Another time, a big client calls and says, “Hey Josh, I wanna buy at the beach in La Jolla.” Our answer? “No problem.”

The key is that all these deals that we do, about half of them a year are made from nothing. They are deals that most agents would overlook, but we never say no. So when people say, “I wanna buy a house in Colorado,” what’s our answer? “No problem, I got the perfect guy in Colorado, let me set it up.” We’re kings of connecting people and of being middlemen. Because of that, we are constantly making money when and where people think we can’t.

I called up the agent and said, “I have a client who wants to buy in your territory. I know you usually pay a 25% referral fee. I have a bunch of agent contacts in your area and they pay me 50%. I’d like to start a referral relationship with you and I’ll give you the same 50% when you send me a referral in my neighborhood. Now, I will give you this, but I want 50% of the deal if he buys anything.”

To be honest, I didn’t have any other contacts that were giving me 50%, but hey, I’m making deals over here. It’s part of the game. Consider it listing language. The La Jolla agent accepted, but the client wasn’t exactly sure if he wanted to buy there or if he wanted to buy in four other places, so I did that with four other agents, just in case, to cover all my bases. The client ended up buying one of the La Jolla homes and we got that deal. We made $100 K off of it, and so did the other agent. One phone call was all it took.

The client loves us. The other agent also loves us. We now pass clients back and forth repeating the same formula. Matt and I brought people together, did little work, and everyone won. We continue to win, just on introductions we pass along. That’s the kind of reach we have. That’s the mindset. We try to say “no” as little as possible. We work as a team. We share. We close. It’s easy money, and in this business that’s hard to come by.