Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLG Meetup. This is our 99th episode. I'm very excited because we're going to have with us a very special guest. His name is John Gohman, and he's a real estate broker, superstar with the agency.
And also the founder of the Growman and Rosenfeld group. They've sold over $2 billion worth of real estate. And this year alone, over 500 million worth of real estate. He also has one of the top 10 highest sales in history in Los Angeles with a property of $75 million.
And he brings all the real estate knowledge, ultimate trends, and all the tips and techniques on how to become a super successful real estate agent. John, Mom and Ann, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? Very good.
Thank you for joining us today. And are you Los Angeles right now? I'm in Los Angeles. It is bright and early.
My kids are just waking up. And I've been up. I'm bad. This is starting.
The man is starting. Yes, I've been up for a couple of hours. I start my day early. But my kids are just waking up in the background.
So you might hear some streaming and crying, depending on what kind of morning it turns out today. Well, we might hear that reality, because not everything is luxury and sexiness, right? In this world, there's also families and a lot of work we've had just since. You said it right there.
I was making a quick introduction about yourself. You're obviously one of the most successful real estate brokers in the West Coast. Also, top 50 teams in the US. I mean, the numbers speak by themselves.
You've been involved in some of the highest transactions. And obviously, to get to that level, there is a lot of work behind. So when you have kids, the only way you can manage that is by waking up early and being very decidly. So, welcome.
And thank you for being here with us today. My pleasure. Thank you. Just so that people can know a little bit more about yourself, because it's not an overnight success.
It takes lots of years and work to get to your level. So tell us a little bit about what's been your trajectory, real estate, to get to that level. Sure. So I've been in the business now for about 18 years.
I actually started as a mortgage broker back in 2003. And prior to that, I was in the music business. I was actually in the record industry. Yeah.
So if you think about what the record industry looked like back in 2003, for those of you that are old enough to remember 2003, it was really at the height of Napster, music pirating, CD burning, illegal downloading, and it just crippled the record industry. And almost it seemingly imploded overnight. So I got out of that business and into real estate, specifically into the mortgage, thinking that I jumped off one sinking ship, not realizing I jumped on. Yeah, you did.
Yeah. And just crashed or even iceberg about five years later when the mortgage crisis happened. So it was definitely a bit of a turbulent start. I had no intention of being a mortgage broker.
It was literally just someone that I had a close family friend who had been successful in real estate. I said, where do I go? What do I do? How do I get started?
And he said, look, take you a few months. You've got to take some classes. You've got to get licensed. While you're doing that, why don't you go intern at a mortgage company that a buddy might own down the street.
It'll be a really good baseline of knowledge for you to have me become an agent, which in truth, I mean, in retrospect, rather, proved to be right. I just got stuck doing that a lot longer than I anticipated. But it has served me really well as an agent because I understand that facet of the business inside and out. I can speak that language fluently.
And that has proved to be beneficial time after time. But I switched over to the other side of the aisle to start selling real estate. Most of my mortgage clients had been referred by real estate agents. It's not like I was going to come over and start taking other people's clients.
So I literally just had to start from scratch. It was very just like grassroots down to the basics. That's one thing, by the way, a lot of people don't realize. They look at successful brokers like yourselves.
They're like, oh my god, yes, I'm going to get into a luxury real estate. It's so sexy, so nice. But the reality, it takes 18 years to build that overnight success. I got into it say 2011, going to 2012, which again, for those of you that were in the business then, was really when the market just started its uptick.
Obviously 2008, we went into the crash, which lasted through 2009, 2010, into 2011, and 2011 and 2012, was when the market was just kind of starting its uptick and its recovery. So the timing was good in that respect. And like I said, it took a year or two before I was able to pop my first sale. And then from there, it's just a compound effect, right?
I wasn't really focusing on any one particular neighborhood or any one particular segment of the market. I was focused on anywhere where I could build on success. I would say one of the critical sort of turning points in my career was when I got into real estate coaching. Oh, what's the, I guess, gold nuggets in this for those that have partners in the same work field?
I would say the nugget there is again, to accept the fact that, you know, look, you have to decide what kind of business that you want to have. I'm very fortunate to work in a market where, honestly, you could sell a couple houses a year and make a pretty damn good living, depending on the price point, of course. And if you don't want to build a team around, you can join a team and just use that as a stepping stone. Just look at it as one pillar in your business that you're going to use to help create wherever you want to go to next.
Because that's what you end up doing, right? You joined the agency and within the agency, which they already had the structure and the system, you build your own team. I mean, I see here the ground women and Rosenfield group, you guys have sold over $2 billion. I mean, this doesn't happen just overnight with one person.
It requires building that team and having that support system. Correct? Yes. First and last eight years that I've been there, the industry has changed.
And the overall sort of trend of the industry, I think, is shifting more towards teams. And I'll give you an example. I love this story. So I was at the Tom Billy Summit.
This is a couple years ago. And we're down in Anaheim. And there's 5,000 people packed into this convention center. And it's 9 AM, the event's about to start.
And Tom comes on stage and he looks around and he said, I see that a bunch of you are holding Starbucks coffee, coffee cups. And I know that the nearest Starbucks is about half a mile down the road. And I know that it's August and it's 90 degrees outside. So each of you had to wake up this morning, check your email, check in with your kids, get dressed, get ready, and account for time to walk a half a mile down the road to stand in line for probably 20 minutes and pay $5 for a cup of coffee and walk back in the 90 degree key when there's free coffee out in the lobby.
So why did you do it? Because we live in the experience economy. Recognizing that we live in the experience economy. And we have to deliver that highest level of experience, particularly in the luxe market.
I mean, I got to ask you this, because when I go into your Instagram, I see great content. I'm very engaging. But one of the latest videos that really, really hit my heart was the one on you showcasing some of the most incredible properties with your mother, you know, helicopter. So tell us a little bit about that.
Tom asked me to speak at one of his events. And this was kind of right in the height of COVID where events were and I guess still are mostly virtual. So rather than speaking on stage, he asked me to go pre-record something. And he wanted me to talk about, I think the topic that we picked was the importance of knowing the market, knowing the inventory, excuse me.
And I just thought, well, I got to look at this thing like on camera and it's pre-recorded. And I just, people are just going to tune out. And I thought, well, what's a fun way to just kind of hook them? What's a fun way to keep them engaged?
And the beauty of, I mean, we're so lucky to sell where we sell. We get to sell real estate in one of the most affluent markets in the world, some of the most beautiful properties in the world. And I thought, well, what better way to, you know, the thing about these is most than you can't see from the street. Right?
There's 40 foot hedges and 20 foot gades. And they're going to get these compounds you can't ever peer into unless you look in from up above. So I had this idea to take it up to charter a helicopter and go around the city and feature some of these big properties. And people seem to really love it.
And so I thought, OK, well, I'll do it again. And I was talking to my mom about it one day over the phone. And she was saying how cool it is and something rather. And I was like, do you want to come with me?
But it just was a fun way to humanize it. A fun way to humanize it. It has been content for you on social media. Huge.
You'd be surprised by how many people are watching and following. They may not be commenting. Some do. Some don't.
But they're all watching. Consistency is the name of the game. Same thing goes with follow up and follow through. We track this stuff.
We measure this stuff. And what we've learned is that the money is in the follow through. The conversion is in the follow up. Now, let me ask you these, John, because this is a question that we always do.
And I want to know your answer to it. What's luxury to you? I think luxury to me is just being able to afford the greatest conveniences in life or amenities in life. Like, I've never been asked that question quite that way.
But what I've often said to people, at least at this point in my life with two young children and a business that's my eyeballs in business, the greatest luxury for me is the ability to afford help. I love that answer, because this is the 99th episode that we've had. And we've had 98, 99 including yourself, incredible guests. And I've always asked this question.
And it's the first time that I've heard this answer. I wanted to ask you something a little bit more personal. When it comes to your life, is there any specific routine that you do in the morning? On those two hours, I just said that you wake up before anybody else that keep you going with that energy, that positive mindset, that winner thrive.
100%. Yeah, so I start my day early and with very specific intention, because it's really the only time that I have control of my day. Once my day gets going, once my kids are up, once the sun is up, once the clients are up, a lot of times the control gets taken away from you. And there's a great book out there for those of you that have never read it, it's called The Miracle Morning.
I would highly, highly recommend it. Super good. Great book, Easy Read. Don't get the real estate version.
I thought the real estate version was sort of cheesy and crap. But just get the original version. And the basic premise is this, the most successful people in the world, whether they're CEOs of major corporations, professional athletes, et cetera, all start their day early and start their day with intention to focus on themselves. So for me personally, here's what I do.
I get up, I go downstairs and get on the Peloton. And I'm big on what's called net time, so no extra time, because I don't have enough time in the day to just properly segment everything. So a lot of times I have to do things simultaneously. So I will work out while I'm doing my gratitude exercise.
And then while I'm going to my visualization exercise for the day and then while I'm doing my incantations. And I also find that it's more effective for me to do that while I'm exercising, because your hearts pump in, the blood's rushing through you. It's like trying to do, you want to take any real serious actually, you have to do so with momentum and inertia, not sitting flat footed on your couch. Always watch one kind of motivational video.
I'll spend 10 or 15 minutes just feeding my mind in some way. Whether that's an audiobook, whether that's a book that I'm reading right now, I'm reading high-performance habits, which I think is excellent. Then I'm off and then I'm back in, that's my 60 minutes and then I'm upstairs and recently get ready before my kids get up. Exactly.
And the way that you present yourself is so genuine and so inspiring that I encourage everybody to please follow him because he's really good. People want to connect with you. What's the best way to do it? Instagram?
Yeah, Instagram's the best way. Just John Crown and JON, GRAM and J-R-A-U-M-A-N. Okay, that along with also your team, right? You can also put a groundman, Rosenfeld, that's the team.
Is there anything else that we have in our touch base that you would like to talk about? No, I don't think so. I mean, it comes to really say, I could sit here and talk till the same time. Yeah, exactly.
I would just say, you know, look, in addition to what we've already touched upon, I would say just be intentional about what we're doing, be deliberate and spend carve out time to work on the business, not just in the business, right? This business is, let's call it what it is. This business is a rat race. It is exhausting and it will chew you up and spit you out if you allow it to.
But a lot of people are out there kind of just winging it each day to wake up and I'm racing and I've got to go here and they're just like, it's the gunslinger mentality. As opposed to actually carving out some time, shutting off the noise and being really focused and deliberate about what you want to achieve, setting deadlines, setting benchmarks, putting together a plan, working towards that plan. And you'd be surprised how many times when you set a really specific goal and create an action plan to achieve it, how often you do. And again, none of this stuff is rocket science.
Like, I'm not like, anything, it's a revolutionary groundbreaking. It's just we're in an industry that it's so easy to just kind of wake up and fall back into the same routines. What it's happening is, you know, you face a lot of rejection that's just get pounded by the surf over and over and over again and you don't have sort of a north star to keep you on the path, so to speak. It's very easy to get discouraged or fall behind and that's what I encourage everybody to work on.
I love it. Well, John, thank you so much. Everything that you've shared today, it's very interesting to be in also very inspiring. So I appreciate your time.
And hey, if you want to come visit us in Miami, please, you're going to be our guest. I also go off to Los Angeles. I'll definitely let you know I'm going there either end of October beginning of November. So I'll hit you up and make sure there's a lot of cool stuff we can work on together.
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you so much. And we'll see each other soon.
OK, thanks for having me. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it beautiful, success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.