Elevate Your Standards with Alexis Valladares

Hey, it's Phil Treadwell, and before we dive into today's episode, I have a game-changer for you. Top performers don't succeed by chance. They follow proven systems, stay accountable, and surround themselves with the right people. That's where growth happens. That's exactly what the M1 Academy Mastermind Group is all about. This is a free, monthly coaching and strategy experience designed for professionals who are serious about building a high-performing sustainable business. By these group coaching calls, you'll get direct access to tactical training, industry leading strategies, and a community of driven professionals. Each month we'll dive deep into streamlining systems, building a magnetic personal brand, creating engaging content, and proven lead generation strategies. If you're serious about growth, this Mastermind Group is not optional. It's time to align with the right people, apply the right strategies, and move with urgency. You can register for the M1A Mastermind Group by clicking the link on our show notes or by going to m1a.pro/mastermind. That's m the number 1a.pro/mastermind. We'll see you on the inside. Now let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Mortgage Marketing Expert Podcast, where expert guests teach you how to have success in the mortgage and real estate industry. Here's your host, Phil Treadwell. Alright, welcome back to the Mortgage Marketing Expert Podcast. I'm your host, Phil Treadwell. My Mortgage Marketing Expert today is Alexis Valideris. I did pronounce that right, didn't I, Alexis? You got it. You got it perfectly good stuff. He is a real estate coach entrepreneur. He started his business journey at 14. After 12 failed ventures, he became a licensed real estate agent in 2020 and found a ton of success. He's closed over 150 million transactions. He mastered fizzbo and expired listings and he now leads Valideris real estate academy, training over 10,000 agents worldwide in cold calling, objection handling, sales mastery. Guys, this is an expert in real estate and mortgage and as everybody knows, my company in one academy is similar. I'm sure we do different things and a lot of the same things, but I like to bring people on there going to give you both tactical and mindset things as well as habits that you can go out and use and build your business. This is going to be a really cool conversation. We have a lot of mutual friends and I'm excited to have you on Alexis. Welcome to the podcast, my friend. Yeah. I really appreciate Phil and I'm very excited to share what I can with the audience and get right after it. Let's do it. I love that. Well, let's kind of jump back in. So for people that may not be as familiar with you, you've got an incredible Instagram following. You've really been blowing up real estate over the last five years, but kind of talk about your background. We were sharing a little bit before we started the recording, but you know, kind of walk people through that high level journey of just how you got to where you are today and really what you're up to. Yeah, well, I'll give you the time constraint version, right? A lot of people might not know about this, but I grew up in a very wealthy household, right? My dad was an entrepreneur. He was a gym business owner and I grew up around a lot of abundance, but the whole family structure wasn't like the happiest household in the world. So at a very young age, I learned that money didn't equate to everything. Life was great up until like about 12, 13, like I didn't even know what was going on behind the scenes behind the curtain. And then kind of like 12 or 13, I started, you know, seeing the problems that were happening in the business. And then like by 14, there was no, there was nothing. It was completely bankrupt. Went from living in a 5,500 square foot mansion to 1000 square foot townhouse, you know, just with my mom. And that's when the whole like for like a six to 12 month period, I started really blaming everybody and I was really frustrated because I wasn't living the life that I used to live, you know, which was carefree and not worried about anything. And then all of a sudden, I had to worry about everything, right? At 14 years old, I mean, it wasn't the worst situation, but from me and my perspective and what I knew for the only 13 years I had of life, it was very different. So at 14, I kind of rolled my sleeves up and got to work, filled a bunch of ventures before I got my license and ended up getting my license and you know, Phil, when the pain of being in the same spot is more than the pain of changing, you'll finally change. And I think that's where a lot of people might be at right now where they aren't in a bad enough situation. And it wasn't until I hit like rock, rock bottom when I was like, cadding in Wisconsin and the freezing cold, making a hundred bucks a day, I just really finally hit so. You mentioned something right there. It's funny. We say something very similar, obviously framed a little bit different, but it's the way that I've always framed it is if you want meaningful change and you want to have that stick tutiveness to become successful. The pain of quitting has to hurt more than the pain of pushing through. And what people don't, I think, realize about that is that means you have to go all in. You have to be willing to give up where you are and go backwards for a short period of time so that you can leap forward ahead of where you were. But people create fear inside themselves of not wanting to give up what they have. Even if that's not the end goal that they have it, even if that's not what they want, the fear of losing that or the fear of not even failure of people seeing you fail, even for a short period of time, keeps people from taking action. So talk about that with your journey. What you talked about, you gave yourself a window of five years to be successful. Talk about the thought process and the mindset you have through that. And also if you would speak to do you think that that five year window that you gave yourself was important because you had this deadline versus I'm for sure going to become successful. But maybe it was open-ended when it comes to a day. Yeah. To tackle the five year window first, I think now with the experience I have, I think that was a wrong mindset to have. It shouldn't be like a timeline because a lot of realtors I think don't give it a five year window. Maybe it's what I did right, given it that much time. I think they give it like four weeks, six months, right? Like I'm going to try cold calling for six months. I'm going to try open houses for two months and given it a window isn't the right way to do it. I think you should just commit to it and do it until it works because everything works. Everything in this business will work and I think that's the right mindset to have. The second part I wanted to share with you, Phil, I used to make decisions based of how I felt. I was always scared to do things. I think people watching this podcast are always scared to, you know, join a coaching program or change brokerages or move from their hometown into a bigger city to grow. And until you realize that we're all built from patterns and behaviors and those behaviors ultimately make us think and feel a certain way. And when these big decisions come up in our life, if we're making the decision based on how we feel and we don't know how to reframe the fear to excitement, we're always going to make the decision based out of fear. And the results are always going to be the results that you get when you make decisions out of fear. So I really just started making decisions out of excitement, Phil, and not necessarily fear. I started reframing my mind. And I think I got a credit. I watched a lot of Tony Robbins during that, during that phase. And it really, really helped. So I got to give him his credit and I dove deep down that and now that's why, you know, I do what I do because I understand communication, I think at a very high level. And I understand how humans make decisions because I was also that human that didn't get everything handed to him. And I was also very scared. And I didn't have the skill sets. I didn't have the confidence. I didn't have the, I didn't know where to call. I didn't know who to call. I didn't know what to say. And I started making decisions out of excitement instead of fear. And here we are. I love that you've reframed simple decisions, right? We've all heard you are in life where you've chosen to be. And we get caught up in our circumstances. And we start buying into justifications or more pointedly excuses. How did you remove those excuses as you were on this journey of becoming successful? I think it starts with like, I removed the people that I was with. I removed the conversations that I was consuming, I removed the ideologies that I was consuming for my family as well. Because think about it. I was an entrepreneur, crushed it, and then it went to shit. Everybody in the family is like, dude, you can't do this. You can't go down the same path. You're going to be the same person. You're going to be the same way. Just go to school and get a job. So I just really, for a period of time, kind of upset everybody, you know, and and was really, really selfish for a really, really long time. And I just set the expectation straight, I was like, look, mom, dad, grandma, friends. I don't want to be this person anymore. And a lot of those people ended up just never coming back into my life. Even some of my family members, like not my immediate family, but some of the extended family members, in order for you to cut out the excuses, you got to cut out the environment that's speeding you the excuses. Because you have friend A that, you know, you wake up, Phil, let's say you're super sore and you've been to the gym 14 days in a row and you call friend A and you're like, bro, I'm just so sorted. I don't want to do this. And friend A's like, bro, let's just come have a drink. Let's just come chill. But you call friend B and friend B's like, stop being a little girl. Let's go pick up your stuff. Let's go to the gym. You don't feel like it. But this one you got to do it. So I started finding more friend B's instead of having more friend A's. And that really like my environment really, really changed everything for me. It was difficult to let go of those people. But again, the pain of letting go of those people was significantly less than the pain of me continuing to fail because I was now 22, 23. My mental clock was like, you got to figure it out, buddy. You know, you have dad that was this super amazing entrepreneur and I'm like, I'm just as capable of not more. What am I going to do to make this happen? I can't be the, I'm the one son. I have a little sister, but I'm like, I have to, I have to make it. So that, that pain of not being looked at that way by my parents and the people around me just started hitting way harder than any other thing, like waking up doing the things I didn't want to do. The discipline, making the cold calls, I wasn't scared of that stuff, Phil, to be honest. I was scared of not living up to what I knew I could be. I love that the conversations we have with ourself, and I love that we're going down this path because you've mentioned it a couple of times that you're talking about environment. And what you just spoke to right there was Jim Rohn's concept of where the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So if we, and I don't know why it's five, it could be three, it could be seven, but we've landed on five. I think that's kind of an accepted number. And to your point, the family members, the extended family, the friends, it's not that you have to cut those people out of your life, but if they're who you think they are. If this is a person who professes to love you and supports you no matter what, and once the best for you, you have to let them know what your new standard is. What those new expectations are for your life. And if they pocket that or try to pull you back down, that's not a reflection of you. That's a reflection of their own insecurities, their own unwillingness to up their game and up their life. And the people that are who you think they are in terms of friends and family that that supports you, those are the people who are like, Hey, I understand. What can I do to help? How can I be better? And that opens up the door of the conversation. If you know what, you're, you're negative and Nancy all the time. Like you're always, you're always talking about people and bad things that happen. Let's talk about where we're going. Let's talk about uplifting things. But I think that also plays into the other part of environment of our eye gate and ear gate, right? And the things we hear, the things we see, speak to that a little bit for you and your journey from golf caddy, where you were, I think I read in a post $30,000 in debt, not making any money to over the next five years, closing $150 million in real estate, making hundreds of thousands into the millions of dollars and reframing your life. Speak to that aspect of how important what you let in, not just in your physical environment, but even in your mental environment. You hit the nail on the head. You talked about standards. I created a new standard for myself and I stopped, I used to negotiate all the time. I used to set certain commitments in my life because I was always ambitious. 14, 15, 16, set 18, I was always ambitious, but I would always negotiate when I felt like not doing it. I would feel tired, I'd feel sick, I'd feel lazy, I'd fail the business and I would just give up because the pain of giving up at that point wasn't enough. And what, what change was your 100% right and it's not just the five people that we spend the most time with in person, it's who we listen to on the radio, what songs are we listening to, what podcasts we're consuming. And at the end of the day, what ideologies we believe to be true. And I only choose now to believe that the things that I want to happen are the things that are true. I don't buy into any negative conversations. If you're someone in my life, there's a rule. My mom has a rule. My friends have a rule. You don't call me with negative stuff unless it's like an emergency. Someone is having a health issue or someone is dying or you need my help. You don't call me with anything negative because here's the thing Phil, you're going to know this very well, scaling a business into the six and seven figures and eventually hopefully we get to the eight figures. It's more problems than solutions and you don't find those solutions and you don't look at the problem from a different perspective, you're not going to solve it. That's the thing that entrepreneurs don't understand, they think it said it's fun. They see us, you know, some of us post the cars and the nice watches and the nice vacations and they think it's fun. This is nothing but just solving problems all day and looking at the problems as an opportunity. Right, frankly, every time something happens in my business, I say this is an opportunity to grow and learn and tackless from a different perspective and it's just a genuine belief system that I have now. Before a problem would come up, I get frustrated, I get mad and I'd give up. But now every time that a problem comes up, right now we're in the middle of my team just went from four people to 14 people in the matter of 45 days and there's a lot of problems that come up. But I see them as just opportunities. But that is the way that I perceive things. The way that you look at things from your lens determines the way that you live and your outcomes. And I think people need to understand that. Most people don't look at things that way. That's right. And that's the problem, I think. Those, you know, most of being a business owner, especially, again, in mortgage and real estate specifically, but I don't care if your financial service is insurance, I know we have people listen to the podcast that are in those, you know, verticals and industries, entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, you own your own business and you have to think like a business owner, and while social media has glamorized entrepreneurship with planes and vacations and bling and all the things, entrepreneurship is a lonely road. Ed Mylett talks about it's a very, very lonely road. And frankly, you're a firefighter. You're constantly putting out problems and challenges on a daily basis. And we do have to embrace that because those are opportunities to grow. And I want to share two quick things that I want your take on these. I want to share a couple of things that I've recently heard over these last couple of weeks just in conversations with really high level thinkers and people and mentors. And one of them is around Elon Musk and I may have shared this in a previous podcast episode, but whenever he founded PayPal with Peter Teal, there was another guy who's, you know, worth billions. He's a venture capitalist and private equity guy. And there was an interview or a podcast interview where they asked him, what is it about Elon Musk? Because there is this thing that just makes him different. And regardless of what your views are, Elon Musk from a political perspective, no one can deny his ability as a business operator. And what this guy was saying, I wish I could remember his name. He said absolutely. I can pinpoint one thing that makes him different when it comes to business is with all of his companies. Every single week, he sits down with all of the leadership with the board, you know, whatever that means for him and say, what are the two biggest problems we have in our business right now? What are the two biggest things that are holding us back? And that week he goes on and solves those problems, doesn't just stand and look into it, doesn't put a bandaid on it. He goes and solves those problems. And the next week comes back and say, okay, what's our two biggest problems in business? And I think that that's what we all need to approach all of our businesses as is, what can I go solve for? We want to take the ride and the wave and the good times, but we forget that's a direct correlation with how many problems we solve in our business and how many problems we solved for other people. And I'd love to kind of get your take on that concept to your point of it creates problems, but it also creates opportunities for us to go out and tackle something new to learn something to succeed. That's where the price is paid. Yeah. I'll give you this take though. I think the real entrepreneurs, the ones that have longevity, right? The ones that are in the game for 20, 30, 40 years. The fun part, and I was talking to my CEO about this, the fun part is the building. The wire transfers, the deals closed, the highlights, like that doesn't matter. Like we frankly, I don't give a crap about that anymore. I care about like being in the room, hour 15, hour 16, hour 17, and like we finally build a thing and that that thing is going to help other people do what they're trying to do. That's the fun part. So for us, it's like you said in the beginning, it's mindset and it's perspective. I think some rookie entrepreneurs or some people that have been, you know, tricked by some of the influencers on Instagram and that they post this flashy stuff, they think that this is fun and that there's not going to be problems. So Elon Musk's perspective is completely right because he looks for the problems and that's his fun stuff. That's what he geeks out about, like looking at all the operations and trying to fix things and make them more efficient. And I think that's what the entrepreneurs that are going to be in the game for the next three decades, four decades thrive on. They thrive on that. It's fun. It's actually not like we don't we don't get upset when things go sideways. We're like this is really fun. Let's actually roll up our sleeves and figure it out together. And I think that that approach will keep you in business forever because there's never a point in time in my experience in business where it's just like, Hey, things are going great. Like let's just kind of like kick our feet back up and that's it. There's always something to do. And here's the thing Phil, I'll give entrepreneurs this one tip. It might sound a little bit like far fetched. I used to have income goals. Now I have payroll goals like I want to make a hundred grand a month anymore. I say I want to pay out a hundred grand a month in payroll. Like that is what moves the needle for me because and I don't want to make it sound like I've got it all figured out either Phil, but I'm at a point in time where if I just wanted to run this business very, very, you know, smallly, I guess by myself and live the life of my dreams, I could already, but I get more of a kick out of helping other people do the same thing now. So my goal when I want to wake up because, you know, some days I don't feel like it. I'm tired and I want to be playing golf on the golf course. I want to go play tennis or just chill or go to the beach. But then I'm like, dude, I got 15 people under me that are relying on me. And that drives my boat, right? Like night right now I get to take care of my grandma. I get to help out my mom. I get to help out my sister. That to me means more because when I first started was I want to make 10k a month. Now I'm like, my next goal is like I want to pay a hundred grand a month in payroll. Right. And that's what keeps the boat moving forward when I don't feel like it. I love that because you've now reframed the goal to helping other people. And I shared all the time, but Zig Zigler is obviously, he's not around anymore. But it was one of the smartest minds when it comes to this kind of stuff because he flat out told everyone, you can have everything you want. If you help enough other people get what they want. And we've got to focus on that in real estate, in mortgage, in most sales ventures. We've already talked about people pay for solutions to their problems, but you have to think about inherent value. And value isn't this boil the ocean concept where we've got to figure out some complex financial strategy. It's having a conversation and finding out what are their objectives. What is it they want to do? What problem can you solve? Or where is that they want to go and give them a strategy to do that? If we focus on doing that for people, our business absolutely explodes, but we go into conversations thinking about getting a deal or getting a lead or getting a referral is opposed to truly building relationships and thinking to ourselves, how can I get to know them on a level where I can really understand what they need, what they want, and provide value in that way. So I want to shift it a little bit tactical from that perspective. You made your business a lot in Fizzbo's and expired listings and things like that where either someone wasn't wanting to deal with a real estate professional or didn't think they did versus other people that maybe worked with a real estate professional that didn't perform at that level. As you had conversations with people, what did those look like? How did you structure that? Because I don't think it was just about, hey, I'm going to get more money for your house, or I'm going to sell this for a higher price. I suspect just kind of hearing you talk about mindset and the way you analyze things, that there was probably a conversation about what their goals or what they were trying to accomplish. I'd love you to share from a tactical perspective what people can do to have these conversations with their clients, with their partners, and really get the kind of lift in their business they want. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the stuff that you shared about making more money and having a better net outcome, that's what a for sale by owner wants. But when you present that at a listing presentation, that is a logical standpoint. If you don't create some sort of emotional reasoning for them to listen to you in the beginning, you're not going to be able to tie the logic in. Some agents come in to a presentation, they sit down and say, hey, I'm with this company, I've done this much. My team can service you in this way, and this is how much we're going to charge you. That's all logical presentation. You have to get into the emotions, and here's how I was able to do it. When I first started making sales, I needed the money, really, really bad feel. I was in a bad situation, and I wanted to get out of that situation, and I was very eager to do so. Most agents in my shoes would have put the commission first, and their first thought in their brain would have been, I want the listing, I want the listing, I want the listing. But I was able to reframe, because I read a lot of books, watch a lot of podcasts, and study the best entrepreneurs. If you put the others person's best interest first, and you genuinely mean it, you're going to get the business. So I would sit down and understand, number one, Phil, remember this, 99% of the people make decisions based out of fear. So the reason why I first sell by owner, when they tell you, I need to think about it. I got to talk to my wife. I want to sit on it. They're not telling you that. That's what they're saying. But what they mean is, I'm scared, and I don't trust you, and I don't know what's going to happen next. So by just learning how to communicate effectively, and ask them, transparently, hey, look, John, I know that right now you don't want to work with an agent, you don't want to pay commissions, and this is a very stressful and overwhelming situation. Correct me if I'm wrong. At the end of the day, if you could just wave a magic wand, and be sitting at the closing table, you just want to have the most amount of money net going into your pocket, and I have to stress about all these calls, right? Can I ask you, what made you mainly want to list for sale by owner? And just have that conversation, and this is a roadmap, right? The first part of my presentation field was creating pain and identifying the problem. But before I get that, I have to make them feel comfortable enough to tell the truth. So I got to set the agenda. I got to say, hey, look, at the end of the day, it might not make sense to work together, and that's totally okay. I just want to come and give you information. At the end of the day, you're going to sell the property anyways. But what's most important is selling it for the most amount of money. If you decide that what I have to share with you makes any kind of sense, we can talk about more details. I just want to get a better understanding of what you have going on, that way I can even see whether or not this makes sense. Now they feel comfortable because I'm not trying to sell them. I'm always giving them the exit. Think about this. A listing presentation or a cold call is like a box. You're putting this person in a box that they don't want to be in. And if they feel like they're in a box, and they can't look around and find a door to leave in, they're going to want to leave the entire time. But if you say, hey, look, here's the exit, Mr. Seller. The exit is right there. You can leave whenever you want. They're going to feel comfortable for a little bit. They're going to feel comfortable enough to tell you the truth. And when they tell you the truth, you can really highlight and create the pain and problem, which makes them feel what? It makes them feel scared. Once they feel scared, you start talking about their ideal outcome. And you use language like, hey, look, John, in a perfect world, ideally, how much do you guys want to net if everything went exactly how you wanted to go? We're the ones guiding their thoughts now. Now they can talk about this ideal situation, and they're going to start thinking about the pleasure. But they're going to have that problem right in their head. And now you present the vehicle, which is your presentation. But most agents present the vehicle, the presentation, in the beginning. And they don't understand how to go through pain, problem, discovery, ideal outcome. And then, because here's the thing, Phil, and I'll end it on this. When you create such a big gap between their problem and the pain they're feeling, and the ideal outcome with information, because most for sale by owners, let's use for sale by owners, they have no idea what they're doing. They don't really truly know the ins and outs of selling a property and getting the result that they want. When you're able to create such a big bridge, and the only way in their mind that they can cross that bridge is by using your vehicle, that's when you've earned the business. But I don't think agents understand that fully. I think you're exactly right. I think that we get so caught up in me, me, me, and all of this stuff. And there has to be a level of introspection self-awareness. Don't get me wrong. I think self-awareness is probably one of the most important things that we can have in anything related to sales marketing entrepreneurship. But when it comes to the act of working in the business and actually going out and talking to people and adding value, all these conversations that you're kind of outlining that you've had and that people need to have, the focus has to be on them, not on you getting a sale. How do I relieve their pressure? How do I be a pressure relief valve? I used to say that a lot. In all these situations, you have to be a pressure relief valve. And I love that you shared that box example. When you put someone in a box, especially if they're not sure if they want to be their or don't want to be there, they're constantly looking for a way out. But if you show them the way out, they're more receptive to hearing what you say, especially with clients. They don't understand or hear 90% of the things that the mortgage real estate professionals talk about. And we forget that because it's our daily life. And so for them to retain more, you've got to first go and help them alleviate that anxiety. Right. I've shared before, Rory and AJ Vaid and Nashville Tennessee, the brand builders group. They built brands for Ed Mylett and John Gordon, Lewis Hauser School of Greatness podcast. This study, they did a commission PhDs to do a study around marketing and branding. And one of the anecdotal things they found is the higher the requirement of trust and a profession. The more important the need for a personal brand. And that was with with doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, bosses. And the correlation here is that people need to be comfortable with you. So having a brand online lets them know more about you, makes you more relatable. And when we go into these sales conversations, because all the ones that were in the study, a doctor, a lawyer, financial advisor, boss, when you go talk to them, you have some anxiety. You're exposed. You're talking about things you don't have in normal conversation. The same thing happens when people are buying, selling or refinancing at home. There's a level of anxiety there. And so not only do we need to showcase more about who we are, we need to relate to them on a human level and make it about them, which is the point. We've got to put ourselves in their shoes. But this, Phil, I think the average rookie salesperson focuses on selling features. The good salesman focuses on selling outcomes. And the great salesman understands how to sell the feelings that are associated with that outcome. And the absolute best salespeople are the ones that really are able to depict that picture and create the most intense feeling. When you go to a car dealership, the salesperson that's selling you about the 22 inch wheels and the leather seats and the heated seats and the recliner, it's not the person that's going to get the sale. It's a person that understands the intrinsic desire that that human being has to drive around that car. And what kind of a feeling they're going to get if they're buying a Corvette with a top off, when, you know, if you're 24 years old and you're driving down South Beach, who's looking at you? What do you feel? What does your status level feel at that moment? And the person that sells to that idea is a person that's going to get the business. Man, it's again, it's something that I share a lot and talk about and coach on. The way that I've always framed it is we focus too much on features and not enough on benefit. We assume if we talk about a loan program or the features of a house, we're assuming that whoever we're talking to understands how to apply it to them. But what we have to do is show the benefit and show how these features actually apply to their life, how it helps them with a solution, how it helps them achieve their goal. And to your point, people lead with emotion. They're excited about looking at homes, to buying home, even if it's investing in real estate, even investors to a certain degree have a little bit of excitement because they understand that they're building their business. And how you tap into those emotions and make people feel something is the most important thing. I found that even in one-on-one conversations in coaching, you can be the most logical, intelligent person. But if people don't feel something with your message, it's going to fall flat. Ed Mylett shares all the time in sales, we need to stop getting people to try to believe what we're saying and get them to believe we believe what we're saying. That's a passion thing. That's an emotion thing. I heard it said that. It's super important that we tie that into our clients and partners. And that's what's most important. At the end of the day, it comes down, I think self-belief is important, Phil, but really persuading yourself to switch that mind frame and just put the other person first. But it's so difficult for real estate professionals because I understand that we're on a commission based job. There's more agents than there are homes. The education system is lacking in real estate. They teach you contracts first instead of communication. And we have family's defeat. I completely understand that sentiment. But if you want to accomplish that goal of having consistent income as a real estate professional, that is the number one thing you have to switch up is your detachment from the outcome because here's the thing, Phil, we are state dependent. The way that we act in daily life is dependent on our mental state. And as a real estate professional, you're going to get no more than you get yes. And if you let those nose dictate your state, you're not going to be able to perform over a long period of time. So if you're attached to the outcome, let's say you get, you know, I have a lot of real estate agents that I coach that, you know, they'll make calls twice a week for an hour a day. They'll get three leads a month and then they know the person by first name. And then when they go to the appointment, they'll get the deal. They're flat for two weeks. They don't make calls for two weeks because they were so attached to that potential outcome. But for me, it was a numbers game. I was like, every single time I walk into a home, I'm going to treat this person individually and I'm going to put their best interests first. But I knew that if I didn't get the deal, I was going to go out and make 50 more calls the next day and get five more appointments and more opportunities. And it just took one. My first for sale by honor, listening turned into a double rep, $30,000 deal. I sold the neighbor's house and he bought another house in Cape Coral. And that one month, I made like 45 grand. I had no experience. And that's great. It's the sixth one. Talk about the belief here because that's where I saw a stat that of the 1.2, 1.3 million people that were licensed as realtors in 2024. It was like 88,000. It was a strikingly small number, actually closed a deal in 2024. And I'm of the belief that so many people, both in real estate and mortgage, whatever that threshold is, their first deal or a certain number of deals per month or an income threshold, the reason that we don't fully go take action on a daily basis is we don't fully have the belief that we can achieve it. But the irony is the only way to create the belief is to go out and take action and get some incremental results so that you see that path there. Talk about that belief as you're coaching people or even as you're pursuing your own endeavor. How do people capture that for themselves? I've always been really delusional, Phil. Like always I kind of, that's the word. It's delusional. And I took it to a completely different level when I got my license. I started acting completely different. I call it acting as if I walked into my broker's office at KW when I first got licensed. And again, I was so sick and tired of being the person I was that I was willing to take the criticism and the weird looks and conversations and gossip from people saying, why is he acting this way? He's making $20,000 a year. Why is he acting like a guy that's making a quarter million dollars a year? I started dressing like it. I started talking like it and I started acting like it. It even got to the point, Phil, where I'd go to the gas station to buy a bottle of water. And instead of buying a Sefer Hills bottle, I would buy a Fiji bottle because I already knew that I was making a quarter million dollars a year as a real estate agent. And I wasn't going to accept anything less. I started acting and trading my time and respecting myself as if I was making a quarter million dollars a year. And I would wake up every single day. And instead of just being some real estate agent, I was a real estate professional. I was fully equipped and capable to sell your home. Now I backed that up with data, knowledge and information. I spent all my time making phone calls, reviewing my phone calls, taking training courses, mentorship, coaching, videos, and more importantly applying it. But let me see if I can give a practical tip to this self belief. It's a book that I'd recommend. It's called It's All in Your Head by Russ. It's a yellow book. It's like, it's like an hour and a half, two hour read. Russ is a rapper that is basically a bee-less celebrity now and has billions of streams. But he talks about how 10 years before that happened, he was in his studio and his house with crappy equipment. And when he was writing these songs, he was already imagining himself singing these songs to like 50,000 people in a stadium. And I just did those exercises all the time. I would just imagine myself, you know, going and buying the car that I wanted. I would just imagine myself closing on the deals, getting that check, being at the closing table. And I would just continuously just visualize, visualize, visualize, visualize. And it was obsessive. That is the thing that people don't understand. There was no time for shut off. It wasn't like, okay, from nine to five on being entrepreneur, it was, it was, from the moment I woke up, it was an obsessive thought to the moment I went to sleep, it was an obsessive thought to the point that it was in my dreams. And the thing that changed now, Phil, and this is why I'm very confident that over the next three decades, I'm going to be top in this industry. My goal used to be like buying a car and like making money and like having a Rolex and shit. Now my goal was making sure that I'm paying as many people as I can and helping as many humans accomplish the feelings that I was able to accomplish. Yeah. Because I'll tell you this, speaking on a stage, which is something I never, I thought it was going to be possible. So I really unlocked that belief, I didn't think it was going to be possible. Like being on stage in front of like 500 people and seeing my mom like in the second row and like just seeing her sob and cry because at one point she was like, you're, you're just so lost. Like, what are you doing? Where are you going with this? Like just get a job. And then now seeing her how proud she is, not because I make money, but because I make impact. It's right. It's worth every single ounce of struggle that I've ever been through, Phil. And if there's anybody watching this, whether you're my age, younger or older, making the people that you love proud, it's prices. It's worth every single ounce of struggle that you can ever imagine. And I would encourage anybody watching this podcast right now. If you have a little burning desire, don't let it die out. Buying the car is going to feel good. It's going to wear off in two weeks. Buying the watch is going to feel good. It's going to wear off in 24 hours. Making the people that you love significantly proud of you is going to last in a lifetime. Oh, man. And this is so good. You, you covered so much that I want people to go back and listen to that again. And I want you to key in on two quick things. Yeah. The first one was that he was talking about wanting something so bad that the facts of his current situation didn't matter. I've said it nauseam, 93% of people don't achieve the goals that they set for themselves in any given year, statistically. And it's for one of two reasons, either they're not clear enough about what they want. They're not specific of this is exactly what I want. And the second reason, which is probably the more important reason is they don't want to bad enough. And the metaphor I've always used is you've got to want it as much as a drowning person once their next breath that's morbid, but they're not thinking about that they leave the light on. Did they pay that bill? Did they call that person back? And what you had was singleness of focus. You weren't doing fake it to you make it. You were saying, I'm taking on this persona of someone who's already achieved this goal. And I'm going to put the action in which is the key part, the action in as if this has already happened. And what happens is you became the person that these results happen for because so many people here this fake it to you make it, but what's missing in that equation is the action. Correct. And this last part that I want people to, you've got to catch it, you've got to understand it. In the beginning, it's okay to have a quote shallow goal, a car, a watch, a bag, a trip. Right. In our industry, you've got to go help a ton of people to make the extra, to make the excess. So you having this quote shallow thing is still a positive thing because it got you to go take action. But at some point, it turns to other people. And when someone is stuck, if they've hit a plateau or if they're just straight struggling, it's okay for you to think of something you want really badly. You don't have to have the moral high ground of why I need to grow a team of however many people and however much in payroll, but what I love that you share about that is showing the journey of guys. I went and got the stuff, but I realized that wasn't what it was about, but it still got me to take action initially. Right. Right. Because that's really what we're talking about here of mindset and everything is what's going to get you to go take action and do something on a daily basis. Right. And I'll share something on that, Phil. I feel like a lot of agents struggle with just wanting to be ready and like they're scared of like getting on a phone call and not having it go their way and having somebody curse them out or going to a presentation and walking in and just blanking out. And that'll get you further faster than just watching the training videos, the YouTube videos and role playing, right? The actual real life experience of failing over and over and over again is the actual staircase to success. It's not the other way around. Like the more ready you get, there's entrepreneur a that is just, which is literally what I did. I got a Tom Ferry script on day one and I said, okay, I'm just going to make a call. And I just made the next call and then the next call and then the next call. We can use Ed my lets one more thing, right? I just made one more call, one more call for another day for another hour and entrepreneur B is reading the scripts, they're role playing, they're watching all the videos, they're making all the notes and they think that that's work, but that's not work. The work is in the action and I just took more action faster for a longer period of time than most other realtors because like we talked about the five year thing, right? They only give it a couple weeks, but during those couple weeks, they're just reviewing and they're getting ready instead of just going out there and taking the uncomfortable action and through real life experience, you're actually going to get the tools that you need to make it happen. I could give someone every book on swimming, they could watch every YouTube video on swimming, but there's nothing that you're going to learn from those that you're not going to learn infinitely faster by jumping in the water and figuring out how to go swim. And that's what we're talking about here. Listening to podcasts like these, reading books, watching YouTube videos, going to events, having a coach, all those are massively important, but only for the purposes of supplementing and helping you take better action more efficiently, identifying blind spots and points of friction, but there's nothing that can prepare you or help you as much as what you learn by doing the thing. If you make 100 phone calls, by the end of those 100 phone calls, if you're paying attention to yourself and what's actually happening, you're going to be better at the end of those 100 phone calls. If you send 100 text messages, make 100 videos, and again, it doesn't have to be 150. You're going to see massive differences in it. You want to be a good content creator on social media, go consume a ton of content and then make a ton of content. And then all of a sudden, you figure out how to do this content thing. Gary Vee talks about it. He still has that first YouTube video I've watched it before. It's bad, y'all. And no one would have thought that this guy is going to be one of the top social media personalities and marketing minds on planet earth from what he started, but he put in the reps. And the last thing I want to mention, and I want to open up to you before I ask you the final question, is you talked about 12, 14, 16 hour days. These people that are upset because they posted a couple videos, made a couple phone calls and their businesses and exploding, right? They're leaving at 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock. What they don't understand is you putting 16 hours a day in. First of all, it's going to be very efficient. That 16 hour day is essentially three of the average person's eight or nine hour day. And so you're shortening that curve to get where you want to go. So the point of question I want to ask, I'd love you just to be transparent. Is that what it takes? Is that what it takes is 12, 14, 16 hour days? I don't think so. It depends on where you want to go, right? I think you can have a successful business by not doing that. You'll probably get there longer, but it depends on what you want, Phil. If you want, I'm chasing purpose at this point, you know, I can't. If you paid me to go on a vacation, just sit on the beach in Bora Bora, I would just be miserable out of my mind, sure anxiety. I'm not talking crap like people that know me personally, I don't have a girlfriend because my girlfriend would want me to go on vacation with her and I can't do it. I can't do it. I know that my mom right now is still working because she wants to be. She's like, I don't want, I don't want to take retirement, but I can't know that I have children eventually coming to the world and then I can't risk one day happening what happened to me. You know what I'm saying? So you don't have to work 16 hour days. I'm sure you can be successful with eight hour days. That's what makes me happy though. Buying the watch and I told you making the money doesn't make me happy anymore because I could just go, if I really wanted to build like wealth faster, probably spending all this money in my business and reinvesting it, probably not going to get me there faster, like for like the safety net that people want, but that's what makes me happy. And that's what at the end of the day is going to build the business faster. But I think the problem is, and I'll get to the point of this field here in a second, is like the fallacy that all these influencers post, it's like giving people false real interpretation of entrepreneurship. For you to be the guy on social media or the guy in cold calling, it can't be like a switch. It can't be like, all right. And to entrepreneur mode and then all right, I'm out of entrepreneur mode. There is no switch for the real entrepreneurs. The ones that are the 1% of the entrepreneurs, it's all day, every single day. And that's what we love, like to drag me out of work, it's like painful for me versus the other entrepreneurs. It's painful to be in the trench, in the work, in the journey. Russ in that book talks about it. The journey is everything. If you're not obsessed with the work, you're not going to make it. You're not going to last long. You might have two or three years of making money and having freedom. You're not going to have a lifetime of it. You have to be obsessed with the work if you want the extraordinary results. If you're cool with the normal results and being average and knowing that, you know, what is this one and four trillion chance that you were a human being and you're okay with being mediocre and average dude, that is totally on you. But I have this opportunity, you know, my parents are immigrants. They came from Cuba. I could have been born in Cuba. Thankfully, I was born here and I have this massive opportunity to impact people. And I'm going to take time off. I just can't, I don't see it feel like maybe when I'm 45, I'll see it, but I don't see it right now. When I wake up, we get to work and then we just go to sleep and go to work. We don't really do vacations. We don't really go out. Whenever we're traveling, we're still working. And it's just 60 hour days right now. And I love it. I'm absolutely obsessed. Yeah. That's passion. And it's funny because you have a very clear vision of what it is you want. And you want it really badly, which is why you're achieving goals and succeeding, right? That's what this whole thing is about, but let's just narrow it down. If someone came to you and said, listen, I want to be at a million dollars a year in five years in real estate. What do I need to do? You know, and I'm not even talking to super tactical things, but I'm saying as far as the commitment that it's going to take, mentally, physically hours they put in, correct me if I'm wrong. If you want to be from zero or 30, 50, even $100,000 a year and you want to make a million dollars a year in five years in real estate, it's going to require sacrifice. It's going to require 12, 15, 16 hour days sometimes or a lot of the times. Yep. I think the answer I want to give here, Phil, is like a lot of people try to talk about knowing what to do. Like you got to know the mindset that you got to do the communication, the people to call, what to say, how to go to the appointments, how to operate the business, how to scale the business. I think everybody knows what to do. I don't think enough people know what not to do and aren't able to stay on just what to do, right? I think if you just figure out and you reverse engineer it and you get a very specific goal and you put a very specific timeline on it and you put very specific activities that you have to do on a daily basis and you just understand that when something comes up, like somebody tells you to go somewhere or another business opportunity because as you start growing, you're going to get more opportunities just knowing what to say no to and staying committed to this goal and not putting a timeline, which is what I did wrong in the beginning, not putting a timeline on the success. That about the when just focus about the what, what am I doing right now and just know what to say no to. I think that would be the most powerful advice because there's so many different things that you got to know. But I think if you know what not to do and it's very simple, I think her mosey says it, get very clear in your goal, very clear on what it is that you have to be doing to get to that goal and anything that's not that, just don't do it. Just don't do it. But I think people go based off of feelings and I don't feel like doing it. I don't feel like putting in the work right now. I feel like going out and having a drink and hanging out, which I'm not saying I don't do casually, right? Sometimes to kind of reset the brain. But you just have to do 99% of the thing you know you should be doing and 1% of the thing you should not be doing. That's right. People have this thing feel called balance and that doesn't exist in this world. No, it doesn't. There's no such thing as work-life balance. It all has to be one thing. You've got to be heard of phrase wherever you are, be there and be there 100%. Yeah. When you're with your family, be there 100% because we balancing these things means you're not all in anywhere and something you said there. We give up what we want most or what we want now. We give up what we want most for what we want now. That's the biggest killer of success. You've been incredible, Gaston. I want to ask you one last question. We asked this of all of our guests and if that's if you could just give one tip to Morgan Real Estate professionals today to go out to use to build their business, what would it be? I think people think entrepreneurship is like about intellect and knowledge and being smart and being witty and clever and knowing what decision to make every single time and I think it's actually just about courage and perseverance. I'm not the smartest person in the world. I've never been but I've always been the one that's the most courageous and I never blink to make a decision that's difficult or that could have a bad negative outcome. If you stay in business long enough and if you take enough chances on yourself and your vision and what you believe in and you take enough action and you're just okay with doing that for 10 years with no results, you're going to make it. That's the simplest way I can put it but I think people since we're so like employee mindset we think that we got to do eight hours of work and get eight hours of result but that's not the case. You can maybe do 10 hours of work and get no results but on year 11, you're the biggest thing in the world. So I would just say instead of focusing on being so perfect and ready and having all the knowledge, just be more courageous and be more relentless than everybody else and I promise you if you do that and you're super obsessive you're going to figure out what you actually tactically have to do to get the result you want. That'd be my piece of advice. That's a great piece of advice. Alexis, you've been an incredible guest. I'm so glad that we got to connect. I know we're going to have a lot more conversations in the future and I guarantee we're going to be collaborating on stuff for this industry. We're going to put social media handles, website stuff in the show notes and for anybody that's listening, guys, if you're getting any value out of this podcast please go give us a five star review. If you can't give us a five star review, give us any review. We want that as well, but we want to bring you incredible guests like Alexis to come and add value to your business and help you execute and perform at the love of your capable of. So Alexis, I appreciate you being here and I look forward to catching up again really soon. Yeah, that's too it Phil. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. This is the Morgan's Marketing Expert Podcast. (upbeat music)