Jimmy Rex: Episode 352

Transcript

[0:00:25] NVN: After beginning his career as a real estate agent at the age of 23, Jimmy Rex almost immediately became a top producer. After just a few more years, he burned out and took a break from the field before coming back and finding success a second time around. In addition to his own thriving real estate career, today Jimmy also owns the Real Estate Coaching Company 100K Agent Blueprint. In his new book, The Next Wave of Influence in Real Estate, Jimmy shares some of the strategies he’s learned by talking to 100 of the top millennial agents in the United States today as well as a few more seasoned real estate agents too. In this episode of Author Hour, Jimmy shares some of the lessons he’s learned in his own career as a successful real estate agent and that he’s brought with him from his former lives as a standup comedian and the owner of a meat selling business and some tips for making it to the top while enjoying life in the process. All right Jimmy, so walk us through how you went from being a 23-year-old rock star realtor to broke and burned out?

[0:01:37] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I mean I got into the business in 2005. And my first full year I actually closed 60 houses and I thought I was God’s gift to real estate. I didn’t realize that it was probably the easiest market to sell homes in the history of mankind. And then all of a sudden in 2007-2008 hit and I was working twice as hard in making a third of the money and I just got to a point and I think it wasn’t even the money that burned me out. What burned me out was every single day, these people were – you know I called a lot of for sale by owners back then and I would go and I would meet with these people that are trying to sell their house and everybody was upside down. Nobody could sell their home. I mean you’d sit across from people and literally they were having a divorce as they are sitting there and it just weighed on me a lot. You know I think one year I listed. In 2008 I listed a 187 for sale by owners and I sold 15 of them. And so, I was just really down about the whole market, about real estate in general. I just felt like I wasn’t working very well and I just got depressed about it and so decided to take a break for a little bit and try to get back in fire for the business.

[0:02:42] NVN: So, you saw both extremes of the industry right off the bat.

[0:02:48] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I remember my first year I think I sold 15 homes I never even saw. People would just call me and they’re like, “hey I am buying this house from this builder. I put your name down as the agent.” I was like, “oh, wow thanks.” You know I remember one time a check showed up and everyone was like for $13,000 my name on it, some guy that I met one time didn’t know who else to put it but my name down as an agent and I am like, “this is the greatest job in the history of mankind,” you know? And that was the market that I came into and I was lucky though. The one thing that I did really well was, I hired the best coaches even then while it was going great and so I was learning a lot. I was learning the business and so that when it did crash, I mean even though my income was a third of what it had been, you know I went from making $450,000 my second year to a $130,000 my fourth year and so it was very difficult in that sense but I was still the number one agent in our office. I mean nobody was making money. So, every other agent was depressed, you know just the entire thing was just very negative I guess you could say.

[0:03:47] NVN: So, you’ve obviously learned a ton of lessons over the years but I am curious, if from the beginning with those two extremes if you have a big take-away both from where the market was booming and then a big take-away from when it tanked.

[0:04:02] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I think the big takeaway from when it’s booming is when things are going great that is when you need to double down. The mistake that we make that I made is that you work twice as hard when the market is not going well and you still don’t make any money and so when it is going great that is when you need to double down. That is when you need to really put the effort into being your best and that is where you see the most reward. And then when the market tanks, I guess if I can look back on just think one thing, you know I would say is really pay attention to the parts of the business that maybe other people are missing. The agents that quickly shifted into short sales and foreclosures for example made more money in the downturn. The people that worked on all that stuff did great and it was the people like myself that were trying to do the traditional way that were struggling really badly.

[0:04:50] NVN: That makes sense. So regardless of the fact that you came in during a high time in real estate, I mean this is largely and my understanding a business of referrals and you still came out of the gate as a top producer. So how did you do that?

[0:05:07] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I think the best thing that I had going on for me is I was very active even before I was an agent. So, I had a meat business where I sold steak and chicken door to door and I had done standup comedy. I actually had produced a TV show. So, I have been going out and meeting a lot of people and I just wasn’t afraid. I’d served a two-year religious mission where I was going door to door literally for two years from 19 to 21 and I knocked doors for 10, 11 hours a day. So, I just wasn’t afraid to talk to people. You know selling meat was a 10-hour day just knocking on doors asking if people want to buy steak and chicken and so, I had no fear of the phones. I had no fear. I didn’t realize how few people in the business were actually prospecting and to me it was just normal. I said, “well of course I need to talk to people and if I don’t know anybody I’d better just find out who wants to sell their homes.” And I really focused on for sale by owners at that time because I said, “these people put a giant red sign in their yard and say I don’t have a realtor but I have to sell my house.” If that is not the best lead you’re going to run across, you know I don’t know what is and I will say that you know once I built up my sphere of influence, once I built up my database that is when my business really took off that was in 2010. That is when I really started to build something that I actually enjoyed doing and that’s how I have done it since 2010.

[0:06:24] NVN: Okay, wow. You started real estate so young. It is crazy that you already had all these lives before you even got to that point at 23.

[0:06:33] Jimmy Rex: Yeah. I tell everybody I had a kid who asked me to go to lunch the other day, a 20-year-old and he said he had all of these different ideas in his head and I said, “dude, just start trying stuff.” You know do things, be out there, meet people, join groups, join charities, find value in yourself and give to as many people as possible and then you will settle in what you enjoy doing. But in the meanwhile, you’ll create myself as an asset to who knows who that is going to change your life. And so that is what I was doing. I just had a lot of energy. I was excited about life and just wanted to figure it out. You know I wanted to make money. I wanted to do and experience a lot of things and so I was just hustling.

[0:07:13] NVN: Well, I think that there is such a lesson to be taken away from that too that even though you were in different fields, you were still learning things that were totally applicable once you got into real estate.

[0:07:25] Jimmy Rex: Oh yeah like the TV show, the best thing ever happened on that was I had to go to all of these business owners and try to get them to sponsor. So, I was going up to very successful people at 21 years old and doing a pretty difficult pitch and I got a lot of them to commit to work with me. And so, you know what I would sit down with some guy that is in the sales house or some woman that normally would be intimidating, I just wasn’t afraid of them at all. I was like, “yeah you know I will talk to you just like I would talk to my buddies,” because I was so used to speaking to high end people and even when I sold meat door to door, I quickly realized that the wealthier people bought a lot more meat and so I would go to the rich neighborhoods with the nicest cars and that’s who I would target to stop and try to sell these huge cases of meat to. And so yeah, every industry I was learning skills. You know I did standup comedy. I learned how to present. I learned how to presence and all of those kinds of things that you have to bring to the table because I think the reason why I have so many people trusted me even though I was so young is that I just had so much energy behind it and I was just so confident that I was going to be their best choice and people pick up on that. And so yeah, I brought a lot of what I learned from those other industries into real estate.

[0:08:34] NVN: And I feel like that is a superpower is having the confidence to go up and talk to anybody.

[0:08:40] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, for sure. I mean nowadays, it is a problem you see a lot with younger agents. They always wonder. They’re like, “what if I just send videos to all these people over Instagram? What if I just sent out mass text?” I’m like, “what’s wrong with you people? Pick up the phone, go approach somebody, go talk to them and you know, your odds are so much better doing those things.” It is just that’s the way to actually have success. And so, these younger generations that they get a little awkward talking human to human and it is not their fault. It is just the world we live in with technology and everything else but the more you can get out and face people, you know that was the beauty of my two-year mission. We didn’t have phones. We didn’t have anything. We just go door to door every single day and that was a huge blessing for me.

[0:09:22] NVN: Yeah and I feel like in any industry, the phone or face to face is a huge advantage because so few people do it now. People are starved for that interaction and it really is a differentiator and it is such a simple thing.

[0:09:38] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, it really is. I am just grateful that I grew up in a time where that was. I remember when I was like a sophomore in the baseball team. I just made the team and I was so nervous I was going to get cut. I was so happy I made the team. I wanted to impress the coach and we had this contest who sold the most t-shirts was going to win a batting glove or something stupid. And everyone on the team if you didn’t sell at least 10, for every one you didn’t sell you have to run a mile. And I went out and I just started hustling. I knocked every door in my community and we get to the – you know there is 50 of us on the baseball team between JV, sophomore varsity and we’re going through and he’s like, “all right, who sold more than 10” and it was half of us. And he’s like, “who sold more than 15?” There was five of us. He’s like, “all right, how many did you sell 16 to 18?” He’s like, “Jimmy, how many did you made?” It was 165, you know? I just wanted to play on the team, I want to show coach how serious I was. But I literally went door to door just canvass my neighborhood. I’d go to all the teachers in hall. I just hit up everybody and just learned to talk to people and sell.

[0:10:37] NVN: The irony being that you tracked so many more miles that way than if you lost, I am sure.

[0:10:43] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, for sure.

[0:10:46] NVN: Okay, so let us rewind a little bit. You mentioned that you took a break early on. Tell me a little bit about that break, what happened to you then and how it led you back to real estate again?

[0:10:58] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, so I just was burned out. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore and I said I need to do something that I am enjoying and so I decided. I took off and I started in March I said I am going to coach a high school baseball team. I am going to help coach baseball and then I am going to go back to school for a few months. So, I did that and I loved coaching high school baseball and I was really enjoying being in school again, finishing my degree. And then after about three or four months, I realized that A, I didn’t have any money and B, I missed doing the real estate. And so I got excited again to do real estate and it was really important for me because I immediately was able to jump into back into it like full speed and I hired a guy to be my coach, but I have seen him present before and he is the best I have ever seen at selling and presenting and you know he wasn’t cheap. But I hired him and we went on he called it a listing binge and my first two months back, I think I listed the first month like 32 homes and the next month like 29 or something and I was back. I was all in again.

[0:12:05] NVN: Wow, okay. So, speaking of coaches, over the years you’ve connected with mentors whose names we all know like Tim Ferris and Tony Robins. Tell me some of the big things that you took away from them.

[0:12:20] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I’ve had a couple of special opportunities that a charity I work with Tony is a big part of it. And so, I have been able to spend some time with him and Tim Ferris, I am close friends with his girlfriend and we spent a couple of days together and just had some really neat opportunities and just a bunch of other cool mentors. Bill Pipes has been my personal coach for seven, eight years. He is one of the top real estate coaches in the country. And each one of these people you get around I mean you can see different things that make them successful and the one thing I have learned is just how intelligent these people are, how much they really dedicate to what they are doing. I think so many people see at end product like Tony Robins but what you miss is how much time that guy really spends becoming Tony Robins to put into each speech and each time he is teaching something. I saw it. You know I talked to Tim Ferris, I have a podcast called The Jimmy Rex Show and I formed it after Tim’s podcast. I just interview exceptional people, mostly in my community in Utah but I mean I’ve had some pretty big people on there, NFL players and politicians, Mitt Romney, these different people, huge business leaders. And what I learned from Tim, it was funny because there was a basketball player here in Utah, Donovan Mitchell. He is one of the top player in NBA right now and he is a friend of mine. And he’s told me, “yeah, I will do the podcast,” and it was funny because I was frustrated because I tried to reach out to him two or three times and just didn’t work out. And I was talking to Tim and he’s like, I said, “who is the hardest person you’ve ever got on your podcast?” He said, “well, I am super proud of it but LeBron James. I literally have to set up that interview like 20 times before I finally got him to agree to actually do it. The thing literally got rescheduled almost 20 times.” I was like, “oh, I guess Donovan twice cancelling or not being able to do it isn’t such a big deal anymore.” and it just taught me like how much effort even Tim Ferris, who is the number one podcast in the country at the time, it took him 20 times to get that interview that he wanted. And I learned like this is not an easy thing. No matter what you are doing. It is not going to be easy, there is real effort you’ve got to put in and get in, in order to be successful.

[0:14:24] NVN: The other thing that is really interesting to me is, so in the process of writing this book, you spoke with more than a hundred fellow realtors about some of their tips and tools for success. So, you know I am fascinated by the fact that you are a leader in the field and still seeking out information from other people. Talk to me a little bit about your mindset with that.

[0:14:49] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I mean I – you know it is funny because I have always said the host gets the most. You know you are going to learn the most by teaching other people and I wanted to find out what are the successful millennial real estate agents doing. And somebody actually reached out to me and he said, “hey, I am going to write a book about the most successful business leaders, millennials that I know of and you came to mind. I love to interview you for my book.” And I’m like, “oh, sounds great,” and I was thinking about that like how cool would that be to have one just specific to real estate agents? That is where I got the idea for The Next Wave of Real Estate to interview these top 100 millennial real estate agents. So, I scoured the internet, had to hire a company to really find me a 100 rock stars in the real estate industry. It was so fun because it was all these interviews I’m doing and I was learning so much. I was seeing the things that other agents are doing because we all have our own way of doing real estate. It is very different agent to agent. It really is and those that were having the most success it was really cool because you could see the common factors in each one and then you could see the little things they were doing differently and I know I got the most out of doing it. But it was also I thought about it as like what I would have given for a guide like that when I started in real estate. What I would have given to have a book or a resource to just see what these other people are doing and you just learn, “hey, you know what? It is not unique to have success at an early age in real estate,” which you know when I first got in, it was like, “oh if I could ever sell 20 bills a year that would be amazing.” And the next thing I know you are blowing right past that and if I had any idea how many I could have sold; I probably would have sold a lot more from the beginning. So, I wanted to create that. I know how grateful I am to my first mentors, the people that taught me when I first started and hopefully, I will be able to give some of that back to all of these new agents and agents that are coming into the business.

[0:16:36] NVN: Love that. So, of these 100 people that you talked to, is there any bit of advice that really stand out in your mind that came out of left field that you just wouldn’t have thought of yourself that really resonated?

[0:16:50] Jimmy Rex: No. To be honest, it was actually the opposite of that. All these agents had so much in common and that was the thing that – there was things. There was pearls I was picking up from each interview. But I loved to hear how success leaves a blueprint and to catch that same blueprint from all these agents having huge success. They’re organized, they do the hard things, they are very good at knowing what to delegate and what to do themselves, they just all had a lot of this same characteristics. They did it their own way, they kept a schedule, they were very good at lead follow-up and things like that, but they all had the same characteristics that any successful people or person has. That was the coolest thing to me was to actually be able to pinpoint success by seeing such a large sample of people doing it.

[0:17:41] NVN: Okay. I’m assuming that these people also covered a broad expanse, is that correct?

[0:17:48] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, we had to almost every single state, we had an agent from almost every state we had. Agents working in every type of real estate field, some just do property management, a few are brokers, most are agents. But some you know, we had agents doing as many as 400 deals a year and some doing you know, 30 or 40, but just having a very successful business doing that.

[0:18:10] NVN: Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about what you think that perhaps older generations of realtors can learn specifically from millennials.

[0:18:21] Jimmy Rex: yeah, the one thing that millennials are doing that is really cool, I do it myself is they’re using these tech tools that are coming out, you know, if you’re still just doing the old school game. A, it’s just not very fun if I’m being honest. Real estate for me, my first five years of how I did real estate versus the last eight years is just night and day. I literally build my entire client base now by throwing parties and going on vacations with my friends and working through Instagram and Facebook and these different ways. And by staying in touch with as many people as possible. I can stay in touch with so many more people thanks to social media at no cost or very little cost as opposed to back in the day, if you wanted to reach the masses, you had to spend so much money on marketing and mail out’s and billboards, whatever it might be. Or you just to make a million phone calls and so it’s just so much more productive to do it through the technologies that are existing today and so it’s cool, one of the best parts about the book is I ask each agent what’s your secret marketing tool or your more marketing thing to get clients and a lot of that is revolves around social media and technology and things like that as well. And so, those key things in the book, each interview has one or two little pearls just things each agent is doing and if you add them all up and take the 10 or 15, 20 that you like best, there’s no doubt in my mind anybody that reads and implements it will you know, double their business.

[0:19:43] NVN: And then, let’s look at that question in reverse, is there anything you think that millennials can take away from some of the older generations of realtors?

[0:19:53] Jimmy Rex: Yeah. That was where we go back to the face to face thing, it’s so important to get out and talk to people. If you’re only trying to use social media, you’re not doing any of the face to face stuff. You’re just not going to be able to – even if you get a million leads through some kind of social media channel. If you’re not doing good follow up, if you’re not relentless on the phones and you know, throwing a lot of events where you can see people in person and talk to them, then you’re not going to be able to close the deals. And so, I think the thing that I love about the older agents, I actually put four or five older agents in the book that are all doing 300 plus deals and I wanted them in there to show a contrast and to show a little bit of what this older agents do that makes them so successful as well and nothing replaces that face to face contact or just making the phone calls and that’s the really – the number one thing I get from the older agents or the agents that have been around forever is they just spend so much effort making calls and making that communication with their SOI.

[0:20:51] NVN: So, let’s talk to any listeners who are maybe thinking about making the jump to real estate but have not done it yet? What is the one really compelling thing you can tell them about why they go into this field?

[0:21:06] Jimmy Rex: Real estate is the only business I know of where you can literally make millions of dollars a year with less than a hundred hours of training to get into it. I mean, I don’t know anything else like it in that sense, minus starting your own business or something else. For me, it was the perfect career. I love being around people, I love talking to people. And so, for me, what a blessing that I picked a career that I get to just go be friends with people and everything I’m doing is business related. I mean. I went to a cabin this weekend with 12 friends and I mean, it was a business thing, I looked around the room at one point and I saw every single person but one, a house that was there. And you know, me and my friends will go to the lake on a houseboat this weekend and I get to go play on a house boat for three days, there will be 30 people there and 10 or 15 clients and another five potential clients coming up, you know? I just closed the biggest sell in the history of Utah it’s a 32-million-dollar house. I met that guy at Lake Powell, on a house boat, 10 years ago. And then when we really locked up our relationship on a trip to Hawaii five years ago. You know, I just got the biggest commission check ever given out in Utah from that guy and he frankly didn’t need me to do the deal. But because we have such a good bond and relationship, he makes sure I was on that contract. And so, It’s just like that, it’s just for a career that’s just really cool, you just get to build really neat relationships and you have a ton of friends, you have a lot of freedom to work your time how you want and that’s a plus and a minus. If you’re disciplined it’s beautiful, if you’re not, then it’s the real detriment to success but it is one of the only industries I know where you absolutely get paid for the value you bring to others and I’ll take that over any day getting paid based on some kind of you know, tenure or time in a company or something like that –

[0:22:51] NVN: I mean, you’re making me question some of my life’s choices right now, I’m not going to lies.

[0:22:55] Jimmy Rex: That’s good.

[0:22:58] NVN: Okay, if you could give listeners one little take away that they can you know, put their headphones down and immediately apply to their own business to see results, what would that be?

[0:23:11] Jimmy Rex: The number one thing that I would do is you’ve got to get a presence on social media. You have to. I’m getting 40% of my leads through social media now and if you do it the wrong way, you actually turn people off. But if you do it the right way, you will just attract so many people to you and they’ll want to work with you and they’ll want to be part of what you’re doing. And so, really dialing in that piece of your business because with the world changing the way it is, technology’s coming to the real estate industry. And it’s all going to be about their personal relationship and people are going to want to want to work with the market experts. So you’ve got to create ways where people just know that you’re that much better than any kind of technology they could use and they’ve got to have a personal relationship so they’ll just go through the easiest route they think which they’ll usually be some kind of technology. So, I think building those relationships and especially through social media is the key to anybody that’s wanting to make sure they stay on top of this industry.

[0:24:06] NVN: Are there any red flags or really bad practices that could indicate to people that they’re going about trying to build business on social media the wrong way?

[0:24:16] Jimmy Rex: Yeah, I teach a course. I get asked to speak a lot, I just got asked to speak to big border realtors, the women’s council of realtors and some things about social media marketing and the thing that I always tell that if I could sum it up in one answer, you know, it’s, if you wouldn’t walk in to a group of your friends that from all over, different parts of your life and say that thing, then don’t put it on social media. The big mistake for example is realtors always put like a house they just listed or something like that and nobody wants to say, you’d never walk into a room full of your friends and like guys, look at this house I just listed, just throw it in the room, you know? They’d be like, “what the hell’s wrong with you?” That’s kind of what you do on social media and they actually think the same thing, what the hell’s wrong with you? Why would you post that, they just skip it and you know, with the algorithms nowadays, if you're posting stuff that people aren’t liking or commenting on, it hurts you that much more on other stuff you post, so you pretty much become irrelevant. Yeah, it is important to create value in your post to be able to do things, you know, if you’re going to use real estate posts, what I like to do is I train people, I show them how they can give the right property or what’s a good investment or you know, some of those kinds of things or I give examples of how I built my relationships with different clients and things like that, where you’d get a lot more value from it as supposed to just being like trying to sell something on your page.

[0:25:32] NVN: Yeah. I feel like the common theme with you throughout all of this is there’s just a lot of knowledge sharing in here like you seem open to learning and also open to sharing what you know without sort of h holding it too close.

[0:25:47] Jimmy Rex: I come from an abundance mindset, the more I share, the more I love, there’s like, it just comes back to me, I had an agent literally last week call me up and he said, “hey man, I watched a couple of your videos on YouTube before. You don’t really know me but I’ve got six listings, they’re all my father in law’s and honestly, I can’t get them sold and it’s causing some issues. I told them I know the best agent, I know we’ve never met but I’ve seen your stuff. Would you be interested in taking these six listening and just pay me a 25% referral?” And I got six listings in one day because I share information about real estate to other agents, you know? I just come from a place where I just know I’ll get mine if I help Zig Ziegler if I help enough people get what they want, I’m going to get what I want and it’s always certain, it’s always worked out.

[0:26:32] NVN: Cool. I love it Jimmy. Anything we haven’t gotten to that you want to be sure to share with listeners?

[0:26:39] Jimmy Rex: You know, the book is really designed for any real estate agent to use as a manual. It’s not like a book you sit down and read from front to back, but if you got five or 10 minutes, when the market was really tough, my real estate coach, a guy named Mike Ferry who everybody is familiar with in this industry. He said, “you guys have to take mindset breaks to get your head right.” What I would do is I had a couple of different types of books I put in my car and one or two times a day, I had gone to my car and just read things to get my head right, to get my head back in the game. And the book’s kind of designed with that in mind where you know, if you’re struggling, if you’re looking for a little nugget or if you’re just trying to get some confidence, if you want to lean on somebody else’s success, pick the book up, read a couple of interviews, read a chapter, you know, a couple of this agents what they’re doing or what they do when they hit a hard time and it will put you back in a space where you’re able to be productive and be a good agent. I think that’s what I hope people get out of the book is just you know, as you read it, you learn and you get more confident in yourself and in the business.

[0:27:40] NVN: Cool. I got to tell you, my mom is 69 years old real estate agent and I can’t wait to give her this.

[0:27:47] Jimmy Rex: I love it, she’s going to like it, yeah, it will be great.

[0:27:49] NVN: Awesome. Great Jimmy. You're such a breath of fresh air to talk to.

[0:27:55] Jimmy Rex: Well, I appreciate that.

[0:40:15] NVN: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find The Next Wave of Influence in Real Estate, on Amazon. A transcript of this episode as well as all of our previous episodes is available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.