Justin Stoddart 0:00
Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddart. And as you know my mission and my passion are to help you think bigger, so that you can have the business that you want, which produces the options and the impact that you want. Super excited today to have kind of a real estate industry icon, possibly even celebrity depending upon what standpoint you're looking at it from
nationally known, at least His name's Kevin Kauffman. Let me start off by saying a big thank you to Kevin for being willing to come on to think bigger real estate show.
Kevin Kauffman 0:28
Yeah, my pleasure. I love to do it. You know, I think you and I connected over the fact that we both love to give back to the real estate community. And so I'm literally my pleasure to do this.
Justin Stoddart 0:38
That's awesome. Good stuff. Let me tell the audience here a little bit about Kevin Kauffman, again, he's a wants to be known as a realtor. I think that's pretty cool. Out of Tempe, Arizona, from another perspective, he looks at Real Estate a little bit differently. He goes about a different we're going to talk about what that's what that looks like for him. He has an expansion team and if you're familiar with expansion teams, where you have one hub
and one location, and you add other agents in different parts of the country, he's done. He's got five different locations about 50 agents, what he calls a small expansion group. Some might beg to differ that that's that small. He's also co-founder of the group next level agents, and the podcast, Kevin and Fred's Next Level podcast. And in talking with you, Kevin, prior to this, I love kind of your passion behind that, which is, you've been fortunate to be surrounded by some really great people. And why not give back? Why not record those conversations and let more people have access to them?
Kevin Kauffman 1:35
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, you know, I, I realized a couple of years ago that something I've done naturally my whole life is to seek out mentorship. And sometimes it's a mentor for a season. Sometimes it's for like, one individual little thing, one topic, and sometimes it's for life, right and,
and so I love learning about the genius inside of people and being able to want to
My reasons for having the Facebook group I mean, the day I started that and then told Cody and Fred: "Hey guys, we now have a Facebook group, surprise!" And the reason I started the podcast was that I wanted to be able to do that on a bigger level as you can only teach live to so many people so often without being on an airplane 300 days a year, which I'm not willing to do. And so it's kind of like my ability to kind of deliver on that stuff that really lights me up.
Justin Stoddart 2:27
You know, I feel the same way. A very similar motive for the bigger real estate show is I'm I guess, gutsy enough and passionate enough advocate for the industry, that I want to get the brightest minds in real estate. Like I want to be around them, and I want to be learning from them. And why not offer that to a bigger audience? Why not? Like, let's like with technology these days, there's no reason why we can't be broadcasting great conversations all the time. So thank you again for being a part of that. Yeah. Let's get into kind of your definition, Kevin of what it means to be a next level agent.
You've obviously carried that through your kind of your branding, both in the Facebook group as well as the podcast, obviously, in your mind, you have some concept of what it means to be a next level agent help define that. For the rest of us.
Kevin Kauffman 3:14
You know, it's funny, Justin, that's a great question. No one's ever asked it to me that way.
But you just forced me to think about it differently. And one of the things I love is the fact that there's not this one size fits all recipe for success in real estate business. And so for me, when I think of like, what, like I say this to people who want to be coached, and I'm, I'm like, we go through an interview process to see if I'm gonna, if I'm going to coach them if I could be a good fit for them, but they'd be a good fit for me is, I don't care if you sold 10 houses this year, and your goal is to go to 25. Or if you sold 500 houses and your goal is to go to 1000 I really don't. But what I want to know is the desire to hit your personal next level there and Will you follow through on the actions that are required
So when you ask the question that way, you just reminded me, number one, it's about whatever that next level is for you. And number two, it's also about it doesn't not like you don't have to go the expansion team route. You don't have to go the team route. You could go the luxury route, you could go the investor, right, like there are so many ways to be massively successful in real estate. And so I guess at the end of the day, that's how I would answer it is like, it's the person who thinks like, what is my personal next level? What's the next level for my business? And for myself as a person in my personal development?
Justin Stoddart 4:35
That's a super, super compelling answer, I think, based on what you said earlier, which is about this concept of growing yourself right of growth. I found for me that that happiness includes growth. And I think, by design, we as human beings aren't happy unless we are growing like there's, there's this deeper underlying purpose as to why we're here which is just to grow and progress and become more and impact more
And I think probably guys like you and I get a little bit addicted to growth, like if we're not experiencing it, or if the people around us aren't experiencing it, like we get uncomfortable, like what? And I can sense that from you. And really super cool to hear that the purpose of this branding is that you want to be around people that are like that, that are like hungry to get to some next level, whatever that means for them. Right.
Kevin Kauffman 5:21
Yeah, you know, I would argue that true happiness isn't possible without growth like you have to be growing somewhere in your life. You know, one of the things I've learned from many of my mentors over the years is like, your business can never outgrow you as your personal development. It just can't, it's not allowed you. Now, some people will choose to let their personal development outgrow their business. And that's definitely possible, but it can't be the other way around. So you've got to have some growth somewhere, I believe to truly be happy and fulfilled, and to be a happy person. I mean, I'm just one of those airy-fairy believers, that as I believe as humans were like we are hard-wired.
To connect, and that if we're going to connect with people, we're going to have to grow in order to be able to truly be connected.
Justin Stoddart 6:07
Yeah. powerful stuff. And I agree, I think it's in our DNA, that growth is part of who we are. And when we negate that or when we avoid that it causes people to be really dissatisfied I do you see people interesting story. I had an economics, no, accounting teacher in college, and he hit it big had a big acquisition for a company he was a part of was like, like, done like did not need to work anymore. And his wife goes home to his wife. He's like my job's kind of done here. I'm going to, I'm going to get a golf club membership. And, like, your job's not quite done yet. kids haven't raised I he was joking about this, right. He wasn't actually that chauvinistic. But he said I golf for the next couple of years. He said I've never been so miserable in my entire life. So so they actually went back to the university th...
