The Faithful Real Estate Agent | Christian Real Estate Agent, Real Estate Systems, Work-Life Balance

277 | Worn-Out Agents: Implement Better Real Estate Systems to Grow Without Sacrificing Your Family and Faith w/ Jim Remley

• Garrett Maroon | Realtor of Faith, Work-Life Balance Expert, Help You Sell More Homes and Make More Money, Real Estate Agent, Real Estate Dad

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You can be a successful agent on paper and still feel exhausted, scattered, and behind every single day. If you’re quietly battling real estate agent stress, feeling the weight of real estate agent exhaustion, or wondering how long you can keep running your business this way, this episode is for you. In this conversation on The Faithful Agent Podcast, Garrett Maroon sits down with veteran coach Jim Remley to unpack why so many agents burn out at the 10–20 deal level — and how building intentional real estate systems is the key to growing without sacrificing your family, your faith, or your mental health.

Many high-performing agents are quietly struggling with real estate agent stress, real estate agent exhaustion, and burnout they don’t know how to fix. Jim shares why this pattern isn’t caused by laziness or lack of talent — it’s caused by the absence of intentional real estate systems that bring structure, clarity, and accountability to your day.

Instead of working from clarity, most agents fall into chaos — reacting to emails, chasing deals, and letting their calendar control their life. Jim explains why real estate systems aren’t about cramping your style… they’re about creating freedom, leverage, and long-term sustainability. If you want to stop living in survival mode and start avoiding burnout in real estate, this conversation will reshape how you think about your schedule, your standards, and your stewardship.

Jim walks through his practical real estate systems and frameworks to help agents bring structure, accountability, and consistency into their daily routines.

You’ll also learn why accountability is the missing link for so many Christian agents dealing with real estate agent mental health struggles. From treating yourself like a $500,000 employee to measuring productivity through participation, Jim explains how to build habits that compound over time. If you want real estate systems that support work-life balance, faith-aligned success, and predictable growth, this conversation will challenge the way you think about your business.

This episode will help you rethink how to grow your business without real estate agent exhaustion or hustle culture guilt.

If you’re tired of reacting to your business instead of leading it, this episode will show you how to prevent real estate burnout using proven real estate systems that bring clarity, discipline, and freedom back into your life.

You’ll Learn:

  • The Five Non-Negotiables for daily structure and clarity
  • The 4-1-1-1 model for consistent lead generation
  • Why most agents get stuck at 10–20 transactions a year
  • How to reduce real estate agent stress and exhaustion
  • How to prevent burnout without sacrificing family time

142 | Why Having a Dynamic Listing and Buyer Presentation is Important w/Jim Remley


Connect w/ Jim - https://erealestatecoach.com

Resources & Opportunities:

📞 If you want a personalized plan to add 2-3 deals/month without buying leads, cold calling or grinding harder, book a Freedom Call here?
---> https://calendly.com/garrettmaroon/freedom-call

➡️ Get the FREE Audiobook of my Book - The Balanced Breakthrough - HERE

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That is fantastic. All right. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Faithful Agent Podcast. We have, actually, Jim, I think you might be the only ever second time guest. Or is this your third time? No, this is second time. Yeah, okay, okay. And as I mentioned to Jim earlier, you all will be very disappointed every time I talk. Jim has much more wisdom than me, but man, I am so glad that you're here. I think the first time you were on, Tyler was still the co-host and man, you shared about, yeah, I think listing presentation, buyer presentation, maybe both of those. We'll link that in the show notes. You need to go listen to that agent. It will make you sharper and better and more excellent at what you do. But man, Jim, I am so glad that you're here. So glad that I'm gonna share a Christian dad joke with you and uh we'll see ah if this is good. Last year, okay. m Last year, my wife and I traveled to Europe for a Christian conference. At customs, an agent held out his hand and said, papers. I replied, scissors. And I was glad that I won that round. I don't know how that's a Christian dad joke other than they were going to a Christian conference. Yeah, yeah, but that's, like that. That's actually, that's pretty good, no. So today we're gonna talk about, I don't know how do you transition from that, Jim, but we're gonna talk really specifically to that agent in that 10 to 20-ish range, right? You've been in the market for a little while, you're doing a good job, you know how to sell, but maybe you feel kind of stuck and Jim has a lot of wisdom that he's gonna share with you, so. any other agent, tune in, this is gonna help you whether you're trying to get to that mark, whether you were, maybe you're growing a team, you wanna know how to help those agents too, this is gonna be beneficial to everyone. So, so glad that you're here, Jim. Brother, please do a quick introduction and then we're gonna jump right in. I'll introduce myself? Yeah, you bet. I'll do that. Let's do it. Remley, I've been in the business for 35 years. So I've been around a while. College dropout. I worked in a lumber mill before I got my real estate license. struggled for first six months in the industry. But second year I figured it out, took 150 listings, top 1 % agents in the nation. Opened my first company at 23, grew that to 17 offices in Oregon, became the largest independent in Oregon. And then I worked for NAR for 10 years, teaching all the designation programs. And then got recruited to come down and help another company grow. We grew that from 38. agents to 250 agents became one of the top 500 companies in America by per agent productivity in a small southern Oregon town, a population base of 80,000. So that's my background. Today, I am a coach. I coach agents and brokers nationwide. My niche, my specialization is helping brokerage owners and team leaders recruit and retain experienced agents. That's my main focus. Yeah. ride up your alley. We'll make sure we get all that in the show notes too. I know many brokers audience that coach specifically with Jim and they love it. They rave about it genuinely. So if you're wondering how to grow your business, reach out to him for sure. So Jim, let's dive in, right? So that agent, that 10 to 20 a year agent, and there's a lot of those agents, right? And what I find, and I'm curious your opinion, but what I find when I'm coaching those agents, they kind of feel stuck, right? They're either, I don't know how to break through or I don't want to do more deals because then I'm going to be gone all the time. So, you know, I don't know how to do more. without staying uh present and doing all the things I'm already doing with my life, I'm kind of happy where I am. And honestly, a lot of brokers too are kind of fine, just stay there. I don't want you to grow a team because my model doesn't work. you know, talk to them. What are the challenges? We'll start there. What are the challenges you think of that agent that's kind of right there in the middle, that gets kind of stuck there? What challenges are they facing? it's interesting. I had my buddy, James Colburn, him and I have gone back a long time. He told me a story and James, if he listens to this, he'll appreciate this because he told me this story on their share. But he was an agent doing a hundred deals a year. Super incredible, right? The same type of person you're talking about, just an incredible agent. But his coach asked him this really important question, which I thought it was really telling. He said, yeah, we can coach you all day long, but let's start with this. You got young kids at home. When's the last time you played Legos with your kids? And that was like a kind of a foundational question for him, because I think it really speaks to what we're all trying to do here, which is you want to design your life before you design your business. And your business needs to serve your life, not the other way around. Your life should not serve your business, right? So let's start with that. I know you preach this as well. Let's start with uh life design. So in a perfect world in 2026, what does your life look like? I mean, how many vacations are you taking? Where you live in? How much time you spend with your kids every day? Are you able to go ball games? What do you want to do personally? How about your health? All those things that you want to design your life around. Then we say, how is my business going to serve that? And I've got to make my business serve that in the right way. The problem with most agents, and I would say 10 to 20 30 million dollar agents, or 10 to 20 transactions a year agents even, is that they really are just falling into business and they're not intentional about their business. And so I think it's to start with, I can't work from chaos, I have to work from clarity, and I have to say, I'm going to outline a system that I'm working, and that system is going to serve the life I want to lead. And the system is the key. And so we have to look for the system. And there's a really good uh point around this, and that is 80 % of all businesses fail, right? And you say, why do they fail? But the reason they fail is because the inverse statistic is true as well, which is that 95 % of franchises succeed. Why do they succeed when 80 % of businesses fail? The reason is, what are they selling? They're selling a system. And when you plug into the system, you follow the system, you create profit. What we need to do is adopt a rigorous system for our business that works and it works within the life we're trying to build. Systemization, number one thing we need to do. system is, so, okay, so, because I think, right, thinking about the agents that I know. It's like you get into business, you're just there to create time, money, energy, freedom, whatever, family, freedom, whatever it is that you're trying to do. And all you're focused on is how do I hit six figures? There's no talk about what's an exit strategy, there's no talk about once I get there, how do I break through, or what if I get stuck? There's no conversation, it's just I gotta figure out if I can do this or not, which all of us have been there, right? I gotta figure out if I can even do this. And then you get to that point, exactly what you're talking about. You've developed such bad or no habits, right? To your point, I love that you said just kind of fall into business, right? When I was traveling around talking a lot pre-COVID about teaching a 36 touch, right? They'd say, oh, I work by referral. Great, tell me what's your system. Oh, what do you mean? Like you're getting referrals. You don't work by referral, right? There's a total difference there. And so systemization. Now, A lot of people, well, systems to them is a bad word, right? That's gonna cramp my style, and maybe their style needs cramping, right? But, you know, that's not me, I'm not that person. So how do they start to understand what kind of system, what does that mean? Can you unpack the meaning of that word, and then what does that even look like? Well, the most dangerous thing we were all given as realtors is freedom. were given a shiny new license. I came from working in a mill and at the mill I worked graveyard and I pulled lumber off of a chain. And if I didn't do my job, they'd fire me, right? You got to do this, that and the other. When you become a realtor, you're given freedom and then you're able to come in late, go home early. No one tells you what to do. All your brokers are really kind of afraid to tell you what to do because you're afraid you're going to leave them if you do. So we have to insert back into something, which is what I call accountability. We've got to be accountable to ourselves and we've to be our own best CEO. And I'll tell you the number one way you can do that. The number one way you can become your own best CEO is imagine, step away from your business for a second, and imagine you're hiring someone to do your job. And you're going to write them a check for the amount of money you want to start making every year. Let's say it's $500,000 a year. You want to earn $500,000. Imagine you're paying somebody $500,000 a year to do your job. What are your expectations? In other words, what's your job description for them? I'm going to guess a few things. I'm going to say you're probably going to have them come in at eight or nine in the morning. You're probably going to have them using a CRM system of some kind. You're probably going ensure that they have a listing presentation they've memorized, a buyer presentation they've memorized. You probably want to make sure they're active on social media, they're using video, that they are um definitely uh following up with clients in a systematic way. They have drip campaigns, all the things you're thinking about. And then I want you to apply that standard to yourself and say, am I living up to that$500,000 standard? Most of us are not. And then we want to still earn $500,000 a year, but we're not applying this rigorous standard of performance that we would to anyone else. And when we do this and we say we treat ourselves our own best employee, then we start to perform at a higher level. then that's the bottom line. interesting story about myself, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, me owning 17 offices at one point in my career, I thought I worked really hard. I thought I did. And then I got, you know, went to work for an AR and then I came back and I got recruited to work for another guy and I was suddenly an employee. I never worked harder than when I worked for him. I worked harder for him than I did for myself because I had somebody to be accountable to. So we need to have some accountability in our business. And that's, that's step one, meaning you've got to have a really good job description of what's your supposed to be doing every day. Love that concept of, it applies to anything, right? Even if we take it from a biblical worldview of the Lord has essentially written you this check, right? And hired you as a steward of the opportunity he's put in front of us. And so if I looked at it in the opposite way, right? had a friend who, like that's such a good concept, Jim. I had a friend who deals with like money management and all those things. I messaged him one day, I said, know, brother, I'm concerned I'm about to fall in love with money. Like I'm thinking about it all the time. I'm reading about all the things. And he said, you know, got to pray against it. But then he said, if I gave you or if you gave me some idea, $10 million and said, go invest this, how long would you expect me to learn about it? Right. How excellent should I be at it? He said, the Lord has done immensely more for all of us. And so I love the concept of saying if we stepped out and looked at it and said, if I was going to bring in a hundred thousand dollar employee, whatever it is, what would they be doing all day? It's just reverse engineering that and then saying, OK, maybe I need to go do that. Right, is that that concept? I think Jim, it's be, do, have, right? Like so many people have it backwards. I'm gonna have what they have, so then I'll do what they do and then I'll be like them. No, you gotta become that person first. If you're not making 500K, if you're not making 100K, it's because you're not that person yet, right? And once you become that person, then you do what that person does and then you have what that person has. And so someone starts. act as if you're already there. If you want to be like, uh, I lost 30 pounds this year, right? And I did it cause I, yeah, yeah. So I had to add a high cholesterol. So I had to change my diet and you just start acting as if you're a, you know, that person you're going to become that person. And it's the same thing with business. You start acting as if you're a $10 million producer and you model exactly their behavior. You're going to start to produce at that level to think about. No, please. uh Two quick things that people say, okay, the greatest gift I can give myself is clarity, right? So when I give myself the gift of clarity, remove decision-making. You look at all great people, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, they did a lot of things of removing distraction, removing a decision-making out of their day. We need to remove decision-making. That's our biggest challenge. We get up in the morning and we think we have this freedom to make a bunch of these decisions, but we really shouldn't have that freedom because that freedom is dangerous for us. Most of us can't handle that freedom. So what we need to do is say, okay, I'm going to have what I can. We preach to this in my coaching. I have my five non-negotiables. It'll be different for everybody listening, but my five non-negotiables are what I have to do every day to win the day. After that, I get freedom. It's kind like your kids and telling them you've got chores to do. When your chores are done, you have the freedom to go play outside. What happens with people that are in our business is they just wake up and have freedom and they don't make any money. But our five non-negotiables for, your case, you might be, I'm going to work the perfect 36 that Garrett told me to do. I'm going to walk my 36. this month, right? It could be, I'm going to call five FISBOS. I'm going to send out five thank you cards. I'm going to call five people in my SOI. I'm going to post five things on social media, whatever it is for you. But the thing you have to remember about this is it cannot be vague. And what I mean by that is you've got to look at it almost like exercise in that there has to be a number attached to it. So I can't just say I'm going to make calls. How many calls? It can't just be I'm going to prospect. How long are you going to prospect? Very highly specific. And once you knock that out, then you've got freedom. Hmm, super good. So how are you helping? So an agent, and that 10 to 20, right? That's what we're talking about, but this applies to everybody, applies to me too, right? How do you help them start gaining clarity on what their non-negotiable should be? It's different for everybody, but for the vast majority of agents we know 70 80 percent of businesses can come from their sphere. So the number one strategy that you can look at all these different sales funnels and we teach we teach hundreds of sales funnels in our courses. But. The number one sales funnel is your sphere. You have no business tackling anything else until you got that dialed in. And so for us, that means you're touching your sphere 20 to 50 times a year. And we are first dialing that in right now. And I'll tell you what we're doing right now as we speak, because we're recording this in November. But we started what we called our fall fast start, which is a blitz during the fall season, a 90 day blitz for our coaching students. But you can apply this any time of year. So in the 90 days, we're saying we're going to do four things. We're going to call everybody in our sphere of influence at least once. We're going to text everybody in our sphere of influence at least once. We're going to send everybody in our sphere of influence an email at least once. And we're going to attempt, we probably won't pull it off, but we're going to attempt to have a networking meeting with everybody in our sphere of influence at least once. uh And when I say these messages are not generic, I'm not doing a blast, it's individual personalized conversations with every single person. So that would be an example of what we call our five non-negotiables of what I would be plugging in first. And then if I still have time, might plug in another what we call prospecting pillar, which might mean I'm going to go out form a market area. I'm going to do open house marketing. I'm going to go after FizzBos or Expire or something else. But first and foremost is my SOI. Hmm, that's good. So it is this, you know, the challenge I think of any of us, but when we have diluted focus, we have diluted results, right? That's from Wealthy and Well-Known by Rory Vadin, I think he wrote that book. But he talks about that all the time. And I think as agents, that is 100 % what happens. We're all over the place, right? Not that the agent who sells a lot of homes doesn't struggle with discipline, right? Of course they do. But if you're that 10 to 20, and like you said, you kind of fall into the business. instead of systematically create it through the activity and those kinds of things, right? We've become so undisciplined that having those non-negotiables, we might not even know what they are. You what did you do? A comment, and you've dealt with this Jim, but a common question I'll get when someone wants to get coached is, talk to me about your business. Where'd your business come from? What do you mean? mean, you know, tell me how many deals did you do in the last 12 months? Oh, I don't know. Okay. Well, like, can you tell me how many you sold from your sphere? I mean, like most of them. All right. Is there a number attached to that? Right? Like we don't even treat it like a business. Right. point, we're just like agents, we're not business owners, and so we kinda wrestle and struggle with that. So they get into this mindset, I love the idea of your five non-negotiables, right, is that a specific number or is it like, create as many for you as you need or is five like this magic number that you found works best for most people? Yeah, the five is a big number. We live and die by the five because studies show you're not going to get more than six major things done in a day. So I think I'm trying to bring that down a little bit to five. And we find that that just that number works. uh We also pair it with what we call the four one one one one strategy. So this strategy, if your listeners just apply this, it's like magic and 30 days, they'll have transformation in their business. So the four one one one one strategy is and it goes right along with the five by five. is I am going to spend one hour a day in lead generation, 1 1 of my day. I must do this. If I don't do what I don't schedule, I don't schedule what I don't prioritize. So I've got to prioritize. It's got to go on my calendar. And I got to do it. In that hour, my goal is to set one appointment with a buyer, seller, or sphere member. Sphere member counts just as much as the buyer or seller. Yeah, coffee. Yeah, face to face. Or I'm showing homes, or I'm setting a listing appointment, right? One of the three. And then because I'm setting one appointment, I'm going on one appointment a day. So that's my third one. My fourth one, which is the most missed one and the most biggest opportunity missed for all realtors nationwide forever, is I'm adding one person a day to my sphere of influence. So if I apply that standard, my business will, by nature, if I run the strategy, I should at least close 22 transactions a year. And I'll tell you exactly why. Even if I'm a brand new agent just got my license today. The reason is of the 10 to 1 ratio, which I know you've been coached on, I've been coached on. For every 10 people in your sphere, you'll average one closed sale if you're touching them 20 to 50 times a year. Here's the problem. If you go back and interview all the experienced agents and all the agents that are doing 10 or 20 transactions, you say, once the last time you added some of your spheres, they'll be like, I don't know, because they're not intentionally doing it. They only add past clients, which they might be adding 10 people a year. So when I intentionally add one person a day, and by the way, the average American has 27 conversations a day, so we easily can do this. Hmm. I'm going to naturally, over the course of a working year, add 220 people. There's 220 working days in the year. 220 divided by 10 means that's 22 transactions added if I'm doing my job. So it is like magic, but it's systemized magic, making things happen because I'm intentional about it. it's amazing that the magic comes after you work and you do good work, right? Yeah, it's incredible how that happens. OK, so to make sure I understand right for our listeners, because that's really good. The five by five is the five non-negotiables, but sounds like geared towards lead generation, right? These are the five things I'm going to do each day. And then the four one one one one one one one one, whatever that right, right? Yeah, yeah, four ones. OK, so walk me through what that is, what each of those are. So that's one hour a day of lead gen. Goal is to set one appointment with a buyer or seller sphere member. Because I'm setting one appointment, I'm going on one appointment, and I'm adding one person I dated my sphere. So that's my 411. and go and then adding one. Yeah, which is amazing. Adding one person also a day, right, is just getting out in the community. I mean, I go to the same coffee shop all the time. Who am I talking to? The same people all the time. Even one of the ladies that works there, she's like, hey, Garrett, you're an agent, right? Like, it's been fun having you in. We got to know each other a little bit. My husband's getting into real estate. He wants to join your team. okay. Let's have a conversation, right? Like just show up and be a person, right? And be nice and be kind and be engaging. Okay, even if you're introverted, it's still absolutely possible for you to go be having conversations with people right seeing the same kind of people Asking someone, you know if they're thinking about buying or selling do they have an agent they refer whatever the dialogue is that makes sense to whoever's listening So I love that concept right so five by five and that is lead generation, right? What are the five things for lead generation are going to do? yeah, number one focus is your sphere and lead generation in that five by five strategy. And then the four one one one is time management. Yep, okay, fantastic. And then the four ones by ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'll get that before the episode is done for sure, Jim. But no, I love that concept. Okay, so now we start shifting to, right, it's not as much if an agent doesn't like the word system, it's like just what are you gonna do every day, right? Just we're gonna figure that out. And I think it was Dave Ramsey maybe, but he was talking about money, but he said, if you don't tell your money where to go, you'll wonder where it went. Same thing happens with our time, right? Same thing happens, if we want to tell our time where to go, we wonder where it went. And so I love the concept of do these things and then you have freedom for the rest of your day, right? But see how that pushes your business forward. How long is that going to take somebody, right? Are they getting up and they're not, you know, they can say, wow, it's a lot of stuff. Am I nine to three and I'm working on this five by five or, you know, what are you seeing like nine to 11? Is it taking them two hours? You know, what kind of structure are you seeing here? Yeah. I want them to do as much of that as they can within that hour block that in that 411 as they possibly can. It may take them longer and I will tell people, know. If you are basically unemployed, which is some realtors that are listening to this right now are basically unemployed. They're down to no listings. They may have one listing. They've got zero or one escrow. You're basically unemployed. And so what else are you doing? So you need to be just all in on this because this is where your time should be focused, right? And I think that's a really important thought process. But when agents start to get busy, and we're talking about agents that are doing 10 or 20 or 30 transactions a year, they still have got to do the hour because they want to be systemized about their approach. Hmm, that's good. The one hour that can change your business, which changes your life, right? I mean, you started with this, which I agree. We have to figure out what our life. Yeah. that I've coached that are doing 30, 40, $50 million. What's happened is since the COVID years, when everybody had a ramp up in their business that was vertical, and then it's come off 30 to 40 % for most agents, is they were on a glide path before and they were able to, they had, there's a lot of uplift with the market, but the market is now fighting against them. And now the glide path is taking them down closer and closer earth and their crash landing from some of them. And so the only way you reverse that trajectory is you to be intentional and go back to work and really focus on your sphere and rebuilding your sphere. And that's the reality. Yeah, and the truth is again, it's you know at least what I've found Jim with with coaching with writing this book of the agents that that have this life that they've designed right that they want to get into It's it's not that the business can't get them there It's the business they've created or fallen into that has kept them from that life meaning if they read if they said okay You know I'm listening to Jim and I'm talking about this and if they sat down and wrote out like what did you actually do this year to generate business? One I think a lot of you be surprised that you didn't do very much. And so if you actually did some work, imagine where your business could be, right? That's the amazing thing. Or they've done so many things, so many variables, so many different times, so many different, you know, I did this, I did that, I did this on the weekend, I did that at night, whatever, that there's that the business is just running them around. There's no structure system. And you say, no, no, no, hold on an hour a day, right? An hour and half a day. If you just get intentional with what you're trying to do. This is how when your, like my six year old son says, daddy, can you play Legos at 1.30 PM? And I don't have a meeting or whatever. I can say, of course, buddy, why? Cause I've already won the day. I already pushed the day forward, right? I think the hardest part for agents when it comes to intentionally showing up and being present for our families, being present for those we want to be present for is I don't yet know if I've won the day. And so I feel like I need to do more. And so then I show up and keep doing more. which none of it's actually that productive. Whereas if I just had clarity to your point and said, this is what I gotta do every day, hey, I've already won the day, buddy. Of course, let's sit down and play Legos. I love that because I think a lot of realtors, I was one of these realtors that felt guilty all the time being at home because I felt like I should be working, especially in my younger years. And you carry this guilt around like I need to be working. You'll remove all that guilt when you give yourself clarity on what you're supposed to be doing every day and you do your job and it's done. And then I can go home and say, I did my job. And you let go of results. This is the problem. We get so focused on result. The results come. You got to trust the coaches. You trust Garrett. He knows what he's talking about. me. I know what I'm talking about. We've been doing this a long time. When you do the work, the results will follow. So once you've done the work, let it go. The results will come. I promise you they will come. I think that's a real important thing to think about. super good, right? Just having faith that the work that you just did is planting seeds. They're going to grow. You have the freedom to go sit. Yeah, I mean we we live in an industry that it can be seasonal, right? Like, well, it's the dead of winter. Nobody's buying a house and would do anything. It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, right? Like for us to know it's OK to chill out a little bit too, right? But it's only OK if you know that what you've done. is what you needed to do to push your business forward. And I do think that's where a lot of agents get stuck, right? Is I don't know, and even showing up the next year, right? How simple it is, I agree, the 10 to one ratio, how simple it is to say, okay, I've got this 10 to one ratio. If I execute the system, if I'm adding people to my database, or if you just have 200 people in your database, whatever, I'm not saying don't add, but even if you didn't and you worked it well, that's 20 deals, you know exactly what you're gonna do the next year, you know exactly when everything's gonna happen. versus you show up January 1, you're like, my gosh, I gotta recreate that. how do I do that? I don't even know exactly what I did. I'm just gonna throw a bunch of stuff at the wall. That's really challenging, right? That is a really challenging position to be in. So speak real quickly to the broker owner or the team leader, right? You made mention earlier, because that's really your heart and your specialty, but you made mention earlier that a lot of brokers are concerned about being that rigid with their agents, because like, well, they're just gonna leave me. I think agents are craving for those things, right? But talk to me, how would you coach a broker or how are you coaching brokers or team leaders and saying, no, you got to hold your agents to this standard. Like how are you coaching them through that? What would your advice be? It's a great question. we um coach to something we call the two P's, and it's productivity or participation. So when we're recruiting or when we have our team with us, what we say to our team members that we're bringing on to our team is, hey, listen, here's how we measure you at our company. We measure you based on productivity or participation. Here's what that means. We would love to see you, and we kind of expect to see you at office meetings, training events. We expect you to be doing open houses, being involved with our lean generation programs, plugging into the tools that we offer. you because when we when we see you participating we know that leads to productivity it's just a natural byproduct. But we understand that if you're productive and you're out there selling a lot of real estate, you might miss an office meeting. You might miss a training session. We get it because you're busy. Here's what we can't have and what we just is unacceptable. We cannot have you being unproductive and not participating. So you've got to be doing one or the other. We want you to do both because we know that leads to ultimate productivity. So for the brokerage owners that are listening to me here, you got to understand something. There's probably several of your agents right now that are doing what I call a goose egg. They haven't sold anything all year long. and you haven't held them accountable. What you should do is, in my opinion, bring them in your office and say, hey, obviously this isn't working. You haven't sold anything this year. Not working for me, it's not working for you. I want to change the trajectory for you. And let's get on the same page. I need you to start participating because I know it leads to production. If you're not willing to do that, then I don't know that this is a good fit. Because here's what's happening with brokerage owner leaders, and they don't even realize it, is that their company or their teams are measured by the entire market by per agent productivity. So if your average team or your average office, let's say the office A that I'm talking to or I'm coaching, has an average agent productivity of five, their average agent closed five deals last year for $2 million or $1 million. And then there's a company down the road that their average agent is closing 10 deals and is doing $2, $3 million. That office is suddenly way more attractive for me to go to work for. So your agent productivity matters in a big, big way, way more than you think it does. And you've got to coach to it. You've to train to it. You've got to have accountability in your office. That's good. So productivity or participation, right? or participation, the chibi is one or the other. You can't not do both. Yeah, love that. And I love that even again, thinking about, now take that as an individual agent listening or a mortgage lender listening. Look at your own business, right? Are you being productive or you participating? Are you doing both? Obviously, if you can do that, right, the idea of just pairing that with even looking and saying, I'm paying myself, right? I hired myself. Here's my job description. You get in at nine. You work till four, whatever, whatever the scenario is for you, even just doing that. Right. And how do I participate within those hours? Because it's going to lead to production. and even just simple things like that. Now, I absolutely believe we need coaches around like you, right? Just say, just hold me accountable. There's something, you lost 30 pounds, I had lost some weight, then I stopped hiring my, or stopped paying for my coach. And then I went back up, right? Because it was like, I'm gonna eat ice cream tonight. There's no one like, don't do that. Right, because my wife and I, have five kids, we're like, you exhausted? Yeah, I'm exhausted, let's go get Dairy Queen. Right, not the greatest thing, plus she was pregnant and so that was my excuse, right? Anyways, when I left my coach, knew what to do, right? I had all the knowledge. I just didn't have the accountability. And if you don't pay, you don't pay attention. And so to me, the actual act of writing a check, which I'm about to hire him again, so don't worry, audience. But the actual act of writing a check, paying the bill, is say, this actually is important to me. I'm going to pay attention. And I think the struggle, right, for a lot of agents in the industry, if you're selling no homes, You're not really paying anything. mean, you're paying to keep your license, whatever, but it's not really costing you anything. You're just kind of there. And so whatever I get to do, whatever I want to get to tell people I'm a real estate agent. And quite honestly, that's just my excuse to be lazy and do nothing. It's like, I'm a real estate agent. trying to build a business. The ones that are going to succeed at the highest level are those who not only are willing to be held accountable, but actually go seek out that accountability, right? And say, hold me accountable. I can become more excellent. And I'll finally, and I'll say, as Christians, we should be in pursuit of that level of accountability because our job is not to be excellent so we make a bajillion dollars. Our job is to be excellent at exactly the opportunity, right? The stewardship the Lord has called us to. And so it's another level, Christian agent, Christian mortgage lender, whoever you are listening, is that reality of your job is to be excellent. The Lord's standard is excellence. Am I excellent in everything? Absolutely not. But it is His standard and I should be in pursuit of those things. So we have to seek out that accountability and say, please help me. I need to be held accountable. If you have a broker, if they're not coached by Jim, they're maybe not doing this, right? So you should go get coached by Jim. But if you have a broker, go to them and say, hold me accountable. If I'm not being productive, make me participate. Hold me. And if they won't, maybe go to the next person, right? Look up, I don't know how they do this Jim, but look up on Jim's website, see who he's coaching and go to one of those people. I don't know how they would do that, right? But like go to someone. who is actively living that out. Because I absolutely believe, Jim, you've probably seen this too, whatever, the 87 % failure rate uh for agents, that's an industry failure in my opinion, more than anything else, right? I mean, do agree with that? Yeah, I think there's some good intention brokers out there, but the reality is that there's a lot of brokers that are not helping their team as much as it could be. And uh I think it's part of what we need to do. think a great question every broker needs to ask, all of their team members, is to say, every time they're talking to them, having small talk in the office, walking around on the phone, whatever, say, well, tell me how's your pipeline? So if, Garrett, you're on my team, I'd say, Garrett, how's it going today, man? How's your pipeline going? And because I want you to know that I care about you as a human being, and I care about your business, I care about your family. And if you say, you know what, Jim, it's down. I need some help. Let's get you in room. Let's do some coaching. Let's get clarity on what you need to be doing. When I avoid that and I don't have those conversations with my broker or my agent, I'm doing a disservice to them. And I'm not treating them lovingly from a Christian standpoint. I'm not saying I need to help this person maximize their God-given talents and really go out there and do the very best they can for themselves and their family. And to your point when you're talking about our responsibility as Christians and as human beings is you're giving these God-given talents, right? And I think when you squander that and you say you have, you have, and we all know we're capable of more. We say, Hey, I'm probably capable of selling 20 or $30 million in business. I'm just being lazy and we're just not doing the work. And I don't have to sacrifice my family or my kid's time. I could do it within a nine to five timeline if I put my head down and did the work. And when I choose not to do that, That's like a disservice. It's a disservice to everybody, your family, your church, everything. Because what could you do with those funds? And it's not just about getting rich. Could you go help some families in the community? Could you feed some people, give some money to the charity, to the church, or whoever you're supporting? When you don't do that, you're doing a disservice, I think, to the community and yourself. To my opinion. Yeah, no, you're right. There's a ripple effect in excellence. There's a ripple effect or a lack of ripple effect that could have been when we don't pursue excellence, right? The people around us. agree with you thousand percent. So, man, so good. I love all the principles. uh I'm going to go back and listen to this for everybody else, which is the fun part of being in the podcast house so I can start implementing these. I love the five by five, the four, one, one, one, one. I think I got that right. one more. You got it. I know it's four. uh All of those principles, right, productivity ah and participation, right, just those basic principles for anybody, just to say, become a little bit better. You know, I think ultimately the reality is, and this is the process of sanctification, is for us to ultimately become more like Christ, it's happening. We're getting a little bit better every day. The Holy Spirit is making us a little bit better. Same thing we should be in pursuit of in our business, right, just a little bit better. Maybe you're not gonna do all four, one, one, one, you know, tomorrow. But maybe as you work towards it in six months, you're like, I'm actually nailing this. I'm getting better at it. And the reality is exactly what you said, Jim. If the Lord has given all of us opportunity, the Lord has said, you know, here's what you could accomplish. Right. We don't know what it is. He didn't write it down. It's not like you could be selling 100 homes. Why don't you do that? But none of us, all of us are aware we haven't maximized our potential. There's more we could do. And so it's the constant intentionality. How do I become better? A little bit more discipline, a little bit more on purpose, a little bit more clarity. Right. So so many good. things, Jim. Brother, if they want to connect with you, if they're like, man, I need my broker to talk to you, ah or they're a broker, like how would they go about doing that, buddy? How do we get them to connect with you? Yeah. So they can easy go over to E like elephant, erealestatecoach.com. We've got a free webinar over there called rockstar recruiting. If somebody is something that's should be recruiting people as part of their, their, their, their build out of their business or their team, go over there and watch it. It's a, it's a one hour. We're bringing in tons of top producer, top recruiter tips in there, but there's also just a huge, a vast amount of resources over there for agents, even free resources on our vlog and our blog where you can watch videos and get ideas and concepts on, on top. strategies out there. A ton of free resources. Just check it out. And if somebody wants to actually set up a discovery call, there'll be a button there they can set up a discovery call and learn more about me and my coaching. Awesome. So even agents can do that, right? Or is it? Yeah, agents. OK, so whoever you are, go check it out. You real estate coach will put that in the show notes. Man, brother, I genuinely appreciate coming back right on the show. And I don't say this lightly, like literally one of the wisest men I know in this industry. And so I am so grateful for your willingness to come share your heart and your wisdom with us, brother. It'll make a difference in people's lives. So yeah, thank you for coming on Faithful Agents. We love you. Go implement, get to work. Let's have some breakthrough in our lives. We love you. We'll see you next week.