937: The No-Pressure Approach to Real Estate Sales with Robert Paolini

Aaron: Rockstar Nation, this is Aaron Amuchastegui. Hey, I’m so excited to get to interview Robert Paolini from Florida today. Robert and I recently connected. He’s a new member of GoBundance. He has been doing real estate stuff. He has developed an awesome real estate book and curriculum and some different things that he’s really been trying to impact the world and impact real estate offices everywhere. I’m super excited to get into it. Robert, thanks for joining me.

Robert: Thank you so much, Aaron. I am very excited to be on the show.

Aaron: It’s so cool to have you right now. What city are you from in Florida?

Robert: Palm Harbor.

Aaron: Palm Harbor. We were joking before we started recording that I’ve heard right now that Florida is the place to be. It’s the most important election state, I’ve heard a time or two recently. My understanding when I see in the news, life is somewhat back to normal in Florida. Are things operating as it was pre-COVID, is it like that? What’s the real story?

Robert: It is today, but who knows. If the numbers fly out of control, they’ll cut off the restaurants again, but as of a week ago, yes, the restaurants opened like normal. It’s just masks are mandatory wherever you go. Texas I’ve heard we share in that it’s a great place to go and invest, especially in real estate and we’re sharing the same gulf.

Aaron: Texas is similar stuff right now, everything is open. We’ve got your masks when you’re walking into the restaurant. It’s been interesting. A lot of our listeners know that about three months ago, I started an RV trip with my family and we went from Texas up through Oklahoma and all the way up to South Dakota and Iowa, and Missouri. I got to do some interviews with real estate agents along the way. It has been really interesting to see the different parts of the US, and how COVID has been impacting them, whether it became to how we’d reacted to COVID or businesses, or people moving and changing their mindsets and things like that.

We went into some states where there was no masks, no social distancing, it was business as usual, and went to other places where everything was completely shut down. Places where people were very much struggling because they couldn’t go to work. There’s plenty of jobs out there that people can do remotely and there are plenty of jobs out there that people just can’t do remotely. What have you seen with the real estate market in Florida over the last year?

Robert: I’ve actually seen it boom, and more so in the last six months. In fact, from the end of March until the end of September, I had the best run of real estate sales of any part of my career since I’d started in 2015. I attribute a lot of that to the relationships I’ve built, which we’ll get into, which is part of the philosophy of the book I wrote Good Talk Great Sales, which was such a huge launch, but I wasn’t alone. When the dust settled, I looked around and yes, some people that didn’t have those relationships built didn’t see a spike, but overall statistically with interest rates being low and like many other states inventory being low, it’s keeping a really high demand on real estate for sure.

Aaron: Tell me about that. Relationships is something that you’ve been pitching and talking to, it’s important to you. How did that convert into huge business? Half of our listeners have had a huge business boom since COVID and half of them have really struggled to figure out what to do next. What was the key? What did that relationship do? How did that turn into a sale?

Robert: I think when everyone’s in a crisis and you’ve got that fight or flight issue, I think the biggest value is trust because people are afraid. People don’t know what to do, if they should, why they should. If someone’s using Webbate, or advertisements, or even door knocking, or cold calling, you’re not really breaking the threshold of that trust factor in the eyes of the consumer, but when you have a relationship, when people trust that you have the capacity to do what you say you do, and they already trust you and they already know you and like you, it really sets the tone for transactions.

Even if they aren’t even sure if they’re going to do it, they just want to know if they can. The moment that reality hits that they can, if they can, then they’re ready to move right away. It’s trust that fuels those reactions when you have relationships.

Aaron: Do you have any ideas of a quick way to build trust? If somebody trusts you because somebody else told them, “Hey, you got to go talk to Robert.” You’re having a conversation with a new client now in this world, what are some of the things that someone can do to try to build trust early?

Robert: That is a very good question. The short answer is you can’t do it that fast. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say my wife, for example. We’ve been happily married for almost 17 years, but if she would have come up to me and I went up to her the moment I first saw her and said, “Hey, beautiful, will you marry me and spend the rest of your life with me?” She probably would have just run for the hills and we wouldn’t be married today. Trust is something that I think has to be earned, that has to be learned. In real estate, there’s this thing called know, like, and trust. I always in my trainings, I’m asking agents of the three what’s most important and almost always they say trust.

An overall 30,000-foot view, trust is the number one factor, but you can’t go in there trying to get trust first, because then you’ll look shady. You’ll be the car salesman, the mechanic, and they’re really not going to– they’ll see right through it. If you’re being honest, you probably aren’t being truthful because you have to know more about that person to truly deliver what they need and then earn that trust. The key of all of those three things know, like and trust is if you want to build trust with your clients, with your database, with your sphere of influence, do things that are you and that are help them to get them to like you, be yourself.

Just add value as far as earning the likability, having fun with them, whether you’re showing houses, or you’re at a listing appointment, you’re not nervous, it’s not all about the numbers. I’m always trying to crack jokes. I’m always seeking ways to make people laugh because I know once they get to know the real me, and they like me, then the rest is a slam dunk, the trust will come.

Aaron: Like that. The trust is the goal or trust is maybe the most valuable thing that you can have in times of crisis. I love that as yes, in times of crisis people need trust because they’re uncertain and they’re uncomfortable and they’re going to go with who they can trust. Trust isn’t something you can manufacture. You can’t buy that. You can’t make it there. You said know, like, and trust. First, they need to know you and that’s going to be from all sorts of different outreach. You said at the beginning, when you’re doing that outreach, they can’t trust you yet, because you don’t even know who they are yet. Then they need to like you, and you’re saying that the biggest way to get people like is just to be yourself. Do you do any extra outreach? Do you have certain conversations that you do, anything that you do to remind your sphere who you are so they like you?

Robert: Absolutely. The first thing I do when I meet with a client, especially a seller is I’m trying to identify if they can sell their home and if they can reach that goal. Most agents would walk in there and just either nervous or bold enough just to try to get them to hire them. They’re not even thinking about what the client needs, what’s best for the client, so they build up this pressure, and coincidentally, they can’t be themselves, and half the time they don’t even know it. They’re nervous or they’re thinking about, “Well, all that matters is I get them to sign this listing agreement before I go.” It alters every bit of their behavior along the way. The goal is to set it up to where all you’re trying to do is discover exactly what their story is, what they need and increase that likability just by being yourself.

I don’t even actually bring any documents, including an actual listing agreement to my listing appointments, because I know they can change their mind the next day, I haven’t really got anything started. I want to release the pressure off them and make it about the first step of our relationship and I have to know every bit of their story. Then I come back to them with a recipe for success and that makes my feeling easier from the beginning. It makes the process with them at their house more effective and more transparent, and just stressless altogether. In the end, it sets the tone for relationships down the road and referrals, upon referrals, upon referrals.

Aaron: I like that.

Aaron: All right. I like the no-pressure approach to sales, so that’s definitely a mindset now. Is there a transition point for that? Right now it’s the first outreach, it’s the first appointment. “Hey, what do you want to do? Then do you just play it by ear, do you wait for them to reach back out to you? Do you have some specific steps that you try to follow or is everything different?

Robert: No, in fact, the process of the listing appointment is very precise and it’s the same for every single person, and there’s a call to action at the end. The mindset I’m trying to create is almost a sense of fear that they’re afraid I’ll forget to send them the listing agreement to sign. I already know the basic coverages of the listing agreement that they’re probably concerned about. Like, when are we going to start, with dates, inclusions, exclusions, the price. To be honest with you, commission is a big part of it, but I almost never get asked that. I just tell them at the end and it’s something I don’t have to rebuttal, which is another beautiful thing about my process, because I’ve been asked by dozens of agents how I do rebuttal the commission, and they look at it, or they look at me like I’m a really good salesman and that’s why, but I’m actually not.

I’ve only had two jobs my whole life where I’m actually doing sales. It’s more or less if I did my job right in discovering what they need and what the problem is, or what the goal is. I’ve labeled back to them that I know that, but not directly, then and I have some transparency in the whole process to them where they understand and come almost headlights on your car at night, they don’t like you from point A to point B. They just get you from turn to turn. Once I’ve set the tone for that, and I’ve conveyed to them the process that will help them achieve the specific goal, or solve the specific problem we’ve talked about, then the commission doesn’t even matter. What they’re looking for is to achieve that goal with that process and make that profit, which is the sale price minus the commission and fees.

Aaron: They want to know what they’re going to end up with. They want to know, “Hey, my neighbor sold their house for this. My neighbor sold their house for $350,000? Does that mean I’m going to walk away $350,000?” You say, “Well, no, it’s not quite like that.” I guess most people they understand that, but if you can take control of that situation, it gets to remove the questions from that. I like that you’re answering some of the questions ahead of time, and you say if you’ve done your job right, then you don’t have to do the rebuttal because there isn’t a rebuttal. When did you get your license?

Robert: In 2015 actually, in the very beginning. In fact, I started with Keller Williams in 2015, but I failed my test the first time I took it, which was a few days before Christmas, actually. In 2014, that Christmas, as you can imagine, it was quite depressing, but I rallied and I passed it right after before the new year and started with Keller Williams right away and ended up becoming the 2015 Rookie of the Year.

Aaron: That was out in Florida?

Robert: Yes.

Aaron: What was your first-year like? How did you get to be Rookie of the Year?

Robert: I come from a 13-year stick of the indoor-tanning industry, and being in Florida people might think that’s a little strange, but–

Aaron: I would not have thought that actually existed out there.

Robert: With people’s busy lifestyle, but the desire to hold the standard of a tan here in Florida, it worked, in 13 years quite a bit. We worked it up to about four different locations within an hour of each other. I think that set the tone for the relationship part of things because if I had to start from scratch, I don’t think we’d be talking right now because calling people that don’t know me just to upset them in the hopes that I get one person that will take it to the finish line with me wasn’t worth it.

The first six months of my first year, I was trying to tap into that, but lo and behold, even the know and like wasn’t that good on the trust with something that was different than what people knew me for the last 13 years. It was a slow start. In fact, the first six months I only sold three properties, but it only took a few victories. Of course, the timing was good, and middle of 2015 we were riding the bell curve like we’re going up a roller coaster. I just drove the momentum, and from the last six months, I sold another 20 homes and ended up finishing my first year with 23. Then that’s how I did it.

Aaron: I like that. You took your sphere and your relationships that you’d have from a previous job if I heard this right. It’s people that you met in the tan industry, those are the people that you started to reach out to and said, “Hey, I’m an agent now.” Because they know, and they liked you. It made the conversation starter a little bit easier. That’s even as similar as somebody on Facebook going, “Hey, I’m a real estate agent now.” Just getting the word out to their friends, like, “Hey, I know you guys knew me from this, but now I’m doing this.” The one hurdle that you saw at the beginning was because you hadn’t done any deals yet, you were a rookie. They were like, “Hey, that’s great that you’re doing real estate now, but I’m not going to be your first guy.”

Like, “Yes, I know and like you, but I want somebody that’s actually good at real estate, and you’re not good at real estate yet. Then once you’ve done a few, now he’s good at real estate.” Then it really took off. For those first three, how do you get those first three people, they know and they like you from other stuff, but they don’t trust you yet because you’re not in real estate? How do you get them over the fear that you’re not going to be good at real estate? I think so many of our listeners are new agents like that. They are reaching out to the people that they know from their kid’s school, or somewhere else, and they’re saying, “Hey, I’m an agent now.” How do you overcome them saying, “Yes, but you’re a new agent.”

Robert: That was tough, but I think if anything, it was their mindset. They just didn’t have as much of a fear, like the one gentlemen is my mentor still to this day and I’ve probably sold another 10 properties just because of him. He had a $500,000 home that he asked me to sell, and that was the biggest trust factor I felt. He was also the reason why I decided not to bring listing agreements to the listing appointments because I sat with him knowing that he called me to do this, even though he knew it was my first house I ever sold, and yet he wanted to hold the listing agreement and read it over the weekend before he signed it. I thought to myself if he is thinking that way, and he’s giving me the trust to do a $500,000 deal, and he’s known me for years, then maybe a lot of people will think like that.

I really don’t want that spinning in the back of their mind while I’m talking to him, I’m trying to learn about them and me even worry about what I’m supposed to do with my process, if that happens, or when it happens. Ultimately, that deal was listed and it sold. The other two were buyers that were actually customers. They didn’t actually know me well enough to actually be afraid. On the selling side of things, there’s a little less risk, but the likability part and me being myself and making jokes and walking around with them and being excited to be there with them and not have a poor attitude and stuff, I think that made the whole experience better. Then that ultimately gave me the confidence to market and then do better and try to learn more and offer and add more value.

Aaron: I really like that. I like the idea of saying, “Hey, people are going to want to take the time to read something.” It’s almost like it would kill your chances of a listing, or if they signed it, they would regret it. There’s a chance that it would hurt that trust. Like, “Hey, you got them to sign something without giving them chance.” One of the epic ways you got that trust is doing there. One of the things that Pat Hiban talked about when I interviewed him on here was taking those first couple of deals and trying to say like, “Oh yes.” Once you did a deal for somebody, he was able to say, “Oh yes, I do all the firefighters.” Or I know that one or it was teachers. He sold a house for a teacher and then he got to tell them, “Oh, I sell all the houses for the teachers.”

Did you see anything like that that became your specialty? Was there something that you got that started to fill a niche that way, or was it just you kept pushing out the effort letting everyone know your agents and they came from all walks of life?

Robert: It is the latter. In fact, I haven’t actually niched my process until recently because the best thing I can offer somebody, and the way I title myself is I am a real estate marketing and sales expert. My key is, in fact, my website is called geteverypenny.com. It doesn’t even sound like real estate but what do people fear the most if you want to sell their house or what do they want the most? It’s to get every penny. That’s the goal. The fear is that they would leave money on the table. I’m definitely niching that down as a sales and marketing platform to cut through the noise of the saturated “ugly houses” in the market and use the transparency of the new real estate world to their advantage and not a disadvantage.

Aaron: How many deals would you do in a year now?

Robert: I probably average around 50. I’m getting ready to scale it up. I average about 20 million a year. I’m probably at about, I’m a little lagging behind now. I’m probably 15, 16 million. Just me and a buyer’s agent that I have under me.

Aaron: Your whole team is you and a buyer’s agent? Are you doing mostly listings?

Robert: Yes. That’s my forte.

Aaron: Listings is your forte. Most of it is or all of them coming from your sphere or now some of them coming from your website and your new branding?

Robert: It’s all sphere and sphere depth. I’ve got a referral from the mother of a couple that I sold their house that was referred to me from somebody else that was referred to me from somebody else. We’re talking like, when you advertise or you market or you have digital funnels or something, you’re constantly performing actions to go wide, which take more of your time and intentional and timely applications but with the seeds that I plant that you’ll learn that people learn to plant by reading the book, you just constantly have an inflow of the phone ringing of depth of all those other people I’ve served before today. Yes, I would consider them still the sphere. Yes, zero of my deals come from any random advertising or marketing.

Aaron: That’s awesome. One of the questions we usually ask people is other than your sphere, how are you getting most of your listings? You’re saying you’re working so hard at developing great relationships that you don’t need to go hunting outside your sphere. You’re staying plenty busy within your sphere and the people that are that referral base. You’re so much based on playing the long game, building good relationships, building trust, that everything grows. What was the growth like from 2015 to now? Did you gradually do more and more every year because of that? The first year you said you did 20, how did you do on your next year?

Robert: It actually was pretty stagnant until 2018 because I didn’t really “hit rock bottom” in my own world until the end of 2016. 2015 was great. I thought 2015 was great, 2016 would just roll with that momentum and be awesome. I had one deal that just had an awful situation happen. It threw me for a loop. I was trying to correct it and I see some of the marketing within my sphere, I just spent a lot of time trying to correct that. Once the dust settled, I didn’t have any momentum for new leads. I finished 2016, I think the last few months, I might have sold three houses.

It really caused me to think about am I happy here in this office at this brokerage? Is the system that I thought was going to work working? The answer was no. Actually, I finished my second year with roughly the same amount of volume in sales. It was about 20 to 25 houses. For the next year and the year before that in 2016, I probably did about 67 million in volume, which isn’t bad but in Florida, your average purchase price is $250,000. Agents are dime a dozen. There’s more agents within 100 miles from where I am than there are bricks behind me. That was a huge uphill battle. I was new to the industry.

Another caveat that comes from that is there’s a lot of people in that boat. A lot of people just starting off that no people if they died tomorrow, there’d be a ton of people at their funeral but they don’t really have the money or the resources to start generating the income. You can do it with who you know and what you have with where you are.

It wasn’t until I started with Berkshire Hathaway in 2017 where my new broker at the time, he’s still my broker, introduced me to a book by Larry Kendall called Ninja Selling. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it. Ninja Selling changed everything for me because once I read it, I realized that this was my ticket. This was the way that I could generate real estate sales without the traditional cold calling or having a spin wheel to win a prize at an open house or put your business card in a fishbowl. I wasn’t big on the gimmicks. I wanted to be cut and dry with people and help them do what they do. In turn, they would help me do what I do. Then from 2017, after I started establishing Ninja Selling, part of the program is book reading. They give you like 200 books.

I bought them all and I was reading number 15 and a light bulb went off. I just started to put it all together and then I jumped from I think maybe 6 million in year ’17 to 20 million all by myself. That’s when I wrote the book because I realized, look, most people would assume that if you’re like a Ken McElroy and you’ve been doing this for 40 years and someone’s new, they might assume because they’re not him, they can’t do it. I’m new, I just started and I’m afraid to even call up a stranger and ask if they want to sell their house. If I can do it, anybody can do it. That’s the beauty of Good Talk Great Sales.

Aaron: One of the things you talked about in your pre bio was having that moment where enough was enough and deciding you need to make a change. Was that it or was it the end of that year where you were like, “Hey, why am I doing all this?” and then that made you jump into the new thing and start doing the books? Was there anything else that really helped push you to start really going up? It sounds like you got to a point where you said you’re going to do whatever it takes.

Buying 200 books and reading 15 of them is really getting into trying to– You were committed, if you were like five books in on this thing, you got to be going like there’s 195 left on this plan. If you’ve committed to something like that, you’re saying, “Hey, I’m going to succeed in real estate.” You made a change of mindset and said no matter what, this is going to be your career and you’re going to really work hard. Was there any other motivation behind that or other things that helped? How did you get through 15 books?

Robert: Absolutely. By now, I’ve read all of them and plus some. That’s why I had to write my own, which basically encompasses the best of all of them into a real estate and sales relationship that also is buffered with negotiation skills. Not the brutal kind but relationship building and networking. For me, yes, there was a little bit of another element besides that one transaction. Personally, 6, 7 million of volume is not bad. That’s low six figures and coming out of the indoor tanning industry, it was fine. Coming towards the end of that industry with four locations and there was just a lot going on personally.

We had some debt, we had sales were going down, I was really distracted because I still had the tanning salons up until the middle of 2017. I started to realize that this isn’t good. I’ve had the best couple of years that I’ve had my whole life and I’m still struggling, I got to figure this out. I got to a point where and I realized that people won’t do what they should do just to get what they want, but they will when someone tells them they can’t have what they need. I got to a point where I wasn’t worthy of the house I lived in, the cars I drove, or the businesses I owned. I had to change.

I just told myself I would never do the same thing again that I do every day ever again. I’ll wake up and start my day different, I’ll think differently, I’ll dress differently, hence the bow tie Bobby. I learned so much in reading those books, like the parasympathetic communication. In other words, if you’re communicating to somebody in a way that there’s fight or flight that they need to know whether you’re going to help them solve a problem or achieve a goal.

55% of what you’re trying to get across is visual. You got to look like you’re in the right spot. 38% is based on your tone and tempo of your words and how when you’re gone, that’s how they’re going to perceive it. 7% are the actual words that you say. Understanding that, I just wanted to revamp everything and then I read another book, which you’ve probably heard of because I think he’s a Go-bro, if not, he should be but Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning, that was it. Between Ninja Selling and The Miracle Morning, I just from the first, actually, it’s been 1000 I think in 43 days but since January 2 of 2018, I’ve run one to three miles every single day. I still haven’t stopped. To this day, I think I’m at 1100 miles that I’ve run just committing to the goal, knowing that why– Just reminds me of why I’m running and the journey that I’m on. Yes, absolutely. My back was against the wall. As difficult as it was and as crazy as it sounds, it was 100% worth it and I would do it over again 100 times.

Aaron: I know Hal’s book, The Miracle Morning, that was a big part of my story. Hal is one of the other members of our GoBundance masterminds. He’s a good friend of mine, lives out in Austin. He has his own masterminds behind that Miracle Morning community. He’s been on this podcast before. For anyone out there listening, if you’re having trouble really getting motivated or really if to find enough time in the day to do it, somebody be like, “Hey, I want to do all that but I just can’t do all the things I need to do,” his solution that he comes up with in that book is super inspiring.

He’s had millions of followers as a result that it has really changed their life. I’ve met so many people that that was a turning point moment. It was a turning point moment for me back in 2015, 2016 when I read that in The Four-Hour Workweek. Robert, tell us now, let’s go into more detail about your book. You said your book, you pretty much were reading all the real estate books out there and then you went from 6 million to 20 million in a year.

You went from having an average/good role as a real estate agent to a great production and it was from those books that you read. You wrote your own book about how a guy like you can go from 6 million to 20, from average to great. You took the best parts of those other books and combined it. Just tell us about your book. What’s in it? How does it go through that process? If somebody goes and reads it, what are they going to get out of it?

Robert: It’s in three stages. That’s a great question. One is the power of thinking and how to think because everybody thinks their own way and it’s based on quite a few things but success has a very particular way to think and look at things. Then also that converts into mindset. Mindset has always been huge for me. In fact, it started in 2005, both of my parents died of diseases that I personally believe were brought on just by personal stresses that they just took on their whole lives. They were in the hospitality business, managing and heading large groups of people. They just weren’t big on processing that stress.

My mother had ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, out of nowhere and she was healthy and exercising her whole life. My father was a health nut guru, in great shape. He had brain cancer and prostate cancer. I just refuse to believe that that stuff was just so random. I just thought mindset is the way and as I started, this was 2005 by the way, I was full-blown in the tanning industry. I had never thought I would do real estate. Once I started reading all those other books, a lot of them were mindset and a lot of them were talking about how mindset works with the body and the actions we take and the choices we make and what we’re willing to do, what we’re not willing to do.

I focused on that. I focused on the programming. If I kept printing a sheet of paper that had an error in it, it would not be smart of me to keep erasing the printed paper every single time I printed one out. It would be better to go right to the source, change it, and all the prints after that would be better. I know there’s elements involved in real estate sales and even marketing that require a little bit of an edge above and beyond being the Mother Teresa of real estate where I’m just so happy and there’s no problem and it’s like I’m burning incense or something. It’s more or less being honest with myself and others to identify the need and come up with a solution that’s best for them.

That is the gist of the book. Even the chapter about negotiating, a lot of people, just the word negotiating, you almost have to be a Harvard debate champion or graduate from some big sales school or have this intimidating demeanor. To be honest with you, good talk has an acronym, the TALK, and it stands for truth, attention, listening, and kindness. Those are the four pillars of all communication, including in its most impactful in negotiating and it’s so passive-aggressive that the other person usually doesn’t even know what’s happening.

I got that from a book called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, who is a beast. He is a beast. Negotiating for him is we’re talking international espionage but I translated it to with mirroring and labeling and we can get into that too with the client that just lets them– I also call it speaking without words. It’s almost implying that you understand using techniques like that. Even things like negotiating, which are so impactful, I needed to get the information out to the world that says you can do it this way and really succeed.

Aaron: I love that too. Chris Voss’s book, Never Split the Difference. He was an FBI negotiator. He’s a hostage negotiator. So many times somebody says, “Hey, I’ll offer you 190.” You go, “No, I want 200. Let’s split the difference for that, 195.” When he was negotiating for lives, he couldn’t say, “Hey, that person needs to come to me alive.” They couldn’t say, “I’ll give you half the hostage back.” That was the whole concept of he had to win every negotiation 100%.

For you guys out there thinking some of this, checking out that book as well. Bobby, you have sent us over so many different things we’re going to get to share with everybody in our Real Estate Rockstars toolbox. In there, you’ve got some downloadable book on there, you’ve got some different kinds of forms, some mindset exercises, some things like that. Tell us about some of the stuff that people will be able to go download and get out of the toolbox from your system.

Robert: Awesome. Yes, absolutely. The mindset one I think is great because, to be honest, nobody wakes up in the morning with the agenda to just cause a ruckus in their life. They don’t wake up going, you know what? I’m going to cut someone off, make someone mad, and ruin someone’s day or ruin my day, but ultimately, things happen. I created this little mantra called HAHEWIWE. HAHEWIWE is basically the first two letters of four words that are sequential in what I consider the new hierarchy of needs, which is happy, to be happy, happiness, health, you got to be healthy, H-E, wise, you have to know something, you have to gain knowledge and wisdom, which is W-I, and WE, which is wealth.

As you probably know from Gobundance, wealth is not gold bullion, wealth is not tons of cash or Bitcoins. It’s freedom. Even David Osborne says it in his books, it’s all about freedom and choices or something particular to the person. Maybe it’s just sitting on the couch with your family and relaxing without any kind of stress. You always have to have the end game. Your wealth is your goal, is your why. You have to have the why. When people can keep that in mind and know that those four have to be attained or focused on every day, then they can stay in the right mindset.

If you know you want to be happy, you’re going to start your day off with gratitude, you’re going to do things that you’re going to feel good about yourself that you’ve accomplished. To go back to Miracle Morning from Hal Elrod, I have not gone to the gym or worked out after 7:00 AM in three years and I’m in pretty decent shape. I used to get stressed out at the gym that in an hour or two of working out, someone’s going to call me, they’re going to need something and it just messed up my workout and messed up everything. I do it long before that.

The key is just to working on the way you feel and what makes you feel good. To be happy, once I’m done at seven o’clock and I’ve done all that and I know half the people are still sleeping, then I start my day with joy. Even if I wake up groggy, I’ll do some breathing exercises or just some prayer and be grateful for my wife, my children and I’m happy. Let’s say somebody cuts me off and now I’m not happy. I know my goal is to be happy. I’m now becoming more aware of why I’m feeling this way and I gauge what I’m thinking by how I’m feeling which most people do whether they realize it or not.

I think, “Does it really matter that this person cut me off? No.” I’m driving to work. I’m making myself better. I know I’m happy because I know I’m growing and I’m adding value to the marketplace and I’ve done all that I’ve done. Then it doesn’t ruin my day. What do we have? 84,600 seconds in a day? There’s an old saying that if somebody took $20 out of your bank account, that they stole $20 and you had $86,400 in there, would you be so mad that you’d throw away the other $84,000 or $86,380? No, you wouldn’t. Why would someone’s two seconds of annoying you get your heart pounding and ruin your whole day and you give all that up? I just can revert back to happiness and just knowing HAHEWIWE prevents anything from ever getting to me, but then I also have to know my next responsibility is my health.

If I wake up late, I’m hitting snooze a million times, or I’m feeling groggy or I’m– You hear people say, “Oh, I’m so tired” or “I don’t feel good” or “I’m constantly getting colds.” You know what I mean? If you ever had the excuse more than once that I don’t feel like it then in the other books that I’ve read, I can’t remember the title, but it says treat your health like you’re the only one responsible for doing it because you are.

Then I’ve created a regimen of exercise, supplements, eating right, sleeping well, even the water I drink, I bought a $400 special stone cast Berkey water system for the purest water that I could drink for the best health. Then the wisdom is to know that I want to read every day. Until 2018 I didn’t read a book, but just once in a while, and I still didn’t finish them. Now I’m reading 30 minutes to an hour, a day in a few different time blocks of either an audible or in the morning, I definitely read a book-book, constantly gaining a little edge on information because if I can get 1% better every day at the end of the year, it will exponentially boost the capacity for me to serve all my clients.

Then, of course, the wealth is keeping that carrot in front of me, knowing what I really want, knowing why I’m doing it, and that helps me overcome challenges. Rather than letting those challenges suppress my actions and my attitude, I can stay focused on my goal grounded by my happiness, which I know is important. My health, which is under control, and the knowledge that I’m gaining every single day.

Aaron: I love it so much of your strategy– People are like, “How do I succeed in real estate?” So much of the stuff you’re talking about is not the traditional things that people hear with that. You’re like no, you want to build trust. You want to build the relationships, you want to become a good, happy person in what you’re doing. I think that is a super unique thing with what you’re doing. Now, you coach people, you do training with big teams, even offices, and things like that as you’re growing into and you’re expanding out how to really help. You talked before we got on and started recording that one of your goals is that, you love this stuff so much that you just really want to have like every brokerage out there that they want to get real talk certified that they want to have a program.

I can see now as you get to talk about it why because it’s not just a real estate training program. It’s like a philosophy in a way of life that will pay off in real estate, but also in life. What are your visions and your plans for that sort of training? Is it a lot of one-on-one stuff? Is it when COVID opens up, being able to go and speak in classrooms? Is that a one-day thing? Is it a couple of hours thing? What are the different levels of training and things like that you’re going to be doing?

Robert: The lag goal is for all brokerages nationwide to at least know of or incorporate certain parts of Good Talk Great Sales into their training. Developing a philosophy that not only betters the agents’ business and betters the agents’ mindset for a better life, a better relationship with their spouse, with their children, with their friends. It’s made me a better father, the principles from Good Talk Great Sales, but the caveat is it’s better for the industry and for the consumers. If you want to talk about trust, most of the time if someone has anything negative to say about realtors or real estate professionals, it’s because they’ve received call after call or flyers of just because they’re on a database because they owe very little on their mortgage, and yet the end result was bad results that we’re all liars and we’re no good.

I don’t want the industry and I’m a third-generation realtor. I don’t want the industry to be like the mechanics of the ’80s. I want people to not have to get phone calls from people they don’t like and people they don’t know, and I want them to have great results and create a trust factor altogether. The real plan is to build those relationships with brokerages and brokerage owners, to do a plethora of different venues, meaning large Zoom events, large face-to-face events. I’ll speak to a million people if we have a big enough room, but ultimately, I’d like to– My plan is to get together with somebody else to create a digital education and training platform with maybe workbooks involved, digital training, a video system, my website, Good Talk Great Sales is the beta version of that. It’s my semi-professional version of many different topics in real estate in two to six-minute videos.

Aaron: That’s awesome. People are going to be able to find a lot of the stuff that you have in our Rockstar toolbox, plus they can go to your website and see that for a taste of it, and right now people can start– I think people will start reaching out to you as they hear this. I can see a lot of different offices probably thinking about how different your spin is on something that’s going on. Just like you said at the beginning, in times of crisis– I think that the– Again, half the agents are doing great. Half the agents are not. The crisis is here, people are polarized. People are having a tough time that everything that I’ve read is showing that next year in 2021 is going to be more difficult for most people than it is now.

When it comes to unemployment or businesses closing or jobs changing and things like that, people are going to be having a hard time. Crisis is something that’s going on and being able to create that trust and that relationship, I just love how you pointed that out. Tell us again, as we’re closing up, what is the best place for people to find you is your website, any other ways to reach out to you?

Robert: Goodtalknation.com is probably the best or my email which you have, or my phone number. I mean, they could even call me.

Aaron: For the guys that are people that are driving in their car and they’re not going to see it. Why don’t you go ahead and say what your email is that you want people to reach out to you?

Robert: Awesome. It’s my name basically, but just the first initial of my first name. It’s R and then Paolini, P-A-O-L-I-N-I @bhhsflpg.com.

Aaron: Awesome. We’ve got it on here and my guys will add that to the show notes so that people see it. Real Talk is his book. Robert Paolini, I think you’re going to do big things in changing the industry with your mindset here. I’m super excited that our agents could hear about that today. There’s no better time for people to focus on trust and relationships within the industry out there. The websites again, you had two different websites.

Robert: It was Good Talk Nation is the main one, but the Amazon is where you find the book, amazon.com you just type in Good Talk Great Sales, but my YouTube channel, it’s easier to find the YouTube channel right through goodtalknation.com. I gave you the email, but Good Talk Nation if they click the links, the little social media links in the upper right-hand corner, click the YouTube one, it takes you to the location of all the videos and there’s got to be 50 plus.

Aaron: Awesome. People go Good Talk Nation, go check out that YouTube, watch a few of those videos. You’ll probably learn a ton from those videos, and you also get to see if you might want to have more conversations with Robert. Robert, I can’t wait to get to hang out with you at one of the GoBundance events coming up in Tahoe. Good getting to chat with you today and thanks for joining us on Real Estate Rockstars.

Robert: Likewise. Thank you so much, Aaron. This was awesome. It’s a great pleasure, and I really appreciate you.

Aaron: Thank you.