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Book Review:
The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller with Dave Jenks & Jay Papasan Review by Kris Freeberg, Economist Making End$ Meet The main thing I learned from this book is that the business administration knowledge, skills, and tools I've collected are the keys to massive success in real estate . . . and that they're greatly needed by most real estate professionals.
Let's work together to take your real estate business to the next level. Please contact me today! |
August 24, 2015. Here's a little personal story. I'll try to keep it short.
My grandfather immigrated here from Sweden, worked hard, and in the midst of the Great Depression, bought the family home where I grew up. Although he wasn't a religious man, as a Scandinavian from a socialist-leaning monarchy, he felt that selling land at a profit is a sin. My father, an intellectual and an academic, supplemented his income during his studies by selling real estate. It was the most lucrative thing he ever did . . . and he hated it. Why? I suppose that, considering his father's views, he felt some cognitive dissonance about it; and, as depicted in scenes like this from Glengarry, Glen Ross. especially as an academic, he disliked selling and the brutal sales culture that often surrounds it. |
My Swedish grandfather Albin Johan Gustav Freeberg
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I chose Economics for my career because I came to respect that, whether we like it or not, like fire or electricity, it's a powerful driver of human events. I thought, "Master, or be mastered." By majoring in Business Administration and Economics with an Accounting emphasis and launching Making End$ Meet in 1996, I chose mastery.
Don't you suppose that, when you major in Business Administration and Economics, somewhere along the line you'd learn a thing or two about selling? That's what I supposed. But it didn't happen.
It turns out my experience is common. The same thing happened (or rather, DIDN'T happen) to Gary Keller, who on page 41 of his book writes, "I earned a four-year degree in real estate, and never once did a professor mention lead generation."
He wrote a game-changing book that I wish had been written in time for people like my dad to read it. Unlike that Glengarry, Glen Ross scene (which on page 165 Gary calls "Seagull Management" - little or no training, swoop in, make a lot of noise, dump on people, and fly off . . .) his approach is kind, enlightening, humane . . . and, it turns out, extremely effective. Ten years later in his book The One Thing, he acknowledges that writing The Millionaire Real Estate Agent was, at that time, his "One Thing." Rightly so.
He published it in 2003, just in time to be read by a young man from my home town who was just starting his career around then. He followed directions well, and continues to spread Gary's "Three L" gospel of Lead Generation, Listings, and Leverage. Now in 2015, despite his humble origins from "The City of Subdued Excitement", he's is a nationally renown real estate celebrity.
Clearly, this is no ordinary book. It's about proven results, and its results are proven.
Don't you suppose that, when you major in Business Administration and Economics, somewhere along the line you'd learn a thing or two about selling? That's what I supposed. But it didn't happen.
It turns out my experience is common. The same thing happened (or rather, DIDN'T happen) to Gary Keller, who on page 41 of his book writes, "I earned a four-year degree in real estate, and never once did a professor mention lead generation."
He wrote a game-changing book that I wish had been written in time for people like my dad to read it. Unlike that Glengarry, Glen Ross scene (which on page 165 Gary calls "Seagull Management" - little or no training, swoop in, make a lot of noise, dump on people, and fly off . . .) his approach is kind, enlightening, humane . . . and, it turns out, extremely effective. Ten years later in his book The One Thing, he acknowledges that writing The Millionaire Real Estate Agent was, at that time, his "One Thing." Rightly so.
He published it in 2003, just in time to be read by a young man from my home town who was just starting his career around then. He followed directions well, and continues to spread Gary's "Three L" gospel of Lead Generation, Listings, and Leverage. Now in 2015, despite his humble origins from "The City of Subdued Excitement", he's is a nationally renown real estate celebrity.
Clearly, this is no ordinary book. It's about proven results, and its results are proven.
The main thing I learned from this book is that the business administration knowledge, skills, and tools I've collected are the keys to massive success in real estate . . . and that they're greatly needed by most real estate professionals.
Listed above in the top right corner of this page and expanded below, organized around Gary's "Three L" doctrine, I'd like to describe what they are and how they help, and offer myself as a resource to help you take your real estate business where you want it to go.
Leads
Leverage
Listed above in the top right corner of this page and expanded below, organized around Gary's "Three L" doctrine, I'd like to describe what they are and how they help, and offer myself as a resource to help you take your real estate business where you want it to go.
Leads
- Set up a database and feed it. Your business IS your database. "At the heart of your lead-generation program will be a large, powerful contact management database" (142). "Marketing is at its best and most effective when it is database-driven" (221).
- Consider using a real estate specific database tool especially designed to track, manage, and market listings and shepherd transactions to a successful close and after-sale follow up. I've done extensive research about this, and discovered that the software development community has been very busy creating a fantastic variety of marvelous tools that can help you. Please contact me for help with selection and onboarding.
Leverage
- Hire administrative support first - not just "good" talent, but "Great Talent" who will help you create and implement systems to run your business more efficiently and consistently.
- Documentation like Procedures Manuals. "Despite my best efforts working with hundreds and hundreds of real estate agents over the years, only a handful managed successfully to document their systems without outside help" (160). "So many agents make the mistake of seeking sales support first . . . " (198). "Systems documentation is an ongoing process. It's never complete" (242).
- Ongoing Pareto Analyses - identifying & focusing on the Critical Few things in your business that produce the most results.
- Budgeting & Accountability. "In our experience, inattention to the money and overspending are the norm" (251). One tremendous budgeting technique is to have separate Deposit and Operating Accounts. Once you've developed your budget, transfer funds monthly from the Deposit Account to the Operating Account sufficient to afford the coming month's budgeted expenses. That way if expenses run over budget, the Operating Account will deplete, necessitating a close examination of budgeted versus actual expenses. If all goes well the balance remains positive, liberating you to stay focused on Lead Generation. It's an excellent and simple technique in Management by Exception (283).
- Get professional oversight and accountability.
- Accountability will remain YOUR JOB until such time as you sell your business, even during the 7th level of ownership when you've replaced yourself with a CEO, you're receiving > $1M in annual income, and it is theoretically "passive." The one thing about which you must never become passive is accountability. That is why the appendix of the book is a Chart of Accounts for a real estate business.
Conclusion
Both the third part of the book, and his entire book The One Thing which, again, he wrote a decade later, are about FOCUS.
I was so impressed by how over the span of a decade he emphasized and refined this theme that, as I read through the book and took careful notes, I designed a cloud-hosted, mobile-friendly app just to help real estate executives track and manage their time, invest large blocks of it focused on their One Things, track leads and listings without getting bogged down in minutiae better suited for their administrative assistants, and be accountable to themselves, their mentors, and their mastermind groups. I hope you'll have a look at it and contact me for a demo.
Part Three is called "Staying On Top" which he breaks down into five steps:
Again, this is no ordinary book. Its results are clear, abiding, fresh, proven, and real. I hope that it, my notes, and this review are helpful. For further help, please contact me.
At your service,
Kristofer N. Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322
I was so impressed by how over the span of a decade he emphasized and refined this theme that, as I read through the book and took careful notes, I designed a cloud-hosted, mobile-friendly app just to help real estate executives track and manage their time, invest large blocks of it focused on their One Things, track leads and listings without getting bogged down in minutiae better suited for their administrative assistants, and be accountable to themselves, their mentors, and their mastermind groups. I hope you'll have a look at it and contact me for a demo.
Part Three is called "Staying On Top" which he breaks down into five steps:
- Create a personal plan, then focus on process. (I would suggest that Step One in the making of this personal plan is a Lifetime Savings Plan.)
- Block your time. Ten years later in The One Thing he offers a precise recipe for time-blocking: four uninterrupted hours daily to focus on your One Thing, an hour of weekly planning time . . . and frequent vacations. (See figures 26-30.)
- Get accountability (from someone like me).
- Make sure your environment supports your focus.
- Keep your energy to maintain your focus.
Again, this is no ordinary book. Its results are clear, abiding, fresh, proven, and real. I hope that it, my notes, and this review are helpful. For further help, please contact me.
At your service,
Kristofer N. Freeberg, Economist
Making End$ Meet
[email protected]
(360) 224-4322
