You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.
Dan: All right, this is Daniel Barrett, and we're here with Chris Prefontaine from SmartRealEstateCoach.com. Chris, welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much for coming.
Chris: Thanks, buddy. Thanks for having me.
Dan: Yeah, it's my pleasure, man. And I was looking through. Basically, you have a lot of stuff going on, but you've got a book and you've got all this stuff I'm really excited to dig into because selfishly I'm very curious about [them]. [01:03.0]
But I mentioned this before we got on the call. I usually like to start just kind of getting a little bit of your origin story. How did you get into real estate investing specifically? Because it's kind of a weird part of the world, right? An industry that if you don't know about it, it's kind of mysterious. So, what was your in to this whole kind of lifestyle?
Chris: A couple of things. I've been in real estate in some form or another since ’91, so dated myself a little bit there, 29+ years, but post-2008, so post-recession, crash, whatever you want to call it, I call it the debacle -
Dan: Yeah.
Chris: - I started kind of reengineering things to be what we are today. But, I mean, I've been at real estate since ’91, so just kind of adapting with the markets, staying in it. But adapting to markets is what we do.
Dan: Yeah. What were you doing in ’91? Were you investing or did you get started in some other part of real estate?
Chris: Yeah, we were actually building homes. I didn't know anything about building. I hooked up with a builder. I would go tie up the land. We would pre-market a finished home. We would actually, back then, have all the subcontractors including the landowner, wait until the house was pre-sold, sold, built and cashed out, and then everybody gets paid. I don't know if we’d get away with that now, but it worked then. The market was different. [02:10.8]
Dan: Yeah. People were very patient at that point. That sounds silly, yes.
Chris: Yeah, they wanted business back then. It was tough.
Dan: Yeah, it's so interesting, man. You brought up the term “debacle” and it's actually one of the notes I took on the book. Let me just mention the book right now and I want to make sure that I get the title right. It is called Real Estate on Your Terms by Mr. Chris Prefontaine, and in that book you actually talk about “my 2008 debacle.”
And I highlighted the word “debacle,” one, because I was like, first of all, it's a sick word; we don't use that word enough. And, two, I'm really curious what that means because it's one of the things I've talked about before in the shows. I've talked to a lot of really successful investors and in my experience some of “the” most successful people have a very transformative and almost kind of traumatic 2008 story. Right? So, the story is like they're sort of pre-2008, post-2008, and there's a lot of lessons to be learned there. [03:07.8]
I'm just curious as to what your experience was during that time because I feel—I don't know, you can correct me if I'm wrong—that people that went through that, that experience, came out with a very specific set of lessons that maybe younger investors haven't quite internalized yet. So, I'm curious if you could explain a little bit about that, that term “debacle” and what that whole time period meant to you?
Chris: Yeah, and you brought up some really cool things, so that's why I'm scribbling some notes and I'll try to hit a few of them because they were key. And you know what? Interesting, when I get off, I'm going to look up what the definition of that is, but to me it's just a complete mess, debacle.
Dan: Yeah, I think that's about right.
Chris: I'll look it up and I'll use that, so say you made me think about that. Okay, a couple of things. Yes to your later point. This was pre-COVID, I would say in this. There's a lot of people that haven't gone through cycles, one or more, or curveballs in their life, or both. And I think they're all important, especially if you're out trying to help people or you have to be trying to follow someone that is super important. [04:08.3]
There's a lot of what I call new money since the debacle that, okay, it’s good, but it hasn't been tested. I bet it’s being tested right now. And so, we will soon find out what the cream rises. So, for us it was 22 or 23 properties or so, all bought conventionally, like I’ve got to put 20% down or 30% down. I’ve got to sign personally, all these things that people think is the norm. We've got to raise with 200, 300 people and we have had people going, Look, I've been at this for 30 years and I haven't heard of what you're doing. So, it's not that it's new. It’s just that we've wrapped the system around it to kind of weather the storms. And this was again, pre chaos, what we're going through right now.
So, yeah, all the things we learned there were what we're doing now: don't sign personally. Buy everything on terms on financing or at least purchase, everything. Unless it’s your own house and you can even do that on terms, but if you can't find one, it's okay to sign for that, in my opinion. But other than that, do not, because when and if a storm comes again, and for some people is a storm right now, right, depending on what mess you're in. [05:06.8]
Dan: Yeah.
Chris: For us, we're booming because it was engineered that way. But for a lot of people, there's a storm right now, so as I said, they're going to be tested. So, I think I hit two or three of the things. Do you want to go back to any of those points from your high points?
Dan: No. I mean, I think, yeah, it’s really fascinating to me. You mentioned people not having gone through cycles, right? And I think there's a real difference between intellectually understanding and sort of viscerally internalizing it.
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: And I say that from personal experience because I started my business in maybe 2012, mid-2011 or so, and things have been really good for us and they continue to be good for us, right, but it's a scary time for us now.
Chris: Right.
Dan: And I think a lot about risk management on my own and for my family and stuff, but it's different going through it, however you want to categorize it, if you want to call it a black swan event or some kind of really big cyclical event. And just this whole time, I've just been thinking about it's so different going through it, and I think that coming out of it, it will be a profoundly different sort of set of expectations about what the future is going to hold. Right? [06:18.0]
I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about that. Was it the fact that you went through it 2008 that made you sort of approach real estate in a way—you talk about terms a lot, so maybe we can talk about that, too, right?—approaching real estate in such a way where, yeah, so if everything's great, that's great, but you are deliberately hedging for maybe these kinds of rare but extremely disruptive kind of periods in the economy?
Chris: Yeah. Okay, so deliberate is the word. It was do we even venture back into real estate again? And if we do, what would be the rules? That's kind of where my head was and the rules were some of the things I mentioned: don't sign personally. Buy on terms. [07:00.0]
Then it became a process. I don't want to say game. Definitely a process where you started doing some deals in, like, 12. It took four years to dig out of that crap, so in ’12 we started back very pointedly on terms and have been laser-focused since, so it's been eight years and things have tweaked.
How so? We used to say, Great, we'll do two-, three-, four-year terms. Now we say, No, five, seven, 10, because if you do five-, seven-, 10-year terms, you care less about the market swings. We've tweaked agreements and forms that we use with sellers and buyers to be more flexible and an open communication. Hey, Daniel, we're going to do this with your house. Look, I'm a conservative investor and if I'm going to do something to your house, I'm going to put this under seven years and that's our intent, but I can't control the national market.
And so, it's just very different communication now, very open, and very cool way we structured the deals and that's why right now, not just us in New England because you're close to me geographically, but I'm talking all around North America, including into Canada, we have students just breaking records two or three times the volume now. Why? Because thanks to tightening up everybody and we’re the answer right now for buyers and sellers. [08:03.7]
Dan: Yeah, you know what? I want to draw attention to I think a thing you kind of said and I think it's so critical and I think is one of the big lessons. There's one of those things, right, where it's like you buy a Honda or whatever and then you just see Honda everywhere.
It’s like one of those things is where I’m personally learning this lesson, and then to see it everywhere, which is that you set rules for your own level of risk tolerance, and then you built your business and systems around those rules. Rather than that, what I think people do is they look at what's a business system that’s really profitable and my rules emerge from that. Right?
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: So, then it's not matched up to what is actually safe and appropriate for them. It's just like, What's going to make me the most money? I'm curious, when things were really booming and things were amazing, did you have people being like, Why are you doing it this way? You could make easier money doing it some other way that kind of doesn't match these preset rules? [09:01.2]
Chris: Similar, maybe not exact words, but things like if I go back in time to ’13-ish, people definitely said, You're nuts. Why are you buying? They still thought it was doom and gloom, pretty much coming out of the doldrums. But I just tend to go the opposite direction. If everybody's saying don't do it like right now, go do it. It's the best time to do it. Everybody thinks it's not.
Dan: That’s like, yeah, one of my favorite all-time sayings. If it sounds like a good idea, it's too late.
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: That's really true, man. It's really true.
Chris: Yeah, no question. And so, it's not like that's a bad thing. If you alluded to those people that made the rules that way, I did it all the way up till ’08, so you can say sometimes you get to learn the hard way.
I mean, when you get thrown at you the different, I call them storms, to me it would be, let me go back, it would be the ’90s. Then it would be, of course, 9/11. That threw a kink in everybody's business right. Then it was my son's accident in ’03. He was in a coma. I mean, that was like overnight things change. Then it was, of course, the ’08. That's four things without COVID. That's five now. That's a lot of curveballs. [10:00.8]
Dan: It's a lot of things, right? I'm a fan of Nicholas Taleb who wrote Antifragile and Fooled by Randomness, and one of his main hypotheses is that those kinds of events are becoming more frequent because we live in such a globalized or interdependent world. I think it's kind of fascinating.
I did want to mention or bring up your son's accident. You write about this in your book and I wouldn't really say it's… I'll put this out there for people. The book is called Real Estate on Your Terms, right? I've read my share of real estate books far less than many people listening to those podcasts. This is the only time I actually teared up while reading a real estate book.
I don't know about anybody else, but I found this chapter being incredibly moving and I'm wondering if you could tell a little bit of that story to people who aren't familiar because it's sort of a really interesting view into how you and your family dealt with this situation. I don't know, I'm wondering if you could tell that story a little bit because you just mentioned it. [11:00.0]
Chris: Yeah. I was literally on the way to my attorney's office to do a presentation. I remember like it was yesterday, and I was just getting off the exit and I got the call from the school. He was just with his middle school going skiing, but he didn't have a helmet. It was one of those rotten days. You don't go skiing, rainy, icy, not a good day to do it. And he'd get off, of course, a young teenager, get off and went off the highest jump, and then caught an edge on a snowboard and then had multiple head injuries.
They couldn't airlift them because it was too windy, so they had to intubate him on the spot on the hill, and it would never have happened if by miracle the guy wasn't sitting in an ambulance in the parking lot. And it was just all these things.
Dan: Wow, really? I missed that part.
Chris: Yeah. He might not have even been in there.
Dan: There just literally happened to be someone there.
Chris: There’s three in all of New England. You're from New England. There's three in all of New England and I had to do that on the spot, and he was in the parking lot in the ambulance.
Dan: That is amazing.
Chris: Yeah, on duty. So, that was fast-forward a month in a soma, Kim and I were told, my wife and I were told he wouldn't walk, talk or eat again on his own. And then he runs the business with us now to fast-forward. But, of course, he had to go through therapy, flashcards, 1+1, 2+2, learn how to write with a different hand because one tremors. I mean, everything started totally from scratch. [12:07.1]
Dan: Yeah, that is incredible.
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Dan: One of the things, there's another kind of highlight in the book. When you tell this story in the book, you sort of make this point of there's a point at which your son turns to your wife I think and says, Am I ever going to walk again? This is after you guys have basically been told, Hey, this is never going to happen.
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: And your wife's reply is, “Of course, you are.” Right? And I'm wondering if we talk about that because, I'll be honest, I go back and forth sometimes on things like this. [13:04.8]
Part of me is like I try to think of myself as a highly rational, highly realistic person. So, someone tells me like, Hey, you’ve got a 99% chance of getting hit by lightning. I'm not going to go outside, right? But at the same time, it's also pretty clear to me that when you're put in a really dire situation, having an almost unreasonable level of self-confidence is really key to getting through that situation. It's like you are actually in that situation, obviously not of your own choosing. Can you talk about that? Did you guys have to think about that or was it just like that was the kind of mindset from the get go?
Chris: A lot of what we talked about to this day, a lot of it was you're shell-shocked, so you just sit in the mo, right, with blinders on. And so, I guess part of it was it wasn't conscious, but part of it was probably we were not going there. We didn’t want to believe that. And a lot of it we knew. You study this. I think you were alluding to this. You study this. You read it. Until you're doing it, you're not tested. [14:02.1]
And so, in the hospital when the doctors would come in and tell us things while he was in a coma, we'd say, “Please go out to the hall. We're not talking,” because we thought he could hear. It’s all this subconscious stuff.
So, yeah, we just kicked into that mode. What’s your option? To wither? If you think about it and I never said that, but your option is do nothing or try everything you’ve got. And so, you probably saw in the book, I'd post affirmations on his wall, so that when he would come out, he would read it. We just did that nonstop, and so that's all he saw and knew, and just I'm sure that helped.
Dan: Yeah. You also alluded to this. This was another part of my notes that you guys are essentially a family business now, correct me if I'm wrong.
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: You've got a lot of members of your family involved in the business. As a father of two young sons, my kids are four and six right now--
Chris: And being groomed for the business, right?
Dan: Yeah, sort of. They like coming to my office, but it's because I have all this comic book crap in the background. But, yeah, they're curious and my youngest son will walk around, and he calls his stuffed animals “lovies.” And so, I'll be like, What are you doing? And he's like, I'm working on the lovey account. He says stuff like that and I'm like, That's cool. But they have no idea what I do, right? I just sit in front of a computer every day. [15:12.8]
I'm always curious when people have family working together. I'm curious, what was the decision-making process like? Was that something you always knew you wanted to do? And then, how does it work in practice? Is that easy for you guys or is it rocky? I'm just curious what the experience is actually.
Chris: Yeah. Okay, so I wish I could tell you I sat down and had a plan, had a goal and it all works. It's not the case. What happened was when I started doing deals again, I was by myself. I found myself in a hole in the wall. Literally, it was like a closet being turned to an office up the street.
Dan: Yes.
Chris: And, Nick, my son was sharing an office with me. It was kind of Stage 2, but he was still there, and then I started needing help. I'm like, Jeez, it’s getting busy. Can you maybe help with the online stuff? I don't know how to do that stuff. Can you help? He said, “Yeah, I’ll help.” That was in ’14, so just starting to grow organically where he was like, Yeah, I like doing this, and I stayed for the sellers. [16:04.0]
And then, Zach, my son-in-law and my daughter, Kayla, were bartending at the time, great money in Newport, Rhode Island, but not a good long-term plan. So, they came to me and said, “Hey, is there any room?” and I just said, “I don't know. Let's try it. Let's go per deal. There's no salary. Let's just go at it.” So, slowly they gravitated to roles that they liked doing and to this day nobody wants to cross over. It's kind of unique.
Dan: Wow.
Chris: Yeah, so then as we grew, Dan, here's a key. We came up with the values. When I say “we,” it wasn't me going, Here's the deal and here's what we're going to do for our company. It was, we voted on it. We came up with values, came up with a mission, came up with a purpose. So, now the decisions that are made, the family peace doesn't get in the way. It’s does it fit the value or not?
And so, we weighed against that, and the mission and the purpose, and if not, there's no argument because you came up with them as a group. How can you say no? This is the deal. I think that's good for any company, let alone a family company, but it certainly helps with the family company, because, Zach, my son-in-law is the CEO now of the coaching company. Nick runs all the properties. So, they're integrally involved in different areas. [17:06.1]
Dan: Yeah, I think it's fascinating that you guys, the way it worked for you was everyone kind of naturally gravitated towards the roles that they like, right?
Chris: Absolutely.
Dan: Which is such a huge deal. Do you think about you get a job somewhere and usually it's like you started the job you hate and you’ve got to kind of stick it out until you rise up to something that you like. That's fascinating to me. I think there's a ton of maybe sort of hidden advantages there that I don't even know about, but it just strikes me as, yeah, it could be so powerful, and I really like the values. What was your process for picking values?
Here's another thing I'll be super honest about. I love my team. I love my company. We're great. I have a document I made that's like, Here's what the company is about. Right? But I’ve got to be honest, when I made it, I was like, This kind of feels corny to me. You know what I mean? I was like, There's certain things. We're here to do what's best for the client. And I'm like, I don’t know, it just seems we kind of all know that already. It felt weird to write it down. [18:03.0]
So, what was your process for coming up with values that you guys really resonate with? Because it sounds like you didn't just put it on the wall and forget about it.
Chris: No.
Dan: It sounds like you use it in your actual decision-making.
Chris: Yeah. Once again, I wish I could say I brainchild this, but I didn't.
Dan: You can. Hey, look, you're the only one on the podcast. You can tell me whatever you want.
Chris: Just whoever you are again. No, here's how it happened with that. Every year we go, All right, what? I've always done this, but now as a group, What's in store for next year? What do you need from mentors, coaches, groups, help? Is it lead gen? Is it scaling? What is it?
In ’17, beginning of ’17, we started to hit our stride. The properties were always cranking. We were starting to hit our stride in the coaching. And so, Zach would say, I'm going to work on this and get better lead gen or funnels. And I’d say, You know what? I need to as the owner go look at how to scale this thing. I never did. It never really went past a million or two. It never did it.
So, we found through different referrals, a group called the Elite Entrepreneurs out in Arizona, and I will tell you if they were on the podcast with us right now, they’d say the same thing. I owe everything to them for our scaling. Everything. [19:04.8]
Dan: Wow.
Chris: They brought me down to a meeting that they do, like a kickoff meeting. You'd get down, you or your company with you, for two days. And they help you establish all the values, the mission and the purpose. Then you go back to your team if you didn't bring them in and you, of course, fine-tune it and make it personal, so they can decide. But that's what kicked it off and I’ve got to tell you, I felt the same way as you as I was telling that story. I sit there going, You know the org chart? They do a future thing and a future this? And I’m going, Oh, all right, but I was just always by myself, so it was kind of weird.
And then, in ’18, we had a record year. In ’19, we had a record year. In ’20, we're on track to kill it, and now what we have, it’s a 10-year mission plan. It was really cool to go through that process, and if you want to scale, if anyone wants to scale any business, this is not just real estate. I'm the only real estate person in that group. It’s really, really unique. And now, of course, a lot of it has gone online with everything that's going on.
Dan: Yeah, that's really cool, man. I'm definitely going to look that up, and I'll grab a link for it and I'll put it in the show notes for the episode, so that people can find it at AdWordsNerds.com/Podcast. That's really cool, man. [20:02.9]
I mean, I'm curious, you mentioned you've got this coaching side of your business now. Obviously, you’ve got coaching yourself, right? I'm also a person that's had a number of really influential coaches in my life. I will say to people that want to go check out SmartRealEstateCoach.com, which is where Chris's stuff is at.
He's got probably—I mean, I'll be honest, I'll throw this—having talked to many, many, many real estate investing coaches, I will throw the gauntlet down and say Chris has probably the best titled course I've ever seen, which is called 31-Day Billionaire, which, by the way, blows any other course I've ever seen out of the water in terms of pure title. Right? Just punching everyone in the face, which I appreciate. But he's got a bunch of stuff up there that people can go check out.
I'm curious as to what you have learned through the coaching process specifically, because I found personally that coaching, for me, whenever I do any kind of coaching, I mean, I am coaching someone else, it helps me to formulate my own thoughts in a way that I probably wouldn't have done just on my own. [21:03.5]
Chris: I agree.
Dan: And I usually come out of it being like, Oh, I actually understand this better now that I've had to teach it. So I'm curious as to what the move into coaching was like for you and kind of what you've gotten out of it personally?
Chris: Yeah, so I'll go to that second piece first and that is I couldn't agree more because now we actually have students who we're grooming to be coaches and they're like, Oh, this is why you do it. It's so cool because, yes, you're going to be on your game. I feel an obligation to be two steps ahead of my highest, highest, highest performance I have in the entire North America, so that I can go, Come on, and here's some new stuff, not shiny objects, just leadership, thought leadership stuff.
And then, as far as how I get into it, we're in Newport. I'm in Middletown now, but it's right next door and the War College is here, as you probably know. And one of the guys called me and said, “Look, I've seen your stuff around locally. I've been on three tours to Afghanistan. I'm done with the service. I'm going to go back to civilian life. I'm moving to Oregon. Can you coach me?”
I said okay. I mean, I used to coach realtors all over North America. I’d never coached investors yet. I said, “Sure.” [22:03.5]
So, we did a preliminary thing. I mean, I couldn't do it anymore. He was in my office. We were hanging out, doing calls. I don't do that anymore, but that started the coaching.
Then I wrote a little e-book and that went to this person's list who has virtual assistants for real estate investors. She said, “Can you write something?” I said, “Oh, I’ll try it.” We wrote a new book. A bunch of people opted in and that list has grown now from 300 to 20,000 and millions of dollars in revenue.
So, we’re on a mission to do deals, Dan, which is different, because most of you would say, We're on a mission to hit the sales number. We're on a mission to do deals with students. It’s a set mission. So, we don't do masterminds just to raise revenue. We don't do any of that stuff. We do things that are going to do deals with students in the field, which is unique in the business.
Dan: Yeah. I love it, too. I think that the problem with some coaching and some online education stuff is usually the dirty secret of that industry is nobody finishes anything, so it's like 10% of people make it through the stuff that they buy.
Chris: And no support.
Dan: Yeah, it's kind of just a limitation of the medium in many ways, right? So, I'm not calling out anyone specifically, but it's like that's just kind of a known thing. [23:06.4]
But I think if you really change the whole focus from it's not about getting a certain number of students, not about hitting a certain revenue number, the metric, kind of the lag indicator that you're going to care about is deals students do or deals done with students that prevents you guys from focusing on anything that doesn't directly affect that bottom line. Right? It's like algorithms.
Chris: Yeah, it does.
Dan: Yeah. I'm curious, you mentioned writing an e-book. You’ve got this book, right? You have another book, too, that you sent me, which is The New Rules of Real Estate Investing, which you wrote along with it looks like your son, Nick, and Zach.
Chris: And Zach, yeah.
Dan: Yeah. So, do you consider yourself a writer at this point?
Chris: No.
Dan: You have at least two books.
Chris: No, actually we did a third with Moneeka Sawyer a women's real estate book, and then we've got two in the process. It's more like a media thing for me. I was taught by the guy I mentioned to you before the show, Steven. He's my accountability partner now and we had met three years ago. We just became really good friends and I'm going to introduce you, too, but he's phenomenal at content. [24:04.4]
So, he's like, Well, I mean, you’ve got how many podcasts episodes, Chris? Over a hundred or whatever it is. So, why don't you take your best blah-blah-blah and repurpose that and get some chapters out of a book? I said, “Oh, that's interesting.” Then why don't you take the video? So, we just became more of a media, provide free content for people, and some of those happen to be books. That's all.
Dan: Yeah. I will be totally honest. I'm deeply jealous because I've been trying to lately, not specifically in real estate but just kind of as a hobby, I'm like, Okay, I want to learn to be a better writer. I want to kind of hone that, sharpen this off a little bit. Right? So, I've been writing just an email newsletter every week and it's like if anyone listening to this hasn't sat down and really tried to write a relatively long-form thing, it's very difficult. Right?
Chris: Yeah, it's tedious.
Dan: Yeah. I think that's super, super cool. And the stuff is all super high quality. I know you said that people could get a free copy of the book. Let's pitch that right now because we've been talking about it and I'm sure people are going to be interested in it. How can people get a copy of some of your stuff? [25:06.8]
Chris: Sure, I'll give you the link. We used to mail it. We're not quite back at the office yet, but you will still get the electronic and one of them is an audio. But just go to FreeSRECBook.com and just say that you heard Dan and I on Dan’s show. It's all you’ve got to do.
Dan: All right, cool.
Chris: And when we’re back to mailing, we'd all make you put a credit card for shipping. We pay for shipping and everything. We get it to you and they're hard copy books.
Dan: Yeah, that’s cool.
Chris: But for now, it will be electronic.
Dan: Yeah, that's beautiful. So, FreeSRECBook.com. You can mention the show. I’ll have a link on the show notes and everything, so people can go get a check, a taste of the stuff that you've put out, which I've mentioned before. People listen to the show. A bunch have heard me interview a lot of people. I brought up kind of specific things from some of Chris's content because it's legit good. It's really legitimately good.
Chris: I appreciate it.
Dan: Yeah. All right, so it's about time for us to wrap it up. I don't want to keep you a super, super long, but I do kind of want to circle back a little bit. I mean, we've talked a lot about a lot of things from your life and one of the things that you brought up about your approach to business is really interesting to me. [26:04.7]
And one of the things that's really kind of come across to me, I know we were talking about how it was like you didn't mastermind the values and you didn’t mastermind this or whatever. But you seem very deliberate in terms of the stuff that you do in business, right? You do it for a reason, right? You're saying you started not signing personally and doing things on terms because you had specific reasons in your past or certain levels of risk tolerance that was a good fit. Right? Same thing with working with your family. Same thing with the way that you guys are structuring the business.
I'm just curious about, for you now, you're obviously in a very different place, the coaching business doing really well, the property business booming, when you think about goals for the business now and where you want to take it, what is the 10-year plan for what you guys are doing? And do you foresee having to have a massive change in how you do things to get there or is it just you're just going to keep working the system that you guys already have?
Chris: All right, again, the latter point is really cool. I’ll delve in first. Do we have to change to get there? A hundred percent yes. [27:06.8]
I think I don't care what business you're in, if you're hearing this one. I know this is an old adage, but what got you here is definitely not going to get you the next year, if you want to grow. If you're quite content, don't get me wrong, I have some students that go, Hey Chris, you know what, the two or three or four deals a month thing, I'm okay. If I do want to read a month at these numbers because we're very profitable, I'm good. Okay, so she doesn't have to worry about changing much. Just walk away.
But if you're going to grow and you want to grow, and you want to scale and/or increase profitability, yeah, I think every year things change and this is why I remember earlier I said we think through and we go, What's going to be on the agenda this year for coaching? Because we've got to learn and grow. So, we all as part of what we call our big three, the big goals for each trimester, we each pick a personal training or coaching program that we're going to do or class for the admin staff, something to improve for next year, for sure.
As far as where we're going, our mission right now is written in January ’18, that initial thing I went to I said, and it brought us to 2022 to complete 1,500 transactions with our students. And then, of course, we brainstorm every trimester meeting, offsite meeting, where it's going in 10, but that's the next plateau, 2022 hitting 1,500 transactions. [28:16.1]
Dan: That was super cool. I'm going to put something in my calendar and I'm going to email you, the grand day of 2022 and I'd be like, How did it go? I’ll be super curious.
Chris: That’s awesome.
Dan: You can come back on the show. I would love to have you come back.
Chris: Yeah.
Dan: Chris Prefontaine, thank you so much for coming on this really, really fascinating conversation for me. If you are listening to this, you want to check out Chris’ stuff. I highly recommend that you do. SmartRealEstateCoach.com is the website. You can also get free stuff at FreeSRECBook.com. Yeah, I'll have a bunch of stuff, links and stuff. AdWordsNerds.com/Podcast. Find this episode and all our past episodes.
Chris, thank you so much, man. This was a really, really fun and awesome conversation, so I appreciate it so much.
Chris: Fun chatting. Thanks, Dan.
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