On this episode of rokrbox TV, Josh brings on a very special guest, introducing this influencer as “the one and only” Colton Lindsay of WGR Academy.
In lieu of our usual Client Success Stories, we’re equally excited to share Colton’s story with all of you today. Keep reading/watching to hear how he went from being a business operator to a business owner, and became the internationally recognized prospecting expert and “inner game master” that he is today!
Greeting the audience with a smile, Colton admits, “It’s always weird when someone says, ‘Oh hey, we got this influencer!’” Remembering a time when he asked a friend what an influencer actually was, Colton says his friend replied, “Look, I hate the word, but here’s what an influencer is in my mind. It’s someone who has a level of results that they can share, based on [their experiences].”
“That sounds a little less flashy, right?” Josh jokes. “There are probably a lot of people who consider themselves influencers who don’t have the results—it’s more of the flash, and the show.”
[1:00] Diving into his entrance into the real estate world, Colton explains that his mom was an office manager for 43 years, meaning that he grew up around real estate professionals as early as eighth grade.
“I saw a guy driving a red Hummer,” Colton recalls with a smile, “and I was like, ‘Dude, that guy’s rich.’” The influence of the industry during his adolescence led Colton to realize something that many of us relate to: he wanted to be financially successful, too.
After shadowing real estate agents and even completing a real estate project in his senior year of high school, Colton earned his real estate license in 2005 after returning from a mission trip in Brazil.
“I didn’t get rich,” Colton declares, laughing. “I failed miserably. I didn’t know there was actually a system to this damn business.” After experiencing the bitter taste of failure, Colton got back on his feet and hired a coach. This pushed him from closing 20 deals a year to a whopping 75—all on his own.
[2:00] It was then that Colton realized why he had failed during his first year: he didn’t have a system. Implementing a system, and allowing that system to evolve, was exactly what took him from 20 to 75 deals. After that, he took the system a step further, and built his own team. Despite his success, even while he was making the most money as a single agent in 2014, Colton confesses that something was missing.
“I realized I didn’t have a business,” he tells Josh. “I realized I was a business operator.” That doesn’t mean he wasn’t doing well, Colton clarifies, but “great business operators get tired and exhausted, [while] great business owners get rich and happy.”
[3:00] This epiphany led him to build a real estate sales team, and open a brokerage. Even then, Colton didn’t achieve the results he wanted. When it comes to owning your own brokerage, Colton says, “it has to have a piece of what drives you, [and] to make it an extremely profitable and sellable asset, right? I just didn’t have the drive to do that.”
A turning point in Colton’s life came in 2016, when his close friend died of stomach cancer. “I realized I wanted to do something different with my life,” he tells Josh. “I want to be happy, versus turning transactions. And I really didn’t know what that was yet.”
By the end of 2017, Colton was ready for a do-over. “You know what,” he told his coach at the time, “I’m ready to burn down what I’ve built, so I can go build what I’m here to build.”
His new life direction can actually be traced back to 2010, when YouTube was still “a wild, wild west.” Colton put up some prospecting videos on his channel, and while the buyers and sellers didn’t care about him, he realized who did: the realtors.
“I kind of accidentally built this realtor following,” he explains. It was this epiphany that put Colton on the right projectory to discover his true passion at The WGR Academy. The purpose of his organization, Colton says, is to help teach agents to step away from being a business operator, and evolve into the business owner—and get to the point where the business runs without you.
Praising Colton’s illustration of business ownership versus operation, Josh relates the example to Robert Kiyosaki’s cash flow quadrant model, which can be broken down into 3 parts: the employee model, in which we trade our time for money; the self-employed model, where we “own” a job; and lastly, passive income—the ultimate goal for most entrepreneurs. Business owners, Josh adds, is retaining ownership of our own systems and processes—the ones that people work for.
After getting involved in real estate in 2011, Josh tells Colton that his boss at the time—Frank Klesitz of Vyral Marketing—they traveled everywhere, exploring different brokerages, coaches, and masterminds across the country.
“It’s amazing to me,” Josh says, “because I realized there are so many ways to be successful, right? There are so many different paths. And people would always ask me, ‘What should I be doing?’”
Josh’s answer, he continues, was always, “Don’t let someone else prescribe your path for you. Learn all the different paths, and then find the one that you want to wake up and live, every single day. That should be your path to success.”
[7:00] Nodding, Colton addresses the modern concept of achievement or success. “For so many years in this industry,” he says, “it’s been taught as, ‘more numbers, higher revenue, build a team.’”
But when he was selling 75 homes a year, Colton points out, “I was really achieving some awesome things, but I wasn’t super happy. I was overweight. I would drive to listing appointments smoking a joint, and I’d show up high. Or I’d be taking shots at 2 o’clock [in the afternoon] on a Wednesday.”
Colton didn’t fully understand “the art of fulfillment” until he lost his friend to cancer in 2016. After that, he began to question his own perception of success. To him, the art of fulfillment became “the actual place where time equals emotion. Why do I always feel stressed, or why am I addicted to work, or why am I so anxious?”
Now that he’s involved with The WGR Academy, Colton is able to dedicate himself to meaningful and fulfilling work. “Not only am I committed to helping these guys and gals hit seven figures, and become owners,” he explains, “but [also] really freaking love their lives. Really feel that joy, and that peace.”
[9:00] In fact, when Colton presented onstage at the REAL Mastermind in Las Vegas, he led the audience through a 20-minute breathing exercise, and enlightened people about the importance of something as simple as breathwork—the first thing we do when we’re born, and the last thing we do when we die. As one of the participants in Colton’s audience that day, Josh states that the exercise was “just phenomenal.”
Josh goes on to say that one component of Colton’s work that he really admires is the ability to address full life fulfillment. Colton and his team aren’t just teaching people scripts, or telling them which add-ons to invest in; instead, they’re emphasizing the importance of pursuing goals that are important to us, as opposed to chasing goals that “look good” to the people around us.
“The biggest thing that entrepreneurs need to ask themselves,” Josh declares, “[is] what is your why? What is your driving point that gets you out of bed every day, and makes you fulfilled?”
[10:30] When it comes to helping people find that ‘why’ in their lives, Colton explains that he leads a life management training program. “We’ve been trained to believe that time equals money, freedom, opportunity. That’s usually what I hear,” he tells Josh. But Colton upholds a different belief: time equals emotion, energy, and motion.
The important thing to remember, Colton continues, is asking yourself: what emotional outcome do I want for this moment? “Because it’s the only moment I’m guaranteed,” he points out.
After his friend passed away in 2016, Colton was left to ponder a question that most of us grapple with at some point in our lifetime: “What do I want to do before I die?” Questioning the “why” in our lives allow us to flood our decisions with certainty, and live our lives with the intent and purpose that delivers fulfillment.
Colton goes on to explain the importance of dividing each day into 3 parts: morning, day, and evening. He then encourages people to reflect on the emotional outcome they desire in each segment. If we don’t go into each day with actionable items and routines that allow us to achieve a desired emotional outcome, we can become reactionary as a result, often making decisions from a place of fear instead of certainty.
[11:30] As Colton puts it, no one likes to spend their day “trying to put out fires all the time,” which is what often happens when we wake up, get on our phones, then jump to emails, to texts, to social media.
“We’ll just be trying to solve, solve, solve,” Colton exclaims. “All day long. And at the end of the day, we feel like we did nothing—no sense of achievement. And yet, we’re still in our head[s].”
Colton remembers what it felt like to sit around the dinner table before he implemented the life skills he coaches today. “I couldn’t be present,” he confesses, adding that even leaving his phone in his office or car didn’t seem to help. “Nowadays when I sit at the dinner table, it’s one of my favorite rituals of my evening routine.”
The reason he was able to make this shift, he explains, is because he now has a desired emotional outcome: to feel a sense of achievement, relaxation, and connection with the people who are most important to him.
[13:00] Another best practice that Colton’s team implements are their biannual Mastermind Retreats, which focus on business and financial mastery. “Really, [they] revolve around talent and acquisition,” Colton tells Josh, and throws in a valuable tip for listeners: have your business system in place, and go acquire 18 “players” to bring onboard.
“I [don’t] think passive income exist[s],” Colton adds, “but I think leveraged residual income does, because everything requires some attention. Everyone’s heard of passive income, but who do you know who’s freaking doing it?”
[14:00] At The WGR Academy, Colton and his team teach people how to actually achieve this. “We teach how you actually make that happen,” he explains. “The psychology behind it, your cash flow management, your tax-free wealth, your infinite banking plan, your asset creation, allocation, protection. How do you balance that, how do you scale that?”
A good example to use, he continues, is real estate. “Real estate’s fire, right?” Colton exclaims. “But I remember in 2007 or 2008 when it wasn’t. People were going bankrupt.”
In Colton’s opinion, real estate in the next 5-10 years “is still going to be amazing. Just supply and demand. However, I do know it’s the only inflated asset class right now to not have a major correction in a very long time.”
It is this insightful expertise that makes Colton and his teachings so critical to those striving to succeed in any industry. “And I don’t teach, ‘Hey, this is my way, the best way. I say, ‘Hey, this is a community: seven-figure earners. All of us have something to teach each other. You take what works best for you, and you apply it. This is just from me, from my [own] experience.”
Nodding in agreement, Josh replies, “That’s what we’re trying to share [with listeners] today—what makes you different, what makes your organization unique.”
He adds that that’s one of the reasons why rokrbox hosts monthly in-house Masterminds with the entire staff, encouraging employees from every level to attend—whether they’ve been with the company for a day, a month, or a year.
“We bring them together once a month to talk about what we’re doing well, and what we can improve on,” Josh explains. “Because we understand that everybody has a different perspective, a different background, a different opinion. When you put them together, you can create some synergies, and bring the group to new heights by learning from each other’s successes and failures.”
Thanking Colton for his time, Josh reminds listeners that the best way to reach Colton Lindsay and his experts at The WGR Academy is via Instagram, where they can submit inquiries or questions through a direct message.
To learn more about Colton and his life fulfillment strategies, check out his account at https://www.instagram.com/thewgr/?hl=en, or through the Instagram app at the handle @thewgr.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode of rokrbox TV, you will NOT want to miss the 2nd installment from life coach and best-selling author Noah St. John in a couple weeks…Stay tuned!
