5 Things You're Doing That Are Hurting Your TEAM

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Lars Hedinborg here, founder, Real estate B school and co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors. So when I wrote down the title for this podcast, originally I wrote down three things you're doing that are absolutely crushing your team. And then I started to write the list and I came up with five and I just stopped. So I changed the title to five things you're doing that are crushing your team. In our highest level of real estate B school, it's our boardroom mastermind. And these folks are running minimum 1.5 million GCI. We've got 5 million plus in the group as well. And we do team health interviews. And so we're right in the midst of them right now. And so a team health interview is when, you know, me and a couple other boardroom members come in and we talk to the team members of each other's teams without the team leader for that team being in on the conversation. So it's an anonymous setting. We also talk to their spouses, which is even more revealing than talking to a team member. So I'll talk. Actually, I'm going to do the next podcast on five things you're doing that is just crushing your spouse. That'll be the next podcast because that's different than the things you're doing to crush your team. So the first thing I wrote down, and this is based on, you know, just probably, man, 50, 60 interviews of team members so far that I've been through. I'll probably go through 100. This is probably the best learning experience, best business training I've ever been through, is this blessing of being able to talk to the team members of team leaders that are running good sized businesses. The first thing, which was across the board, is that your impulsiveness is hurting the business and it's hurting them. And so impulsiveness is where you hopefully have a plan of what you're supposed to do this year and this quarter. If you missed my business cadence podcast, the one right before this, you can catch up there, hopefully have a version of that running if. If you don't. Well, let's say you do. Impulsiveness is like, we're already set in the quarter, we're already working on the key areas of the business, the projects that have to get done for us to achieve at a high level in our business. And then in the middle of a quarter, you, the team owner, decide like, hey, we need to change phone systems. Hey, we need to change our CRM. I've got to get over to this one, from this one. And here's the reason. If you're not running that cadence, that 3, 190 and then weekly and daily that I described in the podcast before this. You're impulsive all the time because there is no documented plan that you're following and you're always shooting from the hip and the folks that you're surrounding yourself with are not. Most people aren't good with impulsiveness. Like people want to know where they're going. They want to know the three year vision, they want a one year plan, they want to know that they have this security inside a 90 day world, a month or a week to just really go at, get after it against the goals you agreed to and then show you that they can do really, really well against predetermined goals. So when you come in and you're impulsive, you just change the rules and it just deflates them because they can never get enough momentum in an area because you're always kind of moving the cheese. Like the rules of the games are always changing the next one. So that was the first one. The next one is your inconsistency is hurting them. And so across the board, busy team owners seem to have a tough time being consistent, whether it's, you know, having time blocks in your own calendar, following the plans you put together as a team, or even your own personal plans. Also, you're inconsistent in meetings. So the cadence includes a set of interactions with team members either. Like in the last podcast I mentioned, your administrative team has to have a weekly meeting, your sales team has to have a weekly meeting. If you have a leadership team, they have to have a weekly meeting. You have to have one on ones with every team member, with their direct manager. So if you have a small team that's probably you, that's twice a month, if you have those appointments set and then you just skip them or you're inconsistent with them, it plummets their trust in you. Just as a human being, you know, they're likely holding that time spot in their calendar and then you just unilaterally decide that you're not going to honor that time. It makes them feel less than. That's a good example of being inconsistent. Another example is that, you know, as a team leader, you have to stay consistent in some sort of morning routine. You know, this team leaders that kind of come and go as they please and they're not part of the cadence of the business. That 8 to 11 time block, that inconsistency impacts the folks on your team. So even if you're only working your database or you're recruiting, you still have to have that new business development time that you're asking your team members to do. And hopefully you're asking them to do that. And hopefully, hopefully you're holding them accountable to doing that. So that's the second thing, your inconsistency. Third thing is the sole focus on results. So your sole focus on results is, is hurting them. And here's what I mean by that, is that. And this is 100% preaching to me and I've done all these things, so I'm just recovering from all these things. So I'm not preaching at you, I'm right there with you. Your sole focus on results. Here's a good example and what I mean by it is we had a member, we just interviewed his team. They had a year and this was going from like, I want to say like 2.5 million. This member started with me when he was a solo agent with a part time administrator. This year they had 20% growth. I think they went from like 2.5 million to 3 million in a year. So he started as a solo agent, he's out of production, you know, three years ago. And so they had really good growth, yet they missed their goal. They, they said he set this sort of wild, outlandish goal and because he thought that the team was going to strive for it and even if they missed it, they would achieve really good results. The team felt completely deflated because they missed this goal and his focus was just on the results. It wasn't on the fact that they actually did really, really well. They were up like double, well, more than double. Their market hadn't grown even 5% yet. They were up 20%. So they captured market share. They did all these great things, they improved their systems, they, you know, all of these great things. He was so focused just on the results against the goal that he forgot that they all put it all on the line every day for an entire year and the consequence was just a feeling of being defeated when they actually won. And so that, that sole focus on results is going to hurt your team. The next thing is a lack of follow through. And this one a hundred percent is me. We tend to. And in all these interviews that I've done with these team members, the team leader tends to get excited about something and then of the, your natural tendency to start a whole bunch of things and that feeling, that good feeling that comes along with that, you have to deny yourself of that and commit to doing One thing all the way through, and I struggle with it just like everyone else. We're putting out a new onboarding process for our graduate program in real estate B school, and I had responsibilities to record videos and to do all this stuff. And it's a lot of things I need to do to get this thing done. And our whole team is working on it. So it's not just me. My energy level, like, let's gauge, like a hundred units of energy is where I am at the beginning of an exciting project. My energy level goes down fast. So I know that I need to just give myself brace. I know that when my energy level or my excitement level, whatever you want to call it, is getting down to like 50, 40, 30 at the tail, that's the way I feel about this project. And I just finished it today where I knew I just had to keep going. I'm having trouble hearing you. I wasn't talking to you, Siri, so I knew that I just had to keep going. Like, there isn't an option to work on something else until I get the most important thing that we decided as a team to get done, has to get done before I get to work on something else. And so I just got it done this morning. So that's why I'm using it as a good example and that's why I'm recording these podcasts, because this was going to come after I did that. And then the, so lack of follow through. The last one here is lack of empathy. And again, this one hits me right in the, in the heart here. I tend to, and I've done a couple episodes on Leap, so I'm not going to repeat, listen, empathize, affirm, and then give perspective. I do tend to go to perspective all the time and I tend to not be empathetic to what folks are struggling with. And even if they're just excuses, like, not great excuses, you still need to listen to your, to your team members because they may actually be struggling and they may actually need to have a conversation with you that requires you to be a human being and not a business owner and to bring empathy versus perspective. And so I only say that in the context of coming off of these interviews that across the board it seemed that there wasn't any room for, you know, it was like this, this almost like this culture in some of these teams. Like, it's excuses or results, period. And there's no, like, can we have a conversation about, like, I'm really struggling here, here's why. And I need you to Listen to me as a human being and if we can get to that level, I will show up and I will fight even harder for you. So just guard yourself against that. Part of us tends to not be really empathetic, if that makes sense. So those are the five. So impulsiveness, inconsistency, focusing only on results, lack of follow through and, and lack of empathy. And so I'm going to record the next podcast and it's going to be probably like the eight things you're doing that is crushing your spouse. Because we've, I guess I've talked to, we've done like five or six teams. No, actually more than that. Probably seven or eight teams. And I've talked to probably four or five spouses and I'm also in a group that does a similar version of these where I've probably spoken to 10 spouses over the last year about their husband who's a business owner. And so I've got some interesting perspective there as well. So I'll record that one next. And if you're at a point in your business journey where you struggle with all these things, except you don't have a plan to get around it, to get through it, to bring some normalcy to your business so that you can actually show up as a human being and not this sort of just driven, you know, on the go, focusing on results and sort of everyone is barely hanging on. There's something inauthentic to that and it is something that I've learned over the years. If you're at a point where you want to have a conversation about it, you're running a big business, you're a top agent or you're running a team already. Let's have a business growth strategy session. It's a 45 minute coaching conversation where we'll just dig into where you are now, where you want to go, what's holding you back? What are some of these things that are you really tripping over to get you the time, money, stress, freedom that you're looking for? Real estate B school is all about time, money and stress freedom. I just have this deeply, deeply held belief that our industry is broken in a ton of different ways. And it really, I don't see a lot of guys with, you know, I see some guys with money. When I say guys, I mean girls and boys with money, but no time and super stressed. Very rarely do I see like this business that's set up with an elegance and an ease about it where the owner, the team owner is doing what they love. For the amount of hours they want to work with a stress level that's completely manageable and they're making amazing money that's making them systematically more and more wealthy. And so that that's what our world is about. So if that hits a chord with you, go to realestatebschool.com There are orange buttons on the site in terms of getting giving us a little bit of information applying for a business growth strategy session. If you're not quite at the point in your journey where you're doing 3 to 500,000 on the low side of GCI with a small team, we just launched our business Foundations program. If you go to getbusinessfoundations.com, you'll learn all about it. It is about the coolest offering that we've ever done in terms of value. Live coaching, live training and every tool and system we've ever built available for a ridiculously it's a launch price. You're not that price isn't going to be around forever. So at the time of this recording, it's going to be 297 per month, including live coaching and live training by me. So that's going to be amazing. So do not miss out on that. It's going to go up from where it is today. So that is you. If you're on the just getting started, go to get business foundations. If you're running a big business and you need someone to come in and really, you know, get the thing moving in the right direction, grab a business growth strategy session. We'll talk soon. Be good. Much love and respect.