As a consultant for the Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureaus across the U.S., John Shook was paid to investigate business and franchise opportunities, so when the company his REALTOR® mother worked for was considering a switch to EXIT, she called on John to check out the company.
“I did my homework,” John remembers. “I found out about the positive mental attitude training that Founder, Steve Morris, teaches, and about the compensation plan. I knew that it was a correct and proper compensation plan offering good incentives for great salespeople. I wrote my report and told my mother that I liked this company so much, I was going to go to the local EXIT franchise, get a real estate license and buy him out.”
Fast forward two years and the opportunity arose for John to buy the EXIT office where he worked. “The early 2000’s were awesome and we grew to 35 agents pretty quickly,” he says. “But then the recession came along and people had to find other ways to make a living because there just wasn’t any real estate to sell, and in our vacation resort town of Panama City, Florida, it was amplified.”
At the same time John and the rest of the country were facing a financial meltdown, his health began to fail, and he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. He shut down the franchise and sold everything he owned. “I had to convalesce for a year, moving to Michigan and being cared for by my mother. With the cancer and the crisis of the real estate industry, I ended up getting divorced.”
One thing John knew for sure: if he lived, he wanted to move back to Florida to be near his children. Thankfully he did, but he wasn’t in any shape to run a business while he was still recovering, so he took a different tact. John was curious about a competitor in town and what made them tick so he spent the next eight months working for them and learning about their operation. Having accomplished what he set out to do, he left to return to EXIT “where I belong”.
The plot took another twist when John was approached by an investor who planned to open a competing brokerage. “Foolishly, I listened,” he says. “He wanted to pay me to be the president of the company and run the brokerage, so I left EXIT a second time.” It only took 100 days for John to realize he had a personality clash with the investor so he opened his own independent company until a phone call from an acquaintance changed everything.
“Erica Price was considering converting her independent real estate brokerage to a franchise and she wanted my opinion. I said, ‘Erica, there is only one franchise out there worth being a part of in my opinion and that’s EXIT. If you open an EXIT office, I’ll come help you run it and build it for you.’ So, in 2018 I returned to EXIT and I’ll do anything to be able to stay in the EXIT system from now on,” John says definitively.
John is an Associate Broker with Erica’s EXIT Sands Realty office in Panama City, Florida. His main focus is helping to run the brokerage and mentor the agents and he continues to sell real estate but not at the pace he once did. “I want to have enough money to work and play when I want to and the EXIT residuals are a really big help when it comes to having play money.”
John sets aside his bonus money from EXIT Realty Corp. International as a thank you for introducing agents to the company in a separate bank account. “I don’t even look at it until I want to do something. I’m a lifelong motorcyclist and I had a goal to buy a Triumph Scrambler. I bought the motorcycle with the money from my residual income. I’ve paid for vacation trips wherever I want. I’m living a good life, working but not working too hard. The residual income just makes it a lot easier.”
John reflects on what first drew him to the company more than twenty years ago. “People like Steve Morris and the late Bill Nasby mean the world to me. Bill was a major force in my mindset and my joy in this business and I can never think about him without crying. Little did I know when I was out on the bus knocking doors with him that one day I’d have to fight cancer too. Also, I’m a firm believer in mindset training so when I first researched the company and found that was the core principle Steve was teaching, I knew I wanted to be a part of what that guy’s got going on. Along with personality profile training, I knew that those two things combined were going to create successful people. Successful not just in making money, but successful in how we live all aspects of our lives.”
Love the article.