RMG Agent Podcast
Welcome to the RMG Agent Podcast - the podcast curated exclusively for real estate agents by real estate agents. I'm your host, Reed Moore: it is my mission to create wealth and wholeness with everyone I serve. That includes you!
Join me as we embark on a journey to expand your real estate career and unlock your potential. Through candid conversations, expert interviews, and proven strategies, we'll explore the art of client relationships, negotiation tactics, lead generation, business development, and so much more.
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RMG Agent Podcast
Episode 70 - How NOT to Be a Rich Poor Person in Real Estate - Master Series with Josh Anderson
What if the "secret" to massive real estate success isn't actually a secret at all? Josh Anderson, who's been crushing it in Nashville for 19 years straight, breaks down the refreshingly simple approach that's generated his referral-based empire: consistently keeping his word and doing what's right. 🎯
When Josh started on April Fool's Day 2006 with just $5,000 to his name, he committed to the fundamentals - making phone calls, writing handwritten notes, and connecting genuinely with people. Even as the 2008 mortgage crisis devastated the industry, his business grew 25-50% because he maintained his lead generation schedule while others abandoned theirs. 📈
The cornerstone of Josh's philosophy? Dedicating 3-4 hours daily to lead generation, no matter what. "I've never done anything super sexy in our business," he admits. "Consistency is the currency of business." This discipline allowed him to outwork agents with more experience but less commitment. 🌟
Unlike many successful agents who step away from production only to jump back in when markets shift, Josh deliberately stayed in the trenches. He also learned early to hire quality over affordability - "Go hire the most expensive person you can find and hold them highly accountable" - while focusing his energy on revenue-generating activities. 💰
After turning 40 during the pandemic, Josh expanded his focus beyond real estate to health and wealth-building, implementing smart tax strategies and traditional investment approaches. His advice for agents chasing shortcuts? "Fall in love with doing what’s boring consistently, it works." The path to extraordinary results lies in small actions performed consistently over time. 🚀
Ready to transform your business through the power of boring consistency? Listen to our newest Master Series episode to gain insights that could reshape your approach to sustainable success. 🎧
Speaking of success, if you aren’t using AreaPro yet, you’re missing out! Head over to areapro.com/rmg today and watch your business take off to new heights 💥
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If I'm boiling it all down, it is just keeping your word and doing what's right and doing it very consistently. I've never done anything super sexy in our business. It's always been like go make phone calls, go love on people, go shake hands, go break bread. You know people do business with. People they know like and trust go break bread.
Speaker 2:You know people do business with people they know, like and trust Real estate professionals. Welcome back to the RMG Agent Podcast. I'm your host, reed Moore. We are doing one of the things that I just love the most, and that is interviewing incredible people for the Masters Series. The Masters Series is agents that I think, selfishly, you should listen to, because they've been in the game a long time, they've taken their shots and they have a history of doing a great job servicing clients in their respective areas, and so I get the opportunity today to interview a beautiful human being, not only physically, but in other ways as well my friend Josh Anderson from Tennessee. All right, brother, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Of course. So, man, we've been able to run together now for, gosh, probably the better part of 15 years, yeah, man, and just being able to see what you've been able to do in your business, consistently, over and over and over again build a huge business, a very profitable business. I just, I love the fact that you took the time here to be able to do in your business, consistently, over and over and over again, build a huge business, a very profitable business. I just, I love the fact that you took the time here to be able to share this with other real estate professionals. So, thanks, thanks again, man, appreciate it Absolutely. So just want to start the conversation by asking the question, you know, why should somebody listen to you? Here's, here's Josh Anderson, and we have a whole room full of you know people ready to listen to you. Why should they listen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think the I think the biggest thing is I've been in the business for 19 years, as of April 1st, and you know, I mean I've gone through several different shifts and cycles and micro cycles and you know, I think we've tried just about everything in this business, with varying degrees of success and failure. I've failed, a lot wasted a ton of money, ton of time, energy. If I could go back and, you know, fix some of those things I don't even know that I would, because this is part of what, like, brought me to here and, you know, getting to sit in somebody like Gary Keller's you know, top agent group. I just remember the first time I was in that, in that mastermind, like I, I declined dinner. I went back to my, my hotel room and laid on the bed and was like it, literally my brain hurt and I also wondered why, like, how did I even get into this room? And I also wondered why, like, how did I even get into this room?
Speaker 1:You know, at the time, I think the I think it was like twenty five million dollars in volume to to qualify, which is nothing now, yeah, yeah, but at the time, you know that was probably 2010, when there was a really crappy market, maybe 2011. Anyway, so that's a big, long, drawn out answer on why I think everybody has lots of opportunities to listen to people. I'm in the trenches every day alongside my team. I am constantly recruiting for our team. I get a lot of agent referrals around the country that have people that are moving to the national market, and the majority of our business is referral based, and I think that says something in the market that we're in, to continue to be able to work with a lot of the same clients that we've worked with for almost 20 years now.
Speaker 2:So when, when the random agent says my business is referral based, that can be code, for I have no idea where where people come from, but that's not you. So how did you get there to you? Or you genuinely have a referral based business that sells a lot of real estate.
Speaker 1:I think in the very, very simplest form. This is going to sound silly, but I do what I say I'm going to do, and I think we're in a world where, like, people's word literally just doesn't matter anymore. They empty promises or like, for example, read if I, if I said, hey, read, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you those comparable sales before the end of the day. If it was 933. And I was laying in bed, I literally would get out of bed, open up my laptop and go do it, because I told you I was going to do it before the end of the day. And so, just as simple as if you tell somebody you're going to do something, you do it and you do it at a super high level.
Speaker 1:I think people remember that kind of stuff and I think it sets you very far apart in today's world. It's kind of like my parents made me write tons of handwritten notes growing up and it sets me apart because I still, I still write handwritten notes and people are like man, you could have just sent a quick text or an email and I'm like, but you didn't, you wouldn't have remembered it, and so you know, I know that's. There's probably a ton of different ways I can. I can tell you things that we've done to get agent referrals, but really, if I'm boiling it all down, it is just keeping your word and doing what's right and doing it very consistently.
Speaker 2:There's something about you know, I've, I've I've shared this with people in the past like consistency has been my arch nemesis and my biggest ally, right, my arch nemesis. And then everything in my life that I'm consistent in has just been a knockdown drive at drug out fight. It hasn't come naturally Right, um. But the other thing is is that whenever you are consistent especially if you've been in, you have been doing something for almost 20 years there is just this, um, almost, uh, you know, like compounding interest with something as simple as doing what you're, what you're you know, doing what you said you're going to do, and at this point in your career, that's, that's a big deal. How did you, how did you start, uh, in real estate? Like, what was, what was the first few years?
Speaker 1:like, Well and real quick, before I answer that you said, you said something that I've started saying a lot over the last couple of years is consistency is the currency of business, and and it's like it doesn't seem like that big of a deal until you look back after 15 or 20 years of doing it and being like you know what. I did this one thing every day for three hours and it built my business, and you can do whatever you want for the rest of the day. If you lead gen and lead follow up every day for three or four hours, your business takes care of it.
Speaker 2:It works, yeah, so um, it's interesting to kind of riff on that. It's just I was. I was thinking about how much consistency we expect out of companies that serve us, right. I even think about places. I've got a few places where I've had one of the best meals ever, right like amazing, went back, had the same meal, massively disappointing. And I'm not a raving fan of that restaurant. I'm not. I'm not going to write a negative review, but there's just something about the expectation that we expect. The reason someplace like, even like starbucks, is so successful is, every single time I go, I get it this way.
Speaker 1:It's, it's a big deal for sure so first couple of years in the business, um, you know, uh. So I got in the business april 1st of 2006. So april fool's day jokes on me. It's gonna, yeah, like what I can do this part time. So I graduate in finance and economics from LSU, moved back to Nashville I'm originally from Nashville moved back there after being in Louisiana, worked at an investment bank and then a private client asset firm for like a year and a half Because I had this idea.
Speaker 1:I created this idea in my head about finance and how sexy and fun it was going to be. And then I realized it was terrible. And I love that. That's what I graduated in, because economics there's so much of real estate and economics that play into all the things. Yeah, you know all the things, yeah. So I got into the business in 2006. I had $5,000 to my name. I absolutely swore that I would not ask my dad for a single penny. No way not happening. And so that was that.
Speaker 1:At the time. That was when Gary was like two hours of lead generation a day, 930 to 1130. And so I was like, okay, and I was like what, if I do like three hours a day, like I'll just do a little bit of extra because I don't have anything in my pipeline anyway. So I started doing three hours a day. I did eight by eight campaigns. I did handwritten notes to everybody that I knew in Nashville which was basically my parents' friend, and so that was it, man, I just did. I did all the things that you could do if you didn't have any money, yep, and literally I remember at some and so.
Speaker 1:So the market was good for about a year and a half before 2008 happened, wasn't even a year and a half, but 2008 happened and I was so ignorant to what the mortgage meltdown was that my business actually grew 25 to 50% from 2008 to 2012. So it was like, wow, this is cool. Everybody else was having like total freak out modes. And you also have to understand at the time I had zero overhead. Are you sure I didn't own I didn't own a $2 million office building like I do now and all the different things. I mean I literally had zero overhead and I was, you know, my wife and I were like each you know, it was like we'd go have happy hour, like, hey, we can go get $1 beers, you know somewhere. So we were still post-college like living very inexpensive, um, but all that to say is, like, man, I did the basics.
Speaker 1:Looking back on it, I did everything that the Red Book said to do. I mean to a T. I put everybody in an. My original CRM was an Excel sheet and it was literally their name, phone number, email address and like a note section. And I just and then and then, like we were coming out of 2011, 10 or 11. And Gary was like y'all need to be doing three or four hours of Legion a day, and so I ramped it up and started doing like four hours of Legion a day. I mean, I've never done anything super sexy in our business. It's always been like go make phone calls, go love on people, go shake hands, go break bread. You know people do business with people. They know like and trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. This is a pretty. You know it's not always easy, but it's a pretty simple business, like people. People have to buy houses and sell houses and want to be invest in houses, and we help them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting, like the, you know, in our, in our industry it's industry it's rare to see somebody who does the consistent work of lead generation, and maybe you could say it's rare that people pop up above the average when it comes to their income, and there's definitely a correlation there. What did you do to you know what was the story? You told yourself around that three or four hours of lead generation, because lead generation is, you know, it's the hardest thing that most people do every day, right, yeah, and then what have you done? What have you found? Works with other agents who maybe didn't have your mindset of, just like, okay, I'm going to work.
Speaker 1:A couple of things that I thought when doing the lead gen was first of all, I looked at all the different ways you could lead gen and it just seemed like the most efficient was picking up the phone. I couldn't go have 20 coffees a day and my goal was to have 20 contacts a day, and so my the reason I started picking up the phone so much was because I said how am I going to compete against that guy that's been in the business for 12 years? The only way to do it is get tons and tons and tons of repetition, and he's not doing that repetition because he's out busy showing houses. So I can study all the stats and do all the things that he's probably not doing because he feels like he doesn't need to do it anymore because he's been doing it for a while. Yeah, and so that was the only way I felt like I could I could catch up with other people was go put in an extra hour here.
Speaker 1:I was going in on Saturdays and calling expires and withdrawals from like 11 to one every weekend, every Sunday.
Speaker 1:I mean I did 75 open houses my first year in the business, so I was just trying to do a little bit of everything to get exposed and at the end of the day, you know, it was kind of like well, you know, you get super duper uncomfortable and outside your comfort zone. That's where the magic happens. And that's what I heard. So I was like I hate making these phone calls, but if I can fall in love with the idea of making phone calls and after six months of doing it I can see some kind of like something, then like I'll keep doing it Cause somebody told me right when I first got in the business whatever you do, you got to do something for at least 90 days or 180 days, depending on what type of marketing it was. And I was like all right, I'm going to do this hardcore Cause I don't have any money. I'm going to do the phone calls and the handwritten notes hardcore for like six months. If it doesn't work, I'll figure something else out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it worked.
Speaker 1:Well, because I found out, if you call, if you make two or 300 dials a day and you get 20 people on the phone, it's just a numbers game. If you talk to a hundred people a week, even if you're really crappy at your scripts and you don't know what you're doing, somebody will be like I'll work with you. I mean, I remember, I remember, I remember getting my first listing. The guy was literally he was like I sent him all these really crappy postcards that I like made myself. And, um, finally he called me one day and I remember exactly where I was sitting and he was like hey, um, this is Steve Goddard, I'm calling you.
Speaker 1:Uh, how old are you? You look like you're in high school still, do you have your license? And you're in high school? And I was like I don't have an objection handler for this. Yeah, yeah, I was like this is what I said to him. I go well, why does it matter how old I am if I can sell your house better than you can? And then it was dead silent. I was like, oh, this is not good. And finally he said, ok, can you come over tomorrow at two thirty? And I was like, oh, nobody had said yes, so I was like yeah, and then I got off the phone with him.
Speaker 1:I was like I don't even have a listing packet or a listing. I don't even know what you're supposed to bring. Yeah, so that was like my first listing appointment and I was so happy he was a for sale by owner, uh and I, 19 years later, I literally called him last week and talked to him oh my gosh, that's amazing and you just got to put yourself out there and you got to get uncomfortable and you just got to listen, listen for lots of no's so you can get to a yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. So this created this. My hallucination is is that this created a problem for you, that it created for a lot of people in your position that have been really successful? And I was talking to Brian Gubernick around around this cause.
Speaker 2:We've had kind of a friend group for a long time and he said you know, we all, we all just built our relationship when we were at that place where we're just flat out grinding and doing deals right, you look over, you know, you look and you see a Josh, you see a Brian, and there's just this level of you know respect that you have because you know that everybody's been in the trenches and they've been doing this thing and having success, be doing the things that that nobody else is willing to do, or at least at that level. But then that comes with another layer of challenge and that is at some point you have too many people to be able to service well yourself. So when did that transition happen? And all of a sudden you're like, oh, congratulations, you get to be a business owner now.
Speaker 1:So I remember going to lunch with my cousin who owns a big landscaping company in Nashville and he's like, how's it going? I was like, man, it's good, I'm busy, but it's not enough. And he was like, well, tell me about your business. And I said, well, hey, I said, and we talked for a minute and I said, well, what, when am I going to start getting consistent referrals? And he was like year number three, literally the start of your third year in the business. So I got in the business, april of 2006. He said, literally three years in, I swear to you at the three year mark, like literally to the anniversary I started getting referrals consistently. That was April of 2009. By 2010, I was drowning in business Like I was, and that's so. In 2008 or early 2009, I hired my first part-time assistant and I just remember going, you know, made the biggest, oldest mistake in the world. I bought, I hired the cheapest that I could, you know, and I hate that it was off of Craigslist. It was the whole thing, you know and.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I ran her off early, early and um, so hired my first agent, my first buyer's agent, who really took a lot off my plate in 2010. Um, she made $92,000 her first year, which was like at the time in 2010. I mean, that was like the bottom of the market, so she was cranking. And then I came back from mega camp when it was in September of 2011. And me and this guy named Aaron Armstrong came back and we're like man, we got to go implement this showing agent model.
Speaker 1:It was like this mythical thing and that's really yeah, and that was like Gary mentioned it and it was like, nah, it's not going to work. And that's really the first real thing outside of hiring my first buyer's agent. But that was the first real thing that really changed my business, because that was that allowed my next buyer's agent to do, you know, a hundred and something transactions. And in 2011, that was like for for her and Brianna, that was like unheard of. Oh yeah, so, you know, for 110 or 15 transactions now it's probably normal, but, um, those were some of the first things that really like transformed our business.
Speaker 2:What did you have to learn? Um, going from somebody who was, you know, you're, you're out, you're out, you know, hunting and killing, and now you're, you're creating this giant. Uh, you know, wake of success, disaster, yeah, that, um, what were some of those? What were the?
Speaker 1:what were some of the things you thought it would be like and it wasn't, and then vice versa yeah, I think the first thing that I had to learn and I think this is the first thing we all have to learn is that your client actually doesn't care that you do the entire process. Like, um, I realized on like transaction number three in, like the history, like in 2006, when I lost an earnest money check that was lodged underneath my chair and lodged underneath my car seat that I probably shouldn't touch paperwork ever. Yeah, and 19 years later, I don't touch paperwork, and but I had to realize that, like I'm really good at a couple of things, I really suck at all the rest of them and I need to hire for all those positions and that if it's done so well, the client actually doesn't care. Yeah, so that was.
Speaker 1:That was like the early on stuff, because I think, as a realtor, you're like oh my, my client wants me to do it and I don't think your client wants you to do it. I think they're working with you because they, like you, know you trust you, or they think you're good at negotiation or whatever, but I don't think they expect you to take photos, do the video, do the paperwork, all the stuff. So go what I tell people now, which is not what I did go hire the most expensive person that you can hire. Even what I did Go hire the most expensive person that you can hire, even if you're a solo agent, like, don't worry about the $12 or $15, $17 an hour job, go find somebody at 50 or $75 an hour and hold them highly accountable and then you go do what brings in the money, which is the lead generation and the shaking of hands.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking back. You know the commitment to lead generation as your sole focus, regardless of all the other things that you think are the focus. It creates unbelievable opportunity. Right, and I was thinking like my very first assistant. I took her through the hiring process, did as good of a job as I thought I knew how to do at the time. She lasted one day and I remember it was somewhere around one o'clock and she was sitting there pale, almost green, with overwhelm because she was really inexpensive.
Speaker 2:Got her from abercrombie and finch uh, you know the uh that's, you know yep and uh, and somewhere around 1 30. I look at her. I just said, hey, how you doing. She's like not good I'm. You think you can get your old job back. She's like I'd like to do that. So that was it. But the next one was somebody who was. She was a nursing student and she was way overqualified. She needed a job and I needed somebody who was overqualified and she changed the trajectory of my. I mean, she, she, she committed to be with me for a year and she was with me for about two and a half years. And as soon as you experience that for the first time, you realize that somebody else is better in your business than you are and actually it turns out they may have, they may even care more about your business than you do to some in some ways.
Speaker 1:I've got one of those right now. It's pretty cool, it's amazing. That's the piece that think, um, as a new agent that has a business that's going up and down and very inconsistent, they can't wrap their head around. Why would I pay the most amount of money?
Speaker 2:I'm like because it's going to change your business even just the resumes you get go from sandwich artists. Uh, I appreciate that, I appreciate. But then all of a sudden it goes from there that to a former paralegal and that's, that's a big difference, right, yeah, so okay. So my my external like, uh, watching Josh Anderson over the years, uh, was that maybe at certain points in your business you were surrounded with people, by people who were trying to get out of the day to day of real estate and the heavy lifting of of sales, and it seemed like you always resisted that or maybe you resisted that more than others and that that, in the long run, has has worked for you really well. Is that? That's a hallucination? But is there any truth to that?
Speaker 1:I actually had this conversation several times over the years. I never got out of production because I saw so many people that were in Gary's group get out of production and the second the market changed even a micro amount, they jumped back into production and I said I want to be so dang insulated that I never have to get. If I'm getting out, I'm never getting back in and and I haven't I've never experienced being so insulated from that, any of those positions. I mean I could get out tomorrow. I enjoy taking 50 to 100 listings a year like it's super easy for me. 50 to 100 listings a year Like it's super easy for me, and there's definitely things I would rather go move on and do. But I never got out of it because I saw so many people get back into it.
Speaker 1:I don't love that and I also think it's like one of the things you said earlier was, or right before this was just agents being able to filter things. Like I think agents get so caught up in the busy like there's a lot of stuff that you can get up at. You can get to the office at seven o'clock in the morning and be really busy till 5 PM and look up and go. I didn't do anything productive today and I think it's very difficult for a new or newer agent to decipher what's busy and what's productive. And that's the reason I've always just kind of hammered lead gen because, honestly, it's kind of fixed everything in my business for 19 years. Like anytime I'm having a problem and I go lead gen more, I end up having better listings or more listings and more money in the bank and I'm like, oh, more money in the bank, I can go hire that person now or I can go do that marketing, and so it's never. I've just said it fixes everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was cool to watch you go through that and it's interesting. One of the things I learned from a mutual buddy of ours was that you know in your business, you, you, you tend to fall to the last level you mastered. And if you watch somebody kind of building a sales team now or whatever, there's this there. Maybe there's always been this temptation, but it's to go from like I crushed it at sales or at least did good enough to turn heads, and then I hire my assistant, I hire a team and I hire and I do all this stuff, and now I have all of this overhead, I have all of these systems, I have all these mouths to feed. I don't actually know how to hold any of it accountable because it got built so fast and when there's like any, like you said, like micro shift, I don't go from here to here, I go from here to here and it's that fast and it's really expensive.
Speaker 1:It's like on Tetris and that. So, yeah, I mean, that's why, you know, I think we could have probably grown faster than we did, but I'm, I just think, growing slow and steady and having a good business and then just adding on things over time or layering in things, and there's still a bunch of stuff we want to do. I love, love, being in the real estate business. It's just, you know, our industry is changing dramatically. It's. It's kind of cool to see, and some of it's a little bit scary to see.
Speaker 1:Um, some of it, you know, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, money coming into the, a lot of tech and a lot of different stuff. And, looking back, I wish I had, I wish I had done some shared services and some some different things. Um, you know, just investment wise for not even title companies, but, like, I think about all the things that touch real estate, which is like everything, um, hvac companies and just all these different things out there. Yeah, I think one of the coolest things um and I know you've got more questions for me, but I like one of the coolest things about real estate has been well, there's been a couple One the opportunity to meet people like you over the years, like, and I think we all got to meet each other when we were like early on, and then we got to see each other's careers progress so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know, early, early days at KW was awesome. I mean, it was like we never knew who was going to be great. And then we all, you know, a pile of us ended up in Gary's top agent group and, man, those were some of the most real conversations. Um, out there was just being able to sit in that room and we all had the same damn struggles of trying to go from A to B, um, or go from one to two. Damn struggles of trying to go from A to B or go from one to two. And you know then the other piece, so the relationships of, of real estate, and then it allowing you, if you make enough money and you're serious about it, allowing you to do wealth building like true wealth building, and that's been really cool, so okay, so talk to me about that, because that's you know, one of my business partners says that you know, real estate agents are the richest poor people that they know.
Speaker 2:Right, and they all drive Range Rovers.
Speaker 1:And like it's, it's, it's amazing yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, it is not uncommon and maybe just in life, but specifically in sales industries maybe, where you see somebody who makes five hundred thousand dollars a year and their net worth is negative and it's not like they peaked at 500. It's like they've made a lot of money for a long time, Right, so was was the investor uh, like the, the heart of an investor always with you, or did you, did you pick that up along the way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I got into real estate. So I graduated in finance and economics. So, like, I wanted to work at a investment bank and I wanted to, like I loved all that and I did for a little while and I got out of that to specifically get my real estate license to specifically buy investment properties. But what I realized was I was 27 and I was previously making $31,000 a year and I went to $0 a year once I got my license, making $31,000 a year and I went to $0 a year once I got my license. And, believe it or not, the banks, if you don't have any money or a job, the banks don't give you a loan. Now they'll give you, they'll give you. You know they had those awesome ninja loans back in the day but I didn't have any money. So they, you got to have something.
Speaker 1:So my first three or five years in the business I do I look back and go man, I made some people a lot of money. If they're still holding some of those properties like I made them I made. I look back on some deals I wish I'd bought. Yeah, but you know I'm not. It doesn't bother me because I took every dollar I had and put it back into the business and the brand and that's done pretty well over the last 19 years. So I'm good with that piece.
Speaker 1:But you know, three or four years ago I did get super serious about wealth building actually probably five or six years but just got really serious about buying properties, but not even really buying properties.
Speaker 1:It was like making sure my kids are on salaries, doing the Augusta rule, maxing out my health savings account Cause you can kind of triple dip on that Um, just all the little things and and and really just like boring tried and true long-term rentals.
Speaker 1:I don't buy Airbnbs, um, and then a lot of it was really just like and I hired a really expensive tax strategist because I was like man, there were some years I was paying two and three and four hundred thousand dollars in taxes, and I don't say that to like humble brag or anything. I hated it. I hate to even tell people that I paid that much money in taxes people that I paid that much money in taxes. But I think you have to. You have to make that happen, to go wait, I can make $0 more next year and just learn how to have some tax efficiency and get $100,000 raise. And so I really went hardcore down that, down that path and you know I joined Brett's Be Wealthy group and did some different things and really I did those to force myself into accountability of wealth building and it's been, it's been pretty awesome.
Speaker 2:One of the cool things and again one of the reasons we do this in the master series is, you see this, like these, these really logical steps, right, like I'm working really hard at the doing the right things and I'm making peace with doing that for a very long period of time, right. And then over the course of time, that transitions into wealth building and wealth building transitions. Like there's that, uh, that time where all of a sudden you know you go from being in the wrong room to the right room when it comes to taxes. The wrong room is a bunch of people that are like telling you like, oh yeah, like I have this huge tax bill, but hey, that's what it looks like, right, ha ha ha. And then you and then you realize, like that's not the room that you want to be in. You want to be around the room, that people that make that much more or more money and are like, no, here's actually how I kept all my money by working with the IRS as opposed to, you know, being stupid. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:So so I think I think um, not everybody does this, but I've seen you and a lot of other people. It seems like we get, we start approaching our. I've always been, I've always been like a relatively healthy guy. My family's healthy, We've been growing up, we always ate healthy and all that stuff so like. But when I hit 40 and that was the year of covid I literally health and wealth became my thing.
Speaker 1:So I went from being all in on real estate as an agent to all right, you know you can, you can live off of three and four hours of sleep. When you, when you get started in real estate and like you're trying to cheat the system a little bit and but but it's one of those things, after a certain period of time it's like no, no, no, I want seven to eight hours of sleep, I want to work out, I want to do some yoga, Like I want to do the things and doesn't matter if you make a hundred million dollars a year, if you weigh 500 pounds and you can't enjoy life and you can't walk around the block with your wife or daughter or kids and you can't go throw football, like none of it matters because you're not going to get to enjoy any of it. So those have been my two focuses, since turning 40 is and I feel better than I felt maybe ever.
Speaker 2:It's awesome just to see the the trajectory. One of the questions I have for you is, if you are sitting together, if you're sitting down with the agent let's say they've been in the business for oh, five years, right, which in the last five years, that's just long enough to still not know anything. But but you've been doing something for a while, right. The last five years have been different, right, or unique. Maybe there's a good chance that that conversation is going to go in some direction towards hacks or get rich quick, or here's the short version, or all of that stuff. What would you say to that agent to try to help them see that maybe the long, consistent road is the right road?
Speaker 1:Well, first I would say, if I was going to do any hack in the world today I've told my kids this if I was going to have a hack, I'd go learn AI. I'd spend like my waking hours doing everything AI, because that is going to be our future. It just is. I don't care if you like it or you don't like it. Hopefully it stays in good hands, but AI is going to be the future. Yeah, oh, it's here and it's well you think about it.
Speaker 1:It took a really long time to get here. Look how much it's changed just in the last 12 to 24 months. I mean it's you've got to think AI and chat GPT. They're like infants, they're like young. Just imagine.
Speaker 1:I mean, I asked my kid on Sunday, coming back from our farm. I said, hey, what do you think the world's gonna be like when you're my age? And he was like I'm actually scared for it. And I was like, well, you don't need to be scared, but like it's gonna be very different because it's gonna be so rapid. Technology is going to move faster than we've ever seen it move.
Speaker 1:So, to answer your question, I would just tell them to go study any businesses over the last hundred years and how they got there. And, at the end of the day, all those businesses the really good ones, on solid foundations, they grew slow and steady and they were super consistent. Consistency, I mean you can look at it with regard to money and just like compound interest, like there's no, there's no, there's just isn't a quick get rich quick scheme. There just isn't one. I know people think there are and there's always some new take on it, but at the end of the day, the businesses that are sustainable and scalable and they stay around, they all just were built over decades, that's it yeah, it's funny because it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:My experience has been. It's the same thing with health. Right, you know everybody every once, everything like right now, but it's habit formation, it's, it's making decisions over a long period of time that actually just change you right at the core level actually change your body, like regardless of what you want.
Speaker 1:like it takes anywhere from one to three years to like, truly change your body. Like can you lose 10 pounds in three months? Sure, but like if you truly wanted to see a consistent change. It's going to take 12, 12 to 36 months, depending on all several variables, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's one of that, my big takeaways from this is just your perspective, and that is that. The perspective is, you know, if you have a short term view of things, you know, 10 to 36 months sounds like a very, very long period of time, over the course of a lifetime, over the course of your journey, to have something that's sustainable, something that sticks around, something that you're proud of, something that builds, you know, maybe, legacy in your family, whether it's wealth or health, that's. That's not actually a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you've got to go back to like I don't know, gary's the one that always says it, so I'm going to, I'm going to credit him with like you can be anywhere you want to be in five years. Yeah, the other pieces I read. I read somewhere last year like you can do whatever you decide to do. If you do it for 18 minutes a day, you're by the after one year, you're ahead of 90% of the entire world at whatever it is.
Speaker 1:That's amazing 18 minutes a day, like if you just, if you just worked out for 18 minutes a day, you're ahead of 90% of the entire population, not in America, in the entire world. Yeah, yeah, If you did wealth building for 18 minutes a day, you'd be ahead, at least from a knowledge perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I love it, man. Well, josh, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Any parting words of wisdoms from from wisdoms plural. What wisdoms do you have for us as we uh wrap up?
Speaker 1:I mean, man, at the end of the day, like I just tell people I think you got to get back to the basics and fall in love with doing boring. That is consistent, that works and I know that's not what anybody wants to hear but like we all have the same hours in the day, like go find podcasts, go read books. Like there's we have more ways in 2025 to become an expert or do make money or whatever you want to do. Like we have more options than we've ever had. Like you have the time. It's just whether do you want to get up and do it, like everybody says, oh, I don't have time to work out, yeah, you do. You just scrolled your phone for the last hour. You could have been in the gym. Or hey, you just you just sat around like mumbling and you're got a crappy mindset like go manifest. Some like let's make it happen, yeah, so, but but that all works if it's just super basic and super consistent.
Speaker 2:Yeah I love it, man. Thanks for sharing your, your mastery and your wisdom. Man, I I mean, uh, it means a ton to me.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate it yeah, man, I appreciate you having me. Yeah, it's good catching up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you too, man all right, everybody, thank you for being here with uh, josh anderson and myself. If you have referrals to send to nashville, tennessee, nobody better than josh. Obviously he takes great care of clients, he's the real deal and he's just an amazing resource. So, as always, go to rmg agent podcastcom for our action guide, for our resources, and if you're like me and you love being a market expert, go to areaprocom slash RMG. Check out that product. We think every agent should have it and we'll see you next time on the RMG Agent Podcast. Take care.