Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cowboy Perspective. I want to introduce you all – well, first I want to thank you for listening. I appreciate your attention and it makes this podcast worth the time we spend doing it. And when I say we, I mean, me and the guests and the people that just come on and help share – I mean help might be the wrong word – but just simply share their experiences and perspectives. Okay. So, thanks for listening. I want to introduce you all to a guy named Kasey Mock. If you’ve ever wondered about real estate or faith or family or how to prioritize those things, well, this guy is going to help you. He’s going to tell you all about himself, so I’m not going to bother with it. Here we are on a cold, windy day in Comanche, Texas, back in the early part of the year, talking about a lot of cool stuff. Let’s do it. Yee-haw.
Well, everybody out there and TCP Nation, we’re here recording a little bit of conversation ultimately is what I hope it turns out to be, but there’ll be a lot of value and insights here for you. If you’re interested in knowing how a guy that is deployed or displayed the ability to be successful, that’s this man right here, Kasey Mock. Kasey, thanks for coming on the Cowboy Perspective, and I really look forward to everybody hearing a lot about you. So, I’m going to try to shut up and let you talk. That’s hard for me to do.
Kasey Mock: Well, if either one of us gets a word in, it’d be a miracle. Neil, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed getting to know you through the podcast. That’s a neat thing about the podcast, isn’t it? We sit down here having on a very windy day in Comanche County, by the way, but we sit down here having just shook hands, because we still do that in the COVID environment – in the cowboy world we do – having just shook hands, but I feel like I know you well because I’ve listened to hours of you talk in a casual setting. So that’s neat.
Neil Dudley: Talking about the handshakes, it’s always, that’s an awkward time. When you walk up to somebody, you don’t know how they’re going to take it. Well, are we supposed to fist bump or elbow bump or don’t touch at all? And it’s such a knee jerk reaction for me; I just go immediately stick my hand out. But anyways, welcome to COVID, what a world we’re living in; man, that could be a whole podcast in itself. But before we get too far down into all these things we want to talk about, I want all the listeners to get a chance to hear your story, who you are, where you came from, what it was like growing up for you. Just give them that kind of baseline understanding of who Kasey Mock is. And then we can start exploring just things you’ve done in your life.
Kasey Mock: Well, I’m a regular guy, Neil, that came from a very regular family and have been very blessed and shown a lot of favor by the good Lord is what I think. And people hear that and I think they automatically think, well, you’ve been privileged or you’ve been given things and I’m not a prosperity kind of guy. I’ve been introduced to great coaches and great mentors at key points in my life. And for whatever reason, I had the clarity and the never-ending desire to learn. I’ve got, God blessed me with a learning mentality. I really am always looking to learn from people. I hope I don’t have an ego because I’ve never considered myself the smartest person in the room. And so, you always- I’m like a sponge. I always want to learn and know what people around me are doing, particularly those that are successful, and God just put those right people in my life at the right time. I was raised on a farm in Kyle, Texas, small farm.
Neil Dudley: Now see, Kyle rings a bell for me. What makes Kyle, Texas, famous?
Kasey Mock: Used to be railroad barbecue, but it’s right on the-
Neil Dudley: Well, I can’t think of what it’s ringing the bell with me for. That’s why I just thought I’d ask the question.
Kasey Mock: Well, Kyle, Texas, is right on the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio, but an interesting fact about Kyle is Kyle is named after the same Kyle family as Kyle Field at College Station, Texas A&M College Field.
Neil Dudley: Any aggies out there listening?
Kasey Mock: We can’t hear the whoops through the podcast.
Neil Dudley: They might be whooping. Which the listeners of the podcast probably know my partner at Peterson’s, which is the bakon company, or the president of the company is my friend since kindergarten, well, he’s an aggie. So, I didn’t graduate from A&M, but I sure get a lot of visibility into their culture and their brotherhood and that kind of thing, which to me is pretty, it’s pretty cool. You might kind of feel a little bit of that being didn’t you go to school at Tarleton?
Kasey Mock: I went to Tarleton, yessir. I grew up on a little farm in Kyle. We had 4-H animals mostly. My dad was a home builder, rodeoed when he was younger, and was a hunting and fishing guide when he was younger. So outdoors have always been part of our life, always been a passion of ours. We never had much money though. My dad was a home builder, and we never did it without. I don’t want to say that grew up in a poor house because I had very, very, very good parents. My parents, the number one thing they taught us was to be present. I remember I played sports. My dad never missed a game, much less a practice. He never missed it. I cannot remember a day that I was practicing football or track that Dad wasn’t there on the side of the field watching. So, I had very present parents. And that’s probably the number one thing I want to give to my kids is presence. But they taught us how to work. We wanted to hunt. We wanted to fish. We wanted to have stock show animals. And anything that I’ve ever done I want to be competitive at. So, we didn’t have the money to do all those things competitively or do them at a high volume. We liked hunting and fishing every weekend, not just occasionally. And we wanted to be competitive in the livestock shows. My dad was a home builder in the eighties when interest rates were really high, my mother was going back to school, and so there just wasn’t a lot of extra income. So, at nine years old, my twin brother and I got a job for a cotton farmer there in town. And we would start at daylight, as nine-year-old kids, we’d start at daylight, and we would hoe weeds in the cotton fields until noon or one o’clock. And then Dad would pick us up. We’d have a Gatorade. And we’d go sweep off, he was a home builder, so we’d go sweep off job sites for him if he had a home to build. If not, we’d go back to the house and we’d clean farrowing barns for the pigs, or we would worm goats or vaccinate goats, or find fence to build or do something for somebody. But all we did was work growing up. And a nine-year-old kid in the early nineties, you make $3 an hour or something for walking those cotton fields and hoeing weeds. And we would give all that money to Mom and Dad to pay for feed for our show projects or to buy boat gas on the weekends or diesel to go to the deer lease. And that was the foundation for everything that we have done. That and faith – we were in church every Sunday morning, most Sunday nights, and every Wednesday. And that wasn’t an option. It wasn’t an option. It was a part of our family, and it was something that was important to my parents and still important to me. My faith in Christ has always been the number one thing to us. It’s God, family, business in our world. So, we grew up that way, and all we did is work. And I think as I’ve gotten into business, Neil, and I’ve hired a lot of people, you find that people that wake up every day and are willing to go to work and have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder really go far in life.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I wrote down competitive here. Well, where do you think your competitive nature, is that from being a twin? What built into you this competitive nature?
Kasey Mock: Your last guest, I think it was your last guest, y’all talked about behavioral profiles and Kolbe. So, I’m a part of Keller Williams Realty now, since 2014. You talk about being introduced to key people at key points in your life. In 2011, I think, I met Gary Keller. Gary’s the founder, chairman of the board of Keller Williams Realty International; it’s the largest real estate company in the world. When I met Gary, I was consulting for ranch owners. I was selling for the state’s largest private land and wildlife management company. So, we just sold management services, tax plans. And I had a hunting company. We booked hunts, guided hunts, outfitted hunts, set it up, set up ranches. And started that in 2008, I believe, out of necessity because my wife and I were married in college. I was a county extension agent, made like $28,000 a year. We had no extra money, and I was guiding hunts on the weekend. And I thought, man, I can turn this hunting guiding into a business because I can only be sitting in one deer stand at a time to guide hunts. So how can I leverage the platform that we’ve got and the people we’re meeting to have 10 or 20 hunters in camp at a time. And then I can be home a little more. So, we started that and that was my introduction to Mr. Keller. I didn’t know who he was when I met him. And fast forward to 2014, we started the land division, farm, ranch, and land division of Keller Williams Realty International. And this past year, I think that company, we closed $4.2 billion worth of real estate, had 380 agents and brokers around the country. My team, the Mock Ranches Group, we’re here in Texas. There’s 10 of us that work in about every market in Texas on ranch sales. We do some residential in central Texas as well. Mock Ranches Group in 2018 was recognized by the National Association of Realtors, Realtors Land Institute as the National Recreational Land Broker of the Year. I say that, not everybody in the industry, somebody’s going to listen to this and say, well, that’s bull, we did more than them. And somebody did. Multiple brokers did. That’s a program that we were enrolled in, and we won the program.
Neil Dudley: Isn’t that funny how almost everybody’s always wanting to say, well, no, that- Why aren’t humans like that a little bit? They’re always wanting to hold somebody else a little and just somehow, it’s if I can hold him down a little bit, that’s going to mean whatever I did- I just wish if you were listening and you heard Kasey talking about a little bit of his success, just be like happy for him. I don’t care. I mean, if you sell real estate, you guys are probably in competition in some way or another, but at the end of the day, that competition is really helping everybody.
Kasey Mock: It’s fruitful. Competition is fruitful. I believe a few things about business. I don’t think anybody else has to lose in order for me to succeed. That’s the first thing I believe about business. Nobody else has to lose in order for me to succeed. There’s ample, abundant opportunity in whatever industry you’re in. If you sell bacon, if you sell real estate, if you sell horses, if you sell tennis shoes, the amount of people that live in our world today, if you sell investments, if you sell whatever you sell, there is ample opportunity for anybody and everybody that does a good job and provides a valuable service to their clients to have abundance success. Everybody can have abundance success. And I’d argue to say that everybody that does it well, that provides a valuable service – now that’s where we get into the difference in some businesses and others. Some businesses ride waves of success. The market gets good, there’s a lot of people that sell ranches and a lot of people that sell bacon that find a way to make a living. The market gets bad, there’s a lot of people that ride the market to the bottom, too. And then there’s businesses that provide a service to their clients that is next level, a service that’s unique, a service that’s maybe they have a proprietary thing about their business. Maybe they work harder, maybe they communicate better, but there’s some businesses that take their unfair share of the market. That’s why in any business, most of the time, you find the 80/20 principle to be true. 20% of the people do 80% of the business. And so, we work hard every day to provide that level of success. But that’s my view on business. I started this last year, Land Broker Mastermind, which is an open forum mastermind group for land brokers. It’s based on Facebook. But we get on there and we discuss challenges and opportunities in the business as a group of competitors, because I believe a rising tide raises all ships. And again, I’m not concerned about my competitors getting better and beating me. I know I’m always going to be a formidable competitor to them. If they do a better job, that pushes me and my team to do a better job. If we all do a better job, our industry lasts into the future. If none of us do a good job, we look up and a tech company like Zillow or CoStar or somebody that we don’t even know today has moved into our space and now they are the voice of real estate.
Neil Dudley: And there’s somebody right now trying to move into that space that you probably don’t even know about it, somebody talking about it in a backroom somewhere. It’s like, if you’re not moving forward, there’s people after you all the time and you better just allow it. Don’t be mad about it. Embrace it. Matter of fact, how could I find that person and talk to them? We might could be a part of that. It’s just like can you be open to those realities?
Kasey Mock: If you allow yourself to be replaced, that’s your fault. Understand that anybody in business against you, they’re trying to win as hard as you’re trying to win. So, if you get beat in business by a competitor, by a disruptor, by technology, by somebody you don’t know or don’t understand, that is not their fault. If we’re the victim, it becomes our fault. We’re like, well, this guy beat me, but that’s not their fault member. Remember, they were trying to win, too. If you get beat, it’s probably your fault that you got beat.
Neil Dudley: And it’s smart to think about sometimes this disruption eliminates an industry, like Blockbuster. That’s kind of my best one. Now Blockbuster, their industry got eliminated. What they were, at least from an outsider’s perspective, I wasn’t a part of Blockbuster or any of that thing, but they just didn’t have the ability to realize, uh-oh, our industry’s about to be gone. We need to pivot. We got to find- we just have to really change dramatically to stay viable. And that can happen, and it can happen to bacon, it could happen to anything. Just because this world is, in my estimation, so dynamic and so fast paced, the amount of change that can be accomplished in just the snap of a finger, it seems, is ridiculous.
Kasey Mock: Blockbuster got Netflixed. If you want to hear that story, there’s a podcast called Business Wars, and there’s an episode in Business Wars that covers the Blockbuster and Netflix story. It’s a great podcast to learn a lot. Blockbuster, they were very bullish on their old business model working. They’re resistant to change and resistant to learn. And so, they doubled down on the old business model because they had the market share and they thought, because they had the market share, they were invincible. And they weren’t. Because somebody else, remember the other thing-
Neil Dudley: Well, hindsight is always so easy. Like I can’t say if I was the Blockbuster executive, I wouldn’t have said the same thing. We’re going to make, I mean, people aren’t going to, these tools for watching shows and that kind of thing, people won’t change, they like this, and they didn’t have any good reason to doubt that thought process. But I think it’s a good lesson for me in business to just think, hey, just because I’m just a hundred percent confident- I heard somebody say don’t believe everything you think. I mean, it’s a challenge in life to realize that. Like hey, I think I’m on top of things, but just think for a second, what if I’m not? How am I prepared in my hedging in a way that I can survive?
Kasey Mock: So many times in business, we think better is what wins. And I don’t want you to misunderstand what I’m saying here because we strive every day, our companies exist to help landowners, help people accomplish their goals through land ownership. That’s why our family of companies exists, whether it’s our real estate team, the Mock Ranches, if that’s our hunting company Fever Pursuit and Western Hunt Advisors, our publishing company Land Owner Insider, the podcast Land Broker Insider.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, let’s mention that. Land Broker Insider is fixing to come back to the people. So, explain that a little bit, relaunch, as a guy that doesn’t know a lot about what you’ve done-
Kasey Mock: Well, hold on real quick, because I’m going to finish that, close that thought. Because I’m like a ping pong ball. I’ll bounce around from thought to thought. Our businesses exist to help people accomplish their goals through land ownership. That’s why our family of companies exists. So, in that, we strive every day to be better. We want to out work, out produce, out communicate, out value our competitors. But we have great competitors. Our industry has some great people, especially here in Texas. Some of the top land brokers in the world are right here in Texas. So, we compete with them every day. At the end of the day, though, in business, better doesn’t always win. Different wins a lot. And when you say different, that’s the Blockbuster and Netflix stories. Netflix was different. Blockbuster felt like they were better. Netflix was different. And then Netflix provides a more valuable, more convenient service to their clients. And all of a sudden, you see different winning. And that’s the thing that technology is offering today. We invest heavily, my personal firm does, and then Keller Williams Realty who I work with. And when I say heavily, I mean, heavily in technology to get smarter for our clients. And technology is a touchy word, especially in the cowboy world and the ranching world. That’s kind of a touchy subject. But at the end of the day, we have to be educated and we have to provide a convenient service to our clients to help them make the best decisions. And that’s how we help lead them through the process. Leadership is what? It’s teaching somebody how to think so they can get what they want when they want it. Well, that data and information and communication, effective communication that we have through technology helps us do that. It helps all of us as a team, our buyers and sellers and our land managers and our land stewards. It helps us all as a team manage more efficiently so that our clients can get what they want when they want it.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. And it’s that kind of principle I think rings true. Just find a pain point for somebody and solve that for them. I think that’s probably what you’re doing day in and day out.
Kasey Mock: You have to listen to hear that though.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. I have a terrible time with that. I spend a lot of my time when I’m in front of a person I could be solving a problem for trying to tell them how much I know about everything. It’s like, geez, just shut up, listen to them. They will help you help them if you’ve got that skill set. And it is a thing that I spent a lot of my attention on trying to get better at. I mean, I’ve gone as far as taking negotiation courses. And I also try to have the philosophy that no matter what, I’m an idiot. And it’s okay. It’s okay to learn from anybody and everybody and allow the fact that- Trump just drives me nuts with this. He’s not, he knows everything about everything and he’s the most perfect businessman there ever was. At least that’s how he comes across to me. It feels like that’s his attitude. And I think he is really smart on a lot of things. But it’s just, I don’t think it’s productive or going to be productive for me in my life to take that approach. I kind of want to just say I’m only as good as what I deliver next.
Kasey Mock: Yeah, that’s right. You want to talk about the podcast?
Neil Dudley: Oh yeah, let’s do so. Yeah, let’s circle back to that. Tell us all about it. Is it relaunching or are you kind of going in a different direction or you’ve done a podcast in the past, you kind of got away from it, and now you want to do another one?
Kasey Mock: Yes. The podcast was the interesting adventure for us. So, 2017, I believe I started a podcast called Bucks to Business podcast. And you can go back and look to find that on iTunes.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I’ve listened to two, or at least one episode, and I enjoyed it, and I would advise you all, if you’re listening and you want to kind of hear some of Kasey’s philosophy that we may not get down here or another guy named Lee Hoffpauir, who’s built a nice business in the automotive industry and really outdoors industry. He’s kind of a cool guy because he just goes after just about anything he thinks he can make win. But that was a great episode on Bucks to Business.
Kasey Mock: Well, the concept there, again and being learning-based, I always want to know what- and I love entrepreneurship, learning based entrepreneurship. My favorite part in business is planning and launching a business, seeing a business grow and get adoption, and then from there, I typically look for managers because some people are managers, some people are growers. I wake up every day and think who in the world wants to manage anything? But some people love managing. And so, I love the growth phase of it and the opportunity phase of it, of business. And that’s why I’ve started a bunch of them. Bucks to Business was just that. It was out of curiosity for what people in the outdoors, agriculture, the outdoors, hunting, fishing, it was just out of curiosity how those that are successful came to get there. Because in our field of work, we get, literally get applications on a daily basis. They mostly go like this – so, if you’re listening to this, and if you’re listening to get in our field, don’t do it like this. Most of them go like this: “Hello, Mr. Mock, my name is George. I want to get into real estate or the ranch business.” “Great, George, what made you want to do that?” “Well, Mr. Mock, I’ve had a deer lease my whole life and I like horses and I just think that’d be a fun business.” “Well, George pack a lunch.” It is a fun business. It’s an extremely rewarding business. It is a very challenging business. And like anything, it is not easy. Pack a lunch, George. So, and you see a lot of businesses, you see startup companies around the first part of deer season every year, this person’s got a sporting goods store or a meat market or a taxidermy shop or an archery shop. And most of them go out of business. And then you look at in the ranching industry, we see all kinds of people pop up business models where it’s, now the new fad is direct to consumer meats, farm to table or ranch to table, and there’s going to be some of those make it, some of them don’t. I want to hear the stories of those that made it and learn from them. But understanding too that they didn’t just succeed the first time. So, the other thing you learn about business is that most people, you look at somebody and say that person’s really, really successful. I wonder what they did, or I wish I had their life. The truth is if you were to peel back the layers of that onion, you’d find that they were probably just willing to try more stuff and fail more times than you were. They just kept going. They were willing to try more and fail more than you were. They just kept going. If I ask Gary Keller why he’s so successful, why he’s built the largest real estate company in the world, that the world has ever seen and unrivaled at this time, he would say, I just failed more than you did, and I hired better than you did. I’m no smarter than you. I hired better than you did, and I failed more than you did. Anybody in this room can go do it. So, I wanted to get those stories. So, we started Bucks to Business, and bucks meant, that represented our passion for the outdoors and how you turn that passion for the outdoors into business. And I wanted to learn from those people. And if somebody listened, that was awesome. If they got value from it, that was awesome. The main goal was for me to get value and learn personally, because if I was learning, I could then go apply what I learned to my employees, my team, my business partners, and to our clients. And being a real estate guy, nobody wants to talk to a realtor until they need one. And they really don’t always want to talk to one then. And so, if I was to call Lee Hoffpauir or call you or call some of the people that we were fortunate to interview and say, “Hello, my name is Kasey Mock. I’m a realtor. I’d love to take you to lunch and pick your brain.” They’re going to say, “Thanks, but no, thanks,” click. If I call and say, “Mr. Hoffpauir, it’s Kasey here. I’d love to sit down with you for our podcast. I’m impressed with the growth you’ve had in your businesses. I’d like to learn from you but also feature your business on our show. Would you be willing to do that?” “Kasey, that would be fantastic. Thank you for the opportunity.” And so, it’s a different approach, but you have to always come from a place of value. See if I call you, or if I call Mr. Hoffpauir or anybody else that we interviewed, and I just want their time for my benefit, is that valuable to them? No. Your most valuable asset you have is your time. It’s the great equalizer. That’s what, again, Gary Keller, a great book for those listening is The ONE Thing: The Simple Truth Behind Surprisingly Abundant Results. The ONE Thing book that Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, both of my good friends wrote, and the principle behind The ONE Thing is time’s a great equalizer. How do you spend it? That’s your best asset. How do you invest your time? So, I’m not going to ask these people for their time, which is their most valuable asset without giving something back. Well, I didn’t have anything to give back. So, what I could do was I could sit down and record this and share it with thousands of people, and those thousands of people hear their story and hear their business and go, hopefully turn into customers for them. While I’m learning, they’re getting business. It’s a win, win, win deal. So, we recorded Bucks to Business for two years. And I don’t remember how many episodes we had, Neil. And if anybody goes and listens, I apologize in advance for the audio quality.
Neil Dudley: Well, it’s growth. I mean, it’s just get off the butt and do it. I mean, that’s something that’s impressive about you. I think I just see, as a guy watching, is you get to moving. I think a lot of people out there, if you want to do a podcast, you don’t have to have the perfect audio. I mean, it would be a great idea to start first time with it perfect. But if you’re worried about all that, you may never, ever record one.
Kasey Mock: Perfect is overrated. In so many things, perfect is overrated. And once you reach mastery – I don’t think perfection exists because the bar continues to move and move and move – once you achieve mastery in something, that can certainly be done. I think perfection is overrated. And so many people never try anything new because they’re afraid of failure. They’re afraid it won’t be perfect. They’re comparing their startup podcast to the Rogan podcast. Well, understand those are different audiences.
Neil Dudley: I do that. I mean, I’ve had to learn over time and listen to people tell on podcasts and different things that comparing yourself to anybody else is the most almost ridiculous thing you can do. Are you doing the very best you can do? Are you challenging yourself? Are you moving forward? That’s the stuff you need to be worried about. Thinking am I as good as Joe Rogan is such a waste of energy.
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Quick pause just to say I hope you know who Peterson Natural Farms is. If you don’t, go check them out, www.petersonsfarms.com. If you have any questions, hit me up. I’ve been working with Peterson’s and my best friend since kindergarten and his wife and my wife and a whole bunch of other really great people for about 20 years now, building a brand and a bunch of products that we think really add value to people’s healthy lifestyles. And I like to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is a labor of love that I’ve kind of do in my spare time. And I hope to just bring value, tell stories about people that affect me and give me the perspective I have. And I don’t want to steal that labor of love line from Mr. Douglas Burdett, the host of the Marketing Book podcast without giving him some credit. There’s another something I’d tell you – if you are into building a brand or an entrepreneur of any sort, salesperson of any sort, go listen to the Marketing Book podcast. He reviews great authors’ books about sales and marketing. So, Peterson Natural Farms, go check them out. Thank you for listening to the Cowboy Perspective. Here’s some more.
Kasey Mock: I could discuss this for days, Neil. We don’t have enough coffee. And we’re going to get into the afternoon and wish we had something else if we stayed on this topic. But here’s the deal – did I do as good as I could do? I tell people in our Sunday school class – we teach a, it’s not called Sunday school anymore, it’s life groups – I teach a life group at our church in Wimberley. And my wife and I have taught for 12 years, I guess, since we first got married. We were teaching in college when we met at Tarleton. So, we’ve taught a church group for that long. And I always told them, we’ve always kind of targeted young people, kind of late college, early career age people that are trying to find their place in life. They’re trying to meet a spouse and they’re trying to find their place in business and direction. And they’re moving off of being dependent on their parents, having to figure it out by themselves. And that’s a pretty intimidating place in life. And now all of a sudden, you’re measuring what you have compared to what somebody else has. And you’re used to the lifestyle that you had with your parents. And if you had successful parents and you had a nice house and a nice setup and nice horses and a nice truck and nice show animals and a nice ski boat, and all of a sudden, you’re in the business world and you got student loans and your own mortgages and your own trucks and your own stuff to pay for. And it turns out, it’s hard to afford that stuff. And so, I tell people all the time, don’t compare yourself because you don’t know the backstory. My wife and I worked really hard.
Neil Dudley: You don’t know the damage it does to your internal mindset or your internal little recorder that’s playing all the time that says you suck, you suck, you’re not good, look at how good they are.
Kasey Mock: And so many things in our world today engineer us to try to want that. You get on social media and what pops up? The things that you want that you’ve shopped for or browsed that you maybe want one day. Whereas 20 years ago, when we grew up, if I wanted something, if I wanted a new belt or I wanted a saddle or if I wanted a fishing rod or if I wanted a set of binoculars to go hunting with, I would have to go to Cabela’s or Academy or somewhere, I’d get the Cabela’s catalog back then, and I’d mark that page. I’d have to get it. And I knew what it was going to cost me. And I was going to go to that cotton field every morning. And I was going to a hoe weeds and I was going to walk that field until I got blisters on my feet as a nine-year-old and sweating my butt off. And I was going to hoe them weeds for $3 an hour so that I could save that money. And when I got enough money, I picked that catalog back up and I’d order that item.
Neil Dudley: Do you have a story-? Do you know-? Okay so, here’s- Don’t let me ping pong you.
Kasey Mock: But now I pick up my tablet or my phone and I turn it on and doesn’t matter what app I pull up, what pops up? That thing. That thing that everybody else has that I want. And so, it poisons our mind to start to think about that’s what success is. But you never compare yourself. Because I remember when we were first getting into business, man, we had friends that they had normal, old jobs, just normal jobs. I knew what they made because I knew where they worked, within range I knew what they made. But they had new cars and they had a big house and you’re wondering- we’re living in a duplex and driving old cars and we can barely pay our bills, and we’re thinking, gosh, what are we doing wrong? How are they winning? But you don’t know. And you learn their situations. Every example you can think of, they had a grandparent or a parent that died and left them a life insurance policy. I would never exchange a dead parent for a life insurance policy so that I could have their car or their truck. Or they lease everything they own, and they own nothing. Well, I don’t want that either. And I look up and I think, well, man, as a 22-year-old living in a duplex, but my vehicles are paid for and I got some money in the bank and I’ve got some businesses that are worth something. I think of all my friends, I’d take my place. So never compare yourself.
Neil Dudley: As you’re comparing, or I think of it like this, I’m comparing stuff to- I’m comparing myself to somebody else and the truth is there’s probably somebody comparing themselves to me. In any situation you’re at, there’s somebody that would take your spot and be so glad to have it. So just stop the comparison thing. It is hard. You have to practice it. You have to try. You have to spend time realizing, oh, I’m comparing myself, I don’t want to do that, I’m going to change my thought process.
Kasey Mock: That’s why goals are important. If you set goals, they’re your goals. If you set large enough goals, and understand too, that when I talk about setting, because I’m not a prosperity guy, I’m not a Joel Osteen prosperity kind of guy. If you are, that’s your game, good for you.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Oh, and that, just to touch back on what you mentioned, you were saying, maybe they at leased everything, they can be happy as they can be just living that way. That’s their thing.
Kasey Mock: There’s nothing wrong with that. What works for you, works for you, that’s why you don’t compare.
Neil Dudley: We’re not saying that’s wrong or bad. We’re just saying they have the things you want and their style of getting it or their path to it was different than what yours is going to be.
Kasey Mock: No, that’s exactly right. I’m glad you clarified that. We talk about the reason to set a goal. The reason to set a goal, to me, is not necessarily to go accomplish the goal, it’s the path and the growth that you achieve in working toward it.
Neil Dudley: I’m terrible at goals. I mean, you’re just making me think I’m terrible at goals. I just- I describe myself or if I had to put it into words, I’m just a floater.
Kasey Mock: Why are you terrible at goals?
Neil Dudley: I guess I’m saying that about myself because I don’t have a bunch of goals that I have someplace that I’m after. It’s like if you said, Neil, what are your goals? You’d catch me totally off guard.
Kasey Mock: I would ask the question different as a coach and I coach a lot of people. We’ve got, through our Land Broker Mastermind, through MAPS Coaching, which is a coaching company we have at Keller Williams, 19 other brokers and I got together two years ago and started the land broker co-op and land broker MLS as a way to elevate the broker, protect the broker, but also protect our buyers and sellers’ data. That’s the MLS part. There was not a land MLS. Now there is, a land broker MLS.
Neil Dudley: You started that?
Kasey Mock: We were a part of starting that.
Neil Dudley: Cool, man. See, that’s thinking big.
Kasey Mock: Well, it was good timing. God blessed us with the resources to do it. Some of the other men and women in the organization had the early vision, and we were just able to be a part of it. So, I in no way want to take credit for that being my vision, but we were a part of it.
Neil Dudley: Is there any one thing we ever do that’s all us?
Kasey Mock: No, not so much. You are a product of your environment. But talk about goals. I would ask your goal question this way if I was coaching – Neil, what’s your goal? You get one. What’s your goal?
Neil Dudley: To be a good human.
Kasey Mock: Okay, to be a good human. So, you would write that, is that a measurable goal? Because remember-
Neil Dudley: No, it’s not measurable. I mean, but it’s the thing that I want to be. And do I succeed at it? Maybe 50/50.
Kasey Mock: In order for a goal to be something you can work toward, it’s got to be measurable. So you want to write that goal down. Gary Keller, when we sit down and write a business plan, it’s on a 1, 3, 5 format. So, you get one goal for the year. You have three priorities to accomplish that. So those are like second level goals. In order for me to net a million dollars, I’ve got to close $50 million in real estate, I need to generate X amount of leads, and I’ve got to manage expenses and profitability. So, I’m just using an example, those might be my three. In order to close $50 million in real estate, how many leads do I have to have, etc. So those, back that up. So, you get one goal, three priorities and five. GPS; goals, priorities-
Neil Dudley: Well, but it’s like, even I’m sitting here, another just kind of thing, a rabbit we could chase or just a thing, I would say, listeners, go check this out. I’m not fully- Okay. So, you came up with that. We have these- in this conversation even, I’m doing it. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to the listener, but it’s happening. I’m talking to myself in the background, ooh, what I want to say next? How do you- Instead of fully just being in Kasey’s world and hearing him and listening to him, I’m not. And we all do that I think. You’re always kind of thinking, oh, how am I going to respond? I think, as listening and to be a better salesperson or have success in sales, you got to learn how to turn that off. Just totally be into hearing what’s happening.
Kasey Mock: Well, that’s the problem when we’re hard chargers like us. But okay. When I sit down and write a business plan, I learned this from Gary Keller, it’s a 1, 3, 5 are goals, priorities, and strategies. So, you get one goal, you get three priorities, and you get five strategies per priority. So, Gary would say you have to one goal, because if you have too many, it becomes a wish list. Because remember, Neil, not everything matters equally. So, if you read The ONE Thing book, it would ask the question, what’s the one thing I can do today, this year, this month, this week, today, such that, because it’s a different answer for each. So the one thing I can do this year, that’s my goal for the year. What’s the one thing I can do this month? I’ve got to accomplish that to accomplish my annual goal. What’s the one thing I can do this week? What’s the one thing I can do today? What’s the one thing I do this hour? Such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. So that’s your goal, but it’s got to be measurable. So, if I have one goal, when I get three- now for that one goal, what are the three things that have to happen for that one annual goal to happen? And then how are we going to go accomplish that goal? So, I can fit that whole business- I’ve written business plans, $20, $30 million business plans, on one piece of paper with that. Now there’s obviously a proforma behind that and a cashflow plan behind that and an org chart behind that that are- but if you turn that 1, 3, 5 on its side, it becomes an org chart. It should become an org chart. So now I’ve got my lead generation operations and administrative downlines and that if I’ve, if it’s sales, operations, and administrative are my three priorities, if you turn that on its side, all of a sudden, you’ve got a business plan with a million-dollar net goal with three business units in it. So, it flows together. But when you look at that, the reason it’s got to be measurable, and you get one goal is because not everything matters equally. So how do you use your time and how to use your resources? Because again, not everything matters equally. How do you line up those dominoes in order to have that chain reaction in business? Because not everything matters equally.
Neil Dudley: Keep needling on that a little bit. I’m trying to get my mind around it. Give me an example of things that don’t matter equally.
Kasey Mock: Gosh, I look at my phone here. I’m just going to pull up my iPad that’s in front of me. So, this would be a real live example of Kasey’s life.
Neil Dudley: Here we go, people, right into behind the scenes.
Kasey Mock: I’ve got on my home screen, I just picked my iPad up. On my home screen, there’s 32 notifications dinging at me. When I unlock my tablet, these are like the banner notifications that here’s what’s happening in your world. I unlock my iPad. I’ve got 154 unanswered emails. I look at my phone; I’ve got 114 unanswered text messages and 6 unreturned voicemails.
Neil Dudley: Right. And this is just since we’ve sat down here. Well, let’s see, we’re about 40 minutes into this conversation.
Kasey Mock: Is my pursuit in life and business, is the best thing I can do for my clients, the best thing I can do for my employees and business partners and my health, is the best thing I can do have a zero in all those? Zero unopened emails, zero on unread text messages, zero unreturned voicemails, because then life looks so put together and complete and organized and unchaotic, but we’ve closed $15 million in ranches in the last two days. And I don’t know that I have, sitting here today, I don’t think I have any unhappy clients. I’ve got the time to come sit down with you and learn from you. Brad that’s here with me that’s videoing us, Brad and I get to spend our planning time together so that we’re able to produce content for the rest of the team. So not everything matters equally. What’s the most important thing I can do for our family of companies or for my clients? Is it makes sure my email box is at zero? Or make sure that those top 10%, top 20% emails are returned, be able to live with a little bit of chaos so that we can continue moving the ball forward and looking at those bigger opportunities for our clients and our people? So not everything matters equally. I’ll wake up, how do you use the first two hours of your day? Do you use the first two hours of your day when you’ve got the willpower to do it? Remember when you wake up in the morning, it’s when you’ve got the most willpower. So, you wake up, you work out, you get your coffee, you do your quiet time, read your Bible, say your prayers, some people do yoga, meditate, whatever you do. Now, my willpower – willpower is not on will-call, meaning I can’t call on willpower at four o’clock in the afternoon to then make the last final charge to get my work done. So, if I wasn’t efficient in the morning, odds are, I’m going to have an inefficient day. And when I get home, my wife’s going to say, “Hey, how was your day? What’d you get done today?” I’m going to say, “Man, I was busy.” But what’d you get done? What’s the one thing you got done today that advances the ball from yesterday?
Neil Dudley: I love that illustration. What’s the one thing you can do that makes all the other things easier or unnecessary? That’s like a really- Ponder on that a little bit, folks, and think about how you could play that in your life.
Kasey Mock: So, if people matter most and the needs of your clients and the needs of your employees matter most-
Neil Dudley: Why’d you say if?
Kasey Mock: Well, if that’s, if in your world or your responsibility-
Neil Dudley: Do you think that’s the number one thing, people?
Kasey Mock: In our world, it is God, family, business. So, you wake up every day, I have breakfast with my family every morning. This morning I didn’t because they slept in. That was their fault. I had to do that light to moderate ranching this morning. And get up there. But I usually have breakfast with my family every single morning and dinner with my family every night, with, I mean, very few exceptions. Four or five years ago, I very rarely had dinner at home. I was always traveling on the weekends, and I thought, I had that aha running down the road one day that, my dad was at every game and he was at almost every practice. And if it was hunting season, he was picking us up almost every afternoon from school to go sit in a deer blind. And if it was summertime, almost every weekend, we went to the coast. He was present. He left that, the values of that presence and that work ethic. And so, being present, who do you think the number one person that talked to me about the Lord was? My dad. Who’s the number one person that taught me about being a good person and honoring your word and looking somebody in the eye and shaking their hand and delivering a good product? My dad. He was present to teach me. He wasn’t dependent on somebody else teaching me that. And so, I had an aha driving down the road that I just decided one day I wasn’t willing to be gone from my family and kids that much. So, then I had to solve problems in the business. Because when you hit a ceiling of achievement, everybody has the same amount of time in a day. How do you spend it? You hit a ceiling of achievement and you either need a person or a system. So, if you ask yourself the question, in your business, just say in your business, how do you strategically remove yourself from every part of your business based on the value of your time? And that doesn’t take away from the job that other people do that work inside your organization, your business partners and the people that you’re fortunate- that doesn’t take away from their job. But how do you strategically remove yourself from every part of your business based on the value of your time? And you end up with an answer that you’re able to leverage out some tasks that you’re probably not good at anyway. I mean, I’m obviously not good at returning emails. I’m terrible at administrative work, terrible at administrative work, partially because I don’t enjoy it. I don’t want to slow down to learn how to do it well, I’ve got a little moderate dyslexia, and I failed cowboy algebra four or five times in college. So, I mean, I’m probably not the best person to do the administrative work in our organization, but we have a huge administrative need. So, what would take me four hours a day to do, somebody that’s good at it can do it in 30 minutes to an hour and get it done better. And enjoy it and it makes them happy. There’s people that get very much joy and happiness every day at coming to work and looking at spreadsheets. My good friend Fletcher at Keller Williams Realty International and Keller Capital, he says he is a freak in the sheets, the spreadsheets. This guy loves to come to work every day. He’s a spreadsheet master. He loves it. I look at that and I get glazed over and nauseous. So how do you strategically remove yourself from every part of your business based on the value of your time? The other thing that you would do – and I don’t even actually remember how we got on this topic. I’m enjoying the way it’s going.
Neil Dudley: It’s been tickling in the- Okay, keep following it.
Kasey Mock: The other thing you would do that my wife and I do is when I sit down and build out my calendar for the year and then every month, and then every week – I live by a calendar. As I sit down and build out my calendar, our faith, we follow the same thing. God, family, business. Our God activities, our family activities, our recreational activities, those go into the calendar first. Those are the first appointments in because if those are the most important things to you, they should get the first fruits of your time. Now hearing that, my clients, they always want the first, they always want that. They pay us very well to do what we do right. We’re extremely blessed in the money that we make to do what we do. So, they’ve got to also get the best of what we have to give. So, I’ve got to be available for them, but so then I look at what are my strengths in the business, or what are your strengths in the business as a leader? Is it to actually do the DocuSign document and send the email and look at the reports? Or is it to advise and lead the transaction and be there when your clients need you to negotiate, to make the critical decisions. But you’ve got to have the clarity of mind to do that. So how do you spend your- It all goes back to how you spend your time.
Neil Dudley: Well, I just got to say thank you, Kasey. Thank you to the Mock Ranches Group for kind of giving me some of Kasey’s time, releasing him from the responsibilities. I don’t know if that’s even true, but I just thought it’d sound cool. Anyways, I hope everybody picked up a little value in that first part. By now, I guess you might be figuring out this is the first part of two. So, the next episode released on the Cowboy Perspective is going to be part 2 with Kasey. So be sure you tune back in and hear the rest of our conversation. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you so much. Everybody, take care.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root & Roam Creative Studio. And the music is by Byron Hill Music.