To create the real estate business you want, you need to start a plan. Renee Williams introduces Neil Mathweg, the Founder of Agent Rise Coaching. Neil talks with Renee about how you need to have one vision and stick to it. To go there faster, hire a coach who’s been there before. Don’t be afraid of failing. When you give effort, either you get the results, or you get a lesson. Take those lessons and stack them up until you get the results.
If you want to know more about how to create the real estate business you want, you’d want to check out this episode. Enjoy!
Mentioned on this episode:
Massive Agent Podcast with Dustin Brohm, Host
Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
eXp Realty - ReneeWilliamsGroup.com/exp
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Creating The Real Estate Business You Want With Neil Mathweg
Welcome to our episode. We are going to talk to Neil Mathweg. He is a realtor, an author, a coach, a dad, a husband, and an RV traveler. He and his family are traveling across the United States. They've been doing so for years. We are going to get into his book called Agent Rise: Real Estate Agent’s Guide To Building A Career They Love. Here's a little bit about the book. Neil says, “This book is a resource for new real estate agents and agents who feel stuck.” For those of us who are experienced and who feel stuck, pick it up, read it and discover how to build a successful real estate business you will love. This book shows you how to craft a success plan that works for your unique personality. “I want you to thrive. I want you to be an agent on the rise,” by author Neil Mathweg. We're going to talk to Neil now.
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We are with Neil Mathweg. How are you doing, Neil?
I'm doing awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm fired up. I love what you're doing with the show. Let's do this.
Thank you so much. I’m super excited that we're in the same eXp family. I see you on everything that you're doing and I know you see a lot of my stuff. You had a book released and I want to talk about Agent Rise. Before we do that, tell us who you are, what you do, and where did you come from.
I've been selling real estate for many years now. I still feel like the young kid in the corner cubicle at the office. In 2015, I got this itch to coach agents. I was close to burnout in my career. I was selling about 75 to 100 homes a year and every moment that I was able to coach somebody, it fired me up. At the time, I was with Century 21. They started putting me on stage telling me, “Go teach people your strategies and the things that you're doing.” I was like, “Put me on that stage. I want it,” and I had a blast.
In 2015, I started working towards that vision, and fast forward to 2021, my book is finally done. I've been coaching agents since 2015. Agent Rise has about 115 members in it. We do group coaching and one-on-one coaching. We have agents breaking through every day. It is exciting and so much fun. I am living the dream. Another weird tidbit about me is we sold our house and 90% of our belongings to go full-time RV. It's another dream of mine. We coach agents, do masterminds, conferences, and all kinds of stuff. We've got the book tour going. I'm traveling the country and living the dream. It's a lot of fun.
It sounds dreamy, the freedom. I think that's what we all want. I want to get into that. I did mention in the intro that you're traveling the country in your RV, which I'm so jealous. Tell me about how Agent Rise came to be. My first introduction to your thing was through Dustin Brohm's Massive Agent Podcast. Dustin is like my big brother and my mentor. My podcast goal is to be like Dustin. I think, at that time, you were doing Onion Juice. You had a different brand. What was the change there? What happened there?
In 2015, I wanted to start a podcast. This was before podcasting was even cool. It was a nerdy thing to do. I had a radio background so I'm like, “I want to do voice.” I love talking. I wanted a podcast that was different from what most agents were receiving. I felt like everybody was drinking the chase Kool-Aid. You got to go out there, hustle more, door knock, dial for dollars. I believed in doing business differently. All of the businesses that I had done and built was all around attracting business.
I wanted it to be something different. I had a vision like you were drinking the content. I don't even know where that came from but as I was trying to think of a name, I thought of a juice box. I was like, “I don't want it to call it the Juice Box podcast. That's weird,” even though my other name is even more weird. I’m like, “That doesn't fit. What's a weird juice?” I started asking people what's a weird juice and one of my friends threw out onion juice. I don't know what it was but it was like the Holy Spirit gave it to me. I was like, “That's the name. We're going with onion juice.”
If you're with a mentor that's been where you want to be, you can get there faster.
All of the listeners were called Juicers. We had the Juice Bar, which was the Q&A episode. I would always joke with people like, "Don't drink too much of it. It could harm you. Don't binge-listen." We would call it ear guzzling. We had all these porky things and the name became very sticky. The podcast did fantastic. It was my early days of coaching. It's fun to listen to the really early episodes and to see where it's gone now. In 2018, I wanted to start a coaching company and I wanted to start a summit like getting people together for a conference.
I couldn't imagine people going home to their spouse and saying, “I want to go to this Onion Juice conference. I want to join the Onion Juice coaching company.” It was good for a podcast but nothing else. As I was coaching agents. I always had this vision of them rising up from their misbeliefs and limiting beliefs that are standing in front of them. Rising up to conquer that 87% of agents don't make it past the first couple of years. One day, the Holy Spirit gave it to me, Agent Rise is the name of the company and the podcast.
It was hard. The original listeners of Onion Juice still call themselves the OJs like OGs. They fought when I originally dropped the idea that I'm going to be changing the name. It was like I had done something to their family and that was bad. Eventually, everybody embraced the name change and we’ve become Agent Rise. Agent Rise Coaching was all started with this understanding that I feel that agents have to have a clear plan. That plan needs to be congruent to them, and then they need to stay consistent with that plan. If they do those three things, success follows.
That's what the coaching program is based around. Let's give agents steps to follow. We call them the Agent Rise steps. Let's give them options to pick from. Once they pick from them, it's going to feel right and they're going to like that plan. Their chances of staying consistent are so much better. When agents get rid of the clutter and the shiny objects, they are focused. If I give you enough lumber to get from one side of the bridge to the other side of the bridge, you wouldn't build three half-built bridges. You would build one bridge. We want to have one plan and one focus. When we do that, that's when the breakthroughs happen.
I want to read a little bit from the book but what you just said resonates with me because there are so many shiny objects. I talked to an agent who is stuck in her business. She's been in the business for ten years. She has some referrals coming in, but she feels like she has not taken off. She's still solo. She wants to grow a team and feels like she's stuck. She's trying to do what everybody else is doing, You get the shiny object syndrome like, “This person has great social media. This person is doing great things with postcards and mailers. They're so good on the phone. They can cold call forever.” Cold calling is not her thing but for some people, it is. There are so many different things. You have to figure out who you are and go from there.
I want to talk about Mary in Agent Rise. Let's get into her story. Ladies, if you don't know who Mary is, pick up Agent Rise so you can understand the story. Neil and I are going to talk about her a little bit. What I wanted to touch on is her situation is like that of so many new agents who are starting, but those of us who are established can still relate to the story. In this book, Neil and Mary are talking and you said, “Here's the thing. We want to build a business you love, and if you are doing a bunch of things you hate, you'll never stay consistent. Success comes from staying consistent.”
After thinking for a moment, Mary said, “I would love to work with people I know. I hate calling online leads, FSBOs and expired. I feel like I'm chasing them and begging for their business. It feels salesy and I hate that. I also like doing open houses because you can meet people face-to-face, get to know them, and then start working with them too. Too bad it doesn't work.” What do you say to that? What did you tell her about?
The first thing is everything works. It wouldn't be a thing if it didn't work. Some are going to promise you that it's going to work better than other things. You can't compare what somebody else is doing to what you're doing. Everything works, but what you have to focus on is when you choose what you're going to focus on, you've got to stay consistent with it. It is repetition that reaches mastery. You've got to go for mastery. You've got to take what you know and build and stack lessons upon it.
Here's another thing that I tell a lot of agents. When you give effort towards something, you either get the results or you get a lesson. Take those lessons and stack them up until you get the results. What a lot of us do is like, "We'll try Facebook advertising for a month or two. We'll generate some leads, but every time we call them, they don't call us back. Every time I leave a message, they never want to talk to me. I feel like I'm chasing them and it doesn't work. I heard that online leads are better. I heard that calling FSBOs is better, and so what we do is give up on the ads. We stop them and then we go do something different.”
The thing is if we stacked up all of those lessons and then switched, we now wiped out all of those lessons and are starting completely over. Instead, what we could do is we could say, “This isn't working. What am I doing wrong?” Maybe when you call them, you call them about what they want and not call them to check-in. If somebody calls me and says, "I saw you clicked on my ad. You're not expecting my call but I'm calling to check in and see if there's anything I can do to help you," I'm sorry but I'm not going to call you back because the truth is that the average agent comes in contact with seven agents before they buy a house. They have seven other agents calling to check-in.
Instead, if I were to call and say, “I know what you're looking for. I was looking through the listings here and I found a new one that's not even available on the MLS yet. I saw it and I thought of you. Give me a call back when you get a chance and I'll tell you more about it.” Now, we're giving the consumer what they want. All of a sudden, our Facebook ad conversion starts to go up. We start to add new techniques and we start to do new things. Now, Facebook advertising is great for us and we didn't need this switch. A lot of agents dabble in things until they find their way. I want to help you prevent that dabbling because, for some, that lasts for years before they figure it out.
I've seen that with people that I'm working with who have had businesses for over ten years. They've spent so much money trying different things but not being consistent. The other thing too is that if you don't see results right away, you tend to give up. A lot of these things, especially if it's anything online-related, and postcards too, you might have to be in it for 9 or 12 months, sometimes much longer than that before you start to see some results.
When you give effort, either you get the results, or you get a lesson. Take those lessons and stack them up until you get the results.
If you're with a mentor that's been there before you have, you can get there faster. We have a twelve-week program with Agent Rise. We have eight steps that you have to complete in those twelve weeks. The agents that finish those twelve weeks with those eight steps completed are usually always the agents that break through the fastest. Speed matters because when we take too much time to develop something, we allow too many limiting beliefs to get in the way.
I saw this TikTok video and it made complete sense. If you have a glass full of water in your right hand and you are pouring it into your left hand, if you pour it quickly, it all ends up in that other cup. If you pour it slowly, it'll dribble and it'll fall onto the floor out of the other cup. You have to go quickly in business to get things moving to the next step. I think too many of us build things too slowly. We give ourselves too much room to make decisions when we just got to go. The book Think and Grow Rich says the same exact thing.
It’s funny you mentioned the book Think and Grow Rich. It’s one of my favorites. I've got it in my library. I am an avid reader of all things that are business-related. Napoleon Hill has hit the nail on the head with that. You have to make a decision about who it is that you want to be and what it is that you want to accomplish, and then you have to pursue it with laser focus.
If we're all over the place all the time, to reference what you said, you start building several bridges but you never make it across because you've got three different parts of a bridge going in three different directions. Just get the bridge going to the end or the final destination, finish it and then make a decision if you'd like to bolt-on, add something else, pivot or whatever you need to do. You need to finish and stay focused. I wanted to ask you about the three pillars. In Agent Rise, there are three pillars. Do you want to tell us what they are and what their point is?
There are three pillars. There's the Sphere of Influence Pillar, the Chase Pillar, and the Attraction Pillar. In the sphere of influence, we kicked that off with having a database built around 100 people. The number isn't that important other than that number is the number of people that you're going to be mailing to. You've got to make sure you can afford to mail. I've seen some agents as a brand new agent come out of the gate with 300 people and they can't afford $400 a month, so we've got to trim that down. If your number is 64, it's 64. If you're brand new to an area and you know eight, people start with eight people. Whatever that number is, start there.
You then want to send an announcement letter, and that's the second part of the sphere pillar. We've got examples inside Agent Rise, but you want to send an announcement letter to let them know that you're an agent. You want to ask them for an opportunity. Many agents miss that, and they come out of the gate acting like they're the greatest thing that ever happened to real estate like, “You should hire me.” If you act like you're the greatest, they won't ask you to be their agent. You have to ask for an opportunity. The letter does a good job of doing that.
The third step in the sphere pillar is to mail a monthly newsletter. This is the only old-school thing about me. I've been mailing newsletters for many years. I could tell you story after story of how this has been the heart of my business. Get a monthly mailing going. Don't do the newsletter yourself. I like Service for Life! or FastNewsLetters.com. Those are two great resources that you could go subscribe to. That's the sphere. The chase pillar is going to be online leads, FSBOs, expired, Facebook advertising, and open houses. You pick something that you're going to dial in on and chase. In the attraction pillar, my favorite attraction pillar is YouTube. I feel that we have got the recipe. We've cracked the code for YouTube. It's changing their life in what's happening around YouTube. It's amazing.
Other options around the attraction pillar would be being a social agent and being very active on social media, and then the third option is we have social media ecosystems, which niche down first-time homebuyers, seniors, military. It’s something that niches down that you can use social media to drive business. There's also the searchable portion. You can get into blogging and additional things for the search component. Those are the three different pillars. We've got the eight steps to help you march through those three pillars, pick them out, and decide what is the best one for you because all of them have pros and cons.
I want to dive a little bit deeper into YouTube and the attraction pillar. I know it may be challenging for agents, and our audience here is primarily women who are of a certain age who may not be totally comfortable with being on video. I talk about it all the time, but I think that we’re missing an opportunity because YouTube is so searchable. What are your thoughts on some of the videos or practical things that ladies could be doing on YouTube to attract?
Don't let your attraction become a distraction.
We've got the exact recipe. The exact recipe is to do videos around moving to, living in, cost of living in, and pros and cons of living in your city. Let me run this scenario for you so that you can get an idea of how this works. I'm going to use my area. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. I'm going to use Joe Marks who has done this. Joe is one of my best friends. He has started a YouTube channel in Madison and is blowing up his business.
There is a gentleman that is moving from Southern Indiana. He now lives in the part of the country where his cost of living is very low. He's going to get a $50,000 raise to move to Madison, Wisconsin. He's going to figure out like, “If I moved to Madison, because the cost of living is so much more, am I going to spend that $50,000 raise or is it worth it for me to do it?” He goes on to Google and searched costs of living in Madison, Wisconsin, and there's a video there.
There are all these other blog posts and these black and white stuff that he could read, but there's a video about the cost of living in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s going to click on that and he’s going to watch this video. This real estate agent tells him all about the cost of living, and then at the end of the video, it says, "If you're thinking about moving to Madison, make sure you watch my pros and cons of living in Madison, Wisconsin," and points to that video. He goes on to that and learns all the pros and the cons. At the end of that video, "If you're going to move to Madison, make sure you watch my five things you must know before moving to Madison, Wisconsin video."
The next thing you know, the guy is now falling in love with Madison and wants to move there. He has learned that he's going to make out fine moving there and the cost of living isn't that much different. Now, he's been watching Joe for the last five videos. Who is he going to call? The only friend that he knows in Madison is his buddy Joe on YouTube that's been teaching him all about Madison. He calls up Joe and says, “I'm moving to Madison. Will you help me find a house?” Joe says, “You bet I will. I'll even give you cheese curds.” That's how it works. Everybody that calls you is a fan of you.
We did YouTube wrong for so long. I did a whole series called I love Madison, where I went around documenting all of Madison and all of the events. Our blogs were very entertaining. They got tons of views but they’ve never sold any houses. The reason is because I ranked for who has Madison's best cheeseburger, what's the best festival in Madison, or what’s the best fair in Madison. I ranked for all of the things that don't lead to homeownership. If I sold cheeseburgers, that would be a good video for me, but I don't sell cheeseburgers so I never got any business from YouTube.
Many of us are doing it this way. Gary Vee told us for years, “You got to be a media company that happens to sell real estate,” and it's the wrong recipe. I'm a huge Gary Vee fan and it pains me to say that. The right recipe is understanding keywords that lead to homeownership. It's not how to do a home inspection. They are not googling that. They're not looking for understanding your mortgage rates. They're googling to understand what it's like to live in that area. They want to know about the schools, the traffic, how cold it is or the weather. These are the things that they're trying to understand. They want to talk to somebody that's got boots on the ground that can explain it to them.
It’s common sense. We should know this. What would I look for if I were moving somewhere? That's the video I should make.
You've got to be a tourist in your own town. That's what you’ve got to do. Here's what most of us are doing. We want to create videos that wow our friends and the people in our community. That's not who we're talking to. In fact, you don't even want to share these videos with your friends. You don't want to post it on social media because what's going to happen is they're going to be bored to death with the content. They're going to get two minutes in and they're going to stop watching, and there goes your watch time.
The algorithm picks up that nobody is watching it and it won’t show to anybody else.
That's why I love YouTube as an attraction pillar. For many years, I struggled with telling people to go all-in on their attraction pillar. The sphere was foundational. The chase was the rocket booster to get your business going. The attraction was if you're creative and you want to do it, then it's good. I would tell people, “Don't let your attraction become a distraction.” I've seen agents just focus on their attraction pillar and never sell any homes.
The other thing too is I would always tell people to not wax their car when the transmission is broken. What I mean by that is if you had a car and it didn't run, you wouldn't spend time on making it look pretty. A lot of us get into this business and we worry about our brand, business cards, photos, website, and we sell 1 or 2 houses a year. You're waxing your car when the transmission is broken. Fix your business first. Get your business running, get your sphere pillar and chase pillar built, then start working on your brand. A lot of agents get that mixed around as well. That prevents us from floundering. It helps agents break through all the time.
That's so good. I never thought to put it that way. I want to ask about the freedom part. Not just of your business but of your life. The premise of this show is to get our business to a place where at some point, we can exit production. We are women of a certain age. We've been in this business for a long time. It's natural that we start thinking about, “At what point am I ready to exit production and do what Neil is doing?” I either want to go RV-ing with my family or I just want to have the freedom to not be tied down to my location and still make money. We're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about income streams or revenue streams. Can you tell us what's the secret sauce to be able to exit production? What are your thoughts on that?
First, you got to work according to a vision. Many of us are working according to our needs and the needs will make you stuck. You've got to work according to your vision and understand that God's your provider and he's going to provide for you and your needs are going to be met. My vision was I wanted to be a coach. In 2015, I was no longer excited about the production. A lot of us get that mixed around with our passions and excitement. Your excitement's going to change.
When I decided that I wanted to become a coach, I started surrounding myself with those thoughts. I started surrounding myself with others that were doing it that were better than I was, and at a different place than I was. I was so blessed to have the most amazing people around me. That's the thing that will happen, guys. The thing that has gotten you to this point is not the same thing that's going to get you to the next point. The cool thing is when you work according to a vision, what you need is going to be there when you get there. The teacher will be there when the student is ready.
Now, you might be selling 20, 30 or 40 homes a year and making a great living. You know that there's something more for you. You also have the same desires that I happen to have, the freedom of where I live. I can be anywhere in this country that I want to be in. We have a beautiful country and I'm so blessed to be able to do that. What I started having to do was having to work according to that vision. Every step along the way, there are these little roadblocks that get in the way. These little things prevent you from breaking through and from finding that.
What I continued to do was to work according to that vision, and nothing was going to stop me. The other cool thing is that my full vision of going full-time RV-ing was not real. When I first thought of it, I was like, “I got to change a lot of things before I go full-time RV-ing.” First of all, my wife wasn't even onboard. That was one big hurdle, and then one day she prayed and heard God say, “Go.” I was like, “Praise God. Let's go. That's awesome.” The next was like, “How do I get out of production?” I had to get into team building. If you're now a solo agent, team building sounds scary to you. You're not even willing to go there. You might have the wrong thoughts about team building and think that it's going to be too much work. You're going to go the other way around.
You've got to continue to know that you can't have fear of success. That's what it is. You're going to keep going and you’re going to keep adapting. The teacher is going to be there at each level. When you get to that place, then you just have to take that leap of faith and go. I burnt the ships. When Jenny and I left Madison, Wisconsin, we sold our house and 90% of our belongings. I sold so much stuff and threw away so much stuff and gave away so much stuff. It was like my own estate sale. It was the craziest thing. We jumped into this and say, “I hope this works. I hope we like this.” Now, we're so grateful that we did it and we love every minute of it. It’s awesome but it was scary.
I've never sky jumped before but I can only imagine. It's almost like skydiving or sky jumping or whatever you want to call it. You get in the plane, that's the first big step, and then you got to get closer to the edge, and then you have to jump. That's what it was like for us. That's what it's like when you go through a transition. Always look for the on-ramps. The different things that are going to lead you to that next place. You got to have that vision. You can't let anybody take that vision away from you. There's a scripture that says, “If you want to ruin a man's vision, give him two.” You can't have a second vision. You got to have one vision and go after it. You’ll see how things are going to fall into place that you never imagined would fall into place.
I want to say one more thing before we wrap up. I feel a nudge in me that there's somebody reading this that feels like we're a traitor to the industry. On the one hand, we're teaching agents how to improve their business, how to work through being stuck, and how to go to the next level in their business. On the other hand, we're saying there is freedom on the other side of this, and you don't have to be an agent for the rest of your life. I want to say to whoever is reading that, that's true.
We go through seasons in life and each season may take us to a different place, but we have to ultimately know what the vision is for our life. Depending on where we are in our age or the season that we're in, we are nose to the grindstone, working hard as an agent, in production, building a team, and doing everything that's needed. At some point, there's a shift in the season for us where we look for that off-ramp where we can exit and go to the next thing. Don't be afraid of that. That is not being a traitor to your brokerage. It's not being a traitor to the industry.
You have to do whatever the Lord has put in your heart to do. You also have to do what's best for you, for your mindset, and for your family. Don't be afraid of that. We want to give you permission now to be able to take care of your business and take care of production, but give you permission to be free from it. To have the freedom to dream beyond where you are in your business, see the vision and go for it. Feel the fear and do it anyway. I just want to say that to whoever needed that. I want to end with this. If we want to work with you, how do we access you and your coaching program? How do we get more?
We've made it simple. You go to AgentRiseCoaching.com. The main call to action is to schedule a call with me. I still take the calls and it's a 30-minute call. What we do on that call is find out where your business is at now, where you want to go, and what is preventing you from getting there. Usually, in that call, we can start to break down the things that are causing the breakdown. The exciting thing is that the breakthrough is right around the corner. We'll show you how we can get to that breakthrough, what that roadmap looks like. If you want my help and you want to go get it together, then we sign you up and away we go. We've got both group coaching and one-on-one coaching. That's the best way.
With that, I wish you well. Enjoy your day and congrats on the book. I’ll see you soon at our next family call.
I appreciate you so much.
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About Neil Mathweg
Author Neil Mathweg is a veteran real estate agent and speaker from Madison, WI. He created the Agent Rise book, podcast, and coaching for real estate agents who want to be uncommon, bring clarity to their lives, and break through all the noise to build a thriving real estate business.
Agent Rise is a movement, designed to wake up and redefine the real estate industry. Neil helps agents to build businesses they truly love, and make greater impacts, while eliminating the stress of it all.
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