In order to thrive in this business, you need more than just a license and a pulse. You need to be knowledgeable about the real estate market, have a strong network of contacts, and be able to close deals quickly and efficiently. And most importantly, you need to be hungry for success.
Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to become a million-dollar listing agent and explore some tips and tactics that you can use to help you reach this level of success in your own career.
Brian Charlesworth joins James Harris, Principal at The Agency, Bond Street Partners, and former cast of The Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles as he shares his story from quitting school at 16 to breaking numerous records in the real estate industry by specializing in multi-million properties in L.A.
Top Takeaways:
(04:49) How James started his business with his partner David Parnes
(06:33) The difference between today’s economy and the one in 2008
(07:58) Why agents need to step out of their comfort zone
(09:15) Why James thinks that the next 8 to 12 months will be rough for real estate agents
(11:16) How James went from being new to the business to selling $120 million listings
(13:09) What developers really care about
(13:25) What James considers as the backbone of their business
(14:32) The good thing about open houses
(15:45) The biggest attribute to their success
(16:50) Why James decided to keep their team relatively small
(18:03) Why you need to bombard your open houses with signs
(21:51) The advantage of getting a coach
(23:28) How James’ casting in the Million Dollar Listing reality show came about
(26:39) What does James’ team do to market multi-million dollars today
(31:33) James’ advice to parents
Connect with James Harris
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesbondst/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamesBondSt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesbondst/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesbondst/
Website: https://www.bondstreetpartners.com/
Subscribe to The Blueprint newsletter: https://www.readtheblueprint.com/
About the guest:
James Harris was born and raised in Central London. When he was a child, he suffered from extreme ADHD and was thrown out of every school. He then quit school altogether at 16. He found a job in real estate as a residential assistant within an agency. He worked his way up the ranks and moved into the commercial sector within the same company.
When James turned 21, he headed west to Los Angeles to broaden his horizon and ended up trading commodities. As the economy was getting back on its feet after the 2008 crash, James and his childhood friend, David Parnes, decided to set up their own real estate business.
Due to his determined work ethic, good relationship with clients, and a group of incredibly talented people, James and his team have reached a steady incline in sales year over year, with over $3 billion in sales since 2017. They have also broken numerous records including the sale of “The Manor” which is worth $120 million, setting the record for the highest sale in Holmby Hills, the 6th highest sale ever in Los Angeles County, and the 10th highest sale in U.S. history.
James and his partner were also part of the cast of the reality show, Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles for 7 seasons. They have recently left the show to focus on their business partnership.
Today, James Harris is the Principal at The Agency, Bond Street Partners where they specialize in high-end residential real estate and investment properties in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Sunset Strip, the Hollywood Hills, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and the greater Los Angeles region.
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
All right. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the Grit Podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu, and your host of the show. And today, we have an amazing guest with us. I'm super excited to learn more from James and to get to know James better. But today, I'm here with James Harris, most of you probably know him from the Million Dollar Listing in Los Angeles. And he runs a real estate team that has had amazing success. I believe your largest home you've ever sold is $120 million, which is more than most teams actually. Well, at least five years ago with selling an entire year in volume and one house. But the goal used to be $100 million for a team. And now we have a lot of teams doing a billion dollars. But you guys have just crushed it. And I'm excited to hear your story and excited to learn more about some of the things you guys are doing. But anyway, welcome to the show. James.
James Harris 01:31
Thank you so so much. I appreciate you having me and excited to have a chat, Brian. And yeah, thanks for having me.
Brian Charlesworth 01:38
Okay, my pleasure. So I want to go back in time. So you are from London. Is that where you grew up?
James Harris 01:45
Tennessee? No. Born and raised in London. I grew up there and moved out here when I was 21. But yeah, born and raised in central London. I loved living there. But we'll get into that I'm sure.
Brian Charlesworth 01:58
So let's dive right in. So somebody's 21 years old, you know, a boy that grows up in London. And I was just in London watching Wimbledon a few months ago, a lot of days. But how at 21 years old? Do you just say, Hey, I'm going to LA?
James Harris 02:15
Yeah, good question. And it's a long story. I'll try and shorten it for you. But you know, I quit school when I was 16. I just wasn't an academic kid. I suffered from extreme ADHD. I was thrown out of every school. Regretfully, I do not recommend it. But that was just my story and my journey. And from a very, very young age, I wanted to go to work. I wanted to sell, I was always intrigued by selling and I loved real estate. And so when I was 16, with no resume, I decided I was gonna go out and find myself a job in real estate. And that's exactly what I did. And I actually got started in a family owned business in northwest London, as a residential assistant within an agency. I was so willing at that age to do whatever it took, whether it was making coffee, or running mail through the mail machine or getting keys copied or whatever it encountered, I would do it. And I was actually at that company doing residential for two years. And I worked my way up the ranks. And then I moved into the commercial sector within the same company for another two and a half years there. And then when I got to the age of 21, I don't know if it's the same in America. But when you finish school in the UK, before you go to university, you have a gap year, where you go backpacking, and you travel the world and you take a year off before you go to university. I never did that. So at 21, I'd been working for five years, and I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to just see what was going on out there. And I came to LA for three months. And that was 18 and a half years ago. But when I got to LA, the economy wasn't doing too good. I ended up trading commodities, which was a great market at the time through the recession. And then David, my business partner then came out and the long and short of it is we then set up our real estate business about 1011 years ago. And the rest is history. And we'll get into that part shortly.
Brian Charlesworth 04:27
Okay, so David is also from London.
James Harris 04:31
Dave was born and raised in London, David, I grew up together, our parents are best friends. And we've known each other since the day we were born, which is awesome.
Brian Charlesworth 04:40
So you're out here in LA and you're like, hey, you need to come here. You know you guys have been best friends forever and you're like, just come here. Let's build a business together.
James Harris 04:49
That is pretty much exactly what happened. David was actually doing commercial real estate in Europe. He was actually working in Bodrum at the time and then the tooth out was an eight recession hit, and everyone lost everything, including the company Dave worked for at the time. I think he was just down and out. Everyone was if you remember, and I'm out here living in LA, having the time of my life, and then I was like, Dave, come on out, come on out. And that's exactly what he did. And we worked together, trading commodities for a while. And then it was like, okay, the economy's getting back on its feet, we both have a passion for real estate. We both trust each other implicitly. It's a no brainer. Let's set up the business. And that's exactly what we did.
Brian Charlesworth 05:34
Okay, what a great story. So yeah, I'm excited to continue down this journey. But I want to stop for a minute, you just talked about 2008. Everything blew up. The economy blew up. We're definitely in a recession, right? Things are changing here. It's different from 2008. What are the similarities? Like from your perspective, now you guys are in this different world than the typical realtor, right? Typical realtor sells a $400,000 house. And, you know, they might sell 40 homes a year, 20 homes a year, whatever it is, but it's a completely different world. I think when everyone gets into real estate, their dream is actually to go show these beautiful, gorgeous homes like ones you guys are in every day. And you know, they're not thinking about prospecting. They're not thinking about any of this stuff. When they dive into real estate. They're just thinking about how I want to go show these amazing homes to these people. And so you've kind of got the life that every realtor I think dreams of. But let's talk about the economy for a second. How do you see today's economy different from the one in '08?
James Harris 06:37
Good question. The first thing is that I have varied opinions on the economy. And we'll get into that. But I do want everybody to know that the dream isn't? Well, the dream is always to sell a 50 million 100 million $120 million home. And we love selling those big, amazing, beautiful homes. But actually, if your market is 400 500 $600,000 homes, a million dollar homes, that to me, it's unbelievable. I never discount or turn down a listing or turn my head away at any type of business. Because to me, that's bread and butter business, right? Those deals are always going to get churned out. And they're always going to keep going. And those are the deals that are going to pay your bills, put your kids through school, keep the lights on, keep food in the fridge. So whilst I love the big glamorous deals, don't get me wrong. But for me doing the, again, in our market, it is different, but a million to 5 million. I love that all day long.
Brian Charlesworth 07:40
So I'll say that, hey, thank you for sharing that. I think that's because, you know, being an elephant hunter isn't always fun, because killing elephants takes time.
James Harris 07:49
It does indeed. And I don't want anybody to have a misconception or idea that that's all we do. Right? We do it and everyone can do it. And by the way, if you're anywhere in America, and you're selling a $400,000 home, I almost guarantee you within an hour drive, there's a million dollar home, people need to get outside of their comfort zones of selling these for 500,000. If that's what your bread and butter is, take the drive, go somewhere West for an hour and go find the million dollar homes, go door knock an hour away, spend a night there, I don't care, but get out of your comfort zone from doing the smaller deals that you're used to doing and go break records an hour away. I don't care if it's two hours away, go do it. With regard to the economy. I don't think we're in a 2008 recession. That was a subprime crisis. I think the movie The Big Short was the best example of what happened in Oh, eight. I don't think the banks today are just lending to absolutely anybody. I don't think there's a ton of toxic debt that's out there that's going to default, even through COVID. I do think inflation is rampant. I think we can all agree the cost of living is ridiculous. And I think that through COVID, we've injected billions and trillions of dollars into the economy, because we had to globally and now that that's sort of coming to a halt and inflation is rampant, the Fed has to raise interest rates to calm inflation. So it's going to get very rough out there for real estate agents, I would say for the next eight to 12 months. I think we're gonna see rates rise again in November, potentially again in December, but I think it will come towards the end of Q1 of 2023. I think inflation is going to be calm, and I think you'll start to see rates going back down. So I think as real estate agents, we have two pitchers, one to our buyers and one to our sellers, and both are true, right to the buyer. If you're working with somebody right now, go and buy right now because rates are only going to continue to rise. And not only that, go out and find that deal. Because you're not marrying your interest rate you're dating it so go buy something right now that's a deal, turn around in six months, a year, two years, refinance out, get a lower payment, and then enjoy the capital appreciation of your home going up to sellers right now. Well, now's an unbelievable time to sell because if interest rates continue to go up, good prices are going to come down. And that's where I think we're going to have a small issue: sellers that don't have to sell are going to sit on the sidelines through this storm. And we're going to incur the same problem that we've had over the last two years through COVID, which there's, there's no inventory. So as agents, my best advice is think outside of the box, get creative. Sharpen your toolbox right now, and be prepared to put in 110%, over the next six to 12 months whilst we weather through this storm. Some people will make it, others won't. But I definitely don't think this is the way. And I definitely think if you work hard, and you put in the time, you're going to come out of this with flying green colors.
Brian Charlesworth 11:01
Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And thank you for sharing that with us. So coming back to your story. You guys come from London, then your partner comes out here. David joins you. And like, how do you go from being brand new to where you are today, selling $120 million listing and $75 million listing and a $54 million listing? The list goes on and on and on. Like, how did you get into that market? Because you just told people to get out of your comfort zone, right? Go break into this market. We have a friend here in Utah that just sold one of the largest sales ever here, which was a $37 million listing, and nobody could even comprehend it. But for you like that's maybe on the smaller end. So
James Harris 11:50
That to me is the best question. Right? How did we do it? And, you know, I often wondered to myself, how did we do it? And people are looking to us for these insanely wild answers of this magic one that we waved and just we got lucky or magic happened. But I'm going to break it down very simply for you. We worked our asses off, we rolled up our sleeves, we did not stop until we got where we needed to be and where we wanted to go. This is a very simple business that so many love to complicate. Okay, we got into the business, we set up our website, we looked at every single large agent around America, we looked at their brand, we looked into what they did, how they did it, what they just, how they got to where they are, we researched it. The beautiful thing about real estate is you can research what your competition is doing. And instead of copying it, you can reconstruct it so that it speaks to you. And when we first got started in the business, it was right around the time in Los Angeles that developers were buying dirt. And they were building these insane 50, 70, 100 million dollar homes. And that was when we got started. So we realized very early on. developers don't care who they work with, they care who brings them the deal. And if they have an ounce of loyalty, they'll usually give that agent that brought them the deal, the listing on the back end. And that was where we started our business. We went out door knocking every single freaking day of our lives Monday through Friday, we would not come home until one positive thing had come out of that day. And we door knocked and door knocked for 10 hours, 12 hours, we didn't care. And we made fun of it. We had fun doing it. We laughed and we created memories. And we literally built the back of our business, the backbone of our business from going out and door knocking. And I've shared this story before. But one of our first ever deals was a tear down in Bel Air that we sold for six and a half million dollars from a doorknob. And we literally earlier this year just closed it which was God 10 years later, because the developer took 10 years, we sold it for $38 million dollars. But we built our business with, I'm talking over, probably a billion dollars of sales today have come from the tear downs that we sold, staying in touch with the developer through the time of build to listing it and getting it sold on the back end. And that's truly how we build our business. We would then sit in open houses every single Sunday. Open Houses are free. They take three hours of your time. If you show up prepared, hungry, knowledgeable and ready. There is no reason you shouldn't leave every open house with at least three great leads of potential people that either want to buy, sell or are going to sell or are going to buy the house that you're sitting at between open houses door knocking, networking, hard work, dedication, that's how we found it and set up the business. And in real estate, if you work something to its full potential, it will lead to five other things. It truly will. And that's how we started. And back then we didn't have software's like Sisu and management software's and all these different types of software's that can actually help you streamline what the hell you were doing, we would just do it on a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet title. Now we've got actual software that can help us streamline what we're doing, and be more efficient with what we're doing. And we didn't have that. So again, it's really and truly rolling up your sleeves and getting down to work and not overthinking everything you do. I believe the fact that we knew nothing, was our biggest attribute. Because we didn't let anything get in our way. We didn't let anything stop us. And we didn't let fear get in the way of our success. Even though there were these big agents that were scary and cutthroat aggressive and trying to put, you know, roadblocks in front of us, we just kept going, we kept going, we kept going. And long and behold, it was like, ah, the Brits, ah, the Brits, oh, God, the Bond street boys, the Brits, the Bond Street Boys and more and more and more people would hear your name we'd get in their way they'd get in ours. And boom, that was 10 years ago, man. And here we are today. So it's hard work and dedication.
Brian Charlesworth 16:35
I'm glad you shared that because I think so many people think oh, yeah, this just happened overnight. Right? Everyone thinks of overnight success. They don't see the Grit. They don't see the work. They don't see the challenges. They don't see all that stuff that took you guys so long to go through? My guess is no, how big is your team today?
James Harris 16:52
13 people, we've actually kept it relatively small to the amount of business that we're doing. And we've done that on purpose that's done by default, we've always wanted to run a leaner mean operation. That's not to say that's not going to change. And that's certainly something that we are thinking about. But we wanted to keep it lean and mean and make sure everyone on our team was doing a tremendous amount of business. And we've got the most unbelievable team. And I'll tell you, we would not be where we are today without our team, period. Because that is the backbone of your business. And I think any successful business out there, any successful business, whether you're talking to the CEO of Apple, Elon Musk, at Tesla, I don't care who Microsoft, it doesn't matter, Virgin. If you don't have a strong backbone infrastructure team that can support you and back you up, you're worthless. And so I'm very grateful for the people on our team that have allowed us and helped us to get where we are today.
Brian Charlesworth 17:51
Well, so a lot of those people are probably on the admin side of the business, some of those on the sell side of the business. I'm guessing you guys still do open houses today, right?
James Harris 18:01
Absolutely. Every single Sunday, our team will have at least five to seven open houses. We always bombard our open houses with Open House signs, because branding and marketing is repetition and consistency. And if people see your signs over and over and over and over again, they start to have a subliminal sort of message of James Harris, David Parnesl, James Harris, David Parnes. Who are these guys? And so we make sure that we are open every Sunday for every single listing that we can and we bombard them with signs very important.
Brian Charlesworth 18:33
Yeah. So my wife has a team now of 75 agents, and wow, I went in and spoke to them this week, actually. And I said, Look, if I were in the business today, getting started whether I'm getting started, I want to keep my business going. I'm gonna do an open house every single week, at least right? Absolutely. 50 signs at least 50 signs every single open house. So men and flags, right, you've got to have the big flags, because they look so good. Yes. So I think this is important because I think a lot of people would look at you and say, Look, he's achieved he's at the pinnacle. He maybe doesn't work anymore, and lets everyone do stuff for him. And yet I know personally just from our conversation before this call that you actually have a Tom Ferry coach.
James Harris 19:19
I do indeed. And let me just backtrack. You say I'm at the pinnacle. I look at myself as so far from the pinnacle. I am nowhere even close. If the pinnacle’s here, I'm here. And the reason for that is I don't think you ever stopped growing. And I think that anybody that thinks they're at the pinnacle or they think they know everything or they become a know it all and I know a lot of those people, at some point they will lose it because my first boss in the company I started out when I was 16, who'd been in the business at the time for two years. He said to me on my first interview, he said the day that you pick I'm willing to learn or think you've known everything is the day you're over. And for me, as long as I'm learning, I'm growing as long as I'm growing, I can get to new heights as long as I can get to new heights, I can continue to build and truly never stop learning, which means I'll never stop building and growing. And that's always the goal for me.
Brian Charlesworth 20:24
Yeah, and thank you. I mean, the minute you think you've hit that pinnacle, you're done right? The man I think so. There's no way to coast uphill, right? If you're coasting you're always going back down. So
James Harris 20:36
and if you're ever comfortable, get uncomfortable. Because the moment I'm comfortable in anything I do. A it becomes boring to me, but B comfortability is never going to allow you to grow. Right? And I will say this, if you look at any wealthy person around the world, right, I'm talking about the wealth of anybody, you name it a billionaire, the most wealthy person, what they have someone they answer to, right. So we're always growing, we're always growing if you don't think Elon Musk has to answer to the banks, and the people that are loaning him money and the company he wants to acquire, everyone's answering to somebody, right? So there's always a step to go above and become better and bigger and learn more.
Brian Charlesworth 21:20
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I love that mindset that got you to where you are today. So today, here you are with this business, and you're like, How can I continue growing and evolving and developing and you have a Tom Ferry coach?
James Harris 21:35
Yeah. And that's been tremendously, tremendously helpful. I've watched Tom from afar for years and years and years, and he is just an unbelievable human being, you know, he really does live it and breathe it, he's passionate about it. And at the point that we decided to get a coach, was at the point we decided that we're ready to scale our business and grow it. And as great as we are at selling, I think anybody in business needs to identify their strengths and their weaknesses. And I'm the first to put my hands up and say that my absolute weakness is structure, trying to understand the numbers or the structure of how to do it. And so in business, you have to delegate to the people that are experts in that field. And I will say that Tom Ferry coaching, sounds like an infomercial for Tom Ferry, but it's really not, it's how I feel, has been tremendously useful and helpful to the growth of our business. It also holds us accountable, right. So every Monday, every Wednesday, we have our calls, we know we need to be there. We know we've got X amount of time to go over X number of things. And by the way, if we don't make that call, or we're too busy, well, then we're not putting the growth of our business first. And that's just fucking stupid, quite frankly. So we're taking it very seriously. It's helping, and we'll continue to do it as long as it's helping. And now I've managed to sit down and spend some time with Tom, or coach. Ivana is amazing. And we're just loving the process of what it has to offer for sure.
Brian Charlesworth 23:09
Great. Yeah, I met Tom about five years ago. And he's an amazing individual. And I'm hoping to go to Switzerland with him next summer to drive race cars around the country.
James Harris 23:18
would be unreal, man. That sounds like fun.
Brian Charlesworth 23:21
So anyway, here you are going down this journey of growth and building this business. And all of a sudden walk us through this whole thing of how this Million Dollar Listing came about.
James Harris 23:33
So such a crazy story. So we've been in the business for about a year and a half. I'm driving home one day, I get a phone call, I remember it like it was yesterday, I pull over to the side. And it's the casting director for this show called Million Dollar Listing. Now I've heard of this show, but I've never seen it. And I think because the person on the other end of the phone says to me, and so and so has told us that we should call you, we were looking for a new spot on the show, and whoever so and so was I didn't know that person or I'd never heard of their name. So I thought I was being pranked. So I was still engaged in the call. I called Dave and like, listen, Dave, I think we're being pranked. But I just got a call from a casting director for this show called Million Dollar Listing. And David goes, I love that show. I watch that show all the time. I'm like, okay, they call. They set up a Skype interview with us for tomorrow. I can't even remember one or two days after that call. And we got on that Skype call and I'll never forget it. I really thought it was a prank. We took the thing that was a joke. And I remember David in the back of the camera flexing his muscles and it was a joke. And lo and behold, it was not a joke. And little did we know they were interviewing, I don't know three to 400 real estate agents for this position on the show. And we went through several periods and added an interview process. And we got down to the last 10. And they sent a full crew out to film with us for an eight hour day, as they did with the other cast members to cut it into, I don't know, two minutes seeing. And they ended up going with David and I, and that was eight years ago, if you can believe it, and we've had an eight year run on the show, I think we filmed over 100 episodes, we recently parted ways with the show, after a tremendous eight years that I'm extremely grateful for. And we'll never forget. And it was an unbelievable journey. Unbelievable journey.
Brian Charlesworth 25:39
I'll bet what an experience. So how long does it take to film a show? Right?
James Harris 25:45
So that's a good question. So this is one of the longest reality shows in TV to film a season because they follow the transaction from the start middle to end. So our season takes 11 months a year to shoot 12 episodes, which is unheard of, by the way. So it's Listen, it's a definite commitment. You know, I mean, I'm married with two children and run a business. So trying to shoot a show 11 months a year with two children can definitely become a lot. You figure out a way to make it work. You know, Josh Altman has kids, Tracy has kids, Flagg is still a kid. But you figure out a way to make it work, and you have fun doing it. But it's definitely a lot.
Brian Charlesworth 26:29
Great, what a journey. What an experience. Congratulations, I'm excited for you. Still, that's amazing. So I see you, you have this Facebook page you have What all do you do today to market these, you know, multi million dollar properties that you guys have?
James Harris 26:45
So much, so much. I mean, your branding is everything in this business, the way you market is everything in this business. And you really need to be creative in how you market properties today, right? If I have, and I use our local market as an example, but this, this goes for anybody. If I have a house in the Hollywood Hills that's modern, and I have a house in the Beverly Hills flats that's Mediterranean, the chances are not the chances are, they're completely different buyers. Therefore, I have to market those two properties completely differently, right, I can't send one brochure and just blast it to everybody. You have to get more niche and targeted in the way that you market. So yes, we use Facebook and social media, Instagram and Tiktok. to market our properties. We obviously do just listed mailers, we put these properties on our website, we put these properties on LinkedIn, we put these properties everywhere you can imagine. But then you have to start thinking about who's the buyer. And then you have to sort of reverse engineer how you're going to get out to that person. Maybe it's advertising in an international publication. If you think it's an Asian buyer, are you going to go and register to a platform called Kamijou, which is an Asian MLS, where your properties get translated into Mandarin? Are you going to go to the Financial Times in the UK and take out a full page ad there because you think someone in London might buy it, you have to get creative in the way you market properties today. But generally speaking, marketing is about consistency. If you do something, do it over and over and over again, if you're gonna go on Instagram Live, do it three times a week, set the time that you do it, put the message out, if you're gonna go on Facebook, do it consistently, you know, I think understand the message of who you are and what you're trying to achieve and be strategic and how you put that message out.
Brian Charlesworth 28:38
I think you guys just, some of the things you just mentioned, like who would think of putting this on a mandarin website who would think of going to, you know, Europe and starting to post it after those markets. And I mean, I think that's what sets you guys apart in addition to the consistency because consistency is everything. So
James Harris 28:56
It really is it really really is.
Brian Charlesworth 28:59
So you actually have an interesting story where 16 You were done with high school. My son graduated from high school at 16. He was a professional photographer, traveling the world shooting weddings, basically COVID hits, he became a social influencer, and moved to LA at 19. Very similar story to yours, actually. So just different. He is still out here. He just bought a home in Florida actually. And he's moving to Florida right now. So he's in Utah today. He left LA like a week ago.
James Harris 29:30
That's very cool. Yeah, very cool, you must be very proud.
Brian Charlesworth 29:33
Yeah, it's fun to see that it's fun to see the growth. So anyway, I brought this up. I know you're a family man. You talked about your daughters, your wife. Talk about that, like how do you prioritize so that you get to spend time with your family because I know it's important to you?
James Harris 29:49
Yes, it is. So if my wife was sitting next to me right now, she would probably disagree with everything I'm about to say. But balance is the key to success and I am sure I am really lousy with balance. It's something that I've worked on and worked on and will continue to work on forever. It's a very tough business, which doesn't really allow balance unless you really, really, really work with it right. And I'll get into the fact that my two daughters, I have a nine year old and 13 year old, right at the beginning of this, you said, Oh, my God, you came here at 21. And you grew up, I didn't grow up at 21, right? I grew up the day my daughter was born, okay, I was 25, there is nothing like a child coming into the world that will grow you up real quick. And these kids and my wife have changed my world, they've changed my life. And I think for most parents, if not all, you don't live for you any longer you live for the family, you go out every day and do what you do for your family. And it makes it all that much more exciting, because actually, when you're giving back, it actually makes it even that much better. Don't get me wrong, we like to do things for ourselves, too. But I do everything I do every single day for my family. That doesn't mean I don't want my children to go to work and make their own money and understand how hard it is to make money. But I want to protect my family in the best way that I can. And that's why I go out and do what I do every single day. Balance is very hard to do. I make sure I'm home every single night. As long. Of course there are exceptions before my children go to bed, and I make sure I'm there every single morning before they go to school. That's a priority. One thing I will tell parents out there that are listening to this special time with your children, no cell phone. Wow, the connection you'll build with your children. When you're not looking at your phone and responding to text messages and emails and looking at Instagram and taking a call and just having 15 minutes of time with them. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Changed the game for me. And that's something that I do with my children most nights, we go on drives, we listen to music, we play rummy cube, we play Uno. And I think that connection with your family is so important. Because what can be very, very consuming. And you can never gain back time with your children or your wife or your families. So you have to create the time to live in the moment and do the best that you can adapt.
Brian Charlesworth 32:19
I love that you share that. I think it's harder than ever to not be on your phones. Right? And so put your phones down to actually spend time, just like you said even 15 minutes of communicating. Just being there being probably
James Harris 32:36
I have a teenager, people. No one warned me about a teenager in 2022. Man, let me tell you, Oh my God, that's hard work in itself. So now when I have no phone for 15 minutes, for some reason she's allowed to keep hers.
Brian Charlesworth 33:00
Our youngest is 14 now and you know, putting down the phone is not that big of a challenge. Yeah, and her putting down the phone? That's another story. Right?
James Harris 33:07
That's a whole nother story, man. I mean, I'm sitting there spending quality time with her. And she's taking these blurry photos for Snapchat. I don't know, I'm not even, I'm old and not cool. Is what my daughter tells me. I don't even know half the things she's on anymore. So I must be getting old, man. I must be getting old.
Brian Charlesworth 33:25
Well, James, it's been amazing spending time with you today before you leave. Are there any last things, anything that you just like to share that you think is really important for our audience today?
James Harris 33:36
We've had an amazing conversation, the only thing I'll share is go ahead and find information about real estate that we didn't know when we started. And so yeah, definitely subscribe. It's readtheblueprint.com. We put it out Tuesdays and Fridays, great information. And it's meant to be a two minute read that will make you go out and be a better agent that day. So definitely subscribe, and let me know your thoughts.
Brian Charlesworth 33:59
How do I subscribe to that?
James Harris 34:02
So you go to www.readtheblueprint.com. we put in your email and we will send you our newsletter.
Brian Charlesworth 34:07
Okay, readtheblueprint.com You guys go there, sign up, I guarantee you this is something you're gonna want to I'm gonna go sign up myself as soon as we jump off of here. So
James Harris 34:17
Yeah, it's been amazing. Feedback has been unreal. So definitely really exciting.
Brian Charlesworth 34:22
Okay, well, James, other than that, what's the best way for someone to reach out to you if they have questions? Or if you're all over social, so I'm guessing it's pretty easy to get to that? Oh,
James Harris 34:31
Just come to me through social and don't be shy. Okay.
Brian Charlesworth 34:35
Awesome. All right, James, thanks so much for joining us on the show today. For all of you, listeners. Thanks for listening. It's you guys continuing to download this and to like this and to follow this that allows us to get people like James on the show. So James, it's been great. I enjoyed my time with you and am looking forward to getting to know you better.
James Harris 34:53
Likewise. Thank you so much, lovely chatting with you.
