$1 Million to $100 Million in sales as a Real Estate Agent

My personal philosophy is that every listing you have should give you at least one more listing from it and one buyer from it. So hopefully, one listing leads to two more sales, which should lead to two more sales, and it just branches out from there.

What's up you guys? It's Graham here! So I did this concept last week of the Snapchat Q&A. I get so many amazing messages on Snapchat; I can't possibly answer everybody. So instead, I'll call you guys up, I'll answer your questions, and I'll post it for you guys to watch. Hopefully, you get some good information from it. Please give me any sort of criticism you have on the video or any ways that can make it better. Sometimes I'm concerned maybe it drags on too long; sometimes I'm concerned it's too long of a video. Please give me some sort of feedback on how I can continue to make these better. I want to make this a weekly thing, and in order to do that and make it enjoyable for everybody watching, I need to know how to tweak it in ways that I think will flow better and that people will actually watch and enjoy.

So anyway, please let me know down below if you have any thoughts. Thanks for watching; enjoy. I ended up getting a ton of messages. The first one is from Kenji Ganassi 069, and his question is: "As a young agent, me being 18, how could I add value to my clients other than saying I'll work hard?"

What's up, Kenji? That's why I actually wanted to call you, by the way, because that question is a lot different than all the other questions I get, and that is important. I think it's important to let your clients know you are going to be working hard for them, but I think it's more important to show them that you're going to be working hard for them. The easiest way to do that, I think, is just to go above and beyond what other people do and to kind of go the extra mile, because I think most people just end up doing exactly what's asked of them.

What I found too is that when you do exactly what's asked of you, it almost doesn't register with a lot of people, because that's just what they expected anyway. So it really takes a lot more than that to really get recognized. Like one of the things that I used to do when I first started, it really made a big impact. Let's say I was showing a buyer around; for instance, and the buyer wanted to see six homes. What most agents would do is just print out one set of sheet. Sometimes it's horrible; it's gonna be black and white, like the war stuff. But that's what most agents do: one set of sheet, which is the information of the property.

What I would end up doing, and this made such a big difference, is I would print out not only the set of sheet; I would print out all the photos as well. Like I'd put like three; you could go to the MLS and print out like, you know, nine photos per page of something. So I'd print out all the photos, then I would also print out the listing history of the property, and then I'd also print out the public records. And I'd hand them a whole packet of every single property that they're gonna be seeing along with all that information.

Because a lot of times when you're showing a property, sometimes someone will ask, like, "Oh, when was this house last sold?" And if you just have a set of sheet, unless you memorize every single house, most agents are just like, "I'll find out for you," you know, like some sort of like stupid crap like that. But if you had this, you say, "I'll find out," and then you look at it; you're like, "Oh, this sold in like 2005, and it's sold for this price." And then you can also show them, because you have the listing history; it was listed, you know, a year ago at this price and didn't sell. It was on the market for this long, and they reduced it to this price, and then you know they had it over here.

And just that information alone is invaluable. Honestly, I think the more information you bring with you that can be valuable to the client; that's such an easy one. So what I would recommend doing if you're gonna focus on a specific area is you go on the MLS, and you could see every other home that's on the market in that area. What I like to do, if I don't know about the people watching, if you have access to the MLS or anything like that, it's harder if you go online. Like the Zillow's and the Trulia's just aren't as good for this sort of stuff as opposed to if you have the MLS.

But the MLS is great because you can do a map search, and you can highlight one specific area that you're really interested in. And you can see every property that's on the market, that's in escrow, that's sold, that's expired, that's canceled, that's withdrawn; you can see all of these things. You can do a search and go back a certain amount of time. So if you want to go back two years, you can go back two years and see every single listing that was ever in that specific area, whether or not it sold, how much it was listed for, how long it was on the market for.

There's so much information, and it's just about studying that information. That's also a really good thing to know. Let's say you have a buyer working in that area, and they've seen everything in the area; they don't like anything. You can go on the MLS, and you can see, "Wait a second; this was a listing that was on the market two years ago. It never sold; it's off the market right now." And this is actually a great place for you to go and either door knock or reach out to this person and say, "Hey, listen, I have a buyer who's looking in this area. I see you didn't sell your home; are you interested in selling? I have the perfect buyer for it."

And that makes you look like such a badass too, because now you just went above and beyond for your client, being like, "I actually went and found a listing that's not on the MLS that I can show you." And you look like a badass to the person who's selling, because you're the agent; you actually took the time to search for something like that. And you're the agent that actually has a buyer that's looking for something like that, so they love you for that.

And that's such an in; if you want to get the listing, let's say the buyer sees it and they don't like it, that's an easy way to go and try to get the listing afterwards. You show it to the buyer, and if they didn't like it, you go to the person and say, "You know, what's holding you back from listing right now? Unfortunately, I didn't like it for XYZ reasons, but if you're thinking about selling, let's put it on the market. This is what I do."

I, you know, and then it's more than just saying, "I go above and beyond," because that's what you actually did. Hundreds, hundreds of listings that don't sell every single day. Hundreds of listings are out there that just expire or cancel or are withdrawn from the market. There's just so much opportunity out there every single day for you to get one of those listings.

My honest answer is they don't track my numbers, and I should be. I don't know about you, but it's something unique about us. The agent is kind of different from all the other ones that I talked to you.

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. And for everybody watching too, there is a chance I could have maybe doubled my sales volume by tracking my numbers. There's a chance I can make a lot more money by tracking my numbers. I have never done that before; maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. So I don't want to discourage you and say it's bad to not track your numbers. I know a lot of agents that do, but I have never done it. But then again, I don't do a lot of volume; I do fewer sales, but the sales I do are in a higher price point.

So like I may sell, I don't know, let's call it 12 to 15 homes a year. Let's say 15 maybe on the high end actually, but those homes are all 2 to 7 million dollars. So it's a lot different to do that than it is, you know, sell a hundred homes a year, but those homes are, let's call it, you know, $300,000. So it's just, it's a different market that's very specific, in my opinion, to LA, where I can get away with something like that.

There's a lot of stuff that you don't really think about once you put yourself in just an uncomfortable position, like being in real estate for example. For myself, you see a lot of things come up in your life that you haven't really encountered before. And those are a lot of mental blocks if you're young like me. I don't know if you're either fourteen, eighteen, or twenty-one thinking of real estate; you're gonna see a lot of growth in yourself. That's the thing, and if you take action and really put yourself out there and have the desire to grow as an individual, you're not only gonna make money, but you're gonna grow as a person. You're gonna have more confidence.

And within one month of putting an action right here, less action, I've seen myself grow so much. That's the thing. Oh yeah, but by the way, Graham, I remember on your video where you talked about first listening. I happen to be the one guy in the YouTube comments section who said he got his, the 18-year-old who got his first listing agreement signed one month, dude! I remember that comment! Oh my god, of course, that is epic man; congratulations!

Yeah, tell me just randomly. Right across the street, I knocked on her door; she said her husband died a couple of months ago, she's been looking to sell, and what do you know? Scheduled the appointment, boom! We're getting it listed on the MLS soon and we're gonna get it sold! Dude, congratulations! That is action!

Yeah, I just want to say make sure you take really good pictures on that. I think pictures are so important to get professional photography and also make sure to price it well. Okay, but I'm gonna give you my information; I really want to make sure you get this home sold! Like, this honestly is so exciting for me; I feel the same way because I know exactly what it was like to sell your first bike—then personal listing!

It's huge! GMN, I'm gonna, I'll reach out; I want to make sure you get this thing solved. And you know, one other thing you can do in terms of going above and beyond, and this would work great, is now that you have a listing, you can go and door knock every other home in the area and invite them to the first open house. And that's the easiest in you can have with all of these people because they have a reason to go to their house and knock on their door besides just like, "Do you know of anyone looking to buy or sell?" Now you're coming up and saying, "Oh, I have this listing; it's coming on the market. I want to invite you on Sunday." It's a great introduction, and they can see that you're the agent that actually takes the time to go door-to-door telling people about a listing.

And it makes you look good to the seller too. Like the seller knows that you're actually taking massive action and doing this, and everyone else in the area is like, "Oh my God, look at this! Look at this agent! This agent is actually taking the time personally to come talk to me." So I think they're more likely to use you in the future, knowing that you're that agent. Plus, you could get more business from it.

My personal philosophy is that every listing you have should give you at least one more listing from it and one buyer from it. So hopefully, listing leads to two more sales, which should lead to two more sales, and it just branches out from there.

Well, dude, thank you so much for this call; I really appreciate it. You got it!

So the next question is from Nitin 300, and this is a question I get a lot of. "Hey Graham, advice to 18, 19-year-olds joining their first brokerage, a hundred percent companies versus big companies, things to look out for and what's not? But what if you already have a mentor who is helping you learn the game?"

Thanks! Well, let's call; I appreciate that you had a good question. Take this way: you're not going 100 percent, especially in the beginning. Now, 100 percent you're gonna be going in just without anything. I would take this split and I would learn as much as you can. You know, the worst-case scenario you do that for a year and you go off on your own, but I promise you, you're gonna be learning so much by working with somebody else. Even if they're getting a portion of the commission, trust me, it's gonna be worth every penny to do that. And it's gonna give you an in to maybe some listings, some open houses to sit, maybe some buyers or some sellers that you can work with, or tenants you can work with; it's just gonna set you off so much quicker.

Yeah, of course! And then one other question you asked me is: things to look out for and what not to look out for. My only recommendation is to find a brokerage that you are really going to be happy working with in an environment that is supportive and where they hopefully offer some sort of training. Last thing you need is if you have like a buyer, and no one is willing to take the time to help you out, or if they have zero training and you go in there and you don't really know what you're doing; that's bad too. So try to find a brokerage where you feel like you really fit in that offers support and training.

Yeah, you got it! Have a good night!

Alright, let's keep going! So the next one is from my lucky Rock, who asks, "For a new agent, do you think cold calling and/or door knocking is good? And then also, do I have a morning ritual? In other words, how does your typical day start?" Am I lucky Rock? Certainly, man, you had a good question! So let me answer these for you: do you think cold calling and/or door knocking is good? And my answer is yes, absolutely! If you can do it, a hundred percent! A lot of like the Brian Costello and the other people are doing cold calling; they do the scripts, they do door knocking.

Yeah, here's the interesting thing: I've watched a lot of the Brian Kocel's videos, and I remember one of the videos I watched of his. He said like, "Would leasing as a waste of time?" You don't make a lot of money from leasing—something along that effect—and that's true. The thing is, with leasing, it's a ton of work, and it doesn't pay a lot compared to what you would put in for a sale. For me, I use leasing as a way to meet clients that I wouldn't have met on the sales side.

Like for instance, I can't mention any names here, but I represented this list actress on a home for lease. This was like five years ago for lease. I would never have been able to get in contact with this person or ever had met this person if it wasn't for them reaching out on a lease listing I had, and then I ended up selling them a home for like almost four million dollars a few years later. And that is a sale I never would have gotten if I didn't take the lease years earlier. Same with another one; I had a sale of seven million dollars, I think it was in April—that was from a client that I originally leased another home to. And then he referred me to this buyer, so this is another client I never would have been able to meet.

The only thing sometimes I feel like with leasing and the way I speak about leasing here is that in Los Angeles, a lot of people lease before they buy something. And a lot of the people that are leasing, especially in like the five to thirty-thousand-dollar month category, they're like, you know, a lot of high-profile people or really no-name people. So it might be different here than it would be, let's say, in like, you know, Kentucky or something like that, where the leases might be significantly less.

But my approach is: the more people you can meet, the better. If you have two clients that both want to see homes the same day, one is like a five million-dollar sale, the other's a twenty-thousand-dollar month lease, I hate to say it, but sometimes you need to prioritize your clients— the ones that you feel, you know, need your time the most. But if you're not doing anything, you know, by all means, I think leasing is great.

But oh, and then as far as door knocking and cold calling, I haven't done that. I tried door knocking and I hated it. I reached a point—I think this was 2012 or 2013; I don't know. I went through this period where I kind of felt fed up with the clients I was working with, and I didn't really enjoy it as much, and I thought, "I gotta break into a new area, and I'm gonna start door knocking, and I should really be doing this." I got hyped up about that, and I did it for a week. I got to the point where for me, it was like either I quit real estate or I stopped door knocking, because I hated it that much.

It was something I dreaded—door knocking. I could not stand it, and to me, it just, it felt weird. I didn't like showing up at someone's door; I didn't like the image that—that maybe this is like a stupid, you know, me thing—but I didn't like the way it made me look to go up. I mean, these are—all like stupid. But like, I didn't like the fact that I had to go up to a home and knock on the door to ask for business. That's a bad mentality to have, by the way, but I didn't enjoy it.

I know a lot of people who make a ton of money from door knocking and cold calling. There's this one agent that I'm not gonna mention any names or anything like that, but she does real estate here in Playa del Rey, California, and she door knocks. And she makes probably one and a half to three million dollars per year for herself from door knocking, and she’s got a whole team that goes on with her, and she's extremely prominent, and everyone knows her for door knocking. So definitely doable; it's just not for me.

But if you can do it and you enjoy it, I think it's great. First, like at this point, she's so established she doesn't have to do it anymore; her thing is you have to continue prospecting, and her business is just growing exponentially. So let's say right now—let's say she does—and these were real numbers here, I believe she does about a hundred million dollars a year in gross sales.

So a hundred million dollars a year, I'm guessing if she didn't door knock, I'm guessing her sales volume would probably stay between seventy million and maybe, you know, ninety million. If let's say she just stopped door knocking, and that's just from existing listings, existing clientele, referrals, buyers she gets from her listings. But I think if she were to door knock and stay consistent with it, the next year might be 125 million; the year after that might be a hundred and forty million. You know, I think it just depends on how much you want to scale and how much work you're willing to put in to achieve that.

I also believe there's diminishing returns. Like, you know, I think once you're making above like a million and a half a year, is that extra two hundred thousand really gonna make that big of a difference in terms of your lifestyle? Maybe, maybe not. So I think it's a personal thing too, but I think just for the purpose of growing a business, by all means, I think it's a great way to grow it.

Yeah, yeah, of course! I don't—sometimes I get these questions and I feel like, "Hi God, I'm like I'm such a failure compared to people that have people that have "—because I'm a terrible example when it comes to certain things. Like, I don't prospect and I don't really have them. My only morning ritual? My only ritual I do is I hit the gym. I try to hit the gym pretty much every morning; that's it. But it's like, it's not like I wake up at like 5 a.m. every morning, at 6 a.m. like, I don't know; sometimes I sleep until like 8, 8:30, sometimes 9:00; I hit the gym.

You know, I like to set a later work schedule. So I like to, you know, if I can be at the office at like 10:00 in the morning, great! If it's 11:00, I'm 15; it's not the end of the world unless I have like a busy day. I prefer for me just a slower pace with clients that I really want to work with. Maybe I do fewer sales because of that, but there I really enjoy in a price point I really enjoy, and I don't have to stress about it.

And you know, I can kind of have me time and that makes me just enjoy everything else that much more. That way, when I'm working with the clients or a listing, like, I'm really in it because they really want to be there, and I really enjoy it, and it's just a really fun experience. Yeah, I just don't feel burned out for it, and that way it always feels like fun.

Real estate always—you know, they have these like crazy schedules and I feel if I'm not doing that as well, I might not be successful. But hearing you say that, yeah, I mean yeah. I mean, that's the thing. I think there's such a fine balance between not having your ritual and like, you know, I sleep in until 1:00, and you know, and then go in the office for an hour, messing around.

I go home, and like, you know, obviously, I think if you're not seeing the results you want, you have to change things. But I also think if you're happy where you are, you don't need to, you know, bust your ass or like, you know, do things that are too complicated.

Yeah, I get to try to post this on like Thursday or Friday. This one is from Live Eric with like Live with like a 3 in it. So, "Hey Grant, my name is Eric. I'm 22 years old, licensed for two years in Seattle, Washington. My question is: what are the necessary steps to advance in your real estate career to go from a few million dollars in sales to a hundred million plus in sales? Biggest do's and don'ts."

Let's go on, man! I think it's definitely a really gradual process. I don't think there's anything that you can do that would increase it that dramatically. But I think it's pretty realistic to expect that you can at least increase your sales volume by about 20% a year, and that's pretty much almost— I think I'm kind of guessing here, but I'm pretty sure that's what I've done since I started is that every year, I've done about 20 percent better than the prior year in terms of sales volume and like gross commissions.

Oh, it's for me—it’s always been about 20%. Now I think realistically I could be increasing that if I worked longer. I think if I worked with more people, if I prospected more, I think there are a lot of things I could do proactively to increase that. But so far from what I've been doing, which is just, you know, be kind of selective with my clients and work with the people I really want to work with, you know, and those referrals and that repeat business is always just kind of increased naturally.

So I think at the very least, if you stick with it, I think 20% is a pretty realistic goal. If you want to increase it more, then I think it just comes down to putting yourself in front of more people, whether that's holding an open house every single Sunday, whether it's like I would meet some clients sometimes at car meets. So like you go to car meets, and like you meet other people with cars and they know you're in real estate; maybe they're looking for something.

Door knocking if you want to do that, cold calling people, doing expired listings, reaching out to expired listings and seeing if they still want to sell or if they would consider listing with you. There's always something I feel like you could be doing if you want to increase your business. I don't think it's something that you can like— if you're like five mil a year or something like that, I don't think you would go from like five to like fifty, you know, one year after another.

But I think it's pretty realistic to expect something like that. Maybe you can go from five to ten, and then the next year maybe like ten to twenty, year after that 20 to like 32, just depending on how much you're prospecting, of course. And the more people you meet, the higher the chances you have of making a sale. As far as having a schedule or something, I would just prioritize clients as best you can, because the thing is when you're one person, you can only work with a certain amount of people.

If you work with somebody who's not serious, that takes time away from another client who is serious. So if you have multiple clients at the same time trying to see the same thing or trying to see properties the same day, try to prioritize as best you can and then do your best to try to fit everyone in. And if it gets to the point ever where you're too busy to handle the clients, I think it's super important you've maybe start to delegate out clients, maybe to another agent, or get an assistant, or get a buyer's agent, or someone to help you out.

Maybe you pay these people, I don't know, 30 or 40,000 a year. But if you're making that back plus an extra, you know, 15 grand a commission, that's a free 15 grand for you. So at a certain point, I feel like you do need to scale or you need to up your price points if you want to start making more money.

Yes, yes and no! I think it's twofold. First of all, door knocking and cold calling is time-consuming. You're approaching one person at one time; it's hard to scale. If you're one person, you can only go to a certain amount of homes in a certain amount of time, and physically doing more than that is impossible. There is something to be said though about physically seeing somebody and walking up to them face-to-face and having a real conversation with somebody, whether in person or over the phone; that's more powerful than an online impression.

There's something to be said about that. But I also believe that online, you can hit thousands of people in seconds in a way that you can never do in person. So with doing things like Facebook marketing, posting Facebook ads for real estate or your services, you know, you maybe spend 50 bucks on that, but you can reach 5,000 people. That might be it; it might be less impactful per person, but I think for the outreach, I think that's amazing.

Same thing with Instagram; doing like a really cool Instagram real estate page could have a great impact. You might have to reach a lot more people to get one sale than if you're door-knocking, but I think it's the truth is, I believe you should do a little bit of everything, especially if you're starting out.

Because to do online marketing—I mean, you can do that in like 30 minutes. You could set that up online any night, and then during the day, you can choose to door knock and cold call.

Yeah, and that's the power I think of just seeing someone face to face. And I think also, people are gonna behave differently face to face than if they're just online. I think you should be doing just a little bit of everything. Ideally, a little bit of everything I think would be the best approach.

And I really appreciate it. Thanks for the questions! Yeah, if you got them, and have a good night!

So as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching! If you have any criticism of this video or any ways I can make it better, any suggestions you have for me going forward, please comment down below and let me know how I can make these better. I'm a little bit concerned that maybe this is too long of a video; maybe the talking is a little bit too slow. Please give me some sort of feedback on this; let me know how I can make it better.

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