so you could like touch people's hearts after that. And they go, Oh, we know Jeff. So, so cool. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think the only thing I want to add to that is something people don't realize about video that I didn't realize when I started is there's the business part and then

Starting point is 00:19:51 there's the personal part. And if you do the personal part right, the leads are so much easier to convert because when they call you, they feel like they already know you and they've already connected with you. Like right now I'm doing a series called A Less Substantial Realtor, which is just about my struggles with trying to lose some weight. I sit down with leads all the time and they want to talk about tips for me for, oh, I think you should try this or I think you should do that. They already feel like they know me before I've ever sat down with them. And that doesn't happen from the providing business angle.

Starting point is 00:20:24 You still got to do that stuff because you have to look like a professional, but it's the personal side of things that lets people connect with you. And if anybody on here is coming to our four, I think we're talking on the same panel, which is exciting. I'm really excited to meet you. That's what I'm going to be going for. How do you connect through video, which is the most important part. That, I mean, I think, I think that is probably one of the most valuable things that people could ever hear is connecting with other human beings. And that leads to business. And life doesn't start with business. Life kind of ends with business. It starts with being a human being and connecting interpersonally that way, emotionally, through relationships, things like that.

Starting point is 00:21:06 Well, I'll tell you, Jeff, I've taken so much away from this today through your struggles, your clarification of what to do, the opportunities, and how you're building your business. So I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. And for anybody who's in New Westminster looking for an amazing REMAX agent, check out Jeff McLennan with REMAX Advantage. Again, ranked as one of the top realtors in the greater Vancouver area. Coming to you from REMAX World Headquarters in Denver, Colorado, top of the 12th floor, this is Adam Kantos. Start with a win.

Starting point is 00:21:41 We'll catch you next time. Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure to head over to startwithawin.com to get more great content. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Adam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And remember, start with a win.

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Start With A Win - Interview With Geoff McLennan

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