The $100,000 Recipe

The $100,000 Recipe 

[An excerpt from SUCCESS FASTER ON FIRE HOT!]

 

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.

·   Julia Child

 

Whether you have foodie skills or not, everyone can follow a recipe because you can read. Much like a monster cookie recipe, you can double or triple this formula to match your appetite. Let’s look at the formula for making $100,000 this year in your real estate business. 

 

First, there is more than one $100k recipe out there. There is the one where you are flipping houses and, if done right, you can get to $100k much faster, but you can also lose $100k in no time if not done well. There is another $100k recipe that involves massive online leads, the funds to generate them, and the systems to go after these low conversion, low loyalty leads with three to four hours on the phone every day.  There is the $100k recipe that involves luxury real estate, fewer transactions, and expensive shoes. This is the $100,000 recipe with traditional real estate serving buyers and sellers. We’ll cover the ingredients first, then the math.

 

Ingredients

• 1 C. vision

• 1 C. grit

• 1 C. talk

• 1 C. drive

• 1 C. butter

• 1 C. sugar

 

Ingredient 1: Vision

Always start your recipes, your goal, your plan, your year, your month, your diet, your meal, with a vision.  So what is your vision? Your vision for that $100,000? How do you see it materializing and evolving, but even more so, what does it look like when you get there?  

 

Vision 101 can be as simple as a sticky note on the bathroom mirror or on the edge of your computer monitor that says $100,000. Or simply writing it down.  Vision 201 takes it a step further by telling someone else your goal, this adds accountability.  Or doing a vision board.  Your brain believes what you feed it (talk to yourself more, listen to yourself less) so feed it the vision of what it is going to look like when you are on pace for $100k and when you hit it.  

 

So write it down. Write down the vision. Write it down like you mean it. Even if you don’t fully believe it, yet, write it down.  

 

Ingredient 2: Grit

Vision 301 takes it one critical step further. Consider grit as part of advanced vision manifestation. Expertise and IQ and care and hard work and perhaps your competitive nature may get you there, but grit will push you through, grit will knock down barriers, grit is a difference-maker.  So ingredient two is grit.  Vision first and then grit.  

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Ingredient 3: Talk

Now that you have your visual check and your gut check, let’s map out the specifics.

 

Math, my friends. It’s all math for the $100,000 recipe. And we’ll keep this as simple as possible by focusing on the lowest common denominator in your real estate success, conversations. Let’s break it down.

 

If you want to make $100,000 and you know that you need a certain number of closings to accomplish that and a certain number of appointments to get to those closings and then a certain even higher number of leads to get to those appointments and then a certain number of conversations in order to get to those leads, then we can do this math progression:

 

conversations

that drive leads

that drive appointments

that drive clients

that drive contracts

that drive closings

that drive commission checks

that drive $100,000

 

So for the $100,000 recipe, we are going to focus on simply driving conversations and, in most cases, having more conversations and better and more purposeful conversations.  Put that sticky on your monitor:  conversations!

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Ingredient 4: Drive

Drive belongs right here after Ingredient 3: Talk as we need to tap into your drive to drive more conversations.  If I told you on your first day on the job as a Realtor on my team that in order to stay on the team, you had to talk to enough people every day to create three solid leads and that is what successful agents do. Would you do it? Sometimes all it takes is someone giving a directive.  If a directive is what you need to get into the conversation habit and flow, consider this paragraph the directive.

 

Maybe your drive is related to grit and having something to prove.  Maybe your drive is financial freedom and escaping the stress of just scraping by or the pit of too much credit card debt.  Maybe your drive is wondering how you are going to pay your rent in three or four months.  Maybe your drive is your family, maybe your new family, and creating an amazing life.

 

Identify and stay tuned into your drive. 

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Ingredient 5: Butter

Butter, in a recipe, is that thing that holds all the other ingredients together.  If the other ingredients are your vision, your grit, your conversations, and your drive, what is holding those together? Or maybe that is the problem, you have these ingredients and have not been able to get them working together in one cohesive effort.

 

What is stopping you? What holds you back?  What is the story you have been telling yourself?  Mindset, life events, dual career, your story is real … it’s just super important for us to acknowledge what is going on right now so we can move into what is next.  When you can identify and own where you are right now with your mindset and the stories you tell yourself, and have possibly been telling yourself for years, then you can accept where you are so we can invite you to where you go next.  It’s like forgiving your ex so you can be fully present with the one you’re with (thank you Lisa Nichols).

 

So the butter represents the story you tell yourself.  And if the $100,000 income (or maybe yours is the 3x or 5x version of that goal) is that thing that has been elusive and unattainable, then you may need a new story.  Your story may be holding you back.  It’s a new goal, it may need a new story.  So what is your story and is it serving you and your goal?  If yes, then wrap your arms around it and keep going. If not, then time for a new story. 

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Ingredient 6: Sugar

Have fun!  It’s the sugar, baby!  Remember the renew your joy concept earlier in the book?  Let’s tap into that.  Having a goal and making progress on it every day and every week is fun!  What if you started each day with the question “What is one thing I can do first thing this morning that will move me closer to my $100,000 goal?  What is one thing I can do this morning that will move me closer to that dream vacation?”

 

Helping buyers find the right house is fun!  What if you reminded yourself every day that you get to help someone change their life today?  Making loads of money is awesome because it builds your life and creates amazing options and experiences!  What if you look at the vision board every day?  Don’t forget the sugar! 

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Directions … the math!

A recipe always starts with ingredients and then the directions. So here are the directions, and it’s really about the math. And how you apply yourself.  

 

First, recognize that with the recipe there is one key ingredient right in the middle.  That ingredient is talk or conversations.  It’s the meat in the recipe.  Could you skip all the other ingredients and simply jump to talk & conversations?  Yes, for some, and no for most of us.  For each of us, there will be one or two “support” ingredients that really do some heavy lifting so it is important to identify yours.  My do-not-skip ingredients are the vision and the drive, those two ingredients do a lot of heavy lifting for me. Yours may be different.  But to nail the $100,000 recipe, the one thing we all have in common is talk, talk and conversations.

 

Let’s break it down.

 

The goal:  $100,000 gross commission income

 

First, what is your average price point? What is your current average price point or your market average price point or your market niche average price point? You can use one of those.We are going to use $300,000 as an average price point in this example.  (The online book resources have this formula in a downloadable worksheet.)

 

Average price:  $300,000

 

Average commission:  $7,500 (using 2.5% to allow for some referral fees, broker splits, or for markets that draw a less than 3% commission; adjust yours up or down as needed)

 

The closings:  $100,000 / $7,500 = 13.33 … round up to 14 because you cannot sell a third of a house

 

So just barely over one closing per month and you hit that goal.  That seems doable, right?  And if your goal is $200,000, with the above parameters, then it’s just slightly over two closings per month and you hit the goal.  

 

The clients:  Let’s just agree that not everyone who starts out with you as a client ends up closing on a property. Just for some easy math, we are going to use an 80% ratio, that 80% of your clients end up with you getting paid.  So if we rounded up to 14 closings, using the 80% factor, you would need to have signed 17 or 18 clients; so we’ll use 18.

 

The appointments:  How many appointments do you need to generate 18 clients?  Let’s keep it real simple and use 80% again (yours may be higher, we’re going conservative).  So you would need 22.5 appointments; so we’ll use 23.  Oh heck, any time you can round up to something that fits easily into a twelve month calendar, please do.  So we are going to use 24. Always round up, never round down on your goals or your life.

 

The leads:  How many leads do you need to generate 24 appointments, to generate two appointments per month?  Now this is where it gets a little tricky and you will learn your ratio as you go, or perhaps you already know it then amazing!  I am going to suggest, for this recipe, that we use a 50% ratio of leads to appointments, partly because lots of folks are in no hurry at all.  So 24 appointments will take 48 leads; two appointments per month will take four solid leads per month.  A lead per week!  OMG, is that all I have to do?!  One solid lead per week?!

 

The conversations:  How many conversations do you need to generate one solid lead per week? What if you knew that every working day, it was your job to have one solid bonafide serious lead generation conversation?  I am suggesting to you and this recipe supports it, that all it takes is one solid bonafide and serious lead generation conversation per day to make $100,000 in the next twelve months. If everyone knew this formula, there would be more Realtors out there.

 

Work on your $100k recipe (or the $200k or $300k version) and then jump on the 456 Coaching Club on Facebook and tell us about it … we’ll help hold you accountable and help you push through!