How Real Estate Professionals Build Scalable, Investor-Focused Businesses

Share via:

Subscribe via:

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Micah Johnson speaks with Coach Drew Little about his journey in the real estate industry, focusing on professionalism, accountability, and investment strategies. Drew shares insights on the challenges faced by agents, the importance of specialization, and how to navigate the current market dynamics. He emphasizes the need for a sustainable business model and the significance of understanding market trends to identify opportunities. The conversation highlights the value of building relationships and providing exceptional service in real estate.

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

Coach Drew Little (00:00)
professionalism,

accountability, you know, the whole real estate industry is built on the idea that everybody’s an independent contractor and nobody’s accountable, right? Because that’s what works for the big brokerages. They don’t have to invest in people. I call it aggregation of failure.

You know, 85 % of agents fail in the first year. The big brokerages get in as many agents as they can. Nine out of 10 of them fail, and they pay for everything off of the backs of the 10 % who figure it out. It’s an aggregation of failure. And so what does that mean for the client or the investor out in the real world? There’s a 90 % chance they’re going to get hosed. I mean…

Micah Johnson (00:29)
Right.

Staggering, man, it’s staggering.

Coach Drew Little (00:43)
That’s unacceptable.

Micah Johnson (02:17)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Coach Drew Little, who’s been making some serious moves in the real estate industry for quite some time now. Coach, welcome in man, glad to have you.

Coach Drew Little (02:29)
Thanks, Micah. Appreciate you having me.

Micah Johnson (02:32)
Absolutely, absolutely. think our listeners are really going to take some value away from how you approach the investment industry specifically working as an agent and also as an investor yourself. What it’s done to help you just step that professionalism up that we desperately need in that area of the industry. So let’s dive in there for people who may not know you yet. What’s your main focus right now and what markets you operate in?

Coach Drew Little (02:55)
So I have a real estate team in Virginia Beach. So we operate primarily in Virginia Beach and Norfolk right now. We are looking to expand more throughout the year. That’s our main business. And then my wife and I also invest in short-term roles.

Micah Johnson (03:09)
Gotcha. Okay. So what let’s take a step back real quick. What led you to where you are today to having the current businesses you have now.

Coach Drew Little (03:17)
Um, well, I’ve

always, always been interested in real estate, but, I didn’t get into real estate when I was young. I started a family young and needed to get a paycheck. And so I ended up in corporate America and was actually doing pretty well.

and I had a background in economics and so when the great financial crisis hit and I saw all these housing prices tumbling, you know, I knew that this just isn’t something that happens. Actually my background, my degree was in economics and history. So I knew that we weren’t going to see something like this again maybe ever. So that’s when we said okay we need to start buying real estate because you don’t get

pullbacks in prices on real estate of 30, 40 % ever. It just doesn’t happen. So that’s when we started investing and that was fine for gosh, more than 10 years or about 10 years. Um like you know We kept working our corporate jobs and you know had our investments and that was great. And then I was able to retire early, partially because of the investing, partially because of a good career.

And so I was like, okay, what do I want to do now? And I thought, well, I’ll help people invest in real estate, right? It worked for me, it worked for them. And I got into the business and decided to do more than I originally planned to do.

Micah Johnson (04:26)
Mm.

You owned a couple businesses prior to that along the way too, so you’ve had the entrepreneur bug for quite some time also.

Coach Drew Little (04:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, so all together my partner, my wife and I have started seven businesses together and I’ve started nine total. So yeah, we’ve done a few.

Micah Johnson (04:51)
I

heard that. Well, what about real estate has created that sticking power for you to be the thing you’re focusing on now?

Coach Drew Little (05:01)
Well, there’s just so much to be done. You know, the industry is is kind of a mess. You know, it’s there are a lot of people trying things in the industry right now. But, you know, coming from a entrepreneurial background, coming from sort of, you know, incubators and tech startups and stuff like this. What I see is there’s a lot of things being done in real estate, even the things to make it better are so far behind where.

business is in every other industry that there’s just there’s just a lot of opportunity to improve things.

Micah Johnson (06:25)
What’s been some of the focuses you all take in to improve? What are your major missions right now?

Coach Drew Little (06:30)
professionalism,

accountability, you know, the whole real estate industry is, sorry about that, the whole real estate industry is built on the idea that everybody’s an independent contractor and nobody’s accountable, right? Because that’s what works for the big brokerages. They don’t have to invest in people. I call it aggregation of failure.

You know, 85 % of agents fail in the first year. The big brokerages get in as many agents as they can. Nine out of 10 of them fail, and they pay for everything off of the backs of the 10 % who figure it out. It’s an aggregation of failure. And so what does that mean for the client or the investor out in the real world? There’s a 90 % chance they’re going to get hosed. I mean…

Micah Johnson (07:04)
Right.

Staggering, man, it’s staggering.

Coach Drew Little (07:18)
That’s unacceptable.

Micah Johnson (07:20)
Right.

Coach Drew Little (07:19)
It’s unacceptable.

And the company, the organizations that get real about what’s wrong with real estate and try to fix it have such a huge advantage. We’re a very small company, but in our third year, we were voted best of the beach for agent, team, and firm. Four people on the team, we beat teams with 500 agents.

Micah Johnson (07:40)
Man, bros.

Coach Drew Little (07:45)
So that tells you how much service is valued and how little of it there is in this industry. It’s professionalism. It’s showing up and doing the right things the right way. And I don’t necessarily blame agents for this. mean, everybody’s accountable for your own career and learning. But at the same time, if you go to a brokerage that’s not interested in teaching you anything, that’s not interested in giving you any support, how are you going to learn?

Trial and error you got to survive you got to you got to make enough mistakes to live until you figure it all out

Micah Johnson (08:16)
Exactly. Better have a year of income saved up because it does. You’re going to be racking yourself to get it done. that was coming from Florida. That was one of the things that I found staggering also about the real estate industry because I got started as a realtor was the amount of arbitrage. How many people just fall out? I was watching it, seeing it like this is truly a throw the mud at the wall and see what kind of sticks or what sticks kind of game. And like you’re talking about

Coach Drew Little (08:19)
⁓ at least.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (08:46)
When 90 % aren’t good, you’re playing reverse Russian roulette at that point. Now you’re playing with a gun that has five bullets in the chamber and you got one chance of getting somebody good. And that’s something that used to bother the heck out of me. The guy who taught my race. Right, it does.

Coach Drew Little (08:52)
Yeah.

It bothers all agents who are doing a good job, right? It frustrates all of

us.

Micah Johnson (09:07)
One

of the best things I heard in real estate school, was sitting after it was an elderly gentleman teaching my class and he looked at me and I’d have, I’d ask him all kinds of questions because it was, it was going to work. I was leaving the medical field. This was what I was doing. Like I was, no one was going to keep me from being successful. So I was asking a ton of questions, trying to understand. And he sat down with me after class one day he goes, man, I want you to know something. There’s no competition in real estate. If you’re going to show up like you’re doing right now, if you’re going to show up every day.

and do your work, knock out what needs done, you will have a very successful career in this industry because nobody does it, Nobody does it. He said in our class, there’s only gonna be one of you in our class that are still in real estate five years from now. And look at how many classes we’re doing a day, right? There’s massive amount of people that fall out and it runs into that. It’s easy to get into, so that’s awesome, but because it’s easy to get into, it gets some folks in there that…

Coach Drew Little (09:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (10:40)
aren’t really belonging. I watched somebody lose their parents $250,000 life savings because they didn’t know what they were doing. And it’s just like, whoa, whoa, this is a big deal, y’all. It’s not a hobby. And if you’re treating it like a hobby, no, it’s none of those things. And it’s constantly moving. It requires you to be learning all the time. And so like you’re saying, most brokerages aren’t setting you up for success. They’re hoping you’re coming with a

Coach Drew Little (10:41)
Yeah.

It is not a TV show.

Micah Johnson (11:08)
a large sphere of influence so you can just sell to your friends and family forever. And man, when I was teaching people how to be a realtor, I told them, do not talk to your sphere of influence. They shouldn’t trust you yet. Like how many things have they seen you try and you got in here in a month and now you’re saying, know, hey, come let me sell your stuff. If I was your friend, I would say, no, I’m sorry. I don’t want you messing with my

Coach Drew Little (11:18)
Yeah.

That’s right.

Yeah, go practice on

somebody else. ⁓

Micah Johnson (11:32)
Exactly go go actually

learn how to do this professionally and then come back and talk to me because then I might be interested because I have no desire to be your guinea pig Nobody does and that was where I tell folks like you’ve got to actually get out there break it down into how many Conversations you need to have a day to sell houses. There’s a mathematical formula for it

And at that point, man, I would show up to the Gander Mountain in my town and figure out, how long can it take me from getting to saying hello to a stranger to talking about real estate? It’s about five minutes. It doesn’t take long once you’ve mastered how to talk about it. But that’s what drove me. It’s like, okay, how do you create these conversations? I remember one time I went to a Burger King and it was about 10 or 12 people in there. And I was like, I’m gonna buy everybody one of those $1 milkshakes and just say, hey, it’s hot in Florida.

Coach Drew Little (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (12:21)
Hope this helps. And if you’re looking for a house, here you go. I was always thinking to myself, how can you just create a conversation anywhere? Because in the end, it’s simple to get back to real estate once you learn how to do it.

Coach Drew Little (12:33)
And so many people want to be noticed and want to be talked to, right? I sold a house to a young doctor a couple of years ago. ⁓ I was in a coffee shop and she had this hibiscus sleeve tattooed on her arm, right?

And I was like, hey, cool tattoo. And she’s like, yeah. I’m like, you must work out. Because she’s immediately flexing, right? And so we started talking about going to the gym and hibiscus blossoms because my wife’s Hawaiian and all this stuff. And so she became a client. And it was like a two minute connection. But people wear their sports gear, right? It’s like you’re wearing an Eagles jersey. How the Eagles going to do this year?

Micah Johnson (12:56)
Yeah. Right.

Right. And you feel authentic feeling. Right.

Right. And that’s what I mean. And you don’t have to fake that part. ⁓ Building rapport with people is much simpler than you think because you’re both human beings. Like you’re going to relate somewhere. You don’t have to fake relating or push on the fact you’re so different. Like you said, people love to talk about themselves, give them that chance and they’ll open up to you. And once they feel heard, they’ll listen. Then what you have to actually say matters.

Coach Drew Little (13:26)
Yeah.

yeah.

Micah Johnson (13:42)
I know we’ve drifted off subject here a little bit, but I think that’s important for folks to know, right? Like it is, especially in this.

Coach Drew Little (13:45)
That’s okay. Yeah, I mean.

We’re just not you talk about in real estate there you’re throwing mud up against the wall to see what sticks Unfortunately that mud is people but that is exactly how Most of the big brokerages treat it, you know They just see what sticks and they don’t even need to find an agent with a huge sphere That’s going to sell a bunch of houses, right? They they know that the average person has one person in their sphere who’s going to buy or sell this year So if they hit bring in a thousand agents that fail

They’re still going to do a thousand transactions and That’s a that is some terrible terrible math But that’s how the industry’s designed. It’s not an accident. It’s not if it’s not a bug. It’s a feature

Micah Johnson (14:22)
Right, right, exactly.

Exactly. They know the statistics. Like it’s known. We know it for sure. And now it’s being played to. So on behalf of realtors and humanity, my man, thank you for doing it right for solving that out there. So let’s dig back in on the investment side. So there’s realtors that work with retail and then there’s realtors that work with investments and having been one of those people, they are not the same.

Coach Drew Little (14:35)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (14:58)
They’re not built the same. The things you need to know are way different because one’s running a business and one’s helping you buy a house that you’re gonna live in. These are two entirely different scenarios. How have y’all focused there to really set yourselves apart in your market for those types of clients?

Coach Drew Little (15:09)
Yeah.

Well, so

for us, mean, you I like doing retail. I like helping the first time buyer and whatever. I mean, you you feel good helping somebody buy their first house, right? It’s a good feeling, but.

Micah Johnson (15:24)
Yeah, right. Happy transaction.

Coach Drew Little (16:09)
Yeah, but you know, I came into this with a business mindset, with a growth and production mindset, because I’d been in Fortune 500s and started my own companies and all this stuff. And so I wasn’t looking to just sort of drift from retail transaction to retail transaction. I was looking to build a repeatable, sustainable business. was looking to build a process.

Micah Johnson (16:30)
Hmm.

Coach Drew Little (16:32)
And so when you analyze the market, you know, the average retail buyer seller does a transaction about every 12 years now. You got to spend a lot of time in Gander Mountain to fill that pipeline. Yeah. So, you know, I started looking where else does the market move? And, you know, this was 21.

Micah Johnson (16:45)
Right! Right! Holy cow!

Coach Drew Little (16:57)
I really started jumping in with flippers big time and I still work with all the flippers I started working with, right? I picked some good ones. There are some flippers out there that I wouldn’t work with. ⁓ If I wouldn’t sell their house as a buyer’s agent, I don’t want to represent their house as a listing agent. ⁓ So there are flippers in my market. I won’t sell their houses for them. I like them. They’re nice guys, but they do bad work and I’m not trying to put somebody in a bad house. ⁓

Micah Johnson (17:02)
Yeah.

⁓ good roll. Good roll.

Right.

Coach Drew Little (17:27)
So, you know, that’s just a choice I make. But what that choice meant for me early on is I’ve now been working with the same set of half a dozen or so flippers almost since the beginning of this company. We’ve only added one or two in all this time. And then we’ve added some new dev guys who do great work. But

you know, we were looking at scale. How do you scale the business? How do you make it predictable? How do you create something that we can then grow, that we can build in training for agents, that we can expand the company? You know, we, you know, we’re in Virginia Beach now, we’d like to be in Outer Banks in Richmond by the end of the year. You’ve got to have predictable revenue, you’ve got to have scale to scale. ⁓ And so

Micah Johnson (18:10)
business. Have a

real business.

Coach Drew Little (18:12)
Yeah, yeah. And so that’s why we locked on to investors early. And because our interest in investing, my wife and I, is really in short-term rentals. ⁓ We got started working with short-term rental investors pretty early as well. ⁓ And that’s it. We don’t manage Airbnbs. We tried that a few years ago. And we’re like, this is too much work for what it pays, to be honest with you. ⁓

Micah Johnson (18:39)
I to do.

I’m from stuff I don’t like for the most part. I don’t want to do it again.

Coach Drew Little (18:44)
Yeah, yeah, I’m

like, no, this is this is actually difficult to do. And there are people who do it better and at larger scale than us. So why am going to try and reinvent that wheel? You know, in in in real estate sales, it’s different. There’s not a lot of really good companies in real estate sales in Airbnb management. There’s a lot of really good companies. They do a great job. So I’m gonna let them do it.

Micah Johnson (19:08)
Right?

heard that man and it’s a smart way to do business because as you keep going and you get older and older in your business, you niche down more and more and more. So that you start to realize, man, there’s this one thing I can be really good at. And sure you can do other little things on top of it, but that main thing’s got to stay there for the process and the system to keep working. Amazon only sold you books for nine years. That’s it. They only sold you a book for nine years before they sold you anything else. So don’t forget the power of that.

Coach Drew Little (19:22)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (19:39)
stability that process and that system because like you’re saying that’s what’s scalable that’s the thing that you can repeat.

Coach Drew Little (19:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s the thing is with the investment side, you know, I have a knack for finding deals. You know, I have a knack for finding ⁓ value that other people don’t necessarily see right away.

you know in in 21 22 everybody’s looking for these you know our average housing price at the time was about 350 for a single family so everybody is like running and gunning trying to find those properties for 170 180 190 that they can then flip and sell for 350 right everybody you know probably 200 flippers in this market of 1.7 million people trying to buy up all those houses

my clients are their own money. They’re not using hard money. So I said, tell you what, let’s let everybody else do this feeding frenzy. Let’s go find waterfront properties. Let’s go find historic homes that yeah, we’re going to pay more on the front end and it’s going to take longer. But when we sell them, instead of making 30 grand, we’re going to make 150 or 200. Let’s go play where other people can’t play. And that worked really well for us.

Micah Johnson (20:58)
And it’s what you got to do in every market. That’s why each part of any market cycle, there’s opportunity. You just have to understand where that opportunity is. We were talking about a little bit pre-recording. New development became one, where that’s a move to make. Start making sure that you’re hitting the numbers that you need to. Because in the end, the investment side is a numbers game. People are involved for sure. if they don’t pencil, it’s not a deal. And finding those markets, I was actually talking to a commercial guy the other day where that’s

Coach Drew Little (21:03)
Yeah.

yeah.

Micah Johnson (21:26)
the same concept as what they did in their business. You five million and under deals have all this racket around them. And institutional buyers have such big funds now that they’re not trying to buy deals in the five to 25 million range. It’s not enough capital. So all of a sudden this gap got created where boom, you can just go in and fill it if you’re paying attention. And much like the same thing, okay, there’s all this noise of people we’re competing with here that are making these not deals.

Coach Drew Little (21:47)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (21:53)
Right? You start seeing, I can’t buy this and make a pencil anymore. I don’t know how they’re doing this besides they’re just trying to pay their workers to make sure they got work because these aren’t working. So yeah. So to shift to that idea of, especially when they have their own money, Hey, let’s go a little more expensive. You have time. Look, you got the money. Let’s find that project that you’re going to be proud of. And in the end, it’s going to turn around for more money than we were thinking to begin with.

Coach Drew Little (22:02)
Lots of app.

Yeah, and you know, it’s like you have to pay attention to what’s going on in the bigger economy, right? People are talking a lot about the K shaped economy now. And you know what that means is it’s a bigger divide between the haves and the have nots. Now, look, I want everybody to own a home. I don’t want anybody to be left out of the American dream. But when we’re talking about investing, if you’re investing on the low end, we’re because of interest rates, people can’t get financed. You’re going to end up sitting on or

losing money on properties. know, the fastest selling price point in Virginia Beach is probably about $400,000. Really hard, really hard to find flips at that price range. But probably the second highest or second fastest price range is $1 to $1.2 million. And flippers aren’t buying million dollar properties for the most part.

Micah Johnson (22:52)
Thank

Mm.

Coach Drew Little (23:13)
So if we can get our investors into those kinds of properties, really anything above 750, we have very little competition and plenty of buyers.

Micah Johnson (23:23)
Right? Because they’re not affected by the normal market transitions. That’s one thing about higher price properties that high net worth individual. They play a different game. They’re thinking differently when they’re buying and their markets are typically always around. They can go anywhere and buy a house. They’re looking in a different. They’re fishing in a completely different pond. So that shift up and it gives you access to something that like you’re saying most can’t get into.

Coach Drew Little (23:26)
Yeah.

And.

And once you get over a million

dollars, mean, lots of people will use a jumbo loan up to about a million. But once you deal with people who are buying properties over a million dollars, the higher that number goes, the less likely they are to use a traditional mortgage, even a jumbo. They’re going to use some kind of other financing tool based on their assets. ⁓ So they’re much less sensitive to interest rates. They’re much less sensitive to all the things that have slowed down the lower end of the market. ⁓ now, like I said, I want everybody to own a

and I’m glad rates are coming down and I’m hoping we’re going to see an explosion of home ownership for people in that sort of starter bracket because that really is the key to wealth for most people in this country is getting started owning a home. And so I want everybody to have a house. ⁓ But the reality of the investment side of the business the last couple of years has been it’s a lot harder to make money in the lower half of the K.

Micah Johnson (24:44)
For sure. Absolutely for sure. I’ve seen it across the board. A of my friends run investment companies around the nation and it has been some of the toughest three years. I remember in 2022 and 2023, I was doing some talks at events about those kinds of things. Like how do you stay in the game? You know, how do you make sure you’re playing it right now in a way where what do need to pivot? What do you need to adjust? The market’s done something. I was talking with some of the other day.

Truly something we’ve never seen before. We’ve never seen homes appreciate that fast and then we’ve never seen interest double that fast. And it put us in a place where holy cow, what the heck is going on? So it’s such a funny time to be in right now and the ones that are doing well are the ones that are adjusting. They’re not just trying to cram square pegs and round holes.

Coach Drew Little (25:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I was talking to somebody about focusing a little bit more on high end stuff the last year or so. I think we’ve got a bunch of new dev coming to market and I think our lowest price point’s about 700,000, ⁓ which is almost double the standard here, right? And we’ve got a bunch coming in just under a million ⁓ because we know they’re gonna sell, right?

And I was talking to somebody about it and they’re like, you know, why are you focusing so much on the high end? That’s like, you know, they asked John Dillinger, why did he rob banks? Cause that’s where the money is. You know, ⁓ you got it. You got to go where you can do business. You know?

Micah Johnson (26:02)
Right, exactly.

If you want to stay in business, that’s the key and acquires that. That’s why I always go back to this is a lifelong learning game. It’s one of the reasons I like real estate is it engages your mind. You got to think about it. You have to participate in it, especially in a position like yourself. When you’re working with investors, having a realtor and a brokerage that knows what’s going on is involved themselves and can see what’s going on and help you with it. That’s where what y’all do becomes invaluable.

It’s truly where now that professionalism, that expertise lines back up with the calling. Because mean, real estate’s been going on a long time. It’s the oldest written code of ethics for an industry in America is real estate. So it’s like, okay, we’ve known for a long time that this is important. You can mess with people doing it and we need to do it the right way because if you don’t, you get a lot of things that don’t turn out well for anybody.

Coach Drew Little (27:03)
Yeah,

it is really important. mean, people don’t really understand the history of the NAR and stuff. The reason the NAR was created was to keep the government from taking over the real estate business, right? Because in the early 1900s, you literally would have people set up these fake companies and sell you shares of the Brooklyn Bridge. You you’ve heard people talk about selling the Brooklyn Bridge. People really did that. ⁓

Micah Johnson (27:29)
Right?

Coach Drew Little (27:33)
And they would print up fake railroad stocks and fake bridge deeds and all this stuff in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the last Gilded Age. They did all kinds of shady stuff like that. And that’s where NAR and the code of ethics and all that came out of, because if the industry didn’t get itself under control, the government was absolutely going to take control of it. It was because it was the Wild West.

Micah Johnson (27:58)
It was, man. It’s funny to watch History Channel as a good show on the titans of industry, the titans of build America, around that mark. But it really shows you how shady things were, how weird stuff that they did that where you have a few people making these huge decisions that are affecting thousands of people over just a grudge. know, Henry talked bad about me at this meeting, so now I’m going to go mess with everything.

Coach Drew Little (28:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

Now, yeah, now I’m going to go

print up a bunch of fake shares of your railroad stock and flood the market.

Micah Johnson (28:30)
Exactly. Yeah,

just wild west kind of stuff. you know, that’s where I do appreciate that. Because again, it all comes back to that professionalism. The folks I know, whether they’re realtors or investors that have lasted in the business, they take pride in their work. There’s dignity. I heard a really good term. Dignity of work when they realize that what they’re doing is important. They put their passion into it. They’re aligned with it. And they’re able to create

a product, a service, whatever it is, that actually helps people in the industry, whether it’s from a first time home buyer or an investor buying their 200th house, whatever it is, it’s actually participating in the process where people aren’t calling you just because you have the keys. And that was a problem I started seeing with realtors is they just were becoming car salesmen in a way. Like we only deal with the car salesman to take a test drive. That’s it. That’s why we’re dealing with them. They’re not doing anything for us.

Coach Drew Little (29:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Micah Johnson (29:27)
So when you’re only calling a realtor because they have the keys, someone’s missing out. Like you’re missing out on a major piece of the puzzle because they’re way bigger than that in that process.

Coach Drew Little (29:38)
That’s a,

so when Ford came out with the new Bronco a few years ago, I’m a Ford guy. I grew up in a four wheel drive association. My dad used to race a 67 Bronco, ⁓ dirt drag race, you know, eighth of a mile just throwing gravel, right?

Micah Johnson (29:50)
Nice. Heck yeah.

Coach Drew Little (29:56)
So I grew up in that. And so when the new Broncos came out, was all in. And Ford had this thing because they didn’t have any Broncos in the dealership. They couldn’t get them here because of supply chain and the demand and everything. So they did this, basically they did this tour where they set Broncos around the country for you to go test drive them. And so when we test drove the Bronco the first time, it was with a woman who was a professional overland racer.

who had been driving the truck and really knew it, not a salesperson at all, an expert in off-roading in this vehicle. Sold, right? Done. You know, got that thing in the mud, learned how to use the different features with somebody who really knew the vehicle. That’s a completely different experience than going to the dealership and doing a test drive. Agents who are successful are more like that professional overland driver than they are the guy at the showroom.

Micah Johnson (30:31)
Right. So nice!

Right?

What a great example that I mean, truly, because you’re talking about someone who’s a professional at their craft versus someone just sitting on the lot. And that is if your agent is just sitting in the office all the time, something’s wrong. There’s not they’re not supposed to be at the brokerage all the time. You’re supposed to be out and about in the community, understanding what’s going on, nose to the ground, because you’re the front lines of real estate. I mean, the first thing people think real estate, it’s realtor.

Coach Drew Little (31:06)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (31:20)
typically what you’re thinking in that world. NAR has done a great job as getting that out for the last long time to make sure that it’s known that way. However, it’s again it’s a real responsibility and I love folks who take that way that see it for what it is. It’s not just someone that’s bored and wants something to do and that’s how it feels like a lot of folks get in. It’s no this is real.

Coach Drew Little (31:32)
It is.

Yeah,

I think a lot of agents get into and they don’t know it takes them a long time to figure out their niche and that’s You know that lack of focus and this is again. This is an area. I think where brokerages fail ⁓ You know you hire these agents in and you don’t even really know what they’re good at what they’d be good for you’re just like go sell a house go talk to your sphere, right and

Micah Johnson (32:02)
Yeah, right.

Coach Drew Little (32:04)
the agents who really succeed, they’re agents who do super well with celebrity real estate and investors and first time home buyers. But the ones who are really killing it in any area, you notice they really do focus on that. Like I’ll do some first time home buyers. I enjoy doing it, but there are agents in my market. That’s all they do. First time home buyers seminars. They know all the grants back and forth. They are a hundred percent all in on first time home buyers and they may do a hundred deals a year.

time home buyers. And yeah, these deals don’t pay a whole lot, but when you do 100 of them, you know, and then there are agents who like dabble with investors, but don’t really know what they’re doing. And then there are teams like ours where we really understand the needs of the investors and really know how to find them deals. So that specialization, I think is what sets the top agents above. We all can do anything, even commercial in Virginia. You know, if you’re can if you’re in Virginia,

Micah Johnson (32:39)
Right? Right, you’re making fun

Coach Drew Little (33:04)
you’re licensed for residential and commercial. I’ve never done a commercial deal because I don’t know what I’m doing, right? If I have a commercial deal come my way, I have a commercial agent I work with. But that specialization is what sets you apart, being able to provide a different level of service and knowledge.

Micah Johnson (33:17)
Someone had to open it.

I because I remember meeting my first investor. it was, I got started as an agent in 2014. I met him in 2017 and it was

I mean, at that point in time, I was kind of just bouncing around doing retail, not really sure what I liked yet. I was realizing, man, I don’t like selling 50 people, one house. I want to, how can I do this different? How can I wake up more each day on offense to go find, you know, I like having money to spend when I wake up, whose money can I go spend? And I ended up meeting my first investor and was like, Oh my God, this is awesome. This is what I was looking for. And it just, the next niche happened. And that’s one thing I love about real estate is

Coach Drew Little (33:51)
Right.

Micah Johnson (34:02)
If you don’t like a certain section of it, pivot. Find that section that does align with you and lights you up. And because there’s a way to pay that emotional paycheck and the financial one in this industry, you can find it.

Coach Drew Little (34:06)
Yeah.

I tell you, my first

investor that I got with that was of any size, when I first realized they had a $8 million signature line of credit to buy houses, that made me feel pretty good. I was like, we could go really do some business here.

Micah Johnson (34:34)
Right.

It’s powerful. From 2018 to 2020, I was working with a little firm where we represented a hedge fund and a big one. I had a billion dollars to spend every morning I woke up. Like literally a billion dollars to spend. And I was just like, how can I spend this money? And I was doing this in Jacksonville in Tampa where, man, I printed out this little sheet that literally said I have a billion dollars to spend. Here’s what I want to buy.

Coach Drew Little (34:44)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (35:02)
went and found investors. I went and found anybody I could. Like, I literally have all this money, bring me these houses. And I just started training people on how to sell me that house to a hedge fund. And we started moving them at 30 to 50 a month, just massive amount of movement. Because again, what’s that part you like? I love my past when I was selling insurance when the Great Recession hit. And I was a young guy at the time, and it hit me really hard. And I sometimes I wish I would have stayed in I got out.

Coach Drew Little (35:09)
Yeah.

There you go.

Micah Johnson (35:31)
didn’t really need to as I reflected later on in life. You know, we all grow up. However, I that taught me there was a certain kind of person I liked. I love business owners. I like working with them. I like being one. I just love that kind of performer. And I just as I was in real estate started shifting, I found that person again. It was like, Oh, here we go. These are the people I like to talk to. Is in you. Anyways, I can go on for that forever. But it’s

Coach Drew Little (35:35)
Yeah.

Well,

they’re so focused on the mission, right? I don’t enjoy people getting distraught and overly emotional in a business situation, right? And in real estate, you do get this. I’ve been in those rooms where people are crying and yelling at each other because a deal’s coming apart.

Micah Johnson (36:03)
Right. Right.

Coach Drew Little (36:26)
that’s not fun for me. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be in that situation. And sometimes in retail, you just can’t avoid it. Things just, you know, the other side does something that you couldn’t see coming. And it’s a mess, you know. And with the business people, you don’t really have that. You know, they’re not emotionally attached. Does it pencil? Great. Let’s close.

Micah Johnson (36:28)
No.

Right.

Exactly.

when it becomes, once it’s just a math problem, then the people in relationships get easier. That’s what I learned. Like you just, now you just need to manage this part and then keep bringing them quality and you’re going to do just fine. And, and like you said,

Coach Drew Little (37:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, and the level of

efficiency goes through the roof.

Micah Johnson (37:10)
Now you got a process. Now you got a system. Now you can actually scale, right? It’s no longer hope pulling you along. Like is that hope ain’t a strategy. You actually have one. You’re waking up each day knowing I know what I’m doing today. I call them activities of daily living. I know what I have to do when I wake up today. As long as I do that, that’s moving the ball forward everywhere. I don’t need to get stressed out about anything else because it’s all backfilled into here’s what we do today. Get that done. That sets up what we’re going to do tomorrow and just

get it done, get it done, get it done. You look up five years later, man, you actually pulled off what you were trying to.

Coach Drew Little (37:45)
If I have,

so I have a certain amount of time I take off each week or each year for industry events, vacation and corporate planning and management, right? We do a retreat, we do a war room. I go to the sell it mastermind. I go to Inman luxury. I take four weeks of vacation, right? So I’m basically working 43 weeks a year. If I make, if I have eight real estate conversations, five days a week, I’m going to sell 43 houses. Done.

I mean, know your numbers. Yeah.

Micah Johnson (38:18)
Exactly. What are your numbers? That’s get literally getting it down to that. Your whole mindset changes. The stress goes away. You start to realize, okay, this is actually doable, right? You start to see you’re not even elephant. It’s one bite at a time. You just.

Coach Drew Little (38:33)
If

I get up and make my phone calls like, know, so earlier this week, so I was just, you may have noticed my voice is a little off. I was in the, actually in the emergency room Sunday night. ⁓ I didn’t get my flu shot this year and I paid the price. but so this past week is one of my reset weeks for the year.

Micah Johnson (38:44)
⁓ goodness, man.

Hahaha

Coach Drew Little (38:56)
So, you know, I have my pipeline and my CRM. It was down about $4 million from where it was last year. I’m down to about a 20. It was about about a $20 million pipeline.

So I went into my database and I went line by line looking at everybody to see if there was anything I hadn’t followed up on, anything I’d missed. And I went back and I just started calling people, hey, you still thinking about moving? Hey, did you ever sell that house? And I went back and I found $8 million in potential sales to put back into my pipeline, right? So if I get up every day and I make my calls, I’m going to make a half a million dollars this year.

I don’t have to worry about it. I know it’s going to happen because I know my numbers. I know what it takes to make that money. I know what I made last year. I know how I did it. I know where I could have made more. So it’s easy to know what to add this year. And that’s the thing at the end of every year is the year’s winding down. I look at what has worked and what has not. And I don’t I don’t fall in love with ideas of how to grow my business until they work. Once they work, I’m in love with them.

Micah Johnson (40:01)
Mmm.

Coach Drew Little (40:05)
Until then they’re just an experiment and if it doesn’t work I’ll throw it out.

Micah Johnson (40:05)
Right.

Right. It lines up with so many business entrepreneurs have just created stuff the market doesn’t want and put it all put all in on it for nobody wants this. Make sure someone wants it and it works before you scale it because that’s the we get ourselves into that mix up. Well, coach, I got to wind it down here. I really appreciate your conversation today and our time together for those that are listening and watching that be interested in learning more from you, understanding more about what you got going on. What’s the best way for them to find you?

Coach Drew Little (40:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Easiest thing to do is just hit me up on Instagram. It’s @coach_drew757 coach drew seven five seven. I’m coach drew I’m in the seven five seven

Micah Johnson (40:51)
Love

that. If you’re listening in, make sure to check the show notes. We’ll have Coach Drew’s link there. Follow along. I highly recommend following people who are doing business the right way. We’re out there actually creating something that’s sustainable, process driven, system driven, and that’s what makes it scalable. So again, coach, thanks for being on with us today. For all you listening out there, if you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with somebody else you think could get value out of it. Pass it along. As always, please don’t forget to subscribe.

Coach Drew Little (41:10)
Thanks, man.

Micah Johnson (41:20)
We appreciate every single one of you that’s following along out there with us. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Coach Drew who are out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Coach Drew Little (41:34)
Thanks.

Tags:

Investor Fuel

How Real Estate Professionals Build Scalable, Investor-Focused Businesses

Show Summary

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

Tags:

Ready to take your business to the next level? Take the next steps below