880: From Assistant to Agent to Real Estate Rockstar with Matt Templeton

Aaron Amuchastegui: Welcome back Real Estate Rockstars. Real Estate Rockstars, this is Aaron Amuchastegui, today’s host of the Real Estate Rockstar Podcast. I am so excited to be on here today talking to my good friend, Matt Templeton. I met Matt a few years ago and if you meet this guy in person, just his energy that he has and how generous he is and how outgoing he is and ready to meet people, you will not be surprised when you find out that he is also a Rockstar Real Estate agent.

Right before I get into that, I want to read one of the reviews that we just had. This one just got posted three days ago in iTunes, I thought this was great, this was from Sam Torres 2012.

It says. “Closed 26 deals, “Thanks to Real Estate Rockstars, I was able to model many of the lead generating techniques, negotiating techniques, et cetera, implemented by top producers, I came to the real estate market with no experience or knowledge about the business. I wasn’t even an entrepreneur. However, I tested many of the concepts explained here. After a few months, I was able to find the system that suits my personality. I closed 26 deals in 2019, I know it’s all because of Real Estate Rockstars, thank you so much to everyone willing to share, and to Pat, you’re the rock star, God bless, Sam Torres, San Antonio.”

Sam, thank you for that killer, killer review. That is exactly what we’re hoping to do with this podcast, you’ll be able to share the concepts and I love what he says about he was able to find the system that suits his personality. If that isn’t a reason to listen to this podcast and go download and subscribe, I don’t know what it is. As we get started, now I got to interview my good friend, Matt. Matt, hey, how’s it going, man?

Matt: How’s it going, so good. We got so many fun projects going on right now.

Aaron: Yes, I cannot wait to hear about it. Tell everybody where you are in the US because when I call you there’s just a few different places that you’re always hopping between, today you’re in the middle of traveling but we’re able to get on tells. Where you’re located? What you’ve been doing? How you got in real estate?

Matt: That’s a great question. I started in real estate 15 years ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I built a real estate team in Albuquerque, my team still is there. A few years ago, five years ago I moved to Dallas to run a Keller Williams brokerage and to launch another team to focus on investing and helping our clients there. I have real estate businesses in both Albuquerque and Dallas, the DFW area. I started 15 years ago, have gotten to build and grow and learn and fail along the way in a lot of different places in the real estate game.

Aaron: Wow. Unpack that for me again. You started in Albuquerque, New Mexico. How long were you there before you felt like, “Hey, my team is now satisfied. I can go set up another team somewhere else.” That seems like such a long time to be able to have two teams.

Matt: Yes, I actually started as an assistant for the first year or two and I got to get that mentorship of following around agents and seeing how they did it. I got my license right when I turned 18 and I spent about eight years selling, sold as an individual agent started a partnership, and added a team member, then restarted the team, went through all the different variations that people go through as they’re trying to figure out how to build something bigger than just themselves.

Finally, about four years ago, I said, “Okay, I can let one of my top agents run this business for me, I stepped out of it.” Then I just started collecting a profit check on that business, I check in with the team, coaching and consult and they ran that business while I lived in Dallas and ran other businesses.

Aaron: That is so freaking cool. We try to tell people that they can build horizontal real estate, horizontal income through investments. That horizontal income, the idea of that is money that you make while you’re sleeping. For me, as a real estate guy, I think about that being, I’m going to buy a house, I’m going to rent it out, that’s horizontal income, that’s money that I make whether I work or not. You were actually able to take a real estate career and just working in real estate and create that horizontal income that way.

Before we get into the rest of the questions, that’s actually just super interesting. Do you think that’s very common? If you’re going to tell somebody, what goals to set to be able to do that? Could you give any advice on that?

Matt: Yes, truthfully, if I had to do it over, I probably would have done it a little bit differently. I love the idea of building a business to step out so that you can continue making income on it. In fact, passive income or horizontal income has been a major focus of my life, for several years. I’ve said, “I need to build more streams of income so that if one fails or if I need to have more income in the future, I’ve got security in those multiple income streams.”

I now have between all the different businesses and real estate and things, it’s about 11 passive income streams that I have right now. The thing that I would tell people if they were thinking about building a business bigger than themselves, is really master the art of hiring great people. Yes, at the beginning, what we really have to do is build a business that is big enough to afford those people and bring those people into our world. The first step is, build a business that grows beyond yourself. Then the second step is, learn how to hire at such a level where you can attract really great talent.

I do recommend to people to build a business that’s bigger than themselves and look at what does it look like to expand or grow or to step out of a business. I probably wouldn’t have moved nine hours away the first time I stepped out of a business though. That would be my only change though. I learned some hard lessons, trying to lead and coach and do that from a distance.

Aaron: Yes, maybe you would have just stayed there for six months while you were stepping out to try to see what that was going to be like. I’ve done a lot of businesses long distance and there are so many pros and cons to it. The pro is a lifestyle and being able to be multiple places at once. One of the cons is, you and I are video chatting right now, you’re getting to see in person, we get to have conversations that are deeper than then we would be if we were just on the phone or driving down the street, calling each other but still, video technology can’t do quite with just being able to see someone in person can do with energy.

Matt: Exactly.

Aaron: Something else you said before we dig into the questions. You said you’ve got your real estate license when you turned 18. I’m still in real estate, I’ve probably changed careers 18 times since I turned 18, how did you know at 18 you want to get into real estate and you’re still here, it’s crazy.

Matt: It’s funny that you say that because I’ve got a few stories around the getting into real estate at 18. I did get my license the month I turned 18. Truthfully, I didn’t know if I wanted to stay in real estate. I just saw the big paychecks and I thought if these guys can do it, I should do this. I actually got my entrepreneurship degree from the university while I was with selling real estate and building a team and figuring those things out.

What I’ve learned in real estate is, when you start to master one piece of it, and unlocks other opportunities. When you start to recognize how to do comparables and see when something’s below market, you become better at buying investments. It’s really fun to buy investments. Then you decide that you want to do some flipping or you decide you want to build another business, it’s an ancillary business.

The cool thing about real estate is all the different pathways it allows you to take once you’ve created one piece of success. I think that’s what’s kept me in this game is how fun it is to explore the various pathways. One thing though, that almost did get me out of real estate was I didn’t sell a house for the first nine months I had my license. I don’t know if it was a combination of, I thought I was too young, I didn’t know how to find clients, I was using my senior picture from high school on my business cards.

Aaron: That’s good, though.

Matt: It was probably all of those things. What I wish I knew and I’m sure you’d ask a question like this but as we’re talking about, I think what I wish I knew back then was the importance of going and finding leads and really working a database and then following up with those people. At first, I was like, “Well, I’ll tell them, people, I’m in real estate and hopefully, they’ll send me something,” and I failed for nine months, I didn’t sell anything.

Finally, I figured out at about the sixth or seventh month like, “I should probably find some leads or somebody to call. I should do some open houses, I should do something to make this business work.” Then from month nine through month 12, I sold 11 houses. Sometimes, you’re in that

that grind of figuring out what you’re doing building your confidence, understanding where business comes from all those things that take a little bit of time to figure out, and then something clicks when you least expect it. That was my failure story that turned into a success.

Aaron: Yes, no listings, no deals the first nine months. How many did you say the last three months of the year?

Matt: 11 months in the last three months of that first year. Sorry, 11 deals in the last three months.

Aaron: No, you’re averaged one a month, except for you did it all in the last three months. That’s so important for real estate people. We’ve got listeners of all types on here. We’ve got veterans doing it for so many years, we got people who just got their license last week. They’re just figuring out, what’s the best podcast out there for real estate agents. As they get to hear some of that.

That’s got to be really inspiring to say, “Hey, if you’re out there and you’ve been doing this for five or six months, it is not too late to become a huge success as a real estate agent. Now, you have start working some of those systems you haven’t done yet. Maybe you’re still going to get paid three months from now from a system you’ve been working for the last three months. Getting started is hard. You roll that pipeline, and it gets going.”

Well, let’s dig into some of the nitty-gritty stuff, that’s very focused on you. Now, all of our listeners know for sure you’re a guy they want to be able to listen to you. You’ve been able to- you started at 18, you grew that. Now, we’re looking many years later, you got all these teams, you had all these people, there’s different offices, you live in a couple of places. How many houses have you sold in the last 12 months? What was your volume on that? What were your gross commissions?

Matt: Yes, our real estate team did 150 units in the last 12 months and our brokerage did 1,200 units in the last four months. Managing training, the brokerage agents, and then also leading the specific team of my own. That ended up being about 30 million in volume, and the GCI was right around 2.9% of that 30 million.

Aaron: That is so awesome. Your a family guy, too, as you’re growing this life. Maybe that’s what we get to chat about at the end. For you, when it comes to listings versus buyers agents for you personally, do you take some of yourself? Or are you just a team lead owner right now? Do you still take listings?

Matt: What’s funny is, I went about three years with taking no listings, no buyers, and in the last six months or a year, I had to step back into our team and start doing a little bit more of that. The reason for that is, I realized that the industry is starting to change and it’s getting competitive in a different way. The markets feeling a little bit of a squeeze, there’s a lot of competitors that are bringing technology and trying to take our business away from us. Our leads where they were coming from was starting to dry up, we had different sources that used to be very lucrative that no longer work.

I said, “I need to step back in and make sure that we’ve got the right system and we’re doing the right thing for our clients.” We’ve got to optimize where our business is coming from. We’ve sold 100 to 150 homes for four years straight. It’s been one of those pain points where we haven’t grown to the extent we could have if I’d been in it really watching that.

I stepped back in and I started taking buyers and I really started documenting the systems of how do we create amazing experiences for our consumers, such that one we could charge more and two, we would attract more people to us. In the last in last year, I’ve actually been doing both buyers and sellers and documenting both those pieces but my favorite is definitely sellers, I definitely prefer working with listings.

Aaron: That’s awesome. That’s great advice too. In different times, as agents become entrepreneurs, become team leads which this thing of going all right, now, I’m not taking listings anymore, I’m not doing this anymore because I’ve elevated to be able to help more people. Not being afraid as an entrepreneur to actually dig in, do the nitty-gritty, especially when something isn’t quite working right? You’re going to be the one that knows your market, knows your people.

Last year, I had to do that a couple of times with my real estate investment business, I had to really dive in and go drive and see all the properties myself and see some of the stuff that was under construction, see why it wasn’t renting out or why it wasn’t selling and then re-diving in with my team and hiring new agents. I spent a few months just training every day and went from going and had to tell my family, “Sorry, we’re not traveling next few months, I’m going to dig in and do training.”

Wherever you are in that entrepreneur journey, being aware of what’s happening, seeing your listings are drying up stuff slowing down, and not being afraid to jump back in and go right, “I’m going to fix this.” Like, “I’m not going to wait until it’s broken and I’ve got nothing left, I see the numbers going a little bit in the wrong direction. I’m going to jump in see if I can fix that.” That is awesome. Just now, you were just talking about leads, what’s your number one source for leads out there?

Matt: Yes, we’ve always done a lot from online sources, between Facebook ads, Google ads, other miscellaneous long-tail SEO and then review sites have been our major source right behind that would be Sphere database working the same people that we’ve worked in the past and also relationships. No matter what the name of the game in real estate is a status deal is a database. As you’re building leads, or as you’re connecting with people at open houses or as your work, whatever sources you’re working your number one goal is to add them to your list.

Even if they’re not ready to buy yet, if they’re somewhere in the spectrum of buying or selling the next two to five years, one to five years, then we want to have them in our database by communicating with them about homeownership and about what the market is doing. What we found is that oftentimes the people in our database, they’re looking to invest in houses, they’re looking to know what the market is in their neighborhood. They’re looking to have referrals from vendors, you’re building long-term relationships with business. We’ve really tried to increase the database business majority of our leads coming from the internet, though.

Aaron: Yes, I’ve heard that so many times, like, the time flies. Before you know it, that’s going to happen so you meet somebody and they say, “Hey, when I get a job, I’m going to buy a house, or in a few years, I’m going to buy a house.” It’s like, “Don’t just set that off and go, oh, you’re not ready. Put them in your list, put the timer in,” and say, “All right, now in two and a half years, I’m going to call them and see if they’re ready yet, or I heard he got a job. I’m going to follow him on Facebook.”

Aaron: What technology do you use to keep track of your leads out there?

Matt: Yes, here’s what I know. There’s no perfect CRM I wish there was, I’ve been searching. I’ve switched so many times it’s killed me. There’s some that work really well and some that work really well for certain people. What I know is that you’ve got to use the system that works best for you. I’m with Keller Williams so we use KDB command to track all of our leads and all of our contacts and then to keep notes and with those people.

Truthfully we had to actually get all of our agents to get back onto binders with what we call lead books, and we would take our intake sheets, and we’d stick them in the binder under a month tab. We’d have January through December, the month tabs and we take the intake sheet that has at least their contact info, their motivation, and their time frame. I have to have those three things for it to be considered a warm or a hot lead for us to continue following up with. That’s their contact info, their time frame when they say they’re going to do something, and real motivation, not just I’m thinking about selling because I want to get the highest price on the market.

If I have those three things on my intake sheet, I’m going to put them in the month when they told me they were going to take action. I’m going to have this lead book for January, February, March all the way through December for the next 12 months. I want the next 12 months of leads in my binder.

I know that it’s low tech, I’m a young guy. I love technology, I use Zoom every single day for video conferencing for conversations, and yet I think that a lead book, a binder you carry around, where a lead calls in, you get their motivation, you get their time frame you have their contact info and you put them in your book makes for a better follow-up process. I need something tangible or else I lose track of who I needed to reach out to.

Then on either the first of the month or the first week of the month, I tell our team, “Go to your lead book which probably has 30 to 100 people because you’re only keeping the really warm solidly motivated people in there, and call through the entire book.

Everyone that’s doing something in a month, everyone that’s doing something in a year, maybe the ones they’re doing for a month you’re probably talking to once a week or even two to three times a week but the ones that are 2 to 12 months out, you’re calling at least once a month and you’re just checking in to see what they need. Do they need recommendations from a stager? Do they need your vendor list? Have they decided to move up their time frame? Would they consider selling if you’re able to find them the buyer ahead of time?

We just check-in and touch on those people. What we found is people often change their time frame move it up or they would sell if we could find a buyer right away. Then we can go to our buyers at open houses or in other situations where we find buyers and say, “Hey, I’ve got a whole bunch of would-sells, I got that term from my buddy Ben Kinney,” he always says make a list of would-sells. All the people that aren’t on the market that would if you could find them a buyer, and then use that as a lead magnet to both attract buyers and provide a service to buyers when it’s a hot market and they can’t find the property they’re looking for.

We go take our list of people that would sell and then we can go market that to the buyer. Binders isn’t that crazy? I mean a lead binder with pieces of paper but that’s my best recommendation for following up with leads at a high level.

Aaron: Dude that is so much info in there. I mean rewind and listen to that last minute again.

Matt: Sorry. [laughs]

Aaron: No, because what Matt just did there is if wherever you are in your real estate career if you’re trying to figure out what’s a hot topic like, he just gave you this secret of how he’s successful. When you meet that person they say, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about selling a house may be in October whether you like take it out a note,” my dad used to have a set of note cards in his upper pocket and he’d always bought the notecard and you can write a note.

Whether you take it on the notecard and write it or you put it on your phone when you get to the office then you put it on your piece of paper but being able to put that in a binder, and then when March comes you pull it out, you call them you say, “Hey, are you still thinking about it?” They might go, “You know what? Call me back in May.” Then you move it in your binder. I bet by looking at that too you can start to see what your visual stack is, which months do you have a lot of people? When am I going to be busy? What else you can do to get out there?

The other tip of calling some of them early, then those questions that Matt asked them, Matt just mentioned when he calls them– If he’s going to call him this month even if they say May or June, and he says, “Hey, is there anything I can help you with?” Do you need a stager, do you want to talk to somebody else, do you want to talk to a handyman to get that house ready? I know you’re not ready to sell yet but what service can I offer for you?”

Then they might go, “You know what? The service you need right now is they might just say I need a handyman, they might just send me a stager, they might say they change their mind or they might say, “We need you to help us or we’re glad you called back.” I give a lot of credit to people that call me back later, months and months later when I told them like, “Hey, maybe I’ll think about this at renewal time,” and then they do call me back at renewal time. I’m like, “All right, you worked hard for this. I’m going to try to reward that.”

I think that is so good. We just jumped there, we just got to skip through a lot of the questions that we usually talk about with one of the best things out there. One of the fun ones I like to ask is there a special phone app you use out there.

Matt: That’s a great question. Besides my podcast player, I really love the Scannable app by Evernote because I can easily throw things into my Evernote, on the go one of the worst things I do is carry around a paper. I always have a paper with me. There’s these things that I have and I’m like, “I need to save this somewhere but it ends up just creating piles on my desk,” so just being able to scan that into your Evernote saving that, putting that into Google Drive whatever your specific information system is, a way to not carry around as much paper it’s probably my best recommendation.

Aaron: 6 Yes, so I like that one too there. Many of those it’s funny because there’s a lot of technologies out there, I still have to journal by hand, that’s the only thing that I can’t put into my phone. I haven’t been able to use some of those for that but when you’re actually taking pictures of the stuff you wrote down, so you can see it later. I think that works out really well.

Aaron: We talked a little bit at the beginning about your early failure, your first nine months of failure that turned into a win. Can you think of a failure over the last couple of years that became that thing that’s really helped you, what’s next in your career?

Matt: Oh, gosh. A failure is my favorite thing now because I can look back on it and realize if I can iterate and change this, I’ll never do this again, my business will get better and more protected from the outside. The first couple of failures that come to mind especially when I think about agents maybe that are new in their career and in the middle of their career I think about follow-up.

What I think specifically is I had an agent come in to me, in my office a few years ago and she said, “Matt can I bring some of the other new agents or some of the new agents into your office and pick up the bread crumbs?” I’m like, “What do you mean the bread crumbs?” She said, “Yes you’ve got all these posted notes sitting around with names and phone numbers on them.” I’m pretty sure you generated this leads, you made a bunch of money or you’ve created a bunch of– spent a bunch of money creating these leads and you’ve done nothing with them. She was right, she said, “You probably have $10 million of volume lying on the floor, lying on your desk,” and it was true.

I learned at that moment that one of the most important things we do in real estate is not just generate leads or find new business, it’s also following up with the business. We touched on it a second ago and you said, “Call back in six months,” that idea. I think that that is the failure that we often miss. I think it was a specific example. A few years ago I had a past client, I’d sold this house before and then he had me come meet with him to buy another house two years after I sold his house. He said, “I’m ready to buy another house, I want to spend about 900 to 1.2 million.”

I said, “Awesome, that’s a great price in Albuquerque.” We went out and saw houses, we found a great house we made an offer, the seller didn’t accept, so we moved on. He actually was living in a different state at the time so we went back to that state and I said, “Well, let’s talk again in the next couple of days, email you and let’s make sure to connect on the next property, I’m sure we’ll find something for you.” I put him on a drip campaign from the MLS, they call those client portals. It had all the properties coming up in that neighborhood dripping on him.

I got busy that month, it was June we had a lot of transactions going on and I didn’t call him. I didn’t really realize how long it’d been, it’d been three weeks and I hadn’t talked to him on the phone but I did send him emails. I’d been dripping on him through the client portal and I finally called him back and I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I just realized it’s been a couple of days.” Because I was trying to make light of it.

“It’s been a couple of days since I last talked to you.” He said, “Oh, Matt we didn’t hear from you after we made that offer and it didn’t go through. We thought you didn’t want to work with us or that you were mad at us, so we hired a different realtor, we made an offer on a different property.” I said, “Oh, that’s too bad, I really want to work with you. I know you were thinking about buying rental property too, can I help you with the rental property?” He said, “Oh, Matt we actually made an offer on both properties, we’ve got about $1.4 million in pending right now.”

Three weeks later and I learned my follow-up lesson through failure. One of the things that I would just encourage agencies, oftentimes we think that we’re going to bug people, we’re afraid of bothering them. What the follow-up does, what that story tells us is we got to stay on top of those leads even when we think that it might be annoying and make sure that we’re providing value.

Not bugging them but staying in contact regularly. The warmer the lead is, the more contact we need to be. If they’re less than a month out we probably need to be talking to them every one to two days. If they’re one, if they’re two, they’re four months out we need to be talking to them once a week and if they’re 4 to 12 months out we need to be calling them once a month so that we’re the person that stays in contact.

I’ll share the script that I used. If ever someone seemed annoyed or they seem bugged, like, “No, you’ve called me three times and I told you I’m not selling till December,” then I tell them this exact thing. One of the most powerful scripts you can use if somebody seems annoyed or if you’re worried about them being annoyed. I’d say, “Aaron can I explain to you why I call you so often?”

Aaron: Yes, go ahead, yes let’s see what’s next.

Matt: “Yes the reason that I reach out this often is because realtors are notorious for poor communication and poor customer service and I didn’t want you to think I was one of those realtors, so that’s why I touch base with you so often, so when you are ready to hire a realtor you know that I’m the type of realtor that’s going to take really great care of you.” That completely disarms any sort of bothering, right?

Aaron: Right.

Matt: When would you like me to follow up with you, right? At that point I want to eliminate the objection that realtors are bad at communication and bad at customer service, I’m not that realtor, you should hire me.

Aaron: Yes and you don’t want them to say like, “Don’t worry I’ll call you.” You got to tell them like, “No I’m not going to take that because I’m the guy.” That example too is that’s why there’s not perfect CRM right? The fact that you didn’t call the guy and so he hired something else. When you did essentially what the CRM would do, right? The emails and that sort of thing.

There is the phone call, in every month it’s going to be slightly different, based on their dollar amount, based on how eager they were, based on how close they were. The other thing you shared the difference, if somebody is planning to buy this month you should be calling more often than the people that are trying to buy in the year, because if not, somebody else will be.

I’ve had a couple of times recently where I listed a house of mine for sale. We took it off the market, and the moment it went off the market, I got 18 phone calls that day. From agents saying, “Hey, do you still want to sell your house? I’m going to be able to sell to top dollar, I just sold in the neighborhood.” 18 guys within a day, the first call happening at 6:00 AM. If you don’t make the call, somebody else will find your lead. Somebody else is going to find in the way they did and they’re going to get that.

It was funny when the guy calls me at 6:00 AM part of me goes, “Dude, it’s 6:00 AM,” and the other part of me goes, “He was like ‘it’s a $2 million dollar listing. I’m going to be first. Like, I’m going to call at 6:00 AM.” I’m sure his objection would have been the same thing. I want you to know that I am willing to call whoever I need to at whatever time to sell your house. Yes, if you aren’t taking care of your leads someone else is going to be taking care of your lead. If you were going to go back in time and say, “Hey Matt you’re getting started in real estate, what advice would you give yourself as a rookie agent?” What’s the biggest, what’s the one thing you think would make the most impact?

Matt: Besides the things I’ve already shared, the other big thing I would tell a new agent or rookie agent is it’s really important to watch your profitability and it’s really easy in this industry to play ego over profitability. A lot of top agents I know that sell several hundred to several thousand leads and they make less money than the guy that sells 50 a hundred with a great assistant running a really profitable business.

Sometimes I think that we get too excited about hitting the award, hitting the volume numbers, hitting the GCI numbers and then we don’t look at the profit number. I’m always looking at it measuring what’s my profitability in this team? What’s the percentage of this revenue that’s bringing in the profitability. If it’s not greater than 25% you should just refer out the business. Maybe you’d make more money by referring it than working it yourself or working it with your team. Many times I see that the profitability numbers are hurt or they’re not as good when you start scaling a team or adding team members.

Aaron: Yes that’s like what you said at the beginning too, the goal first is to build a business before you hire someone. You need to build a business that can actually afford to hire somebody. I know a lot of people too as soon as they start building they can’t wait till they hire their first assistant, they can’t wait till they hire their first something to help and being able to tell them, “Hey, make sure that you’re actually working so much now that you’re earning so much it’s going to be easy to do that.”

I want to teach everybody how to work less and live more and how to scale to run these companies where they aren’t working every day but there is a process that that takes of building up and getting there that the people have to get through first. One of the fun things I want to talk to you about, this week you’re going to be doing, you’re going to be taking my seat and taking Pat’s seat, you’re going to be interviewing a few people this week.

What are you the most excited about? When you guys come on and you hear Matt Templeton is today’s host of Real Estate Rockstars, don’t be surprised like you’ve heard from, he’s going to be great at asking questions, great people, but what excites you the most? About either the people you’re going to be interviewing or just coming on and getting to share some of your stories and ask good questions for the podcast.

Matt: Selfishly one of the best parts about being a host on this podcast is getting to explore the stories of top producers. When we impact that I get as much value as the listeners do and that’s one of things I’m most excited about. Truthfully I think there’s also an aspect where if we can model, if we can listen to what somebody else is doing and copy them, we can skip some of the heartache.

Now, the one thing that I also want listeners to hear is that the most successful people at least from my experience, they have built businesses, they give them level, they give them time off, they give them that freedom. Many times we get into real estate for more money, more freedom, more flexibility, and because we’re passionate about the industry or passionate about houses right? Often times we get hamstrung by our freedom, our flexibility, and no finances. Instead of being able to actually win that without opportunity we get stuck in this frustration.

What I often tell new agents and what I am so excited to unpack is the grit and the hard work that agents put at the beginning, the failure they went through and it helps some of our agents that are in those growing parts of their career even the new parts of their career to say, “I’m going to put in the hard work now so that I can earn the right to have the flexibility and freedom I want in the future and really get the finance that I want,” and not get the which is failure, right?

I think that’s the thing I’m most excited about, I love sharing stories of failure, I love sharing stories of grit and I love hearing stories of people saying, “I’m going to work hard on the front end to really build something that allows me to have what I want for my family and my life.”

Aaron: Yes man I cannot wait to hear the questions that you ask as you get to unpack the grit and the stories out there for the other agents because you’re a Rockstar agent yourself and so I know you’ll be able to ask the best questions. One of last things a lot of our people come on and they come up with a free gift. Now, the free gift I really want is your business card that has your senior picture on it but they weren’t going to share that with us. Your first business card is. What do you plan on sharing?

Matt: Well, as I was thinking about this I realized many real estate agents run entrepreneurially and they’re just running or selling as many houses they can. Eventually, they realize that the leverage that gets you to the next level is systems and the more you can have checklists and processes and systems, the faster and more efficient your business gets. Specifically, I talked about in the book that we use an intake sheet. We have a buyer intake sheet and a seller intake sheet. Those are the questions we asked buyers and sellers before we go on an appointment with them.

It’s got about 30 questions on each side, I’m going to go ahead and give you guys the PDFs of those, just part of our system we use. Make it go and print those out, keep them in their binders, hole punch them, and put them in the months where they’re their leads say that they’re motivated to sell and that I think that’d be a great opportunity to buy and sell our intake sheets.

Aaron: Yes, from what we’ve talked about I cannot think of a better kind of free gift to having that system. We have everything on the link you can go to our agent toolbox and anybody that listened to us you’ll be able to see Matt’s custom page at hibandigital.com. Matt, If somebody wanted to reach out to you the where can we find you? Where’s the best place for people to can have a chat with you?

Matt: Yes, DM me on Facebook, you can find me under my page or my personal profile Matt Templeton or follow us on Instagram @templeton.realestate, templeton.realestate. DM us on either platform.

Aaron: How are you on– if you want to come find us Real Estate Rockstars @rerockstars at Instagram, we got Real Estate Rockstars Radio on YouTube and come find me on Instagram It’s @aaronmuchastegui so as long as you know how to spell Aaron and you add a few more letters A-A-R-O-N-A-M-U after that it’s going to auto search and find it because very few people have a strange of a name as I do out there.

I hope you guys get to come challenges a bunch of Matt it’s always good to see you, man. That first event I went to, that first mastermind, you were the first people I met. It was up in Tahoe and the and like I said at the beginning, your personality was just so great and so awesome that I knew we would become friends after that. Now it’s many years later and now you’re growing your own family and your businesses are crushing it and loving it so thanks for coming on it was a lot of fun.

Matt: Thanks Aaron, I appreciate you.