Agent attraction next level Pres for Level Up

All right everyone, I'm super excited to be presenting at Level up and giving you what I've learned in just over a year here with EXP and my name is Lars Hiddenborg. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School. I'm going to share my screen to keep me on track. And the goal of our time here today is to give you as much as I possibly can. And so let's get after it here. So let me share my desktop. Hit share, hit present and we should be good to go. So the topic today is taking your agent attraction efforts to the next level. I'm going to challenge you, push you. I may upset you and rub you the wrong way and it's all intended to get you into action and get you out of our head. I think a lot of times we're just way too much in our head around some of this stuff. I founded Real Estate B school in 2013. I got into real estate in 2007. Here's the reality of our industry and I'm telling you some of this so you'll have the confidence to approach folks because I've been at this for a long time. I've had over a thousand conversations with the top of the top in our industry through Real Estate B School and basically strategy sessions, you know, our sales calls. I've done all of those over the years and I just, and hundreds of people have been through Real Estate B School and I have my own journey in terms of, you know, achieving at a very high level in this industry. And here's the reality. The industry has completely failed to create any path to financial freedom. It's just the reality, right? Traditional methods keep agents, team leaders and broke, broke brokers on this never ending transaction treadmill. It takes on a life of its own and creates a life not worth living in my opinion. And here's the thing, productivity coaching and traditional training methods, they're just not getting done right. You see very few top agents or team leaders or brokers that are really crushing it and they have freedom, they're having massive impact in their, in their families and they have time and you know, they're not stressed and all that good stuff. And here, here's another thing, right? Most agents, team leaders and brokers will not be able to retire grace gracefully. When's the last time you went to a real estate agent retirement party? It just doesn't exist. A little bit about me. I'm a dad. That's probably my number one job. This is the last picture when my kids actually wanted to be around us. They're 11 and 13 now, but this picture just warms my heart. I'm a husband. I'm a business builder. I've got a podcast called Real Estate Team Builders, if you can see it. I'm an author, wrote a book called Scale or Die, and I have placed my faith in Jesus as of 2009. And so the insanity in the world, I'm not placing my faith in any of it. I think it's all complete chaos right now. Here's the thing, though. In my real estate career, I've served over 5,000 families through a leveraged model. I went from a solo agent at 44 sides in 2008 to over 400 sides all through those Great Recession years. Financially free, I work when I want to, essentially 11 to 5, Monday through Thursday. And I take as much time off as I want. And I don't say that out of ego just so that you'll trust what I'm telling you because I've actually achieved the thing. Most of us want to make more money. We want more freedom and have more impact. And here's the thing. I've made every mistake you could possibly make in business, and I'm willing to share them with you. Here is the question I have for you, and the question you need to figure out a way to understand the real, authentic, true answer for people you're having conversations with about inviting them into this gift. We have this platform called Exp Realty. It's, hey, Johnny, do you have a clear roadmap in place to scale your business, achieve your financial goals so that you can live a life at a high level in multiple areas of your life. A life of meaning, impact, and satisfaction. So think about that for yourself. But this is really what you need to get at when you're. When you're having conversations with people. My journey in real estate was a typical one. This is 2007 in 10 months. I sold 27 homes instantly, seven days a week. I've ruined. This is our first family vacation with me in real estate. Ruin the vacation. The deal didn't even close, right? Raise your hand. I can't see you, but raise your hand if you've done that before. My. My motivation came really truly when Kendall, our daughter, was born in April 2010. Anders was born in November 2007. We had a couple of miscarriages in between, so really just kind of, kind of rocking there. My wife and I didn't have great childhoods, so we are motivated to create a life and a lifestyle and really be with our children. And this is my motivation, this is my why. Right. I will go through a little bit of why. I am even telling you that I think everyone has to have a why for whatever season they are in their journey. So this was my why. Right. I want to create a life for my family that they never thought was possible. And it has changed over the years. But back then, and you may be at the point where maybe the money isn't where you want it to be, maybe the time, freedom and stress and you know you are not having the impact in your family. So you have got to really buckle down on that. So create an awesome life for our family. This is the kids a little bit older. This is a couple of years ago, we go to Mexico over, over New Year's and so just a great life. And the journey wasn't hard. The journey wasn't hard. The journey was super hard. And at the end of it, I was really led to start a coaching company to be able to fill a void in the industry in terms of being able to help folks scale their businesses or grow and scale your business without losing your mind. And it's a systems approach to business. And so that was real estate, B school and it was born here. Here is what I see in the industry and the challenge, challenges specifically of every position you can take in the industry and how you need to think about those you approach. When it comes to agent attraction, number one is the traditional agent. So let's take a traditionally successful selling 20 to 25 homes a year. Mind you that only 43,000 agents in the US out of 2.4 sell 25 homes. So it's less than 2%. But let's just take the successful agent. You stop making money when you stop selling. There's no exit strategy, there's no freedom whatsoever. And the hours and stress, in my opinion aren't worth it. You're going to give up and give up something in other areas of your life. Let's say you go the team building route like, like I went. You ultimately spend time helping agents grow and they will leave even if it's on great terms. And you train the competition even if you don't think of them that way. But there's no way to be in partnership with those folks. As I'm telling you this, these are the things that you need to be thinking when you're talking to a team leader, when you're talking to a top agent. Right? Okay. Or in the team model, you give away margin and you make all these Weird commission split deals and you're not following an economic model and it gets sideways really, really fast with the brokerage model, right. There are lots of broker owners out there, independent broker owners and folks that are involved in some of the franchise models where this constant churn, agent churn for the grass is always greener, right? The grass is always greener. It's got to be my brokerage, right. And it's not low or no profit in the brokerage model made up for with title and mortgage. I'm just going to make up for it with title and mortgage. So I'm going to run this loss leader which I don't really, I don't, I don't subscribe to that. I've talked to a lot of broker owners that are struggling financially even, even with those additional income pillars and there's no way in that model to add real value and truly impact agents lives. And so no matter who you're talking to, a broker owner, a team leader, a top agent, the biggest challenges that I see is that for any of the players there's no real exit strategy. Right? So the challenge is let's say you want to have 20 grand a month coming in and you don't need to do anything, right? So pure straight up leverage income, residual income, that's 240 a year at 5%, which is near impossible to get 5% now on a critical mass. But let's just say you could. It's 4.8 million saved. So you need to ask yourself, okay, 20,000 sounds like the number for me. I don't have 0.8 saved, let alone 4.8 million saved. Right. And so that's the ultimate challenge. And here are the lessons that I've learned in my journey. You know, 5,000 families served. I've, I've helped hundreds of the top of the top build sustainable businesses and I think these will really, really serve. Serve you. I mentioned it earlier. You have to be clear on your why you're going to be put in situations in this opportunity. I think I'm wearing, I think I have this later. Be comfortable with the uncomfortable. You're going to be put in situations where you're going to do something that challenges you. And if you don't have the backdrop of like, all right, I don't want to go out. You know, I used to take listing appointments when I was in production, 9, 11 and 1 on a Saturday and I had young kids. And this probably went into like 2010 is when I made the shift over just to listings and I dropped buyers and 9, 11 and 1. And I didn't want to do it like it's the last thing I really wanted to do on a Saturday. But I knew that this was the last piece for me to propagate, perfect the system and then hire someone to take over that system at the appropriate value based commission splits. So the economic model was intact, but I knew why I was doing it. So you could do anything. Like if you had to dig ditches for five years and you knew at the end of that journey you would have multiple five figures a month of residual income, would you dig ditches for 50 hours a week for the next five years? You for sure would, right? Because you'd have the why and you'd have a clear vision on where you're going. And that takes me to my next point is that you've got to begin with the end of mind. I think it's proverbs like 27, 13 or 18 or where there is no vision, the people perish. And I just believe in business like you as the business builder. If you don't have a clear idea of where you're going, you're not going to have confidence that you're making the right steps or taking the right steps to get there. So for example, you know, in 2007, my three year vision, I always have a three year vision was, I think it was, you know, I was just going to work on listings. I was going to work 40 hours a week in my business. Coming from a guy who hadn't started a team yet, and I was working probably 70 hours a week and it was like 99% buyers, right. So I knew where I was going and I still have a clear idea of three years from now where I'm going to be. So I'm always beginning with the end in mind. Like my shirt says be comfortable. Let's just say, yeah, be comfortable with the uncomfortable. If you think back to your, to the things you've achieved in your life and how you've succeeded at the highest levels, you've had to push through some discomfort to do it. Think about when you first got into real estate. I, I had no sales background when I got into real estate. And I never generated a lead before or built a business or any of that stuff. I had a corporate job before I got enrolled into real estate and it was really uncomfortable to call a lead that registered on my site and to follow a script and to invite them to a buyer consultation. Right. I wouldn't go out and show homes until I Actually got this person to agree to do business with me and get them to sign an agreement. And like, that was really uncomfortable because I'd never done it before, but I got used to it. And I'm like, that's a system I can replicate and duplicate and get somebody to run that system. So we've got to get comfortable with the uncomfortable and leave with a servant's heart. This has been a tougher lesson for me to learn over the years. In my early days in the business, I was so overwhelmed and so stressed that I invited people into my world to serve me. And that is not. I just hurt a lot of people. Not a lot of people, but there are some key people along the way that I hurt. And now this opportunity, I am just, you know, so grateful to be plugged into a platform where I get to impact at a big, big level. So to really embrace that servant's heart, like, how can you serve the people that you're having conversations with and then stop caring what others think of you. Stop caring what others think of you. Right? I think we're so paralyzed at times. Like, hey, I only sell 20 homes a year. How could I possibly approach that guy or girl that does 200 homes? They run a successful team. They're probably rolling in money. They're lucky. They're on Facebook, like, they got a nice car and they take vacations. And like, I promise you, they're just as jacked up, if not more, than you are at a 10 times larger business. Chances are it's not on the right economic model. They're doing a ton of homes themselves because they built it the wrong way. They're not using value based commission splits. So they're in production and they're managing people and they've got overhead and their stress is through the roof, right? So there's no freedom in what they built. And you have to understand that so you have the confidence to move past anything that is uncomfortable. I can go on for probably an hour about this. Your world versus the world. All I'll say on this is that if you want to achieve at a high level in business and at home, you need to be really careful how you define your world versus everything that's going on in the world. So just think of social media and news and politics and even sports and Netflix and where you spend your time, right? If you want to be a good dad. So for me, a good dad, good husband, good at business, massive impact. I want to take care of my physical body. I want to have a relationship with God. So there's like five things. All of that takes a lot of time. So my world outside of that has to be. Has to be really tight, right? So really, really, really mind that. I want to tell you real quickly my exp recruitment story. So when I came into exp, 4,000 plus, you know, close to 5,000 at that. @ that point a year ago, family served. I had been doing real estate B school. So I was someone that you probably would want to identify as, you know, someone that you would, you would want in your organization. This is a picture. So AJ Maida, I think he'll eclipse about 5,000 in his organization. John Mikus. I coached AJ for a couple of years in his real estate team. John Michael, for a few years. We're at a mastermind. AJ just hit 200 in his organization in this company called exp. And John and I kind of made fun of him. It's like, whatever. But then we see AJ taking a different path. Retiring from real estate, going on an RV trip for 12 months with his bride, you know, moving to Puerto Rico and just living a different life. In August 2020, he had this post. He hit 2000 agents in his organization. Keep in mind, this is about as. So this is 2020. So a little over a year later, he's more than double in his organization and he tells his story. Then on the right, he said, my Rev Share team, and I'm running a team at this point, closed 1,008 transactions. And I'm like, oh my gosh. We did 30 transactions and we had six figures of overhead and we actually made good money. But it was painful and there was a lot of drama around it. I'm like, huh, that's a head scratcher. And then of course, you know all the EXP folks, when you're not an exp, you see Rev Share day. Rev Share day. That one actually in the middle didn't bother me because both my kids were born on the 22nd. So it's just a good reminder. So this kind of planted a seed. This is August, late August 2020. Then John called me on September 5, 2020. That's John Mikus. You can tell in the middle there. He's a little better kept than on the right there. Calls me, he says, I have something to tell you. Are you sitting down? Instantly. I think the worst. I think divorce or critic or terminal illness. I'm not lying. My heart starts to beat weird. I'm moving my team to exp. He runs a multimillion dollar team in my market, lives in Bozeman, Montana. And he says, I'm moving my team dxp. And he asked me, have you actually studied the model? Have you actually studied the model? And I hadn't. And so it's been said that the most expensive thing you can own is a closed mind. Here's the thing you need to know, using me as an example, the bigger players out there have said no, even mentally, or their ego, their gate is closed. Like they're likely in the same position I was a year ago. Their ego is in the way. They've said no to the, to the model, but they're likely in a position where they actually haven't studied it. So fast forward, this is in Cabo. AJ's organization is accelerating and now we just have this amazing business relationship because I finally slowed down to look at the model. We have one of the best examples of Sheila Fegeron, who was an individual agent, met Brent Gove for like less than a minute at, I think it was a Star Power event or some event. She called Brent Gove and invited him to look at exp. I'm sure that took a lot of guts for her to make that call. So you can't be where you are and be afraid to take action and call. Some of these, some of these bigger organizations just have the confidence, take my confidence, that they're living in a world, either in their personal life or in their business that's not running smoothly. They need this opportunity. So here are some more lessons I've learned that I really believe will help you with revenue share. Your ego will get in the way of doing what's right. And this is for others out there. And knowing this, it allows you to figure out ways, depending on your relationship with the person or what you know about them, to throw in a pattern interrupt. Like I would just go right into something. Once I get to know somebody, I will ask them, like, how close are you to having the financial freedom you desire? Like, we're all putting in hours and making money. Are you building something that's going to give you freedom or are you on this never ending treadmill? Right. You've got to break them down a little bit to ultimately build them up. And here's the thing, very few big fish have been approached properly. AJ went into exp in January 2017, and I knew AJ, but he never really invited me to study the model. I think I probably said something that was a turn off at the time. One other person in June, I think around June 2017, reached out to me and said, you have got to study this. It's going to take off and I want you to be a part of it. And I completely shut it down. Really shut it down. Hard ego, right? I just seen all this. I likened it to mlm and I had a bad experience with somebody from MLM and whatever stuff was going on in my head. Nobody approached me from June 2017 until John called me on September 5, 2020. That's over three years. So even if some of these bigger players are being. They're seeing it on social media, they have notions about weaker people joining exp. All of that is unfounded at this point. Go to EXP Life and look at all the people that EXP is bringing in. And that's probably a small fraction of the big players come in. But there's story after story, right? Chris Craddock, they just did a story on him. He's in my front line. The dude will do 650 transactions this year. He's a major player in the industry. Number 15 for KW in the world. Direct line to Gary Keller. He came in because I just, I just slowed him down. I said, have you actually studied it? Like, really broke it down and decided if the platform you're on now with KW is better than the platform that that EXP is. And once we got into it, it took like probably six, seven weeks to really break it down and have him understand it. He, he, he definitely got there. They think they know, but they don't know. I think I covered it a little bit, but people that have said no to EXP this far, they think they know, but they don't know. You have to ask them, hey, you owe it to yourself to spend a few hours on this because you have to, have to get you to the point where you at least really trust, truly understand what you're saying no to. And that's the commitment you're going to make to especially a larger player. You've got to make the commitment to do that, work with them. Even though I had relationships with some of the teams I brought in, some of the independent brokerages I bought, I brought in, it still required hours and hours of me doing calls. You know John Mikish, aj, Cliff Freeman, you know Brent Gove, Dave Kinord, I would do whatever. Like, it would just. I would take them through as many calls as they would need to really, truly understand it. And everyone in the industry is struggling and they need xp. You've got to understand this. Nobody has it figured out and they don't have an exit strategy that's the bottom line. They need you to be bolder. They need you to step up and be bolder in your conversations. This is a great quote prophet. First, Mike Michalowicz. Putting your nose to the grindstone is a really EAS easy way to cover up an unhealthy business. We think if we can just work harder, longer, better if we could just hold out, something good will happen one day. It doesn't, you know. So what could agent attraction mean for you? This is what you're telling someone, right? And this, you could be going through this exercise for the first time. You've got to pick a number. Like what's your I'm done number? For me, it was 30,000. If I could have residual income of 30,000, I could check out, right? That was my number. So 360 a year, 7.2 million saved at 5%. Here's the math. 7.2 million was my number. I had saved about 2.4 million liquid. I was saving about 240 a year, 20,000amonth. I was still 20 years away from achieving freedom. So it took me 27 years working years to generate 2.4 million liquid net worth, which is the equivalent of 10,000 monthly residual. It took me 12 months to generate 10 million in net worth equivalent. And my last five months has averaged about 43, 44,000 in residual income. So the leverage is the 27 or the 31 FLA or FLQA turned into 635. That's the magic of this model and it's just super cool. So one question you want to ask, folks, is based on where you are today, how confident are you in terms of where you're going? That's a question for you as you're consuming this, but also a question for people that you're going to have conversations with. I think people have two choices. Whatever level, top agent, team leader or broker owner, you could attract 10 to 15 agents in the next three to five years and show them how to bring some people into our awesome organization. Or you can save 4.8 to 7.2 million and that will take you 20, 30, 40, 50 years, right? Do the math on how effective you've been at building net worth or a critical mass or residual income. And this is just elegant. So you've got to know, as I close here, the industry has failed to create a path for financial freedom. Most players in our industry will not retire gracefully. What are you going to do about it? That's the question. You need to be bolder because people are struggling right that's the impact and the gift that you have because you're at exp Keep Here's a bit of homework. I want you to write down 10 quote unquote big fish top agents, team leaders or broker owners that you're afraid to reach out to. Write them down, get their contact information, send them a voice message over Facebook, messenger or video message or text them. You need to reach out to them in the next 48 hours and you have to be consistent in terms of adding value and truly caring about these folks. AJ said this quote it's not whether or not this works, it's whether or not you will do the work. If you go to free rev share tools.com I gave you the literally the script I used with all my Big Fish when I got started, a top 100 template to put your contacts in there, a copy of this presentation because I think you should grab the slides on the numbers and the monthly residual income and I think that's just super valuable. And a script book as well and a couple other things. So go to freerevsharetools.com it's just a Google Drive. You can just grab everything. Don't request access, just create a copy of the document or download it and let's agree to do the work. Bottom line, we've got to settle into this. This opportunity is task over time, being organized time, blocking and actually doing the work. Much love to all of you. God bless you and we'll talk to you soon. Be good.