Are You Sabotaging Your Real Estate Success? The 3 Shocking Things You’re Doing Wrong
3 Apr 2025 · 11 min
Podcast episode in which Lars Hedenborg identifies three common ways agents sabotage their real estate success: (1) failing to treat real estate as a business (not prioritizing the handful of high-value activities: planning, prospecting, follow-up, appointments, negotiating, and system-building); (2) lacking repeatable lead-generation and lead-conversion systems (advocates database work, expanding digital footprint, and a menu of ~10 lead-gen levers including a 60-touch database system); and (3) not tracking daily activities (recommends a 91-day/13-week, daily-task implementation with ~16 repeat tasks). The episode also promotes the Million Dollar Agent Method — a 90-day program that claims to add 2–3 closings per month and cites the speaker's experience helping 5,000+ families and coaching ~3,000 agents.
So the question is, are you sabotaging your real estate success? Today I'm going to go over three things that you're probably doing wrong and you don't even realize it. This industry is stacked against you. There are so many things that are working against you in terms of your ability to succeed and it's really not your fault. The entire industry if every agent sold two homes per month, there was only as many agents as as required to sell two homes per month. Every brokerage would go out of business. Every local MLS board would go out of business.
The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share all with you the good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results.
You just gotta do the work. No one is rooting for you to sell an additional two to three homes per month. That is the promise of Million Dooll Agent Method. So you'll hear me mention that. And my only ask is that if you need help implementing systems into your business that get you to that two to three homes per month run rate, go to million dollar agent method.com I've been at this for a while. Probably close to 3,000 agents have been through Real Estate B School and our various programs. I've also served 5,000 plus families in my real estate sales journey. I exited that business in 2020 to focus on ramping up and having maximum impact through Real Estate B School. So million dollar agent method.com if you know you need help with some of these things. So let's get into the three reasons why it's going to be really hard for you to succeed if you don't keep these in mind. First one is that you're not treating your real estate practice like a business. And here's what I mean by that. When I got into the business, I got busy really early. So my first 10 months I sold 27 homes. 44. My first full year out of the gate I realized that I was doing 12 different jobs. None of the skill sets were the same. I could go out and build a system to generate an expired or FSBO lead calling me through a direct response marketing system I put in place. Building the system was different Than fielding the call was different than going in, securing that business and negotiating price, pricing strategy, looking at market data, then getting home and like taking pictures and you know, lightly staging the property, putting in an MLS and you know, then negotiating a deal and you know, running signs around town and putting lockboxes and dropping off checks and you know, all the stuff we do. And so I made a decision early on is that I was going to treat it like a business and I was going to focus on the things that made me a lot of money in business, which is only a handful of things. And it's very simple. It's P L A N S, prospecting, lead follow up appointments with new buyers and sellers, not showing homes or not, you know, other activities, negotiating deals, getting homes under contract and then building systems. So those are the five things that make you a ridiculous amount of money in real estate. And unless you put your business builder cap on on a regular basis, you're not going to realize that most of your time is not spent doing those activities. So when you look at your calendar for the week or for the month or for the quarter or for the year, do you have specific time blocks in there where you're building your business? We just have in our world we call them work on business. It's working in the business which is the job of the real estate agent. Working on the business is the job of the business builder. And so I challenge you to look back in your last couple weeks or maybe the last month in your calendar. Hopefully you're keeping a calendar. And are you actually putting time locks in there to build systems required for your business to run more like a business than it does a haphazard, you know, series of events that happen different every day and there's no rhyme or reason around any of it. So that's number one, not treating it like a business. Number two, and I kind of hinted at this, is not building systems, specifically lead generation and lead conversion systems. 99% of agents that come into million dollar agent method. They struggle having any lead generation systems in their business at all. And typically they've already been down the path of like paying for leads or relying on their broker for leads or they're cold calling or their door knocking or they're holding open houses that no one should show up to or they're posting stuff on social media that there's like just crickets. So they have nothing working in their business that's consistently generating inbound organic warm leads. That is what we ultimately want to build out. And, and it's this. Basically the analogy is like someone giving you fish versus you learning how to fish. So I'm not here to sell you leads or get paid at closing. I'm here to help you build systems into your business that allow a steady stream of leads to come in. So if you're with clients, leads are coming in. If you're with family, leads are coming in. If you're on vacation, leads keep coming in. And this is very simple. Well simple but not easy. So there are 10 lead gen levers that we teach in million dollar agent method. There are two across the board every agent needs first one is to structure and build your database right. 10 to 15% of your inner circle know like trust you database will either transact with you or refer a piece of business to you. If you have the proper value added touch system in place our numbers are 10 to 15%. So if you have 100 people in your database there's 10 to 15 closings there. If you have 250 in your database there's 25 to 37 closings just automate automatically happening because you have a value added touch system in place and it's a 60 touch system. That's number one. Number two is expanding your digital footprint. There's a 10x amount of people that can quote unquote know, like and trust you online. If you establish your digital footprint, get your Google business profile set up properly, get, get at least 105 star reviews on your Google business profile and then every day you're posting one thing, three non real estate related posts to every one real estate related post. So essentially you're building authority online through authentically being you. So building authority through authenticity, that's the game you want to play online. And then we have a 5, 5, 5 where essentially we task you every day to do 5 basically connect with 5 people like and comment on 5 things and then get into different communities where you're sort of commenting on newer people and you're basically expanding your digital footprint and that those are the first two. Then we have eight other legion levers Expired direct mail system, FSBO for sale by owner direct mail system, a motivated seller system, a new construction system, what else? We've got our social proof system, our home search lead system, our open house system that actually works, that's good for generating sellers, not just buyers. And so you have to think about your business as a system of systems. And do you have the system set up around lead generation and lead conversion where leads are coming in consistently and they're Being automatically nurtured so they're pre sold on working with you. That's number two, not building lead gen systems. Number three is not tracking your activities daily. So I can't tell you how many agents come into a strategy session with us, which is a first step you'll take with us. If you enter our world and they come into the call and we ask them about, you know, what are you doing every day to generate new business and they have no idea what are you doing to build systems into your business and they're doing nothing. Our approach, we work together only for 90 days and whether you work with us or not, you need to do these things. We basically every day for 91 days or 13 weeks. Once you get onboarded and you have your game plan call your 91 day implementation process and it's twofold. It's not just you know, doing the calls and tracking your numbers on production, but it's actually what are you doing every day to build your database to expand your digital footprint. Are you managing your time properly and are you taking care of yourself personally? We have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16 things and these only take, you know, your database work is 15 to 20 minutes per day. Expanding your digital footprint is 15, 20 minutes per day. So it's not a big chunk of your day. But if you do these 16, these 16 tasks every day for 91 days straight. Granted you don't have to work on weekends if you can get away with it. But as long as you're doing these and you're compounding your results, you will be successful. You will sell one or more homes per month just from your database and one or home, one or more homes per month from your digital footprint. And then we've got two other Legion levers we install in your business in our 90 day build out. So that is why most agents will not be successful. They're not treating it like a business, they're not building Legion systems and they're not tracking their activities daily. So if you know, you need help with some of the things I've talked about today, you know, I'm not bashful about Million Dollar Agent method. I am so bullish on this program because it's just a 90 day basically we work together for 90 days and implement all the systems in your business required to add an additional two to three closings per month. So if that's you go to million dollaragentmethod.com there's a seven minute video to watch there. If it resonates with you. Book in a strategy session, we'll have a conversation about your business. Basically where you are now, where you want to be in the future, what's holding you back, what are some of the obstacles. And then if a conversation about million dollar aging method makes sense, we will have it. If it doesn't, we have a ton of free resources we can point you to, or may even refer you to another coach. We're not for everybody, only for folks that want to build a real business. Get to 250k GCI, 500k GCI, maybe even a million GCI and beyond. Much love, much respect. We.
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