Rise Into Your Absolute Highest Success-Potential with Justin Konikow

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. We are here with Justin Konikow. Justin, thanks so much for joining us.

I appreciate you having me on. Excited for this conversation. Justin, you’re coming out of the south, did you say eastern part of Ontario?

Southwestern, just north of Michigan, actually. Yeah, got it. Yeah, so give us a bird’s eye view of what you do in the real estate space, then we’ll get into your story.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, so I mean, if you looked at me online, you would see first that I’m an active agent in production. I run a team, but I actually own my brokerage outright as well. I’m with my incredible wife, but we’re not really a brokerage.

We’re the only brokerage that I know that acts like an actual company and doesn’t do any recruiting. Think of us more like a tactical Navy SEAL team of experts. And also very unique to us, we cover every asset class, residential, commercial, investment, agriculture.

For example, I have a cash crop advisor on staff who actually raises grass fed beef and has done rodeo. Very unique, right? Each asset class has kind of a division leader, and then we have territory specialists.

So I said southwestern Ontario, London, Ontario is like the hub of the market. If you looked at Toronto, Canada on a map in Detroit, we’re like smack dab in the middle. So we’ve taken that entire region as our market share kind of everywhere in between.

And also do a lot of speaking, collaborating, podcasting. Good friend of mine, Mr. Ryan Serhant, spoke on stage at his event last year and just a normal guy who somehow got in front of some really interesting people and I still feel like I’m failing every day trying to figure it out. So here I am.

[Mattias]
I love it. We’re going to have to dive in to tease out how you differentiate yourself as not just a brokerage but a company because I think that’s really interesting and I have some thoughts on it. But I do want to hear first about how you got started with real estate.

When did you actually get into the business?

[Justin Konikow]
My wife tricked me. It was 2012. I was in hospitality and I had worked my way up through that company from being a bouncer to a bar back to director of marketing coordination for all the restaurants.

And she had grown up in a family that built an automotive business in the middle of nowhere to the biggest powerhouses for Ford and Lincoln in Canada. And we just wanted to do our own thing. She wasn’t really wanting to go down the nepotism path.

She’s like, I want to build something. I want to build something. And initially we had thought about hospitality because she has her MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business.

She’s a killer at ops. But she had been licensed seven years before me when she had given up to go help her family with the medical situation within the family. But she had always loved it.

And when she told me about being a real estate agent, my exact response was, I don’t want to be a greaseball on a golf course. They don’t work hard. The agents I knew didn’t.

You would set up a portal, find your own house. They brought little to no value or they come and list your house and all show you the same comps, show you their great slide deck and how great they are. And then it would just be a competition on commission.

So I was like, I don’t want to be that guy. But her idea with her background in business consulting was the nexus of what we created, which was no, no, we won’t be agents. We won’t be a brokerage.

We’re going to build a company that specializes in pricing, marketing and negotiation, but an actual company where you’re not getting an individual agent one out of 200 to fight for you. You’re getting the entire company, hence where we are today.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. So where did that start then? So you both got your licenses and you, I mean, I don’t know what it is in Canada.

Around here, you have to be licensed, what, for three years before you can jump into get your brokerage license. So where did that lead?

[Justin Konikow]
Well, I like to explain it like this, right? You have three things. You have time, skill and money.

We had a lot of time, no skill, no money and it started opening up shop or getting licensed and working at a brokerage. You have to do it for two years there and we just wanted to sell a house. And the market in 2012 here was garbage and we were listing properties but nothing was selling.

So that was my entrance into the industry and then we started getting some traction because of what I was doing on the marketing side and media and her tactical approach to pricing. I actually started off in commercial real estate first. She was on res, but after that two year period, we ended up having a child and she really didn’t want to be front facing with clients, right?

I definitely, of the two of us, you don’t see anything of her online. You wouldn’t even know she exists because she doesn’t have social media. She doesn’t like it.

It’s not her thing. And she wanted to move into more of an operations role and after we had our child, she showed me the business plan. And it’s interesting because I pushed against her.

I was like, we’re crushing it. We finally have traction. We’re at a big national brokerage, big national brand.

All our clients are going to, that means so much to them. And she was like, that’s cute. This is what we’re doing.

And it’s interesting because in a relationship, a lot of times you do those back and forth. So I was like, okay, if you really feel this way, let’s try it. So she moved purely into operations.

I was in sales and then had too many clients to deal with myself. So brought on one agent to help me with the overflow, brought on VAs, admins. And I mean, I painted a really big vision of what we are today, but it literally started in a 300 square foot coworking space with a VA and us just scrapping it out, going from selling a house to a bunch of houses and neighborhoods to different asset classes in a city to now we cover a bunch of different territories.

And it was just showing up every day, just trying to get 1% better. That’s the story.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s go ahead and dive into then why the, or if you can explain more why it’s different to like run a business that specializes in selling real estate, right?

I mean, versus, you know, having just a traditional brokerage.

[Justin Konikow]
Well, I mean, it’s a lot more complicated from the standpoint that you’re taking on all of your transaction coordination and compliance, right? Like it would probably be easier for me to just bolt this onto one of the large nationals, but we have a level of control that they just simply don’t. And we’re building enterprise value within our company that we wouldn’t be able to do if we were just working at any national brokerage, virtual or bricks and mortar.

And I also think like with the future of real estate, we are, we’re truthfully now we’re a real estate, a media and a tech company. The tech company is really going to be in our crosshairs in the next year, especially with AI, but like literally looking for AI engineers, because you know, every national is bolting on their virtual AI chat bots and everything else. That’s great.

But I think we’re going to take it to a different level internally here in terms of building it really to help our clients, not necessarily our agents, where if I look at every other brokerage that’s out there, every solution they’re coming up with is actually to help their agents because their clients are their agents, right? So like the biggest difference is my clients are my clients. My clients aren’t my agents.

My agents are, I don’t even like the terminology, G agents or team or brokerage, because it doesn’t really define how we operate. We just have our own little ecosystem. And it means that obviously being active in sales and generating opportunities for the team, it is a big part of what I do and being in negotiations, but it means I’m much more of a business owner than I am a salesperson, if that answers your question.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love it. I think I, you know, I’m going through processes of building a team, exploring things like organizational charts and that kind of thing, where you have your traditional CEO role, visionary type thing. I’m wondering if you’re filling that role, you’ve already talked about your wife being kind of the operations person, so she might be the integrator.

Underneath that, you’re going to have sales operations and finance maybe. And from what you’ve already described, you would have in the sales category branches. So you have specializations in different sectors.

So like the commercial, is that accurate?

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, silos, whether you look at EOS, whether you look at like, there’s a ton of different programs out there that all basically say the same thing and business is not hard.

You literally have to offer a product, generate leads for the product, intake product, deliver service, close out, retain clients, rinse and repeat. I would say from our organizational structure, that would be fairly accurate. There’s the prime group of companies, prime real estate is a part of that, prime media and prime technologies, which next year will be a bigger part of it.

My wife would be CEO role operations. I would be more CMO, which is leading content driving opportunities. But the two of us really do, we lay out the vision and it’s our job to lead the organization to make sure that the vision is being executed, take the risks, look around corners in terms of, okay, what really matters to the people that are in our ecosystem?

And then also provide opportunities for them, right? Because I don’t want my salespeople to always just be salespeople. I want to create an organization that allows them to become better humans through their work.

And thus we all probably are going to make a lot more money if we have really good people doing really good work, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. I don’t know if they have their own goals and three year plans, visions, things, but it is really cool to help facilitate, help support people under you to get to where they’re wanting to go along the way, even if it’s not necessarily a hundred percent directed in where it’s adding the most money to your pocket. Like if they want to move in a slightly different direction, be able to help them still with those dreams.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, you caught me on the right day. We just did business planning about three weeks ago and I’m doing my one-on-ones with them now. We give them what’s called the prime planner.

And then I did another talk to a very large developer sales office with their property management group. And we all know that like property managers that have people that answer phones, right? For tenants, not the best job in the world.

Entry level probably doesn’t pay a lot. And you’re dealing with some pretty miserable people sometimes on the phone. And I walked in there and I’m like, what do you want from me?

And she’s like, just fire them up. Like, you know, we had gone to a wealth private dinner and I was telling her what we were doing on the sales side to like affect change in a really tough market. It’s bad here right now.

And she got excited. So I walked in there and I was like, the first thing I said to everybody sitting in the room, like she’s going to get mad at me. But the first thing I’m going to say to you guys is your work is the least important thing on this list of what we’re about to talk about.

And like, she called me in here to talk about sales, but I’m going to tell you, if you’re, if you’re not physically, mentally fit, you don’t have good relationships and you’re not having fun, you’re not going to make any money. You’re going to suck. And then we really dug into that piece of like my personal stack is faith, family, fitness, fun finances.

If my heart’s right with God, then I’m in a better place to serve my wife and daughter. If they are okay, then I know I’m going to be able to work out and not be distracted. Then if all that’s taken care of, maybe I can go shoot some photos, go fishing, whatever, um, do stuff with my family.

And then if all four of those are taken care of, I’m happy at work, but we live in a world that does the complete opposite. We work jobs. We hate to buy stuff.

We don’t want to impress people we don’t like. And then we wonder why we’re miserable. Right?

So I do think like for yourself, if you’re building your team out or going down that path, anybody watching this, like ask yourself, how good are you in those first four before you start worrying about closing deals and making money?

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love it. How do you keep yourself, um, how do you keep yourself on track? Um, so like, I mean, do you, and where did you create this from?

I mean, did you have, uh, do you, do you have like intentional vivid, uh, vision kind of retreats or vision retreats or whatever to, to check in to see where you’re wanting to be in five years, three years, 10 years, et cetera. Like what, what do you do to kind of keep yourself on the right path? Yeah.

[Justin Konikow]
I’d say like mentors reading books, looking for signs of success, listening to podcasts. Like really, that was probably my journey initially. Now it’s a lot more structured.

Um, so once a year we take a massive founders retreat. I call it just me and my wife and we go back and we take all the problems we encountered in the year, look at our business and then adapt everything moving forward. We look at our four apps.

We ask ourselves, honestly, how are we doing? We’re eight them one out of 10 sevens, not an option. What can we do yearly, monthly, quarterly, daily, weekly to affect change in those things.

And then I literally just put it on my calendar and then I just follow my calendar and then I review it. And I think this is something, I don’t even know where I heard this. I think maybe back in the clubhouse days.

If some, I know it was Amanda Doll who said it, who worked for the Jeff Boreham team in Florida. Shout out Amanda Doll. I always like to credit stuff.

If I could only judge you by your bank account and your calendar, what story would it tell me? And bank accounts and calendars don’t lie. If I’m buying nothing but chips and pizza, I’m probably not going to be in the best health, right?

If I’m spending all my time doing scrolling TikTok, I’m probably not going to get better at my job. So I take a look at my calendar, my bank account once a month, make adjustments against the vision that is very, very detailed and mapped out where we’re living, what we’re doing, who we’re working with. And then my decisions become a lot easier to track against.

If I get a call for a coffee with a mortgage broker, does that track towards the vision? And if it’s somebody that I genuinely love, it’s not all business, maybe it does track to the vision. Maybe it isn’t all about the actual business side, right?

[Mattias]
I love it. Yeah, I think the more you dive into this space, the more you understand success, that’s not just financial, that’s personal, that’s health, all that family. The more you understand the level of intentionality it just takes and how you are basically, a lot of people just have life happen to them and it’s people that choose to see where they want to go and then take steps towards it on a daily basis that really get places.

So I love hearing different versions of that, but it kind of all boils down to intentionality really.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, I find journaling and writing has been helping me a lot lately as well too. Writing stuff out physically like on a note, I don’t even have good handwriting. I can show you my notepad, nobody can read it.

It’s hard to describe, but there’s a different thought connection where my mind moves very quick as you can tell. When I write stuff down, it makes me pause and look at each word, right? So I find sometimes, I love doing stuff like this because ideating with other people who are driven will make me realize, am what I’m saying, does that actually track to who I am or who I’m pretending to be for this podcast?

And then as I’m writing stuff down, is that actually who I am or who I’m trying to be or what do I need to change? And I do want to encourage people watching and listening that if it’s not yet, that’s okay. It just means yet.

And it’s the simple language difference of deciding like, I’m trying to quit smoking or I’m not a smoker anymore. You may still be smoking, but if you say, I’m not a smoker anymore, you’re going to have a very different connection to that next cigarette than you would if you chose different language, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, I agree. And I think another piece of the puzzle here too that people need to understand is that they should really understand themselves well. I think having a lot of information about yourself through self-reflection like you’re talking about, I think through like different personality assessments.

I’ve done a bunch of different ones. Currently loving the cultural assessment one. But anyway, I think having a really good understanding of how you operate will also help you on this path because for me, I’m not a tracker.

I’m not a person that will do like the checklist of making sure I got all my habits done every day. That’s just not me at all. But I have to find my way of doing this intentional living.

And most of that just really comes down to the routine of it and setting myself up for wanting to be in these spaces. For me, I’m not a home gym person. If I had a home gym, it probably would get dusty very quickly.

But I am a social person. I am competitive. I enjoy classes.

I enjoy going into some sort of form of class, building that community up, holding accountability. And so I know that if I’m ever in a place where I’m not doing the class I’m doing now, if I move, whatever, I need to put that in place or else my physical fitness will go down. And no checklist is going to do that for me.

But I can set my life up for that. So yeah, I think it’s also important to note, just because you see somebody else who’s a really good tracker being super disciplined, know that that’s their strength. Know that’s how they operate well.

And it’s not the same for everybody.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, I would also say to that, there’s a few things that I’ve learned over the years where I’ve talked to hundreds of people about this kind of structure that I’ve created for myself. It was necessary because of my story. I have a very addictive personality.

I actually came from addiction, broke that 23 years ago, 15 years completely sober. But I needed it as a tool. It was simply a tool.

And I would say for somebody like yourself, as you’re speaking about the social aspect of it in the classes and the fitness piece, I can tell fitness is important to you. I can tell that those pieces are important to you. I would just challenge you to front load your year and be like, man, just make sure that you have that in your calendar.

It’s not even tracking it. It’s just there. And then as you look back, you can really take a grasp at like, OK, what did I do?

What didn’t I do? And what’s interesting is you will find out all kinds of different stuff about yourself through the journey. You’ll look back like, you know, I love fly fishing, but I’m at a phase in my life where if I look at my last year, my daughter’s 11.

It’s so important to me to be doing things with her that she loves. I love photography as well. I’ve been shooting since I was a kid.

She loves it as well. Probably going to scrap fly fishing and spend more time going out into the woods, hiking, shooting stuff, going to eat good food. The ability of mapping things out and looking at your calendar and the bank account is more on the finance side, but just the calendar really allows you to slowly start tweaking your life so that it doesn’t feel cumbersome because like this chart, there’s two things I’ll say as well.

One, the structure that I have, I hated like 60 to 70 percent of the time and I’m not impressed about it. And here’s the other thing. If I lose all my notebooks and all my calendars for a month, I’m good.

I’m not dependent on it because I used to have a track and then I took months off where I’m like, I’m not tracking nothing. And you need to have that variability because the human body, if you’re so adapted to doing something one way and then you miss a cold plunge and your whole day’s ruined, that’s not good. That’s not healthy.

You need to be in flow. But I think when you’re zooming out, it’s exactly what you said. Do you know what you want?

Do you know who you want to become? And I love the calendar as a tool because it doesn’t lie. What is on your calendar?

If it’s fly fishing every single weekend for four hours at a time, my daughter doesn’t actually matter that much to me, no matter what I tell myself. The calendar to me, it works no matter who you are, depending on where you want to go, if you use it the right way.

[Mattias]
No, it makes sense. Totally. And I can say that the times that I was…

Calendar, I will plan out my week to try to make sure I can fit in a CrossFit class or whatever within the time frame and try to work around the kids’ schedules and stuff like that. But there’s times where I’ve had individual habits or goals or whatever that I’m tracking on a daily basis, that kind of thing. And it does really help you become intentional about whatever it is you’re trying to.

And it does make a difference. I just also have gone through times, and I think that this is probably true for a lot of people, when you build up… If you’re trying to become a real estate agent and you try to model yourself after a mentor, you’re not.

For sure. You can try to beat yourself up about the ways that you’re not them and think you need to get better at being them, when in reality, you’re your own version of a real estate agent.

[Justin Konikow]
Dude, on Instagram or social, sorry to jump on that, but I preach this all the time, right? You need to find who you are because the people that pop usually pop because they were uniquely themselves. And then when people try and replicate what they did, it never works.

And the calendar and that whole process that I was explaining is kind of the exact same thing where you may not like fly fishing, you may not have a daughter, you may not have kids or like CrossFit. What are the things in your life that you actually do care about? What are you passionate about?

Who are you trying to become? And that flexibility of… I laugh because I stopped tracking my habits for almost a year.

And I recently started again because there’s two habits I’m trying to break. And I just tracked them for two weeks and I was like, I’m like zero to seven both weeks. I’m like, huh, that’s super interesting.

What do I need to do to change why I keep being in that position, right? And it’s more of just a curiosity loop. But I do think that people tie themselves too much to other people’s versions of success and their success today, where I’m like, no, don’t look at what I did today.

Look at what I explained to Mattias I did in the first 10 years to get here. Do that and that you’re more likely to succeed than you are trying to do what I’m doing today, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, 100%. And I think no matter how you go about it, the act of continuing to reflect, to continuing to like be intentional about where you’re going, being intentional about your life is important and something you shouldn’t lose sight of.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Konikow]
And be okay letting go of stuff, letting go of the past version of yourself that you thought you were going to be.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Konikow]
Life will reveal a lot to you, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. I’m curious if you have found you’re able to channel the addictive side of yourself in positive ways and what that looks for you now. Like is it obviously probably was a really hard time in your life that to get through that, to get past it, et cetera.

But what is the positive?

[Justin Konikow]
In it now. Yeah. I mean, from a reflection standpoint, it really was, I can tell you the day I was 17 years old.

I chose to go with a bad group of people versus somebody who was my best friend on his birthday. And that led me down a very dark path that we’ve built, mend that bridge. I’m really good friends again now, but it really was like, man, you need to be careful of who you surround yourself with because you become the people that you surround yourself with and what they do becomes standardized and normal in your world, right?

And then the second piece was your story is not over. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve come. There is a God up there that wants more for you.

And if you are willing to just listen and take a step forward and another step and another step, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen overnight. But like I said, I still feel like I’m failing every day. But the exciting part is in one of the hardest markets I’ve ever been in in my career, I’m probably more excited for the next phase of growth that we’re in than I ever was during the bull run of 2020 to 2022, because I know what it’s going to build in us in terms of a foundation for 2028 to 2035.

I couldn’t pay a consultant enough money to show me what we’re going to earn through tough times, right? So that was a big part of it is that your past doesn’t define you unless you let it. Your past refines you if you let it.

[Mattias]
I love that. It’s a really good quote. What are some of the strategies that you’re going through or you all are doing?

Has it flipped completely to a buyer’s market now? You mentioned this a couple of times that it’s a tough market. And what are the things that you’re doing to overcome it?

[Justin Konikow]
Well, we cover a lot of asset classes in a lot of areas. So we’re very diversified, which is a strength of ours. So agriculture, commercial, still very healthy markets, still very busy.

Subsets of commercial are a little bit slower. But like I said, we deal in all asset classes. Residential home buyers, it feels like more of a buyer’s market out there.

But are you in a primary market like London, Ontario that has half a million people or are you in Grand Bend with 2000? Are you selling a entry level home for $500,000 or are you selling a $3.6 million lake from property? Really, really depends on the asset class in the area.

What I can tell you is the thing that is working across all asset classes in all area is treating this like an actual job and not trying to be an influencer, but an actual real estate agent. And it’s not really complicated. All you need to do is A, go to work every day, know your stuff, learn the market.

So read up on real estate and be educated on, just look at the dailies, look at what’s old and start calling people and getting info. Prospecting daily, which no agent wants to do, but they all know if they did, they’d probably make more money. And then market.

And that’s really simple because you just tell everybody everything you learned while you were prospecting or learning the market and just do that four days a week. I’ll give you Fridays off consistently for eight months and you will succeed. And we have a team of 30 here.

Our team right now is at the highest frequency I’ve ever seen. We’ve simplified everything, simplified our CRM, our daily kind of routine, how we’re prospecting. We’re in the trenches and I’m there with them with my shovel.

And that’s what’s working is treat it like a job and go to work and you’ll be okay.

[Mattias]
What are some of the marketing efforts you all do as a company or what do you encourage agents individually to do?

[Justin Konikow]
I think as a company, definitely high level, we have our own platform. YouTube has been great for us and our newsletters are dialed. We have our own social media channels for prime real estate, which is my actual brokerage.

And then I have my own, which is bigger than theirs for sure. But the personal brand typically is. And I think frequency and getting good at communicating.

I said, go to work every day. Well, get better at writing copy every day. Understand how to engage with people online.

One random thing that I tried, two random things I did. One is I had a business page, Justin Konikow, full suit, whatever. I deleted it and I had 15,000 followers on that page and I was scared when I did it.

And my main page had been dormant for years. My personal page is absolutely crushing right now. And all I’ve been doing on there is going in once a week and telling people what I think of the market and then just being rid, just me.

And I also think that frequency of now writing has repositioned me in the marketplace with people that I’ve known for decades in terms of my aptitude for the industry. So like you said, I kind of wanted to give you both answers. One is from a brokerage agency perspective, team perspective.

What is your platform that you’re able to provide to the people that are with you? And does it actually amplify their voice or does it just feel like you just did the caption on chat to BT and put it on later to schedule posts? Because you may as well just not do it.

And then the second piece is for the individual, who are you? What do you sell? Where do you sell it?

How are you telling people what you do? What is the frequency? Pick one platform.

You don’t have to do what Justin does today. Pick one platform. Be consistent on that platform.

Be in conversation. DM people. I had a girl actually, random girl.

I posted a living in Bayfield, Ontario video. Crushed in the group. And this one girl had gone on two of my posts and put the little angry face.

And that’s what I noticed out of all the other likes and comments and everything, right? So I DMed her and I was like, hey, what is it about my post that made you upset? And I said, I genuinely want to know.

I’m not trying to cause any friction. We got into the best conversation I think I’ve had. And she didn’t know I was local.

She thought I was just a sleazeball agent. I’m like, I know the area and I support business owners. She’s like, yeah, it’s hard for me to watch my little town grow the way it’s growing.

And when I told her that my heart was for protecting that town, probably more than the seasonal residents and my depth of ties in that town, I got so much intel from her on how I need to create my messaging for that group so that they know that I am local to the area. But then B, I got so much feedback as to what matters to the people that live in that community. So really good tip for anybody that’s watching this.

Every person that follows you, send them a DM and get into conversation with them. You’re here for real estate. You’re here for content.

Who are you? Where are you from? Tell me about yourself.

Genuinely me writing these messages, not copy and paste. And listen. And then adjust based on the feedback.

I think a lot of times too many people on social, they’re just screaming into the ether expecting people to come follow them, but they’re not in conversation. And it’s social media, so maybe be a little bit more social.

[Mattias]
It reminded me of another tip I got once of if you are following up with people, if you have a regular follow-up plan for your sphere, to consider doing it through whatever social media platform you are most active in. If you are an Instagram person, DM that person instead of texting them or emailing them, even if you have that information, because you are then more likely to get there. Your content will get fed to them more on the platform, which I thought was pretty clever.

[Justin Konikow]
So that’s another good reason to do the DMs. Dude, I will go on to Instagram specifically to engage with people that I have texting me. People that you want to get to know. It’s the digital bus sign.

I’ll even go, Dustin Brougham is on my podcast later on today, and I’ve known Dustin for 10 years. He’s the homie, right? I’ll actively go on Instagram, click his profile, and chat with him so that it shows me more of his stuff so I can support it just because he’s my boy.

The algorithm, for some reason, isn’t showing his stuff to me as much. Again, social media, multi-billion dollar companies that are going to repurpose and show my content to my clients over and over and over, and I’ll have to do heavy lifting, sign me up.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I love it. We’ve got a ton of golden nuggets in the show already. I’m curious if you have one prepared for the audience.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, I would say the biggest thing is really take some time this week, grab a tea or a coffee, whatever you love the most. Go to the place that you love the most, and don’t turn on your phone. Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, and just start writing to yourself.

Write a letter to yourself in 10 years. Sorry, write a letter to yourself from yourself in 10 years, and picture the life that would just make you so excited to be living. I think if you do that, then identify what are the things that you would need to do between now and then to make that happen, and then just put it on your calendar.

[Mattias]
Yep, I love it. Such a good practice. Setting that vision is powerful.

Again, being intentional about how you’re going to live instead of having life just happen to you is crucial. Another point to what you just said is that is an opportunity to get into deep flow. Everything we have is designed to distract us right now.

Our phones, so turning them off is huge. There is nothing like getting into a deep state of flow where time just stops. You don’t really think about time at all.

You’re just in that moment with what you’re doing, and you’re so much happier. I’m always in such a better mood when I get through doing something in that state, so I love it.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, I always say try and find a provincial park and get outdoors. There’s something about being outdoors in nature that really repositions you. Get away from the streams, the lights, and all that stuff too.

I find sometimes taking pauses and breaks really does help as well too. It slows you down. Again, I’m a very high energy person.

I do my best thinking when I’m in the most random places.

[Mattias]
Yeah, we’re coming up. When this airs, it’s going to be halfway through the quarter of the last quarter of this year, so it’s a great time to start getting 2026 in the sights and figuring out how you’re going to break down 2026 to get to your 10-year, 5-year, 3-year vision.

[Justin Konikow]
Yeah, cool. Going back to what you said earlier, some people, they hear the word planning, checklists, calendars, and it can make them feel like there’s a reaction to that. I don’t want to have that structure.

My wife is that person, but I remember saying to her one day, I’m like, yeah, totally fine. You either build a plan or you don’t. Not building a plan is also a plan, but your plan is just not to build a plan.

That’s okay. It doesn’t have to have that attachment that some people feel like it has because it doesn’t define you. I’ve built plans that are completely different than who I am today, and I’ve changed those plans because my identity is not wrapped up in being a real estate agent or my identity isn’t wrapped up in building a mega team.

I’m shrinking my team. I got rid of five to seven people that I had told the team last year, we’re objectively going to shrink and the industry is going to think, oh no, look at all the people that are leaving. We’re actively going to do this because of X, Y, and Z.

It worked, and we may even shrink down a little bit more, and that’s okay because my identity isn’t tied into the industry per se.

[Mattias]
Totally. I love that. I agree.

When we talk about this as well, I just would say that for me, I live in the future. The vision, the plan, that part comes easy to me. Then for me, setting myself up to do the day-to-day stuff, it can be hard to not go to the new exciting thing.

It’s harder to sometimes stay the course long enough to get to where we want to go. That intentionality makes a huge difference. Are you a reader?

Do you have a book prepared that you think that every person maybe should read as a fundamental book or just one you’re really enjoying?

[Justin Konikow]
I’ll give you two. The Bible, again, just my faith is a big part of my life. I’ve been seeing it with very new eyes too.

I’ve actually been trying to take the biblical principles from the Bible and apply them to situations that I’ve had from a work perspective. I’m doing actually this on my personal YouTube channel, which is tiny. I just do it because I enjoy doing it and sharing stories around how those principles have saved me in situations that could have broken me differently.

The second would be Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, which a lot of people know that book. I’ve been personally coaching with Dan for quite some time. It’s been a game changer just to get in a room with people that are doing it at a very high level.

He’s an absolute killer. That’s a great book. He has a new one out, doesn’t he?

I’ll be writing one right now. I don’t know if he released it yet or not, to be honest with you. I haven’t paid that close attention.

Maybe I’m thinking of a different…

[Mattias]
He co-writes, right?

[Justin Konikow]
No. Buy Back My Time is him. It’s his book.

It’s his systems. He built a SaaS company, sold it for all kinds of money. He’s a director on, I don’t even know how many companies at this point, a massive YouTube channel.

I see him doing his meetings from his boats, wakeboarding, his scooters. He’s doing meetups in Australia. His content machine and his media company is on a whole other level.

He’s coached with Ed Milet, was his coach at one point too. He’s a version of you and I that is constantly searching for knowledge and information. His ability to look at human systems as code is fascinating because when he runs his company, he looks at it like code.

This equals this equals this. The flow structure is very, very simple, but it’s allowed me to simplify my organizational structure and workflow quite a bit.

[Mattias]
Cool. I love it. You’ve mentioned a couple different platforms you’re on, but what’s the best place for people to follow if they want to see more?

Probably Instagram is the easiest.

[Justin Konikow]
@Justin.Konikow, my username is the exact way to write it. That would be the best place. Shoot me a DM and then from there, you can find everything else.

My personal YouTube channel has got some fun stuff in it. If you like the type of content that I’m sharing here and some interviews with some absolutely killer agents, it’s all on there.

[Mattias]
I love it. Cool. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

It’s been a great conversation. I appreciate you having me.

[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.