Welcome to the Vici Code where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt and conquered their challenges. Faith, family and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory one story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest purpose driven journey beyond the hustle, where we navigate engineering a human first business, how real estate professionals and business owners can leverage AI systems to reclaim more than more than 10 hours a week, stop leaking revenue and shift from competition to contribution. Most business owners think they have a growth problem, but they actually have a systems problem. They're paying a busy work tax every single day in the form of misleads, late nights and burnout teams. What if the solution wasn't more headcount but a smarter engine? Sam Abdallah, father, creator and 10 year real estate veteran who realized that chasing leads was a race to the bottom. Now through the 350 formula, he builds AI systems that work while you sleep, qualifying leads and booking meetings so that you can be human again. Sam and I connected in Dan Martell's elite mastermind. He understands that systems are the bridge between a life of chaos and a life of contribution. In an industry notorious for the 247 hustle, Sam has engineered a way to let technology handle the noise so that leaders can focus on human relationships. Today we're diving into the 350 formula. We're exploring how to turn operational chaos into clarity and why integrity is the ultimate scaling strategy. As always, we'll filter Sam's journey through the Vici pillars, faith, family fitness and finance. Sam, I know so many clients that are really going to benefit from this episode. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm grateful to be here. It's going to be a great episode and looking forward to contributing any way I can. Boy, AI just comes up left and right. Before we jump into that though, I want to talk about, you know, the busy, busy work tax epiphany. You know, you spent a decade in the field before you provided or before you pivoted to systems. What was the specific breakthrough moment where you realized that working harder was actually the silent revenue killer for real estate agents. Yeah, I would say that it, it happened. I was on multiple teams and found there was a, you know, you, you, you go on a team, you figure out their systems, what's behind the curtain of a real estate team, what happens? And before then there wasn't much AI and the host of Culture was very like, very much prominent like, it was like, you know, more contacts, just grind harder, knock more doors. And I think at some point, thankfully, because of technology, we had to find a way to get forced to disrupt ourselves and work smarter and find other ways to actually be more present with our clients and more customers. And a lot of people think that AI is going to take that away, but if it's done the right way, then it could actually enhance your relationships and allow you to be more present. And being a family, a family man, father of four, it's the best time management skill you're going to have is having kids. You know, being able to support my wife, working from home, making sure, you know, with our kids that everything's taken care of and the home's running smoothly. Everything kind of needs a system. And so I realized that I needed to figure out how to learn this, because like Dan says, too, you got to disrupt yourself before you get disrupted. So I had to figure out, how can I be more efficient and still have the same output? And there was a big breakthrough at a Mastermind last year where we were sitting down and talking about how we are kind of just trained for, you know, input, output. And it's. It's related to, like, maybe the factory mindset. Like, you just put a certain amount. We're not making widgets anymore. Why do we think that our input is related to our output? And so I realized that my output can be infinitely greater than my input and just by selecting the right things. And I think we'll talk about that today. Great book. Like, the Essentialist talks a lot about that. Like, you know, you have all this energy, but can you focus a little bit more energy in the right thing and you get further along the line rather than going in a whole bunch of different directions. So I realized, like in, in real estate and in business, there's a lot of parallels. So there's, you know, there's negotiating contracts, there's. There's prospecting new people, there's generating new leads for the business, keeping the business healthy, and, and, and that sort of thing. So. And going on appointments that are for your business, talking about representation, whether it's your business or real estate. And it made me realize, how can we create systems around that so then the owner or the business owner can have full clarity on a dashboard of what's happening in their business and know that they can just double down on those things and make sure that there's no missed revenue. And so the people that they talk to are more qualified rather than just kind of chasing Going in different directions or the real estate role or the income roller coaster where they're servicing business, then it dries up. Then they go get more business than they service business and it dries up. I wanted to figure out how we can better streamline that. And I was interested in systems. I remember when I was sitting down and it was, I was working on some systems in the office at a brokerage at the time. An agent approached me, said, you know, you're really efficient, like how do you sit there and how do you, how do you do what you have to do every day? So a lot of agents were just wondering, like I don't know what to do. I'm just going to figure it out, I'm going to react, I'm going to open my email and like you said, public inbox of to do list and I'm just going to figure it out. And so he sat down and he ended up picking my brain and he ended up paying for the solution. And it made me realize, okay, why don't I start building this now instead of waiting for it to be perfect. I started building a database system because I knew that we had to get the systems right. We have to get the fall bright, the database right. Because if we don't, AI will just be amplified. So AI will just amplify a mess. If you have a mess, it'll just be more of a mess. So we have to know who's who. We have to get our marketing dialed in. And we only know that if we know where people are. We only know our clients, our forever clients or new leads are. We're not able to dial in our marketing if we don't know who we're talking to. So that was the biggest thing for me when it comes to how I got started with this journey. For a few years it's been hundreds of iterations. Seeing how I can simplify it to make it easy for realtors and business owners to plug into a system. Because when you turn the car on, the key on in the car, you just want the car to run. You don't have to worry about all the things on the back end. So I just want realtors and business owners to just know their system is going to work. They're not going to miss calls if they're on vacation, they're not going to have guilt, which I did a lot of the time when I was on vacation, always stressing, worrying about time, not being present with my kids. And I remember there was times in my early years, first couple years we had two kids at that time. We have four. And I. I felt I was on a journey to, like, not have a good relationship with my kids. And I was very heartbreaking because I remember coming home and, you know, there's a couple times where it's like, oh, yeah, hey, dad. I was like, where's the hug? Like, where's the. You know, and. And family being the glass ball? I didn't want to drop that, you know, So I was like, you know, I got to make sure that I can really be more effective and not just subscribe to this hustle mentality. I feel like we as humans adopt these patterns, and we live them out without questioning them. And I feel like the hustle mentality was the same idea. Like, real estate was always like, just hustle. Ask for the sale. Go, go, go. Are you gonna buy, sell, invest? I shifted that to working smarter, to, you know, having AI help work in my voice so that I can continue that con and know where things are. Because as a founder, we got to know where things are. Whether you're real estate, business owner or not, you got to know where your revenue is coming from. And like Dan said, the delegation ladder, you know, you take care of the operations and the systems and the marketing and the sales eventually, then as you grow, you could then hire a closer or someone to do the opens, you know, so that's kind of how I look at business and system. So I'm always figuring out how to make things simpler, add more value for business owners and realtors that I found that there's a common theme of where they're losing business, where they're looking for the shiny object. And these lead companies are literally making money off them because they know that it's this false sense of security. They feel good about buying leads and working on their website, but they're not actually doing the things that are moving the needle. So that's a little bit about where I got started. And you mentioned a little bit about, you know, family and the impacts there. So now that you've shifted from chasing leads to basically governing a system, how is that? How has that changed your personal stress levels? Oh, it's a lot. It's a lot less. There's. There's no guilt for taking time off because, you know, it's not necessarily about the money. The amount of money you make, you want to be more effective, but it's about doing it more efficiently in less time and. And not having to be the bottleneck of every task. Like, I've gone through multiple different hires where I was stressed out. I thought the answer was hiring another VA but not training them properly and then having to be the bottleneck of every task. And so I wanted to make sure that if I could build a system that, that way that person can plug in and just allow it to run and they can kind of monitor it. So how it's changed for me, I'd say that I have a lot less guilt vacations. I don't have that mindset that I have to clock out at a certain time. I'm much more present with my kids and my family, a much more supportive husband. I'm able to be home and work from home and, and have a good white, good life counterbalance, be able to put time in and go in spurts like an athlete rather than feel like, you know, just constantly grinding and constantly on my mind. Now when I work on projects at night or so I work on passion projects, right. Things that I'm interested, things that light me up, you know, things that maybe I'm working on a system and I want to figure out how to add value and it's, it's something that's really exciting. I want to learn something new. So it's not necessarily feeling like work as much. So it's, it's really nice. Nice. So let's jump back into the finance pillar. You know, we talk about assets. Yeah. You mentioned that the average follow up takes 42 hours while your AI does it in under 60 seconds. For the skeptic who thinks AI removes a human touch, how does responding faster actually make you more human? And in the eyes of the client? Well, you think about it like when someone's calling a company, they're going to be looking, they're looking for a solution. They have a need emotionally, they could be going through something. They have a need, they need to be connected with and heard about what they need and their solution. So they don't really care who answers. They want on demand information, they want on demand service. And so if they have a, if there's a system that's able to better filter out what they need and qualify that person so that way that human can get on the phone. There's a better speed to elite, there's better responsiveness. That person, that salesperson is going to be much more effective, they're going to be much more human. They're going to know the situation of that client or that motivation, they're going to be able to speak to that more and I think that's going to be more powerful. Sales conversation. It's going to be better use of the client's time. It's also going to prevent lost revenue because most of the time they'll just be looking for something else and they'll look at you as a commodity of someone who didn't answer the phone or didn't get a hold of them yet. And the industry also already has a reputation for some realtors that they're not really that responsive or they kind of just drop the ball or they look for the shiny object. So this kind of prevents that. And this allows you to put your relationships front and center so you can focus on serving that client and know where they are. Because we're not there to convince them to do something, we're there to speak to where they're at so then we can match their motivation and help them get to where they want to go and create more long term business as a result. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean even in our company we've, we've definitely been tech heavy with our stack to, to make sure that, you know, things get caught faster, that we have a better idea of where things stand without having to verbally communicate that with each other. And it's communicated not only to our team members but also to our clients because they get to see basically where we're at in the process of, you know, for example, either a tax return or where we're at on a bookkeeping engagement. And that gives us more time back to either improve the systems or spend more time with the client or spend more time with our family and just be less stressed out. And family members can sense that. So completely agree. What does lead leakage really cost a business over a 90 day period? Predictive forecast. Well, that's actually a great point. And what I'll do is if you, if you Instagram me and you'll probably have it in the notes. Roi actually Vici. So you know, you're on this episode, I'll send you the ROI tracker because what it does is it shows you as a business owner. So if you're a business owner, there's an angle of how much is my customer worth, how many missed calls have I had and how many website visits have I had that I don't even know about that are have not been captured. And 80% of the people don't have, you know, an assistant on their site that's taking care of those things, that's capturing those things, it's talking to one system. So there's actually number you can get and I can actually Give those numbers to you. Depending on your client value, depending on how many leads, clicks you've had, and how many views and calls you may have missed for your business. There's quite a bit, and I think there's even one business we did, it was like $15,000 in revenue that was missing. So as humans, we always look for the shiny object because I think it's, it's, it's in our nature to look for something new. It's like, you know, the hunter gatherers, they look for better berries, new berries, you know, more food in another area. But like, why aren't we looking at the waste? And, and how do we actually recover what we already have coming to us? Because our business is live, people can call, but we're not capturing visitors, we're not capturing things, we're not training them to follow up. So we're not creating a system that's all end to end. So to answer your question, it's quite a bit. And a lot of business owners who, you know, the smart business owners do invest in getting those things done because they know how important it is and they know that they'd rather have hard work on the, on the front end and easy on the back end. So then their systems are working, their salespeople know what's happening. Their salespeople are booked for appointments, appointments are coming in the calendar and they know where the revenue is going to come. And they can have better conversations with salespeople about accountability, about appointments, about opportunities for conversion, stuff like that. So great. Well, we'll mention this again. Roi Vici, if you message that to Sam on Instagram, we'll mention that in the show notes and at the end of the podcast as well. This is important information to know how much these lead leakage is costing your business over the course of a 90 day period. Thanks for that, Sam. I want to shift over to the other pillars. Let's talk about reclaiming the fatherhood pillar. Sam, you have four kids. I have four kids. I actually have one on the way. So we're looking to field a basketball court here with our, with our kids. You say you're a father first. You talk about, you know, reclaiming over 10 hours a week through automations in the family pillar. What has, what has that reclaimed time allowed you to do that you couldn't do when you were, you know, a slave to your CRM. Oh man, mental shackles. I mean, just being able to pick them up at school and not worrying about if a client have to put out a fire with A client or where my business is. Because if you're a systems oriented person or you have your own business, you're probably always thinking about what has to get done. So the peace of mind, even if physically, if you're not in the office, but the peace of mind mentally is massive. It's a mental tax, you know, and we call it mental margin. You know, I remember a good, good mentor of mine mentioned that mental margin. So it takes away so much mental margin that you can't even measure. But not only that, when you put your hours in, you know that those hours are done. But as far as a family being able to have that, that off time and being able to know that we put in some world class hours at the beginning of the day, we focused on some creation and focus work and deep work. And then at the end we can actually enjoy the time with our family or enjoy that vacation, make sure that we're able to contribute. Also make time for hobbies that light us up, being creative in other ways too. I love music, so that's one thing. So just really a better overall quality of life. And you don't feel like you're, how to say this, you feel like you're actually like moving the needle. You don't feel like you're just moving in all these different directions. And so you're actually able to be present with your wife, your spouse. You're gonna make time for date nights. Like I remember times where we would cancel date night and it was just like, it's heartbreaking because your wife's like, it's okay. But you know that you could be better as a husband, you know, that you could show up better. And what happens is even as, as your attitude changes, like I remember even before, I would be like a little bit more on edge, you know, and I'd have, I wouldn't say ego, but just a little bit more on edge, like, oh, I gotta get this done and what are you talking about? And that stress puts a wedge in the relationship a little bit. So I think that when you recognize what has to change for your family's sake, because having all this success and grinding for it is nothing without the right people by your side. So that's where this has really been a tremendous shift for me, you know, And I want to give people that gift too, because they can actually see what it's like to really be there for their family again. I had a good conversation with a mortgage broker friend of mine and he said, you know, I went on vacation and he was so wound up because he's figuring things out right now and he goes, my nervous system literally needed to reset. Like I, I didn't even know what to do with myself for the first little bit. It's almost like he went on a sabbatical where his nervous system had to completely like shut off and reset. And I never want anybody to have to go through that, you know, so I'd rather have kind of like a. And I think Dan talks about this, but you have kind of steady work life counterbalance. Like you're never just completely off, but you're, but you're not stressed, you're not overly. Cortisol's not going up too much. You're not wondering what's happening, you're not wondering where things are dropped, you're not wondering where your paycheck's coming from. You're not wondering where things are in the business and you're not managing 10 different systems. Like business owners mostly are not systems oriented, especially realtors. A lot of them, they're not systems oriented. They need someone to, they know how to, for example, work out and eat right. We know how to, they know how to lose weight, for example, like a fitness trainer. But implementing that implementation is what you pay for, you know, And I think that's the important thing is implementation to then make their life easier so they could take off that mental margin and actually focus on being with their family, doing what they love or when they're putting their hours, they're really present with their clients. Like I remember working with a realtor. He said I would always be with my clients and I'd literally be on my phone doing something else in Slack or whatever that had to get done. And he just wasn't present and his clients could feel that and he would lose clients as a result. So there's a big tax you pay and you don't realize it and you probably know about tax, obviously it's a big tax you pay without even realizing it. So. So for kids, I'm sure you spend some time either at music lessons, you know, karate lessons, sports fields, you're sitting there talking to, you know, other high performing parents. What are you telling them? How to stop being the bottlenecks in their own business. I mean, I think it's definitely learning to let go. And the, the foundation is just audit because you don't know where you're going to go if you don't know where you are now, where you, where you could go and auditing what you're doing every day because I think as humans we live in patterns. Like we just let the pattern repeat, right? And I think that's why meditation is important when you talk about faith and stuff, because you have to be able to observe the pattern to break it. And if you don't observe the pattern, you're not going to break it. So you have to be able to observe where you are so you can figure out without just going in that same pattern and living that same cycle. For example, someone who's working a 9 to 5, they don't like it, they're in the same pattern thinking this is how life has to be and they're just doing the same thing, eating the same thing and all that stuff. And I know that it's different for high performing entrepreneurs, but there is a parallel with being in a pattern of hustle, being in a pattern of having to always over commit to things and say yes to everything or be there for everyone. And I've had to let go of certain friends and things like that. Not because, just because you have to figure out what's really important and you know, making sure family's a priority and the most important deep work is a priority. You have work with purpose. So I trust that makes sense. But that's definitely something. Yeah, I can relate to that. It's not like a hard, like cut people off, it's just like, no, you're going in different directions and it's like, you know, you can still catch up when you see people, but you just tend to when you make that mindset shift to have a higher calling, a higher purpose, like it just either someone, either are the people you've surrounded yourself are on the same page or they're not. And it's nothing personal, but you know, you got to do what's best for you and your family and you know, catch up when you can. Absolutely, I totally agree with that. I think every entrepreneur has been on that journey and like Dan says too, and whatever, money is a spiritual journey and wealth is a spiritual journey and we, and I'm reading a great book, you know, Science Getting Rich for the Third Time. And I'm just loving it because your consciousness is almost like unfolding every minute. So you control literally every minute of your reality. You're stepping into a new reality. And it's a little esoteric, but I don't mind. And I think it's true because like we got to believe in a higher power. And we'll talk about that at some point. But I think it's, it's really important that we're working with purpose and we're working with zest and our clients can feel it and I think we make more money, we're happier. So it's a good thing. Your philosophy is contribution over competition. In a high stakes world like real estate or tech, that sounds almost counterintuitive. How does your faith or your personal values guide your human first follow up strategy? Collaboration to me is every time you, whether you pick up the phone instead of reframing it as a prospecting or you're, you're following up or you're reaching out to a client, you know, or you're seeing how you can serve. Selling is inviting. Selling serving as we as we know. It's a good reframe and contribution means that you're always, and there's actually a great book on this but talking about your, your, your opportunity for giving. When you're lead generating, you're giving opportunity to connect people. So you're like a relationship broker. So I always have this important reframe with Realtors too. I said instead of feeling that old programming that you're there to sell them, think about you as a relationship broker. You're connecting and you're not attached to the outcome. And so you being able to connect two people that never would have met before makes you more valuable and makes you more memorable. And as a result you end up getting more referrals anyways. So why are we so like why are they so focused on the commission breast sort of thing rather than we're focusing? Because that's more competition. I'm thinking more collaboration where it's contribution, it's helping others succeed. You could have vendors in your database or your system that you could connect with and they could serve someone else that you know. And so you could work as an affiliate program. There's so many different opportunities when you dive deeper. And I think that's one of the biggest pillars I like to talk about is it allows you to go deeper in conversation. Therefore you have better relationships and those referrals come naturally. And a lot of business owners just look for the next thing or a lot of realtors look for the next thing in the new lead. But if they're not going deep on what they already have, they could have incredible business around the corner. Especially client could have an incredible amount of residual value of how many times they're going to buy or sell or you know, for instance assets right in your, in your business. Right. You would never work with a client. And then after you met with them once and you did their tax. You say, okay, we're done. Will never really put you in a, in a, in a kind of value add again. We'll just send you occasional card and hope that you come back. It doesn't work that way. Like, people don't care if you send an occasional newsletter. That does not matter. They don't care if your social media was showing how flashy you are. They care about. Did you actually care about that? Right. Because that, you know, that know how much you care thing is really true. I mean, they, they want to know that you actually care about them. And that comes through in actually making the time to make those relationships priority, you know, and the right systems will allow that. Because if you don't know where people are, you're never going to have the right marketing, you're never going to have right messaging, you're never going to be able to have the right system in place to kind of do that. So that's just my philosophy on it. Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's great advice to, to, to treat your clients as honestly like an extension of, you know, family and friends. Right. Like, that's the treatment people want and that's the, that's the treatment that gets people to stay and, and continue to refer you to more people that they know. Because who wouldn't want to be treated like that, you know? Yeah. And purpose too, because, you know, they respect intentionality. It's not like you're just, you know, hey, I just wanted to call. I know you're a judge in the middle of the day and you have a court case, and I just want to see how are things going. Like, how's the kids? How's the dog? Like, that's, it's more about having intention, you know, understanding where they are on their journey. And we actually, we have this really exciting thing. What it does is it looks for your clients that you actually know and it will reach out to them every 90 days with a personalized message based on their socials. Right. So someone's socials could be, I'm going through this kind of change. Well, we know that changes spark life changes spark real estate changes. Right? Spark taxes, spark. You know, any of that stuff. Right. So we know that they're all related to each other. So why not have the people in our corner, like you said, taxes, mortgage broker, financial planner, life insurance, they're very much related. Right. You know, so it's, we can't. We as realtors or even as business owners, we have to stop siloing ourselves into one section, you know, we have to look at like that's what I mean by that collaboration as well, you know. Yeah, yeah, totally. Where can listeners go to find their own 350 formula and start simplifying their business today? Yeah, I'll link the site for you and you can, you can definitely. So sam, hyphen abdullah.com is my site for. That's designed for real estate agents that want to develop their follow up, their systems, utilize AI the right way. So then when they have AI, it's not slop, it's not messaging, that's not in their voice, they're not alienating, they have the right systems in place. So that's a great start. For real estate agents, we do have a similar product for business owners. I'll share with you the site but for business owners we know that business owners have a slightly different profile. So for instance, like they receive calls after hours. Their sites generally are not optimized to capture people. So we wanted to fix that problem. They generally don't want to really implement AI because they feel overwhelmed. So we want to create everything in one system for them. Then we want to have a receptionist that knows their site, their services like the back of their hand to answer questions for email and stuff, but also be able to capture leads and put them in a system. And so if someone wants to go on a vacation like we said, and they want to take some time off, they can put that receptionist on. If they don't answer and know that business is coming in and so they can have a salesperson designated and say, oh, it's at this part of the pipeline. Perfect. John's going to reach out to him, he's going to book the appointment. I can go and enjoy time with my family because I have full visibility. It's not about working more, but when we don't have visibility we get stressed about something. That's what I think personally. So no, I completely agree. Amen to that. So we're getting here. Towards the end we'll do one more shout out on a few other things but I just want to do a brief takeaway based on what I heard. Systems are the cure for burnout. AI is the engine for consistency and the goal of every business should be to serve at a higher level. Sam, thank you so much for your insight into the agentic operation system for our audience. If you're ready to stop chasing and start governing, visit sam-abdallah.com that's going to be in the show Notes. If you do sam-abdallah.com 350formula that will also be in the show notes, as well as his Instagram and LinkedIn. And I think earlier today we said, you know, message, Sam, what was it? Aivchi or what was it? Roi Vici Roi vii. And he'll, he'll connect with you through Instagram. Until then, reclaim your time, serve with integrity and keep building for the next generation. We'll see you on the next episode of the Vici Code. Thanks for tuning in to the Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels a fight and your comeback is already in progress.