Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
All right.
Hi, friends.
For those of you who don't knowme, hello, I am Lindsay Dreyer,
the founder and head coach atHappy Agent Co.
I am also a brokerage owner anda mom of three.
So we don't have time to foolaround, right?
If you have not reviewed thepodcast, can you please?
(01:31):
That would be the best Christmaspresent you could ever get me.
And without further ado, let'sdive in to our episode today,
which is the money debrief.
This is all about what yournumbers are actually telling
you.
Now, I know some of you arelike, girl, I don't want to talk
about my numbers.
And that is totally fine becausemost agents actually avoid
(01:55):
looking at their numbers becausethey think they're like moldy
leftovers in the fridge.
And I'm not one of those peoplewho actually eats unmuldy
leftovers, to be honest.
And I know that it's not becauseyou don't care, but it's because
you're scared or maybe you don'teven understand how to look at
them.
But I want you to know this thatyour numbers are not an
(02:16):
indicator of whether you are agood or bad person, whether you
are a good or bad real estateagent.
They are not judgment, they areinformation.
So when you know how to readthem, that information becomes
power.
I truly believe it.
So today we are going to do your2025 money review, the way that
I do it as a real deal agentCEO, with zero shame, simple
(02:38):
math, and hopefully verypractical insights.
So let's get you clear and incontrol.
So your 2026 plan is built ondata and not just winging it.
All right, so let's talk aboutwhy your GCI, and for those of
you who have no idea what I'mtalking about, yes, it's another
(02:58):
one of those realtor acronyms.
GCI is your gross commissionincome.
So this is the commissions thatbasically get deposited into
your account.
So most people are just lookingat that number, but what they
really should be looking at ishow much you kept uh and then
(03:21):
what burned through your profitand what is draining you.
Like we don't care if you had350,000 GCI, if your expenses
ate half of it and you werebusting your ass to make that
because it is not about how muchyou make gross.
It is about your net profit.
So your profit is actually thereal story, or at least a big
(03:46):
part of the real story.
All right.
So if you're listening on the goor you're in your car, you can
just listen.
But if you're at a desk orsomewhere where you can write
things down, I want you to writedown these seven numbers: your
total gross commission income,your net income.
So this is after expenses andtaxes.
I want you to write down yournumber of transactions.
(04:08):
I want you to calculate youraverage sales price, your
average commission per deal.
And then we are going toestimate your expenses for the
year, or if you actually haveyour expenses because you are
tracking them throughout theyear instead of just cramming at
tax time, that would be great.
And your estimated hours workedper week.
So we want to gather all thisinformation.
(04:29):
Now, if you do not have a waythat you are tracking this
information, I am going to makethis super easy for you.
I have a free deal dashboard,which is going to allow you to
track all of these numbers Ijust named.
And then it is also going togive you a dashboard, which is
going to show you where you'reat throughout the year.
(04:50):
It's going to track all theinformation you need to really
be the CEO of your business.
You are going to see what isclosed, what is pending, what
your GCI is, how many dealsyou've done, what your average
sales price is, what youraverage commission is per deal.
So that is in the show notes.
So definitely check it out.
And if you are just so thirstyyou need to get it now, you can
(05:13):
go to happyagent.co slashdashboard.
And I will mention it a fewtimes throughout this episode.
We're going to move on tocalculating your real hourly
rate.
So this is a formula that Ithink really puts a lot of
things in perspective, which isyour hourly rate.
So it's super simple tocalculate.
(05:33):
You just take your net incomeand you divide it by the total
number of hours you worked thisyear.
Now, no real estate agent I knowtruly works 40 hours a week, day
in, day out.
It flucts based on your market,based on what's going on.
So just guesstimate.
But when I show this to agentsor agents actually calculate
(05:55):
this, they're like, oh damn,like I have a pretty high hourly
rate.
Or they're like, oh my God, areyou kidding me?
I'm making like$3 an hour.
So either way, no matter whichend of the spectrum you're on,
this is a total wake-up call.
So then once you have thisnumber, I want you to ask
yourself, where am I doing$50 anhour tasks or$20 an hour tasks,
(06:17):
scheduling showings, running tolock boxes, formatting a
newsletter.
And then ask yourself, where areyou doing those$500 an hour
tasks or whatever the highernumber is for you in your
market, like negotiating,pricing strategy, high-level
client care, growth planning.
This is the thing.
You may not be able to hire afull-time assistant tomorrow,
(06:39):
but you could potentiallyoutsource five hours to somebody
next week and immediately freeup time to focus on those higher
dollar value tasks.
And I know a lot of you like,no, I can't, but you could.
If you are selling real estate,you can probably make this work.
If you are feeling overwhelmed,you could probably make it work.
(07:00):
So now that we've got ournumbers tracked, we've got our
hourly rate calculated, I wantto dive into where you leaked
profit.
And this is where I am like yourbestie, who's maybe gonna be a
little real deal with you,because real estate agents are
notorious for buying the brightnew shiny object.
(07:21):
We throw money after the mostridiculous stuff because it's
sexy and we think it's going tomake getting business easier.
We think it's going to do XYZ.
Like we honestly, I've neverseen a group of people who are
searching for the freaking magicwand.
And I just hate to tell youpeople, there literally is no
(07:41):
magic wand.
I believe in magic, but there isno magic wand in real estate.
So let's talk about where yourmoney went.
So I want you to ask yourself,did you panic by a bunch of
leads that you never followed upwith?
So did you sign up for ZillaFlex or whatever?
Um, and you just homes.com,realtor.com, whatever, pick your
poison.
(08:02):
Did you buy the leads and nothave a clear system for
following up with them?
Did you spend$200 on technologythat you don't even use?
Or worse, do you have like five$10 a month pieces of software
that you don't even use?
Because those are the likereally bad ones because you
don't even really notice becauseyou're like, oh, that's$9.
That's not a big deal.
(08:23):
Did you give every client a$300closing gift to prove that
you're the best instead ofliterally just doing a great job
and then following up with themafter they moved in?
Or maybe it's just spendingmoney on farming, which
honestly, farming works if youdo it right.
But maybe you just were like,I'm sending a bunch of postcards
(08:44):
and I'm not getting any businessfrom it.
That's telling you something.
So this isn't like you're badwith money.
You're a human being, you have abusiness, you want it to do
well, but we need to hold thatmoney accountable.
So these are not mistakes, theyare just little hints at where
your profit is leaking and whereyou can cut it.
(09:05):
I am gonna be honest with you.
Two years ago, my brokerage waslosing$150,000 a year.
It was not a comfortable placeto be.
So I had to get real with myselfand look at where was my profit
leaking.
And I was cutting, I wasruthless.
It was if it didn't affect theclient or agent experience, I it
(09:27):
was getting cut.
And I will tell you like we'reback to profitable.
Like this year, we're gonna havesix-figure profit, which is
amazing.
But like, we are back, and ittook that ruthlessness of
holding every penny that I wasshoveling out the door and
holding it accountable to whatwas it doing for my business?
(09:50):
And I want you to do the samething.
If you're sending thosemagazines every month or every
other month, have they sparkedconversations?
If they haven't, and you get noresponse from them, they're
useless.
They are not doing their job.
And you should be investing thatmoney in something that is going
to get you conversations, getyou business.
All right, jumping off mysoapbox, I swear I like really
(10:12):
love to jump on the soapbox.
Let's talk about what made youthe most money with the least
amount of stress or like theleast amount of energy.
This is the part where it reallystarts to get juicy.
I want you to go back and I wantyou to look at where your
easiest, most profitable, mostjoyful business came from.
Was it referrals from past happyclients?
Was it your agent network?
(10:33):
Was it a client appreciationevent?
Was it a like off-the-cuffInstagram post that went viral?
God, don't we all wish thatwould be the case?
Was it a simple and consistentemail newsletter?
I'm telling you, this simpleconsistent email newsletter has
been really working for melately.
I want you to find where thegold is coming from because
those are your people pillarsand we are going to dive more
(10:56):
into attracting clients that arealigned in our next episode.
And honestly, they deserve moreattention in 2026 than just
throwing money at stuff thatdoesn't work.
So we've evaluated a lot, right?
We looked at our GCI, we lookedat our net income, we've looked
at our number of transactions,average sales price, average
(11:18):
commission per deal, what yourhourly rate is, where you were
leaking profit, and where yourmoney wasn't being held
accountable in 2025.
And then we're also looking atwhere is that income that is
just not so hard won.
Because yes, we do have to work.
Obviously, real estate is a veryhard job sometimes.
(11:40):
Like we are hustling, we aregrinding, and I'm not even gonna
pretend that we aren't.
But you have to find thosepeople that you are just the
magnet for.
And that is really what makesthis business so fun and so
enjoyable.
And so holding your moneyaccountable and then investing
in how do you get more of thosetypes of people is really
(12:04):
powerful.
And again, we'll dive into howyou do that in the next episode.
So hopefully you stay tuned nextweek.
All right, let's talk about yourmoney plan for 2026.
So we are not gonna just pullrandom ass numbers out of the
air, like I'm gonna make half amillion dollars and do 40 deals.
I really want you to build arevenue plan.
(12:24):
And I want you to build thisbased on your actual capacity,
the way that you actually wantto feel in your business, the
clients that you want to workwith, what your real hourly rate
is and the work that you'reactually doing.
So I have a few questions foryou.
If you haven't noticed, theseare very like reflecting time of
year.
Like I just believe the wintertime is like the best
hibernation season.
(12:46):
So, what do you want to repeatin 2025 when it comes to your
money?
What do you want to stop when itcomes to your money?
Like, what do you need to holdaccountable and just put on the
dropping block?
What deserves more investment inyour business?
Like, where have you beenholding back?
Where maybe you need to likeinvest the$2,000 and hold that
(13:07):
client appreciation event?
Maybe you need to invest in aCRM.
Maybe you need to invest in sometraining.
Maybe you need to invest in anew car.
I don't know.
You know, you know where youneed to invest.
And then if you're at a point inyour business where you need to
start automating or delegatingthings, what needs to be
automated, what needs to bedelegated?
(13:28):
And then that allows you tostart setting some real revenue
targets and putting together areal money plan.
All right, so let's talk aboutbuilding out a real goal based
on actual a money plan, like anactual mathing, including
brokerage splits, expenses, andtaxes.
So I'm gonna walk you throughthis step by step.
(13:49):
You can grab your calculator orjust listen along and plug the
numbers in later.
So step one is deciding how muchyou want to take home in 2026.
This is your actual income goal.
This is what you want to keepand live on after you run your
business and your taxes are paidand the brokerage takes their
split.
So let's say you want to takehome$100,000 in 2026.
(14:11):
That's great.
That's your goal.
So we've got step one, squaredaway.
Step two is you're going todivide that by whatever
percentage you are setting asidefor business expenses and
whatever percentage you'resetting aside for taxes added
together.
So in this example, I am goingto say 15% is for business
expenses and 25% is for taxes.
(14:34):
So adding those numberstogether, that's 40%.
So I'm going to divide mytake-home goal of$100,000 by
60%.
Now you might be like, Lindsay,but it's 40%.
So you basically take 100%,subtract whatever your business
expenses and taxes percentageis, and that's gonna give you
(14:56):
what you divide it by.
So 100% minus 40% is 60%.
So that's what we're plugginginto that formula.
So that gives me the grosscommission, and this is after
your brokerage split.
So this does not fake factor inbrokerage split.
If you want to factor that in,you can.
So this is saying that I need tobring home that I need to make
(15:16):
gross commission 166,667 to hitmy take home goal of$100,000.
Now, step three is you're gonnafigure out what your average
commission per deal was.
So just look at your pastclosings.
What was your average salesprice commission rate after your
split?
So let's just say it's$10,000per deal in this scenario.
So now you're going to find yourdeal goal.
(15:38):
This is your transaction goal.
So you'll take your GCI goal,and then you're going to divide
it by whatever your averagecommissions are.
So in this example, it's$166,000,$667 divided by$10,000,
which is our average commission.
So we're gonna get a 16.7 deals.
So we'll round that up to 17.
(15:59):
So my goal for 2026 is that Ihave 17 closings with a gross
commission of 100.
I'm gonna round this up,$167,000, which means I will
take home$100,000.
So you can break this downhowever you want.
I personally like scattering the17 deals throughout the year,
kind of like when I think I willdo them.
(16:20):
I know for May, June, July,those tend to be high closing
months.
And then it pops up again inSeptember, October, November.
So sprinkle those out, kind ofgive yourself a little
projection on when you're goingto do those deals.
So this is essentially how youare creating your 2026 money
goals.
(16:40):
And a lot of it is just trackingit as well.
Like, so definitely have a waythat you are tracking your
deals.
I don't know many agents thatactually have a spreadsheet of
tracking their deals.
This is something I make all mycoaching clients do.
So if you want to have aspreadsheet, definitely download
the free deal dashboard.
That is going to be so muchbetter than doing nothing.
(17:02):
So if you want that freeworksheet, it is in the show
notes.
You can also download it athappyagent.co slash dashboard.
But this is what real CEOs oftheir business do.
They know their numbers, theybuild their business around
them, and they don't just wingit.
And I really truly believe thata happy agent is a profitable
(17:23):
one.
So let's go make 2026 your mostprofitable year yet.