John Assaraf is a great friend of mine, and someone for whom I have the greatest respect. John has built and sold several multi-million dollar businesses, and now lives in his dream home on six acres in San Diego county in California, surrounded by beautiful citrus trees. John took the Indiana RE/MAX franchise and completely turned it around. When he got done, RE/MAX’s Indiana offices were selling more than $4 billion a year in real estate. Not satisfied with that, he took a start-up software company from zero to 1,500 employees and $8 million a month in revenue. He helped take that company public in just nine months. John attributes his success to the lessons he’s learned about how the brain works. Tonight, we’re going to get him to share some of that knowledge with all of you.
Chris Attwood: Would you tell us how you discovered the things you’re passionate about? A lot of people say, I know that passion’s important, but I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know how to figure out what my passions really are. How did you discover the things you’re passionate about?
John Assaraf: It wasn’t very easy for me. When I was a kid, I got into a lot of trouble. I got out of school when I was in grade 11, so I didn’t have a huge education to fall back on, so I didn’t say, I’m going to be a doctor, a lawyer or a surgeon. I really had to delve inside myself and ask: What are my strengths? What do I love to do? I’ll share a little story with you that really helped me.
My brother, who’s 10 years older than I am, his name is Mark, was a tennis pro and he loved to play tennis. There’s nothing he would love to do more than play tennis. My parents would tell him, No, you’re never going to make a lot of money just following tennis. He said, There are two types of income that I need. One is mental, or psychic income, the other is monetary income. If I have a balance of both, I’m really happy.
I heard him say that, so I determined when I was younger, I’m never going to not do what I love to do. What I recommend to people when I consult or coach them is: What would make you happy if you could do it all day long? Remember when you were a kid and you got to play at something all day long? Not everybody liked the same thing, but when you found the thing you liked to do… I’ve got two little boys. They could do it from morning until night.
The first key is to ask yourself: What is it that if you wouldn’t get paid, you’d do anyway? One of the things I’ve learned is that in every single business – I don’t care what business you give me around the world – somebody is making money doing it. When we match up what we love and become excellent at it, and mix it with proper business practices, we can make money doing what we love.
I don’t care if it’s widgets, babysitting or being a doctor, you have to understand what is it that you’d love to do – if you weren’t getting paid – you’d do it anyway. Then the questions come: What needs to happen in order for me to become outstanding at that? What business practices do I need to learn to convert my love into making money? That’s really what I’ve done.
Chris Attwood: As we delve into this, would you share with us what you discovered your passions are? What things light your fire?
John Assaraf: I love business, I love enterprise. I like to see the human spirit building companies. I’ve become pretty good at it and my partners are really outstanding at it as well. My love is to take an idea, to take something that’s new, to take something that maybe other people have tried or have failed at, and to figure out how to make a lot of money doing it. That, coupled with really wanting to help people, just drives me every single day.
Chris Attwood: You’ve done that, very successfully, a number of times. You’ve built several business into multi-million dollar successes. Will you tell us about the RE/MAX story? How did that happen? How did you turn around the Indiana RE/MAX franchise and make it so successful?
John Assaraf: When I was 19, I got into real estate, not knowing what else to do with my life, feeling down, feeling insecure and feeling like I wasn’t very smart. I really got into the personal development field and was really well mentored by coaches and mentors who knew what they were doing, so I was able to get some good counseling and coaching.
When I was 26 years old, which was 18 years ago, an opportunity came to my door, where I would have to move to a city that I never had been to. I moved from Toronto to Indiana, I didn’t know anybody there, and my job was to take a region, a business that had failed twice, the entire state of Indiana. I was to turn it around using my passion and my skill sets.
I didn’t know how to balance a checkbook for a business, let alone do that. I listened to my two mentors, Walter and Frank, who had built multi, multi-million dollar companies. They basically laid the groundwork for me of what I needed to do, they laid the groundwork for my attitude, they rated my performance month in and month out. What I suggested to them was, Give me the right information, in the right order, and I’ll apply it. That is what I learned about building companies.
If you have that sequence and you’ve got the passion, the skills you can learn, if you’re really committed to what you want to do. That’s what happened. I really busted my butt and I became passionate for two reasons. One, I wanted to make a lot of money and I wanted to do something with my life. Two, because I’d already become an agent with RE/MAX at the time and I did very well, so I could speak from experience.
My passion level was not even at a passion level, it was at a conviction level. When I spoke to somebody and they said to me, It won’t work here, or, This idea won’t work there, I just didn’t even listen to them because I knew in my heart, and with what I knew in having become an agent, going up the ranks and listening to my coaches and mentors, that I could do it and it was just a matter of time. It started off slowly where we sold some franchises, trained the franchises and we grew and grew, and last year, we did $4.5 billion in sales. I don’t run that company anymore, but I still own it.
Chris Attwood: You drew a line between passion and conviction. Would you talk about that? What’s the difference? When does passion become conviction?
John Assaraf: When you give your life up for doing it. If you think about what’s happening in our world today, we have terrorists that would give up their lives for beliefs and convictions they have. They believe if they don’t do what they do, other people will do that to them or to their religion. It’s not that they’re bad people; they’re just doing things that may not be acceptable in our society, but they have gotten so indoctrinated, they have gotten so brainwashed into believing it’s the truth, they’ll give up their lives for it.
I’ve spent a lot of time, as you know, studying the brain and the universe and how they interrelate. It’s been really fascinating for me to understand why we do the things we do, but more importantly, why do we not do the things we know we should do? That’s a huge distinction – why we don’t do the things we know we should do. I’ve been really interested in passion and conviction.
Chris Attwood: The example you gave brings up an interesting point. Does that mean that passion, and in its more extreme form as you described, conviction, is something that can be used for negative purposes? That seems to be the case with terrorists.
John Assaraf: Absolutely, yes. Somebody can have total conviction for what they do, but be totally wrong. One of the things I always suggest to people is don’t confuse sincerity with truth. People could be absolutely sincere and not be truthful or not be right.
Chris Attwood: How do you make sure that your convictions are aligned with things that are going to make the world a better place?
John Assaraf: I’ve got about 1,600 salespeople in my one company, and I would bring in great trainers and they would get the best information in the world. They wouldn’t apply it! I said, How is it possible that I just spent $20,000 to $50,000 to bring you the best information, to give you the absolute blueprint and you don’t apply what you learn? That was for over 90% of our salespeople.
One of the things I understood was that it’s not about information. Information is gathered in one part of the brain, called the conscious part, and application of information happens at the non-conscious level of our psyche, which as you know, controls about 95% of our perceptions and behavior.
All the work I’ve done in my companies is how do you get people to retrain their brains to a new reality, and how do you get them to retrain themselves so they actually apply what they learn? I’ll bet you there are people on this call – this is not their first, second or third call – that have not applied what they’ve heard in previous calls. They say, Wow, that was a great call! I loved it!
They got emotionally charged up, dopamine was released in the brain. We can tell where it happens, but that’s not the part of the brain that’s responsible for action. If you want to know what the secret of success is, it’s getting the right information in the right order and applying it. That’s what yields the results.
That’s why we know of people, who we don’t think are as smart as we are, that do better than we are. We also know people we think are smarter than we are, that don’t do as well. The question is: why? We know the answers now.
Chris Attwood: What’s the difference between a person who’s committed and a person who doesn’t have that level of commitment?
John Assaraf: Success and failure.
Chris Attwood: That’s pretty simple.
John Assaraf: It really is simple.
Chris Attwood: If you’re committed, when you run into challenges and obstacles you keep going, whereas if you’re not committed, you may give up?
John Assaraf: You have to have commitment, but you also have to know the right things to do. Let’s say I’m committed to building a business and making more money, but I don’t have the right information or the right direction. I could be committing myself to death, basically, by doing the wrong things over and over again.
Chris Attwood: How do you avoid that?
John Assaraf: You’ve got to find people who have already done what you want to do and have them as your coaches or mentors, that you either pay for or you don’t. The shortcut for me has always been to find people who already did what I want to do. I’ll share a story with you.
There’s a gentleman who is walking around in my office right now who flew in his own jet, the guy’s been worth hundreds of millions of dollars and he’s doing a deal with us for our new company. This guy has already done some of the stuff we want to do. He’s here. He’s flown in.
I was on his 115-foot yacht about two weeks ago. I was talking to him and now he’s here talking to us some more. Why do we need him? We don’t; we’ve done very well, but some of the stuff that we want to do, he’s already done. We’re learning from him.
Even at the level we’re playing at, my partner, Murray, who is a very successful business entrepreneur, and I – we’re still seeking out coaches and mentors for us to deal with. Specialized knowledge has so much value that it’s well worth its weight in gold. That’s a key. We know we’re prepared to do the work. If we have the right information and we’re prepared to do the work, then the formula becomes a lot easier.
Chris Attwood: Would you say commitment is the number one thing to be able to take information and move it to action, or are there more important things?
John Assaraf: Commitment is right up there with oxygen for me. I will take somebody who is committed on my team and will do what we ask them to do… and obviously they can offer suggestions, ideas and brainstorm, but if they’re prepared to do what they need to do and they’re prepared to learn and grow, fall, get up and try it again…
You’ll love this. Michael Jordan said, I’ve taken 3,000 shots in my career that have missed and lost the game. I’ve taken 26 shots on the game-winning championship and lost, but I don’t look at it that way. I win because I’m prepared to take the final shot again, every time.
I’m prepared to fail, I’m prepared to fall. I don’t look at failing as failing and losing. I look at failing as just one way that didn’t work. What I do to mitigate that is find people who have already failed as many times as they possibly can at what I’m trying to do and ask them, Is this the right plan? or, Show me the right plan, is even better.
Chris Attwood: That makes sense.
John Assaraf: Yes, it’s pretty logical when you think about it. My parents never went to anybody for advice. They thought that going to anybody for advice showed your weakness. I look at not going to somebody for advice as showing your weakness.
Chris Attwood: One of the things that a lot of people tell us is they love this information and they may even have some good idea of what they’re passionate about, but they get stuck by their own fears, self doubt and Who am I to think that I could accomplish that? How does one get past those? I think we all have these self doubts or issues of whether we’re worthy or if we can accomplish it. How do you get past that to take successful action?
John Assaraf: We’re dealing with feelings again, and most of our feelings are automatic in nature. They’re happening all the time. We have something in our brains called ANTs, or Automatic Negative Thoughts. Automatic negative thoughts about ourselves or our abilities are nothing more than neurocircuits in the brain that have been reinforced by either our parents when we were young, our teachers, siblings or our own experiences.
The more of those we have, the more they got reinforced and the more they’re going to play out automatically right now. If we know that’s not the truth, if we know we’re real geniuses and we have so much potential, there are always going to be two sides to ourselves. There’s our spiritual side that wants to soar, expand and do so much.
Then there’s this little voice in our mind that says, Who are you? You’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough. That’s not reserved for you, that’s reserved for somebody else. We have to understand what’s causing it. Let’s go to the root of what’s causing it. I call it brain surgery without a scalpel.
Snip out those little voices, and we can show people how to atrophy those voices, and put in brand new circuitry that lines up with who we are today. The feelings we have today are based on experiences and things that were told to us 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago! We’re still living like that person who had been told that. It’s not the truth.
That’s what I love about the work we do. It’s to show people why it’s not the truth and how to rewire their brains. The brain is the most sophisticated piece of equipment on the planet that we are aware of, yet we were never given the instruction manual on how it works.
I’ll say this just to make a point: we have six intellectual conscious functions, three non-conscious functions, a reticular activation system, and an amygdala. Most people are doing this right now, What did he just say? I did that for a reason, to share with you that if you don’t understand how the most sophisticated piece of equipment that we know of in the galaxy works – it’s yours and you don’t know how it works – why are you wondering why you’re crashing and burning?
That would be like a fighter jet pilot getting into an airplane, not knowing how all the buttons worked, and wondering why they keep crashing. It’s that ludicrous to me. It’s our job to raise our level of awareness and our knowledge base of the latest and most recent information that we can apply in our lives right now, to eliminate the doubts, fears and anxieties that hold us back from our greatness, our retirement or from the homes we really want to live in or from taking the trips we really want to take.
It has nothing to do with peoples’ abilities. It has everything to do with understanding how powerful you are and then learning, just like you learned a bicycle, learned how to drive a car. Learn how to go through the motions of mastering it. That’s really what it takes. It goes back to: Are you interested or are you committed?
If you’re interested, you’re going to say, Wow, that sounds like great information, or, I’ve heard it before, but it doesn’t make a difference if you don’t apply it. Am I passionate enough about this? I’m standing here in my office in San Diego and I’ve got my headset on. People are walking by and wondering what in the world am I doing?
Chris Attwood: Does it come down to rewiring our belief structures, changing and shifting the beliefs we have about ourselves and about what we can accomplish; what’s possible?
John Assaraf: Yes, absolutely. It boils down to your beliefs and values. Your beliefs will override your values. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you value your family and that’s the most important thing for you. It’s one of my hierarchy of values. Your belief is, in order to take care of them, you’ve got to work seven days a week, 18 hours a day. You’re going to do what you believe first, values second.
That’s why people have conflicting lives. But I love you, I care about you. I’m working for you! Can’t you see that? The spouse says, No, I can’t. Neither can the kids. You’re never here.
Chris Attwood: I never see you, so…
John Assaraf: Right. Their belief system is different and their value system is different. It’s important to get peoples’ values and beliefs lined up so that perceptions and behavior match up. Then we have harmony, we have less stress and we feel great about ourselves and our lives and abilities.
Then we achieve success in balance, and everything we do, everything our company is about… every one of my companies have been about balance. It hasn’t been about making so much money that you stress yourself out. I’ve done that before and we changed that very quickly. At what cost?
Chris Attwood: How did you apply this in Bamboo.com? You grew this company very quickly, you got great results. You were dealing with a lot of people who had a lot of ingrained beliefs and concepts about themselves, about what they could do and accomplish. How did you apply this knowledge on a practical basis?
John Assaraf: The only thing I can share with you, which I will admit right now, is I didn’t live in total balance. I did it in probably about 80% balance, but not total balance. We had a goal that was more important than anything else and we were prepared to sacrifice some other stuff, so I’ll have to let people know that.
Number one, we hired an individual, Scotty, who is a dear friend of mine, who understands what I understand. My business partner, Len McCurdy, built another company that had 5,500 employees and was doing $500 million a year in revenue. He understood quantum physics and neuroscience.
We taught people why it’s possible to do a lot in a day if you believe you can. If you think about this – what is your highest income-producing activity per hour? I ask people to write down, on a piece of paper, how many hours today did you spend doing that versus shuffling paper around, versus having conversations you didn’t need to have, versus doing the small, tedious stuff and got that out of the way in order to make room for your highest income-producing activity or your most productive activity?
Chris Attwood: That sounds like a valuable exercise. Think about your most valuable, income-producing activity.
John Assaraf: If you’re making money, whether you’re employed or working for yourself, what are your two highest income-producing activities? Is it getting out in front of a prospect? We’ve got people saying, I don’t like the prospect, even though that may be their highest income-producing activity.
The first thing we need to share with entrepreneurs, business owners and solopreneurs is you have to understand where you bring the most value to your company? There are only two times in your day where you’re making money for your company or not: the activities that make your company money and the activities that cost your company money.
The first thing is to get people who love what they do and they want to do it all day long; getting you to understand what you love and what you’re good at doing and getting you to do that 60 to 80% of every day. If people just doubled what their highest income-producing activity was every day, they would double, triple, quadruple their income within six months, just that one little tidbit.
Chris Attwood: That makes sense. So once we’ve gotten clear about the one or two things that are the highest income-producing activities, then you’re suggesting to look at a typical day and see how much time you spend in those activities, right?
John Assaraf: You’ve got it. When I teach business planning to business owners, I would have them bring their Day Timer or their calendar with them. I would have them add up, in the last two weeks, how many hours would they work, out of a 45- or 50-hour week, what percentage of their hours did they spend doing their highest income-producing activity?
Here are the results. I haven’t done this for about 15 years, but I can tell you approximately. The people in the workshops that I did, who spent 10 to 15% of their time with their clients, which is one of their highest-income activities, made about $35,000 to $50,000 a year. People who were in that seminar who spent about 20 to 25% of their time with clients made about $75,000 to $110,000 a year.
Going from 15% to about 25% more than doubled their income. When that number jumped to 60 or 70%, the income went up by eight to ten times. It became exponential at that point. It wasn’t like 1+1=2, it was 1+1=11. Ever since that, we would really get people to understand their strengths and how do we get you to focus, day in and day out, on what you really love to do and what you’re wanting to do and what you’re good at doing.
When you do what you’re great at doing and you do it well, you can hire everything else out. The rainmakers are the ones who make the money, they’re the ones who make it rain. That reminds me of a joke. There’s a tribe that has 100% success ratio of making it rain every time. Do you know what their secret is? They dance until it rains. That’s just a little funny one.
Chris Attwood: That’s pretty good. This is a really important piece you’ve shared with us. There are two things I’m getting. Number one is this issue of being clear about the activity that any of us do, which is our greatest income-producing activity. Secondly, devoting the majority of our time to that activity and offloading the balance. The other thing you said was doing what we love.
The question that comes up in my mind is: What if I’m not a marketing or sales-type person? What I love doing is the detail work. I love keeping the accounts, organizing or creating the systems.
John Assaraf: It’s always about partnering with someone whose strengths and loves compliment your own.
Let me share my story. I hate doing the accounting, I hate doing the detail stuff, but I know I’m very good at creating the vision; very good at helping people see the best of themselves. I’m very good at helping people figure out what they’re best at and helping people with strategies and tactics. If I can simply do that and I bring on a partner, whether it’s barter, senior, people who have free time or college students, I can always figure out how can I versus why I can’t.
Most people say, Here’s what I want to do and here are all the obstacles. I say, Here’s what I want to do. What are all the solutions? I look at how to find the solution. Figure out how you can, not why you can’t. It’s critical to do that.
Chris Attwood: How you can, not why you can’t.
John Assaraf: Yes. If we go back to quantum physics, to the way the universe operates, for every negative, there must be a positive. If you go down, right to the subatomic level – and that’s why I like quantum physics – it can explain a lot of things when we have challenges, especially.
If you go to the quantum physics perspective, you can’t have a great opportunity without the opportunity possibly being very risky, or a good event without a potential bad one. If you’re focusing on why you can’t, your brain absolutely can’t be focusing on how you can. The question you’ve got to ask yourself is: Are you more interested in being right or in being successful?
If you’re more interested in being successful, there’s a formula for doing that. For every result that every person wants, there is the exact way of thinking and the exact way of behaving that will yield that result. It’s your job to find out, either on your own, to hire people or to barter with people on what the process is for you, for what you want to achieve.
I know that’s what a lot of people want and hopefully, I can help with some of the answers. This is not rocket science! That’s why there are so many people who are really successful, who may not be as smart as you or me. They’re just doing the right thing over and over again.
with John Assaraf conducted in front of a live Tele-Audience.
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