At just 32 years old, Utah-based real estate agent Colton Lindsay has achieved a life of financial freedom for himself through his fierce dedication to his business, and strategies that have helped propel his agency, the WGR Sales Team, to unbelievable success.

In today’s episode of Stay Paid, Josh and Luke sit down with special guest Lindsay as he discusses the plan and tactics he used to focus his business and accomplish his goals at such a young age.

Key Points

• Building your assets as an agent is essential for creating financial freedom
• Relationships are the most critical part of generating repeats and referrals
• Focus on powerful rituals and routines to achieve your goals

About Colton Lindsay

Colton Lindsay got an up-close look at the real estate industry from a young age. His mother worked as an office manager for a Utah real estate company, and he was eager to shadow some of the top producers at the agency.

He entered the business at 21, and only sold two homes in his first ten months. Through a training event, and, with the help of mentor Bob Loeffler’s program Fearless Agent, Lindsay improved his strategy to close 73 deals in a single year. He built out his business in the years that followed and now manages one of the most successful agencies in Utah.

Q: Tell us about yourself:

A: When I was in the eighth grade, my mom was an office manager of a local real estate company. I would notice agents driving brand new cars and I thought to myself, “these guys are making a lot of money.”

Later on, after I went on a Mormon mission, I returned home and immediately got my license and went right into work. In my first 10 months, I failed miserably; I only sold two houses. But I joined Fearless Agent and did 22 deals that year. At my peak as an agent I closed 73 transactions. I started to hit a wall, though. I came back from a family trip to the World Cup in Brazil and my deals were closing but I had no new deals coming in. In that moment, I decided that wasn’t going to happen again, and I was determined to figure out how to create residual financial freedom.

Q: Where are you generating leads from?

A: Before you really generate leads, you have to create a state of absolute certainty. There’s no excuse, there’s no limitation.

When I got to 73 deals in real estate, I spent most of my time focusing on FSBOs and expires. What I realized is, especially with FSBOs, very few of them (less than 25 percent of those deals) even became repeat and referral clients, which was horrible for long-term business. I had to always start over. My biggest mistake is that I didn’t start creating long-term relationships early. If I can’t create a long-term relationship with you, I won’t do a deal with you.

I believe the old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is obsolete now. It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. If you create this tribe of what you stand for, people are going to be doing business with you based off the results you can create and the messages you deliver.

Q: How are you maintaining the relationships that will bring you repeat and referral business on a day-to-day basis, and tracking the value of those relationships?

A: The idea is, how do I know upfront when I start a relationship that this will be fruitful? I don’t always know, but I’ve got this sense inside of me for whether this person is here to create value. You can feel their energy. A real business person will understand a relationship is by far the best investment you can make—way better than the right stock or rental property—back into your business.

Compound interest doesn’t just work on your stocks, your 401(k), and your real estate investments, it works even better on your relationships. Identify upfront if these people have a good energy. Are they here to serve? Do I feel some resistance?

As I create the value, I come up with more ideas to systematize it. For example, I do WGR events three times a year. We have one coming up that is a harvest festival, with a pumpkin patch, pig races, turkey races, we’re shooting corn on the cob, just fun stuff. We have about 500 people come to that event, and I don’t care if they’re real estate agents, past clients, people in the community—we show up, we celebrate, and have a great time.

Q: When you host an event, does that cost you a ton of money? And have you seen that translate to results?

A: I create so much value I always find a way to victory. This idea of cost, that’s a limitation. Although I do all this marketing, it would make me go broke if I didn’t do phone calls. I have to have real-time, human conversations. If I’m not doing that, I’m just like any other person with a sponsored ad on Facebook.

I want to give the outcome of an amazing experience to the people who support my business and life. Take a young family in my database—they’ve got 8 kids. The opportunity to take their kids to this event, if they went by themselves, it would cost probably 100 dollars. A lot of families can’t afford that. To me, I’m creating value for this person.

Who is the person that is always feeding out referrals to you? Your lender? Your home warranty company? Your inspector? I’d bet you’ve got zero referrals from your home inspector, from your lender, from your home warranty company in the last 12 months. So, what I did is I went to these people and asked how many of them want to grow their business, and they all, of course, say yes. I go to them with my idea for an event, and I’ll say, “Home warranty company, I need you to buy the food. Inspector, I need you to cook the food and help out with treats. Lender, I need you to help me cover the venue.” So, depending on the event we do, sometimes I get the entire cost covered.

Q: What do the follow-up phone calls look like for you in your business?

 A: I believe each salesperson has got to create a funnel. How do we fill that funnel so at the very bottom it pops out appointments where we can give presentations and get contracts signed? Closings are the name of the game; that’s how we get paid.

My number one lead source is going to be my sphere of influence and my past clients. I’m calling them about nine times a year. Three of those calls will be, “Hey, I want to invite you to our event, how many tickets do you need?” Three will be, “Hey, I appreciate you coming out” or “Hey, sorry we missed you.” There’s six phone calls right there. Here’s why you don’t get referrals today, it’s because people are afraid you’re going to screw it up. Validate to them that you’re not going to make a mistake and get it done. Three or four of those calls throughout the year will be about the market, requests for referrals, and asking questions like, “What can I do for you? What do you need help with in your life that I can add just a little bit more value?”

The next tier down is what I call my people farm. These are leads of people thinking about making a move in the next two years. This could be a timed call, an internet lead, a cold call, it could be anything. We put them into our database, they’re getting the emails, the retargets, the post cards, the random phone calls every 60 to 90 days.

How we fill that is through our third place in the funnel, which is cold calling. We have our junior agents cold calling about 75 people a day, and they’re looking for two types of people: one that’s looking to buy or sell right now (that’s 25 percent) and another group who are they’re thinking of making the move in the next six to twenty-four months. Most of where the appointments come from is the follow-up, because no one else is making those follow-up calls.

Q: Where are you getting the leads for your cold calls?

A: We use two sources: Mojo and Cole Realty Resource. [Cole Realty Resource] have the best data right now. I think Mojo is getting better. But for the longest time they were just focused on the software industry. But Cole’s is 100 percent a data company. If you want to reach out to me, you can send me a message on Facebook or Instagram, or if you just call there and mention the WGR, typically they give almost a 500-dollar discount for anyone that mentions my name. That’s the exact data source we use.

Also for real estate agents, stop circle prospecting; it’s wasting your time and your energy. Focus on cold calling and stop wasting your time with three to five minute conversations that are going nowhere. Get to the point. Build a relationship. And move forward.

Q: What are the things you do every day to drive success in your business and in your personal life?

A: Stop separating personal life from business life; it’s all life. We have one life. This moment is what you have. Time equals emotion, it does not equal money. Ask yourself what emotion you want to experience as time passes. For me, it’s typically one of two emotions, either peace and tranquility or passion and excitement. If I know those are my outcomes I want to create, there are specific routines I create throughout my day.

I have a morning routine, a daytime routine, and an evening routine. We’ve heard the saying we’re creatures of habit. Every time I hear the word ‘habit’ it sounds gross to me. I don’t like it. But I love powerful rituals. I love rituals that drive me to have absolute certainty to my core, so I know today I’m giving everything my very best. Those are the rituals I need to put in my routines. Instead of managing time, I’m managing life. I’m managing my emotions.

I know that the quicker I change my physiology, my state changes. When my state changes, my story changes. When my story changes, my technique, my strategy changes, and it drives me to get the outcomes that I want.

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you tell your younger self?

A: Be patient. It’s going to happen, you just have to keep doing the work. Early on in my career I’d think, “Well, I just did the work, why don’t I have the paycheck? Why don’t I have the results?” I’m here now, and it’s like the blink of an eye.

Focus on relationships. They are the bread and butter of life. Just my relationship with Mojo, with Fearless Agent, the people on my sales team—everything is about relationships. The money will come when you create value for other human beings. We’re all in this together.

Action Items:

Following this podcast, our goal is to provide you with as many actionable tips as possible. For this episode, they include…

• Take your sphere of influence—clients, friends, family—and call them to ask what you can do for them to add value to their life.

As always, take action on these tips!