3 Accelerators To Scale Your Real Estate Team

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast where we just open up and talk about the good, bad, ugly of building a profitable, sustainable real estate team. A business worth owning so we can live lives worth living. My name is Lars Hedinborg. I founded Real Estate B School about six years ago and I've been in the real estate team building game for over 12 years. Almost 4,000 families served in that business and today we're going to dig into really a part two of a podcast I did recently where I really laid out the three key drivers to building a sustainable real estate team. Attract, convert delivery. You have to be able to attract high quality buyers and sellers, convert them into clients and deliver on the promises you make, the sales process and do all of that without you really being involved in most of it, or at least initially have that mindset to go to work, to build out the tool systems and to think about your business in such a way where you will have a shot in the future of being able to run those three drivers without you meddling in them every day or without the business relying on you showing up every day. The fourth key driver or the thing that the byproduct of doing a track convert deliver the right way, it's really not a driver as much as it is your ability to scale your business relies on you being able to attract, convert and deliver. And so when I talk about scaling a real estate team, I'm talking about three accelerators, three things you need to do at a very high level to be able to end up with the kind of business that you want. So this is a begin with the end in mind activity. And so the first thing I want to talk about is create your future. I would say 90% of team leaders and like almost 100% of the other population, but the majority, the vast majority of real estate team leaders do not have a plan that they're working toward. And in real estate B school, when I talk about create your future, it's building what we call a three year picture, breaking it down into a one year plan, living in a 90 day world and then realizing that there are 13 weeks in every quarter where we get to really get after crushing that 90 day world. So we could stack four quarters to crush that annual plan, stack three years to actually achieve that three year picture that we set out to achieve. One thing I've done really well amongst the hundreds of things I've done really poorly in building sustainable, profitable, systems driven, high culture, high service real estate business is that I've always known where I'm going. So I always had a real clear picture of what three years out would look like. So when you think about scaling your real estate team, assuming you have a track convert deliver in place, when you talk about scaling your real estate team, you've got to begin with the end in mind which is creating your future. That 319013 we call it three year picture, one year plan, 90 days at a time, 13 weeks. And then the good news, even within a week, you have seven days to crush that week. So a lot of time, the future seems hard to attain because we haven't chunked it down into attainable bits. And a week, 90 days, you know, four quarters make up a year. Three years, like that's, you can actually sort of sink your teeth into that and you can, you can manage it. So that's. Number one is to create your future. Number two is to know your numbers. This is where most of you will kind of turn the podcast off. And don't worry, I'll do a quick commercial break here. We have a pilot program where we help you set up tracking Systems. It's a 30 day program, there's no charge whatsoever if you qualify. Where we actually help you set up these basic tracking systems, these basic productivity systems. So do not worry, just go to realestatebschool.com, request a business growth strategy session. You'll talk to me personally and I will lay out the details of the pilot program. You've got to have a small team at least. Doesn't matter if you have a huge team. Some big teams don't have this stuff figured out. At least one admin, a couple buyer's agents, 500K, GCI. All right, that's commercial for the pilot program. Alright, so number two, know your numbers. This is where you've got to come up with a way to, to understand the leading and lagging indicators aren't really that important actually. Although the most lagging indicator and the one that most business owners pay attention to is the money they have in the bank. That's the worst way to run a business ever, ever. In the history of running a business. That's the worst way to do it. And so you've got to figure out what numbers are important to your business. You know, we have about 17 or 18 numbers that we track on probably well, five to seven that we track on a three year. So part of our three year picture we have measurables, five to seven measurables that we track. When I'm talking annual, there's probably 12 to 15. When I'm talking quarterly, there's 17 or 18, really just key performance indicators that we track to know that our business is on track and that it's healthy. That includes new seller volume signed on a weekly basis, new buyer volume signed on a weekly basis, the number of price improvements. You know, how many listings do we have for what volume in gci, how much did we write that week, how many listings did we activate and what volume did we activate onto our mls? That's our one thing, that's our leading list indicator. And then we break it down even to how many conversations do we have per agent. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff that we, we track in the business. You cannot scale your business if you put your head in the stand about knowing your numbers. And so many team leaders, they feel like, I think it's a limiting belief where you feel like, well, that's not my personality type. I don't have, you know, I'm not a high C personality. If you're toss talking disc personality profiles and I think you just give up and you think it's harder than it really is. And so you've got to know your numbers if you're going to scale this thing. Because if you don't, you are. It's sort of irresponsible to scale and not know what you're doing. That's number two. Number one was create your future. Number two is to know your numbers. And then number three is to grow your team. You know, starting with who do you want to attract to yourself? Who do you want to surround yourself with? And that's core values. And so when we think of core values, look at the folks in your world currently, that sort of, that put off what you want to, that they exude who you want to surround yourself, you know, more like that person. And then the best characteristics of yourself, you know, you've got to think of your core values before you grow your team. This is where team leaders mess up. And I messed up over a hundred times letting people into my world that ultimately weren't a great fit. And part of that is necessary because I think real estate attracts sort of transient folks and folks that think the business is easy when it's really not easy. And the grass is always greener and it's never greener. And so I think part of it is you're naturally going to have some turnover and some of that turnover is good. But of course you don't want bad turnover. You don't want to lose great people. Because you're not serving them at the highest levels. So when it comes to growing your team is knowing real clear who you want to surround yourself with, that's core values and then being putting a process into place where you actually can attract high quality talent to your world. And this is one thing I really dropped the ball on when I look back on my business growth journey is I wish I would have given enough way more focus and attention to the recruiting aspect of the business and marketing and value proposition and how do I present to, you know, my value proposition to a potential, you know, recruit to my team both, both administrative and on the sales side. And we are, we figured this out over the last three or four years at a very, very high level. And I wish I would have just spent more time on it in the past. And you know, once you identify someone who's talented, how do you take them through a process to endear them to you and also to be really clear on the expectations of joining your team. And hopefully your team is different than other teams and you, and you do the things that need to be done to be able to compete at a high level. And once you get them to commit to joining your team, how do you make that first, you know, 60 to 90 days the best possible to set them up to be successful and to make money as quickly as possible in this journey? Because that's the kiss of death. It's getting someone on your team that could be a good fit and not giving them the tools and resources and training and you know, really helping them structure their day and get, get the skills necessary to be able to make money out of thin air for the most part, right? To be able to do the things that need to be done to make money for them, most importantly, and then ultimately for you because you set the structure up and you're adding that value into their life. And then how do you ongoing, once they're an agent on your team, how do you keep the culture real high on the team? How do you what productivity strategies and what's the cadence of the team and your daily huddles and ongoing role playing, script training and quarterly conversations with your people and all of that stuff to grow your team, not just to grow it in numbers, but to actually grow the people from a professional and personal growth standpoint so that they'll never leave you because they're getting so much from being around you. So attract, convert, deliver, that's the foundation. Only then can you scale. When I talk about scale, it's number one, creating your Future Number two, knowing your numbers and number three, growing your team. If you're at the point where you're like, oh man, I need help with all of this, it doesn't matter if you're at 500,000 as a team, a million 2 or 3 million, we have teams in that range 500 to 5.5 million GCI. And we all have the same freaking problems. Nobody that runs a business is problem free. So hopefully that'll give you some, just some peace. You know, as entrepreneurs, as business builders, as business owners, we create this inner turmoil where we always think we're failing and we're always feeling less than and we're always striving to get to some point and there's no rush. All you need to do is slow down for a second. And if you're at the point where this is just kind of beyond you and you're at the point where you're scaling, you've added people to your team and you don't know what systems to put in place next, you don't have that through your picture. You certainly aren't working to one year plan. You have no economic model. Oh, that's the other part of knowing your numbers is an economic model. Building this thing on a sound economic model. I've done other podcasts just on the economic model and so but I don't want to miss it here. Knowing your numbers is beginning first just by deciding what your economic model is and then working in value based commission splits to your agents. So just wanted to add that in there. So if you're at the point where this is something you need help with, all I've got is a 45 minute conversation with me to talk about your business, where you are now, where you want to go and what's holding you back. Go to real estate B school. I'll talk about I can if you qualify. I'll talk about our pilot program as well, which is 30 days for free. We're going to work with those that are qualified to put in some foundational systems to get a strategic game plan and you'll get some other specialist training and implementation support. Our program is one of implementation. So every 90 days you're looking back and you're seeing what did I implement that's going to make the next 90 days easier to scale more sustainably, more profitably. Right. It's systems that help you build a business that you're not all wrapped up in and all stressed out about all the time and not even getting paid for it. Most of the time because you're not systematically increasing your net worth. Alright, soapbox is over. That's you. Go to realestatebschool.com. that's the only thing I have to offer you. It's a conversation with me. It's all I do is talk to real estate team leaders in our community and outside of our community about their challenges and their struggles. So we'll talk to you soon.