Justin Landis: The Free Tool That Shows You If Your Five Year Plan Actually Works
An agent recently told Justin Landis their ideal future: net $500,000 a year, sell 25 houses, work 30 hours a week, and have a full staff including an assistant, a marketing person, and a runner. Justin loved the vision. He just wasn't sure the numbers actually worked. That gap between the dream and the math is what led him to build a free planning tool, with help from Claude Code, that lets agents pair their five year vision with the real numbers behind it.
Start With the Ideal Year, Then Stack Five of Them
Justin's planning exercise starts with a simple question: picture a perfect year, one year from now, where everything in your business and personal life fell into place. What did you accomplish? Who were you working with? What did your income look like? Writing the answers down, on paper or a whiteboard, makes the exercise real instead of abstract.
From there, he stacks that ideal year five times. Five years ago, the brokerage he now leads didn't exist. In five years, an enormous amount can change, for better or worse, which is exactly why it's worth asking in detail: what have I accomplished, who am I around, what have I earned, and what does my day to day actually look like.
Every Dream Year Has a Math Problem, and That's Normal
Once someone has their ideal five year picture, Justin asks two follow up questions. First, what's the biggest roadblock standing between here and there, whether that's building referral business, making a first hire, or dropping a side hustle. Second, and this is the one that trips most people up, does the math in that vision actually work?
In his experience, it almost never does on the first pass, and that's expected. Dreaming big is the point. But most goals, once you run the actual transaction counts, price points, and expenses, don't hold together as originally written. The good news is there's almost always a real path to the same outcome. It just takes different numbers than people assume.
Scenario One: The Solo Agent With Full Support
Justin's first walkthrough matches the agent who sparked the whole tool: 25 transactions a year at a $500,000 average price point, a $120,000 full time staff, and $40,000 in other expenses. The math lands at $375,000 in GCI and a net of $215,000, far short of the $500,000 goal. Cutting staff costs barely moves the needle. The real levers are transaction count and price point. Raising the average sale price to roughly $900,000 while keeping the same 25 transactions gets that agent to a net income over $500,000. The alternative path, staying at a $500,000 price point, requires closer to 45 transactions a year to hit the same number.
Scenario Two: The Lifestyle Agent Who Wants No Management
The second scenario is for agents who want a high income and a high dollar per hour without hiring or managing anyone. Justin models this on a team split, in this case 70-30, where the brokerage or team covers marketing, transaction coordination, and listing support. At a $700,000 average price point, only 18 transactions a year are needed to net around $245,000, working roughly 30 hours a week, for a dollar per hour of around $170. Push the average price point to $1,000,000, and the same net income requires only 12 to 13 transactions.
Scenario Three: The Lean Team Builder
The third path is for agents who want to mentor and lead a small team while staying in production themselves. Justin models 20 personal transactions at a $600,000 price point, plus three team agents each closing 12 deals at a $500,000 average, for 56 total transactions. Staff and other expenses run higher here, around $210,000 combined, and hours worked climb closer to 50 a week. The headline GCI looks impressive, close to a million dollars, but the actual net lands around $400,000, a reminder that top line revenue and take home income are very different things once a team's expenses are factored in.
The Real Point of the Tool
Across all three scenarios, the lesson is the same. A five year vision only becomes real once it's paired with the actual levers: transaction count, price point, staffing, and expenses. Justin built the tool to let agents test those levers themselves and see, in real time, what it actually takes to hit their number. The free download is linked below the episode, and Justin also offers free calls at bolst.homes for agents who want to build this plan out with him directly.
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Justin Landis is the founder of Justin Landis Group and Bolst, two of Atlanta's leading real estate companies. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and three daughters and has been selling Atlanta real estate since 2008.
