A couple of weeks ago we held our GoGoAgent Academy Mastermind in Orlando. It was a really great two days, masterminding, sharing and thinking about all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle we talk about here.
We got to see a lot of people we've been working with over the past few years on their GoGoAgent programs, and some people I've known for over 20 years now. Some you’d recognize as guests on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast.
So I wanted to give you an inside look at what we do at our Academy. This is the opening session where we talked about the future of real estate and I'll share some of the other sessions over the coming weeks.
There were some great ideas shared and it’s always amazing to see the breakthroughs people have in a mastermind environment, where you can really spend a couple of days just fully immersed in talking about the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
Links:
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep016
Dean: Okay, good morning. Welcome. Good morning. I'm excited, I love this format. As you guys know this is just like a nice, conversational format for the next two days here. I always like to start these out by really kind of looking and reflecting because we do them all at the same time. We always do it in February here and another year has passed. I look now, this year in 2018 marks the 30 year anniversary of when I got my real estate license. November of 1988 is when I started, I was 14 years old.
Barb: Real estate's been good to you.
Dean: Real estate's been good to me, that's right. I was thinking about it that so much has happened over this last year that's been the culmination of that entire 30 years of everything that has happened. I was thinking about the last, on the 25th year anniversary we did an event similar to this and we recorded the 10 money getting ideas for your business. That was on the 25th anniversary, so 30 years. I think about how much has really even changed in that five years, the last five years. Let alone the last 30 years. This year all the right words at the right time have come, and I think that to some, what I'm anticipating and rallying behind, and being a voice to carry us into the future is the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
I really believe that we are in maybe the best time ever to be in the real estate business. I mean as people are thinking fearfully about what's going to happen to the real estate business or is it even going to be around. Is Zillow going to takeover or is everything going to be digitized and disrupted? You hear all of these things, and it really made me think. I was looking back over the 30 years and thinking in 1988 when I first got my real estate license, there was no internet, there were barely cell phones. It was just starting, and it was hardwired into my car, the phone, and it was $1200 and I got the good rate that gave me 50 cents a minute on the calls. It was like a $200 a month minimum, but it was the new tool and you had to have it kind of thing.
We had pagers that were just starting to be where you could send a little text message with it. Where Joanne could sit in the office, somebody would call in, and then they could text you a little message to tell you you had a call. We had a fax machine that was one of the thermal paper fax machines that you had to run and get it before the ink disappeared and photocopy it. Straighten it all out because it was all curled from the heat. Every two weeks we would get a catalog delivered to our door which was the MLS catalog which was the bible. You had all of the information at your fingertips. Buyers had zero access to information. They had, when you think about right now what they have access to, compared to 1988.
In 1988 the only way they could get information was in the newspaper when it came out with new listings or driving around the neighborhoods looking for signs or going to open houses. Or, driving into an office. I was in Toronto in Halton Hills just outside of Toronto so it was kind of like people were moving from Toronto out there. If you were considering a new area, the only way to ever get any kind of information on it was to go out there and see what it's all about. You had to drive out to Georgetown and take a look around and pop into a real estate office and that's why being ... When we did floor time, opportunity time, the peak times to do it were on Saturday and Sunday when people would drive into the office, or on Wednesday and Friday evenings with the real estate section.
People would get their ads, they'd be looking through, and then they'd have to call and do the ... Circle the ones they're interested in and then they had to brace themselves, and call, and deal with a sales person to get the information. It's so funny, but I remember going to a Roger Butcher seminar. Do you guys remember, been around long enough to remember Roger Butcher? Roger, this was really a life changing thing. I went, and first of all it was like the first thing that I had done in my real estate career. Like my office all went to the big meeting and I'd never been in a room with 300 people at one time. I was just out of college, and this is my introduction to these business seminar ideas.
Here's Roger sharing all these ideas and one of the things he talked about, and I learned script from him for handling those opportunity calls of just saying to people when they call in on things to ask them, "How would you like this to be the last phone call you have to make? I've got all of the ..." I would say that to people, they would be looking at the newspaper, they'd circled their ones, they're calling about one of our company listings, I get the phone. I say, "Listen, I've got the newspaper here right in front of me and I've got all of the properties, but I also, I have the MLS catalog right here so I can get you all the information on all of them."
That script alone got me so much, so engaged in so many conversations. I just remember the first time that I tried that script, that conversation, I talked to a guy who lived in Rockwood which is the next town over a little bit in the country. He was so impressed with my helpfulness that he said, "We've got five acres. We've got a house out here on five acres that we want to put on the market and I'd like a guy like you answering the phone when people are calling in on it. So why don't you come over here and help us with our house?" That was just, I loved that you could go to a seminar and you could learn the information and you could apply it and make a difference. That was just eye opening for me.
I used that a lot and then I met Jim Morton, not too long after that. Maybe 1992 or three, I met Jim who is the guy who owns Prospects Plus now. He was doing seminars, he was a former Floyd Wickman Sweathogs trainer and he'd started his own thing. I met him then and we became really good friends, but I learned a lot about language skills and about all of the ways of talking with people and it made a big difference. Then, when you look at now the things that we have access to, you know when you wanted to learn things that's what you had to do. You had to go to a seminar to learn things. There was no internet to look stuff up, no YouTube to watch videos, no podcasts to listen to. There was none of the kind of thing.
I look at now we've got access to every piece of information and we've got access to share things with people. Going back then, people calling in on the newspaper ads or driving around and I would have people who they wanted that MLS catalog. They would come to my office in the evening sometimes and just, "Oh, I was just popping by. Oh, what's this? Oh this is ... Let me just look at this overnight and I'll bring it right back to you in the morning." It was so funny that they would just, they wanted this information. People, we crave information. We still seek it out, but now you look at it and we've got ... Every buyer has access to every property instantly on their phone, the entire history of the property, everything about it.
They know more about the properties than you do because they're micro specialists in the type of home that they're interested in. They know everything about that neighborhood that they are looking. We could say that the information advantage that we had has been disrupted by technology, right? That's fair enough to say that we don't have that as an advantage now, but because of that it's also become easier for us. We don't have to now be there in the office on Wednesday, or in open houses, or hoping that we're going to run into an intersect with somebody who's looking for a house. I look at that and I think so much has changed and there's not, some things just haven't changed, either.
I was thinking about it as other things that technology has kind of disrupted or change. I'm a golfer and I was realizing how much technology has changed golf over the 30 years. When we look at in 1990 the leading driving distance on the PGA Tour was 279 yards. Last year the leading drive was 317 yards, so it's improved by 56 yards over that 25 or 28 years because of technology. Because the driver technology is getting better, the able to calculate launch angles, and the golf ball dimple patterns, and the things that they make the golf balls out of, all that technological advancement has really made it easier to hit the ball further. What I looked at was that the thing that matters, the score, has improved by less than one quarter of one stroke.
All of that technology, all of that advancement in the way that we're the ball, all that change, but the fundamental thing about gold has improved by one quarter of one stroke. Now, that got me thinking about the same thing in real estate. If you think about all of the things that have changed, all the technology that's been disrupted, all of the digitization of it, and yet the fundamental things that are the core of it, days on market and percentage of asking price have largely stayed unchanged. It still takes 40 days to sell a house and it still gets 98% of asking price overall. All this technology can't mask the fact that fundamentally it's about finding somebody who wants to sell a house and matching them with somebody who wants to buy a house and negotiating the agreement and earning a commission for that.
That's the fundamental thing, so when you really look at this right now, the reason that I say ... I've said this now for the past five years, since I've been going to Peter Diamandis' Abundance 360 events that I've been saying this, that people are worried about the digitization and the disruption of the real estate industry, and I say that what's going to save it is that, fundamentally, you can't digitize the last hundred feet of a real estate transaction. It's always going to be a negotiation between two completely irrational people negotiating the market value of the only property like this one in the world today. You can't algorithm that.
Right, and then a couple of years ago we talked about how companies are maybe addressing that with something like Opendoor, we've talked about. Is everyone familiar with Opendoor? I think that's got some traction, I think that model is certainly going to change things, but what they've got is they have removed the irrationality out of one side of the equation at a time. When they're buying somebody's house, they're a rational buyer. They know, fundamentally what the house is worth, they've got the money. They're not falling in love with it. They don't get excited that it's perfect for their family or they want to be in this school zone, it's none of that. It's just the completely rational market value of it, and if you want to accept that offer, that's great. It makes it totally convenient if you're a rational seller.
If you're emotional and you want to get top dollar and you're not going ... we're not giving it away, that kind of stuff, then good luck. It doesn't matter to them that you're not going to accept their offer, it's not going to hurt their feelings. Now what they've done is when they become a buyer, when they take that property, now they become a completely rational seller. They know what the market value and they make it super easy for the buyer to get access to that property and to buy it. If you want to go see it they've got an app, you can go anytime from 6:00 am until 9:00 pm, you go see it as much as they want. Take a look, when you're ready, give us an offer and you can move in three days, or 30 days, or 33 days or whatever you want.
That, I'm keeping an eye on all of that. I want to hear what you guys have seen as trends that are shaping things, but when I look at it now ... This is why I think the future, the great opportunity that we have is to focus on the fundamental things. The things that are at the core of being successful in the real estate business. That's where the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle are coming into play here. I'm having so much fun with this, this is kind of the little manifesto, shares all the elements of it, and then we've been doing a Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast on every Friday, new episodes. The idea is similar to my More Cheese, Less Whiskers Podcast where we have people on the show and we brainstorm and workout a specific marketing plan for you.
We get to brainstorm and talk about your business and what's going on. It's a fun format like that, but I look at the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle as things that are rudimentary to success in real estate. I have a friend who is a doctor and she has a website called Unsick.com. She is what she calls, practices rudimentary medicine where when you get right down to it there's five underlying causes of why we get sick at all. Five underlying things, it's something systemic, or it's an infection, or it's inflammation, or it's some gut biome, or I forget what the others are. They're like all the fundamental things, everything is an outcropping of those. By focusing on the underlying thing, you can discover what's going on rather than just treating the symptoms.
I look at the things that we get focused on in real estate, or the things that people often chase are the things that are the equivalent of the new driver. The shiny new thing that people are doing just to ... The technology, drone videos and all of these things that are not underlying a rudimentary thing that's helping you find somebody who wants to buy that house and sell and match them up. The five business things of the Listing Agent Lifestyle are getting listings, got to have a system for getting listings. If you're going to run a listing-centric business it's kind of fundamental to it. Then multiplying listings. Every listing that you have, turning your listings into more opportunities. That's kind of a great thing.
All of these are attached with metrics so that we know whether you're moving in the right direction. You can assess where you are and see the improvement that you're making and compare to other people and share with other people what's actually working. That's what I'm most excited about is really building this community of people who are all working from the same playbook and using the same metrics and are able to compare and share with people the things that are effecting those numbers. The things that are moving the needle for you. Multiplying the listings, then getting referrals. We still, by far, and I think focusing even on getting listing referrals is a key of the listing-centric business here, of the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
That so many, you see so many different studies that show how people found the realtor that they ultimately listed their house with. Repeat and referral is a big portion of how people do that. Being involved in that is really a great way to make sure that you're getting as many listing referrals as you can. We've got all the tools, and the metrics, and the philosophies around doing all of that. And we're going to over the two days here have conversations about each of those. That's the way we're going to do this year's. We're going to have a full session on getting listings and we're just going to share what's working. I'll share some of the new things, we'll get all of your questions, we'll focus on what is the state of the union right now, the best practices for getting listings right now.
What are the best practices, what's going on with multiplying your listings? Who's the clubhouse leader with our listing multiplier index? Seeing how all of that goes. Then, after getting referrals it's converting leads. Right now everybody has a goldmine that they're sending on of anybody who has inquired about buying or selling a house, sometimes even years ago. You start to see, I can't tell you how many times I run into this. I do events just like this for all kinds of business owners, other business owners and they have lists of people who have bought, or not bought yet. Constantly we send out these, a nine word email. Are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?
Just yesterday I was doing a consulting day with a guy from Atlanta who's got a bookkeeping training business and we sent out an email to 4,000 people from November who had opted in in November and just sent out a message. It said "bookkeeping" in the subject line and, "Hey Zack, are you still interested in bookkeeping?" All the replies start coming back from, "Yes, I'm interested. I'm saving up the money to take your course right now." Or all of these people that are now engaged because we came up with an idea to fund people doing the training. That's the reason that we sent that message out, but that little message will reengage with all of these people who are interested and be able to connect with them.
Then all of the things that we do with your weekly flagship email, your market watch email, or your sold watch emails. The things that you're sending to people on an ongoing basis with your super signature that make the people who are ready to list or ready to buy, jump in the boat. That was such a fun thing. I did the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast with Chuck Charlton. Did you guys see the video that I put up with the fish jumping in the boat, because I remember telling that to Chuck years ago? I had seen this video of a guy driving down a canal and shining a light and then the fish just jumping in the boat. We had decided that's really what it's like, what he's got going on here.
Is he's stocked the canal with 1700 who have asked for the report on Milton House prices and all his job now is just to drive the boat up and down the canal every week and shine the light. Then when people are ready, "Oh, I want a pinpoint price analysis." "Oh, I want a room by room review." "Oh, I want to see about that silent market." They just jump in the boat and they're ready to sell and it's kind of exciting. The asset that you have is all of these unconverted prospects and we're going to talk all about those. Then the fifth element is finding buyers. I've got a whole new perspective on buyers right now and I think even taking a listing-centric approach to buyer generation. Meaning finding the types of buyers that are really going to be most helpful to support our listing getting efforts and our listing multiplying efforts is really the best thing that we can do.
I don't think ... We've seen the evolution from in 1988 we had the catalog, they had to come to us to 1998 where the internet was just starting up and we were able to get ahead of the message and say, "Hey, search all the homes online." And that for 10 years was the advantage. Then for the last 10 years every listing everywhere is online and it's become about Zillow and Realtor.com. They are the definitive sources for where people go to get that information. Search all the homes online isn't the winning message now. It's not a differentiating message. It's like you don't even have on your website access to the same kind of information that they can get at Zillow. Finding those things where it's almost like sometimes buying those leads is a great idea.
Especially if you can even buy them from people who think they're bad leads. That's really one of the great things. I'm going to share some really cool strategies where we talk about that, talk about finding buyers because I see it all the time. People add me to all these real estate groups so I see all the comments that people make and they're saying, "I tried Zillow. I did it for three months and I didn't get anything. Those are garbage leads." I just know, first of all, if they've tried it for three months that means that it's probably they had two month’s worth of actual leads coming in and the oldest of which is not even 60 days old yet. They're really making their judgment on what's happened right now. They're expecting that they're going to pay the money and people are going to hop in their car and go buy a house right away.
We know that it takes a while for people. We know that most of the people are going to be more than 90 days before they even think about it. But if you can get in contact with them, if you can be the one that's giving them valuable insights on the market, not just the market data, you've got an opportunity. You've got the big chance to shine the light and make those offers that whenever they're ready they can get on a tour. Come for a daily tour of homes, or come to a home buyer workshop, or get a free home loan report. Whatever's going to jump them ahead, but it also creates an advantage for you in that every time you get a new listing you've got, or every time you go in to see somebody about a new listing, you've got this opportunity to send, in advance of you going in to talk to people, the information about the general type of home that you're going to see somebody about and have people say, "Oh yeah, tell me about it. Oh yeah, I want the info."
If you just send to people and say, "Hey, I'm going to see about a house in whatever" a townhouse, or a condo, or whatever the house is, "if you'd like me to send you all the info as soon as I get it, let me know." Then when you go in to talk to the sellers you've got armed with all of these people who are already interested in a house like that. There's so much great advantage where you get to focus on being a market maker. That's the advantage that we're going to have. You can go right underneath the surface where now, you are again in a position where you have information that the general population of buyers and sellers don't have. See the pattern here? That now you have your information advantage is you, having run your getting listings program in a specific neighborhood for the last 12 months, and generated 50, 60, 70 people who are going to be selling their house potentially at some point, your secret inventory of that list.
You've also got all of these buyers that you've been nurturing that no one else knows about. Your position as a market maker is really the information advantage they have right now. We'll explore a lot of that as how it all unfolds here. That's the guiding things of how we're focused on it. Then those are the five rudimentary things about the real estate side of the Listing Agent Lifestyle and then the lifestyle elements are daily joy. Looking at how much joy is your business bringing you. I think we're in a situation now that the notion of separation, like a 9:00 to 5:00 type of job is really a ... We don't have to bring that mindset in there. Digitization allows you to be anywhere you want, to work anytime you want, have access to whatever you want, and to really integrate your business into or around supporting your life.
That really, I think that joy is really the number one goal of all of it. To get to a point where we're able to create a wonderful life for ourselves. I think that as we look at what's going on, think about the next 30 years. All the things that are coming down with longevity and the fact that we're going to be living longer. That we're going to have the opportunity to live longer. We're going to be able to, because it takes less and less work to create results through digitization, and automation, and teamwork, and tapping into marketplaces. We'll be able to extend our working lives. I say working, and am replacing that with our money making years rather than thinking of it as work. If we're replacing the work element, meaning mostly things that we don't want to do with joy elements, with things that you do want to do, or make your work joyful and you're creating money.
You've got the opportunity to continue that and build an asset that can continue to create wealth for you well into your retirement years. Look at Tom Cook, it's 82 years old now.
Tom: 96.
Dean: 96 years old. Yeah, you just keep getting younger, Tom. You're already on these, on the thing. How old are you right now?
Tom: Tomorrow.
Dean: Tomorrow, 70. This is something. It's all very exciting, that's amazing isn't it? But 70, Tom's making 70 look like the new 50, that's really what it is. Then the next element is abundant time. We say those words, it's like there's so much opportunity right now that we have more than ever the opportunity to build fly wheels that allow, with a little bit of effort, to get so much stuff to happen. I think that that's really, we're at a point where your time, when you look at doing the leveraged things and organizing other people or access to other people who just want to do things on demand. That's really what we're looking at now. You see what's happened with Uber and how fast they've been able to grow and this whole side hustle culture where people can tap into a money source.
Like they need some money, okay just flip on this light and then oh, go pick these people up, and go pick these people up, and go pick these people up and in a few hours they've got money to do whatever they wanted to do on the weekend is such a great thing because there are people that are not ... They don't want to build these things, they want to benefit from these things. They want to be the service providers for these marketplaces. You start to see now that, I think there's the big divide in all of this is going to be our migration as a society to what I'm calling cloudlandia. That we're definitely migrating to the cloud as a real place. I mean that's where we spend our lives is in the cloud. You can imagine that we're up there, that that's where our heads are. That's really what I mean by that is that everything that we're doing, we're connected on Facebook and all our entertainment, Netflix and everything on demand.
Every song ever written is available for you. All the podcasts, all the things, everything happens up in the cloud and there's going to be a divide that only the things that have to be on the mainland are going to be provided by people that are just doing non-digital things. You've gotten it now where we can stay in the cloud most of the time. In terms of we can keep our head in the cloud, we can organize our physical bodies to be moved from one place to another place with an Uber. We can go and look at the thing, we don't ever have to look up. We can just be here, we can look on our Uber thing and the show you on the map when the guy's arriving right at your feet. You just look up for a second, get in the door, and right back into online, whatever you were doing. Then you get out and you don't have to even take your eyes off your screen to find your wallet or anything.
We're allowed, and I'm saying that if you look around, just look around when you're out in public, that this is the posture of society right now. This is it. You realize that it's not that big a leap to go from here to here with some virtual reality goggles and we're living in that world. Steven Spielberg's got a movie coming out next month called Ready Player One, which is based on a book, that, I haven't read the book yet, but I want ... Has anybody read the book? The general idea from what I understand is that it's set in 2045, and as a society we've abandoned the physical world and all live in this virtual utopian world that is perfect and anything's possible. We're spending all of our time there so everything in the physical world is in disrepair and there's no more beauty or nobody takes any time to garden or keep things up and looking good because nobody's looking at the physical world.
We're all living in the digital utopian world and I think that's where we're going. You see it happening right now more and more that everybody lives in the world. Especially if you have kids that that's it. It's like you've seen the Maslow's Hierarchy adjustment where they've added the two more base layers of it, which are battery power and wifi, and then it goes to shelter, and food, and all these things. The extension for sure is that's what we need is power, wifi, shelter. You look at those as like, that's the way things are going. Understanding that, just having a perspective to realize that that's what people want. That's the way it's all going and you start to see that's true is how is that kind of reality effecting real estate right now?
It's really that buyers have access to go and look at all of the properties online, but still you're buying a physical thing. They still now, at some point have to go and see that house. Even though you have access to expose these houses to everybody, right to the whole world. What still has to happen is you still have to find one person that's looking for a house in Happy Valley with a red front door and berber carpeting. There's one person who wants that house. It doesn't matter that you could expose it to millions, it's finding the one person. I think this is going to be the new advantage that we have is creating our own market maker monopolies where we can own categories, rather than looking for individual buyers who just happen to be looking for homes. We can find people who are looking for category homes. Looking for oceanfront homes, or looking for condos, or townhouses, or golf course homes, or whatever it is.
All the things that we talk about by being a market maker by doing all that triangulation. Our time is really, really minimal to do these kinds of things because of this migration to cloudlandia and the organizing of the people on the mainland to do the things that aren't fly wheel related. By the way, the reason I started talking about this migration to cloudlandia is that in cloudlandia there's different rules. We have so much more leverage in cloudlandia. We can shape shift and you can, everything that's digitized can be multiplied and distributed. You've got so many opportunities to move things around. On the mainland things are analog and they're in real time and we have to deal with the things there, so my goal ... and I think that part of the Listing Agent Lifestyle is to be able to stay above the cloud where you can be in the cloud, organize everything from there, and organize the physical meeting up on the mainland for the last hundred feet.
That that's really all we need to be able to do. I'm super excited about that. We're seeing now, one of the things that has kind of been a new development is this ghost restaurant. Have you guys seen that or heard that word? I posted about it on the GoGo Agent blog that there's a new concept in New York and Chicago, and they're venture funded that they've started nine restaurant brand that only exist on Grubhub and Seamless which are the online delivering apps. The article that I saw was nine restaurants, one kitchen, no dining room. What they've done is they've taken all of the mainland stuff out of the restaurant. No dining room, no physical location that you can do it, and they've staked it all on the cloud. Nine virtual restaurants that only exist in design, and name, and menu, that they run everything from one kitchen in a basement commissary kitchen.
Doesn't have to be high traffic or high space or expensive or beautiful because nobody goes there. They get all the orders from online, they cook it all in the same kitchen, they stage it, meaning put it in the right package for that brand, and the delivery guys pick it up and take it right to you while you get to keep your head in the cloud. You get to choose and everything and the food comes and you don't even have to look down, you could just keep your head in the cloud and keep eating. I'm saying that that is fundamentally what's going on. Those are the people, the big opportunity is to facilitate the ability of people to stay in the cloud. That's really what is going to be a big trend for us over the...
We can't predict what's going to happen in 30 years, but I really stay focused on what we call the near term future, meaning the next five years that you can see that these things are already happening. These are trends that are shaping that are already going on that way. That kind of thinking is exactly how we were able to be ahead of search all the homes online and get there ahead of people and have a 10 year advantage on that. Those were the glory years when we could put money in AdWords and just have people show up on your doorstep and multiply it. Then it got a little bit more difficult as everybody had the same idea. Now I'm seeing that this is the opportunity, this Listing Agent Lifestyle of being a market maker building a market maker listing-centric business is really a big advantage that we have.
Then the final one is financial peace. I think that those three together as a trifecta, daily joy, abundant time, financial peace are really the knobs and dials that are going to match up with what our life is going to be about. How we really enjoy the time that we spend. How much money that takes, how we feel about how that money's taking. By the way, money is a real leverage tool. Money's a multiplier when you're dealing in exponential technologies where you can use money to multiply and expand the things that you're doing, or have other people on the mainland do things that help you facilitate keeping this cloudland world going. This bridge, I'm excited to see how it all plays out over the next 30 years, at least to see how it all goes.
I think the thing that really surprises me about it is how quickly it goes. It wasn't too long after I think I probably met you Tom in 1992, probably, right? Is that about ... Yeah, I think it was. That was at the very first main event in Toronto, same as you. We had probably a hundred people at the event. That was when Joe was coming to Toronto every six months kind of thing. That was really ... it just feels like yesterday, and here we are 30 years later after being in real estate that long. How long has everybody been in, has anybody else ... Who's been in longer than 30 years? Zack, how long for you, Barb.
Barb: 40.
Dean: 40 years. Zack about the same, right?
Zack: Oh no, not quite.
Dean: Oh.
Zack: 38.
Dean: 38. 38, yeah. 35 years. You guys know it goes fast and I just look at it. Even then people were concerned ... When I first got in, everybody was concerned that Fizbos were going to ... Everybody was just going to go Fizbo because the Fizbo companies were company that they would let you list your house for a flat fee and that was going to takeover. Oh no, there's the doom of the real estate business. We all know how that worked out, and I think it's the same thing now. We're seeing that, oh no the digital, the disrupters are coming. I think that really when you get right down to it, our human brains haven't changed much in that 30 years. When we think about it now, that I'm amazed at how little the things that bring me joy have changed over 30 years.
You remember the Delta Hotel in Meadowvale, for one, they had a lobby with a fireplace and in the winter I would go on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday afternoon, I would go and I would sit by the fire. They had a real log fireplace and I'd order up some lunch and I'd sit and I'd read magazine and just kind of write in my journal and think through stuff and spend the whole afternoon there and how much joy that brought. Then I would go to a movie and it was just a really great time. I had about five years ago, and I may have shared part of this when we were talking about 25 years that I had this surreal day where I woke up and I went to Starbucks and then I went to Books a Million and I got all the magazines. I've been just a ... I'll go and buy 20 magazines at a time and people, they're always like, always the cashiers, "How are you going to read all those magazines?"
I'm not going to read all of them, it's okay. Don't you worry about what I'm going to do with these magazines? I'd pay for the magazines, and I went to a movie, and then I went to Starbucks and I was reading and I was reflecting on how similar that was to exactly the kind of day that brought me joy back then. But I was looking, the surrealness of it was that it's 25 years later and here's, I'm reading Success Magazine and my friend Tony Robbins is on the cover of the magazine and I've got a full page ad in the magazine. There's a list of the top 25 influential people in business and I've got 11 of them on speed dial. I'm just thinking you couldn't have even imagined or thought that 25 years ago to see where that path ends. It's amazing, but at the core, the things that brought me joy were the same things that bring me joy regardless of how much money you have.
Regardless of how much money you make, or how much money you have, or whatever it is, the core things, the fundamental things that bring you joy are often the simplest things that don't require money. It's often that we don't need as much money as you think you maybe need to live the joyful, abundant time life that you really want. I'm excited to kick off this journey for the next 30 years and get that rallying words of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. The format for what we're going to do here, what time are we at right now? The format for what we're going to do is, we're going to have conversations about each of those elements and it's going to be an open format. I'll share some of what I see as the state of the union, kind of what we're at, what the opportunities are for getting listings, for instance.
Then we'll talk about and share what you guys are doing right now with getting listings, answer any of the questions that you have, or any blocks, or any things that you guys see as coming because we've got so many great minds here. We've got so much experience, collectively, that we're all playing from the same context, it'll make a big difference for us. I'm excited to do that, and then we'll go all the way down the list. We'll spend 90 minutes on each so it'll be a whole mastermind just about getting listings, just about converting leads, or multiplying your listings, getting referrals, converting leads, finding buyers. Then we'll do one about the three lifestyle elements as well.
There we have it. That was our first session for our GoGo Agent Academy Mastermind and we had lots of really great discussions all through the two days. I'll share some of those sessions with you in the coming weeks. If you'd like to continue the conversation right now you can go to Listingagentlifestyle.com and download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book. Then, if you'd like to join us you can come over to Gogoagent.com and join the fastest growing, listing-centric lifestyle focused community of realtors really focused on building an incredible business and a great life. You can get a 30 day free trial, no credit card required, come in and see what we're all about. See all of the programs that we talk about. Every one of them helping you implement the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. Just come on over to Gogoagent.com and I will see you over there.