Real estate agents, get your money right!

by

I can't turn phone while recording. Good morning. Yes, I'm live. All right, let's see where to begin with this one. I was always told, as a young man, that you can't think straight without 10 grand in the bank. I just never knew why it was 10 grand. It's actually not, but there is a principle there that I still subscribe to today that I don't see enough people subscribing to. With the fallacy-- I guess it's not a fallacy. It's truth. You've got to spend money to make money, but you've got to have money to spend it in the first place. I think that's where a lot of people get, or maybe misled, if you will.
Before I go into that. By the way, if you're not generating enough leads, if you are-- What's up, George. Morning Jodeen. If you're not generating enough leads, and if you don't have a strong plan for taking over your market, for dominating your local real estate market, give me a shout. Melisa, Brave, White, man, I'm getting some friends on here. Over half of my friends are real estate agents on my Facebook group.
The whole spend money to make money. I remember when everybody in my office started making money, and they started getting these fancy cars-- Good morning. I was scared for a minute because they got these big nuts of payments. If you ever drove past my old office, especially around the Hay day of the market, you saw it looked like a car lot. We were keeping those fancy car guys in business, Mercedes, BMWs and Bentleys and Cadillacs, you name it.
I had a guy tell me, he said, "Hey, don't worry about that." He said, "The good thing about sales guys, having that kind of overhead, is they have to come to work everyday." I thought, "Gosh, that's sinister." I would just never wish that upon somebody. I saw a bumper sticker, it was "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go." For me, I just never wanted to be in a position or a situation where I was in that pickle. A lot of guys have to have that stress [unintelligible 00:02:44]. The bite off more than you can chew, and nibble like hell kind of stress.
For me, when I learned that as a young man, you can't think straight without $10,000 in the bank, which is not $10,000, I always was curious as to why. Well, you can't make good business decisions if you're in a position of need all the time. Too often, I see a lot of business people go into debt, slam stuff on credit cards and not keep track of what's called core capital because in the world where every, and time you turn it on Facebook, somebody is trying to get you to do something. Every time you opened your emails, somebody is trying to get you to do something, and usually, it's buy something. You turn on the TV, they're trying to get you to do something.
The old fool and his money is soon departed saying it's harsh. I don't know if it's necessarily true. I think the truth is they're lucky to come together in the first place. That's something I heard on a movie or something, I never forgot. I found out. I asked one time, I said, why 10 grand? How come it's 10 grand. The number wasn't 10 grade. It's different for everybody. I wanted to start a Keller Williams franchise a couple of times and never did it. Got close to second time, and they make you have a minimum of three months in advance of all expenses as core capital.
For me, every business that I've ever ran, that's been the bare minimum foundation. At least three months core capital in the bank. I don't think that enough people run their finances in that way. I don't know if you have a steady eddy check, if it's as important, I think it would be for me, but I'm talking about for self employed people, entrepreneurs. When you get to a certain level of overhead, you just can't call somebody and ask them to borrow money. It's not like asking for 100 bucks. You are at a different level. You have to rely on yourself, and you can't make good decisions unless you have that money in the bank.
I think that a lot of times when we get into business, there's all kinds of things for us to buy. You can buy t-shirts, you can buy swag, you can buy pens with your name on it, you can buy hats. You can just buy-- Sorry, I got a call.
You can wrap your vehicle. Wrap it. You can buy a moving van. You can just buy all kinds of stuff. If you are not investing specifically only in the things that give you a return on investment that are consistent, before you buy anything else, and at a minimum, getting that three months of co-capital in there, I think that you're putting yourself in a position of a lot of anxiety and stress that's just unnecessary. You want to milk the cow and not have a barbecue.
A good business should feed you consistently. Anytime you are dipping into that reserve or revenue of that three months minimum, you need to start shopping off overhead to allocate for that because something is going wrong in your business. Something is happening. Maybe the market's shifting. Maybe your marketing isn't as effective, it needs some attention. There's just all kinds of things, but you need to compensate for it. It all starts with having that one rule, of keeping that co-capital on the bait, those three months in advance of expenses. Not [unintelligible 00:06:14] in for all the things that they're trying to sell us on. Even keeping up with the Jones', having that fancy car. Is it really worth the piece of mind and stress that it might cause? For me, no. Not so much. I'd rather be able to sleep well at night, and I'd rather be able to say no to things that I don't want to do, to things that are maybe not good investments. I'd like to have a clear mind when I'm going to make a decision, and I like to make it out of the opposite of necessity. Make it out of an abundance decision. It starts with keeping your finances right.
Hopefully, that added some value. Hopefully if you are not doing that, you'll consider doing it. By the way, not just with your business, with your personal finances. A minimum three months in advance of all your expenses. I'm telling you, it just makes everything a lot less stressful, and it makes you be able to take advantage of opportunities when they come across your plate. Again, say no to things that maybe aren't advantageous but are just instant gratification. Have a great day.