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Transcript
- 0:00What's up everybody?
- 0:01Welcome back to another episode of the Faithful Agent podcast.
- 0:05I have Brett Johnson with me today, an incredible guest.
- 0:07And guys, you're going to love this.
- 0:09He probably has the best accent of anyone we've ever had on the show.
- 0:12So Brett, I am so glad you're here.
- 0:15We were talking pre-show and one of the comments you made was, do agents understand and talk about a theology of real estate, which is fascinating to me.
- 0:23So Brett, thank you for being on.
- 0:25Brother, let's dive in.
- 0:26What is a theology of real estate?
- 0:28What does that even mean to you?
- 0:29Hey, Garrett, great to be with you.
- 0:31Yeah, I worked with business people from around the world for a long time.
- 0:35And I remember sitting with some friends of mine who were selling real estate in Northern California in a pretty hot market.
- 0:41And I asked them this question, you know, what's your theology of real estate?
- 0:45Because place is super important to God.
- 0:48You know, people didn't get to know God.
- 0:50Adam and Eve didn't get to know him because they read a theology book or they went to seminary, but they saw what he had made.
- 0:58and God put them in a prepared place.
- 1:01And so place was super important to the assignment that God gave them.
- 1:05And then he gave them an assignment around the earth regarding the earth.
- 1:09it was a land related, property related, real estate related assignment in many respects.
- 1:16And if you look at real estate in scripture, it's there from the beginning, all the way through until we get to heaven, know, when there's a new heaven and new earth.
- 1:26one day out into the future, you the promise for doing a good job is to get to rule over cities.
- 1:32And this is a whole real estate playbook, if you like.
- 1:36And so we need to understand it.
- 1:38So, yeah, so it's really, really important.
- 1:40You know, I tell people you need to find your job in the Bible.
- 1:43And for real estate people, it's not that hard to do.
- 1:47But actually, I've worked with big real estate companies, property developers and others, and some of them actually haven't even thought about.
- 1:54what the Bible says about these things.
- 1:57So for me, having a theology of real estate says, okay, how does God feel about place?
- 2:02For example, one of the principles, and by the way, in our business at the Institute, we've identified 10 drivers of business impact.
- 2:11So in the old days, people used to talk about three, know, products, price, service, if you like, or product leadership, operational excellence, customer, individual.
- 2:21People would talk about those things, but I've identified 10 drivers of business impact, such as your purpose, your products, your positioning and so forth.
- 2:31They all start with a P.
- 2:33But one of them is place.
- 2:35And Garrett, the one that's least understood is place.
- 2:38People say, yeah, place is not that important.
- 2:42But I remember working with a company in Silicon Valley and we did a 10 P assessment on their business and they wrote rated place.
- 2:51as least important.
- 2:52And I said, just wait until you move to your new headquarters.
- 2:55It's going to become the number one thing.
- 2:57Then it was, who's got the biggest office?
- 3:00Who's closest to the CEO?
- 3:02What about this?
- 3:03Who's...
- 3:03And all of a sudden, place goes up in importance.
- 3:06And so God uses place as a megaphone to amplify his message.
- 3:13And so he adjusts, for example, when he's talking about promised land, big stuff, up goes Moses to the top of a mountain.
- 3:21I mean, he can see the whole thing.
- 3:24Other times, it's a valley, it's a valley of the shadow of death.
- 3:27Other times, it's next to a river.
- 3:30And so God uses place as a megaphone or an amplifier for what he is saying.
- 3:36So for example, the message says regarding John the Baptist that says, John the Baptist's message was just as austere as his surroundings.
- 3:46Now, John the Baptist is telling people, You gotta repent, you're a brute of vipers, all this stuff.
- 3:52And if you put him in a palace velvet couch, you know, sipping Margaritas, I mean, it's not gonna work.
- 3:59I mean, the guy was in the desert.
- 4:01He had like locusts sticking out of his teeth and all of that stuff, bad clothing.
- 4:07uh And so God sort of puts the place and the message together.
- 4:12So place is super important.
- 4:14So when you're selling somebody a home, It's something that can create space for God in their lives.
- 4:24I'll give you an example.
- 4:25was working with a real estate company, visiting them out in East Texas.
- 4:29No, West Texas it was.
- 4:31And they were doing property development.
- 4:33So they would buy a tract of land, cotton field or something, and they would come up with five model homes, set up a sales office, put in the services, the normal spiel.
- 4:44And so I listened to their whole story.
- 4:47And then I said to them, and they were very generous, wonderful company, they still are, paid for their people to go on a missions trip and everything.
- 4:54And I listened to their whole process.
- 4:58And then I said to them, so apart from putting a Bible verse on the two by four halfway through construction and handing the homeowner a Bible, you're no different than the pagan builder down the road.
- 5:10They were shocked.
- 5:13So I said to them, Do you ask God whether you should buy that piece of land?
- 5:19Do you ask God what his purpose was for that piece of land?
- 5:24Do you address the four things in scripture that defile the land?
- 5:29And then, do you invite Jesus onto your design team?
- 5:33Like, if his purpose is to create community, do you change the design of the development to create community?
- 5:40Or if it's to do healthy living or learning?
- 5:44or beauty or whatever it might be.
- 5:46Do you change the design or are you just chunking out cotton fields and doing X thousand hums a year?
- 5:52So it really got them thinking and they changed their whole approach.
- 5:57They changed their approach to their headquarters, all sorts of things because now there's an integrated view of God in place.
- 6:04yeah, so that's just generally you need to say, look at.
- 6:08go through, if you're selling real estate, you better go through the Bible from beginning to end.
- 6:13just, fortunately nowadays you've got search tools, look for place, property, property lines.
- 6:20And the intersection of place and the presence of God and people, because then you're not just selling people a home, you're getting them into a place where they can experience God potentially.
- 6:35It's amazing.
- 6:36So a lot to unpack.
- 6:37I love that though, right?
- 6:39That thought process even to the reality of just pausing to know, and it's challenging to me, what's my theology on what I do?
- 6:49Right?
- 6:49What does the Bible actually say about what I do each and every day?
- 6:53We talk a lot about on this show, Brett, of the faithfulness.
- 6:57versus the ambition or profit, right?
- 6:59Or even submission over the ambition, right?
- 7:02What does it look like for me to say to the Lord, all right, this is what I think makes a profit sense, Lord, right?
- 7:08But what is it that you have for me?
- 7:10And it doesn't mean that they're always opposite.
- 7:12They could absolutely be the same thing, right?
- 7:14There's, you know, there's so much to that to unpack in the nuance.
- 7:18But when it becomes what is your theology, right, which is a word that maybe some Christians don't even care about.
- 7:26But what does the Bible say?
- 7:28What does the Lord say?
- 7:29it a way to think about it?
- 7:31What does the Lord say about real estate?
- 7:33uh You wrote down so many different, or I wrote down so many different things.
- 7:37You said, your job in the Bible as one.
- 7:40Can you unpack what that means?
- 7:42Yeah, sure.
- 7:43I think a lot of people think that, you know, work is just what you do.
- 7:48And then there's the spiritual stuff, know, stuff that happens on a Sunday and so forth.
- 7:54But in reality, ah God revealed himself to us through his work and through his work products.
- 8:02So technically, God still can reveal himself, not technically, but practically.
- 8:09to other people through our work.
- 8:11So somebody in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, wherever it might be, can figure out what God is like by the way that we work, right?
- 8:20But if we think work is bad, I grew up thinking actually, Garrett, that work was punishment for sin, because when I was naughty as a kid, I got given more jobs.
- 8:31I figured, okay, yeah, like if you're naughty, you get more work.
- 8:36And...
- 8:38Yeah, and it's kind of like if Adam and Eve hadn't have gone for the apple, know, gone for the forbidden fruit, we would all just be hanging around.
- 8:46We wouldn't have to work.
- 8:47We'd be on the beach just, you know, angels peeling grapes for us.
- 8:50It would be awesome.
- 8:52And but you figure out that actually work is good.
- 8:55That work is a pre-fall concept.
- 8:57So God worked before the fall and he gave Adam and Eve an assignment before the fall.
- 9:05Work that was enjoyable.
- 9:07They co-created with God.
- 9:09They had an assignment which involved taking care of creation and getting it back into the order that God intended.
- 9:19So now I can either think, ah, real estate is bad because you're taking a nice forest and you're cutting it up and you're cutting down trees and you're putting up homes, or I can have a view that says, God intended the earth to be inhabited.
- 9:33That's why he created it.
- 9:35So in the world nowadays, there's a wilderness philosophy.
- 9:38Oh, if we got things back to the wilderness and we had fewer people, everything would be great.
- 9:44Well, that's an antithesis to scripture.
- 9:46Scripture says no, be fruitful, multiply, take care of the earth.
- 9:52Yeah, do a good job with creation care, but it's not to say you shouldn't be building houses.
- 9:59Now.
- 10:00We can find smarter ways to build houses.
- 10:02I'm working with a company in South Africa that's building a lightweight concrete out of ash, biomass, trash, like garbage, and a secret source.
- 10:14And so it's good for the environment, it's carbon negative, and it's providing housing.
- 10:21These things, as you say, aren't mutually exclusive.
- 10:24So it's not like development is bad, know, wilderness is good.
- 10:29No, we have to figure out how we do real estate with God so that it has a good outcome for people.
- 10:37And God as with you on land, I mean, it's all his.
- 10:42He said to the nation of Israel, when you go into the promised land, remember the land is mine.
- 10:49But there's this paradox in scripture that says, if I move in next door to you, you have a boundary between our properties.
- 10:56I can't move your boundary.
- 10:58As far as you and God are concerned, it's God's land.
- 11:01As far as you and I are concerned, it's your land.
- 11:05it's even you remember the realtors, the famous real estate agents in the Book of Acts, Ananias and Sapphira, right?
- 11:16It didn't do not so well for them, right?
- 11:18But the issue wasn't that they were selling property.
- 11:21I mean, the apostles said to them, hey, before you sold the land, it was yours.
- 11:25After you sold it, the money was yours.
- 11:28Right.
- 11:29So between Ananias and Sapphira and the apostles, it was all belong to Ananias and Sapphira.
- 11:35But between Ananias and Sapphira and God, it all belonged to God.
- 11:39And they to be ethical and truthful in that.
- 11:44yeah.
- 11:44So there's a lot about real estate.
- 11:46There's a lot about restitution.
- 11:49You know, if somebody takes your land.
- 11:50I mean, I love the story of the widow who goes to live in a foreign land and she comes back.
- 11:58And the king is saying, tell me the story about that, you what happened again?
- 12:03And just so happens that she comes back.
- 12:06She gets her land restored, there's restitution.
- 12:09Not only that, they figure out what the yield would have been on the agriculture for the years she was away.
- 12:15She gets all of that restored.
- 12:16So God's into property ownership, dealing with it properly.
- 12:21And the key thing is, how do you use it for his purpose?
- 12:27And I'm really concerned that real estate has become an asset class for investors, for example.
- 12:36But God said, look, I want everyone to sit under his own vine.
- 12:41So in the promised land economy, it's pretty interesting.
- 12:44In Egypt, they didn't own the land.
- 12:47It was pretty good land.
- 12:48They got to work it, but they didn't actually own it.
- 12:51Right.
- 12:52And then when Israel moves into the desert, they didn't own anything.
- 12:56They just come living hand to mouth.
- 12:59But in the promised land, every family, except the Levites, every family had an income producing asset.
- 13:07It was either farm or in the city and so on.
- 13:10So in God's economy, everybody has income producing assets, primarily land in that situation.
- 13:18But there was no river Nile.
- 13:20So there was no source of water.
- 13:22So God says, here's the deal.
- 13:23I'm going to give you all a piece of land.
- 13:25buy your tribes all figured out and so on.
- 13:28You're gonna get that.
- 13:30But you obey me.
- 13:31If you don't obey me, you're in trouble.
- 13:34If you obey me, I'll send spring rains, autumn rains.
- 13:37If you don't obey me, you're toast.
- 13:39So in the Promised Land is this lovely combination of property ownership from which you can produce an income and have a base and build an economy plus dependence upon God, those two in a wonderful.
- 13:54So that's part of the economy of God and I think land is a big part of it.
- 13:59I love that.
- 13:59And first of all, agents, heard that our job is biblical.
- 14:03So thank you for that, Brett.
- 14:04We can be rejoicing in that.
- 14:07think.
- 14:10The thought process, right, again, of what is my theology, thinking deeper than simply how do I do more deals, how do I buy more investments, how do I develop this land, those kinds of things.
- 14:21You know, what I hear you saying without saying, Brett, is really the ask the next question, right?
- 14:28It's sure, this land that I could do X with or, you know, this seller that I'm gonna help do whatever, it's the next question.
- 14:35That's good and right, but as believers, We have a responsibility to ask question two, which is, but Lord, what do you want?
- 14:42Right.
- 14:42And that's the next question that I often forget as well is it's all right, great.
- 14:47This makes business sense.
- 14:48Let's do it with the, again, it's possible the Lord would say, yes, that is what my desire is, but it's our assumption.
- 14:55We move forward in an assumption that because it makes good business sense, it also makes good theological sense.
- 15:02And that isn't always the case.
- 15:04Right.
- 15:04So this theology of business of asking those questions.
- 15:08So what's your perspective then, Brett, on this desire, right?
- 15:13This desire of place.
- 15:13It's good, it's right, it's godly.
- 15:15We do have, and we were talking briefly, Prisho, but we've got this affordability crisis for young people who are, yeah, great, I'd love to buy a home, but I can't, I can't afford it.
- 15:25You know, it costs way too much money, I have too much debt, whatever it is.
- 15:29And yet there are people, good or bad, right?
- 15:32We can discuss that, but good or bad.
- 15:34taking up all the houses, buying every house.
- 15:36So even if there was an opportunity for this new first time buyer to buy, they can't because there aren't any homes left anyways.
- 15:43Now they might buy it, they might use it to rent it to somebody in their church at a super, you know, one of my best buddies.
- 15:48That's what he does.
- 15:49He rents it to a pastor at his church.
- 15:51He takes a $500 a month loss because the Lord's kindness he can, but he doesn't.
- 15:55That's good.
- 15:56I think that's God honoring, cause this guy couldn't afford a home on his own.
- 15:59But you know, if there's this desire to say the Lord cares about place and he desires, m I think you said it's the microphone that amplifies the message.
- 16:10I think it's how you put it.
- 16:11uh The reality is, does that mean, Brett, that we as believers in this industry need to try to keep the door open for young believers or anybody, but let's say young believers, to buy a home at the exclusion of investors buying homes?
- 16:31Like, what's the conclusion?
- 16:32How do we practically live that out?
- 16:34Okay, so, yeah, practically.
- 16:36So first, if you get back to what's the purpose of having a place, I mean, God wants people.
- 16:41as part of his restoration of us to have shelter, to have a place where we can raise a family, a place where we can be safe and so on.
- 16:47He wants us to have a place where we can welcome strangers, where we can draw others.
- 16:51Scripture says God sets the lonely in families.
- 16:54It doesn't help if the family is on the street.
- 16:56So God wants us to do those things.
- 16:59So if you look at the purpose of real estate, we've turned it into an asset class where you can generate a passive income, know, multifamily housing, you own 10 units, et cetera.
- 17:11Versus say how do we get the people in the ten units to own their own places?
- 17:15So we ask a different question if we understand the purpose of place the purpose of real estate It also the focus of our business.
- 17:24What are we going to do as agents?
- 17:25If we're estate agents and realtors and we're selling and we've got a choice as to who do we sell to or who do we focus on?
- 17:35You know, we should be figuring how do we empower the young people to actually be able to get into a property of their own?
- 17:44Maybe it's a smaller property, it's whatever it is, but we try to find ways to structure it versus saying, it's quicker for me to sell 20 units to Blackrock versus to do the hard work to help Mr.
- 17:58and Mrs.
- 17:59get into a first-time home, for example.
- 18:02And so...
- 18:04Proverbs 25 verse 2 says, it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
- 18:11So search it out with God.
- 18:13God, how do I help these first time homeowners?
- 18:16How do I help people?
- 18:18So for example, I'll give you an example.
- 18:20I was chatting to a guy, he's an architect in Germany.
- 18:24What do they have?
- 18:25They have an issue of affordability of housing.
- 18:28But part of that problem is when you buy or sell a house, there's a lot of closing fees, transaction fees, transfer fees.
- 18:35They've got a whole bunch of fees and it can be a big percentage of the transaction.
- 18:40So he came up with a solution.
- 18:43His solution was...
- 18:45to have a multi-unit building with different sizes, so two bedrooms, three bedrooms, one bedroom and so forth.
- 18:54instead of selling an apartment to somebody, they got shares in the entity that owned the whole building.
- 19:03Why?
- 19:04Because when they have a kid, they can just get more shares and they go from a one bedroom to a two bedroom or two bedroom to a three bedroom without all of the loss of that can be a high percentage every time there's the transfer fees, the agent fees, all of this kind of stuff.
- 19:22Then he went a step further.
- 19:25He said, how do I make sure that we get some continuity with this?
- 19:30So he bought the land himself through, and he set up a trust or a foundation.
- 19:37And he put the land into the trust and the building into a company so that you can't have some realtor come along and just start buying up units and get rid of the tenants because basically they start taking over the company and so on.
- 19:54And he figured out that he could set up that trust for a long period of time.
- 20:00He set it up for 700 years.
- 20:07mean, the guy's got to be like 50 something years old.
- 20:11So, you know.
- 20:12650 years after he dies, that baby's still going to be going.
- 20:16That's awesome.
- 20:17It's good thinking, you know, it's good thinking.
- 20:20It's kind of almost like, OK, God says you can't sell the land.
- 20:23It's my land.
- 20:24Right now, you can have title, but conceptually, it's God's.
- 20:28And so so I just think we can ask God for creative solutions like that.
- 20:33And I know people are thinking about tiny house villages.
- 20:36They're thinking about ways to to get solutions and.
- 20:43More such solutions, you know, how do you?
- 20:46uh repurpose some of the existing real estate and give an opportunity for people who want, who need community, they need property ownership, they need portability of the asset.
- 20:59so you're not locking them into some landlocked situation.
- 21:04So yeah, we've been looking at some of those solutions in different parts of the world.
- 21:08And I do think that At a simple level, I have a friend who owned a rental property in Florida.
- 21:17He was living in California at the time.
- 21:20He went on one of our business missions trips with us and so and he had tenants in there and then later he sold the house to the tenants.
- 21:31He went out there, helped them go through the acquisition, sold it to them below market because it was going to be their first home.
- 21:39So instead of him just milking it for rents, he helped them become property owners and he went on and did something else.
- 21:46And it's a view that says, look, I don't want to just get the last dollar out of this thing, but I want to help people get into their God's purpose for them.
- 21:56So I would just say as a realtor, and this applies to other industries, just to be asking God, how do I help people, home purchasers, find their purpose, not just find a place?
- 22:08Mmm.
- 22:09It's good.
- 22:10So if God's purpose for this family is this, which means asking some deeper questions.
- 22:16My wife talks about asking the third questions.
- 22:18What do you want to do?
- 22:19I want to buy a house.
- 22:22Why do you want to buy a house?
- 22:24Well, so I don't have to pay rent.
- 22:25Yeah, but what do you want to do in the house, right?
- 22:28Well, and so you can ask three or four questions deep and you can really find out what's really going on with these people.
- 22:36Then you can match them with a solution and you can help come around them.
- 22:41to find creative things.
- 22:43And within the ecosystem of real estate, lenders, appraisers, all of that kind of stuff, I think we as believers can come up with redemptive solutions, better solutions, not just like, OK, God, I'm selling real estate.
- 22:56Help me meet my target this month.
- 23:00Yeah, I mean, that's it's such a I love all of that.
- 23:03It's such a reframing of the definition of success.
- 23:08Right.
- 23:09It could be to your point.
- 23:10It is absolutely true that I could sell 10 homes for five hundred thousand or I could sell 50 homes at one hundred thousand.
- 23:18Right.
- 23:19I hope I did that math right.
- 23:20Right.
- 23:21I can do three percent of basically anything, but the extended math is challenging for me.
- 23:26But That is the industry would tell me, no, no, no, no, go for the 500,000, right?
- 23:32Man, like why work as much and why did, and again, it doesn't mean that there's a hard and fast rule to say, no, no, no, that's totally wrong.
- 23:38That could be right.
- 23:39I don't know.
- 23:40There's so many factors involved in that, but inherently we have grown accustomed to say, yeah, go ahead and ignore the a hundred thousand, right?
- 23:50Or don't really worry about that.
- 23:52You don't gotta put a lot.
- 23:53You're not gonna make that much money on that anyway.
- 23:54So don't, don't worry about those things.
- 23:56as opposed to, Lord, is this who you're calling me to serve?
- 24:00You know, I have a good friend, Connie, who's in this organization I have called the 210 Collective for Ephesians 210.
- 24:06She's an amazing agent and she is a great agent.
- 24:10She sells a lot of homes.
- 24:11But this year, she was telling me that her business has shifted to serving seniors who are downsizing.
- 24:16She didn't do that on purpose.
- 24:18It's not marketing.
- 24:19It's not brand.
- 24:19It's nothing like that.
- 24:20She just started to think the Lord was placing them in her life.
- 24:24And so now she's trying to do it well.
- 24:26And it is that mindset of the stewardship of what's in front of us.
- 24:31I struggle a lot, Brett, with instead of stewarding what's right at my feet, I'm always looking for what's next.
- 24:36What I could go create, what I could do this, right?
- 24:38The Lord created us with ambition.
- 24:40That's awesome.
- 24:41But again, what's right here?
- 24:42What does faithfulness look like today is a question that is something I need to ask more often.
- 24:47And I believe we all do.
- 24:49But in this scenario, I love that concept of just, for example, we own a house or we're helping a seller agent.
- 24:56We're helping a seller who owns a house, who's a believer, who's got, you know, whatever great equity and they're okay.
- 25:01They don't need every dollar.
- 25:02You know, there's all kinds of nuances and scenarios, but, but they're in that position.
- 25:06say, Hey, what if instead of going on the open market, get as much money as we can, X, Z.
- 25:11What if we went around to some churches or, you know, our church or whatever the scenario and say, is there someone specifically who's in need of housing, a place that maybe couldn't afford it otherwise let's structure up.
- 25:24seller finance deal and give them a 1 % interest rate, right?
- 25:27Like let's get creative.
- 25:29That's what our industry is known for.
- 25:31Get creative.
- 25:32Figure out how do we solve the problems?
- 25:35How do we, whatever it is, but it's asking those kinds of questions.
- 25:39It's not always about, this is what I think you're saying, Brett.
- 25:43It's not always about squeezing every dollar out.
- 25:46It is always about honoring the Lord and whatever that decision is, which requires a submission and an asking.
- 25:53Lord, what is it that you desire for me?
- 25:55You know, I would love to sit down with my seller and just say, hey, before I leave, can we pray about this?
- 26:00What would like, let's ask the Lord to show us what he wants us to do.
- 26:03And we'll try to trust him in that.
- 26:05Right.
- 26:06So, man, if they, if they're, if an agent's listening and they say, okay, I love this.
- 26:10Cause I do.
- 26:11Uh, and I have a lot of notes, but if they say, I really love this concept, but how do I even begin to build or think about what my theology of real estate would be?
- 26:20Where do they go?
- 26:20How would they start?
- 26:23Yeah, a couple of different things.
- 26:24You can go to BrettJohnson.biz and there's a resources page over there.
- 26:29In the resources page, it'll take you to a link to Amazon, where I've written this little book, This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land, which was actually...
- 26:38You know, somebody criticized me for calling the book that because it's obviously from the Arlo Guthrie song that was back in the day.
- 26:45There was that old classic song, which was a protest song written because people couldn't afford homes.
- 26:51It came out of the Depression and so on.
- 26:53It wasn't like a Kumbaya song.
- 26:55was like, yeah, you know, people couldn't get access to homes and so on.
- 27:01And so that's one place to start.
- 27:03Just go through your Bible and just do, you know, use Bible Gateway or whatever you're using.
- 27:09research, look for land, property, boundaries, those type of words and just see sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad.
- 27:16Get a bit of a picture as to what God is saying.
- 27:21Then look at the story.
- 27:23Imagine explaining the kingdom of God in terms of your industry.
- 27:28So there's a real estate story in the Bible.
- 27:31Just get used to seeing that so that you understand that you and God are in the same business.
- 27:37You and God have the same job.
- 27:39It's a redemptive story and place is an important part of it.
- 27:43So I think those are some some practical things to do.
- 27:46There's a good series of books by Alastair Petrie that's quite good.
- 27:49I can send you the links on those.
- 27:51And he writes quite a bit about place and especially dealing with the things like on the corporate real estate side, things that defile the land, witchcraft, bloodshed and so forth, and dealing with some of the historical roots of the land, the foundational pieces.
- 28:07So think understanding some of those things are pretty important.
- 28:11On a day-to-day basis, asking the why questions.
- 28:15God, what's your purpose?
- 28:16What's your purpose for this family?
- 28:18What's your dream for them?
- 28:19What are you saying?
- 28:20I loved your question, Garrett, and God knocked me on the head many years ago.
- 28:26When I was asking God, when we started our company in 1996, 1997, God, how do I get a predictable income stream?
- 28:34and I'm asking this question.
- 28:36And then like three days later, four days later, I'm like, God, you haven't answered my question.
- 28:41He said, it's the wrong question.
- 28:44He said, question isn't how do you get a predictable income stream?
- 28:49The question is, who do I want you to serve?
- 28:53Who's self-sufficient in the seniors, that can change in our career.
- 28:58Okay, so if a realtor is asking God, who do you want me to serve?
- 29:04how can I do that?
- 29:06what have I got in my hands?
- 29:07let's go back to your question of the church for example there are a lot of churches that are sitting on a big real estate asset value So what if the church said we have a problem where young families, young people, singles and so forth, they can't afford to buy something.
- 29:25What if we leveraged our balance sheet, worked with a local lender, leveraged our balance sheet to get people to become homeowners?
- 29:34It's good for the economy.
- 29:36It's good long-term.
- 29:38It's good for decades.
- 29:39And we actually help our young people.
- 29:44we have in our hands.
- 29:45We've got real estate assets.
- 29:46We've got other properties.
- 29:48Now, I've seen churches go about refinancing for their own reasons and so on, but I'm talking about all using the collective assets of the people in the church to support younger people coming up who want to get into homes.
- 30:05I'll give you an example.
- 30:06I was working with a company in...
- 30:08well, an organization in India, Chennai, India.
- 30:12And what was interesting was that the pastor had started the church, you know, a few people in his living room.
- 30:17It had grown, but they didn't own their own building.
- 30:20And so he wanted to get a building.
- 30:24because they were renting and moving around and so on.
- 30:28So God challenges him and asks the question, what do you have in your hands?
- 30:31And he realized that what he had in his hands was five people in the church who all wanted to own their own home.
- 30:39Hmm.
- 30:39what they did was they persuaded somebody to sell them a piece of land, a Hindu guy, and the five of them clubbed together and they built 12 apartments.
- 30:50Now the church had a construction company.
- 30:56And so they sold off the apartments and then got some money out of that.
- 31:03Eventually what they did was, It turned out eventually they had to hire some people.
- 31:09So they had a construction company, had an HR recruitment firm, and they had a software company all out of the church, right?
- 31:16uh so eventually what they did was they bought an unfinished office building with four or five floors, and they put the HR company in one software company, the construction company in another, but on a Sunday it was the church.
- 31:32So the youth, the young people, the Sunday school and all of that stuff.
- 31:36So it changed their whole philosophy.
- 31:38It was all integrated.
- 31:39But they put their thing together.
- 31:42And it's a wonderful look at how you leverage assets that you've got.
- 31:46And so instead of just selling the realtor out there trying to sell so many houses a year, put your heads together.
- 31:53Come and say, OK, what's the need in our town?
- 31:57How many people can't really afford homes?
- 31:59They might be homeless, they might be in transitional housing, they might be coming out of college, they might be struggling with what the impact of AI is gonna be on their jobs and all this kind of stuff.
- 32:10How do we put our heads together and come up with a kingdom real estate solution that has the multiple players, that can solve a problem that God cares about?
- 32:22I think when we ask those kind of questions, we'll get better answers.
- 32:27So good.
- 32:28Right.
- 32:28That is so good, brother.
- 32:29I mean, we could talk forever.
- 32:31But again, just that concept of the pursuit of my theology of the work that I do.
- 32:38said explaining the kingdom of God through real estate, right?
- 32:43It's understanding that it is that we have a unique responsibility as agents.
- 32:49often say our mission is the gospel.
- 32:52Our method just happens to be in real estate.
- 32:55We're not you know, specifically here to the Lord wrote in the scripture that we all have to be agents.
- 33:01No, we have to be disciple makers, right?
- 33:03And we just happen to be in this industry.
- 33:05So let's start thinking as disciple makers, not just as profit makers.
- 33:11Both are good, right?
- 33:12But I love the reframing of that.
- 33:14So uh so good, Brett.
- 33:17So y'all go check it out.
- 33:18Brett Johnson.
- 33:19It'll be in the show notes.
- 33:21B-R-E-T-T for Brett.
- 33:23BrettJohnson.biz.
- 33:25You can go check out the book, check out the other resources.
- 33:27Please go do that.
- 33:28I know that's literally what I'm about to do right after this.
- 33:31And so just loved all these thoughts, Brett.
- 33:33And I know there's so much more, brother.
- 33:35uh If there what's the what's the podcast name that you have as well so they can go check that out?
- 33:40Yeah, repurposing business and they can find it also off Brett Johnson dot biz.
- 33:44We've got a number of free things there.
- 33:46For example, up on the home page is like 15 things that are self evident.
- 33:50They can just download a PDF and we've got a class on repurposing a business.
- 33:56How do you get a business into God's business is a free introductory class there.
- 34:00How do you change your city, impact the society?
- 34:03There's a free class.
- 34:04There's a class on transforming society.
- 34:06Again, a free introductory thing and good.
- 34:10Yeah, and so there's other resources if they're thinking about capital, finance and so on.
- 34:15There's a bunch of those type of resources.
- 34:17So encourage people to take a look and reach out to me uh if you need any questions answered or want to speak to some other realtors.
- 34:25I can connect you.
- 34:27That's great.
- 34:27love it.
- 34:28Now, Brett, I mean, we are honored to have you on, brother.
- 34:30Genuinely, I appreciate certainly the work and the heart that you lead with and the work that you're doing.
- 34:36But again, it's the helping us reframe and take ownership of the biblical nature of what we do for a living.
- 34:43The reality that it's not just simply go make more money by selling more homes, it is a kingdom impact and that decision and those decisions we make can't be made lightly.
- 34:54They must be made in tandem with what scripture says and a submission to the Lord's purpose and will, which is prayer and seeking the wisdom of others.
- 35:02So, brother, I just appreciate you bringing us back to that.
- 35:05Y'all go check out BrettJohnson.biz.
- 35:08Go check out those resources.
- 35:09Check out the book.
- 35:10There's so much good stuff.
- 35:12It'll be in the show notes if you all forget.
- 35:14So Brett, thank you so much for coming on, brother.
- 35:16It is a joy.
- 35:17It was a joy to have you and faithful agents.
- 35:20We love you and we will see you next week.
- 35:22Great.
- 35:22Thank you so much.