if you could just give us a brief introduction how long in the business and tell them what you were doing before yeah let's get it thanks for having me on today Brandon I I work in Dallas Texas and I got my license in summer of 2022 so it's been I guess two and a half years now I went full-time in right before summer of 2023 so I guess I've only been full-time for about a year and a half joined the coaching program in uh March of 2024 and it's been it's been great I'm sure we'll break all that down before real estate I was a middle school and high school orchestra teacher for five years a lot of fun that's awesome and how much are you earning as a teacher I'm curious yeah so probably around like $65,000 got it and tell them how much you earned in 2024 oh what is it uh 236,000 gross so that's a little bit of increase he something new hopefully are uh that pays a little bit well than being a teacher would that be fair yeah and I'm not going to dog on teachers you know we're dealing with some stuff in Texas right now that's uh really crazy actually but I'm just blessed to be in this position now yeah I mean I'm heck dude I think teachers are like the most underpaid profession I was going to be a teacher you know and it's sad how little they get paid for all that they do so no I'm not dogging on teachers whatsoever it's quite the opposite um it's not fair care what they earn but here's the interesting thing I did a little bit of math Sam you were so nice to send me your numbers before uh we met and you prospected for 540 hours last year and you made $236,000 which puts your your average hourly rate of work to $438 per hour and if we look at the highest paid jobs in the world based on an hourly rate dermatologists were number one at 20 $15 per hour and uh anesthesiologists were number two at $150 an hour both of those need you know8 10 12 years of schooling and hundreds of thousands of dollars of formal education but yet here you are a salesperson earning double than those how does that feel and then we'll break down how you did it I mean it's just amazing right like when you're when you're in a job like that and you're you're you're thinking about everything you got to pay for and and what you want out of your life what all that's going to cost and you know the family you're going to have one day it can be really overwhelming and stressful which is probably why I would imagine most of us got in this business because we had a dream and we needed the money to to make that dream happen so to be in a position now where I'm I'm actually taking steps towards that and the numbers reflect that it's just incredible yeah and the opportunity we all have that's why I share your numbers is there for you so if you're here in the live audience watching this conversation with Sam or you're going to watch the replay you can make it happen in this business that's why you got here that's why we're all here to Sam's Point like you can you have an amazing opportunity it doesn't matter what the housing market is it doesn't matter what interest rates are you have an amazing opportunity to make lifechanging income to create any lifestyle that you want if if you're willing to put in the work and and get good at this and that's what we're going to talk about right now so your business primarily comes via outbound lead generation is that fair 100% and was there any thing that you tried other than outbound in the beginning that maybe didn't work as well that you can share with the audience because sometimes well some people here in the Inner Circle have are new to outbound and they've gotten maybe some business other ways what did you try in the past uh first and then what made you go all in on outbound yeah I love the way you teed that up so I tried farming neighborhoods with Direct Mail postcards I tried doing some open houses I even tried door knocking now all three of those strategies are completely viable but to Brandon's point I was not all in on those when I made the decision to go all in on outbound prospecting and I I really committed to it and only did did that and focus on mastering it everything changed yeah why did why did you go why did you decide to go all in on this versus something else out of curiosity yeah I mean it's a couple things right um I felt like it was the the least amount of competition in terms of well there's a million Realtors out there that post on social media all day beg their F friends and family members for listings and go knock on doors but most of the Realtors I know in my market are like man I'm not ever cold con I'm good on that I'll do anything but that so I thought that if I went all in and got really good at that it'd be an opportunity to get a step ahead of everybody else fair enough all right so let's break down the business so before I say the number I'm going to say I'm going to ask the live audience that uh to to take a seat hold on to something because I'm afraid that if I say what I'm about to say that someone might faint pass out fall over um like they always do and that is last year you spoke with 5,400 human beings about selling real estate so who in the world are you talking to like 5,400 conversations in one year I mean no wonder you're doing uh as well as you are but let's break down The Who and then we'll break down the what in the how so who are you focused on what sources of business are you are you calling so obviously expires in canels that's probably where most of my business comes from for sale by owner for rent bu owner and then downsizer lists that was my four lead sources for 2024 this year I've added probate to that got it okay and so um on average what is that breakdown per day is that about is that about 20 to 30 conversations per day well in 2024 it was about 30 conversations a day for those numbers we're talking about yeah that's awesome is that where you're at currently or have you increased or decrease that no I'm I'm at 50 now now don't get me wrong there's some days if I've got two appointments I might not make it to 50 but I'm doing bare minimum 40 contacts a day there's days I'm going over 50 and uh I hope my roleplay partners are on here because I have to pay caralis $100 every week I don't get 250 contacts for the week and I've already had to do that once that sucked wow so so 40 to 50 contacts a day in in in a world where when most agents are newer to prospect they're like I can't get anybody to pick up the phone and and I don't I can't do this and I can't do that what can you share right here right now that has helped you to increase contact rate where you're actually talking to 40 to 50 people every single day yeah so it's it's extremely lead Source dependent if you're going to be calling people like cancels expired fsbos is the highest competition you got to be the first voice because I have my MLS setup where I get an email notification when a listing gets canceled off the market right away and so I'll just look up I'm call him right then if I don't get him then I'll do them the next day bbos I have a Zillow email that sends me whenever a new for sale bu owner becomes available and then I'm calling them right then because the longer you wait the less likely it is they pick up the phone love it so you've got an alert to set you up on what we call the lwh hanging fruit for fsbo's expired cancel withdrawn so that you can be the first voice because we know that if you're not the first voice like you said the likelihood of you even having that conversation let alone a decent conversation getting a lead or an appointment is very very very very very low okay now um when we're talking about lead sources you've added now probate and so I would imagine that you're not having 40 50 conversations a day with just expired or just for sale by owners you know what is the how do what is the makeup of those contacts like what does your distribution of conversations look like yeah I already showed you this man you're teaming me up so great today appreciate it so this is my new contract distribution and I've kind of noticed that since I made this uh I kind of have a hard time getting the 10 expireds on a lot of days so you know I may take some of those and put it in a different lead Source but generally I try to stick to this because what I noticed previously and I made a post about this somebody helped me out thank y'all um I was getting a lot of contacts but a lot of them were just people on the street who the likelihood of been wanting to sell was really low or for rent by owners where it's a lot of opportunities for lease listings but I need more now business so doing that contract distribution has helped out a lot with that so has that also helped out with getting over the the the boredom of making the calls is it is it allow you to focus and become more prod uh productive because you say okay I just need 10 conversations and then I can switch lead sources and have a completely new conversation with maybe less competition maybe easier conversations with less rejection etc etc does Breaking the 30 40 50 contacts up a day the way that you're doing it has it helped with all of that 100% because then it doesn't feel like oh my God I'm gonna I'm gonna call for four five six hours today rather than that you know calling it's each lead source is its own thing so mentally you know I can kind of flip a switch and Brandon this I got to give you credit for this you asked me to buy one of these timers I keep this on my desk and I set it for 45 minutes I I call that lead source for 45 minutes and then I do a 15 minute time break at the end of that because at one point I was just going nonstop um that was insane I don't know why I did that yeah yeah I mean it just it's it's difficult so I I would I would say that now coaching over 6,000 agents that the number one thing that determines one's success or failure you guys are going to want to focus now this is the one thing and it's a huge huge huge secret wink wink wink wink is consistency right the ability to do this day in and day out like it is by far by far the the plague that most agents have um and so like how have you been able to break through that because it is literally the 8020 principle 80% of the people can't be consistent they do it once in a while they never get any momentum ever um and you've broken through to the 20% how like what kind of because it's all mindset yeah I mean yeah we're going to talk about skill we're talking about processes fine that's what people think it is and I know Sam you'd probably agree with that but it isn't it's all mindset first so what can you share with the live audience right now around your mindset when it comes to taking action every single day even on the days you don't feel like it a day not prospected is a day not worked simple as that if I have a day when I don't Prospect I don't care if I go on five listing appointments right it doesn't matter because that's going to feed me right now sure but if I don't Prospect there's going to come a day in the future when I'm starving I have to Prospect and that's number one above everything else which is why I start my day with it because nothing can get in the way if I do it first thing that's right I mean it's the fuel of our career and so I love that what you just said it's like if you're not doing that you didn't work that day because that is the job that is the job everyone got their license cuz they thought they were going to sell houses it's only later that they found out no no the job is is actually prospecting for buyers and sellers you spend the shortest amount of time actually working with clients in this business and to your point the most amount of your time in your case over 500 hours of you last year spent looking for business would you agree yeah and I mean I can pay some some random newbie agent to go show a home for me just as well as I can but that agent is not going to be able to convert a lead on the same skill amount that I can so I got to put my time into where I have the highest likelihood of getting paid and helping people that's right that's why most agents go and work for agents like you because they can't lead generate they can't get clients they can't generate leads uh but they're fine to do the client work which is what they thought they were going to get in the business of okay so let's talk about leads per day so if you're having between 40 and 50 conversations a day how many leads by definition thank you cards are you sending out per day h well per day for 2024 it was about two leads a day now obviously there's days when I've got a whole handful of leads which is great and then there other days man I I I I can't tell you how many days I had last year I'd call for hours get 40 50 contacts and zero leads but I will also add this as a stipulation because some of you guys are like oh my God this guy's a psycho right now part of that is because I really work on disqualifying my leads because I would rather spend time top of funnel looking for new opportunities than following up with dead leads that are never going to do business with me so because of that my leads are lower than some of you guys but my followup I would probably bet is better than a lot of you guys yeah it's great so speak to that that was actually my next question so let's talk about the technique of disqualifying or the skill of disqualifying so that people in the audience know what you're talking about and what you're talking about is going from a world of stuffing anybody with a pulse into your CRM or database and calling them a lead and then chasing them down and they never pick up your calls ever and they they they they they avoid you to what you're talking about which is having a mindset and an approach of high quality conversations of disqualification what does that mean for Sam and what does that look like or sound like yeah yeah so so two things there so one thing that doesn't show up on the stat sheet so to speak is the people I'm adding to my database every day because there's a handful people every day who I'm like uh I don't know this guy doesn't sound like a lead but he's still open to interviewing me at some point in the future if he does move so I'll take their email and add them to my database I'm not doing a great job of tracking those but that's something to be considered to me if I'm putting them down as a lead it means I'm investing money and time into them and those are really important resources so um I guess the second part of your question was what does that followup look like with the lead well yeah thank you so I hope everybody got that there's you're getting both you're getting what we would call optins okay this is really important half the live audience here is like walking the cat they don't even pay attention but they miss all the good stuff right so uh half of those or a big portion of those are people you're just adding to a passive email database which could turn into business over time you're growing that audience if you will and then you're actually focused on the really good quality leads my second question is what are you saying or what questions are you asking or how do you disqualify yeah to to differentiate who just goes on the email list who never gets a call again versus who you're going to invest time energy and effort uh following up with over time okay I understand so I'm the one volunteering all the reasons why they're not going to do business with me I'm playing offense so they don't put me in a position to play defense oh my gosh I wish I had a mic drop boom say that one more time the whole thing I'm going to copy this from you Sam just so you know I'm going to steal that whole thing what you just said rewind say the whole thing again yeah like like Blockbuster right um I think what I said was I'm the one volunteering all the reasons why they're not going to do business with me because I want to play offense so that they don't put me in a position to play defense I love it and so what does that mean what what what does it sound like should we roleplay it are there questions that you ask is there a script that you follow is there an approach that you follow like can you give us context of what that actually means yeah we can role play why don't we just do an expired yeah you want to start from the get-go or like when we're in the middle of the call yeah we'll just get right in the middle of it yeah so Brandon um I know you guys are maybe still open to moving to Florida but I get the feeling even if you did look at that in the future you're probably just going to call the same agent aren't you um yeah I mean that's the thing we just haven't decided yet I mean we we we haven't made any decisions there just yet hey it totally makes sense and I mean you mentioned that you guys didn't really have any serious offers um have you maybe thought about just renting it out instead wouldn't that be easier we've thought about it yeah I just we just there's no way that we can manage the move to Florida and being a landlord on top of it there just there's just no way we could do that okay um well why not just stay put then I mean cuz you're right that that does sound like it would be a headache to be a landlord and I mean obviously the home didn't sell this time I mean just stay put for a few years and wait till the market gets better right well it's funny you bring that up I mean we we've considered that too it's just you know we we can't we have to make this move to Florida if it was an option to stay here we we absolutely would entertain that um and unfortunately right now because we do love the home it's just not an option okay I I think I see your point well then I guess Brandon Before I Let You Go can I ask you a really transparent question um yeah sure fire yeah I appreciate it um if there was a way that you guys actually could sell the home get the price you want it and get down to Florida without having to deal with sitting on market and having a bunch of showings with no offers again I mean be honest that's that's not something you'd like explore is it I am so impressed genuinely and the reason for that is this that a you can hear who's doing the selling the reason Sam got me to be to be the one who does the selling is by his ability to ask disqualifying questions we call this reverse presumptive language your I can't believe your Mastery of This truly not just because we're doing a recording but like your skill level has grown so much how in the world have you built that confidence and that ability to articulate so clearly that maybe someone's watching this saying gosh I can't do that I can't do what Sam just did talk to us how did you get to that point yeah listen I'm GNA I'm going to go a little different on this one so we can talk about going through the course we can talk about role playing we can talk about practicing I'm going to assume you're already doing those things and that's a big assumption that's a huge assumption if you are and you're still feeling that way here's the real secret I was on a a prospecting call with my roleplay Partners this morning I unmuted because I had a call with an expired who he he came off the market about a year and a half ago I interviewed for the job afterwards and uh he didn't hire me he ended up going with another agent so two other agents you know I would be agent number three well I finally got him back on the phone today and he remembers me because I've been following up with him and these kinds of things and during the course of the call I remembered the reason why I didn't get the listing before was because he basically felt like my value wasn't worth the commission he was going to pay so I lost on commission well the the listing expired again so to me this is the golden opportunity hey you hired a discount broker and I didn't sell would there be any downside to inviting me out and taking a second look at this well he was giving me every objection in the book on commission again I pulled out my calculator and I asked him hey by the way what's your mortgage payment and he told me and I was like okay and you were on the market 120 days I did the math and I was like you know if you would have just paid a full service agent who actually could have got the job done your net would have been better than where you're at right now having to start over but you're telling me you still won't hire an agent for a full fee even if that menu could actually sell the home and cut the cord and he he kept giving me objections and I told him listen I'm going to be honest uh it's a no from me if you want to to call me and and you're open to having a conversation with a full commission to get the home actually sold you can call me for now I'm going to delete your number amazing amazing and then the the process for those of you that are just newer to because what we're teaching here is is is some Advanced selling techniques there's no doubt about it but what what what Sam is talking about right now and it is legendary is disqualifying is just what he said it's you playing offense bringing up all the reasons that most prospects give you anyways first before they bring it up and you're seeing which one of them are actually arguing against you and telling you you are wrong that's the only way you can generate high quality business in that somebody doesn't say well you know we're going to wait till the market gets better and then you try to convince them why they should or they tell you we already have an agent and you con try to convince them as to why they should interview you or they say why they're going to hire somebody that charges less commission and then you try to convince them why they shouldn't you see we're the ones playing offense to Sam's Point we're bringing up all the reasons why they wouldn't hire us and letting the ECT to say no no that's actually not not true I would consider hiring you knowing that you're not the cheapest agent no no no that's not true we are selling now regardless of the market it's a huge huge different uh different way of communication which I think Sam you probably tell us it it has helped you to generate higher quality opportunities Fair yeah and I I just think it goes back to Detachment like this is one of the very first things you teach in the program but to be honest it takes a lot of time and practice and going on like really bad appointments before you really start to understand I don't want to waste all this time making these calls of people that are never going to hire me going on these bad appointments that's time you could be looking for other business so when I'm doing the disqualifying thing it's not just because Brandon taught me to do that it's because I don't want to waste my valuable time on opportunities where there's not one and the only way that I can truly detach from that is by doing a ton of prospecting that's right that's right and so you've created not a to-do list you've created a what we call a not Todo list in other words you've done so much prospecting you know exactly what not to do and you're following that list which is helping you build a really successful business and then to your point of detaching from the outcome what you've learned is that if someone's not going to do business with you you just want to find out now versus chasing them for months and months and months and months and months which is what most agents do is they live off like the the most addictive drug in this business called hopium you know they just hope that they're going to get one and they just Chase and Chase and Chase and follow up and follow up and follow up and voicemail after voicemail after voicemail just to find out later oh yeah honey we sold that property a couple months ago with with Joe at Remax it's like yeah because you're unwilling to ask good questions that lead to the truth all right let's move on to the next step so you're disqualifying you're getting really good leads talk to us a now about followup what you're doing in follow-up that leads you to be able to set good high quality listing appointments fantastic so in terms of followup I really made this a focus in Q3 and quarter 4 because I do a lot of prospecting but a lot of those weren't converting into opportunities so um the change that I made was when I'm doing my follow-up it's it's not just call them on a Monday text them on a Friday that's like the bare minimum you could say what has worked for me is changing up what that looks like so on a Monday there might be a day I call them if they don't answer I'll double dial and then on a Friday instead of just sending a text hey if you need anything over the weekend feel free to reach out have a nice weekend that's okay sometimes but then there's other Fridays where I'll do like a loom video on hey this home in your neighborhood just sold and did you see they were only on Market four days I was curious for your thoughts on that one a lot of times when I send like videos like that or a selfie video of me talking about something like that I'll get a response because that's providing value I'm essentially working for free to give them the experience of what it's going to be like to have me as their agent and that's converted a lot of them at a higher clip again here's another agent coming on this podcast saying the exact same thing as other top listing agents be their agent before they've hired you to be their agent so that when they're ready to hire an agent they hire you to be their agent hopefully you got that okay that's the key to lead follow followup it's to serve them such that they feel as though you're already their client so it only makes sense for them just to continue getting that level of service so lead follow-up cannot be automated it's not a check in the box it's very custom it's very well thought out it's very creative uh and I love what you're doing all right now talk to us about the presentation we're going to go for five five minutes here and then if you guys have questions for Sam okay you guys can start to raise your your Zoom hands and I'll start to get you guys unmuted so we talked about lead generation we talked about disqualifying we talked about lead followup now we're at the meeting the listing presentation what are maybe one or two things that you've learned to do that's really helping you to win the business in the business that you want not just any business hey Brandon can you call me real quick and I want you to put my phone on on speaker and before you do this let me tee this up sure a lot of you guys are getting the what are you going to do to sell my home objection when I get that objection this is different I asked them yeah you know I'm really glad you brought that up and before we get into that can you just remind me real quick how we met and they're like yeah you cold call me and I'm like that's exactly right and every single day between 8:00 a. m. and noon minimum I'm on the phone looking for buyers for my Sellers and sellers for my buyers and by the way have you ever gotten my voicemail usually they say no and I say do me a favor and call me real quick can you do that and put on speaker hey this is Sam realtor with compass if you're calling me between the hours of 7:30 a.
m. and 12:00 p. m noon Monday through Friday I'm on the phone working hard for my buyers looking to find homes to purchase and my sellers looking to find buyers for their homes so I'll get back to you during my administrative time between 1 pm and 3 pm.