Stop Hustling Alone: How to Build a Real Estate Business That Actually Scales

Jonathan Spears (00:00)
Robert Kiyosaki has a book, if you’re real nerdy, you’ve probably read Rich Dad Poor Dad, but his follow up to that is a book called Cash Flow Quadrant. And in Cash Flow Quadrant, he opens this thing talking about why organization is the game changer. And he uses this analogy about like a rural village that is in need of fresh water supply. And listen close because this has always stuck with me.

Micah Johnson (01:58)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m speaking with Jonathan, who’s been making some serious moves in real estate for quite some time now. Jonathan, welcome in, man, glad to have you.

Jonathan Spears (02:10)
What’s up, Micah? I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Micah Johnson (02:13)
Absolutely. pumped man. I’m pumped. I’m excited for our talk today because we’re gonna dig in on the nitty-gritty the things that make you last in one of the most powerful industries that’s ever existed and I it’s right up my alley So I’m pumped man. So let’s dig in for folks who aren’t familiar with you yet Tell us a little more about yourself and what your main focus is right now

Jonathan Spears (02:33)
Yeah, for sure. So my name is Jonathan Spears. ⁓ I am principal of Spears Group, which is one of the top selling real estate teams in the country. We’re located in a 30 mile stretch of beach called 30A in Northwest Florida. Most people actually, Micah, we were talking about 30A before this call. Micah lives in St. Augustine, which is maybe a four to five hour drive from 30A, but he didn’t know 30A existed. So.

Micah Johnson (02:58)
I have driven through it. Like I’ve driven through there and didn’t know it existed.

Jonathan Spears (03:03)
It’s a, it’s a, call it, we’ve actually trademarked the term Hamptons of the South. And it’s pretty much a second home destination, white sand beach, emerald green water. I was born and raised here. fortunate, fortunate to be here. It’s a beautiful part of Florida, but, ⁓ my team is basically a small brokerage running within compass. We’ve got over 20 agents. ⁓ and really this is a perfect lead in to what I’m.

obsessing over right now. And if you’re listening to this and you’re like Mike or myself, you probably have an obsessive personality. Maybe you’re an entrepreneur that’s obsessing over new industry or ⁓ you’re in real estate. But for me, what I learned is to scale, had to obsess over systems and I’m self-described ADHD. I have a system, but it always lives in my head. And what tends to happen, especially running like a real estate team, but much like any business is that

the systems that live in our head, either hire people to go out and execute vision, or we hire people to chase us around and try to pull those things from us and organize them. And the latter is highly inefficient. And so my career spans 17 years. I went to college at the age of 14. I had my first degree at the age of 16. I got my second degree at 18 going on 19. The same year I got my real estate license. And I never thought I’d be a real estate agent.

I want to go study finance. thought I’d go to Wharton. I was set on getting an MBA and economically I was facing pretty heavy headwinds. It was 2008, 2009, 2010. In our market, we had this thing called the BP oil spill. So if you’re an investor out there, it’s like, if you could look back and buy a stock, you’d buy Nvidia, right? If you could look back and buy real estate, you’d buy…

⁓ Gulf front real estate in Northwest Florida during the BP oil spill. It was ⁓ pretty much a depression and it was the perfect time for me to jump into this market and get to learning.

Micah Johnson (05:04)
Right, right. So interesting, man. All right, we’re going to throw the door open here. What led you where are you today? You dipped on it a little bit, but take us through the real estate career. What have you done so far in the business that has gotten you and taught you what you know now and equips you to do what you do today?

Jonathan Spears (06:07)
Yeah, certainly. So we started off the convo talking about systems and why organization is an obsession. The reason organization is an obsession is because as an 18 year old kid, already college educated, graduated top of my class at Florida State University. Man, I had the world by the tail and I thought I knew what I wanted to do. I was so passionate about volume and transacting and at an early age became a top agent in my market.

I think I was 22 when I became the number one agent. To put that into perspective, the average median age of an agent in our market was like 57 at the time. So really there were no young guys that were blazing trails. I had a self belief that not only I could do it, but that I would continue to do it. And I started to build systems and those systems live right up here between my ears. And when I finally realized that I could not do everything, and this is what

Where a lot of people get stuck is in their perfectionism, which is truly a desire to be excellent, right? Like we want, we want to have the best signs. We want to have the best marketing. We want to have the best, best, best. They believe that they are the best to execute those tasks. And I think that trips so many people up and I got tripped up on this for the longest time. I can tell you when I was 22, 23 years old doing a hundred million dollars in sales,

Just about by myself, I had one assistant at the time. I could put a sign in the yard better than you could. I could put a sign in the yard so good and I could face it in the perfect direction that I would generate more leads than you would. And this is really ⁓ an analogy for the fact that like we believe we can do everything, but we really can’t focus and accomplish more unless we realize, A, we need to build an organization that we believe in these systems and processes. And we put the right people.

that are more talented than we are in charge. And we give them that, we give them that ability. I call it decentralized command. ⁓ If you guys have read the book, Extreme Ownership, it talks a lot about this concept, but you empower others to come into this vision that you’ve created, this sort of playing field that ⁓ you’ve plowed and you give them ⁓ opportunity to grow. And so from an early age, ⁓

You know, I think I sold a hundred million at age of 25, which that was, you know, that was a great milestone. I realized with my first child on the way, this was circa 2017. So almost a decade ago that I could not do it all. And if I want to be a great dad, had to adapt. So that’s also a concept we’ll talk about in this podcast is adapting to the market conditions, because we’re going to talk about how the current market is tough, but also how every market that you work in is tough. But for me, like,

what that looks like is I had to bring people around me that shared the same vision and really rally them and lead them to go and accomplish that goal.

Micah Johnson (09:02)
It’s good, man. You’ve nailed on some of the key things that plague entrepreneurs. Our problem is we can do more. That’s our problem. It’s your biggest problem is because you can do it. as you, especially when you’re younger, especially when nothing’s pulling on your time, especially when, and the way time works, you think it’s just, this will always be this way. I’ll always be able to do this. I’ll just always be able to, and then life happens. if it,

forces you to adjust you the mentor I work with he calls it role-based living he’s like you you are not one thing man you are many many things now you’re you’re a son you’re a brother you’re a father you’re a husband you’re A business owner you you do this you do that look these are all different things and you gotta understand Which one you’re being at any given time because it’ll throw your life off if you’re trying to be them all at once You don’t get anywhere. There’s just no way to do that

And then you pull that concept out and you start plugging it into business. It’s ⁓ Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s who not how. It can’t be you. Not if that’s your goal. Like you trying to build a high paying job or you trying to build a business. Entrepreneurs, and ask me how I know, were really, really good at building high paying jobs. Because the stuff that leads you to the reliability, what I’ve learned is almost counterintuitive. Until someone told me, it’s not like I would have guessed it.

It was just, I just need to work harder. Work harder solves everything, right? It’s like a caveman speech. do that.

Jonathan Spears (10:30)
More

get go true

Micah Johnson (10:32)
It doesn’t, it really requires you to slow down. So I am pumped about what we’re digging into. Take us into one of those first lessons that forced you to slow down. What was one of those like, as that onion peeled, what was one of those first layers coming back that was like, okay, this is where I can start to make some headwinds. So if someone’s listening or watching in out there and they’re feeling that way, like we just described, like, okay, where do I start? How do I actually start to make my way down and to create this life I actually want?

Jonathan Spears (11:33)
Yeah, I think too, you almost have to elevate your thinking at an enterprise level. And so I’m pretty passionate about really helping entrepreneurs think about themselves as a CEO. And it’s so hard, right? So in real estate sales, you get caught in this production run. So whether I’m developing properties or I’m selling them, I’m always looking for that next deal. I’m always looking for that next client. I’m always sort of on the hunt.

And the problem when you’re in a hunter mode only is that what happens to the rest of the village? What happens to home? You never really established roots. And the hard part about creating an organization is that you have to slow down and take the time to establish roots. And that typically looks like finding resources around you that you can invest in to bring in. I’ll give you a good example. ⁓ Early in my career, you know, bringing in an assistant just

simply bring in an assistant, right? I had to commit to a 60 or $70,000 salary. ⁓ on top of that, I had to relinquish control, which none of us are probably great at. Why? Because we again, believe we can do everything better than everybody else. And then I think, you know, Dr. Hardy’s book, who not house one of my absolute favorites. When you start looking at problems and you ask yourself instead of, know, how do I solve them? It’s who can help me solve them? Who is going to solve this for me?

so that I can go out and I can work in a larger problem. That’s the whole concept here. For me, when I brought in my first assistant, I remember I had to flip this switch from being very reactive to proactive. And so when you bring on staff or you bring in, let’s just say you’re investing in a project, you’re bringing in somebody to help you manage that project. What can happen when you’re so reactive in a project is like, man, I gotta be there to meet the installers. I’ve gotta be there to make sure that this is measured properly. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta.

The problem is we get caught in that I got to, and then we never realized what is the highest and best value for me to be doing. It’s probably out identifying other properties to acquire, raising investment capital. Like those are high value tasks. And who could I bring in that could be more reactive to the things that are needed on a daily basis? Because really we need to be in a proactive state. It doesn’t mean that we don’t react to things, but we’re always thinking proactively. How do I get myself my time back?

to go out and do the things that actually generate business.

Micah Johnson (13:51)
Man, you nailed it right there. And you set it up front. It’s a mindset update. is a shift that takes place for how powerful the mind is in terms of the, can just do more because you can work hard and because it’s, it shows in all of our lives. Like the high performers are high performers for a reason. It’s this fact that we’ll dedicate our things, way.

we’ll dedicate ourselves to things in ways other people’s will not. That’s what makes us a high performer and learning, hey, someone doing something 80 % as good as me, if I can get to 80%, now I got 160 % and I can’t outrun 160%. I can maybe get 110 for about a week, but you start to adjust that and it requires you to think in such a different way. The way it was described to me is like flip the pyramid over.

We keep trying to build it from the bottom up, but once you want to build it like a real business owner and actually create the life you always said you wanted, I always hear people say, I got in this for time and freedom. And then I ask them, well, how much of that do you have? And most of them say not much because it is an intentional thing to create it. And it starts right here, starts here. You have to choose to be that way. Cause it’s not that there won’t be temptations to just let me go do this. I can do this so fast.

while someone else is learning and it can get your heart racing, but it’s the reality of no, if I slow down and do this well, what this does is slingshots me. And that’s how life already is. It compresses and it expands and it compresses and it expands and how well you deal with that compression, man, exponential potential, Like that, that’s what makes us the next one.

Jonathan Spears (16:15)
Robert Kiyosaki has a book, if you’re real nerdy, you’ve probably read Rich Dad Poor Dad, but his follow up to that is a book called Cash Flow Quadrant. And in Cash Flow Quadrant, he opens this thing talking about why organization is the game changer. And he uses this analogy about like a rural village that is in need of fresh water supply. And listen close because this has always stuck with me.

He talks about how the municipality of this rural village needs water. And so they asked the villagers to bring them proposals. And out of those proposals, they end up picking two candidates and they award them both a proposal or they award them both with a grant to go out and get fresh water for their municipality. One of the guys disappears, right? Like he’s out, nobody really hears from him. You know, he brought a great proposal, but he’s not like the water doesn’t come immediately.

The other guy decides to go out and he immediately grabs buckets and he goes and walks himself, you know, miles down the road and he gets water and there’s instant gratification, right? Like the city, there’s money that immediately flows to him. People are happy. ⁓ he’s the man he’s gotten fresh water to the, to the area. Then he recruits his kids. He’s like, come on guys, like we can do more.

Right? Like they’re working hard. They’ve, they’ve got these buckets, they’re putting them on their back and they’re going over time. The quality control issue sets in, man. You we noticed that you’re bringing this water back, but there’s like flies in it. And, ⁓ you guys look kind of tired. look like you may even be sweating in this water. Like this, how, like what’s the viability of this? And then he starts to notice some wear and tear in his body. He’s like, man, you know, my knees out, I’m going to miss this day. And when he misses that day, guess what?

they don’t get enough water for the city. Fast forward a few months, the other guy who’s awarded a contract comes back. And what he did is he went out and he found investors to basically invest in a pipeline. And he created this pipeline concept from the watering hole to the village. And not only was he able to create instant on-demand water, but

He did it in a matter of six months and then he went and franchised it out to all the other municipalities around him. Meanwhile, the guy that was carrying buckets is tired. He is unable to create on demand products and he still has a key man problem because he’s the one delivering the water to the municipality. And so the moral of the story is how many of us are out there carrying buckets each and every day? We’re trying to work harder, not smarter. We’re really trying to figure out, man, I can…

I am the pipeline. I can go out and I can do this versus creating a system and organization and figuring out, okay, this works, that doesn’t. Let’s, let’s assemble this together and create value for our customer. And once you create that assembly line, you have something that’s replicable and you can teach other people that concept to work in, which allows you to move up to enterprise level and to do more with less.

Micah Johnson (19:15)
Bingo gets you to economies of scale and to your strength. Part of that. We’re all good at pointing out our strengths. The most valuable thing we can do is point out our weakness is to understand what’s that thing we don’t need to do anymore. And some of it’s easy. Some of the stuff we already don’t like. But one thing I like to do is a time audit every now and again, where every week for a full week, every day or every hour, just write down what I’m doing.

What I’m doing, what I’m doing and go back and see, okay, which parts do I enjoy? Which parts do I not enjoy? What’s not beneficial? Cause you said it earlier. What’s your most valuable use of your time? Cause as you get smarter and grow and keep going, you learn more, you’re just more valuable. If, if, if you really break it down and you’re worth a thousand dollars an hour and you’re doing a $15 an hour job, what are you doing? Like, what, what are you doing? And that’s what gets a lot of us be, well, I can just do it. I can just do it.

I can just do it. Now, AI has helped with some of that, but even with AI stuff, the final 10 % of the project, we still need engineers and things for, right? So it’s really limiting what you can just do. No one cares if you can just do it. Can you steer your ship? Can you actually get it where you want it to go? Because I love the fact about the vision part. Once you start including other humans, it’s bigger than you.

It’s bigger than real estate is always bigger than you. is an intensely human business across the board. Like we were always doing something that involves another human directly. They’re either going to live in it, work in it, something in it. Like that’s what it’s for. Put cows on it. I don’t care. Something.

Jonathan Spears (20:48)
That’s why having a clear mission is so important. I think if you’re going to lead a team, you need to have a mission. Like what is our why? And what most entrepreneurs tend to do is they say, I’m the why I need you to support me. And guess what? That leads to burnout for the team because while the team may work to please you, you become a key man and really a stumbling block in a mission. So what I had to do is I had to figure out instead of building a team that’s just centered around me.

How do I help Jonathan? It’s how does Jonathan help this team? What is it about what I’m creating that’s so valuable that it’s gonna improve and enhance their lives? And that’s really the major flip in terms of awareness of, man, what is my place in this entrepreneurial world? Yes, you’re hungry. Yes, you wanna go out and you wanna build wealth and you wanna create things. But what is that mission statement? For me, it goes back to people, right? I’m in an intensely people business, just like you said.

My mission is to build lifelong relationships and create raving fans. And what I tell a team is I say, listen, when you’re deer in the headlights, like, what do I do? The market’s slow or things are hard, or this isn’t going my way, or I, this is not what I expected. Go back to the mission. What’s the mission? Are you building lifelong relationships is your first action today about building a relationship? Is it about making a raving fan or is it about you? Is it about, you know, your needs?

And that’s, that’s like, always, I always tell entrepreneurs in general, it’s like, you got, you got two options. You either, you either get deer in the headlights and you get hit, or you have a bias to action and you move. And when you have a mission statement, that’s powerful and simple, it gives people an actionable, ⁓ opportunity to get out of when, when they’re stuck, when they’re in a rut. And for me, like the, the rut I would always get in is like, I’m not doing enough or.

I need to work harder. And then I just go back to, man, this isn’t just about building the relationships. This is about putting in the time and the work will take care of you. But when you’re doing the right things consistently, you’re going to see the fruit of that labor.

Micah Johnson (22:50)
I couldn’t agree more, It’s like an update to the golden rule. Really, whatever you want, give it away first. That’s right. you want? You want love? Love people. You want money? Value. Like, what do you want? What do you really want? And then give away the thing that gets that thing back. That’s literally what treat others like you want to be treated means. It’s not just like be nice to people. It’s how we can interact in a way where

we’re not taken from each other, right? That’s the big update in sales I’ve seen the last 20 years that I’ve really enjoyed is even the sales training is way more about the person you’re helping and not about the thing you’re selling, especially in the home industry, especially here, especially among real estate investors. The best ones have an incredible process at understanding the problem. What do you actually need?

95 % of the time we’re not the solution. So we have to know what’s going on because it may be a realtor. It may be nothing. I can’t help you. But it’s that ability just to interact, connect. like you said, get that mission done. oof, when that mission is bigger than you, that’s when people will follow. That’s the key for entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs.

Jonathan Spears (23:59)
Abs-

Micah Johnson (24:03)
I won’t say all, most, you can’t blanket statement. Most have the gift of leadership if they’ll tap into it. Most, because they are really good at updating environments. That’s a skillset that we have is we can look at stuff and put it together in ways that most don’t see and boom, we’re just updating the environment, but it’s not just for us. When we understand that we’re building stuff for other people to use and housing is such a good example, especially for developers, you’re not living there.

Yeah, you’re literally building something for somebody else to use even the process then sticks to it, but where People will buy in because it’s not just build good house make good money. It’s there’s a family there They’re gonna eat there live there breathe their sleep their laughter love their cry there all the things they’re like it’s connected to something better like mine is I get to do something powerful for my hometown and I get to connect people in my hometown to it that’s improving a problem and that’s what

You know, multiple businesses I’ve pay attention to the stuff you get traction around. Pay attention to the visions that draw people to them because that’s the thing. If what you’re doing doesn’t attract anybody, it’s all about you. Correct. If what you’re doing starts to pull people to you, now you’re onto something. That can scale. That’s scalable. That’s its original thing. Is it attracting? And you’re nailing it, man, because that’s what you build on.

Jonathan Spears (25:25)
I agree. also think as an investor, who you work with and really in any team environment, who you work with matters. And that statement also comes off fairly cliche, but let me give you an example of what that looks like. Because if you don’t have trust in these relationships, you really have nothing. For my business, people transact with me because they like and trust me. Likeability ultimately leads to trust.

⁓ especially when you do a great job for people, you make them raving fans. But for me, when I think about leading an investor or a client through a process, ⁓ I have to earn their trust first. And so if you’re going to lead people outside of yourself, if you’re an investor that let’s just say you’re working with, ⁓ a great, first of all, usually investors have a great real estate agent partnership. And if they, maybe they are an agent themselves.

At minimum, they’ve got great relationships with agents in the community that they’re serving because those guys end up being mouthpieces, not only for their products, but also for opportunities. They’re relaying information. You’re trading off of it. Building that trust is critical. I just did a deal with an investment group that we identified land five years ago. We acquired it. ⁓ we put together or I put together along with a builder.

basically what a market would reward. And then we just exited that project for ⁓ almost $60 million. And so we had basically a five-year capital velocity. And those guys did extraordinarily well. But none of that would have happened without building trust first. And so if you’re thinking about putting together a team or you’re working with a team or you’re probably listening to what I’m saying and there’s a red flag going off because your team is not somebody that you trust.

That is a glaring opportunity to not only make a change, but as a leader, you’ve got to be able to make sure you put the accountability in place to have the right people in your organization or in your fold that not only do you trust, but because of that trust, you guys are building better things.

Micah Johnson (27:30)
Right? Right. And it you said it, I’ve heard it said like, no, and trust. That’s the three. Trust is the most important one. And it takes the longest to build, which is just like real estate itself. If you’re getting in this for fast things, just don’t bother. Not right now. There’s about a six, one year to two year gap. can get in every so often where you can do fast stuff and you’ll probably lose it though, because you won’t get out before it stops. And that’s what’s happened now. But

shoot ADHD got me. What were we talking about right before that?

Jonathan Spears (28:01)
⁓ Man ADHD got me too, but can I add onto that real quick? The Wall Street Journal just came out of this article talking about how real estate agents are leaving the industry left and right because it’s a hard market. And I felt a lot of things, one, empathy, because I do know a lot of people who’ve gotten into this business and they are struggling. Their families are struggling and it’s a real issue.

Micah Johnson (28:05)
Please go, go,

Jonathan Spears (28:27)
But the reason that they’re struggling is not being emphasized enough. And so if you’re an investor out there and you feel like you’re struggling, I’d challenge you to audit your consistencies. Micah talked about it earlier. He goes through a schedule every couple of weeks and he re audits every hour of his day. What are the things that you’re doing consistently? Because typically what got you to be successful in the first place, you stop doing once you reach success. So if you’re a real estate agent or you’re an investor and you’re out

prospecting and you’re hitting the ground hard and you’re prospecting, you’re creating a farm market, you’re doing all the right things. And then you get success and then it starts to feel easy. You’ve got that momentum. You stop prospecting. You may stop doing the things that got you to that successful point. And I think the old adage that hard times create really great entrepreneurs and great times create really weak entrepreneurs is because when times are great and you rely on that time in the market,

versus relying on the skillset that you know and the things that you know you should be executing day in, day out, regardless of market conditions, you will fail. You’re setting yourself up for failure. And I think that ties directly into what you just said.

Micah Johnson (29:39)
I couldn’t agree more, man, because if you’re going to be in real estate, guess what? This has been going on way longer than all of us currently alive. There’s whatever study you can find, you’ll find some kind of year cycle, 18 years one, I hear that’s really popular of how it operates. It’s volatile, y’all. It’s not a mystery. It’s done it over and over again. What is proven through it all is the best always rise during the hardest times because it’s the ones who really want it.

Right, up trending markets hide all your flaws. You look like a genius all the time. And that’s what happened when the interest rates doubled so fast, all of sudden, all the poor operators and as real estate professionals across the board got exposed. You didn’t have anything set up. You were willy nilly. No, it was no P &L. You were spending money. You just knew you were putting a little in, getting a bunch out. You thought you solved the ATM.

Yes. And then the ATM said, Hey, this one’s out of money. Y’all. We ain’t got no cash in here to give you. And now what? And that’s what you’re talking about. Like you either have the deer in the headlights look, or you fall back on the systems and the processes you’ve built knowing this is on the way. And if you’re in it right now and you’re building it right now, just know if this is, if you’re new, you’re going to be better than everybody else that gets in after this. If you stay in.

There’s nothing like learning in tough times because it forces you to see the reality of real estate where you get in when things are all fuzzy. It’s not, it’s just not reality. You’re not taught what’s true. And then the next time it comes around, there’s a reason uncle Warren has the most cash ever. sitting on right now. There’s a reason that the best all have that same thing. Like you said, when BP oil spill hit

There’s a reason investors go to markets that way because that’s that’s investing. That’s not gambling. Right. We’re not taking chances. We’re taking risk and risk is mitigated. We understand it. We have multiple ways to elude it. If we need to. We understand that is how we operate. And it’s the blood in the streets mentality. So let me ask you this after mindset. All right. They know they want to make this shift. What’s that?

first, what is the first process or some early things that they can take away from the show and say, I need to go, I need to think about this myself right now. I need to think about this in my business. Where’s some, a good place for him to start.

Jonathan Spears (32:04)
I think you hit the first one, which is your time audit. You work through what are the things I’m doing consistently. The best way to describe the why behind that is think about your favorite restaurant where you’re like, dude, this is my favorite meal. You can’t say it’s your mom’s home cooked meal. It’s got to be your, your favorite restaurant. When you know, when you go, you’re going to have a great experience. You’re going to have a great meal. You don’t go there because of necessarily that particular waiter or waitress.

You go there because the ownership created a process in a system for delivering you that experience and they do that day in day out. So as a business owner, you want to take that mindset, that extreme hospitality back to your industry and you want to execute it. ⁓ The second thing that I would do is, and this goes back to building systems and process, I would write down KPIs. So these are key performance indicators.

These are the things that you’re going to audit your schedule and look for. And once you find them and identify them, you’re going to start a system for tracking. What does that mean? That means that you’re either going to use an AI or you’ll use, mean, at its simplest form, most people will pull open a Google doc, AKA an Excel spreadsheet, and they’ll just simply track, Hey, I made this many phone calls today. Hey, you know, I noticed that after making this many phone calls for a week, I got

you know, 10 people on the phone and every phone call is going to lead to this measurement. You’re trying to create a measurement of success and what happens when you create measurements, right? Like why do people write down recipes? It’s so that you can teach others to do it, right? That’s how you scale. That’s the why behind a system isn’t so that you are, you’re going to die with this secret family recipe, right? That nobody in the world ever gets to enjoy. It’s to get that recipe out of your head.

and make it so simple and so valuable that other people rally around you so that they can follow the same thing. That’s the basic premise. That’s the premise for why we build systems. That’s how you scale your business.

Micah Johnson (34:05)
Right. Absolutely, man. And if it’s only in your head, you’re dead. Your processes have to be written out. And that’s what we struggle with, too. And in the age of A.I., it’s never been easier to train up a quick bot and have it write your SOPs for you. It’s never been easier. And what it does, it relieves. Here’s what you don’t realize. It relieves its massive amounts of emotional energy that you’re carrying around because it’s just in your head.

And you don’t even realize you’re doing it. And the moment you put it on paper, you literally feel relieved because you don’t have to remember it anymore. I can go back and look at it then. I don’t know if Einstein actually said this, but there was a quote I used to hear say he’d never don’t memorize anything. You can look up, write it down, just put it down. Don’t, don’t boggle your mind down with all this stuff. You feel like you have to remember, especially as entrepreneurs, especially like myself, you have ADHD. We see things as a whole already.

You have to get it into the processes and systems and writing them down so that when you shift, you were talking about when you hired your assistant and that’s the best first hire for a lot of people. And what they can’t do anything that you don’t show them how to do. And when you can just write down in order, this is what happens in a row in this area. And they just go back to it. Now you’re getting less questions. they, nobody likes being micromanaged.

Nobody and SOPs empower your team to take action. This is what Jonathan says when Jonathan’s not around. This is what Micah says when Micah’s not around. And that’s where I want to just jump back for a second to your core values, your mission statement, because when in the mastermind behind everything we do that where we work with business owners, when you come in, if you don’t have it completely set up, the workbook you go through, that’s the first two things.

Jonathan Spears (35:38)
You

Micah Johnson (35:58)
You need to know your core values and your mission because without that, you don’t have the North Star. Nobody has anything to buy anything to buy into because it’s never just good and that’s okay. Life is good and hard and switches back and forth. And if that if it’s not those things, people cannot buy in and we want to brush by him so easy. It seems like

And again, it’s never been easier. can take you 15, 20 minutes to really nail this down. There’s so many things to help you do it now and create it. We feel like, won’t do anything. But again, you shift. You feel the difference because now you know why you’re getting up each day. You know what’s driving you. You know that whenever you get in a tough situation, this is my mission and my core values. I don’t violate these at all. And as long as you don’t, your team doesn’t.

And that’s what gives them their space. People want a box to operate in. Very few people like us want to just free roll. Most don’t like no fences. Correct. Given them the fence to operate in and they thrive instantly. just, this, these are the edges. Okay. That’s cool. Deal. Now I know where I’m going. That’s Yes. That’s what writing these things does for you. Getting it in front of your team, talking about it regularly. Cause it

Jonathan Spears (37:07)
are benefits.

Micah Johnson (37:15)
meetings with them, talking with them, that’s part of the leadership. It’s what you’re exchanging your time for. Because if you, your conversation with 10 people to get them ready and going, that’s what generates the revenue ultimately. I always like to try to tell business owners, your first customer, that’s your employee. You treat them right. They’ll treat the ones right that are going to generate all the revenue. Okay. Like it has to be that way.

Anyways, that’s I’ll hop off my box, but that is it’s I guess pumped about it because it’s what creates longevity and that’s what we’re all laughing.

Jonathan Spears (37:46)
No, you nailed it. You talked about standards of process. You know, when you go back in my career, my first hire was an assistant. And then after that, we hired producers. And then I hired an assistant for my assistant and more producers. And then you hire marketing. And then you get to this phase where you have to decide, are you going to be the operator in the business? Are you going to be the behind the curtain entrepreneur? Or are you going to be the CEO? Are you going to be the in front of the curtain entrepreneur?

And for me, I’m a front of the curtain kind of guy. And so I hired a COO. They could come in and they could manage the SOPs. They could take the vision that I had and execute it and also give me accountability. Hey, that’s a, we’re not going to be able to do that. That’s not going to work. And so when you think about going from single employee to more organization, like those are the levels. What’s fascinating though is technology is starting to disrupt that.

You have, and you just do a quick Google, there’s single to maybe two to three person companies that are trading at billion dollar valuations or they’re raising capital billion dollar valuations. There is now a push more than ever in the history of our planet to lean out. And for me, I really, lean into instead of focusing on how do I lean out? How do I make every single person on my team more productive?

You know, how do I equip them with those SOPs with my curiosity in technology, with my curiosity in adapting? How do I make those people more productive? And really they have to be, we could go to right seat, you know, right person. You could have the right person in the wrong seat, or you could have, you know, the wrong seat for the wrong person. And I think what’s interesting is,

You know, when you lay that foundation of vision, we talk about visionary and then the integrator, you lay that foundation for vision. And then you also, as a leader being front of house, or even as an operator, you lay your expectation for execution. And so it all flows down from the top, whatever that culture you want. talked about your tribe earlier. I say the same thing. It’s like you show up and you better mind your vibe, right? Like what you give at that top, that energy is going to permeate all the way down to your customer.

And really the customer, it starts with your employees. But when we talk about going to an operational level, you really want to look at capacity for people. And for me, it was like, man, how do I hire folks that have the opposite skill sets, that enjoy being in the back of the room and running it? And then that allows me to free up time to go to the front of the room and to inspire and to lead.

Micah Johnson (40:24)
Right. It puts pitches you to your strengths. And that’s really as an entrepreneur, that’s your growth. We all start doing almost everything and then we slowly grow to pitching ourselves to the things we do really well. And I appreciate you mentioned visionary implementer. If you all aren’t familiar with those terms, that’s the EOS business operating system where what it really did well, especially in the real estate world, is visionaries are the entrepreneurs. We typically struggle with the throughput.

the thing that makes it come. We’re really great at ideas. Now AI has helped because it can do so much that we used to struggle with. And I really appreciate that. Again, it really comes down to what kind of business are you trying to build? But that person that offsets your strengths, especially to implement and push back, that’s why they’re the implementer. They’re high quality. They can come at you and say, Jonathan, dude, too many ideas, man.

Jonathan Spears (41:18)
And

they love it.

Micah Johnson (41:19)
They love it, right? And this is their skill set. And that’s what you keep doing so that you, again, if the front of the room drives you, if all you pay is your financial paycheck, you’ll only do that long enough or it’ll kill you first. If it’s not paying the emotional paycheck too, and we can find that balance, that’s what gets you going. And as entrepreneurs, that’s what we find. And typically, it’s about every two or three years we get a little bored because we’ve mastered what we’re doing. And that’s where you’re either scaling the thing you’ve built

You’re adding something on something outside. It’s where our minds start to bounce, but it’s just that layer after layer of growth and learning not to get in your own way. It’s you. That’s what journaling showed me, dude. You’re in your own way over and over again and unplug yourself here. There’s a reason you hate doing that and you suck at it. So stop doing it.

Jonathan Spears (41:57)
Yeah.

I think, yeah, isn’t that the truth? ⁓ And that goes back to like stepping on a scale, right? Like I always tell people when you look at numbers and like I equate it to weight loss, you may wake up one day and go, you know what, it’s January, I need to, I want to lose 10 pounds, but I don’t necessarily want to know where I’m starting, right? Like I don’t want to face the music. I don’t want to see the damage done. A lot of us as entrepreneurs will approach that from an expense standpoint.

Right? Like our ego can get in the way so fast. Man, that project, it’s going to put me on the map. It’s going to, you know, the numbers may not look as good as I want them to, or I may not have even penciled them out perfectly, but it’s going to do, it’s going to, it’s going to help me, you know, get ahead, whether it be socially or politically or, know, whatever in real estate, especially there’s no concept of P and L, right? Like there’s this,

mystery around financial literacy. And it really goes down to like, does somebody really want to be a business owner or they just want to be a producer? And I think if you’re listening to this podcast, you have to ask yourself that, right? Like, do I want to own a business? Do I want to manage these things? And if, if, if that’s a yes, then your goal is to work yourself out of a job, right? Like as you’re, as you’re elevating what you’re doing in your organization, you’re putting people in place.

as you build that railroad and you move the ball forward. And one thing that really tripped me up for a long time is that I was so good at generating income and I was so terrible at taking the time to manage ⁓ that income, whether it be from an expense standpoint or I was great at investing, but I don’t know that I was, I didn’t have a keen eye on expenses. I would do the typical, man, my CPA is going to tell me I’m going to find out later, you know, like,

I know I did a hundred million this quarter, right? Like all of these sort of cliche answers. And if you’re listening to this and you want to be a CEO of your business, what I challenge you to do is, in fact, you could do this with chat, ⁓ Whisper Flow is another AI you could probably talk to, but chat or Claude, basically create a scenario where you’re on an earnings call about your business and you’ve got to

face investors, you need to talk about the performance of your company. You need to be able to take questions like you’re on an earnings call and you need to know your data like you’re the CEO of your company. You need to know what your profit and loss says for the last quarter, for the last month. You you need to look at those financial KPIs and be able to articulate them. And really the reason that you do this is so you can start to spot trends and opportunities.

Most of the time we’ll spend another dollar before we’ll take the time to play defense and save a dollar. We’ll go, you know what, if I, if I just, if I spend a little more, I’m going to get out of this hole. And I’m not, I’m not saying that, you know, spending a little more isn’t the right scenario, but a lot of times we do it based on how we feel versus the facts and the data that we’re reviewing. And it’s mainly because as these ADHD creatives, like we’re just cranking out ideas and we just want to stay in that vein and we don’t slow down to take the time to learn.

what defense is. We want to always be on offense. And I think for me, that was such a big unlock with not only managing PNLs, but it’s really the core reason that I got into the technology space is because I saw this opportunity in real estate where financial literacy was not a thing. It’s almost like you’d have ⁓ athletics where these athletes would get these big paychecks and then maybe mismanage the money because they were so focused on playing, right?

We all, we’re players. We want to get out on that field. We want to perform. I want to be the star quarterback. And when you’re the star quarterback, you may not have time to be paying attention to what’s happening back in the locker room. And so if you’re not hiring somebody to do that or, or implementing technology to do that, for me, we were able to create a technology called my ops. ⁓ and if you go to my ops.ai, you’ll learn more about it. But my ops premise is really to create.

operations and consistency in real estate businesses. And it’s to give you the operational data and feedback and ultimately the system to play with that allows you to go out and be that CEO of your business, to know those numbers. And when you know those numbers, you start to spot the narratives, the stories, the opportunities in the market, and you relay those back to your customer in a very valuable way.

Micah Johnson (46:31)
Man, another major point. If you don’t know your numbers, you’re making all your decisions in the dark. And it just is what it is. Like you said, you got to know where you started. So there was a time in life I tried to play professional golf. And what I would do is out every week, I’d print off the PGA Tour stats and I’d hang them up on my wall and I’d put my stats right next to them. And I saw why I wasn’t playing on Sunday. It’s really clear. It’s easy.

It’s easy to see when you’re just putting it up there and it shows and exposes, hey, this is where you are. And it taught me the most valuable question I have found to this day. And it’s, you willing to accept self honesty? Because if not, we’re not getting anywhere. You are only going to grow as far as you are willing to be honest with yourself and only you can do it for yourself.

Jonathan Spears (47:09)
Hmm.

That’s right.

Micah Johnson (47:20)
Only I could have just stuck my head in the mud and wasted a bunch of money, played in a bunch of or, okay, I know where I need to practice. I know what I need to do. Do I like it? No. Do I feel, does it feel good? No. But I tell this to people a lot. How you feel about how you feels what’s fucking you up. Correct. The first one’s data. That’s all it is. It’s just data. It’s telling you something. What’s it saying? The second thing, that’s a decision. You’re deciding what to do at that point. Like you freaking out? Not helpful. Like what are you doing? Right. But, that’s.

That’s just what we get put into over and over and over again, like behind the scenes, like as an entrepreneur, you will be forced into that situation over and over and over again. Am I willing to accept self honesty? What’s that actually look like right here? Could I do something a little shady and get a bunch of money or do I actually stick to my core values? Do I tell this person, no, do I do this? Like, what do I actually do? And now you’re getting somewhere because if you can just be willing to fail,

to be okay with it, to just accept these things, you’re gonna get everywhere you wanna go. But that’s where so many folks get tripped up is you don’t wanna see the truth. You don’t want to because you know it, you know it. And you come up with this weird outcome in your head that well, once I see these results, then obviously it’ll be true, but you’re never gonna see those results because what you’re doing doesn’t create them.

Jonathan Spears (48:36)
My theory, Micah, to why is because you’re afraid to take action on the results. You have this bias to be deer in the headlights. I think it’s such a great example that the deer in the headlights that doesn’t move quickly gets hit. They get run over. They’re eliminated. There’s no in-between or they’re hurt pretty bad. And so as entrepreneurs, we’re afraid to face this data because we’re afraid to act on it.

And I think when you’re unwilling to slow down, to see the data and act, you’re unwilling to grow and you’re unwilling to have that compression. Or maybe you’re just not ready for it, but you better hire somebody who is right. Like you don’t have to be compressed in every aspect of your business. Hire somebody who’s who can shoulder the numbers for you. If that’s an investment you want to make fantastic, think about it as such. It’s an investment. But the ones that the entrepreneurs that I interact with that are uber successful.

They have such a wild bias to action that as soon as the idea pops in their head, they are executing it. They’re executing it or they have a system of execution. And I’m talking CEOs at the highest level. They all have the same hours in the day that we do. They have systems of execution that they go through and they have filters for that, for that execution and their bias to action. And I think our job, especially when we’re auditing our calendar is to identify those areas of execution and to try to do more of it.

Micah Johnson (50:03)
Absolutely, man. Again, do that money making activity offload the ones that aren’t what keeps you flowing. What keeps you growing, especially in business, because that it doesn’t stay the same. Those top CEOs get to be top CEOs because they’re steering the ship. It’s not it’s we’re all in this together. It’s flowing. It’s happening all out in front of us. Y’all welcome to the real estate river.

Right? How are you steering and what you’re doing? Is it, are you just floating along being pulled or are you actually creating what you want on purpose? Cause it’s hope isn’t a strategy. One of the groups I’m in, have an acronym we use, which is CASE. And it means collect data, analyze data, strategize and execute. As entrepreneurs, we love the S &E. We love to strategize and execute. And we’ll get our, we’ll get out ahead of ourselves so often where we neglect the data.

We’ll just go do stuff and just doing stuff ain’t helpful if it’s not pointed in a good direction. So taking that time to collect the data and analyze what I found about doing this practice for a few years now, strategy and execution become obvious once you have enough data and you’ve analyzed it. You know what to do next and that’s operator level thinking. Those CEOs aren’t waking up each day making it up as they go. It’s very much an operator system.

Process man, like I said, I hyped up on this conversation. I could go on and on

Jonathan Spears (51:23)
I love it dude, I love it. It’s so good.

Micah Johnson (51:25)
And to me, there’s countless life examples of it. It’s so much bigger than real estate, right? Because as you lead, how you lead yourself is how you lead anybody, right? You want a good culture, lead yourself well. Are you holding yourself accountable to the things that you require of other people? If so, then you get the good environments. You get the good things. And when you start to look at, one thing my mentor’s big on is go meet people. Go put yourself around high level other people like yourself.

And what it just shows you is what it takes, what you gotta do. And it’s usually not as bad as you think it is once you see it, because it’s not just do more. It’s be effective, be more effective. That’s what you’re doing. I’ll give you be more effective, not just do more.

Jonathan Spears (52:07)
That’s right. Yeah, and that’s where the strategy lies.

Micah Johnson (52:10)
does, man, it does. Well, Jonathan, thanks for being with us today, man. For folks that are listening and watching in that want to find out more about you, your group, see what you have going on, even the MyOps AI, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Jonathan Spears (52:23)
Yeah, I’m most active on Instagram. So follow me at Jonathan ⁓ as in Michael Spears, or you can follow us at myopsai, myops.ai as well. And man, I look forward to hearing from you guys. If I can ever help you, let me know. I love to give, I think the best entrepreneurs are the ones that give back. They’re an open book. I always tell people that you could write a script for Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep.

and everybody in the world could read that script, but they can’t act it out like Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep. And so we all have our own script. We have our own way of doing things. You are that secret sauce. And when you lean into it and you understand that, it’s powerful. So thank you for having me. It’s been fun.

Micah Johnson (53:05)
Absolutely, man. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. think we need more folks out there like yourself that do it. Thank you. The way that you’re doing it, because it’s the established way. So if you’re watching and listening in out there, like you hear me say on this show a lot, go check out the people that we bring on. There’s a reason that they’re here. They’re professionals in what they do. They live this. They breathe this. They’re not just saying it. It’s not just words, because there’s enough of that out there already. So all of Jonathan’s links are going to be in the show notes. Check down there.

Reach out, talk to them, go visit 30A. I know I got to put it on my list next time. I’m ⁓ reaching out to you, Jonathan. I’m going get your number. So again, thanks for being with us. If you all got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode. If you think there’s someone else that could get value out of it, share it with them, get it over to them. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do. Click that button, follow along. We got more conversations coming up with operators just like Jonathan. Folks.

Jonathan Spears (53:39)
Go!

Micah Johnson (54:02)
out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you on the next episode.