4 Things You Need to Do to Get into the Owner's Seat

What's up, real estate team builders. Lars Hedenborg. Here, founder, real estate B School. Today we're gonna unpack the four steps you must make to make the shift from real estate agent to real estate business owner. This is coming off an episode I did with Jessica from, what was it? Exit Factor, who's a business broker. And she talked about, like, you know, how are some business owners successful in a. A sale and an exit from their business, and they get money to sell it and, and others aren't. And here's what I've learned over my journey. And this is, you know, I've made all the mistakes that I can make, so I'll kind of give that disclaimer. But I did build a business that ultimately I was able to sell in 2014, the year we did 400 plus transactions, I think like 420 or so, I worked about 40 or 41 days. So. So I got the business to the point where I was sitting in the owner's seat. And then ultimately I took on a business part. And then, and then I ended up selling the business outright. And so. And I also have a background in acquisitions and strategy from a aerospace company. And so I don't say any of that to impress you. I've just seen, you know, how businesses are set up to run without the owner. And in doing that, you create an amazing sort of opportunity for your team to take on additional responsibility and to really engage in the business. But you can also create a lifestyle for yourself that makes the business more enjoyable. Real estate is a really, really hard business. Being a top agent, selling, you know, 30, 40, 50 homes a year and not figuring out leverage or systems or having a plan or any of this stuff does not lead to a life worth living for the most part, right? You're working evenings and weekends, and you really can't get away if you're being honest with yourself and take time away from the office. So let's unpack the four steps to go from agent to owner. Number one is to. And this is probably the most important. And I'll have the backdrop here. And I learned this from Tony Robbins, but I've heard many, many business builders and coaches and personal development folks say this, that even 80% of success in anything comes down to your psychology and your mindset. So there's 20% strategies and tactics and the how to's, and 80% comes down to your psychology and mindset. And so number one is to begin with the end in mind. Meaning, like, regardless of where you are today, let's say you're doing a hundred thousand gci and you want to get to a million gci and you want to be sitting in more of the owner seat at 10 times the size of your current business. And it's the mindset just, okay, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to be only working soi sphere of influence listings at a million dollar business working less than 40 hours a week. I've got a licensed assistant, two buyer agents that act as my showing agents. The business is completely dialed in. I'm taking in, you know, five, six hundred thousand dollars a year for working 2,000 hours a year. Right. That's the, that's the math of it. So begin with the end in mind. Do you have a clear vision about where you want to be three short years from now? That's the challenge I have. Each one of these steps is going to come with a challenge. So take, take time. Maybe pause the podcast or the video here. Do I have a clear plan in place or a roadmap in place that I can build my business out in such a way where I can live a life of meaning, impact and satisfaction. That is number one to begin with the end in mind. And this goes for business and also life, right? You want a strong relationship, you need to sort of have a vision for what you want, what you it to look like. Same thing with your physical body, your walk with your creator, all that good stuff. Number two is to know your worth as an advisor. There are certain things that we do on a daily basis, you know, tasks that we do that are highly paid versus not so highly paid. And there's probably like 12 core activities that an agent does. But it's everything from, you know, get listing paperwork signed, enter listings into the mls, take pictures, put yard signs out, put a lockbox on the property, drive buyers around, you know, to look at properties, open doors, write contracts, negotiate deals, new business development, follow up, email, calendar, you know, running business errands. Right. There's all these things we do as real estate agents to make a living. The question is, have you decided? This is the question for number two. Have you decided how much money you want to make per hour in your real estate business? Probably. If you've been listening to the podcast, you've heard me tell this story over and over again, I will tell it one more time because you may not have run these numbers for yourself the year so 2007, I, I built my business in the great recession and most of my most successful members took advantage of those really tough years to, to scale their businesses. At the end of my part year 2007, 10 months, I netted $37,000. So I don't want to go into the story about how I wasted so much money on a whole bunch of stuff that didn't work. Had a bad deal with my broker at the time, um, but I only netted 37,000. And I calculated in those 10, 10 months, I worked about 2,000 hours, $18 and 50 cents an hour. And I left a job where I was making multiple six figures, working about 2,000 hours. So I was making $100 an hour, and I traded it in for $17.50 an hour. No, 1850. It was 1850. So I decided when I knew that number and I was like, holy crap, I did not leave. You know, I want to make twice the amount of money I was making in my corporate job, and I want to work the same amount of hours. That's just what I decided. And so again, this was me a little bit beginning with the end in mind. I want to make a half a million dollars working 2,000 hours. That's $250 an hour on average. Which means I cannot spend any time doing the 85% of the job of real estate agent, which is generally administrative in nature. It's not that those things aren't critically important, because taking pictures, designing brochures, uploading photos to mls, getting document signed documents, initials, attending, closing, showing homes, you know, putting yards, all that stuff has to get done. It's critically important, but it's administrative in nature. So there's an exercise that we do every quarter where we basically study where we're spending our time, and then we're looking at what, in the realm of the things we're doing, all of these tasks that I did, I do regularly, what am I passionate about and what pays really well, and the things that you're really passionate about that pay really well, you get to keep doing those. The things that you're not passionate about that don't pay well, you need to get off of your plate immediately that the things that you're passionate about that don't pay well. So low, high passion, low pay, you still ultimately need to get them off your plate if you're going to make the kind of money that you want to make. And then unfortunately, the things that are high pay, low passion for most of you, you still need to keep doing those. But the key is to get only into activities that are high pay, whether or not they're high passion or low Passion is debatable, but you need to spend most of your time most of every day doing the things that pay good money in real estate. And that's P, L A N S. So I'll say plans prospecting, which is new business development lead follow up which is following up with people you've had conversations in the past with. Appointments, which is new buyer and seller consultations. N is negotiate. So negotiate deals. Getting a home under contract or as the seller's agent or the buyer's agent and then S is systems building systems. So PLN and us, those are the highest pay activities in real estate. They all pay, you know, over $250, some of them over a thousand dollars an hour. So more time every day doing those things, you'll be more successful. That's number two. Number three and I just mentioned it is slow down. It fits right into number two. Passion versus pay is only possible knowing where you're spending your time. If you slow down and you take an inventory of where you're spending your time, I'm almost certain. Let me just check if you go to real estate business growth.com real estate business growth.com I'm pretty sure if you. Yeah, we still have a bonus. So you can get a copy of the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator but also you can get a copy of the 14 day time study and that's what you're going to want to get access to. Essentially it will help you inventory where you're spending your time and, and then catalog it against what is dollar productive and what's not dollar productive. It is a monumentally painful exercise that is the most valuable thing you'll ever do. So slow down. Once a quarter take a look at where you're spending your time. Be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time and, and you'll be better off for it. This is what I do. So it's not like I'm not preaching at you to do something that I know doesn't work. Even if there's a little bit of short term pain involved, I know this is going to lead you to a better place ultimately. So that's number three. Slow down, do less, do the time study and what's the question for number three? So this is the question you need to ask yourself. Am I investing my time, the bulk of my time in a way where it's focused on the highest dollar productive activities possible and just, just sit with that. Right? So it could give you like a scale of one to ten. One. No way. I'm running like a chicken with my head cut off, doing all the admin stuff in my business. 10, you know, you're only working on the thousand plus dollar per hour activities. All right, number four is to build systems. Easy to say yet it's sort of this mystifying business coaching term is like, yeah, leverage through systems. Right? You need to build systems. So what is the system? This is pretty simple when you think about it. So assuming you've done the time study, you've considered passion versus pay, the building systems part comes in. It's just looking at the tasks that, that are button clicking in nature where if you're being honest with yourself, anyone can do them and they don't have to be physically in your, in your geographic market. It could be that like they're more like an errand, like dropping off a lockbox or brochures or picking up a check, you know, due diligence check and getting it to the attorney, putting it, installing a yard sign. Those are necessary activities, but they're not really. You don't need to be the one doing them. So the question is, how do you get someone else to do them? You simply record, you know, either through loom or you record yourself doing the physical activity like, okay, I no longer want to install yard signs. So you're going to pick up your iPhone and you're going to take it in the back of your car. You can say, okay, this is the yard sign call, this is the yard sign. This is how I install it. And you're going to hire some college kid or high school kid or there's plenty of, you know, talented courier runner type people in every market and they don't charge a lot of money and they can do it for you. So you actually build the system, record it, tell them how you want to do it and then you just get it off your plate. And then you figure out a system through Slack or text where you or your admin can reach out to that person when you need that thing done. You have to view everything in the business as something ultimately you can exit from that activity. And you may never exit from listing, you know, from listing presentations or negotiating contracts or some of those highly dollar productive activities. But you have to have this mindset that it's possible. So the question here is, what things am I doing in my business that if I'm being really honest with myself, I don't need to be the one doing them. These things are actually hindering my ability to be financially free. Question mark. So that is complete. Four Steps to make the shift from agent to owner. If you're new to the podcast, I am looking for a hundred agents to become my next case study. So I want to take your business if you're less than 500,000 GCI, I don't care if you're 50,000 or a hundred thousand or 250,000. I'm looking for 100 agents to help scale their businesses to a million GCI. Working less hours, with less stress, with more profit in the next two to three years. A shift storm is coming. I think we're going to be okay in terms of real estate sales because supply is still way low compared to the demand even though interest rates are going up. But I think the fear, uncertainty and doubt, the FUD that we're seeing right now in the general market with buyers and sellers and all of it, I think it's even going to get the best of agents. So I think a lot of agents are going to be sort of freaking out getting out of the industry. I've launched a program called Business Foundations where literally for a no commitment, cancel at any time with 30 days notice. You can get coach live twice per week, trained by me once per week. A cadence of four quarterly business planning workshops, 1 annual planning workshops, 2 two day events, digital summits that you'll be invited to and access to every tool system that I've ever built. Plus our weekly mastermind call where we're giving away our best stuff sales and production related every single week. And so go to get businessfoundations.com I am doing this because I want to create our next case studies. I want to find agents that are business minded that know, that know in their hearts with this shift storm that if they align themselves with the right community, with the right trainer, with the right coach that they can actually take a unfair share, say quote unquote unfair share of the market. Right? You want to be the agent that and that's how I built my business. In the Great Recession. I went from 27 to 44 to 58 to 118 to 178 to 248 sides. That was the last year of the Great Recession. I went from no license to 248 transactions in a single year in 2012 and I did one of those transactions. So I made the full shift from no license to five years later, completely out of production. And then I went down from five days to three days to two days to one day. In those next two years we sold over 400 homes and I worked 40 days right and I made $2800 per hour in 2014. Sounds completely egotistical. It's not intended that way. It's just that I will be your guide in these next two to three years to help you, you know, double or 10x your business, but get to a million GCI. That's where the business becomes really, really fun. Where you can afford, you know, virtual assistance to run, you know, our systems, but the backstage of your business. Some really cool things we can do if we can help you scale your business. So go to get business foundations dot com. We'll see you over there. Much love, much respect.