Redefining Success: A Journey from Luxury Homes to Transformative Referrals with Justin Stoddart

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. It’s Mattias, it’s the Mattias show. Guys, it would be remiss of me, I think there’s been too many episodes gone by that I have not talked about CrossFit, so I need to talk about CrossFit today.

It is very important. I, a few months ago, ended up kind of tweaking my back a little bit. This sounds like it’s like a bigger problem than it is.

It’s kind of my form on heavy squats was bad. I was arcing my back too much, sticking my butt out too much, which put a lot of stress, a lot of pressure on my low back. And essentially I have like a knot in my back that I need to work out.

I need to work on my hip flexors, stretching those, since I sit probably more than people that are on their feet all day, I guess what we’re probably meant to be. And I know this, I’ve learned a lot. I mean, honestly, CrossFit has taught me so much more about my body, kind of by pushing it, right, by testing it.

And so I know what I need to do. I spent most of my morning kind of working out these kinks, trying to get my back to be more mobile, stretching it out, using all sorts of different things like a Theragin kind of massage gun, sitting on a tennis ball in my truck that with seat warmers on, that one is gold. That one, my masseuse told me.

But I even, I asked my son, who’s two, to put on my socks for me because I couldn’t reach down and do it myself. It was so cute. He was trying his hardest to get those things on and he wasn’t giving up, but he was not getting close.

So actually my other kids kind of helped me finish the job. But it’s one of those things that it could be something that stops me from going back to the gym. And I’m not saying that you should injure yourself and you should push through injuries and make things worse because that’s not really what’s happening here.

And I think that if you aren’t familiar with your body, if you’re not familiar with how you operate, this is bad advice for sure. But I actually went into the gym and did deadlifts and I did power cleans and wall walks, all things that are kind of, could be bad for your back if you’re not having good form. But I feel like I’m at the point where I know my body well enough that I knew I could do these things and not further injure.

I’ve never really had back problems from doing deadlifts. And the clean stuff, I’ve gotten to a point where I feel like I’m doing it well enough with good enough mechanics that that’s not really a concern and it wasn’t ultra heavy for me. So all I have to say is, the point is that I think that sometimes we have to achieve greatness to really feel fulfilled in life.

We have to go all in, work hard, climb the mountain. We talk about this in the podcast a little bit, but if it’s not hard, it doesn’t feel as worthwhile. Like if it’s not something that you really earned, if you receive something that you haven’t really earned, it doesn’t feel as good as if you had to work so hard to get there.

And I think that that’s just something that I would love to encourage my kids to really see that sure it’s easier if your mom and dad buy you that toy or whatever, but it’s gonna feel a lot better. You’re gonna appreciate a lot more if you’ve worked your butt off to get to earn enough money to buy that toy or when they’re old enough to have a car, like maybe we match whatever they earn and whatever they earn plus us matching is what kind of car they can buy. I would love to see that come to fruition because I think again, it is just very rewarding for people to actually earn things and actually dedicate themselves and go through the hard times.

I mean, I think the lower the valleys are in the journey, the better views there are on the top of the mountain. That’s something I tried to say in the podcast and it didn’t come out quite clear, but I said it much more beautifully this time. Anyway, we today have Justin Stoddart and Justin never was a real estate salesperson, but he found a vein through his different roles.

He started off as a construction luxury home builder and then in the title company world and he’ll get into all this stuff, but basically he has found a system that helps agents get warm referrals and we talked about how this is something that both of our personalities would much rather prefer talking to people that wanna talk to us, that wanna work with us, as opposed to chasing down people that don’t really wanna hear from us from a cold internet lead thing where they might have signed up for something just to see what the price was or get more information or whatever and now they have somebody calling them every two days. We talked about how that just isn’t really our personality type. We don’t wanna get rejected 99 times to have a yes one time.

It just kind of is defeating to our personality types. We’re not saying that it’s not possible for it to work, but it is something that is not something we really strive to do every day is to get rejected 99 times. My feelings would be hurt.

Anyway, it was a really good conversation. He is a smart person, has a big family and we get into all that. So without further ado, here’s Justin.

Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m honored to have Justin Stoddart here with me. Justin, thanks so much for coming on the REI Agent.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, my pleasure, Mattias. I appreciate the opportunity.

[Mattias]
Yeah, so you have an interesting background and you’re an author. You have a few things that are gonna be very applicable to our audience, but you’re not necessarily coming in to this with the sales background that most of people are. So tell us a little bit about your journey to get to where you have authored a book that could be very helpful for real estate agents.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, you bet. I started off in the real estate industry flipping homes in my early 20s and I got caught the bug of what real estate can produce for people. I was working a part-time job at UPS at the same time and I’d make $10,000 on a flip and I’m like, okay, this is a much better path, right?

And of course, it was kind of like in between college semesters. So it wasn’t ever my long-term plan to be working an hourly job. I’d come from a very entrepreneurial family, but I got caught the bug at that point.

When I went off to college, I switched my major to construction management and went to work for a high-end home builder and started managing projects for him, luxury custom homes. By the time I had graduated from college with a degree in construction management, I had left and started my own company. I essentially bought out his custom home division as he really moved more towards land development and I ran that company for a number of years and in that process, learned some really important lessons about how to build a referral-based business that scales without having zero advertising budget and without having to rely solely upon your personal sphere.

So those lessons from those early days in my home building business became kind of a theme for me moving forward as I moved into an executive role with a title company and began teaching real estate agents that and realized that the same principles that were utilized to build my home building business were very applicable for real estate agents. So eventually, I was invited to author a book on the topic, which is The Upstream Model, and then now I lead a platform that teaches real estate agents. It’s a simplified way to employ the principles that I learned as a home builder.

So anyway, it’s kind of a 30,000-foot level.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, wow, that summarizes it really cleanly. One thing that I wanted to point out real quick about what you just said was I was thinking about how your model you just talked about, or at least from the luxury home building side of things, was kind of like what Tesla’s doing, right? I mean, Tesla doesn’t have an advertising budget.

They just kind of have word-of-mouth marketing, and I don’t know if they intentionally leak new products to kind of get the hype rolling, but yeah, I’ve heard they have zero marketing budget at all, and it’s just kind of word-of-mouth.

[Justin Stoddart]
That’s crazy. I did not know that.

[Mattias]
Yeah, have you ever seen a Tesla commercial? No. No.

Yeah, and that’s a huge company. So I mean, if somebody with, you know, most car companies go under, right? So there’s a huge, I think Tesla’s one of the only ones that didn’t actually ever go bankrupt, and so that’s, you know, I’m not trying to fanboy here on Tesla or anything, but it’s a good understanding that it’s possible to run your business without a marketing budget if you are getting word-of-mouth referrals.

One of the things I read about your book is, and part of what we’re talking about here is the preference of warm leads versus cold leads. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, I think, you know, what I’ve seen happen in the real estate industry, Mattias, is that there’s, you know, you’ve got record low transfer rates. In other words, real estate sales are down significantly. In 2006, people were moving every six years on average.

Now, fast forward to 2024, people are moving anywhere between 12 and 15 years. So one-half to one-third as often. So you can have a very diligent and structured system of getting referrals from your personal sphere, but the reality is your numbers are likely down unless you’re actively growing that sphere, like significantly growing it.

You’re off as much as 50%, maybe more, and it’s not because you’ve done anything different. It’s because the people who are in your sphere are moving less frequently, and so are the people around them. Therefore, they have less referrals to offer you.

And so in that situation, people are posing the question, people that are growth-minded, that are listening to the REI podcast are the people who are growth-minded. They’re not just gonna sit back and say, okay, I guess I’ll settle for less. It’s like, no, I’m not going to do that.

I’m gonna figure out a way. And so then the age-old question becomes, well, if my warm market isn’t working like it used to, then I guess I need to go cold market, right? I need to canvas, I need to farm, I need to buy internet leads.

And when you look at the statistics of an online lead, they’re sold anywhere from two to five different agents. The conversion is anywhere between 1% and 4% at best after anywhere from six to 12 months of nurturing. And the cost is high, right?

When we say yes to one thing, we say no to something else. And so being very clear of like, yes, a cold market business can work. But the reason I believe most people go that path is because they don’t believe that they have a referral-based business that actually scales beyond their very personal relationships.

And so they don’t think they have any other option. And what we’ve developed and what I’ve uncovered and uncovered back in my homebuilding days is that there is a way to scale a referral-based business. You can have a business that grows and doesn’t take all of your time cultivating a bunch of personal relationships while still really scaling your referrals.

So that’s what we focus on.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s such a good point. I mean, there’s really, I mean, two paths. I mean, there’s going the cold route.

I mean, you could go in between as well. You could try to nurture your leads and everything and also buy leads. But that cold path is just not, has never been for me.

I have tried a couple of times buying leads from different sources, never for very long and never very much money. But it felt like I was taking on a secretary role. And you hear about just answering the phone over and over again or calling people and talking to people who don’t want to talk to me.

Convincing them that they do want to talk to me and that they do want to buy a house and that they do want to work with me for that process. Where when you hear about eight teams that grow, they spend tens of thousands, $30,000 a month on leads. And then they have to hire inside salespeople to run these very complex CRMs, to reach out to all these people, to make sure that nobody’s falling through the cracks.

And it’s a numbers game. And you know that if you have 100 people come through this pipeline, that you might get 1% of them. And then that will result in a sale and make it all worthwhile.

And to me, I’m not saying, again, like you said, it can work. There are definitely people who are very successful with this. That sounds exhausting.

[Justin Stoddart]
You know, I heard it said yesterday, is that, you know, I don’t want to be in a business where I’ve got to upset 49 in order to serve one. Yes. Right, and I think, I know there’s a lot of people out there who have built a great model around this.

And I commend you for that, right? This is in no way to disparage what you’ve built. It’s just not for me.

There are certain people like myself who are very much on the disk profile, high D, very driven. And high I, where I care about like the experience that I offer people and the feedback that I get from them. And so my I precludes me, my high I precludes me from doing business that way.

And for some that relate to that, for others it’s like, I’m a high D, high C, I don’t care. I’m gonna get what I want and it’s cool. They’ll be fine, right?

They might be upset, they’ll be fine, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Stoddart]
And there’s part of me that envies that kind of personality. I don’t have that kind of personality. I’m very relational and I want people to like me, right?

Call it whatever it is. It is what it is. But there’s a lot of people out there that like that.

I think a lot of people come into the real estate industry because they love people and they love serving people. So when all of a sudden you feel like you’re offering people a disservice because you’re interrupting them and at some level badgering, right? And I know that’s harsh, but like calling, calling, calling, calling when they say stop, I would argue is not been good for your business, nor has it been good for your morale, nor has it been good for the overall industry.

I believe that many of the lawsuits that we find ourselves in is because real estate agents took on ambulance chaser type practices. And as a result, consumer said, I’ve had a freaking enough, right? You bleepity bleep, stop calling me.

I’m coming after you, right? And that’s extreme. But I do think at even some local level, our reputation goes from being an advisor, a specialty expert professional, to being the chaser of kind of opportunistic chaser.

And so it just depends where you want to put yourself. And again, there are professionals who may be listening to this who have a very professional lead based business. And if that’s the case, I respect that.

I’m obviously leaning very much towards those who don’t have that kind of business. But for everybody listening out there that says, I don’t want to have that kind of business at all. I want to have a referral based business and I’m not willing to settle for less.

Tell me more, right? That’s the message. That’s the place we fit in the market.

[Mattias]
No, that makes a lot of sense. That’s a really good point because I think you really need to learn how you operate, what brings you energy. And I think one of the problems with real estate agents as well is they often feel like they have to do everything themselves.

And so they feel like they have to learn how to do this type of business because that’s the only thing that’s gonna get them going. And if they don’t and they fail, if they don’t have enough business or whatever, it’s because they somehow did not live up to the standard of being able to be rejected 49% of the time, right? But there is a different way.

So like, it doesn’t have to be that way. And I would agree, I’m completely that way as well. I’d much rather have somebody reach out to me and say, hey, you were recommended to me by X, Y, Z.

I was wondering if you could talk to me about this property or my situation and I can start building rapport upon an already baseline established. I’m not bothering them. I’m just enhancing what they actually want.

So yeah, tell me more about your book and how the strategy works.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, so I’ll go back to when I was a high-end home builder. Again, I didn’t have a big advertising budget at all. I was 25 at the time.

I knew how to build a good home, but I didn’t know how to fill a pipeline other than my existing clients referring me to the next people. But to really start to grow that at a faster clip, I signed up for coaching through a well-known coaching company that teaches you how to do notes, calls, and pop buys. Many of you are familiar with who that company is.

And to this day, I still love the man that leads that company. His Irish accent is fantastic. And I didn’t have a sphere that was influential enough to be sending me million-dollar custom home projects.

And so although I made a lot of friends in the process, I didn’t make a lot of business. And so I signed up for a B&I chapter. I thought, okay, I need to be with a little more sophisticated crowd of professionals who can help me.

And again, while I made a lot of friends, most people in that room were in industries unrelated to real estate and could not be of help to me. So here I am at 25. I know how to build a good home.

I’ve got clients who love me. And now I’m just trying to fill the pipeline. How do I fill the pipeline, right?

What does that look like? And so I got to a point where I started to get pretty creative and I had to make a decision. It was like, is this industry for me or not?

Because again, I’d left and started my own business, right? And it’s like, okay, my predecessor, the gentleman who I purchased a book for, made this look really, who I purchased his book of business, he made it look really easy. And I had this aha, this epiphany that I didn’t need to have a huge personal sphere that was referring me to clients.

I just needed to have a few key strategic referral partners, meaning professionals in neighboring industries who were dealing with my ideal client just before they needed me. What I call, they were just upstream from me. So you can picture this metaphor of a bunch of home builders along a shoreline with their fishing lines in the water.

And there’s more fishermen than fish. And maybe real estate agents feel that way right now about their business, right? So many real estate agents and fewer opportunities.

Well, that was me. And I realized just upstream from all the builders were architectural designers. Now, this wasn’t like some total breakthrough that every builder knew that they could get business from an architectural designer.

The problem is they showed up as a solicitor. They walked in with their muddy boots, with a stack of business cards and said, hey, I’d like to bid on any of your projects, right? And in other words, they’re coming to get something.

And I tried that as well and it didn’t work. And so I took a different approach. I got a warm introduction to an architectural designer and I sat down with the intent to give value to him, which meant I asked questions and listened about where he was at, where he wanted to be at, and what his path was and what the challenges were to get down that path.

Realized that I had a network of some people who could help him with his business. Began to make introductions and all of a sudden he warmed up to me. And I kind of cut to the front of the line where all the other builders were standing outside of his office waiting to get floor plans to bid on.

I was welcomed in. We were having strategic conversations and I was given early access to meet the clients who became ideal clients. And so I had this aha, is that I needed to just walk upstream, right?

Not swim upstream, that’s hard, but to walk upstream, that’s pretty easy. And to actually create this strategic alliance with those, again, who are serving my clients just before they need me. So fast forward after the crash of 2008, 2009, I was in the title industry.

Was hired by a Fortune 500 company who was launching into the Portland, Oregon market for the first time. They needed a different approach to sales because the typical title rep sales offering is pretty common and not all that helpful. And they knew that they were not gonna be able to get big agents to refer them title business based on a common title company offering.

And so I came in and I just began to teach what I had been doing as a home builder, right? Is that I built these strategic partnerships. And agents were kind of curious about that.

I’ve never really tried that. I’ve heard about getting business from an attorney or a tax attorney, but I don’t know how to do it. I’ve never really done it.

And so I began to develop the model for them. And it started to work. And I began to teach in regular places.

Eventually was invited to author a book on it. That created a platform for me, again, to step off and start coaching on it and then to do what I do now. But the point is that these principles are pretty universal.

In fact, my brother who owns chiropractic offices, he said your model, the upstream model, works for my industry as well, right? There’s attorneys, there’s other medical practitioners who are serving clients just before they need an architect. And to connect with those professionals and create strategic partnerships that allow me to not have to spend a bunch of money advertising to the world or creating a bunch of personal relationships, which personal relationships are good, but there’s only so much time to be able to do that.

But you create these strategic partnerships who are dealing with your clients all day, every day, and you’re next, they need you next. That’s the pathway to scale a warm market business. Because when a professional introduces you to another professional, clients listen.

Because trust is transferred from one professional to another. The client gets a better experience because the professionals talk about what this person needs. And so that’s what we have developed at Pro Insight at scale for real estate professionals is a way to easily connect with their local network and then with a reload network to be able to generate these strategic partnerships that feed them warm referrals, not cold leads, but warm referrals at a higher propensity than they could from their sphere or from trying it through some local chapter or something kind of very small and geographic.

[Mattias]
No, that makes a lot of sense. And then honestly, that’s what a lot of lenders are doing with the real estate agents is they’re trying to nurture relationships with the local agents to be able to get those referrals. Because often we are the first people that clients reach out to if they are reaching out to an agent first, right?

So yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense. And I think that the chances of somebody going with somebody I recommend from the lender side is very, very high. And because I typically have reasons, I have experience with these people.

So my referral comes with a lot of weight and they listen to what I’m saying for the most part. So it makes a lot of sense.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, no, you’re exactly right, is that many other professions have gotten really good at getting B2B referrals for the end consumer. Real estate agents have not. And oftentimes as real estate agents, we feel like we are invited to a buffet, we bring the food and everybody else brings a fork, right?

In other words, we send out referrals all day long, right? Inspectors, appraisers, painters, plumbers, roofers, lenders, title companies. But who’s referring the real estate agent?

The real estate agent is out, their job is to go out and generate referrals by themselves from their sphere and everyone else eats when a real estate agent is successful, right? And so our aim is really to teach these other professionals how to be valuable referral partners in return. Because it’s not difficult, but it does take just a little bit of kind of perspective change.

And pretty soon you have, instead of 30 people to whom you’re referring as a real estate agent, you have 30 other people who are referring back the other way and it changes someone’s business pretty dramatically.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. That’s really cool. I did wanna ask along the way about your family life as well, because you mentioned off there that you have six kids.

And you’re obviously a very driven person that has accomplished a lot. How have you managed? Yeah.

You don’t look very old, you don’t look very weathered.

[Justin Stoddart]
So how have you done it? Yeah, they keep me young, I’ll tell you that. And it’s not a Brady Bunch situation, it’s same dad, same mom.

And my wife and I decided early in our marriage that we wanted to have a big family. She comes from a family of seven and I always thought that was a beautiful thing. I thought family was beautiful.

I came from a family of three, so I had a great family as well. But seeing that big family and how close my wife was to her siblings was just beautiful to me. So we decided on six, weren’t sure if we were gonna make it, but we got to five.

We could feel very clearly we weren’t done. And at six we were very clear that we were done. It was like, we’re done.

And so that’s been really exciting. My oldest is 18, she’s writing college essays and she’s got her wisdom teeth out, so she looks like a little chipmunk right now. Kind of that fun time of life.

And then my youngest is six, she’s in first grade. And I’ll tell ya, I’ve created a really wonderful situation for myself where I get to drop my kids off at school and then I get to walk over and pick up my little girls from elementary school and it’s awesome. And I get after it in between those times, but they’re the motivation, they’re the joy that allows me to really be excited about building something special.

Because I know I’m setting them, just creating a future path for them, if not even just an example of what it looks like to have a dream, have a vision, and go for it. I think that’s my job as a dad, is not just to give them stuff, but it’s to give them an example of what it looks like to go for it in life. So that’s a passion.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s so freeing. I think that many, many kids do not have that example where they feel like they need to follow the stream to use your metaphor, right? And there’s a lot of other paths.

I mean, so obviously go to college, get a job with a company, et cetera. Not that that’s a bad thing, but to really have that freedom of time, which I imagine you do, not that you don’t work hard, but you could choose to do something that you want to, like be there for them, be there for a special event or whatever, you have probably more flexibility in your schedule than some others might.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, no, it is a choice. There are paths that would potentially be even more lucrative, but it’s, at the end of the day, the things that really make you happy, you have to decide how do I really prioritize those things and then build a life that supports that, not competes with that. No, I love it.

[Mattias]
Do you have any theories about the, I have theories about, in my own world, of the first kid going from zero to one was the hardest or going from one to two, two to three, which is there stages for you that you think after a certain point, it’s just like, whatever, come on, we can handle this. We can get more.

[Justin Stoddart]
You know, you do, in part because, and in fact, I write about this in my book. It’s a chapter about leadership and I talk about how the evidence that I’m doing a good job isn’t that I can handle more. It’s that we can handle more, right?

And my oldest daughter is wildly responsible, right? And it’s because she’s had to help out, right? There’s just, so to answer your question, yeah, one was like game-changing, right?

Because all of a sudden it’s like you have a little human to take care of. Two was like, okay, I think we got this. You got him, I got her, okay, we’re good, right?

The third one was like broke our systems. Yes. You know, and that was probably the hardest.

And then at that point, you know, by the time we added number four, five, and six, my oldest two were more helpful, especially my oldest. And it really created, you know, additional leverage for us. And at the same time, it has turned her into a wonderful young adult because it hasn’t been all about her, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Stoddart]
So I think to me, that’s part of the beauty of family is that you have to help out. You have to be a part of something bigger than yourself. And so, yeah, it’s interesting because we’re like, yeah, six, we got this, right?

And we have like one of my children has special needs. And so he takes a lot of effort and attention. And we wouldn’t know it unless you spent more time around him.

He’s slightly on the autism spectrum. So he looks pretty normal. And then you spend more time with him, you’re like, there’s something a little different about him.

And we love him to death, but there’s some times where it’s very challenging. Like he really gets stuck on some things and he can’t get past it. And so he can kind of dominate some of the attention that’s needed.

And other kids have really learned how to have compassion for that and how to step up and fill in when mom and dad are needed on a one-on-one basis with him. So it’s been hard, but it’s been really good for us as well as a family. And so it’s interesting when one of our kids or two of our kids goes to see grandma or something, we’re like, man, four kids, this is easy.

Oh my goodness. Like you just kind of acclimate, right? You have a new system and you’re like, yeah, I don’t think it’s that different than having three or four.

And then all of a sudden you have three or four because some are gone. It’s like, whoa, this is like, I feel like I’m an empty nester. Like this is weird, right?

It’s quiet in here. Yeah, exactly. So again, you just, us as humans were wildly adaptable to our circumstances.

And I always say people like, boy, that’s a lot of work. And I said, yes, and I’ve never found one that has a better ROI, right? Not necessarily monetary at this point, but the ROI of joy and of love and just so overall fulfillment.

You just can’t be like, yes, it is a lot of work. I will not argue with that. And yes, the return is wildly good.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I completely agree with you. That’s exactly what I would say about the, going from zero to one, that’s like just world changing, right?

But then two to three was like, what? That was hard. So glad I’m not feeling alone.

I feel like we would probably also have better systems and be able to handle more. I don’t think we want to. If Erica was here, she’d give me a dirty look.

But yeah, it is a lot of fun. It is a lot of work. It’s a lot of chaos.

There’s a lot of overstimulation. I mean, we feel that all the time when every kid seems to think they have to yell to get attention. So ours are two to seven, two, four and seven, almost five.

So that’s kind of our range right there. One other thing that you said there I thought is so true and has been so true for me is adaptability part. Can’t talk today.

And I found that in my business as well. Like I remember as an agent, a newer agent, and there’d be problems that would come up that would just like destroy me. And I just, it would be so hard to get down.

There’s a problem and I feel like I’m responsible and blah, blah, blah. And then you get over it and you get better. You get stronger, right?

And now with the same problems, I don’t even blink an eye over. And I remember, I’m a verbal processor, so my poor therapist wife has to hear everything. I tell that I go through and there’s just times now that it’s like there’s so much happening that I’m like, you don’t even know.

You see that I’m different right now and I’m gonna maybe at some point when the kids give me a break, be able to communicate some of this, but there is like so much more that would have taken up a large conversation with you prior that I’m not even gonna bring up because it’s just not as big of a deal anymore. But yeah, it’s crazy how adaptable we can be.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, we really have the potential to grow. And I think in there is where we’re the most happy, right? I think it’s some of the most miserable people.

It’s because they’ve stopped growing. They don’t have a real purpose anymore, even if they’re wealthy, right? Just because needs are taken care of doesn’t mean the core human need, which is connection and growth is happening.

And so I think we ought to be pushing ourselves. It’s funny, I’ve been, this is not to be political in any way, but I’m a student of Elon Musk. And the fact that he has gone all in, all the chips are in upon leaving PayPal.

He did it with Tesla. He just did it on a presidential election, right? Which who would have thought he would have done that.

And he just has realized that the path to the biggest wins, the biggest success is not just kind of on the sideline or let’s dabble in this. He’s like, I’m freaking all in on this, you know? And I hear it all over the internet right now, don’t bet against Elon.

Like just don’t bet on the guy. The guy’s a super genius. And again, I don’t care whether or not you agree with him politically, but I just think there’s lessons for everybody in here that dabbling doesn’t get you much, right?

But if you want the best stuff out of life, it’s gonna take a full commitment. I look at my life, the areas where I’m the most satisfied and the most happy, it’s because I’ve made the most commitment, right? I made the biggest commitment, whether it’s marriage, whether it’s my faith, whether it’s my family, whether it’s my career.

And usually if there’s something that’s not working quite right, it’s because I haven’t gone all in. I haven’t actually committed yet. And it’s interesting because we live in a society in which it’s almost taught to be non-committal, right?

This is like relationships and dating apps. It’s like, no, don’t, like don’t commit. It’s like, is anything ever worked really well if you don’t commit?

Like, can you really expect to get the most out of that area of your life by not really committing? And like, I just think we’re silly to think that, right? So that’s where I remind myself of that, of areas where I’m not exactly who or where I wanna be.

It’s because I haven’t made a full commitment yet.

[Mattias]
100%, I think that people often have that fear of failure, maybe holding them back as well, that if they didn’t really, I know I’ve been guilty of this. I mean, I think like more in school, I wasn’t the best student in high school or anything like that. But yeah, I think part of it was, if I don’t really try, I won’t fail.

And I think that’s something that people probably get into the real estate business and they kind of have this idea, they like the image, whatever, but maybe don’t fully go in, don’t burn the fleet. Again, I didn’t do that. I was fully committed to real estate, but I had another job for a little bit until it really made sense to jump in.

But I was fully committed when I went in. And I think you’re right. I think you have to do that.

You get so much more rewards. I had a person come look at houses with me once from California. They were like young 30s.

They had built some businesses in California. They had a hospitality business. I think they owned maybe a vineyard even at one point and they built it up and they sold it and they were financially free.

They didn’t have to work a single day in their life anymore. A young couple, they’re driving around in a van looking for where they wanted to live. Very interesting couple.

And I just looked at this guy because to me, I was thinking, I don’t think I could just not do anything at this stage of life. I feel like I need to be active. I think I need to have that mental stimulation.

And I asked him, I was like, what are you gonna do? Are you happy just not working anymore? And he said, he looked at me, he’s like, no.

He’s like, I always have to climb a mountain. I always have to have that next challenge. And I just think that’s so true.

And if you don’t have that mountain to climb, if you don’t have, which is hard, right? I mean, there’s gonna be hard parts. There’s gonna be difficulties along the way up.

But if you never climb the mountain to see the peaks, you’re never gonna really appreciate the view, right? Like if you don’t go through the valleys of life and get to the top, you don’t really have that appreciation of how good things are, is kind of my opinion on that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, no climb, no view, right? Yeah. So 100% agree with that.

But yeah, no, it’s a fun, crazy life we’re in. I think if you’re giving it your all, if you’re really intentional about how you spend your time and your energy, it’s a beautiful, beautiful life.

[Justin Stoddart]
It’s a great time to be alive. You think about AI and just modern technology, the internet, all the way, like it really is fascinating. It’s a fascinating time to be alive.

And as long as you don’t get caught up in some of the snares, right? That cause people to get derailed, you can really build something beautiful from anywhere in the world, right? We have, I mean, as part of our development team, we’ve got developer in France, one in California, we’ve got a team in India, we’ve got a team in the Philippines.

And my co-founders currently headed down to Baja or down the Baja Peninsula. It’ll spend the winter in Mexico, spends the summer in Tahoe. And it’s like, he logs in and it’s like, I don’t know where he’s at and I don’t really care.

The guy just gets great work done. And it’s like, this is fascinating. The fact that we can live just untethered anymore and just do good work from where we’re at and solve real problems that people have.

If you’re not optimistic about the future, I think I would encourage you to rethink that these things that are threats can be harnessed to really be so powerful for you to build and live a beautiful life.

[Mattias]
So I’m just- Sorry, speaking of Elon, like what you were just mentioning reminded me, like if I didn’t have kids, if I was single or just married, traveling around in a van with a Starlink and having some sort of remote job sounds amazing. What a new world that unlocked, having that Starlink internet, high-speed internet anywhere you go. It’s pretty crazy.

It is crazy.

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, my dad has a big, beautiful boat and they spend the winter, I should say the summer up in the San Juan Islands, which is up north of Seattle, kind of inside Vancouver Island. And he said, I’ve got better internet out in the middle of nowhere than I do at my home in Henderson, Nevada. He’s like, this is crazy, like how connected the world can be now with this satellite service.

That’s wild.

[Mattias]
Well, I do wanna know if you have any books that you’d recommend people to read, any fundamental books, any books that you currently are enjoying, or yeah, just something that would help them grow their mindsets, business, et cetera.

[Justin Stoddart]
You know, I’ve become a fan of Alex Hormozy, although I would say he’s maybe more, a little more in the leads business than the referrals business like I am. I’m fascinated by the brand that he’s built and the way in which he acquires and grows and scales businesses. But I’m not gonna necessarily recommend a book of his.

I’m gonna recommend the book that he often talks about as most influential for him, which is a book called Influence by Robert Cialdini. And I’ve been studying this and it’s, you know, the more influence you have, the easier life gets, right? I mean, we’re talking about the most, probably influential couple of men in the world, right?

And the more influence you have, the more impact you can make. And so there’s six principles of influence that determine, you know, how much influence you have. And so I’ve been studying that because that’s one of our aims at ProInsight, the company that I lead, is how do we elevate the influence of professionals?

We believe that big tech platforms are designed at their core to lessen the influence of professionals. The technology gets between the consumer and the professional and they sell that influence back to the professional, right? And so therefore the professional is a commodity, right?

If not you, we’ll find someone else, right? Whereas our aim with technology is to elevate the influence of the professionals, to bring them closer to the clients, use technology to make them more impactful. So influence has been a big thing that I’ve been studying to see how can we work that into our technology and into our overall offering to make it to where professionals have elevated influence versus diminished influence.

[Mattias]
I love it. Yeah, that’s really good. I’ve, Alex is awesome.

I wish I could speak and think like him. He can just talk about anything and just make it super interesting, I think. And so, yeah, I haven’t read that one.

I’ve definitely heard of it before. I don’t think that one’s been mentioned on the podcast. So that’s, my reading list is super long.

I’ve got a new one.

[Justin Stoddart]
It’s a bit of a textbook, but so take your time on it. I do one chapter and then kind of work through it versus just trying to get through it. You probably won’t get away with too much because it is a little deeper than an average book, but it’s good.

It’s really good. Awesome, yeah.

[Mattias]
No, and then tell us more about where people could find out more about your book, is it an app, the service?

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, so proinsight.com is where you can learn more about Pro Insight. As I mentioned, we typically start with real estate agents and help them to claim a territory in their community. So as a real estate agent, you have the ability to say, okay, for example, Canby, Oregon, which is where I’m at, I’m gonna claim this community.

And then we help you, we actually do it with you slash for you, I’ve helped you to put together a local wealth advisory team of 30 professionals from your community in a matter of a couple weeks. And then we help you to extend that to a relocation network to your top relocation markets. And your local wealth advisory team is presented kind of to these other agents in other markets as a very enticing place for them to place future referrals.

So we built a tech platform to support that and enable that kind of activity. And so yeah, proinsight.com if you wanna learn more about that, we do have pretty high criteria as to who gets to claim a territory. But regardless of where you’re at in your real estate journey, if you’re a real estate agent and you wanna work by professional referral, like I described, as I teach in the upstream model, proinsight.com, we do have an offering for those who are, let’s say, less than 18 transactions a year. We have an offer for you that’s very low price that gives you access to the unique systems that will allow you to build a professional referral business. So wherever you’re at, if this resonates with you, that’d be a great place to go to get access to the upstream model. You can buy it on Amazon, it’s also available on Audible if you’re an Audible listener, or if you are interested in just buying it outright, you go to upstreammodel.com and it’s less expensive and I’ll sign it for you if you go there. So upstreammodel.com will have it sent directly for me. Cool, awesome.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and then do you have a social media platform that you’d want anybody to follow you on or anything like that?

[Justin Stoddart]
Yeah, so Instagram’s great, just at Justin Stoddart like you see here on the screen, S-T-O-D-D-A-R-T, which is a bit different than some of the Stoddards out there. So yeah, just send me a DM if I can help in any way, I’d love to, otherwise I’d love to be connected and see what we can learn together.

[Mattias]
Awesome, well thanks so much Justin for being on here, this has been a really good conversation and a great reminder that you really can build that worm and if that sounds much more energizing to you, I mean, you’re like me, and building up a worm database is, or referral stream is just so much better to me than answering the phone and chasing down people that don’t wanna talk to me. So again, thank you so much for being on here. My pleasure, thanks for the opportunity.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in this show is not investment advice or mental health therapy, it is intended for entertainment purposes only.