Joshua Smith has sold over a billion dollars in real estate his career, closing over 650 transactions in 2017 alone. He’s a Wall Street Top 30. What is it about Josh that allowed him to scale his business from 48 deals in his first year to over 650, and even better, only work about 30-minutes a month in his real-estate business? Read on for Josh’s best tips on how he did it.
Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t happen overnight
It’s important to note that Josh didn’t start out wealthy. He was a college dropout with no money to his name and couldn’t even secure a loan. But he had big aspirations and he had some experience in running a business. Raised in the fitness club industry (his father owned health clubs), Josh was familiar with what it looked like to be a business owner. While his passion still lay heavily in the health and wellness industry and helping people lead healthy and fulfilling lives, Josh saw an opportunity in the real estate industry. He decided to throw everything he had at building a successful business selling real estate.
“If you do this right, the real estate industry can become a source of passive income.” – Joshua Smith
Success didn’t come easily though. Josh worked hard, around the clock. He admits that when he started, he had no spouse or family, so he was able to give himself fully to building his business. Year one ended with 48 closed deals. Reflecting on how important building a sales team had been for selling gym memberships, Josh decided to expand his team and hired an assistant. Six months later, he brought on an assistant manager. 13 years later, he owns nine companies and his real estate business closes over 600 deals a year, with little input from him.
What is it that Josh did that allowed him to capture this level of success when there are agents out there working an insane amount of hours a week trying to figure out how to escape the grind but only closing five or so deals a month, 40-60 deals a year?
How did he make the transition? What do you need to be able to do this?
Josh’s Tips for Building a Massively Successful Real Estate Business
- Recognize that it doesn’t happen overnight.
There is obviously some hustle required. Sometimes a lot in the beginning. But you shouldn’t have to hustle forever. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can have the lifestyle you want. Make sure you’re putting the hustle in the areas where it’s truly going to result in faster change – in your systems, processes, and team growth.
- Establish Processes Early!
These are your proven step-by-step action steps that guide you to the results you want. Josh refers to this as the “cookbook” with all the recipes for running your business. When you follow the same recipe each time you do a process, not only do you save time and stay consistent, you can scale the business quickly because you can duplicate efforts rapidly, you can delegate more easily, and you don’t have to worry about important steps and procedures getting overlooked.
To establish the processes, start by documenting everything.
When we get a phone call from a listing lead, we do x,y,z. Spell it out specifically. Create the processes for exactly what you’re going to do when someone wants you to list their house. What do you do to prepare for that appointment? How do you list it? What is the presentation?
Most real estate agents don’t even take the time to master their own daily processes inside their business and it’s hindering them, slowing them down, and most importantly, keeping them from scaling as quickly as they could.
- Build systems around the processes.
Once you have all of the processes identified, build systems around them. Save time in the actions you do over and over. Then as the manager, you can manage the systems and let your team manage the actions. Josh emphasizes that until you have these processes and systems established, people are not the most important thing inside your organization. Yes, people are critical, but when you’re trying to scale massively, systems and your processes are the most important thing. You can hire the best, most talented person, but if they don’t have proven systems and processes to follow and if you don’t train them on these, they will ultimately fail you. But if you do these things right, you’ll be able to hire the right people, train them properly, and then they will help you really grow and scale your business.
- Expand your team as quickly as you can.
There is so much value in creating a team. If you don’t hire a team, you’re always going to have a job. Hire an assistant. Hire a manager. Hire more agents. If you’re planning on growing a large agency, hire the people you need to take care of the business aspects that you don’t need to be spending time on, like hiring new people. And train them with the procedures and systems you’ve created so that can duplicate the systems you’ve put in place.
- Know your numbers intimately.
Track the front end and back-end financials to create predictability in your business. If you aren’t tracking the numbers, how can you know what it’s going to take to meet your goals? Where your inefficiencies are? Or how to set goals for your team members? You need to know exactly what you need to be accomplishing to have a good ROI. Track everything; the leads per source, the cost per lead, the cost per acquisition, appointments, closings, everything on the front end, but also everything you’re putting into the business to grow it – ads, etc. Knowing these numbers intimately creates predictability in his business. Numbers don’t like, and it only takes a few minutes a day to know how much time and money you are spending and what the return on investment is.
- Don’t make excuses that you’re not wired like other successful people.
Do the work and realize that you CAN be successful too, but you must have processes, systems, and know the numbers so you can adjust accordingly. Basically, do steps 1-5, with no excuses.
“Anytime you put somebody up on a pedestal, all you’re doing is giving yourself the permission to not go out there and do the work that you need to do to become great.” Joshua Smith
Josh admits for the first five years, he didn’t do these things. And instead of making millions, he was pulling all-nighters, working far too hard and far too much. He realized that something had to change, he had to do things differently in his business so that he could enjoy spending time with his family and live a fulfilling life. It was only once he learned all of the tips above and implemented them that his business and his wealth grew substantially. You can do this too.
