Eric Johnson – Relationships in Business

Eric Johnson:
And what we teach people to do is not to do the do you like to buy or sell your house this year? Or just to say, hey and build relationships. Just connect with people as a human being. And through those connections, people respond to just a human connection, like, how is your Christmas? How are things going with your kids? Just talking to people? What happens is as you create conversations and you’re just a normal person, having conversations gives you a chance to get to know people, gives you lots of opportunities to help people, connect them to people, you know, refer things to them, give them your opinion on, you know, that’s going to create opportunities to talk about real estate in a natural way. And then what we do in our circle closer is you log it so you know you’re in contact with them.

Dana Robinson:
Exit Plan is a podcast for business owners and those who want to be business owners. I’m always in search of the lesser known stories of entrepreneurship. In the Exit Plan podcast, you’ll hear stories from startup to sale and hear from the professionals who help business owners achieve their exit. Hosted by me, author and private equity manager Dana Robinson. Along with my co hosts and guests, you’ll hear real stories, tips and tools that will help you plan for the exit you want, whether you are still working at a day job or running a business. Let’s get started with this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. This is Dana Robinson with the Exit Plan podcast coming to you with a guest today, Eric Johnson, a longtime friend, colleague and client of mine who is a serial entrepreneur and has created software and consulting businesses that support entrepreneurs. As everybody knows, the Exit plan is talking about the never ending journey of the entrepreneur, from a job maybe out to entrepreneurship and from entrepreneurship to often the sale of a company or the sale of a product.

Dana Robinson:
And so I love telling those stories and bringing in entrepreneurs that have been on that journey. And I’m happy to bring you Eric Johnson. Eric, thanks for coming.

Eric Johnson:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Dana Robinson:
So I’m super excited to tell your story because it took me a lot of years to learn your story. I think with corporate and IP lawyer, I get little pieces of people’s journey because they come to me with a thing. They’re like, I got this thing and then I get really involved and I learn everything about that thing. And then years later, I learn a lot more about how they got there. And then, of course, years later, they’ve done something else. And over the last decade, I’ve sort of seen your story unfold. So great opportunity for you to introduce yourself instead of letting me try and reiterate your cv for everybody else.

Eric Johnson:
Okay, great. Well, Eric Johnson, and I’m the CEO and creator of a couple of different software platforms. One is called Teamsy, teamsy.com, and the other is Circlecloser.com, also author of the book Power Hour Boss, and also a principal at modus coaching and consulting. So got a few things going on, all of them related, as you said, to helping the entrepreneur succeed. Teaching people how to build what I like to call relationships based businesses.

Dana Robinson:
Right. Which is a broad spectrum of things, I think, for purposes of describing it the way I understand it, in the olden days, if you sold something to your kind of close to your friends and family network, we often called it an MLM or multilevel marketing. And as those businesses have diversified and really aren’t always built on that model, we call them network marketing businesses, I guess.

Eric Johnson:
Right, right.

Dana Robinson:
And one of the areas that you’ve become a specialist in that I don’t think everybody really realized was a network marketing business is real estate. Right. Becoming a real estate agent or broker is a business built on the network that you have or that you build 100%.

Eric Johnson:
Well, the truth is, any successful business is based on the relationships you build. I think real estate was one of the first entrepreneurial type businesses where people figured it out right away that, oh, my gosh, I think real estate invented the term sphere of influence. And really, they really honed in on the fact that, oh, my gosh, these relationships that I have, I need to build and deepen if I want to see my business grow. But these are principles that are timeless, really, for any type of business. And over the past 20 some years that I’ve been a coach, talked to just about every kind of business owner there is. It’s all about increasing their network of relationships and deepening the trust with those people if they want to grow the business.

Dana Robinson:
I love that. I know a lot of people that do coaching. And what I love about you being a coach and a mentor and somebody who’s created software that supports other people in business is, it’s not sort of a mental exercise for you. You became an entrepreneur, and certainly the entrepreneur journey brought you to build a business around software. But let’s talk about your early kind of how did you learn real estate, and how did you take what you knew and build that into something that was yours?

Eric Johnson:
Yeah, 100%. Well, I’ll tell you, I had the best sales and entrepreneur training in the world, which was about 15 years of wearing an apron in restaurants. And I always say, if you haven’t served as a waiter or as a bartender or something like that, then you haven’t really had the good sales training yet. Right. Working for tips definitely teaches you a lot. And so coming from that world, working my way through high school and college, working in restaurants, and then after college, graduated during a great recession, continued working in restaurants for a while, really learned a ton. Got to the point where I was managing restaurants, working the PNLs, understanding how the business flow worked, and then I graduated to working in the real estate industry. And I thought, oh, my gosh, compared to a restaurant, real estate is so much easier.

Eric Johnson:
Right. You know how many plates of dinner you had to sell to get to 6 million in sales in a restaurant? But your third cousin Sally can sell $6 million of real. So. And the margins are better.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely.

Eric Johnson:
But the thing is, it’s so funny because I talk to people all the time. I just had a conversation recently with top producing agent Los Angeles, someone that works in around the $100 million in sales a year type range, not a bad income. And literally teaching dialogues and verbiage from my restaurant years to like, wow, that’s really good. Where’d you get all this? That’s how you talk to a customer at a table. It’s the same philosophy. Right. And I’ll just give you an example. A lot of times, people are afraid to ask for business because they feel like a cheesy salesperson.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
Right. So they don’t want to constantly bring up their business. They just feel really gross. They don’t want to let people know. The example I always give them is when you go to a restaurant and the owner knows you, makes you feel special.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
Right. Makes you feel special. Makes you want to go to that restaurant. Because I know the owners.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely.

Eric Johnson:
When you walk into the restaurant and the owner knows you and they greet you warmly and they make sure you have a great experience, they’re taking care of you. They’re making sure that you’re getting a little upgrades here and there, they’re checking in on you. Are you having a great time? You’re feeling great, you’re spending more money.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
You’re having a better experience, and you’re happy about it. Right. So they’re not feeling cheesy at all. They’re making sure you’re having a great time, you’re spending more money. Everybody’s happy. Now, if the owner of the restaurant came up to you and said, dana, I hope you guys are having a great time tonight, you’d say, yeah, we are. Thank you. You really make a special.

Eric Johnson:
Well, I just want you to know if you have friends or family who have a special occasion or just want to have a great time, make sure that when they come in, they ask for me and tell me that you sent them. I’ll take good care of them.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely.

Eric Johnson:
Right. And you would be like, yeah, it feels like I’m doing you a favor. I just asked you for business. Am I being a cheesy salesperson? No. What I’m doing is I’m sharing my heart that I want to bring this experience that you’re having to the people you care about. And that is what the heart of relationship selling is, because selling is solving a problem for people. Right. It’s identifying a problem they have, helping them solve it.

Eric Johnson:
So if I can help you, I can help the people you care about. And you can feel good about putting your name to me because you know the level of service I’m going to give them.

Dana Robinson:
Right.

Eric Johnson:
And it’s really simple. So it’s getting past that idea of, well, I don’t want to be a cheesy salesperson. Instead understanding that you’re a professional that solves certain problems in your own brilliant way that other people need help with.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely. So does any home based business, real estate? I mean, look, young lawyers come to me and want to know, how do you go on your own? And they’ve been at a firm hiding in an office, and it is the same. Like, do you care about the people around you? Do you believe that you can deliver great service for them? They can’t read your mind. Right. You have to say, and then for your own customers, I think we probably talk about this at length. You have to ask your customers, who else might I be able to help? Not who else can I sell more of this to? Because at the core of it is giving somebody something that they want, right? No one can ever sell someone that they don’t want. I mean, maybe some slick sales program will promise that once you get in the door on the phone, you can sell anyone anything. But people want agency, and you’re just providing them with a menu of options that they want or need.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah. The truth is that if you don’t do that, you’re withholding the blessing from that person. It’s like a selfish act, right? So I’ve got a million analogies for it. One of my favorite ones is a good friend of yours finds a new church that they’re excited about. Oh, my gosh, I found a new church. It’s amazing. I can’t believe how great this new church is. The pastor is amazing, church is amazing, music is amazing.

Eric Johnson:
And you’re thinking, well, are you going to invite me to come see your new church? Or are you going to keep it to yourself? Right? Or I tell my kids, like, hey, if your friend is eating a piece of candy, do you feel weird if they don’t offer you a piece of the candy? Right? It’s just like, these are basic things. So if you have something that’s awesome and you don’t ask to share it with more people, you’re withholding that blessing from them. And sometimes it’s just mental gymnastics. It’s just kind of reframing in people’s minds. Like, hey, you just need to think about this differently. My business partner, Mike Lopez, always says, if your heart’s in the right place, your words aren’t going to stumble. Right. You’re not going to come across as an icky salesperson if your heart really is genuinely there to serve and help.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, I think I totally agree. I was thinking through when I was working in the air conditioning and plumbing business. It’s just a really big mental barrier for those of us who were raised kind of, I’ll say blue collar. I was raised by a phone man and my mom didn’t work for most of when I was growing up. And they chose that as a means to be present and available more, but it meant we didn’t have much money. And so his friendship network was always like, who could make it so that we don’t have to pay anything? So the sort of, like, doing you a favor was from a culture of sort of lower income. I’ll say poverty, but, I mean, I can’t claim that I didn’t eat, but think of the person who is, like, becoming a realtor, who’s worked their way through a service job. It’s really easy to think that what you can do to bless someone is give them something for free or try and save them money.

Dana Robinson:
Right? I’ll do this on the cheap for you. I’ll get your house listed and you can just pay me a little bit. But when you sort of grow up and realize, no, people really want you to get your fees and they’re going to pay somebody.

Eric Johnson:
Right?

Dana Robinson:
And, for example, a big obstacle for. I remember training some guys that sell air conditioning, and I just said, these people have more money than you and I are used to, and they would like some choices. And many of them, if you told them you have a premium option. Just say, let’s just don’t tell me all the other options. I just want the good one because I think I deserve it and I have the resources to pay for it. And that’s the favor they want. They want you to give them the best in some cases, and it’s a hard kind of mentality to have to break through for those of us that were raised with less than enough, I guess.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah. Well, I think, first of all, real estate is a great example because you don’t want to cut your fees. You’re going to save them money because they’re paying you to get them a better deal. Right? So you’re going to save a ton because I’m going to get you a better price, or I’m going to get the buyers to pay way more. Right. So every penny that you’re paying me is going to earn you tenfold. So you’re good. But I think you’re right.

Eric Johnson:
It’s understanding the value that you have and that people are willing to trade treasure for value, but they are loathed to do it with someone they don’t know and trust. So we live in a culture now where it’s like, if I don’t know you, then I got to go look.

Dana Robinson:
At your reviews, right?

Eric Johnson:
And so if I see that 100 people think you’re a five star guy, it’s like I’m borrowing trust from them. But I’m certainly not going to give you the money with no idea if I can trust you. Right? So I think it’s still close to 90% of all business is by introduction, referral, relationship, but certainly that other 10% is by reviews. So we’re looking to trust somebody, and that’s an important piece. The trust is what we’re paying for, obviously, competence, because trust, if you break it down, we always say it’s a combination of competence and connection, right? So it’s like the relationship plus how good you are at it, right? Because I could trust you. You could be my grandma, and I trust you, right. But I’m not going to have you do the rebuild of my engine on my classic mustang. So you need both, right.

Eric Johnson:
Competence and that connection. But really, that’s what we’re looking to do, is build trust with people. And when we go to spend money or do anything important, we’re looking for people we can trust. So if it’s not a friend, needs to be a friend of a friend. If it can’t be a friend of a friend, then we’re looking for reviews. But either way, we’re not going to go blindly into anything. People won’t do anything like that, right? We won’t even buy a pizza like that anymore.

Dana Robinson:
That’s right.

Eric Johnson:
When’s the last time you tried a new pizza place without checking the reviews?

Dana Robinson:
I mean, this is social capital. I see someone who I already follow, it’s someone who know local, someone who posts news on San Diego restaurants. And then I go, oh, they’re posting about a new place. It looks interesting. I add it to my list, but then I still might go ask some other people or check on it, right.

Eric Johnson:
Well, I’ve been in places where it’s like we’re getting ready to order it and my wife’s on the phone going, the reviews are terrible, let’s go. Right? It’s like, I’m starving right now. It’s like this is a two and a half star. We’re out of here. So I think that’s what it is. And business owners just need to understand. It’s funny because in the real estate business, I don’t know, I know I kind of go off on tangents, but we got into the network marketing business eight years ago because coming from the real estate industry building, we wanted to build technology. It was brutally competitive, right? The tech tools for real estate were being built by multibillion dollar companies and they were gobbling each other up.

Eric Johnson:
And network marketing was such an opportunity because nobody was building tools for that industry at the time. It was like 8 billion, I think it’s like 20 billion now. Huge. It’s a huge industry. So when we built our teamsy tool for network marketing, it was blue sky, blue water, whatever they call that opportunity. Right. But the same principles applied.

Dana Robinson:
Right?

Eric Johnson:
The same principles applied, yeah.

Dana Robinson:
You came at the real estate which would talk about how you got your origins in real estate. You had some real estate sales sophistication, knew how to train people, came from a training background. And then instead of tackling, how do we solve the sort of cms for salespeople or CRM. Sorry. For salespeople in real estate, you tackled network marketing, which would be like, let’s name a few. Beachbody. What are some of the kind of classic nationwide brands?

Eric Johnson:
I mean, all of them, everyone from Mary Kay and Amway to Beachbody to Arbon. We’ve got over 100 versions of teamsy that we’ve customized for each network. We’re everywhere. My background, I worked for a large real estate coaching and consulting company for a long time as an employee. And I really loved my job, I had a passion for helping that company succeed. And after about a decade of really enriching my boss. Good guy. Don’t fault him for anything.

Eric Johnson:
He gave me a great opportunity. But I will say, without being too cocky, that really helped enrich him with my. That’s what a good employee does, right? They help enrich you. So watching him get wealthier and wealthier and enjoy the fruits of my labor, he paid me well. I’m not going to complain about my salary, but I didn’t have a private jet. He did. Right. And having built a technology tool for real estate for him, watching it succeed, I had that experience, right, of figuring out how to get it done.

Eric Johnson:
Working with the engineers who speak their own. You know, Elon Musk says they speak like dolphins, dolphin talk. The engineers talk to each other. Know you’re in a room, and you don’t know what they’re saying. I’ve learned over the years that some of it’s fake. Some of their words and stuff are fake. It’s just like they do it to get rid of people like me out of the room so they can get back to work. But having that experience and then saying, okay, I’ve done it once, we can do this again.

Eric Johnson:
Let’s go do something for ourselves, right. And then embarking, jumping into a new industry where we could do something fun and not have any sort of competition with anyone we knew, right. And just go for it was a lot of fun. And I will tell you this, the second time I built a tech platform took me a lot less time, of course. Right. And that’s where you and I met, because I needed somebody to help me draw up all the paperwork for that company.

Dana Robinson:
Yes. And that was for you. New to partnership, probably, right. The entrepreneur journey. This is an observation I made years ago. So when I started podcasting, Nate and I grabbed every entrepreneur we knew and kind of grabbed their stories. And one of the themes that came out to us was almost everybody’s first business, not necessarily the one that hit big, but the first one that gave them some freedom, basically took what they learned from their job. And they said, yeah, you know what? But it was almost always someone who got really ambitious.

Dana Robinson:
They ingratiated, they lined their boss’s pockets for many years. But the trade off was that they came away with the skills, relationship capital, just an intuition about the business. And then when they stepped into that business, even though you didn’t have your sea legs about corporate partnership, IP law, all these other things that sort of come along later, you were competent and confident to walk into that role and say, I know what I’m doing here. I’m going to do this thing. And then you rally some trusted advisors when you go, okay, now I’m going to do this next thing, and I need partners, and there’s some capital issues and IP law and all that stuff, right? Then you level yourself up out of your own growth. So you’re kind of like the exit plan to me is like you’re getting out of work for someone else, but you got to get out of that job everything you possibly can, right? Because again, you look back and you don’t really resent your old boss, but if you would have stayed a little longer, you might. You leave when it’s time and you take those skills and then with each business, you’re going to have some hard lessons. Right? Three years to develop a software instead of six months is pretty common theme I’ve heard.

Dana Robinson:
Talk us through. You got your first software platform done and then was teamzy the second one.

Eric Johnson:
Then teamsy was the first one I did for myself.

Dana Robinson:
Okay. The first one I did was for.

Eric Johnson:
My old boss, and that still exists. And making money, which is great, God bless him. I was an employee. I had the role of director of product development or something like that at that time and built that out. What I had going for me was I knew who I wanted to work with. And so I was able to pick a few of my team and had them exit with me. And so we already knew each other. We already trusted each other.

Eric Johnson:
We already had been through some of the challenges, building stuff before. And so what I did to get my company going was as I pulled these handpicked this team, four guys, I picked four people I knew and trusted. Each one brought a different skill set that I needed to get the business going. And I said, I’m going to split the company with all of you. We win together, we die together. And so the only thing that I asked was that you guys make me CEO. We’ll work as a team, but I’m bringing the idea. I’m going to market it, I’m going to build it, you guys are going to help me create it.

Eric Johnson:
And it worked. And the thing is, because I didn’t have any capital, I had no capital. Leaving my job with, they gave me like a two month severance.

Dana Robinson:
Wow.

Eric Johnson:
And I think that was enough to pay your bill.

Dana Robinson:
Sorry.

Eric Johnson:
And it was good. I mean, I was glad to have that because getting that part laid out gave me the confidence to go after it. Right. And I had a mentor who said, good fences make great neighbors. Yeah, right? So we wanted to make sure we had all that down. So now I had my dream team, and it was, how fast can we bring this to market so all of us can make money? Nobody’s getting paid. So you know that. Three years to develop software, it was like nine months.

Eric Johnson:
These guys were animals. And we launched that techie people, they like to be the first adapters, early adapters. So we created a whole beta test group. We promoted it. We started with just with beachbody coaches because at the time, I was doing a little side hustle there. That’s what inspired me to do this. We did a little like a beta test where we were like, okay, if you want to be in the beta test, it’s free. 90 days.

Eric Johnson:
You get in here. We created a community board. We want all your suggestions. And we were constantly implementing suggestions, refinements, some stuff we thought was silly and we ignored. But there were some really good suggestions. We fine tuned it, and at the end of the 90 days, we said, okay, here’s the deal. If you like it, you can subscribe. We’re going to give you a special founders rate.

Eric Johnson:
And the day we turned on our credit card collection service, we had like 350 people subscribe.

Dana Robinson:
Wonderful.

Eric Johnson:
I was so excited because it’s like when somebody pays for something, you’re like, wow, this is a real thing.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely right.

Eric Johnson:
And that was really exciting because it was enough money on day one that it kind of, like, replaced the little bit of investment we had put in. Right. So it was really exciting. And then it just started to grow really fast. And I was like, wow, I can’t believe it. Our first try, we had a business.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Yes. I’ve seen so many businesses, they fall apart over ego conflict. They’re like bands, right? The garage band and the garage business tend to have who’s the leader? And you did probably a lot of the real derisking was being sure that you were all aligned and different talents and probably some of that sitting down and making everybody feel like, okay, we have our fences, everybody has their turf. Let’s go. Right.

Eric Johnson:
Well, we definitely have had conflict over the years. I mean, I won’t sugarcoat that. We’ve definitely butted heads. We’ve said unkind things to each other. We’ve been pissed off at each other. I think that’s normal. I mean, the thing is being grown up enough to come back from that and say, hey, sorry, I lost my cool. I do have tons of respect for you.

Eric Johnson:
Let’s talk this out. Let’s get on the same page. But there’s definitely been ups and downs. And as you know, last year, one of our partners opted to sell his shares back to us and leave. But it was amicable. It was amicable. It was just time to do it. That is a thing.

Eric Johnson:
I think you need to be aware of that. One of the things that we’ve tried to do is because we don’t work together in a brick and mortar location. We’re all at home. I mean, my whole thing was, I’m at home right now, right? I’m in my office right now. I wanted to be home with my kids, working for somebody else. I enjoyed my job, but I didn’t enjoy the fact that I never saw, I felt like Fred Flintstone coming home from the quarry, seeing the kids at dinner, and that’s it. I didn’t want that traditional role. I wanted to be able to be around my kids and my wife and enjoy this time because I know it’s gone soon.

Eric Johnson:
And then it’s like then an empty nester. I wanted to enjoy it while I was still a young man. So we’re all remote and virtual, and for a time, we all lived in the same city, and so we would have lunch, but then people move away and they buy it. You make some money, we start spreading out into bigger properties. So we’re kind of spread out. But what I try to do is at least once a year, I try to rent, like, a really nice Airbnb house somewhere. And we get together for a weekend and we do some planning, we do some brainstorming, we drink some bourbon, we hang out. We kind of reconnect and just be dudes hanging out together and who own a business together.

Eric Johnson:
And it kind of helps reset the relationships and all the little. I’ve got kids, they get under each other’s skin, but they’re siblings. They love each other. Yeah, right. And business partners can be like that, too. We can get irritated with each other, but it’s good to just. There’s really not that many problems that spending a couple of days together just breaking bread and hanging out and doing stuff can’t kind of mend over, if that makes sense.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a little like any relationship, if it’s going to be long standing mutual respect, patience, forgiveness for the blow ups and transgressions, and getting along for the greater good of the business and the friendships. Right? Because I hate this phrase. It’s just business that people throw at people when they’re screwing them over. In business, it’s not. We only have one life, we’re living it. And these people in our business lives are our friends, are the piece of our foundation, 100%.

Eric Johnson:
The relationship is most important. One of the thought leaders I love, and I’m sure you’re aware of him, probably read some of his books. Is Simon Sinek. Anyone listening? If you haven’t read any of Simon Sinek’s books, he’s amazing. Yeah. Really great thought leader. But he’s kind of a unicorn in the business era because for him, it is about the trust and the quality of the relationships. And one of the, gosh, I think it was in leaders eat last.

Eric Johnson:
One of his books he had a chapter on from GE, right? And Jack Welsh is lauded as one of the great icons of american business. And Sinek just destroys him. He’s like, he’s the worst leader in american history. Single handedly destroyed the american business model. And he goes through and explains how Jack Welsh took the greatest, largest, most successful american company ever, General Electric, and turned it into a pathetic conglomerate of weak units. Right? And he did it first by eroding the trust of the culture. He destroyed the trust culture. It became a dog eat dog culture.

Eric Johnson:
Right? And then he basically stewarded a steady decline. That brings us to now where you don’t think of GE as a great company. Right? I mean, it’s a big company, but it’s not a great company.

Dana Robinson:
Right?

Eric Johnson:
And meanwhile, people are still talking about Jack Welsh. Jack Welsh. Jack Welsh. It was such a great chapter because I 100% agree with him and his analysis of the situation and that whole kind of 1980s. It’s just business and, oh, well, the dividends are a little low. Let’s lay a couple of thousand people off and things like that. You’d never get the loyalty of your staff back after a layoff round.

Dana Robinson:
Right.

Eric Johnson:
It’s gone forever. Right. As soon as they understand the relationship between employer and employee is 100% transactional, you’re never going to get anything more out of it. You’re never going to get that extra mile out of your employees again.

Dana Robinson:
Right. Yeah. You’re in a standoff where we chase to the bottom. Right. I will only give you as much as is necessary to keep from getting fired, and I will only pay you as much as is necessary so that you don’t quit so you end up in this horrible standoff. I talk about that in the king’s fly swatter for a shameless plug for my book. Because I think your podcast, you plug your book yeah.

Eric Johnson:
Thank you.

Dana Robinson:
Dana Robinson here. Quick plug for my book, the King’s Flyswatter. You can see it here behind me. If you’re watching this, I’ve got it in my hand. It’s a beautiful hardcover book, printed to make it giftable, something that you can share with a family member buy as a gift. So this latest book, it’s a fable about a person who has a really crappy job. Let’s just start there. This is a book that most people can relate to because we’ve all had crappy jobs.

Dana Robinson:
This is the story of Ubar, a servant in the court of a babylonian king who masters his boring, monotonous job and then learns to listen to the king, hearing him rule the kingdom while quietly swatting flies behind a king. Eventually, Ubar becomes the wisest and most successful man in the kingdom. The story is fun and it’s easy to read, but it’s not mythology. It’s my story. And as I shared the idea with colleagues and friends, I learned that it was their story. And guess what? It’s your story if you’re at a job of any kind, one that you love, one that you hate, one that’s just enough to get by. This little book gives fresh perspective on how to leverage that job to get you something greater than a paycheck. The lessons in this parable are entrepreneurial lessons, but not what you might think from the current entrepreneurial zeitgeist.

Dana Robinson:
If you or someone you know are looking for a real pathway to entrepreneurship, here’s the secret. Your job is the way out of your job. It’s counterintuitive, but once you see how it works, you can’t unsee it. Learn the way of the fly swatter from the parable of Ubar and from the stories I share from my 30 year business journey. You can get a free copy of the King’s Flyswatter by going to danarobinson.com. It’s the tale of a slave in the babylonian era to the king who does the worst job in the kingdom. He swats flies, and his mentor says, well, I’d like you, now that you’re good at that job, to start listening to everything the king says and does. And over time, of course, this young man becomes very wise and as a result, becomes very wealthy and serves the kingdom and himself and enjoys all the fruits of that.

Dana Robinson:
And a lot of that starts with breaking that cycle. And I know employers aren’t going to lead the way with breaking that cycle. But for us, our story, mine as well, as yours is, we took a job really seriously and helped make other people a lot of money. And the trade off was that we extracted a lot of the skills that have taken us to where we are today. And the more employees that do this, the more agency they’re going to have to leave when they realize that maybe this is too transactional. And for those that will never become entrepreneurs, you’ll still get a better job down the road. Right. If you take your job and you just say, I’m not going to be that kind of employee, even if I’m in a horrible transactional environment, you have the opportunity to become the star employee that gets to leave, to go somewhere else because you haven’t chased it to the bottom and been in that standoff where you say, I’m only going to do the minimum that’s necessary in this job.

Dana Robinson:
You say, I’m going to take all the skills I can possibly get out.

Eric Johnson:
Of this job 100%. The thing is, too, is that you learn from bad leaders, too.

Dana Robinson:
Oh, yeah.

Eric Johnson:
It’s like how much of our life is not wanting to do something our Parents did or not wanting to do something that boss did to me? So there’s a lot of valuable lessons in that. And probably my little pro cynic rant I just did was part of that was because I’ve had bad bosses and I’ve seen firsthand culture be wiped out. But it’s a big deal, I think, about a company like Costco. I don’t know about you, but I love going to Costco.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, 100%. Quick Costco story. I went to the Moreno Valley Price club as a ten year old boy and was fascinated by it and probably walked past Saul Price. My very good friend’s father just passed away. He took almost all of his investment money in the 90s, invested it because he met Saul Price. And that stock is trading at just under $700 a share right now. And I think we’re talking tens of millions of dollars over the course of a 30 year period by investing in that business and that business. Invest in his people.

Dana Robinson:
There is still the same door greeters that were there when I was a kid through whatever. I’m 54, so you’re talking about 40 plus years of people that I recognize from when we would buy five gallon jugs of pickles, whatever Costco used to.

Eric Johnson:
Sell in the old. My Costco is 20 years old. I’ve been going there for 20 years, and the same employees are there.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
And it’s like we don’t know each other personally. I mean, I know all their names because they were name tags. Yes. But they always greet me like, oh, hey, how’s it going? My daughter, my youngest, my baby, she’s seven now. She says, how did all these people know you, dad? I go, I’ve been shopping here for 20 years. And the thing is that it’s the same people. Now, we’re living in a time, especially here in southern California where you and I live, there’s an extreme shortage of good employees. Costco keeps all theirs.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah, right? And you wouldn’t look at that and mean, it’s easy to look down your nose. And, you know, working at a, it’s not a highly glorified job, but people stay there forever. They have loyalty. And perfect example is in 2009, 2010, when everyone was laying off everybody, Costco gave everyone a wage increase. So they invested in their workforce at a time where people were feeling very insecure about their job. What a strong message that sent, right? And people were saying, oh, well, what idiots. These people don’t run a business.

Dana Robinson:
Right? Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
Look at how well they’ve done. Right? So I think it does come down to that. It comes down to how you treat your people, and then it comes down to how you treat your customers. It comes down to how you build those relationships. For me also, it’s about being systemized in your approach. Right. That’s part of what we teach. What we do with our software is help people systemize their approach so that they’re not dropping people through the cracks.

Eric Johnson:
Forgetting about people. Absolutely. I’m the worst at forgetting about people. Time flies for me. I don’t really see time. Some people see time. My wife sees every minute. Every second goes by.

Eric Johnson:
She sees it. Right? If you locked her in a dark room for five minutes, she’d be like, I was in there for five minutes. If you put me in a dark room for five minutes, I might think it was a week. I might think it was a second. I don’t know. I don’t have a concept of time. So without having a system, I lose track of people. And it’s like you and I.

Eric Johnson:
When was the last time we talked? It feels like it was just yesterday to me. So if I don’t have a reminder tickling me, saying, hey, reach out and connect with Dana, time’s going to go by and I’m going to go, yeah. How’s it going, jerk? It’s been six months, so I think it’s really important that we all have a system like that, have something that is helping us be better at being a human and being a business owner and being an entrepreneur. And that’s kind of been a passion of know, trying to structure my day, structure my calendar, have tools that help me stay on top of things so that I can show up the way I want to.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. So let me just highlight something for a the, I think, big lesson from Eric Johnson. You take the skills that you got at a job and eventually you’ve got the tools for entrepreneurship. The second piece of this entrepreneur journey has a lot to do with how you deploy those skills with partners and execute well on your business and then get that business up and running and then treat that business as a people business. Right? People. Your customers are people, your partners are people. If you have shareholders of people, right? You’re making this cultural decision that you’re going to do good because people deserve it. But what you’ve done is, I think a lot of businesses get to an impasse, right? Maybe my favorite book, sort of foundationally about business is still E myth Emith revisited, if you want to be specific.

Dana Robinson:
So Michael E. Gerber’s got this. A lot of the things that people realize is they’re like, oh, my God, I’ve been doing all this stuff wrong. I read this book, it’s super simple. And then they go, well, I’m supposed to have repeatable systems and processes. It’s like one of the kind of big highlights of the methodology, I guess, would be myth. And when I’ve talked to people who have had that, aha, the very next thing they start doing is they stop doing their business and they start trying to create systems and processes. And we’re in a world today where I don’t think anyone has to create their own systems and processes because there are a bunch of entrepreneurs like you who have said, I’ve got a silver bullet for this particular business.

Dana Robinson:
So teamsy really becomes that tool for an entire business category where people would otherwise have to basically invent. How do I keep track of things? They’re going to put it on their calendar. They’re going to use their email, they’re going to bootleg it into some giant thing like Salesforce that’s expensive and complicated. So you actually came up with something that becomes a really valuable tool. So anyone who’s listening, I say take note that the systems and process piece of solving your business problems or getting started in business and actually succeeding has a lot to do with relying on a piece of technology that substitutes for you having to invent your own way, right?

Eric Johnson:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve worked with so many people as a coach, helping them to figure out how to systemize their approach, that we finally just said, let’s just get software that does it inexpensively. You don’t have to pay a huge consulting fee to get this done.

Dana Robinson:
Right? Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
And you can just plug in, and it’ll tell you basically what to do. You can’t screw this up. I was really. My good friend of mine owns a couple of chick fil a restaurants here in southern California. That’s a great business, man. I don’t know anybody listening. If you’ve got a chick fil a near you, have you ever seen that thing? Not.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
And they do so much volume usually. So here in California, there’s always an in n out burger next door to the all. But they both have these long. There’s a point to this story. Don’t worry. They both have these long takeout lines. The main difference is that chick fil A’s line is they do. They do two to three times the volume that in n out does.

Eric Johnson:
And in n out, to their credit, the reason why is because they will not put the burger down until the order is in. Right. I’m a logical thinker, so even though I can see 19 cars in the drive through and the only thing I sell is hamburgers, the logic is, they’re here for hamburger.

Dana Robinson:
Yes.

Eric Johnson:
You could probably get away with putting a few down. I’m just saying. So chick fil a has a system, right? Everyone learns it. They take these young people, they teach them how to make sure they’re smiling and happy. They all follow the process. The service is great. But one of the things they have, people don’t realize they have this. They have this predictive software that measures the volume of food by the minute.

Dana Robinson:
Wow.

Eric Johnson:
So what it does is it says, today’s January 15. Last January 15, at 11:52 a.m. We were selling 18 chicken sandwiches. So what happens is the longer that chickfila restaurant is there, the more data they have. And they have the trending data for this date. My budy, who owns these restaurants, he says that the error rate is about 3% on this predictive program.

Dana Robinson:
Wow.

Eric Johnson:
So they don’t even have to look out the window. They just start cooking.

Dana Robinson:
That’s amazing.

Eric Johnson:
They just start cooking. And that is why you can get through the chickfila. So what always happens is, I have four kids, so some of them want in and out. Some of them want chick fil a. Okay, great. You two go into chick fil a and we’ll get in the in n out line, whatever. And usually it’s like, by the time the inn out, kids get their burgers, the other ones are already done eating. That’s the thing.

Eric Johnson:
So the point is, what makes them so successful? It’s the systems that they’ve put in place. Right. When you become. I forget what they call them. I think they’re called partners. And when you get to own the restaurants, you don’t create a system. Right. You learn a system.

Dana Robinson:
Right.

Eric Johnson:
So the next level is having a system that is so simple, you don’t even have to learn it. It just kind of tells you what to do and you do it. Right. And that’s what teams. He tries to do. It says, okay, well, here’s who you need to connect with, and here’s a text you can send and go do it. And you don’t even have to understand the philosophy of what you’re doing. Just do it and things will work out fine.

Dana Robinson:
Right? Yeah. I have friends that try to get in real estate. For example, a bartender, which is to your point, is the perfect training ground for becoming a real estate agent. My wife has been in real estate for 20 years, but she was largely doing short term rentals, which didn’t require license. I have a broker’s license, so if we did anything, then it was covered under my real estate license. But she finally got her license about four years ago, and so she was commiserating with a bartender because he was taking the exam, I think, a couple of months ahead of her. And then we kept in touch with him, and I think he felt lost. He got a license, and then he’s looking for mentorship, a system process.

Dana Robinson:
I mean, there’s so many people that are perfectly capable of becoming incredibly successful real estate agents that just need to step into the right practical training, because the training they give you to get your license, it’s worthless.

Eric Johnson:
Right.

Dana Robinson:
They need the sales training. They need kind of the kind of coaching and training that you offer, and they need just a system to plug in that just says, here’s how we’re going to do this.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah, I mean, if that bartender is still trying to figure out how to be a real estate agent, what he needs to do is go get on circlecloser.com, which is my real estate tool. And he can, in five minutes, he can sync his phone contacts into it, he can sync his Facebook friends into it, Instagram followers into it, and immediately have a huge database of relationships. Start working and just follow prompts and reach out to people. The only other thing somebody needs is a good broker who can back them up if they’re new and make sure they’re doing the transaction correctly.

Dana Robinson:
Right, right. Their fee. Right. To babysit the transactions until you’ve been through enough to see. These are how transactions go.

Eric Johnson:
Right? So the circle closer process is really simple. One of the things that I have found 23 years working with real estate agents is you say, show me your database, let’s see who you’re working with, and they’ll give you a list of 150 people. It’s like, that’s not enough. Let me see your phone. You have 2900 contacts in your phone. Why do you have 150 people on this database? What are you thinking? Well, those aren’t my real estate database. Those are just people. I know you’re not getting this, right.

Eric Johnson:
Do they live in homes? So the first piece is them understanding that they have a huge sphere of influence. They’re not thinking about social media context. They’re not thinking about their phone contacts, right. And then they’re saying, well, I mean, I don’t want to sink the pizza place into my database. It’s like, how often do you eat the pizza there? Every week. It’s like, you’re really not figuring this out. You need to be knowing that pizza owner, he probably knows your face, right? His customers. So go introduce yourself to him.

Eric Johnson:
You know what I mean? Guy’s probably looking for a house right now. So it’s just about understanding that. And then it’s like, okay, well, what do I do with these people? Great. And that’s what the system does. It says, okay, we’ll reach out, text this person. And what we teach people to do is not to do the, hey, would you like to buy or sell your house this year? Just to say, hey, and build relationships. Just connect with people as a human being. And through those connections, people respond to just a human connection.

Eric Johnson:
Like, how is your Christmas? How are things going with your kids? And just talking to people? What happens is, as you create conversations and you’re just a normal person, having conversations gives you a chance to get to know people, gives you lots of opportunities to help people, right? Connect them to people, you know, refer things to them, give them your opinion on things. But that’s going to create opportunities to talk about real estate in a natural way. And then what we do in our circle closer is whenever you have a conversation with somebody, like you started a conversation, you log it, so you know you’re in contact with them. But then there’s a special one called a real talk, when you actually talked about real estate. So we figure like, 20% of your conversations will lead to a real talk. Great. And then out of your real talks, you’re going to generate a certain one in ten is going to generate a lead, and then maybe you’re closing one in four leads. So now we can do math.

Eric Johnson:
So if you’re starting this many conversations and 20% of those are real talks and a certain amount of those are leads, a certain amount of those close, then I can tell you that if you’re having enough conversations, you can set a goal for how many transactions you want to have. And though I can’t tell you which conversation is going to lead to the transaction, I can tell you that over time, you can predict what’s going to happen in your business. Right? And then analytical minds like you go, wow, I like that. Okay, so it’s not just warm and fuzzy, being nice and sweet and loving to people, but there is a math to it. Of course there is. It’s any business, right? It’s any business. But I think somebody like your friend, the bartender, who’s like, what do I do? How do I build this business? It’s kind of funny because we actually had a booth for Circle closer at the NAR national convention in Anaheim several months ago. And they have this.

Eric Johnson:
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one of those NAR conventions.

Dana Robinson:
No. For the listeners. National association of Realtors. It’s the organization that owns the Circle R of the Realtor trademark. So the biggest national real estate organization.

Eric Johnson:
I’ve not been, they have this huge know, and they have lots of meetings and stuff, but they do a trade show. It’s a massive trade show. Probably the biggest trade, the only trade show I’ve ever seen as big as the NaR Realtor Pavilion is like the LA CaR show. Just to give you an idea of how big it. Okay. And it’s all booths like my business, all booths trying to sell something to real estate agents because it’s a lot of. Yeah, okay. But what’s interesting is NAR, again, the National association of Realtors, it’s like the Teamsters, but for real estate.

Eric Johnson:
Okay. So they probably won’t appreciate that comment, but that’s what it is. But they have all these researchers, and so they say 88% of all real estate is done by referral. That means somebody introduced the agent to their friend or repeat. So I’m using the same agent the second or third or fourth time. Right? So 88% of real estate is done by relationship, by trusted relationship. So that leaves 12% of probably the biggest industry in our economy. So it’s still a big chunk, 12%.

Eric Johnson:
This whole trade show is how to run ads, how to get cold Internet leads, how to convert, how to buy technology, to do that, to do funnels. So they’re literally investing billions of dollars.

Dana Robinson:
To chase the 12%.

Eric Johnson:
To chase the 12%. Right.

Dana Robinson:
And no one’s talking about how do you just manage and market to the relationships you have with the direct relationship, which is where 88% of the business is going to come from.

Eric Johnson:
88% of the business comes from that industry wide.

Dana Robinson:
Wow.

Eric Johnson:
You talk to the top agents in the business, they’ll tell you their number is more like 94%. 95% is by relationship. It’s referrals, it’s repeat customers. It’s like, how are they doing that? If you’re a new agent, you need to be figuring out how to do that, right? So that’s really kind of the niche we try to fill is how can we create something that’s really inexpensive and easy, right. So that somebody like your friend who’s the bartender can immediately afford it and have a system to follow to start generating leads. Once he has some clients to work with, like I said, then he can build his competence, right? And when you’re new and you don’t have the competence, I mean, I know you go through the licensing and you do some learning. You haven’t applied yet as you need to build your confidence, that’s where you need a good broker who can help make sure you need somebody competent behind you, make sure you don’t screw up. Right? But once you’ve done a few deals, you start getting good.

Eric Johnson:
Right? Once you’ve done a dozen deals, you’ve pretty much seen it all and now you can have the confidence that you’re going to be able to nail that, do a great job for your clients. The biggest challenge is getting more clients.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. The more competent you are, the easier it’s going to be to convert those clients because again, the relationship is like you said with your grandmother, you trust her, but you wouldn’t let her work on your car, right. The new realtor is going to have 1000 contacts and they’ve got to convince somebody that it’s worth giving them a shot and build the confidence and competence that is going to be conveyed when they sit down with more and more important. Most brokerages in my experience, tend to compensate that way. Right. So early on they just say like you can have 30% of this deal why? Because they are babysitting you. And twelve deals in. If you get a deal a year, a deal a month for a year, by the end of the year you might be negotiating yourself to 60 or more, right.

Dana Robinson:
In terms of your split with your broker, because the broker trusts you and now you have the competence to land the deals. You don’t need to rely on them as a relationship transfer to convince somebody that you’re the right person to handle their transaction. So the economics go up again. It’s earn or learn. I think early on you’re in that position to just learn and get to a point where you have some control. And eventually a lot of people choose never to become brokers and just to continue to work. The first agent that I learned real estate from was on a 95% commission with Cobwell banker. Because she didn’t want to be the broker, right.

Dana Robinson:
She wanted the umbrella. But she was so good and so seasoned that almost all of her commissions go straight to her. And the brokerage was lucky to have her just being connected to the brokerage still.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah. The truth is that in real estate, the salespeople can make more money than brokers in most cases.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
It’s more of a personality thing that leads people to the leadership of being a broker. They can make a good income, they can make a great income if they do it right. That’s a rare situation. I know some of the, through our consulting agency, we work with a few boutique brokerages and we work on helping them build what we call a team ridge, which is a brokerage that functions like a team. Instead of that Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross donuts are for closers, get out of here type real estate office. That’s like the stereotypical real estate office. That’s a little over the top example. But sometimes it kind of feels like that some of the brokerages will have hundreds of agents.

Eric Johnson:
You’re kind of a number on the wall. Hopefully you bring some income in type thing, trying to build a team ridge can be very profitable because there’s a loyalty. And typically for that environment, agents are willing to pay more of their commission to the brokerage. So it’s kind of like anything else. You pay for the experience you’re having, right?

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
And if you’re working for, and let’s be honest, a new agent that’s making 30% of a real estate transaction in a lot of parts of this country, that still beats bartending.

Dana Robinson:
Yes, it does.

Eric Johnson:
Right? So you have a couple of those and you’re like, wow, you can make good money bartending. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there and done that. But I will say this, having run the books and restaurants and bars, that is not where you want to go entrepreneurial. Unless I always say, we always talk about maybe opening a brewery. We’re in San Diego. It’s like the Napa Valley of Beer. It’s like maybe we’ll open a brewery someday with a restaurant. That’s like your fun.

Eric Johnson:
Retirement money, entrepreneurship. I’m just telling you guys, restaurant business is low margin, hard work, long hours. But it can be done. It can be done well, but there’s easier ways to make money, and one of them is software. It is so nice to have people buy and pay for your service and use it while you’re asleep.

Dana Robinson:
Yes. Well, yes, 100%. I mean, my second business was a coffee house, and it cured me of ever wanting to own any kind of a hospitality business again. It was long hours, low margins. People steal from you. It was a horrible experience. And the clients I’ve had that have been wildly successful were seasoned chefs who got backed by big funds that were able to open restaurants that were done right. Those that do the skinny entrepreneurial restaurant thing, it’s a rare success, in my opinion.

Dana Robinson:
But to your point, real estate, homebase businesses. Amongst homebase businesses, real estate has got to be one of the top opportunities. Now, let’s be toward the end of this here, predict the future and we’ll be accountable to it. Because some years in the future, someone might still be listening to this podcast. It is the beginning of 2024. We have had almost a year of interest rate increases and slow real estate sales. Is it a horrible time for someone to go, I’d like to be a realtor and become an agent right now.

Eric Johnson:
Honestly, I think it’s a great time to do it because you’ve heard the old adage that hard times make strong men and women. And women. It’s an old adage. Okay, yeah, but the way it goes is hard times make strong men strong people. Let’s just say that. Strong.

Dana Robinson:
I like that. Thank you.

Eric Johnson:
Strong people make good times, and good times makes weak people. Right. And weak people make hard times.

Dana Robinson:
That’s a good characterization of the cycle.

Eric Johnson:
That’s the cycle of world history. Yeah, right. So we’re in a hard time, which is a great time to become an entrepreneur, because it is going to give you skills and hardiness that you’ll be able to weather the ups and downs of the business cycle. I do think predicting the future, I think that we are moving into a much better economic climate over the next couple of years, though. I don’t think it’s going to be an overnight thing. And I think it may get a little tougher before it gets easier. But I’m optimistic. I’m optimistic that we will see another kind of boom.

Eric Johnson:
And the thing is like, man, if you can get a solid foundation into your business when it’s hard and then a boom happens, it’s very exciting to ride. Right. So you want to be ready to do that. Now, for the real estate agents that I talked to, I know we didn’t talk about real estate a lot, but this is true for whether you’re a network marketing home based business, or you’re a solopreneur with some sort of a business right now. When times are hard, obviously you want to make a living, but I want you to think about market share. So market share, what is that? It means that you’re building relationships at a breakneck pace while other people are quitting the business. So you’re building relationships, you’re meeting people, you’re getting out there, and you’re understanding that. I may not get a deal from this relationship right away, but I’m banking this relationship.

Eric Johnson:
I’m meeting more people. I’m expanding my database, my sphere of influence. And what’s going to happen is, as it gets harder, like if you’re in real estate, a lot of agents are quitting, right? They’re expecting a 20%. They haven’t got the numbers yet because people haven’t been rebuilt for their membership, and they are, but they’re expecting like a 20% drop nationwide. That’s a huge drop in competition. Right? So think about this. All those people have clients. They have relationships that no longer have a person to serve.

Eric Johnson:
They’re up for grabs. So market share. Market share. Market share. If you’re running a restaurant, I mean, Southern California is like, what was it?

Dana Robinson:
Like?

Eric Johnson:
70% of restaurants closed during COVID and didn’t come back. So I mean, think about the market share those that survived had.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah, they just expanded the parking in front of their restaurant and put more tables out and filled them and added their capacity and have boom.

Eric Johnson:
My encouragement to everybody is don’t look at, is this a bad time? If you’re ready, go for it. If it’s hard work. Hard work? What’s wrong with hard work? Hard work is good for us. And remember what I said, hard times make strong people. So this is your chance to be a stronger entrepreneur, to have market share. When the tide turns and just be ready, man. Just be ready. And the other thing is, as you’re building relationships, think about systems.

Eric Johnson:
One thing that you said earlier, Dana, that I think was wise was, don’t stop building your business to build your systems. But think about the systems of how you will scale if overnight, your volume tripled, quadrupled, quintupled. How will you scale the business so that it doesn’t fall off the rails? Like, think about that, right?

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
We’re actually working with a client who is a top loan originator. Mortgage loans. And she’s just amazing at it, and she’s what we call, you’ve probably heard this term, an unconscious competent. She’s just good at it, and her dream is to have a team of loan officers who do what she does so that she can just make it rain and enjoy her life. Right. That sounds like something we all want to do. Problem is, nobody else is good at it like her. So how does she teach people to be consciously competent? Like, she’s unconsciously competent.

Eric Johnson:
And so in her case, she gets it. I can’t stop building my business. We’re in a low point in the market. I got to work hard to make my with. She works with my partner, mike, and I. She just schedules 2 hours a week where during those 2 hours, we pull the systems out of her brain.

Dana Robinson:
Brilliant. Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
And so she can just start on the dime and go, okay, where’d we leave off? We left off here. And over the last four months, we’ve actually helped her write, like, a 45 page manual. Right. She calls it her diamond standard of excellence. But the point is, she’s not thinking about 7% mortgage rates. How in the world will I ever build my team like, I want? There’s no mortgages, especially very few. Like, in California. We’re on the coast here.

Eric Johnson:
Real estate kind of is starting to move again. But it actually stopped for a. The train came to a stop. Right. And now it’s trying to break that momentum and move again. She wasn’t thinking like, well, what was me? What should I do? Should I go work as a barista? She’s thinking, I’m going to be ready to add ten people to my team. So she’s thinking that way, entrepreneurial. Like, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, make the living, make it through this season.

Eric Johnson:
But when this tide turns, I’m ready to scale.

Dana Robinson:
Right? Yeah. Interesting observation, because one of my friends is a loan originator and a broker, essentially, and he couldn’t get the systems built during the high times because he was doing so much. Right, right. That then when the hard times hit, now is the time for those that are successful to say, okay, I couldn’t scale because I was so busy. Realtor loans, home based business. I was so busy doing, go, go. Now is the time to say, okay, I’m going to do all that I can, which might be a 10th of the production that you were familiar with, but now is the time to build so that when the floodgates open again, you’re ready for it. And probably a good opportunity for those new realtors that have been thinking, well, I wanted to get into this when it seemed like easy money.

Dana Robinson:
If you really want to do this at scale, I know almost no other businesses where someone can get qualified in a matter of months. Get training, a wide variety of training like yours, inexpensive software, literally be self employed in a business that if they do one deal a month, make more than an average wage. And during that time do open houses. Find someone else and just say, I won’t take anything. I’m going to just get business cards and hand them out at an open house. And show your houses to someone who’s got more houses than they can have open houses for.

Eric Johnson:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, you could realistically make six figures your first year of real estate if you’re focused. I think another great business is network marketing. It has a bad reputation. But here’s what I will say about this. I think every home in America should have one, should have a business. If you’re bad at it, you can make 15 grand between your tax write offs and what you bring in, which for a lot of families is a big deal. If you’re decent at it.

Eric Johnson:
It’s an easy way to add 40, $50,000 a year to the family’s income. So as a side hustle, I think that people don’t realize what an easy, I won’t say easy because you got to work, but it doesn’t require a skill set that you don’t already have. Right?

Dana Robinson:
Well, yeah, Homebase network marketing businesses. And I agree that they’ve had bad raps, but I grew up using Tupperware and my mom had to get it somewhere and she bought it from someone she knew. Right. But they follow the franchise model they’ve already got, other than, say, the product that you’ve created for people to manage the business from. The template is there. The business wouldn’t be successful for the brand owner unless they created the franchise model that lets someone have a home based business they don’t have to invent. Right.

Eric Johnson:
Right. There’s already products. There’s already distribution. There’s already customer service. It’s all there. Right. I know you typically invest like, 200, $300 to start your business, and that’s to buy products you’re going to use so that you can talk about it. It’s a no brainer to me.

Eric Johnson:
That’s why I wanted to make an impact there, because I wanted to help with the reputation of that industry, because so much of what’s being taught is 1970s sales weirdness. So I wanted to teach people like, hey, just be a real person. Help your friends and family find a product that you can get passionate about. And we’ve all got different stories, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s health, whether it’s getting rid of toxic chemicals in your home. There’s lots of different areas that people. Skincare. Women are crazy about their skincare. I mean that in a good way.

Eric Johnson:
They don’t enjoy the wrinkles as much as we do. But I’m coming across as the misogynist of the week, aren’t I? But anyways, you get the idea. It’s a great way for people to add to their family’s income during a challenging time where we’ve got 20% inflation. Imagine if you could put that 20% back into your income.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah.

Eric Johnson:
So I’m a big fan of it. Plus, the tax benefits are incredible for a family. If you’ve got two w, two earners, wage earners in the home, and you can’t write anything off your taxes, now suddenly you’ve got a business. You get to write a lot of things off your taxes, and that’s real money back in your pocket.

Dana Robinson:
Absolutely. Home, office mileage, meals, a certain amount of travel. If it’s related to the business, there’s office supplies, the technology that you need to drive the business, all of these things that really do add up to. And there’s whole books written on how to leverage the most to save taxes appropriately based on your home based business.

Eric Johnson:
Right. Yeah. I would encourage people, don’t be discouraged that it’s a hard time. Be encouraged. It’s a great time to do it. And the other thing is you can do side hustles without leaving your job. I didn’t leave my job right away. I had things cooking when I left, to be honest.

Eric Johnson:
They sent me on my way. I was ready to leave, and they sent me on my way. And I was actually quite grateful for that because I got a little severance, which helped.

Dana Robinson:
Yeah. Anyone who’s dreaming? They watch Shark tank. They’re waiting for a big idea. They’re waiting for something to hit. They want to walk out and kind of Yolo and do the Jerry Maguire speech about how they hate their job. Keep your day job and nurture your business skills as a realtor and a home based business, whether it’s based on an existing platform or not. And you’ll be thankful when you have a soft landing out of that job into something that you’ve begun to nurture as you gain the skills of entrepreneurship. Eric Johnson, thank you for taking an hour of your time to hang out with my audience on the XPlan podcast.

Dana Robinson:
Appreciate it very much. If people want to connect with you, there’s probably a lot we’ve got a couple of software platforms. What’s the easiest way into the Eric Johnson contact funnel?

Eric Johnson:
You can probably find me pretty easily on LinkedIn because I have kind of a generic name on other social media platforms. It may take you a minute to find me, but teamsy.com, like teamzy.com or circlecloser.com, you’ll find those software platforms and you can message me there, too. But yeah, LinkedIn, probably the easiest place to find me. And you’ll see me connected to Dana. So if you’re wondering which Eric Johnson.

Dana Robinson:
There, it’s, yeah, there’s not that many Eric Johnson. Johnson is the number one most popular anglo last name. Right behind it is Jones, which means Johnson and Welsh and then Robinson. Yeah, we’re representing the most common old british names. But anyway, great to have you, Eric. And for everybody else, don’t forget to stay in touch with me. Email questions, comments, anything you’d like to hear or see to. Hello@danarobinson.com? Thanks for coming.

Eric Johnson:
Bye, everyone.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up with questions or comments by emailing me at hello@danarobinson.com or leave comments and questions by calling 858-252-7785 call 858-252-7785 and leave a message.