Carly Ries
This discussion with Mitch Ribak was originally meant to be about success tips for real estate agents and why they must think of themselves as solopreneurs (although the takeaways can be applied across industries), yet right when we thought it was coming to an end, it quickly turned into a lesson about overcoming life's obstacles and moving forward to find greatness. We couldn't have planned this content if we tried. Be sure to check it out!
What you'll learn in this episode
- Why real estate agents must look at themselves as solopreneurs
- Why it's important to know how to build your own business
- How to be successful as a real estate broker
- Common mistakes people make in the real estate business
- How to prioritize your day and delegate when you need to
- How to shift your mindset for success
- How to turn difficult times into recipes for success
And so much more!
Resources Mentioned in the Episode
- Read The E-Myth Revisited.
- Watch or read The Secret.
- Read The Miracle Morning.
- Visit Lola's Gift.
- Email mitch@mitchrealty.com.
Favorite quotes about success:
"Be uncomfortable with comfortable."
"Help people get what they want and you'll get what you want."
"Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right"
Want to share your experiences and learn from other one-person business? Be sure to join our community! It's free :)
Full Episode Transcript
Mitch Ribak (00:00):
You should never be doing $10 an hour jobs. And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean that your time is more valuable working on your business.
Intro (00:08):
Bigger doesn't always mean better. Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast, where people who are flying solo in business, come for specific tips and advice to find success. As a company of one, here are your hosts Joe Rando and Carly Ries.
Joe Rando (00:27):
Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Joe Rando
Carly Ries (00:32):
I'm Carly Ries.
Joe Rando (00:34):
Today we have a little bit of a different topic to cover. We're gonna talk about real estate brokers and agents. Now you might say, well, gee, those people usually work for agencies, so they're not solopreneurs, they're not One-Person Businesses. Our guest today, Mitch Ribak is probably going to argue differently, that anyone that wants to be successful as a real estate salesperson is going to want to think like an entrepreneur, like a solopreneur. So, important background on Mitch before we dig into the details is that we met when he was 15 and I was 16. We attempted to take over the rock and roll industry with our band. That didn't happen but we had a great time. We formed a friendship that has lasted ever since. I won't tell you how old we are now, but it's been a lot longer than either of us would like to admit. Mitch has been an entrepreneur since the age of 19.
Joe Rando (01:33):
I would argue that maybe 15 and given that, trying to make it in a rock band, is kind of entrepreneurial. He has owned 23 different businesses in 18 different industries. Currently Mitch runs Tropical Beachside brokered by eXp Realty with over 150 agents in Brevard County, Florida, and a total of over 1,650 agents in 45 states and 7 countries. Tropical Beachside, brokered by eXp Realty, or TRB as I'm gonna call it from now on, has been in the top 10 real estate brokerages in Brevard since opening its doors in 2005. TRB averages 800 plus transactions per year, and that's a lot. Mitch became a realtor in 2001 and very quickly became successful through multiple avenues, including open houses in the internet. In 2008 Mitch published his first book, "100 MPH Marketing for Real Estate" and it quickly shot to number one in real estate books.
Joe Rando (02:26):
In 2015, Mitch's book, "So you have your real estate license. Now, what?", is selling extremely well throughout North America? Mitch speaks throughout North America on a variety of subjects, including internet marketing and lead conversion, inside sales agents, mindset expectations, how to kick off your career in real estate, among other subjects. Mitch says that his goal has always been to stay ahead of the curve in everything that he's done in his life. He looks for potential trends and tries to capitalize on those opportunities. He believes if you have great training programs for your realtors and make sure they put their customers needs ahead of their own, you would have a world class organization. Mitch currently lives in Merritt Island, Florida with his wife, Jeanette. They have four grown children and two beautiful grandchildren, Lola and Henry. And, I can attest, they also have a very cool band. So Mitch, welcome to the One-Person Business podcast.
Mitch Ribak (03:13):
Thanks, Joe. Yeah, since we talked, we actually have another grandbaby too, so we've got three grandbabies now.
Joe Rando (03:20):
Oh, congratulations. That's awesome.
Mitch Ribak (03:23):
Crazy. Yes. Cash Price, a pretty funny name, right? Cash price
Joe Rando (03:28):
Cash price, Sounds affordable. <laugh>
Mitch Ribak (03:33):
The next one will be named credit. So <laugh> there you go.
Joe Rando (03:38):
<laugh> Well, that's great news. So, just before we dig into the questions that we typically focus on here, can you dig in a little bit to what I said about this notion of real estate brokers and agents? I guess, there are brokers and there are salespeople, that's the distinction, right? The brokers have a license. They could theoretically work for themselves. Salespeople have to work for somebody else. Is that right?
Mitch Ribak (04:03):
Yep. That's right.
Joe Rando (04:04):
But talk a little bit about this notion of thinking as a solopreneur. Thinking about it as though it's your own business instead of that you work for a company.
Mitch Ribak (04:13):
Sure. I'll just touch on myself when I started. Obviously being an entrepreneur was fairly easy for me to be successful in this business. Selling 36 homes my first year. What I had to do I had to look at the brokerage. What does that function have to do with my actual business? The reality is just where I brokered my deals to. It's no different than a financial advisor brokering their deals to fidelity. That was my mindset of how I looked at it. I was starting my own business again, which obviously I've done many times. That's why we're entrepreneurs. People who are successful in this business are entrepreneurs. There are very few people successful in real estate that are not entrepreneurs. I had to develop my own lead systems, my own lead generation system, my own conversion systems, were there people I could feed off of to learn stuff, actually not because I developed everything that everybody uses now. The reality is that's the beauty of this business. In the real estate business, you are an entrepreneur and the more creative you are in lead generation and lead conversion processes, the more successful you are.
Joe Rando (05:20):
Cool. So that's a general way to think. I am glad that we agree that it's a good way to think about this business, but can you get a little specific about what people need to think about to become successful as a broker? You talked about lead conversion and that kind of thing, but specifically, for people out there that maybe aren't that familiar with those terms, what should people be doing selling real estate to be successful?
Mitch Ribak (05:47):
Really comes out to what you'll actually do. That's a little more complicated question than a simple answer. As you know I've trained hundreds and hundreds of agents all over North America. What I've learned is some agents will do open houses, which is an amazing way to generate business. Some people will do it through using Realtor.com or Zillow to generate leads from them or their websites. Others will do it through networking. I have an agent in California that works with me now. He sits at Starbucks from 8 to 11 every morning and he generates about 30 transactions a year from that. On the back of his laptop he has the words "Real estate question, ask me?". So, it really just comes down to what you're gonna do and that's where the entrepreneurial part comes in.
Mitch Ribak (06:33):
And that's as an agent. So, as a broker, you have to determine what type of systems can I do for my agents that'll help the masses because you're not going to help everybody in your brokerage become successful. Everybody has different work ethics. The challenge of being a realtor is the ability to think on your feet and build your own business. The challenge is most people who came from a job, don't have that ability. They came from a 9 to 5 job and all of a sudden they're a real estate agent and they just don't realize that you actually have to still work those hours. It just put them into a different focus.
Joe Rando (07:10):
If I understand what you said, it could be summed up as, do something that meets your philosophy or approach or comfort zone, but do something to generate those leads. If you just sit around waiting for the agency to feed them to you, you're probably gonna be sorry.
Mitch Ribak (07:26):
Yeah, you'll be out of business. There's a great book called Relentless by Tim Grover, who is Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan's trainer. The one line he said that is so true at every industry is "do the work", pretty simple.
Joe Rando (07:42):
That's pretty simple. What about common mistakes that you see people making in this business? What are the most common ones and what can they do to avoid them?
Mitch Ribak (07:52):
The most common one is chasing the 29.95 and you can get 5,000 sales from that for a couple dollars a month. A lot of people are chasing the shiny object instead of concentrating on one or two things. As an example for me, being an athlete, I played golf, I played ping pong, I played baseball. I went and joined the bowling league. That was one aspect. I started the internet stuff. That was another aspect. I did open houses, that was another aspect. Most people are trying to reinvent the wheel. The reality is, the majority of people in this business actually have success in the palm of their hand, meaning their phone. They have enough contacts that are local, that are looking to buy or sell, but they're always trying to chase a better lead source when they actually have the best lead source right in the palm of their hand.
Joe Rando (08:41):
Could I sum that up as saying they should be thinking in terms of what my dad used to call, blocking and tackling. Just doing those basic things that you need to do to be successful and not trying to go out and do something magical. When you say 2995, you mean like $29.95 program to be successful.
Mitch Ribak (09:05):
Everybody's always looking for the easy button in pretty much everything. And that's a challenge. The reality is there is no easy button, nothing substitutes hard work. The key here is you really have to find the program or the process that you'll actually implement. Number one reason why people fail is because they don't implement any business. Something you'll actually implement and then stay with. People are so jumpy. I talk to agents all the time that will have a program they're trying it for a month and they get nothing out of it, so they quit. My program is when we started doing our testing on different systems, it was a six month a year process to test the system. Usually it works but you have to be focused enough to stay on that track. Then, understanding how to implement that into the real world stuff.
Joe Rando (10:01):
It doesn't happen overnight. That's the bottom line, no matter what you do. It could be the best strategy in the world, but you're not gonna see results in two weeks. It's gonna take time
Mitch Ribak (10:09):
Except for open houses. I sold my first house five days into the business and it was an open house.
Joe Rando (10:16):
Ah, get that secret here folks.
Mitch Ribak (10:18):
Yep.
Joe Rando (10:19):
If you had just one thing that you, as a real estate agent, you would want to take away today. What would it be?
Mitch Ribak (10:31):
Really do the work, but understand, think like an entrepreneur. Don't think like a job. One of my favorite books is The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.
Joe Rando (10:42):
That book comes up every episode, by the way, Mitch.
Mitch Ribak (10:47):
It changed my life. When I had the online dating service, I was traveling 25 days a month. I was literally calling the office six, seven times, 10 times a day because I was micromanaging the world. What I learned from that book is delegate, delegate, delegate, or you're gonna create a job. And I think a lot of realtors create jobs, they don't create businesses.
Carly Ries (11:07):
Mitch, you're seriously the sixth or seventh guest to say that book is their number one. So for people listening, absolutely take it seriously.
Mitch Ribak (11:16):
Exactly.
Joe Rando (11:18):
Mitch talk a little about this though, because we've been talking about this as solopreneurs, as people working effectively alone, but then you talk about delegating. How does somebody delegate when they're working in a situation where they don't technically have anybody reporting to them?
Mitch Ribak (11:32):
So you can delegate even amongst yourself, which is an interesting concept, which I think I just made up. But <laugh> I'm a time blocker. For me to accomplish the stuff that I accomplished and I now hit 1800 agents this week. I'm on four to six zoom calls every single day doing coaching. I have to time block everything in my life to do that. If you're an entrepreneur and you can actually just use yourself until you're ready to bring on either a virtual assistant or some sort of assistant, which I highly recommend, but if you're not time blocking, you're really gonna struggle being successful because you're not in control of your time. Your time' is in control of you. It's really important that you sit there. If you looked at my calendar 8 to 9, 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12 lunch from 12 to 1, it's literally blocked. What I try to do is I try to end every meeting 15 minutes short of the hour. That gives me 15 minutes to catch up on my emails or return a phone call or two, if I have to do that.
Carly Ries (12:32):
In terms of delegating to yourself, I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm very unfamiliar with the real estate world so I apologize to both of you on that front <laugh> but marketing is the area that I'm in and we delegate to contractors a lot. So, even though we don't work with them as an employee, we delegate to contractors, are contractors common in the real estate world or is that not really a thing?
Mitch Ribak (12:54):
Absolutely, 100%. If you're in the real estate business, you need to have a transaction coordinator. Here's my belief on all that stuff. You should never be doing $10 an hour jobs. And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean that your time is more valuable working on your business. For instance, using a transaction coordinator for real estate, you take from the contract to closing, you have somebody handling all the paperwork, setting up the survey, setting up the inspections and all that stuff. We sub out a lot of stuff. Our social media we sub out somebody else, a third party. So yes, there are third parties in every industry that you can sub out to have work done. Again, that's delegating to a third party, which is, obviously the way to go.
Joe Rando (13:42):
That's a great idea in terms of the coordinator, because there is a lot of that stuff. Coordinating inspections and these things can done by somebody that's just organized, but isn't necessarily pursuing a career in sales as a real estate salesperson. So that makes a ton of sense.
Carly Ries (13:59):
And now a quick word from our sponsor.
Sponsor (14:01):
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Joe Rando (14:23):
So we're getting close to the end, Mitch. Do you have any resources you think would be helpful for real estate agents or people thinking about becoming a real estate agent?
Mitch Ribak (14:36):
Yeah, there are a million real estate schools. I always recommend going to a real estate school that's local in your area because you'll meet other people. If you have to do the online, there are a million online schools that you could choose from. Just Google online real estate school. I have AtoZrealestatelicense.com as my real estate school that we have. But I always recommend people go in person. The other thing is, if you're thinking about doing it, go talk to a local realtor who's successful in your area and just get their view. Don't talk to a broker cause a broker's gonna feed you a bunch of stuff that they want you to hear so you might go work for them. You really want to do it with an agent that's actually successful in the business.
Mitch Ribak (15:16):
The other advice I'll give everybody is sometimes people are willing to give the most advice to the least successful people. So be really conscious of that when you're talking to people. When I joined, I remember these two ladies came up to me, very sweet people, and said, "Don't do open houses. Don't do what we call floor time, which is meeting the front desk and don't do internet". Well, open houses and floor time people were coming to me or calling me and internet was my background. So, all three of those things are what made me successful. If I had listened to them, I wouldn't have been as successful as I was so quickly.
Joe Rando (15:47):
So Mitch, just a clarification there, in terms of figuring out who's a broker versus a salesperson. I assume that if somebody's working for an agency, it's quite likely they're not the broker because they have their own agency. Is that fair?
Mitch Ribak (16:01):
Yeah. Every state is a little bit different. Some states, brokers are just real estate agents, but they are called brokers. Most states, the broker owns the company, runs the company and the realtors are the agents underneath the broker
Joe Rando (16:16):
Just a thought on finding successful people. I was doing some research about selling my house recently and I went in and started looking at some of these online sites that have real estate for sale. I looked at and found which agents had the most listings. Is that a good way to find somebody that's actually successful?
Mitch Ribak (16:37):
Sure. If you drive around, you see someone's name on a bunch of different signs, he's a good person to talk to.
Joe Rando (16:41):
In this case, she, by the way,
Mitch Ribak (16:43):
Oh, geez. <laugh> okay. You can also go onto realtor.com and Zillow and look at reviews.
Joe Rando (16:51):
Yeah. So that will tell you whether people like dealing with them or not, whether they did a good job.
Mitch Ribak (16:56):
Yeah. When you see somebody that has a bad review, but they have a lot of good ones, I actually like when people have a bad review, that's not perfect every time. That means they were actually real reviews. Sometimes you'll see all five stars every single time. You're like, well I had a bad transaction, but will not give that person the ability to do a review. I think with every product you want people to have good and bad so they can make their own decisions. I'm not saying a minus one star, but if someone has a three star versus a five star, that's not always a bad thing.
Carly Ries (17:23):
Actually data backs that up. You're not alone in that. I've heard that if you're a rating of 4.8, you're actually more reputable than five point. Because you know it's not fake.
Mitch Ribak (17:34):
Exactly. I agree.
Joe Rando (17:36):
Very interesting. People are gaming the system.
Mitch Ribak (17:39):
Everybody games, the system <laugh>.
Joe Rando (17:41):
So Mitch, what is your favorite quote about success?
Mitch Ribak (17:45):
All right. I have a couple of them. I'll give you three. One, I don't know who the author is. I think I might have made it up, but I don't remember. So, "be uncomfortable with comfortable" is one of my favorite ones. If you are comfortable, you are never going forward. Another one is "Help people get what they want. You'll get what you want." I'm paraphrasing that, it's Zig Zeigler. The other one, which is my favorite of all time is , "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right" by Henry Ford.
Joe Rando (18:12):
I'm pretty sure we've heard that one before, too.
Carly Ries (18:14):
That's my personal favorite.
Mitch Ribak (18:15):
<laugh> yeah. It's so true. I talk to people. I'm speaking in Kentucky in a couple weeks on mindset and joy. I use my getting burned at 17 years old as an example of mindset.
Joe Rando (18:28):
You wanna tell that story? We've got a little time left if you want to tell that story.
Mitch Ribak (18:31):
Sure, it's a great story for mindset. I'll I'll keep it brief. Joe knows this very well. We pulled up to a gas station in Stoughton, Massachusetts at quarter of 8, in 1978. I remember that day. I still text my buddy, Rick, who saved my life that day. Every day, quarter of eight, every year, I text him and say thank you. He writes back, ,"You're welcome." That's the extent of our conversation every year. So anyway, we pull up and the gas station attendant, Joe and I are so old, they actually didn't have self service back then. And, you know those little plastic caps that prevent the gas from spilling on you when you are pumping your gas? They didn't have those either. So anyways, I get out and pump the gas because the guy was busy. I get a little bit of gas on my shirt.
Mitch Ribak (19:11):
My friend Rick asked me for a light. I clicked the lighter, my shirt blew up. It was a very sexy, fancy nylon fishnet shirt. <laugh> at the time, very hot for 1978. So I caught on fire and Rick pulled me out and I remember very vividly, like it happened yesterday, rolling one way and seeing the gas tank to Joe's car, cause were in Joe's car, and then rolling the other way to see the gas pumps to the gas station and say, "I wish my friends would get out of here because they're gonna die. " I already knew I was gonna die and I was okay with that. I made peace really quickly with myself. I was more worried about my parents and my friends. So, Rick gets me out. I won't use the words that I used, but it was a continuous F bomb <laugh> until the ambulance got there. Except I think I made a couple jokes during it because I can't not make jokes.
Joe Rando (20:02):
<laugh> I'll attest to that. Although I wasn't there, it wasn't my car.
Mitch Ribak (20:07):
Somebody else told you. Okay.
Joe Rando (20:08):
I was home.
Mitch Ribak (20:09):
You're lucky. It wasn't a pretty site. So they got me to the ambulance, they got me to the hospital and I'm in intensive care. Well, first I'm in the emergency room packed up with ice and skin hanging off my body. I had third degree burns on 20% of my body and tons of second and first degree burns. They tell my parents I'm gonna be in the hospital for four to six months. Two days later, I get out of intensive care. My doctor's telling me I have to do skin grafts on my hand and I have to get skin graft on my stomach and possibly my wrist. I said, "Well, I have this gig in three weeks that I have to play at, I can't miss it." He goes, "You are not gonna be there" I say, "No, no, I have to be there".
Mitch Ribak (20:47):
The reality is Jimmy Quaglia who could play a mean guitar, way better than I, and could sing, and was replacing me at all the gigs that we were playing. And you know, the band was the only way I met women. So I couldn't give that up. <laugh> The doctor said to me, "If you can close your hands and open your hands, and if I give you a visual of closing your hand and opening your hand, when you can do that, you can leave, but it's gonna take you four to six months." Every morning they would take me down and they'd take off all your skin. Then every night, I would ball my eyes out trying to move my hands. About a week after, I'm in the hospital and all of a sudden... now remember I'm 17 years old.
Mitch Ribak (21:22):
I'm not understanding any of this. Doctors were coming in from all over the country to see me. They come in, look at me and then they leave. This is Dr. So and so from Los Angeles. This is Dr. So and so from everywhere, all over the country. That went on for a good week. So two and a half weeks after I got burned, the doctor walked in. I'm doing my hands the way he told me I could to get out, and I got out. I played the gig. I got out of the hospital at two weeks.
Joe Rando (21:47):
You had stuff on your fingers. I remember covers or something.
Mitch Ribak (21:52):
I had these little mini things, skinny condoms, basically on my fingers. <laugh> I don't know any other way to describe them. But fast forward to 50 years old and this is where I figured this out. I was addicted to pain pills. I had neck surgery and my doctor told me I'd be on this for the rest of my life. It's 2010, my real estate company was doing terrible. My coaching business was doing terrible. Everything was bad. I stopped cold turkey, the pain pills, on a Friday. Went on a Saturday to show property, started going through a little bit of withdrawals, which I've never dealt with in my life, and then on Sunday I was in full fledged withdrawals. I came home from writing a contract. I was shaking and sweating. And like I said, I'd never been through anything like this before.
Mitch Ribak (22:37):
My wife says "Do you want to watch a movie?" I won't tell you what I said to her because it was not appropriate. But I said sure. And she put on the movie The Secret. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but if you haven't watched The Secret, you should watch it. I immediately flash back to 1978 and realized I cured myself of burns. Think about that. I've even talked to my dermatologist here locally. There's no way that you could have possibly done what you did. It's not possible. So I cured myself of burns and I said, if I cured myself of burns, what can I not fix? What can I not do? I took the next couple of weeks off, then immediately got back with a different mindset. My business started flourishing again, my coaching business flourished again. I realized if you can cure yourself of burns, you can pretty much do anything you want in your life. And that gave me the mindset I needed going forward to literally do whatever I want.
Joe Rando (23:26):
It's an amazing story Mitch. I was there. I saw it. It was ridiculous. Nobody could believe it. But Mitch wanted to play that gig really badly.
Mitch Ribak (23:37):
<laugh> it was that first big gig. I mean it was good.
Joe Rando (23:39):
It was huge. It was 800 people I think. An amazing story and a good lesson for all of us. I really appreciate you took the time to share it.
Mitch Ribak (23:56):
Yeah, no problem. Well it goes back to that saying, right? Whether you think you can or think you can't. If your mindset is negative and Joe will attest, you'd never see anybody with more smiling than I do. I literally smile all day long every day. If your mindset is negative, you're not gonna make it. You've got to get out of that funk, think positive. I'll give you a quickie. I know I'm probably talking too much. One of the things I've learned about procrastination and not doing the things I don't wanna do, about being uncomfortable, is I've learned to manifest pain into success. What do I mean about that? I went through three major things in my life that were the most painful things.
Mitch Ribak (24:36):
One being the burns that were physically painful. The other two being my mother and my father dying. Those are probably the three most painful things in my life. When I look at something that is a challenge ahead of me, I do two things. One, I block time. So, how do I write books? I block 15 minutes a day to write a book. I'll literally look back at the most painful moments of my life and say, all right. So if this person's gonna say no to me, is that like getting burnt over 20% of my body? Is that like my parents dying? No. So I've harnessed that pain and whenever I'm questioning, whether I really wanna move forward with something, it's pretty powerful. If you try, you'll find it's really amazing. I've had so many people that I've taught that to, who have reached out to me and thanked me for teaching them that technique, because it's really helped. You get past different blocks in your life to get to the next level.
Carly Ries (25:28):
Wow, Mitch, have you read The Miracle Morning?
Mitch Ribak (25:31):
I did, good stuff.
Carly Ries (25:32):
Everything you're saying right now. I recently finished that and I feel like you guys had the same mindset.
Mitch Ribak (25:38):
<laugh> well, it's funny. I had this before the book, but I'll tell you what I love about it, because, I've been doing this for 30 years probably and I don't dwell on things. When you have a bad thing that happens to you, most people that's a week or two weeks or a month of dwelling. I put it in my pocket. Now that I'm 61 years old, I kind of forget it's there and I don't have to worry about it anymore. People dwell on stuff you can't change 30 seconds ago. And that's what that book is basically about to me. You can't change 30 seconds, so take five minutes, get it all out and move on. I remember in 2000 I lost $80 million. It was a really bad day. It was actually three bad days, but
Joe Rando (26:22):
What year?
Mitch Ribak (26:22):
That was 2000 when the internet bubble crashed and I lost.
Joe Rando (26:25):
You called me right after that. My dad was in the room and he told you to go into real estate.
Mitch Ribak (26:31):
Yep. He did <laugh> and you are the reason why I'm here. Sometimes I've cursed you for that, but <laugh>, I mostly love you for that. But even then, I took three days. To be honest, I balled my eyes off for three days. I killed myself building that company and to lose that much money and everything you do. At 40 years old, I had to start over again. So you pick yourself up and look in the mirror, just stop doing it anymore. Right. What am I gonna do? Let's go.
Joe Rando (26:57):
That is a very common trait of entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, I hope because bad stuff's gonna happen. If you let it get to you...you know, there's always a reason to quit. There's always a reason to give up. Something's gonna happen and you have to look and go, what's the path forward. Well, Mitch, thank you so much. This was really great. I thought we were doing a show for people that were in real estate, but I think this show will benefit pretty much anybody that's looking to do something meaningful with their life. So good job.
Mitch Ribak (27:34):
Well, business is business, right? Real estate is just my product now.
Joe Rando (27:37):
And life is life. You can live it afraid or you can live it pushing forward. Well thanks again for taking the time. It's great to catch up. I'm sure we'll talk offline soon. The last question Mitch, is there some way for people to connect with you? If they want to get information, do you have some kind of website or anything like that where people could go to?
Mitch Ribak (28:07):
They could just send me an email. Mitch@Mitchrealty.com is my easy one. I'm always willing to help. I help entrepreneurs all the time with their businesses. I don't charge anything for anybody anymore. All I tell people is if you like what I taught you that made you some money, donate something to my charity.
Carly Ries (28:27):
What's your charity so we can include that in the show notes.
Mitch Ribak (28:29):
It's Lola's gift. Lolasgift.com. My granddaughter has a rare disease called Sturge Weber syndrome. So it's pretty much what I do everything for.
Carly Ries (28:39):
We will be sure to add that.
Joe Rando (28:40):
I've got to ask you Mitch before we go, you sold your website. Is this like when Kramer sold his stories? <laugh> on Seinfeld
Mitch Ribak (28:50):
<laugh> yeah.
Joe Rando (28:51):
Is this still your website?
Mitch Ribak (28:53):
I had 57,000 leads in there and now honestly, I'm just over it. My business is building my business now, not generating leads. It was worth about $300,000 and I sold it to one of my agents for 25 grand. She called me last week and said, "Hey, do you know anybody who will buy this from me? I'm not working it <laugh> Typical. So, I put it out there. I think she's talking to someone to sell it to someone. But it was a great website with 57,000 leads in it.
Joe Rando (29:27):
So it wasn't your personal brand or anything. Okay, got it.
Mitch Ribak (29:30):
Yeah, it was tropical. We're building a new one. We'll have Mitchriverback.com shortly. We're in the middle of building it right now.
Joe Rando (29:36):
All right. We'll look for that in the future.
Carly Ries (29:39):
Yeah. Mitch, thank you so much. For listeners, thank you so much for tuning in today. If you like what you hear, be sure to visit lifestarr.com/podcast or subscribe anywhere you listen to your shows. We'll see you next time.
Closing (29:54):
You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a One-Person Business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures. At LifeStarr, we're creating a One-Person Business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com
