We're excited to welcome Eric Sachs, CEO of Breakthrough Broker, to the Top 5 family. In this episode, he will share his Top 5 Ways for Agents to Avoid "Shoulding" Themselves.
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Welcome back to another episode of Top 5. My name is Chance Brown. I'll be your host for today. Top 5 is a place where we bring subject matter experts from around the real estate and business worlds together to share best practices that are designed to help you build your business in an awesome way. Today, I'm excited because we have the CEO and founder of Breakthrough Broker, Eric Sachs, on with us. He is going to talk to us about the Top 5 ways that agents should themselves. Had to concentrate on the should there because it was in a different direction. Welcome to the show, Eric. We're glad that you're here. Thank you so much. Thanks, Chance. It's an honor to be here. You've had some great people on, so thanks for having me. It's awesome.
We're excited. We're excited. Talk to us about this concept of an agent shooting themselves. It's funny. Try saying that five times fast. I teach a class. What happened was, is I come from inside the industry, so I had my own team and my own brokerage. It actually happened to my business partner and myself. What happened was, we tend to run around with our hair on fire. Chance, I like to say Realtors are kind of like Doug, the dog from Up, anyone who knows the Disney movie Up. What happened was, with Nathan and myself, we both come from past lives. I think that a lot of us don't really come from, we didn't go to a four-year university on how to sell houses. I came from a past life that I got paid every two weeks. I had this real secure outcome. Then you jump into a world where there's not much oversight. There's not a ton of accountability. What we saw was, was that Nathan was asking me, we're so busy, right? Nathan, I'm running around with my hair on fire. I have five transactions going on. We're driving our children everywhere, right? I think we're glorified Uber drivers for our kids. Nathan was asking me, did you get, you know, did you get that newsletter out to our sphere of influence? We had a huge sphere of influence, right? And I'd say, oh man, I really should get to that. I'll do that next week. And Nathan would ask me, did you get that, that just listed postcard out to that really awesome neighborhood we're trying to get a better penetration into? And I'd say, oh man, I really should do that. And what happened was, was I would say to Nathan and myself, I'll get to that next week. And what we found is that we're, we're as busy today. We're as busy tomorrow as we are today. And we just kept shooting into the future. And we quickly found ourselves running out of money. You know, we're all of the shoulds in our life. We're, we're really, we're, we're going to the back burner. And so as we identified that and Nathan said, I don't want to hear that word come out of your mouth ever again. Like no more shoulds. We really started looking at what the shoulds were costing us in our, in our personal life, because every should is assigned to a dollar making activity, right?
Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of times the shoulds are the big revenue generating potential activities, right? Because those are the easiest ones to say, I don't want to do because they're the hardest. Chance a hundred percent of the time, not sometimes. I've taught this class for nine years and I S I've spoken in front of thousands of Realtors across the country. And I asked them and everyone watching this right now, I'd love to ask you, what are the shoulds in your life? And they'll raise their hand and they'll say, I really should everything from, I should take more vacations to, I should get my CRM dialed in to, I really should track my marketing metrics. I should do email marketing. I should call my past clients a hundred percent of the time. Those shoulds are always money. I never hear, not once.
I really should get my contract writing skills dialed in. I really should get my, I really should get my listing contract agreement, my buyer's agreement, super dialed in. And the reason for that is, is this, and don't cringe chance as a broker owner. It doesn't matter how good of a contract writer we are. It doesn't matter how amazing of a negotiator we are until we have clients to negotiate for. Right. Until we have clients to write a contract for, it doesn't matter. So our, our main job as a Realtor or a real estate professional, first and foremost, is marketing. First and foremost, our main job is finding people that want to buy or sell a home. Everything after that is secondary. Yes, it's good to be a great negotiator. It's good to have dialed in contracts, but first and foremost, we have to be good at marketing. And so every should I ever hear is about making money.
Well, and I think that you bring up a really good point there, and I don't want to gloss over it because I think one of the things that agents get really hung up on when it comes to prospecting, which is part of that marketing piece, right, is creating the need to buy or sell. But what you just said was finding people who are ready to buy or sell. I think that agents think that they're too involved in this process and that are more involved in this process than they really are. The reality is we need to be in front of people after they make the decision that they're going to buy or sell. We're not going to force somebody to make a decision to buy or sell. Of course. We're not going to coax them. It's going to be some sort of life of it, a marriage, a death, a divorce, a baby, whatever that is that causes that need for formation of a decision to buy because we need a bigger house or we need a smaller house. So same thing. And so. Absolutely. One of the things you said too a couple minutes ago is a focal point of the class I teach. And that is some of these things, most, if not all of these things, the actions you have to take to sell yourself. They're not fun. It is not fun. When you write down anyone watching today, when you go home and write down all your shoulds, the shoulds totally suck, right? They are not fun. It is not fun to organize. My CRM is not fun to take three classes on how the email marketing works on my CRM and make sure that I have everyone's email and direct mail address in my CRM. It sounds terrible. So what do we go do as Realtors? It's, it's human nature to go to lunch with our mortgage partner because that's more fun. And it feels like we're staying busy than to do those things that, that, that suck. And so, you know, when I was creating this class, I found this essay called the common denominator of success. You guys can Google it. It's super old. It was written in the sixties, the common denominator of success. And this guy that wrote the essay wrote, there's an excerpt from the essay that was, that's been used by the top coaches in the world over time. And basically it's, he says, um, the secret of success of every person who's successful lies in the fact that they've created and are doing the habits that unsuccessful people don't like to do. And I, what I hate about real estate chance, and I know you don't like this either, is that it's a true 90, 10, right? 10% of the Realtors are selling 90% of the homes. And I have a soft spot for those 90%.
I want Realtors to make a living, whatever living they want. I want them to create the wealth that they want, but they're not due to be a top producer. It's, it's not that hard. There's recipes out there. Like every top producer in the world that told all of us how to do it. Yeah. We just have to do it. We have to execute. Yep. You know, the, the saying that we continually use in our brokerage is daily disciplines repeated over time, equal success. Of course, you know, I give a speech when I've talked to some people called bringing not very sexy back, you know, borrow on some Justin Timberlake lyrics there. Um, but it really, it's the not sexy stuff that makes you successful. Of course. Yeah. Right now it's picking up the phone and calling people you haven't talked to in three years and, and you don't want to call them, but it's super easy now to say, Hey, the current, the current crisis has me thinking about you. Yeah. How are you doing? That's it. You know, so we got into a conversation about this in our brokerage not long ago and yeah, I want to get into your Top 5, but, but I just, I think that agents have a tendency to overthink prospecting.
Um, and in that, I think that they have to be, they feel like they have to be prepared with this script or this or this or this, and really whether it's an email, whether it's a text message, whether it's a phone call, all I want you to do is talk to me. Right. Right. Once you start talking, we can take a conversation somewhere. Most of us are pretty good at, at having a conversation with people. It's just, let me ask you a question. Even if it has nothing to do with real estate, if they respond, now we have a conversation going up, engagement going and build on that. Great. Yeah. So, all right. So let's jump into your Top 5 ways that agents should themselves. Shall we? I think number one, uh, number one, you have to write, I'd like everyone to, I'd like to do the Top 5 ways to not should on yourself. How does that sound?
Not should on ourselves. There we go. Perfect. Let's do that. And I think the first thing I'd like everyone watching to do, number one is write down all the shoulds. So number one, write down your shoulds, how everyone is shooting on themselves. And so write that down. Okay. And so after you've written down your shoulds, there isn't anything on your should list that should not make you money. Once you analyze your should list, everything on your should list is probably there because you want to do it to go out and make money. You want to organize your CRM so you can leverage it to get referrals. You want to, you want to send a just listed postcard out because you want to leverage it to get more listings or buyers. You want to do Facebook advertising because you want to leverage it to get more buyer leads, whatever it may be. Right? So everyone, number one, write down your shoulds.
Number two, I want you to identify your highest money-making activity. And here's how we do that. You're going to look at your shoulds and you're going to say, all right, I want to do, I should do buy versus rent postcards for, to these particular communities because I believe over clear and consistently over time. I believe that if I do buy versus rent postcards and spend X amount of money, I'm going to go out and get two first-time homebuyers. Okay. And in my market, a first-time homebuyer is 300,000. So then I'm going to identify the money I'm going to make from that buy versus rent postcard. Okay.
And I'm, so you're, I want you, number two, I want you to identify your highest money-making activity. Okay. Number three, with that highest money-making activity, I want you to create, all right, I'm going to time out a second on my Top 5 list. Who on this, who on this call are to-do listers? I think the to-do list is the death of action in our world. I used to be a crazy to-do lister, but there's no accountability for us in real estate. So you create a to-do list on January 2nd and five of those to-dos are still in your to-do list July 24th because there's no, you keep carrying it over every day. And the, the human mind, we look at those to-dos and we're like, oh, that's hard today, but I have five other things to do that are easier. So I'm going to do that.
Right. Well, and you know, Realtors have a tendency and not all of us, but a lot of us have a tendency to have that to-do list. That's a mile long with 47 things that are 38% done. Yeah. And they stay 38% done. I love you chance. Cause that part of this class says that we have this whole section on 90, times 10 equals zero. Can you do that math? Yeah. 10 things, 90% done equal nothing. Right. Right. So, so action and actually execution is the biggest enemy to the, to the modern day Realtor period, right? We're terrible at finishing things. I watch my wife. I hope my wife doesn't watch this, but we, but we battle about this every day. She has an idea. She asks me for an idea. She gets it started. And then two days later, I'm like, where did that post go? I thought you were going to do this post on Facebook and we killed, we, we, you know, there's a famous saying, and I forget what the saying is, but like, um, at putting something out there 90% done is better than never putting something out there. A hundred percent. Is that the, the George Patton that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow? Exactly. Exactly. The enemy of success is perfection.
Right. Right. Right. You have all these cliches going on right now, but it's so true. It's so true. They are true. Right. So, you know, I use, I use this thing as an example to people all the time. I'm like, every one of us has a smartphone in our hand and whether it's an Apple or Samsung, when it's time to do a software update, what happens? They come out with a software update and then a week later they come up with another one to fix all the bugs. So if a company like Apple can put out an imperfect product, you should as hell can. Yeah. There's a famous, I don't know how long we have on this and I don't want to drone on, but you ever seen the show South Park? So there's a famous story. South Park almost got canceled in its first season. The guys who created South Park kept going back to the drawing board and they kept missing their dates. They couldn't get the shows out to the producers in time. And the producers said, we're done with you. We were not doing this anymore. And what happened was, is the guys from South Park were like, it's not perfect. It's not done. It's not done. And finally they came up with this idea that they would do one sketch of South Park. That's it. No revisions and get it off to the producers. And it was the biggest, now it's the big hit that you, that, you know, cult following. And they do one, they literally never do a revision.
It, what you're watching on TV is the first shot. Well, and you know, the thing that I try to try to impart to Realtors, and a lot of us are perfectionists and we're type A and we want everything to be right. The only person who knows whether it's right or not, or not right is you. The audience doesn't have a clue that you wanted this to be just this slight shade different or this wording different. Just get it out there, man. So let's get, let's get back to number three, get your highest money-making activity, get rid of your to-do list. The highest money-making activity is your only to-do. And you work on that, whether it takes 40 or 60 hours, you get that to do a hundred percent done. So you take your highest money-making activity, and this is buy versus rent postcards. And then you write a recipe.
You do write a to-do list for that one thing. It's like writing a recipe to bake up brownies. And it's literally like, find my buy versus rent postcard, find my, you know, where do I want to send this? Print, stamp, label, mail, whatever you want to do. And then once that's done, the weight, the feeling you get as a Realtor, when you get something a hundred percent done is amazing. It's almost addictive. And that's why the top 10 percenters are so good at their systems because addicted to that feeling of getting things done and out. And so I want you to find your highest money-making activity. And that is the only, that is the only thing, right? Another, another thing I'd like you guys to do is try a to-don't list. Number four, try a to-don't list. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to get a daily activity log. All too often, the enemy of execution is our habits, right? And so, you know, this Realtor, you wake up in the morning, you drink a cup of coffee, check your email, your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, you go to the office, they come in and talk to you for 15 minutes. They go talk to 20 other Realtors. They sit down, they check their Facebook, their Instagram, then they go to lunch with a title partner for two hours. They come back, they check their Facebook, their Instagram, they go home and they tell their husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend. Oh my God, I was so busy today. And our significant others are like, really? Cause I'm not seeing the money coming in. So I think habits are what we need to work on. So I'd like, you can download an activity list. If you Google activity list, there's like 10 million, just download one, do, do 14 days in your activity. And then I want you to look at it and write a two don't list and, and get rid of all your, your, of what you're so busy on. That's not a money-making activity. Is that fair enough? I'll give you a real world example that I just did. And this, it makes me feel stupid to tell this story, but I'm going to tell it. And I got the inspiration from my wife who did it and seemed far more sane after she did it. But I took all the social media off my phone. Yeah. I can't go on my phone to check Facebook. I can't go on my phone to check LinkedIn, Instagram, anything. It's a great idea. And as stupid as this sounds, I went from seven hours a day on my phone to now only four, which still seems like a lot. But when you're, you know, Realtors are on the go and you're moving around and you're on the phone talking and you're emailing and everything. But I mean, that's three hours a day of back into productivity time that really wasn't spent doing anything. I can try to try to justify it to myself, but the truth of the matter is, I mean, add that up over a month. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. A lot of time. I should try that. My wife would love you. I'd be like, yeah, my friend chance, he told me to do this. She'd be like, good. He's off his phone. So I think those are ways. And I think last, you know, if you're going to do those three things, I'd like you to really read some books. And so I'm a big fan of, I'm a big fan of getting things done by Alan. I'm a big fan of, oh my gosh, I'm drawing a few blanks here. I'll send you the list so you can put it of a bunch of books. Um, but there's a ton of books, uh, uh, habits by Charles Duhigg, um, is a great book and just really. Yeah. Brandon Burchard, the high level habits or whatever his is. Yeah. It's coming up in our book club, high performance habits, really focusing yourself on execution. And what I say is compartmentalized. So that's what that does by taking, getting away from your, uh, to-do list because it shuts your brain down and going to a to-do list of one. And those to-do lists should be your highest money making shoulds every week.
Yep. And, and you'll see, you'll see a transformation in, in your income. If by just executing, you'll see a transformation in the amount of homes you sell and the things that you're doing in your life for execution. Yep. So we, you know, and I think it's, there's a little bit of a difference, right? If you're, if you're a single sole proprietor, Realtor, of course, and versus a team that has admin and things like that, you can probably manage a little bit more. Um, but you know, what we, I mean, if you look at my wall right here, written up on the glass, uh, is a do-doing done board, which is an old Tom Ferry trick that I learned a decade ago, but it's still, it forces us to prioritize. We use a system inside of our brokerage called agile. Um, and you know, it's not something proprietary to us. You can go Google it. It's a, it's for lack of better terms, it's a glorified spreadsheet. Um, but what it does is it causes you, it forces you to prioritize the to-dos, right? So you can still have your list, but you're prioritizing and you're only going to work on that one or two things at the top. And because you've now done exactly what you said, which is you've created that recipe, you take that completed task and you put it down here in this little library and look, absolutely. I love it. Next year, when you want to do pie day, you have, these are all the steps I have to do to do pie day. I love it. And it's done. And if you, as things grow and evolve, you can scale and change the recipe a little bit, but you're, you're left with something that's there and ready to go. And so at the end of the day, you almost start to get sort of like a, uh, you know, the, the analogy I use is anybody who's ever seen the movie coming to America and, you know, Mr. McDowell's hiding under the desk with the McDonald's playbook. Yep. You get your own playbook.
These are all the things that have to happen in my business. I'm pretty sure most of the people watching this aren't going to remember coming to America. I do. Forget about his book. Go watch coming to America tonight. I love it. I love it. Awesome. But you know, hopefully this is helpful. Hopefully just by identifying that when you say the word should, you're losing money. So in the class, I identify. So what happens is real quick exercise for everybody to close this with is if you look at your money-making shifts and you identify how many homes you should sell. Okay. So for example, newsletter to my sphere of influence, clear and consistently over time, we'll get me 10 referrals a year. Uh, uh, by verse round, we'll get me five open houses. We'll get me five. So that's 20 transactions. Then I'm shooting on myself. Okay. And then you multiply 20 times your average sales price.
Okay. So 20 times 500,000. That's a big number. That's your sales volume that you're missing out. And then you multiply that by your average commission. That's the money you're losing every year by shooting on yourself. So if everyone wants to do that exercise, you're going to look and see that when you say the word should, you're actually losing money and that should get you motivated enough to, to complete your shoulds. So you can bring the money you want to bring home, uh, to your family. And that's how it works. I mean, the example you just gave in my market, that's $180,000 that somebody is leaving on the table. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, imagine going home to your significant other and saying, man, I, I totally could make an extra 180,000 this year. I just, I just don't think I want to. Right. Right.
Wouldn't go over well in my house. No, not at all. Oh, it wouldn't go over well with me. Much less my significant other. Right. I want to spend some of that on there. So, uh, those are good exercises for anyone watching this. Uh, try that. It's a little eyeopening and then leverage the, the, some of these skills, um, to do that. All right. Well, that's awesome, man. Thank you very much. Um, anything you want to say about Breakthrough Broker before we go? Uh, you know, it's Breakthrough Broker is, uh, we have 461,000 real estate professionals using it in North America right now. It's a truly no cost for Realtors. We have an advertising based platform where we, um, make our money through advertising. And so we hope you get, there's over 3000 pieces of content on Breakthrough Broker and we hope you guys can leverage it to sell more homes, execute, and make more money.
It's a phenomenal tool. Thank you. Phenomenal tool. Awesome. Well, thank you, Eric. Thank you for watching today, everybody. I appreciate it. Hope that this is a great opportunity for you to take some things to really take some time, step back, look at your business from a 30,000 foot overview and the things that you should and should not be doing and then going out and actually doing them so that you make more money and you're a more successful agent. So thank you for taking the time to watch. Bye.
