Tentmaking Tips

Most brokers charge some kind of commission split for each transaction you do with a client.

It could be 60/40, 60% to you and 40% to the broker. Or it could be 70/30, 80/20, and so on. Brokers typically have other fees you pay in addition to the commission split like a monthly desk fee, an E&O fee, or a transaction fee.

The percentage split plus the fees can eat up quite a bit of your commission.

I’ve always recommended people try to find a 100% commission or flat-fee brokerage where you get all of your commission and they just charge some kind of flat transaction fee.

That’s what we do at our brokerage.

There’s no commission split for experienced agents and they just pay a transaction fee for each deal they do. That way they keep their commission and don’t pay a percentage that varies based on the transaction size.

I’d typically answer, “Why not?”

Even if you just found 1-2 family members or friends to help each year, it’d likely cover all your fees and be some great side income. Do a few more deals than that and the side income compounds.

Here’s a quick example:

Let’s say you have a family member who is planning to sell their home & purchase another one. You’re planning to represent them for both transactions.

I’ll assume they’re moving up in home, so they’ll sell their home for around $300k and buy another home for $500k.

If you make around 3% commission on each transaction, that’s:

• $300,000 x .03 = $9,000

• $500,000 x .03 = $15,000

Remember you have to split that commission with your broker so it’s helpful to find a 100% commission broker in your area if possible (I’ll share more about that in the next email).

Let’s say you find a broker like this and they just charge a transaction fee of $500.

$9,000 + $15,000 - $500 - $500 = $23,0

It’s called Monarch.

It costs ~$100/yr and I used a code to get 50% off my first year (see below for a code).

It can help you budget, track your spending, and has great reporting.

It’s great for couples to use together to categorize expenses and see trends in spending.

Here’s how my wife and I use it:

• Each week we both go into the Transactions and categorize the purchases we made

• If we didn’t make the purchase, we can skip it so the other person can categorize it (it can also auto-categorize if you don’t want to look at each one like us)

• At the beginning of each month, we go through the Categories from the previous month and make sure everything is categorized correctly

• Then we use Monarch’s Cash Flow section to compare each category to the previous month to look for trends

• Based on whether the category is higher or lower we make decisions for the next month

I’ve used a number

A friend of mine, Roy Moran, responded to the email and jokingly said, “Wait, you didn’t tell the best part, she owns a car and doesn’t drive it, it drives her!”

Let me give you the backstory.

A few weeks ago Roy and I were at an event together and I told him he needed to “drive” my Tesla. I said there were only 2 rules: [1] Don’t touch the steering wheel and [2] Don’t touch the pedals. I’m sure it sounded crazy to Roy but he was up for the experience.

As the car started to drive him to our destination, he immediately grabbed his phone & started videoing the experience because he, like most people, have trouble believing it the first time they experience it. The car literally drives itself and all you have to do is look forward. It’s called FSD (Full-Self Driving).

Our story with Tesla began a year ago when my Dad decided to buy one for himself. He loved it so much he convinced us to get o

Here are those two newsletters:

Is College Hackable?

Is College Hackable? Part 2

A few years into it, I can tell you that it definitely is.

I’m so proud of my oldest daughter, McKinley, who will, Lord-willing, graduate next May with a 4-year BBA in Accounting.

Guess how long it took?

4 semesters.

Plus some of the hacks I’m going to tell you about.

Saving tens of thousands of dollars in the process.

We used quite a few of the hacks I wrote about (along with John) in the previous newsletters.

Here’s how she did it:

• She took as many dual credit classes in High School as she could

• She took community college classes in the summer to get the basics out of the way

• She also took several CLEP tests which eliminated some of her business core classes entirely

That resulted in:

• Her bringing in 57 hours of dual credit & community college classes

• Her CLEPing out of 6 hours

• Her taki
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You can imagine the surprise of the post office employee.

She made a comment about how my wife must have a lot of mail to send out.

The employee was right. We do!

Mail is getting more & more expensive. The price of a stamp keeps going up. As I’m writing this, it goes up about 4 more cents again this weekend.

The more expensive it gets to mail, the less often people will do it.

And in the real estate business, mail has historically been one of the best ways to market to prospective clients.

Expensive, yes. But also very profitable.

We are about to send out mail to our entire target area giving them a mid-year update on market trends in our neighborhood.

I wrote previously about how we sent them comps in March to help with their property taxes & now we’re sending them another update to help them consider whether or not now would be a good time to sell their house.

I had a real estate men