S1 E12: How To Crush Your Real Estate Goals | Michael Hellickson

Noel LaFerme (00:00):
Hi, I’m Noel with Today’s Brew where top producing real estate agents share their tips and tricks on taking more listings, making more money, and having fun doing it. On today we have a coach from Club Wealth Founder and CEO, Michael Hellickson. Welcome.

Michael Hellickson (00:22):
Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate you having me on. Noel,

Noel LaFerme (00:24):
We are thrilled to have you. And I want to start off by saying that I had the pleasure of interviewing your son last year, Austin. He is quite the agent and at a young age, which is got to have a lot to do with you and your coaching and your upbringing.

Michael Hellickson (00:41):
Yeah, that kid’s ridiculous. His very first year selling real estate. Well, actually I’ll tell you what. Day one selling real estate using espresso agent, by the way, day one, this kid decides he’s going to go in, he’s going to call expired listings, never called an expired before in his life. So he shows up at six 30 in the morning. His whole team’s supposed to be there, it’s just him. And so he has to do it by himself. He starts making calls, he makes, he calls expired listings. It’s January 1st, 2022. He starts making expired calls and he makes eight hours of expired calls that day, sets himself 12 appointments. He ends up listing four of those closes, two of those. And I’ll tell you, he went on to list over 97 homes that year

(01:27):
And this year so far. So here we are, we’re October, 2023. He’s already over, actually we’re not in October, end of September, 2023. And he has already sold, or excuse me, he’s already listed over 85 homes. He should finish out well over 120 homes this year in terms of number of listings. And I share this, not to brag about my son, I share this because what one man can do, another can do, right? If he can do it, you can do it right. Last year when he started selling real estate, he was 19. Right now he’s 21 years old. If a 21 year old kid can do this, then everybody watching this, you don’t have an excuse, you can do it too.

Noel LaFerme (02:07):
Absolutely. Makes me feel, I’m an agent too here in Virginia. So I’m like, okay, I better step it up. Listening to that. So when I interviewed him, he got on it, I think it was 6:00 AM or six 30 his time for the interview. Six because he was so strict with his schedule. So let’s talk about schedule a little bit with you and your clients. How important is that for them to uphold?

Michael Hellickson (02:34):
Well, I can tell you that whether it was me when I was listing, so back in the day, I used to list 50 to 75 homes every single month. Not counting my team and not counting REO, which was about half my business, or Liz McDonald, who’s one of our coaches and clients over in the West Virginia market where she’s literally listed over, well, a hundred homes a year for three out of the last four years. That fourth year, she only listed 70 homes. She was focused on recruiting. And I can tell you, I got example after example, after example of people who are listing, I’ll call it 75 to 120 homes a year, not counting their teams, just themselves. And there’s one common denominator amongst every single one of them besides being club, both coaching clients

(03:23):
That one common denominator is they have created and live by and follow religiously, their perfect daily schedule. And that perfect daily schedule for almost every one of them starts at the very latest at seven 30 in the morning. They do a team huddle from seven 30 to eight o’clock, from eight o’clock till noon every single day, Monday through Friday. What do you think they do? They make phone calls, right? They’re doing lead generation, lead follow-up and lead conversion calls and that’s it. That’s all they do. They don’t take inbound phone calls, they don’t check email, text messages, Facebook, all that stuff. They’re making their phone calls and their goal, every one of ’em, and this is going to sound simple, right? Their goal is to simply set two appointments a day no matter what, two appointments every single day, Monday through Friday, that’s 10 appointments a week.

(04:09):
You get your 10 appointments a week, guess what? You’re going to hit a hundred listings a year. But here’s the interesting thing, because it’s so simple. It’s kind of like for those of you that are religious, it’s kind of like when Christ tells the leopard to go bathe in the river Jordan, right? But leopard doesn’t want to do it because first of all, the River Jordan’s muddy and gross and it’s nasty. And so they don’t want to do that. But beyond that, they don’t believe that it’s that simple. And so Christ just kept saying, go bathe in the river, Jordan, go bathe in the river. Jordan leper keeps coming back, I’m not going to do. And finally the leper says, okay, fine, I’ll go bathe in the river Jordan. And guess what? Curative leprosy. All right guys, you want to cure your freaking real estate leprosy.

(04:46):
Get your butt in the river, Jordan, go get your perfect daily schedule dialed in and start following every day. It’s really that simple. Now, there’s a lot of other things you can do to build a team, scale a team, grow other parts of your business. There’s all kinds of different things besides phone calls that work, right? Internet referrals, all that other stuff. We have lots of great systems and strategies for how to do well on all of those things. But everyone on this call, regardless of financial wellbeing, regardless of financial wherewith all, regardless of whether you have a dime to your name or not, you have a phone and you can pick it up and you can pull yourself out of whatever hole you’re in right now, and you can be successful right now, and it takes about 90 days from the time you start doing this until the time you start getting checks rolling. It takes about 90 days. But guess what? Something’s going to happen in the next 90 days. Might as well make it something good.

Noel LaFerme (05:36):
Absolutely. So the importance of a schedule and picking up the phone is what I’m hearing.

Michael Hellickson (05:46):
It’s really paramount. I mean, that’s the beginning building block, right? That’s the foundation of building a world-class real estate business. At one point in time, Noel, I was the number one agent on planet earth. I was closing 120 to 180 transactions a month, and I was doing that consistently for a very long time at a time when number two and number three combined, were doing less than half that. And I say that not to brag, but I say that because it’s not about me being smart or great salesperson or great looking, none of those things. What am I? I’m consistent. That’s it. I’m just freaking consistent. And so what I did was I built that perfect daily schedule in a way that I said, okay, look, if I wanted to force myself to succeed, what would my schedule look like? And then I took everything else and I handed it off to other people, and all I do is those things that I absolutely have to do to be successful and it works.

Noel LaFerme (06:37):
What does that morning perfect schedule look like? Because I know that most people have a very hard time just getting on the phone anyway, so they’re definitely not going to go eight hours. Well, most people are not going to go eight hours, but what’s the perfect looking dream schedule for prospecting for anyone that you’re coaching and trying to guide?

Michael Hellickson (06:56):
It depends on how much you’re going to make. If you want to list a hundred homes a year, you need to prospect four hours a day. If you want to list 50 homes a year, you can do that in two hours a day. But I’m telling you, if you’re only doing one hour a day at best, you’re going to do two listings a month. Now, is that better than most people? Absolutely. But hey, look, if you just want to get on the phone for one hour a day and make lead generation and lead follow-up calls, 25 transactions a year should be that easy. And that’s not counting your sphere of influence, which by the way, you should be able to get about 10% of the number of people in your sphere in number of transactions every year with no problem. And if you do one simple trick, I can get you to 20 transactions a year in your sphere of influence. Sorry, 20% of the size of your sphere. So if I’ve got 250 people in my sphere of influence, I should be able to very easily do 25 transactions. But if I do this one thing, I should be able to get to 50 transactions a year just for my sphere.

Noel LaFerme (07:51):
What is it?

Michael Hellickson (07:53):
Do you want to know? Oh, now you want to learn that good stuff. You want to give them C? Okay, fine. It’s easy. Look, watch this. I’m going to do it because guess what? I know most of the people that hear this won’t do it anyway. So here you go. If you guys want to do this, if you want to be able to succeed at the highest level with your sphere of influence, here’s what you got to do. You got to hold four client events per year. That’s it. Four client events per year. Then three weeks before the event, you have to call every single person in your sphere of influence, invite ’em to your client event. Then the week after your event, you got to call every single person in your sphere of influence and let ’em know that you were glad they came and you’re sorry you didn’t get to spend enough time with ’em, but hopefully we can spend more time together at the next one, the people that didn’t show up, you’re going to say, I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you. I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you. You don’t even talk about the client event. You just let ’em know. You’re calling to let ’em know you’re thinking about. Now the strategy goes a little deeper. Can I give ’em two acronyms? That’ll help.

(08:46):
All right. So there’s two acronyms I want you guys to learn. The first is bro, BROT. That stands for Building Relationships on trust. Now, here’s what’s interesting. Most people will tell you that people need to know and trust you to do business with you. That’s freaking hogwash. Listen, not a single human being has listed more homes than I have on planet Earth. No one. It’s kind of weird to say that, right? It’s weird though, but literally, there’s not another human being on this planet that’s listed more homes than I have. I’ve literally been on more than 10,000 appointments face-to-face with mom and pop selling in their home. Nobody’s done that right? Now. Watch this. Here’s what I’ve learned in all those appointments. There’s only three things they care about, and you’re not one of them. You want to know what those three things are? So watch this. So in other words, they didn’t even have to like you. They don’t have to you to list the house of they. Here’s all they care about. Who’s going to give the most amount of money?

(09:33):
Going to do it in the least amount of time and who’s going to do it with the least amount of headache? To me, that’s it. That’s all they care about. Now, if you can nail those three things, you’ll be surprised how many of ’em will do business with you. And so first, what you got to do is you have the right leads. You got to have the right strategy, you got to have the right schedule. You got to execute a high level. You got to lead, generate lead, vault, lead, convert. That needs to be 90% of your day. In fact, I’ll tell you this, I’d go so far Noel as to say that in any market with a $250,000 average sales price or higher, well, let’s back up. I’ll even say it this way. You can make whatever your average sales price is in your marketplace.

(10:12):
Can make that amount of money in net income every year by simply working part-time. But most people won’t do it. Here’s the thing, but most people won’t do it. Now, if I could just get you to make phone calls, part-time, four hours a day, five days a week, that’s 20 hours a week, you would make whatever your average sales price is in your marketplace and net income every year. It’s truly that simple.

Noel LaFerme (10:35):
You just have to show up and do it.

Michael Hellickson (10:37):
Yeah, show up and do it. Now, it helps to have the right scripts and it helps to have the right strategies, and there’s definitely things, tips, and techniques that you can use that will allow you to be more effective with that time. Even if you’re horrible at it, you should be able to get one appointment every hour and 20 minutes, even if you’re absolutely horrible at it. There’s people that have been doing it a lot and for a long time, and they still suck at it, but that’s okay because as bad as they suck, guess what? They’re still putting transactions together. They’re still getting listings. Why? Because they just keep doing it every day. Now, again, we can help you get better. That’s part of what we do here at Club Wealth With Coaching. We could certainly help you get better at that, but at the end of the day, just doing it is going to help you get out of the hole that you’re in. It’s going to help you not only survive this market that we’re in, and that’s getting more interesting by the day, it’s not only going to help you survive it, it’s going to help you thrive in it. I got to tell you, our clients, most of them are having their best year ever at a time when the sales year over year nationwide are down 26 to 32%. Well, why? What’s one of the big differences? One of the big differences is following their perfect daily schedule.

Noel LaFerme (11:43):
Yeah, you’re right. And then the other people that aren’t showing up at all, because believing the news and the statistics and the interest rates, which I want to ask you, what are you hearing? What are your coaching clients coming to you and having the hardest time handling? Objection wise, have you seen a common trend other than interest rates?

Michael Hellickson (12:05):
Well, we’re still at a 50 year low. If you look at the average interest rates over the last 50 years, we’re still well below that. And so the reality is the days of two and 3% are gone and it’s not coming back. And so for those that are waiting for it to come back, good luck. You got to make the calls. It starts with get off your butt and make the calls.

Noel LaFerme (12:27):
Yeah, bottom line. Well,

Michael Hellickson (12:29):
Here’s the reality. The reality is that most people do not have a good lead generation lead follow-up and lead conversion system, and you have to have all three. Now, you also have to have habits in all three. In other words, not only do you have to have the system, you have to work the habit, the system habitually on a daily basis, five days a week. And if you’re not doing that, it doesn’t matter how great your system is. If you don’t work it, it’s not going to work, right? It’s kind of like the leads. You need to have quality leads that you’re working hard, and then you need to nurture those leads for as long as it takes. And by the way, there’s two keys to lead follow-up. There’s speed to lead and tenacity of follow-up. Most people understand speed lead really though. You’ve got to get to your leads. And then when it comes to follow-up. Nobody’s making the number of calls they need to make. You want me to give you the lead follow-up system?

Noel LaFerme (13:15):
Yeah, do it.

Michael Hellickson (13:17):
Here’s the system. You want to make more money. And I’m telling you, all of our clients that do this, they make a ton of money. But here’s what you got to do. You’ve got to call every single lead. You’ve got to contact them in six different ways, right? Phone, text, email, video, text, video, email. And I won’t give you the sixth one, that one you got to reach out to me for, but you got to reach out to ’em in six different ways, and you got to do it according to the club wealth rule of three. Write this down, club wealth rule of three. And here it’s,

Noel LaFerme (13:43):
I’m writing,

Michael Hellickson (13:43):
Yeah, most people freak out when I share this with them, but I’m telling you, it works. It always works. And so here you go. You’re going to contact him in one of those six ways, three times a day for the first three days, three times a week for the next three weeks, three times a month for the next three months, three times a year. For the next three years, I’ll give it to you again, three times a day for the first three days, three times a week for the next three weeks, three times a month for the next three months, three times a year for the next three years. Now, if you’ll do that, you will do business with a way higher percentage of those people.

Noel LaFerme (14:15):
So we’re not going to seal all of your knowledge. You have a wealth of it. I know you have an event coming up in October. Please tell us about that.

Michael Hellickson (14:23):
So we’ve got a big event where we bring about 350 of the top agents worldwide come together. This particular event this year is happening in Houston, Texas. It’s end of October. The dates are on our website. Go to clubwealth.com/bsm. That stands for Business Strategy Mastermind conference. And I’ll tell you right now, the tickets are actually, what are they? They’re $1,497 right now to go to this event. But I’ll tell you right now, if you’ll go while we’re on right now, we’ll give you the discounted price. We’ve created a special discount for espresso agent in today’s reviewers. So if you’ll go there now, you’ll get a substantially discounted event ticket price. And I’ll tell you right now, we actually have a guarantee at the event that if when you come to the event, you don’t believe that it’s the best event you’ve ever attended in real estate and that you got enough value out of day one, it’s a two day event.

(15:23):
But if you don’t feel like you got enough value out of day one to make an extra $250,000 in the next 12 months, we’ll give you a hundred percent of your money back and we’ll buy a first class ticket back home. Now, at the event, there’s over 70 different breakout sessions taught by the top producing agents all over the world, predominantly in the US and Canada, and they’re teaching today’s strategies, the things that are working right now. This isn’t a big pitch for coaching. It’s literally just we’ve put these events on to bring value to our clients. You don’t have to be a client to come though. You can be anybody out there. You can come and we have classes for agents, team leaders, listing, inspire agents, administrative assistants, broker owners, you name it, we have a class. If you’re in this industry, we have classes at each breakout session, there’ll be at least four or five classes. You’ll be like, man, I really want to go to that one and that one and that one. And I promise you’ll come away from this feeling like every single class you went for two, the entire event was tailored to you. So get your tickets and it’s going to pull out. We’re about a week away from selling out just FYI.

(16:25):
We’re very, very close on our numbers. It’s a smaller venue this time than we did last year. We had 525 agents at our event six months ago, and this is a much smaller venue, so we’re going to have to shut off the registration probably in the next four to five days. So get your tickets now.

Noel LaFerme (16:41):
Yes, get your tickets because this man sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. And you can rewind and play it again, and you can go back and watch his son’s interview and see just how valid everything is that you said. And thank you so much for coming onto the show today, Michael.

Michael Hellickson (16:58):
I appreciate you having me all. Thank you so much. Thank you.