Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart. Are real estate teams good for real estate or not? Today's episode is going to be all about that. I have with me today, somebody who is a proponent of teams and doing some amazing things. His name is Christopher Watters. He's been on the show before and I'm excited to have him back. Christopher, thanks for being here. I'm excited to delve into this topic with you.
Christopher Watters
Yeah, me too. Justin. Excited to be on your show again.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, thank you for coming back. For those that don't know, Christopher, his background, he's in eight locations across the US and Canada. His hub where his main business is based out of, is Austin, Texas. He's got a real estate brokerage there. He's author of Million Dollar Real Estate Team. So he has not only written about it, but he's done it, which is impressive. For those of you who are maybe tuning in to the show for the first time, or haven't been listening for a while, I want to restate the purpose of this entire show, is that when you are around big thinkers, guess what, your thoughts expand, your actions follow suit and pretty soon your impact also follow suit. My passion is to help people realize the divine potential within them and to begin to live up to their potential, impacting the world in great ways. So I'm excited to have Christopher on here today, because whether or not you agree with with his view on teams, the fact is, the guy's a big thinker, and he's going to influence you to make a bigger impact in your world. So again, thank you again for being here.
Christopher Watters
Yeah, so I mean, something I was telling you earlier you was when I got started building real estate team full time in 2010. And I went and paid and went through every coaching program imaginable. Like I've paid all the coaches, I've been through all the different coaching programs, and they were all amazing, like I learned so much. Going through all these coaching programs, I always say like one of the secrets or one of the shortcuts to like growing super fast is not trying to reinvent the wheel and go learn from somebody that's already done it. I was watching Shark Tank back in 2010. And Damon john on Shark Tank said pioneers get slaughtered and settlers prosper. And I was really frustrated with my growth. Like I wasn't, you know, selling as many homes as I wanted. And I heard him say that on Shark Tank. And I'm like, I'm like, Man, what, why am I trying to be innovative and all this stuff, like I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars, like, you know, these big tech companies, right? Like I'm bootstrapping and putting money on a credit card and just trying to you know, scrounge up enough money to pay for lead gen and all that kind of stuff. And so I was like, there has, there's obviously lots of people that have come before me super successful. So anyways, I got involved in coaching and like really radically changed my world, because I've learned from people that are already figured it out. And in 2013, I kind of hit a brick wall. Between January and June of 2013, I went on 267 listing appointments, my my title rep love to me, by the way. So I hit this brick wall, I was literally drinking so much Red Bull, and like Monster Energy and going from 6am till two o'clock in the morning. And when I you know, when I first got started in real estate, like, you know, I wanted all the fancy cars and fancy house and all that stuff. But the real reason I really wanted to make a lot of money was you know, I remember as a little kid, always feel like I needed to prove myself because, you know, I had a lot of like academically driven people in my family. And but none of them were entrepreneurs, like they were all like success successful in their own right. Never made a ton of money, though, but they're very academically driven. And my mom was a nurse, so I didn't have a lot of money grown up. And so I ever since I was a little kid, I always felt like I had something to prove. And so I had this big goal. By the time I hit 30, I wanted a million bucks, but it wasn't really about the money, it was just trying to, you know, gain the respect of my family and the people around me. And so and I made that happen in 2013. But I did it at the expense of realizing that what I was chasing the North Star I was chasing, like making all this money going on tons of appointments, which is like what everybody thinks they should be doing, right? Like I got there to the nth degree. And I was like, Man, this is not like, this is not what I thought it was like, have you ever have you ever had that happen? Where like the North Star didn't end up being a North Star?
Justin Stoddart
I have. Absolutely--I think all the way back to high school. You know, this is probably the first example. My wife actually hates this story, so if she's watching this, she's gonna probably chime in. She hates it when I share this story. But from a very early age, I realized that at outer or outside things couldn't make me happy because I had poured my entire heart and soul into football. We were state champions, you know, two of my three years at that particular high school, and I remember as a junior holding the championship trophy over my head and I'm like, I'm still not happy. Like, what? Why is this not more exciting to me right now. I had the whole town there, cheering me on and although, you know, I've had a number of experiences since then that have have kind of reinforced that lesson. That was the earliest that I remember that trophies don't make you happy, right? They don't, they don't fix what's what needs to be fixed inside. I think that's really everything from, you know, relationships to spirituality. There are some things that really do fix the inside and then once that foundations in place, then you can go create some great things and impact a lot of people but it's got to start at the foundation.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, man, I couldn't agree more. I I so the thing was, is like I realized in December 2013, I was on that transaction, treadmill, and I got the trophy, and it wasn't fulfilling. And I was like, man, there's gotta there's gotta be more, right. And so number one, like I didn't have a lot of time, you know, just like I couldn't, you know, even with the money I had made, I couldn't spend it because I'm working seven days a week. And it wasn't, you know, I was I remember reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And there was this quadrant, and he said, top left is an employee. Bottom left is the self employed, and the top rights and business owner. And in the bottom right quadrant was an investor. And he said, the difference between an employee and somebody self employed versus being on the right side, is if you're a business owner and investor, you don't trade time for money. And so after going through all these coaching programs, something I realized those and they're all amazing, like, I highly recommend all of them. But the thing that I realized is, there's very, you know, there's very few people that actually help you go from owning a job being self employed to actually owning a business. And very few people actually make that transition and legitimately have like a business that can operate without them. And so I spent the next two years trying to, you know, figure that out. And I remember in 2015, looking at my tax return, and I had broke a net income, like I literally paid taxes on a million dollars. And like, I felt like I had found the gold underneath the Rainbow Bridge, you know what I mean? Like I was, it was like one of these things where I was like, I felt like I had this, this moral obligation to like, share with the world how I did this. Because I didn't go on it, I didn't work with a single...
