5 Steps to Scale Your Real Estate Business to $1M & Beyond in ANY Economic Climate

We want it to run smoothly. We want to think that we've got it all together. And the reality is we don't. And a lot of times it's messy. And the goal here is to show you a better path a little bit more About Me My parents actually divorced when I was four and it was due to the fact that my dad was an active alcoholic. He drank until I was 15 years old. So I didn't have a really good, you know, loving sort of environment. I mean, my mom was certainly there and she was super supportive and loving. But I didn't have a dad really in my life growing up, or at least one that I could rely on to provide any stability. Actually had student loans for a career I didn't pursue. I was an engineer and undergrad and I got out of engineering. I didn't have any sales or marketing experience before I got into real estate and I didn't have any business building experience. Here's the thing though. I did have a desire to grow and, and a willingness to bet on myself. So my only question I have for you as we enter this training is are you willing to take a risk and bet on yourself? Right. The first step is just a willingness to do something different than you've been trying in the past and just take a risk and bet on yourself. So step number one is how to think like a business owner when it comes to leveraged growth. And here is my sort of encompassing statement. You don't have to be a business owner to think like one, but you do have to think like a business owner to become one. So that's a way of saying that this shift to becoming a business owner from becoming, you know, going from an agent to an owner starts in your mind and you have to start thinking like, like a business owner. Here's the E Myth question. If you've ever read the book Michael Gerber, it's thinking about your business as the franchise prototype. Even if you're never going to replicate it. But you have to think about it that way. So how would you think. How would you have to think about your business differently if you're going to replicate it 10,000 times? Just think about that for a second. How would you think about it differently if you couldn't show homes to 10,000 buyers in 10,000 markets, or go on listing appointments or enter listings into MLS or run a sign out to a property or take photos or just think about all the things you do all day long and how you couldn't replicate those if it was just you Doing it all. So that is the fundamental question that we ask. My example of the ultimate E myth, the entrepreneurial myth, really meaning that you're. You go into business for yourself, thinking you're going to, you know, be a business owner, and you're just doing all the technical work. My dad actually worked for Wella, it's a hair company in Sweden. He was a platform, a stage artist or cosmetologist with them. And he came to the US to pursue the American dream and be a business owner. And he went straight into all the technical work. He was cutting hair, washing hair, doing hair color, doing perms, doing all that stuff. But then he was sweeping the floors, taking out the garbage, ordering supplies, right? Counting money and making sure that there's, you know, all of that stuff. And he didn't ever make a great living. And so he was just the E myth, the entrepreneurial myth that if you go into business for yourself and magically you're going to be a business owner and you end up just doing the technical work, just grinding out the technical work. So same is true for real estate agents, same was true for me. This is 2008, probably. Anders is probably about a year old, maybe not even in this picture, where all I was doing all the time was working. I had no leverage whatsoever, and I wasn't even making that great money. So I sold a lot of homes. Priced. Sold 44 homes this year. I was top 1% of my market. Or better yet, I was working all the time. There was no freedom in it and certainly no impact because I wasn't able to be a great dad or a great husband. I wasn't present at all. Reminds me of a client of ours, Dave Hook, who, when I met Dave, Jenny, his wife was pregnant with their first child and he was working more than 70 hours a week. He sold like 80 to 90 homes with a small team, but he was doing most of the production himself. I remember when we met, he just sort of agreed to suspend disbelief and take that risk and bet on himself. And where it took us a good two years to really get the systems laid out. And he was able to grow to, you know, from under 100 sides to roughly 240 sides. He was able to get out of production, so get out of working with buyers and sellers. He went from 70 hours a week consistently to under 40 hours a week. And he was able to build a small, really profitable team around him where all the jobs of the agent could get done, but he didn't have to do them all. And it's just an awesome story. A 5X, you know, increase in income and half of the hours worked. And I'll get into more around the myth around, you know, working more hours and making, making more money in that. But just a really awesome story that this is not only possible, but it is 100% predictable. So the question for you is like, do you have any limiting beliefs when it comes to building a real real estate business? A business that's built on tools and systems and runs without your hands being in every piece of it? And just maybe even pause this training and think about that, right? What are your limiting beliefs around building a real real estate business? And so here are some steps that you can take to shift your your mindset. Number one is to think the long game in your business. Like, if you're going to build this business the right way three to five years from now, what does it look like? Begin with the end in mind. What impact do you ultimately want to have in your real estate business? And remember the franchise prototype, you're building this thing to not have to rely on you. Even if it 100% relies on you today, you're building it for the future. And then just to realize that success in anything is 80% psychology, which is your mindset, in the process of building this business, you're going to have people that don't see it the way that you do. Our industry doesn't reward one person selling a lot of homes. It operates because a whole bunch of agents sell a few homes. So you need to guard your heart and mind around not only those around you in the industry, but also just news and social media, right? There's nothing really good that's going to support meaningful goals in your business, in your life. And then last thing here is to get the emotional leverage, you need to take action. Whatever it takes to take action on this path, this roadmap that I'm laying out for you today, the emotional leverage is maybe letting down your family or maybe financially you're not where you want to be, or maybe you have a vision for a different home in the future or nicer things, or paying for, you know, college for your, for your kids or retiring at some point, having a wealth plan or retirement plan. Right? You have, you need that emotional leverage so you can take action. All right, so step number two is residential real estate has changed dramatically and you must have a response to it. And so let me unpack this here. Here's the statement. Your ability to scale your real estate business is directly correlated to your ability to Serve your clients at the highest level. I fully believe the only survival, the only survivors in real estate will be those that commit to providing a client experience that knocks the socks off their clients. Right? To provide such an emotionally charged wow experience to their clients, where the natural byproduct is those clients saying really great things and those words of praise are used back in the marketing to create this virtuous cycle. And so there is a shift storm, whether we like it or not, that has four parts that are going on right now in real estate and really in every industry. Number one, it's changing consumer patterns, right? Consumers go from the Apple store to a Disney Cruise and then they go shopping at Nordstrom and then they jump in an Uber and then they go visit their real estate agent, right? We need to be providing an experience that's at par or above based on any other experience that they have. Number two, it's, you know, technology is. Before I got into real estate and I didn't have any business building experience. Here's the thing though, I did have a desire to grow and a willingness to bet on myself. So my only question have for you as we enter this training is are you willing to take a risk and bet on yourself? Right. The first step is just a willingness to do something different than you've been trying in the past and just take a risk and bet on yourself. So step number one is how to think like a business owner when it comes to leveraged growth. And here is my sort of encompassing statement. You don't have to be a business owner that to think like one, but you do have to think like a business owner to become one. So that's a way of saying that this shift to becoming a business owner from becoming, you know, going from an agent to an owner starts in your mind and you have to start thinking like a business owner. Here's the E. Myth question. If you've ever read the book Michael Gerber, it's thinking about your business as the franchise prototype, even if you're never going to replicate it. But you have to think about it that way. So how would you think, how would you have to think about your business differently if you were going to replicate it 10,000 times? Just think about that for a second. How would you think about it differently if you couldn't show homes to 10,000 buyers in 10,000 markets or go on listing appointments or enter listings into MLS or run a sign out to a property or take photos or just think about all the things you do all day long and how you Couldn't replicate those if it was just you doing it all. So that is the fundamental question that we ask. My example of the ultimate E myth, the entrepreneurial myth, really meaning that you're. You go into business for yourself, thinking you're going to, you know, be a business owner and you're just doing all the technical work. My dad actually worked for Wella, it's a hair company, Sweden. He was a platform, a stage artist or cosmetologist with them. And he came to the US to pursue the American dream and be a business owner. And he went straight into all the technical work. He was cutting hair, washing hair, doing hair color, doing perms, doing all that stuff. But then he was sweeping the floors, taking out the garbage, ordering supplies, right? Counting money and making sure that there's, you know, all of that stuff. And he didn't ever make a great living. And so he was just the E myth, the entrepreneurial myth that if you go into business for yourself and magically you're going to be a business owner and you end up just doing the technical work, just grinding out the technical work. Same is true for real estate agents. Same was true for me. This is 2008, probably. Anders is probably about a year old, maybe not even in this picture, where all I was doing all the time was working. I had no leverage whatsoever and I wasn't even making that great money. So I sold a lot of homes, priced all 44 homes this year. I was top 1% of my market. Or better yet, I was working all the time. There was no freedom in it and certainly no impact because I wasn't able to be a great dad or a great husband. I wasn't present at all. Reminds me of a client of ours, Dave Hook, who, when I met Dave, Jenny, his wife was pregnant with their first child and he was working more than 70 hours a week. He sold like 80 to 90 homes with a small team, but he was doing most, most of the production himself. I remember when we met, he just sort of agreed to suspend disbelief and take that risk and bet on himself, where it took us a good two years to really get the systems laid out. And he was able to grow to, you know, from under 100 sides to roughly 240 sides. He was able to get out of production, so get out of working with buyers and sellers. He went from 70 hours a week consistently to under 40 hours a week. And he was able to build a small, really profitable team around him where all the jobs of the agent could get done. But he didn't have to do them all. And it's just an awesome story. A 5x increase in income and, and half of the hours worked. And I'll get into more around the myth around, you know, working more hours and making, making more money in that. But just a really awesome story that this is not only possible, but it is 100% predictable. So the question for you is like, do you have any limiting beliefs when it comes to building a real real estate business? A build a business that's built on tools and systems and runs without your hands being in every piece of it. Just maybe even pause this training and think about that. What are your limiting beliefs around building a real real estate business? And so here are some steps that you can take to shift your mindset. Number one is to think the long game in your business. Like, if you're going to build this business the right way three to five years from now, what does it look like? Begin with the end in mind. What impact do you ultimately want to have in your real estate business? And, and remember the franchise prototype, you're building this thing to not have to rely on you, Even if it 100% relies on you today, you're building it for the future. And then just to realize that success in anything is 80% psychology, which is your mindset. In the process of building this business, you're going to have people that don't see it the way that you do. Our industry doesn't reward one person selling a lot of homes. It operates because a whole bunch of agents sell a few homes. So you need to guard your heart and mind around not only those around you in the industry, but also just news and social media. Right? There's nothing really good that's going to support meaningful goals in your business, in your life. And then last thing here is to get the emotional leverage, you need to take action. Whatever it takes to take action on this path, this roadmap that I'm laying out for you today. The emotional leverage is maybe letting down your family or maybe financially you're not where you want to be, or maybe you have a vision for a different home in the future or nicer things, or paying for, you know, college for your, for your kids or retiring at some point, having a wealth plan or retirement plan. Right? You need that emotional leverage so you can take action. All right, so step number two is, you know, residential real estate has changed dramatically and you must have a response to it. And so let me unpack this here. Here's the statement. Your ability to scale your real estate business is directly correlated to your ability to serve your clients at the highest level. I fully believe the only survival, the only survivors in real estate will be those that commit to providing a client experience that, that knocks the socks off their clients, right? To provide such an emotionally charged wow experience to their clients, where the natural byproduct is those clients saying really great things and those words of praise are used back in the marketing to create this virtuous cycle. And so there is a shift storm, whether we like it or not, that has four parts that are going on right now in real estate and really in every industry. Number one, it's changing consumer patterns, right? Consumers go, you know, from the Apple store to a Disney cruise and then they go shopping at Nordstrom and then they jump in an Uber and then they go visit their real estate agent, right? We need to be providing an experience that's at par or above based on any other experience that they have. Number two, it's, you know, technology is evolving rapidly and the ways that consumers want to be met and our ability to, you know, not just sort of use technology as a way to email or text, but really provide a solution, whether it's buyer searching or seller selling that is helping them get the outcome that they want. And so if you're not paying attention to technology, we have a portion of our training we call critical tech tools where if you're not utilizing technology at the highest level, it's going to impact your business. Number three are structural industry changes where there are ibuyers in most markets, where they're changing the way that consumers are, are transacting real estate. They'll actually go in and buy the current home that you're in, buy the home you want to move to, let you move without selling your current home. They take possession of it and they make the whole process easier. It costs a lot of money, but they're changing the way that the industry operates. And then lastly is that the housing market is always in transition and the economy is always changing. And so that's the, that's something that's going to happen in our economy whether we like it or not. There is a, a period of reckoning for some of the decisions we've made over the last 20, 30 years in our economy. And that's not a political statement at all as much as it's to say is that some of that stuff will sort of affect us at some point in the future. So the question for you is, how am I thinking about my business in terms of my ability to scale based on the service you provide your clients. So what I mean by that is, like, is the natural byproduct of the service you provide to buyers and sellers worthy of multiple referrals before they leave the closing table. That is how we want to measure success in the business. And we're playing this game whether we like it or not, right? We're generating leads, we're having conversations, we're setting consultations, we're meeting folks, we're signing them, you know, up to buyer, buyer loyalty agreements or listing agreements. We're. We're getting them through the process, we're getting them under contract, we are closing them out. And hopefully we're doing this in such a way where they're endeared to us and they love us and they're going to sing our praises, and we need to have a deliberate process around all of that. And so I have a really amazing experience where I sort of put everything. I compare every experience with going on a Disney cruise. We've been on five or six of them at this point. I think we're doing our sixth or seventh this coming spring here. And the family with us in this picture, they had never been on a Disney cruise before. Yet when he mentioned that he was thinking of doing something for spring break, I'm like, you have to go on a Disney cruise. This is actually their second Disney cruise with us. And they wouldn't have gone if I wasn't, like, the most obnoxious, raving fan of Disney cruises. And we're not cruise people, you know, yet. A Disney cruise with kids is like nothing you've ever experienced before, in my opinion. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it's certainly for me. And I'm going to let you know that it was an awesome experience. Another experience I had was this was on a flight where my wife and I received a handwritten note by our. It's not a stewardess, I guess it's a steward. Basically just saying, hey, thanks for flying with us, and, you know, have a great evening. Walking off the plane, I turned on my phone, I checked my email, and I was sent this survey. Net Promoter score survey. So if you're not, like, actively searching for feedback for people that are experiencing your services, you're missing the mark because you're missing the opportunity to get better. And so it's to rethink your funnel so that the whole point is to create a client that is willing to sing your praises that is the source of all that's good in business. And if you're Just buying junk leads and you're sort of missing the opportunity. I'll get into that one in a second. So you have to get clear on what makes you different. And in my humble opinion, it is your ability to deliver an experience to your buyer clients and your seller clients that is better than any experience they, any consumer experience or service they get anywhere. Meaning just think about like the best experiences you've had in any other industry and you need to be on par or better with those experiences. And you have to have a response. You can't just put your head in the sand and hope this thing is going to work out in your favor. It's not. It's not right. Disruption is happening in our industry and you have to respond and draw a line in the sand and say, from this day forward, I'm going to commit to building a system that provides at a different level in real estate B school. I mean, we have all the client care systems built out, all the scripts that your administrators would use or you would use for showing properties, for listing properties, for contract to closing, for active buyers, for homes that are on the market, all of that. And you need to be building those things out in your business. I think of Dan Jones when I think about, you know, building a business that's based on service and not paying for a bunch of junk leads. And I'll get into that story in a second. Dan. I met Dan. He was actually on my real estate team as an agent. And I knew he wanted to build his own thing. And I was like, I started real estate B school. He went out on his own. He did it for a couple years on his own. He did about 60 to 65 sides with just an assistant. And which is awesome. Like that's top 1%. Yet he was working the seven days, you know, evenings type. Traditional success right in our industry. And when I first started working with Dan more formally as a business coach, I looked at what he was doing and he had four paid lead sources. I'm like, dude, you've got to get all, you got to get rid of those. We've got to focus just on providing a service that is referral worthy. We got down to one paid lead source. He went from 65 transactions to 105. We added back a second lead source who went to 175 to 225. And then I think last year he did no, then 275. Then I think he did about 300 last year. So I've been working with Dan for about five years. He's actually one of our business coaches now. So he went from solo agent to five years later doing five times as much business. He went from 70, sometimes more than 70 hours a week, making only so much money you can make as a solo agent to been out of production for a couple years now since Charlotte was born, a little bit before she was born. And he actually was able to take two months off to be with Nadia as they were sort of adjusting to the new world order of being parents. So just an awesome, awesome story. And he's one of our business coaches. And so here are some steps you can shift to. You can use to shift your service, right? Study other service industries. This is where it gets fun. You know, I started shopping at Nordstrom. It's different than when I shopped at TJ Maxx, right? So I studied that. What's different about it? Make it fun and embrace the challenge. You have to go down this path. You cannot just sort of hope that just pushing out transactions and just, you know, marginally serving your clients is gonna work in the. In the long term. Be willing to utilize leverage in the form of systems and people. We'll get into that more in step number five, make it life or death. Because I really do believe that it is. I believe your ability to scale your business, make more money, have more freedom, and make more of an impact is hinged on the systems you create in client care. And then track your progress by soliciting feedback from your clients. That's critical. We ask for feedback at like seven different points in the process. We have systems built out and scripts built out for people to continually give us feedback so we know if we're delivering on the promises we made in the sales process. And then last but definitely not least is to get social proof to scale your business. And I'll go into that a little bit more in a second. Step number three, the key to filling your pipeline with high quality, low cost buyer and seller leads. Marketing is the biggest leverage point in your business. And it requires letting the world know that you can serve their real estate needs like no other agent in your market. Right? That is what we're after. And this fits into the step that we just talked about, which is just the client care systems you have in place. Question here is, am I truly using marketing as leverage and building lead generation pillars that can run without me? And what I mean by that, the reason there are those oil rigs, those, you know, we want you to set up lead generation levers in your business that are good for 50 or more transactions. It may take you a couple of years to get to 50, may take you three years, but you're setting up one of these at a time in your business, right? So if you want to sell 200 homes, you need to set up four lead gen levers, right? We've got them built out in real estate B school right now. I just want you to understand the concept of lead generation levers. And you go deep on these and not wide, and it's massive leverage in your business. This is something I committed to earlier on in my journey. I called and expired once. He was mean to me. I was like, I'm not gonna do that again. I'm gonna learn how to be a really good direct response marketer. And so that's where I dug in there. I didn't go down the path of giving a bunch of money to Zillow or realtor.com or Google Pay per click. I did some of that the last three, four years. We're out of all of it. We have no paid lead sources and we'll do 3 million GCI, right? And that's about 275 to 300 average price point. So selling a lot of homes, not doing a lot of paid lead sources makes for a very profitable business. So stop being hostage thinking that you're a good marketer because you're paying Zillow money to generate leads for you. Letting someone get in the middle of you and your client, buyers and sellers is not marketing, I assure you. The goal here is to tell their story. So when you do a good job for buyers and sellers, you get them to say good words about you and you use that in your marketing. It's this virtuous cycle that you can build up. And social proof is everything in marketing. It is becoming almost the entire game. And so if you're not focusing on social proof, you're probably not playing the right game. And here's the power of social proof. I went into my dentist and I was checking out and my dentist said, hey, have you given us a five star review on Google yet? I said, no. And I. She said, pull out your phone. I'm like, okay. She said, pull out a browser. She said, go to Google. Type in Ballantine Dentistry. I'm like, okay. She's like, click there. And she's like guiding me through this as if I didn't know how to use my phone. And she said, click there, click there. She's like, she pulled up the five stars. She said, did you have a five star experience today? I Said, I did. She said, click five stars. She said, write some kind words about us. I said, okay. I pressed submit. I said that was amazing. I said two questions. Why do you think the owners asked you to do that? And that's the first question. The second question is do they pay you to do that above and beyond your normal pay? And she said, well, the owners told us that radio mass media is not pulling like it used to and that we need social proof to generate business. And they give me a small bonus, a small cash bonus to get for every referral or testimonial I get on Google. I'm like that is unbelievably, believably awesome. Here's the thing. I started on radio with these guys. There's three owners at the same exact time actually sold one of their houses in the early days when I was on radio. And we found the same thing that radio. We scaled our radio back from 20 grand a month to five grand a month. It is not pulling. So the benefits of tracking is that we know it's not pulling so we can adjust things. So that's the power of social proof. So when you go to Google and you type best dentist in 28277, there it is. Valentine center for Dentistry 1033. Five star reviews. So immediately I go to my real estate office. This was for a cleaning on a Tuesday morning and I go into the office on Tuesday I go right to our transaction department and I totally out of order the way things should happen. I said you need to start doing this. Here's what happened. Let's implement it right away. We were at like I think 30 or 40, like just people would go and just give us reviews but it wasn't intentional. And so that was the light bulb moment for me. So the question for you is are you the best agent in your market? When you search best real estate agent in Charlotte, North Carolina here's what comes up. High Performance Real Estate Advisors. 580 reviews we started so we've added in less than a couple years over 500 reviews. They're all legit. All from clients that know like and trust us. We've done a great job for and we're getting business now from this. People are searching best real estate agent in Charlotte, North Carolina going to our website and and they're reaching out to us. This didn't cost anything. We have a system built out for you to increase your social proof presence with a simple system that costs you nothing. Right. So are you thinking like this in your business when I think about Dave Friedman, another one of our members and looking at what he's done with social proof in his business and not necessarily relying on junk leads to build his business. I actually met Dave the year he did 65 transactions. He, he had a part time administrator and he was just realizing that that life was not sustainable. His wife Hailey was not happy and we had to go, we had to do something because it wasn't sustainable what he was doing. We committed to working together. He was open to this concept of leverage in the form of people and systems. He went from 70, 80 hours a week to he doesn't go into the office anymore. He's been out of production for like three years. He did 400 sides last year I think for almost 4 million of GCI and super profitably 7 figure net income, right. And it came from this realization that the business is more than him. So you can build a real real estate business and not have to grind out transactions. And he's just a cool dude. If he's not fishing, he's not happy. And just spending time with Haley on vacation. He went from no weeks of vacation for the first few years I met him to consistently 12 to 15 weeks of vacation. He just took 30 days to go to the Galapagos, two weeks on a fishing trip and two weeks with his, with his bride Haley. So just a cool story that sort of came from this. All of these steps I'm teaching you this mindset of business, this, you know, being unwilling to accept the status quo in our industry and paying people for leads versus, you know, creating your own brand and doing an epic job when it comes to client care. And so here are the steps you need to take to shift your marketing. Number one is you need to track everything, right? Real estate B school, we are obsessed with tracking. We built out these simple tracking tools. You need to get there, you need to go deep and not wide. Remember, you want to build these oil rigs that are going 50 transactions deep. Each and every one of them, we call them lead gen levers in real estate B school. And then imagine you couldn't spend any money on leads, right? What would the world look like if you couldn't spend any money on leads? And to use social media strategically in your business. But be careful because it could be a massive time suck. It's got to be strategic and it's got to be business serving. Install a process for getting testimonials that is going to be the lifeblood of your business is getting testimonials doing a great job getting testimonials, using them in your marketing. It's a pretty simple process. Step number four, let's bust the myth that you must put in more hours to make more money. This is the sort of traditional success in our industry has you working more hours if you want to make more money 100% of the time. So the income you've been making in real estate is simply the result of the choices you've made with where to spend your time. Right. You're only making the kind of money that you're making because you've made certain choices with how to spend your time. And so the question is, what are the most dollar productive activities in a real estate business? Just think of all the things you do in a given week. Are all of them equal in terms of the, the dollar productivity of those activities? Right. Are you always working in your highest and best use the highest pay activities in your business, or are you spending time working in things that aren't highly paid? They can be super important, but maybe they don't pay as much. Right. So 80% of your time needs to be spent doing the most dollar productive activities, which are listing appointments, buyer consultations to secure new clients. They could be building systems, recruiting, coaching. It's likely not entering a listing into MLS or you know, doing a walkthrough with a buyer. Those are important things. They're just not highly paid activities. Right. A showing agent will work for 20 to 25 bucks an hour, where if you want to make 200 to $250 an hour, you can't spend a lot of time doing those activities. And so the reason why you're not making the kind of money that you want to make is because you're making poor decisions with your time. So the cool thing is that we all have the same amount of time. We all have 168 hours in a week. So time is finite. My ability to make 500 to $1,000 an hour consistently in my business activities, there's nothing special about what I'm doing. I've just made the commitment to get out of the things that somebody else can do better than me. And it's a different pay grade than I want. And there's no ego in that. It's just a fact. If I want to make a thousand bucks an hour, I better stop doing things that I can pay someone 50 bucks an hour to do. And it is crazy, right? In so many ways, we are in extraordinary times with the amount of information we're being bombarded with, with, you know, Being a real estate agent is taught in a way where it is seven days a week, right? So this is extraordinary times. You know, news, Netflix, having kids, you know, having clients that want to talk to you seven days a week. It's a crazy industry that we picked. I want you to understand that there is a way to quantify where you are in your journey. I call this the Business Freedom Index. So this is the total profit before taxes and your own compensation divided by the total hours that you work. And if there's a spouse, it's your total income as a family divided by the total hours that both of you work in the business. And this is all the hours that you work in the business, in the office and at home. So let's say that you made 100,000, you know, adjusted gross income. So that's on your tax return. It's literally called AGI Pre tax. Pre what you pay yourself. And you worked 3,000 hours to get there. That's 60 hours a week. 100,000 divided by 3,000 is $33 per hour. That's a typical top agent. The hours they work and the money they make. $33 an hour. So the punchline in that is you're spending time on things that pay 10, 15, $20 an hour, and you're also doing things that pay 500 to $1,000 an hour. Systems work, listing consultations, negotiating deals, prospecting, lead generating. All those things pay a lot of money per hour, yet your total compensation per hour is lower than you want. For me, I committed to doing 500,000 AGI. This is in my head. And I wanted to work 2,000 hours or 50 hours, 40 hours a week on average. So 40 hours a week times 50 weeks is 2,500 is the one, the number I wanted, and that was $250 an hour. This one number, the Business Freedom Index. I didn't call it the Business Freedom Index back then. I've since started to call it that. That $250 an hour allowed me to see that most of the things I was working on was, were not leading me to make the kind of money that I wanted to in my real estate business. And that's a massive awareness. So if, if your number, if you want to make 100 bucks an hour, and your number is 40 bucks an hour, now you have to let go of the things that don't make you more than 100 bucks an hour. And we've got a process that we use. It's a quarterly process that we use. It's called delegate to elevate. It's in our business freedom planning process. So I can't really go into the process because it's quite involved, but it's just a commitment every quarter that you're going to shed the things that don't make you the kind of money that you want to make. Stacy Peterson was the first client to Real Estate B School ever. She now runs the entire show. All I really get to do are things like this and the podcast and some videos. She is our coo, effectively our CEO. And when I met her, she was in the grind, working buyers and sellers, building a team. Her kids are the same age as my kids, so we really clicked in that regard and we got to work. Within six months we were able to get her out of production, out of working with buyers and sellers. She tripled her business in three years and she was able to sell it for a seven figure valuation in a market where a sale of a real estate team or brokerage had never happened before. And she's been out of that business for three or four years now. And so it is possible to do this the right way. All right, let me give you some concrete steps you can take to shift your productivity. First, think in terms of your highest and best use all the time. Is this the best use of my time? The thing I'm working on right now? Constantly ask yourself that question. Put it on a sticky note on your computer. Then honor your work on business time blocks in your calendar. We coach our members to have three 90 minute time blocks per week where they work on business. We give them plenty of stuff to do in those time blocks. But are you honoring those time blocks? Do you even have systems work in your business? Next is to calculate your current and your desired business freedom index and obsess over it. I wrote that $250 an hour on colored index cards and I obsessed over it. There will be necessary endings so you'll have to stop doing things that aren't serving this number right. The money's not everything. It leads to more freedom and more impact. That's what we want. Get on the same page with your loved one. That was key for me in those early days. I did it and I even. I hurt Julie, even though I was pretty good at being on the same page with her in terms of the amount of time I need to spend for the given season. And then last but definitely not least is you have to follow a proven plan. I do care if it's not Real Estate B school, as long as you're following A plan that allows you to make more money, have more freedom, and have more impact, and sort of systematically do that. That is what I want most for you. All right, step number five is the strategic tools and systems you'll need to start scaling your business today. We don't want to wait. So not only is it possible to scale your business without losing your life, but it is predictable when you have a clear roadmap in place. And here's the question. Based on where you are today, your business and your life, how confident are you in terms of where you're going? I really like that question because it forces you to think like, hey, based on where I'm at today and my finances and my business, with my time, with my relationships, with my physical body, my spiritual journey, based on where I am today, how confident am I in my ability to plan? In the roadmap that I'm on, am I even on a path? So, you know, we have this. These six stages of business growth when it comes to, you know, going from, you know, the start phase, which is under 100k, to ramp, to build, to lead, to exit, to own right. There's this process is built out. We've been doing this for a long time and refining and working on it. So the question for you is, do you know how to move through these levels? It's not that you need to move through all of them. They come with a little bit more freedom of time. They come with more money, they come with more impact and typically less hours as you go through them. And that's what real estate business school is about. It's about more money so that you can have more freedom, right of time and stress, and ultimately have more impact. That is what I wake up every morning. That is my obsession is to build systems and tools and to make the process easier for you to become a business owner than it was for me to be a business owner. And then, you know, who are you hanging out with right now? When I think about your ability to build this business, the tools and systems required to do it, who are you hanging out with now? And are they helping you, you know, do more in your business in terms of the ability to scale without your. You having hours, more hours into it? There was a study done by the Department of Psychology with Harvard University, and it says this, that 95% of your success or failure in life is determined by the people you habitually associated with. 95% is who you surround yourself with. Another study by the HSE center for Institutional Studies says those who hang out with high achievers, improve their own performance. And those who hang out with underachievers see their performance suffer. So same theme. It's, you're the average of the people that you hang out with, right? University of Chicago, Booth School of Business says this people who multiple people with multiple strong social networks have early access to valuable information, earn more money and receive more recognition. Cody Riddle, I met her when she was done with her real estate business. She was about 300,000 GCI, had just been through the Great Recession, was beat up. I think she was 18 years in the business then. And I said, cody, you've done the hard work. You've done the hard part. Let me show you a path that can have you making more money in less time with less stress. More money, more freedom, more impact. And she's like, all right, let's do it. We've been working together for four years or so. She just left me a message recently. And this was eight months in. She had done, she had closed a million GCI. She did a million two last year. This year she's on track for 1 million. And she is in love with her real estate business again. And she's scaling her business. She has seven or eight team members. She's working half the amount of hours. She is like, just fully fulfilled in her business. She doesn't want to exit production. She loves production. She just doesn't want to do it 70 hours a week. And so she just does listings on her team and she does it mainly in business hours. So a massive success story and a complete delinking of time and money. So here are some steps to shift your approach. Choose faith over fear when getting out of your comfort zone, right? This is gonna require you getting uncomfortable, but trust that there is a path for those that have gone ahead of you, right? I've been there, been at this thing for seven years. There is a path, and you have to think like a business owner and less like a real estate agent. You probably know everything you need to know about, about being a real estate agent, and it's not leading you to more freedom and more money. Growth isn't easy. So expect to have tough days. There will be tough days, right? But real estate is tough as it is, right? This is a different set of tough that we'll take you through, create the vision for your business and then break it down, right? We have a process we call our three year vision, one year plan. 90 Day World Weekly commitments and your daily cadence, right? You have to be able to vision the future three years and then break it down into what you need to do today. Alright, so here's what we learned, right? We learned how to make this shift in our minds around thinking like a business owner. The industry has changed, residential real estate has changed. And you need to respond to that change. You have to fill your pipeline with high quality, low cost leads. You need to become the marketer. We busted the myth on hours and money being a real estate agent and that it is possible to make more money in less time. And then in terms of the strategic tools and systems you'll need to start scaling your business today, I want permission to go through with you how a business coaching and training program set up for those who want to go further faster. So if everything we've gone through in our training today has you nodding your head like, yeah, I definitely see the impact of that, I want to do that in my business, then I want you to dig in right now and listen to what I have to say. So Business Foundations is a program specifically to set up for a solo agent or small team who's less than 500k GCI and you're feeling underpaid, overworked, overwhelmed. But you're ready to scale your real estate business without giving up your personal life. And you want to be able to put the things that matter most in your life first. And you want to create the future you deserve and you're willing to challenge the status quo in the real estate industry. If that's you, you'll be obsessed with Business Foundations and we would love to have you. Here's what you get in Business Foundations. It is unrestricted access to all of our tools and systems. Every tool and systems. Every tool and system that you'll need, every template, every presentation, every tracking tool, every ad you'll run for an administrator or a buyer, agent, anything you could think of, we've got this system built out. You'll have live coaching every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, every week. It's the shift from agent to owner requires live coaching to get there. I do a live weekly training every Wednesday. It's a huge part of the journey is learning new things. You'll get instant access to our foundational tools. These are eight tools that you'll run consistently in your business either every month or every quarter. And these are new tools that we just developed to help you get further faster in your business and more leverage, more easily. You'll get instant access to all our past weekly specialist trainings. That's all of our deep dive trainings on everything from agent recruiting to agent Onboarding, to tracking in your business, to our listing consultation framework, to our buyer consultation framework, to our lead management. The email sequence, like all of it is recorded in there and then access to our private online community as well. You'll also get access to every tool and system in our four drivers which are attracting buyer and seller prospects. That's all the database marketing, collateral, listing marketing, buyer marketing, everything in there. Convert, which is converting to a consultation and a client, all the lead management emails, text sequences, protocols around that, the appointment setting process, all the scripts and dialogues and tracking systems and then the consultation process including all of the sales presentations and then to scale to a million and beyond. This is creating your future, which is planning, knowing your numbers, which is tracking leading indicators and lagging indicators and then growing your team, which is all about culture and cadence and recruiting and onboarding new team members. All of those are valued at $7,988 and that's conservative. I want you to check out the member portal here in a second. I want to show you our Facebook community, but here are the membership levels. This is a monthly commitment, so there is no long term commitment. You can cancel at any time with 30 days notice. Many of our new members just see the value as a no brainer and they decide to opt into our annual plan which essentially you get two months free for opting in for our annual plan. So it's 2970 and you can cancel at any time within 30 days notice after that first year. So you say 594 not dollars and there is no coaching and training program like business foundations. If you want to build leverage into your business and do more transactions in less time, make more money and have more freedom so that you can have more impact. So here's our guarantee. We have no doubt that you'll be able to increase your income while decreasing your hours when you go all in with business foundations because this our guarantee is a little different than you might expect. 2 parts 100% results guarantee. We're guaranteed you'll succeed if you do the work and you reach out for support when you get stuck. We invest a massive amount of time and resources to support you every step of the way. The only time you won't succeed is if you give up. When things get challenging and we're there to help push you through those uncomfortable times. There's a 0% money back guarantee. We know our approach works 100% of the time for those who do the work. That's why you need to take 100% responsibility for your results. If you don't do the work or challenge or approach every step of the way, then you won't get the results you're looking to get. So we are 100% guaranteed this will work. And here's the thing. You get to learn from my mistakes, right? I went from 44 sides in 2008 to 248 sides in 2012. That's the year I sold one home and went down two years later to one day a week. The year we did over 400 sides. Right? It's a process. I struggled through it. I made every mistake you could make. I have a real estate team that has sold 4,000 homes. I co founded High Performance Real Estate Advisors. Working one day a week in that business, I built a multiple seven figure net worth. And that's just not me bragging. But I want you to know that this is real stuff that works. And I've made it my mission to help other agents and team leaders scale their businesses as quickly as painlessly and painlessly as possible. And here's the thing, it's not going to be perfect, but we will get through it together and it will be super intentional. Right? You can see Kendall, my daughter there's a little bit scared. Anders and the rest of the family are super excited that you're going to be joining us in business foundations. And here's the thing. This is what we stand for. Number one, it's more money to live the lifestyle you desire and deserve. Number two, it's more freedom to enjoy time with friends and family. Right? We want our business to serve our life, not vice versa. And number three, it's more impact to make a difference in your world, your community, and maybe even the world at large. Right? This quote guided me in those early years. Napoleon Hill says, whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve. And I believe that's true about making the shift from agent to owner. Take action right now. Go to getbusinessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and we'll see you over there. And we'll have the link available as well on this page for the appointment setting, scripts and the lead conversion challenge as well. So go to getbusinessfoundations.com and we will see you over there.