What, if you could create a real estate business where your answer to this question, determined everything, it determined what you did and didn’t do it determined how you grew your business, how you got clients, and really how you thought about yourself and your business and your clients. And that question is, wouldn’t it be fun if like, wouldn’t it be fun if you didn’t have to use the phone to get clients, wouldn’t it be fun if you didn’t feel like you were bugging your friends and family for business, wouldn’t it be fun if I didn’t feel like I always had to be on the hunt for clients everywhere I went and instead they came to meet consistently and automatically through my own website. Wouldn’t it be fun if I could make a million dollars per year and take over six weeks of vacation AND not have to manage a team of people to make that all happen. I, my question to you on today’s episode is how would you answer that question for you? Wouldn’t it be fun? If what, what is something that right now you think is totally impossible? That would be so fun if it came to fruition if you were able to make that happen. So that’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s podcast is going to share a story about how I did just that in my real estate business. And hopefully, by sharing my story, I’m hoping that I can inspire you to hopefully do the same in your real estate business, too. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. I’m your host, Jennifer Myers, listen in, as I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to becoming one of the top 1% of agents in the US even opening my own brokerage full of agents helped me serve all of the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents the same strategies I use and date to became top producing agents. Now through this podcast and agentgradschool.com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside of the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, or just the exact steps to get you to real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. When it comes to your real estate business, how would you finish this sentence? Wouldn’t it be fun if, and when you answer that question, I challenge you to answer with something that you considered to be a total impossibility right now, like totally laughable. And like, you don’t think it’s possible over and over and over again, in my real estate business, I kept asking myself that question and then thinking of ways to make my answer become a reality. So a perfect example, wouldn’t it be fun if I could work with the first time home buyers and only first time home buyers, that’s just one example of the very beginning of my career. Then later, wouldn’t it be fun if I had my own brokerage and then a little bit later, wouldn’t it be fun if I was able to own the building that my brokerage operated out of and have a tenant below me paying the mortgage, and then wouldn’t it be fun if I could teach other real estate agents who came to my brokerage, the exact same steps that I used to create my successful business. And then later, wouldn’t it be fun if I could do that with real estate agents all over the country, right over and over again, I kept thinking to myself, I wonder if, or wouldn’t it be fun if, or wouldn’t it be cool if, and I’m going to tell you a story about one thing recently, not recently, but one thing that a few years ago happened and something that really is attainable for all of us, but when I thought wouldn’t it be fun if when I thought the next thought, which I’m going to share with you of this story, I thought it was totally impossible. So one year, you know, after my business was booming, I had the brokerage, I own the building. Right? All of those things seemed impossible to me. So to me, when I originally said, wouldn’t it be fun if I like the thought of having a brokerage, the thought of teaching other real estate agents who joined my brokerage, my system, and helping them be successful, the thought of owning the building, all of that seemed impossible. But after I accomplished all of that, one of the thoughts that went through my head was wouldn’t it be fun if I could work from anywhere in the month of August, like kind of take off, but not really just not be physically present. If any of you have been in DC in August is pretty miserable. The whole place clears out, it’s pretty quiet from a real estate perspective. It’s really quiet from a, can you even go outside? It’s usually muggy. It’s so hot. And so I just had this thought, wouldn’t it be fun if I could work from anywhere else, like somewhere much cooler and work remotely for the month of August. Now at the time when I originally had this thought, that seemed literally impossible to me. I was running my own brokerage on top of that, I was personally selling $40 million worth of real estate meant the company itself was at a house a week for just me, let alone the other agents in my office, we were doing about 180 transactions. And we had a very small staff. It was like me and one other assistant and a couple of agents doing their own thing. Right. We didn’t have a huge team of people making that all happen. And the thought of just packing my bags and getting out of town for an entire month was like, literally, like, you’ve got to be crazy. Right. But then slowly but surely not right away, I made it happen. It was kind of like when you buy a red car and then you only see red cars everywhere you go. It was like, I had this thought in my mind that I wanted to work from somewhere else in August. I wanted to like, see if it was possible. And I couldn’t, unthink the thought. And then just like driving a car as I was looking over in that direction, it’s the direction that my car, that my, that I went and I veered off into. Right. So how do we create in our real estate business and frankly in our lives, something that once seemed impossible? How do we make the impossible, not just possible, but an actual reality. Here’s how I’m going to share with you how I did it for this particular thing. Just because I think it’s something that like, all of us want, like all of us want the ability at some point in our real estate career, to be able to take some time some well-earned time off. And maybe it’s not this year, especially if you’re a new agent or you’re just getting started as you’ll hear my story here in a minute, that wasn’t the right timing for me to do it. But at some point in your career, if you’re doing this long enough, you’re going to want a break and you’re gonna want to be able to plan this. So I’m sharing this story for a couple of reasons. Number one is I want you to know that even things that you think are impossible in your real estate business actually are possible simply because you thought about them, the fact that you can think a thought, like I want to take three weeks off in August, or I want to work from August from anywhere in August and not be physically present in my business every single day. The fact that I could even think that makes it a possibility. It somehow in my mind gets my mind churning. Even if at the moment when I thought it the first time, which was true, never in a million years, did I think that was possible? The second reason I’m sharing this story specifically is I want you to be able to see that you have opportunities that you might not see in your business at this very moment. And my hope is that whenever you feel like you want to create something in your life and in your business one day, that even if now isn’t the right time, right? Like when you share my story, you might be thinking like, this has nothing to do anything to me. This has, this is no way something I want to accomplish. But my hope is that you see, like, I didn’t think it was a possibility either. And it was an opportunity that I created for myself. And it’s something that I had to work towards and you could work towards whatever it is for you. And I put things over people in place over time to make it a reality. Okay. So in my mind, this is how this all came to be in my market. August is really slow. Every market has a slow couple of weeks. So it might not be August in your market, especially if you’re in a vacation area or, you know, and the beaches or something like that, it’s probably not, but there is a slow three-week period. I guarantee you in every single market, it might be during Thanksgiving. It might be during Christmas, my, to be during the holidays. But in this particular example, I’m just talking about how in my market, that slow time that I saw a year after year was always like the last three weeks of August. It’s the time when, like, kind of, not much is happening in DC in general, but especially in the real estate world. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I have anything to do. I certainly could fill that time. But year after year after year, I noticed this pattern and it was almost like clockwork. It got really quiet in August. And the first few years I completely panicked. Like, I’m not kidding. I can still remember where I was and what office and who I was talking to. And I thought to myself, I’m never going to sell a house again. It’s so quiet. Something has gone wrong. I am literally panicked. And for about the first five years, August got slow. I panicked, I wasted so much time and energy focused on what was wrong and what I could do about it. Then finally, like after five years, six years of watching the same process and being, I wait a second, finally, I was like, this thing kept happening like clockwork every single year to the day. And so what I realized finally, when I got out of that panic mode, I F I said to myself, I’m not going to panic this year. I’m going to use this time to my advantage. The first few years that I realized this was happening, I decided to work. What’s called on my business. Instead of in my business. During that time, this was a concept that I learned from reading the book, the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, which I highly recommend for any, any entrepreneur at all. But especially in real estate, there are times when you have to work on your business, not just in your business. And so I thought to myself, okay, great. I will work. I will take advantage of this slow time. And every August and I will work on my business. And the first year I can still remember it was the year that I created my database and my CRM. I had a stack full of folders, and I just did data entry for literally three weeks in a row. Another summer, the summer after that, I worked in my systems, another summer update all my marketing. Now the summer I did my website. Right? So what I, I knew that I had to make some big things happen in my business. If I wanted to grow my business. And I really kind of just ear marked a big project for August when I knew it was slow. Right. So right now I’m doing a total rebrand. And I shared that with you recently, if you go to the agent grad school.com and you go to the podcast, I talked about the rebound. There’s no coincidence. And the reason I’m doing it in August, because it is the time when things are slower. Okay? So just, I want you to notice that I gave myself, I chose to give myself the gift of using that slow time in my market wisely. And I planned ahead for it so that I wasn’t trying to redo my website in the middle of the spring market. For example, that would have been disastrous for me, that spring market is, I mean, the market is all kind of always happening. If you are a student of mine, you know, I’m, I talk about that yearly cycle of the market. I even talked about it on this podcast before. So there is seasonality to every real estate market, and it’s not that it goes to a halt. It’s just more like you can expect to be working, you know, more with clients and then less with clients, certain types of the year. So I didn’t earmark for example, a huge website project during the spring selling season, because I wanted all of my time in all of my energy during that busy selling season to be focused on my clients. Okay. So I would earmark it for the slower time of the year, which made me so much less stressed out, less beating myself up all year long. And I never felt like I was behind. I knew I would kind of pick a project every year, an EMR ear market for that August time period to slowly but surely keep moving the ball forward on my business. So the first takeaway that I want you to hear here is, do not try to plan big moves in your business when you should be, you know, when the hay is shot and what does it like make hay while the sun shines do not spend time behind your computer when you should be a, you know, polling, the fruit of the seeds that you planted last year. Okay. When it’s busy selling season, do not plan on doing things like that. You need to do that are working on your business, pay, spread it out throughout the year, but every ounce of effort into helping as many clients as you can. But that would happen is one year I had everything set up my business. My business was totally humming. I was kind of just coasting. I had already put at my, as you guys all know, like I love lead-generation being on autopilot. I automated as much as I could. I had a very, you know, slim the support staff around me and I had a lot of extra time. And I, frankly, I kind of got bored. I was hitting my numbers. They can go over a million dollars a year. I had the brokerage, everybody, everything was great, everything was happy. And then it dawned on me that thought again, a whisper came up, wouldn’t it be fun if I could spend this time really taking a break and removing myself from, you know, what I would, what would always happen is I would just end up kind of working or working on something. And I really, at some point needed to break this is about 15 years into my business. And as you guys all know, being a real estate agent for 15 years at a high level of production, owning your own, brokerage it, at some point you get tired. And so I said to myself, I really want to take advantage. Now that I’ve earned this kind of boredom where everything’s really flowing on, everything’s set up in my business. I want to, I want to take advantage and I want to work from anywhere. And so, you know, I finally, I realized that I could have the break and things weren’t going to happen negatively in my business. I heard it done everything that needed to be done. And so it had me wondering what else was possible. My mind started to wonder, and I kept thinking, wouldn’t it be fun if I could just go somewhere a little bit cooler, you know, maybe do something in adventure and not have the other thing that was important for me is wouldn’t it be fun if I could work from anywhere and not have anyone else impacted by my not being there. So the one thing I am true, like for me personally, is I don’t want my choices in my business to then create more headache, more work for other people, unless, you know, you know, my leaving shouldn’t make somebody else’s life more miserable. Does that make sense? And so I find, I finally thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun if I could continue to make a million dollars a year and not have to work at all in August. And my support team did not have to work for the month of August either. And so that was my big dream. That seems like my impossible goal, but so I started my first seeing how to give my support time, my support team time off. And so the first year we did things like batch and automate our weekly emails to our clients, which as you know, is my biggest lead generator. And we did all of that in July. And we even, for example, started in August doing like our, what we call it our best-of series. So we didn’t have to regurgitate the wheel again. We didn’t want to create more work in July. We wanted to create less work overall. And so we did our best of series and we just looked at our stats. When you said, what are the most clicked on articles? And we shared those for our best of series in August and we set it up and we automated it all. So it would come, come just like clockwork every Tuesday, like all of our other emails to our list, to my, to my clients. And it was all set up before the month of August. So we did that the first month and they got time off. And then the next August, we up that all up again. And then Donald did they take time off? I also took time off. And for me again, I had to physically remove myself. Otherwise I just kind of, I love my clients and I just kind of ended up working. So I decided to work from anywhere. And I always had this dream to spend a lot of time on the west coast and specifically in Seattle, I just love Seattle. And so that’s what I did exactly what I did for the last couple of years, every August. Right. I wouldn’t just totally check out. I would check my email. I would talk to clients over the phone. I would work on projects that I wanted to work gone, but I just physically remove myself and just did less for three weeks in August. I spent it exactly how I want it to you long walks it at the lake every morning. I’ve visited friends and family, family, and I just kept asking myself, wouldn’t it be fun if, and then I filled my days with those answers. Okay. Now I want you to understand that this all came because I had the knowledge and the, yeah, I, I, I believe that your real estate business has seasons, not only the yearly seasons, like I talked about earlier, right? Like if I had tried to do this in April, it would not have worked because that is the busy selling season. And I don’t want to be gone for my business at that time. I want to be working. I want to be helping clients, right. I want to be meeting my goals in that season of my business, but not only is there a yearly seasoned to a real estate business, but there’s kind of like this thing of a timeline. I almost think of it kind of like the way that I airplane kind of goes up then coasts and then kind of come up down for a smooth landing. That’s how you want to think about your real estate business. So in the beginning it takes a lot of effort. It takes, you know, like G-Force big day to get off the ground and it’s kind of bumpy and you know, you, you got to have your seatbelt and your they’re not passing out to drinks. Then you can’t use your computer and you really have to stay focused as does the staff have to stay seated, have to stay focused and your focus is getting up. Okay. So that, so notice also it took me 15 years to get to the point where I was able to take these three weeks off. I didn’t do it year one. So if you’re new in your business and you’re thinking like, this is the season where I need to hustle, then I want you to continue to do that. This might not be the year for next year. Might not be the year for, but maybe five years. No, that could be it. And maybe in a couple of years, I don’t know. Maybe you want to take maternity leave. Wouldn’t it be great if your business was not affected when you want it to take off time for your family as it grows, or if somebody gets sick. Right. That kind of thing. And so not only did I time this and also, you know, I, when I thought of the idea, they didn’t do it that August, I thought of it one year and then the next year I kind of tested it and make sure that I, you know, I kind of was around, but, you know, I made sure all of the systems were in place and that my staff had time off. And then the following year I finally took off. Okay. So know that this is a process to put into place. It’s not something that you just snap your fingers and decide all of a sudden. And so I would like to challenge you to think of all of a time in your business and your life that you can kind of shift down to fourth gear. I think in real estate, unfortunately, there’s this kind of culture. I’m not sure why there’s this like sell more, always be selling kind of hustle, always be doing something new, always be like driving, driving, driving business. And what I’m here to tell you is I did not create a million multimillion dollar business that way. And you don’t have to either. It is okay to shift down into fourth gear, whether it’s for a year, for a season, for a week, for a day, whatever it is, but make sure that you’re putting things in place to really enjoy that. And so as every August right now, as of the recording of this, every August, I asked myself, how can I shift into fourth gear? Because I think August is such an important time just to kind of take a little break. There’s something about the summer. You know, one of our students and I were talking and laughing about something that we call the, the August of ease, right? Really thinking about how could I make something easier? How could I just do a little bit less in this one season in my business? And so this year, and listen, we all be, I mean, hopefully you became your own boss because you wanted the ability to control your time, control your income. And so even if this doesn’t resonate with you right now, there’s some version of this at some point in your career that I hope this will resonate. You resonate with you. So this year, as I think about, wouldn’t it be fun if my thoughts are, wouldn’t it be fun to, again, shift down into fourth gear. I’m not quitting entirely. I’m not taking off completely. I’m just doing a little bit less. And as soon as I think about that, I’m full of all the reasons my mind just automatically responds and yours probably will too. Or that of why taking time off is a bad idea, but I’m taking it off anyway. And so for me, what sounds like fun this year of this T this year, this August is I’m taking a break from the podcast. So this is the last podcast I’ll be doing until after labor day enrollment is closed for Asian grad school. I spent a lot of time with our new agents and getting them up and running and making sure that they kind of come in and they know where they’re at. And it takes a lot of time to get people enrolled and get them all up and running. So enrollment is closed until after labor day, labor day, I’m focused solely on the amazing group of students we already have and putting all the love I can and all the time into making sure that they’re meeting their goals and I’m loving on our inner circle members. So although there’s not going to be new podcast episodes until after labor day, I’ve got free trainings and lots of really fun emails that are coming to our inner circle members. In fact, the first free training that I’m, that I’m doing for our inner circle members is called how to grow your real estate business to 1 million without a team. It’s a three-part series that I’m doing, and it starts this Thursday, August. Let’s see. So in real time you would be, if you were listening to this in real time, it’s starting this August, this Thursday. And so that’s Thursday the 19th. And if you’re a part of our inner circle, the Agent Grad School inner circle, you will get an email about how to join that. So if you’re not already a member of our inner circle, it’s completely free go to The Agent Grad School dot com forward slash inner circle. And you will be notified of that training. And I’m sharing some behind the scenes look at of my, of how I got here and my career. I’m sharing another training in September. And so I’ve really what I’m doing is just focused on our students between now and labor day and our inner circle members, and really just loving on the people we have instead of always focused on getting new people in the door. And I challenge you to do that in your business too. So I hope that you take this to heart and you think about ways that you could answer the question. Wouldn’t it be fun if I’m just sharing this one story with you of showing you how that one question and answering it took a few years to get it in, in, in to fruition. And when it started, it started as a completely laughable impossibility of idea. But when you start dreaming big and making things happen that you thought at one time were impossible, your entire life can change. I can tell you that I had no idea how my life was going to change. When I decided to take that leap for myself, I met my husband. I moved across the country. I sold my brokerage. I took agent grad school for my tiny brokerage in Washington, DC, to now I’m getting to work with agents across the US, and even in Canada. And all of that came from asking the question, wouldn’t it be fun if and so much more than I ever imagined would be fun, occurred and came to me in my life. And so you never know what life will bring you. When you have the courage to ask yourself questions and wonder what would happen or what would be fun. And if you’re not scared or not, you know, if you’re willing to tell yourself, like really would not be fun, let me go make it happen and not stand in your own way and actually go make it happen. So I would love to know what you think it would be fun. I want to hear from you. I want you to e-mail me at Jennifer at agent grad school.com. And tell me how you would finish this statement. Wouldn’t it be fun if – and then I want to hear how you’re going to go and make that happen. Not overnight, right? It took me years to finally make my own. Wouldn’t it be fun if happen to the story I’m sharing with you? Maybe it doesn’t happen next year, but what are you gonna do eventually or when you emailed me just answer the question. Wouldn’t it be fun if, okay? So email me joining the inner circle so we can talk on taking this little short break between now and right after labor day on the podcast. And I can’t wait to see you in my email and enter the inner circle emails I’ll be sending out and hopefully in the trainings that you’ll be joining as well. See you then. Thanks so much for being here. Wouldn’t it be fun if we kept in touch while I wasn’t doing the podcast for a couple of weeks? I think so. Talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. We purposely keep this podcast sponsor and commercial-free so we can focus solely on providing real estate agents with the content that will help them grow their real estate business. And how about light? They love outside of the business too, but we need your help to get this podcast and the hands of other real estate agents. So please, if you liked this episode, leave a review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, and also tell your agent friends’ to listen into. Thank you so much for supporting the show for being a listener and supporting other agents along your way to success. That’s what this is all about. See you next time. On another episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. And until then, come hang with me over at agentgradschool.com. We’ll see you there.