3 Ways to Stay Consistent In The Face Of Shiny Object Syndrome And Omnipresent Squirrels

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. This is Lars Hedenborg, founder of Real Estate B School, and I'm going to do a follow up episode on Kirby and Christina out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Twin Cities. They did 777 transactions last year for 7.7 million. And Kirby didn't mention his profit margins, and I won't either. But he follows the rebs economic model, meaning it's not all about the top line. Many of the real estate teams that end up scaling beyond 2, 300 transactions, they do it in a way that sacrifices economic sustainability and they forget about their economic model and their buying transactions. And that's not what Kirby and Christina have done, which is crazy, crazy awesome. I got the pleasure to work with them probably for four or five years when they were sort of scaling the business outside of their individual efforts and just an awesome, godly couple. And I'm just honored to know them and call them friends and they just kick serious butt in business today. The thing I think about when, or I want to go deeper on when I think about their journey is their unbelievable consistency. And I mentioned it on the podcast or their episode of the podcast, which you need to go listen to, it's awesome. But they have done the same thing, you know, all these years with a core piece of their business. And I think it was, I want to say like a couple thousand transactions or something, some, some crazy number of transactions from their database. And so just doing a good job for their clients and adding them to their database and referral marketing program. And it runs like clockwork. I mean, Kirby and Christina have been sending out the same newsletter, the same email, the same events, the same postcards, a set it and forget it approach for like the last 10 years. And consistency is the reason why real estate teams succeed at a high level. But it's also the lack of consistency is why I see many real estate teams fail. And when I say fail, they may scale, but they do it in a way where it's not profitable or it leads to more hours and more stress for the team owner versus their approach. You know, Kirby didn't, I don't think he mentioned this on the podcast, but he spends, I think like less than an hour or two a week in that business. He actually has a complete another business that does, I think I want to say like $9 million top line and he launched that build that business, you know, while he still obviously owns the real estate team with Christina. So consistency is the name of the game and we're going to dive deep into three Things that I think through when I think of their journey and anyone that's struggling with, with not achieving their goals and constantly sort of changing directions and they're never quite getting traction because they're kind of all over the place. So the first thing I think of, and this is for sure true of Kirby and Christina, is to have a clear plan. You know, we teach at real estate B school and it could be a version of this is a three year vision or one year plan and then chunk it down into 90 days and then weekly and then daily and then literally making decisions with what you're going to focus on every day and time blocking into your calendar and making sure that you're putting into your calendar time blocks that say work on business. Without those work on business time blocks, the, the current day company is always going to look the same. It's not going to be transforming over time. There's an expression, I don't know if I'll botch this but the time blocks that you're working on company like literally in your calendar, three time blocks a week, 60 to 90 minutes where you're not going to dishonor and delete or move and not do the work. Those are the time blocks where you're working on the future company. We call it Newco. So the life you live in and the business you have today will not change in the future unless you make decisions about what's going to change. And that typically comes in the form of systems that you're building. A great example that I brought up is, you know, their database and referral marketing system. Somebody had to build that system, somebody had to design the print newsletter template. Someone had to, to decide the, the marketing calendar, the social media calendar throughout the year, the contest they were going to run, right. And then sort of they're creative on the one hand, but it's with a backdrop of consistency and, and a calendar that's set in stone. And this is going to happen. We are going to produce a print newsletter. We're never going to stop. I think Kirby said there, I think they're over, I want to say like over 100 months consecutive in terms of getting that print newsletter out. And could they change it? Could they do something more quote, unquote, sexy? They could, but 50% of their business on 777 transactions comes from their database marketing program which hasn't changed much in the last like eight, nine years or whatever. So that's the first thing is having a clear plan. So if you're at 100 transactions now and you're doing most of the transactions yourself and you have a few people around you, you're starting a team and you don't know where you're going in the future. Right? You don't have a written three year vision, one year plan, and then you're kind of working, working that plan. The first step is to declare that I'm going to go from 100 transactions to, let's say 200 transactions in three years. You know, 50% of my business is going to be repeat and referral and it's going to look like this client care process, database marketing program in place. You know, we're spending less money on paid leads. I've got, you know, whatever, four strong buyer agents, one strong local admin, two VAs. You have to get really clear on what that vision looks like in order to have a shot at achieving it. So that's number one clear plan. Number two, I got to go back here and get this guy. If you're watching the video is no distractions. If you're listening to the podcast, you won't see that I'm holding up a squirrel. It's not a real squirrel. This guy is a constant reminder that most everything in real estate is a squirrel. A distraction. Meaning that when you start the year and you have your, you know, you have a three year vision, you have a one year plan and you start the year and there was no plan to look at changing CRMs, but then all of a sudden you get an email or you, you talk to another team who's running a different CRM, and then you're doing a demo and then you're like going down this rabbit hole of like you're in a Facebook group, a mastermind Facebook group or whatever and you're asking like, hey, what are Your thoughts on Excel 95 CRM? Real Estate CRM, right. It's not a real one, so don't look it up. I don't think it's a real one. And then, and you're in this rabbit hole and your, your year started without any thought of looking at changing CRMs. But all of a sudden you're spending time looking at different CRMs. And we do it because I think it satisfies. There's definitely an entrepreneurial part of our DNA as entrepreneurs is that we're easily distracted and so we have to guard ourselves against distraction. And that comes in the form of, okay, this is my three year vision, my one year plan. My 90 day world is the thing that locks it in, right? In 90 days, you can work on one or two things, maybe, maybe one or two things, and actually implement them, install them in your business at a deep and meaningful level. So that's number two. It's also called shiny object syndrome. You have to build a muscle and almost a mindset that most everything in our industry that comes our way, that's marketed to us, they're all shiny objects. They're all distractions, 100% of them. That's the mindset you have to have. 100% of them are distractions. And then until they prove otherwise. Quick story for me. Exp, for me, was a distraction. When the big push, there are a lot of influencers went in in 2017, you may have heard from some of them at that time. And I just assumed out of the gate that it was a distraction, it was a shiny object. There were 2,200 agents in, like, 25 states or something in early 2017. And there was no need for me to look at it because I trained myself to just assume everything is a shiny object, everything is a distraction. A good friend of mine, I was actually coaching him at the time, Actually, one of my business coaches pivoted into exp, and then Cliff Freeman, and then AJ Maida pivoted into EXP back in those days as well. And their stories are amazing now, and they've helped grow the company beyond whatever anyone thought was possible. But I waited until September 2020. So three and a half years after someone told me more, actually told me about EXP, was when I actually pivoted in, when they. That when they reached almost 42,000 agents. So at 42,000 agents, I told myself, okay, this thing is clearly doing something that I need to study and not dismiss. And at that point, ego comes in and all that. But I need to actually look at this. And I studied it, and the platform's legit. And so the pivot was made into. Into exp. But the example, the reason I'm telling you that is that there will be new things. There will be grass is greener. There will be things that can draw you away from the current plan. You need to resist the temptation, or you need to. To. To follow someone who you trust that has proven out that they've run a sustainable business, that they track their numbers, that they do all the things that's required to run a really good business. And that kind of brings us to point number three. Kirby didn't mention it, but Kirby is the ultimate business tracker. He runs his numbers by the business, right? And so he. I mean, he knows every deal and every agent on his team in terms of accountability around lead generated, cost of the lead, cost of the appointment set, cost of the appointment met, cost of the appointment signed. So the client signed to be a client and then cost to get it under contract and then the cost to actually close it. So you may pay $100 for a lead, but the conversion rate sucks. So the cost to set an appointment on a lead source is, you know, it may go from 100 to 1,000, then the no show rate on that lead source may suck. So the cost to meet face to face, that buyer may be $3,000. And then let's say only they mostly sign, but let's say, I don't know, 75% signed. So it goes from three to 4,000. You may be $4,000 in before you have a signed buyer client. And then in this crazy market, you may be at 8,000 before you get them under contract. And then who knows, if something crazy happens, you may be at $10,000 per closing. And it's not, not ever that bad. But my point is you need to really, if you're going to scale your business and do it in a way where you actually know what's going on in the business, you need to be able to track numbers, but also the efficiencies around your agents. And if you're doing inside sales, clearly you need to know exactly how many conversations turn into a set by lead source by inside or outside sales agent, how many times, how many hours that they're putting into their lead generating activities. So you can literally calculate dials per hour, meaningful conversations per hour, sets per unit of time. Right. We need to look at our business in a way where we actually know what's going on. And on top of that, so those are more accountability and production measures. We need to understand the financials of our business and to know that we can't just scale our business willy nilly. Looking at the top line and not paying attention to the economic model. I started out by saying I know Kirby's numbers. He shares his numbers still. Even though we're not in a formal coaching relationship at this point, he still shares his numbers with me. So I know on 7.7 million he's running the rebs economic model, which is more profit than any model I've seen out there. I've talked to over a thousand team leaders about their businesses and I kind of triangulate where they are on their numbers. We've had members come in at 6 million GCI that weren't doing 10% margin and the team owners doing a bunch of production. And Kirby and Christina are totally out of production and they're running legit margins. And so just know that a big piece of this consistency and being able to run the business and not doing, making irrational, haphazard decisions, you need to know what's going on in the business. These, these are weekly scorecards by function. So we have marketing scorecards, operations scorecards, sales scorecards, those sorts of things. And Those are more KPIs key performance indicators. So all of that is you becoming the CFO of your business, knowing your numbers so that you don't have to freak out about what's going on in the business and use your emotion to guide the business. And it's done more with, you know, you can run the business from the beach, you can look at numbers in the business and get a good gauge of what's going on in the business. So having a clear plan, avoiding distractions and knowing your numbers, that is the key to consistency and scaling an amazing business. If you want to look at the platform and this is sort of my offer here, there's, there's no, it's not even a call to coaching, but if you want to look at a platform that I've built that I'm super excited about, partnering directly with me to help you scale not only your real estate business and do more sales but, but to build additional wealth pillars, whether that's through stock or whether that's through residual income. Go to partner with Lars.com that's partner with Lars.com and click on the button. You'll learn more about the opportunity there. But click on the button that says find the truth or learn the truth. Something I forget what it says, but spend some time there. Partner with Lars.com and then just connect with me directly. You can book a call into my calendar directly on that site and we could talk about your business, where it is today, where you want it to be three years from now, that three year vision and what's holding you back. What obstacles are in your way from you achieving your vision? What have you tried in the past before? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And we will put a plan together to get you to where you want to go. So go to partnerwithlars.com and we'll see you over there. Be good.