Be Careful Who You Model & The Kinds of Success You Admire

This is Real Estate Team Builders, and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems, and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. I am not your host, Lars. I am Matt Johnson. I'm the producer of the show, and we've got Lars with me. We're doing another episode where it's just me and Lars, and we wanted to kind of dig into the types of success that we admire, because Lars and I have a lot of similarities in the types of people that we look up to versus the types of people that we acknowledge that they are successful, but we don't want to replicate that kind of success in our lives, nor do we want to teach people how to do so. I think this is a really interesting conversation. So first of all, Lars, what's up, man?

Not too much, man. This is going to be a good conversation, though. You know, there's all these big personalities that we. We follow and we tend to put on a pedestal. And I've just always been really clear, like, yeah, I don't want what that guy has, you know, even though he has the jets and the Cars, and I just know that he's working, you know, 140 hours a week or, um, you know, Elon Musk and the three marriages and the estranged kids and all that. It's like, no, I don't. I don't need to do to. To, you know, land on the. On Mars or whatever. Right? I want to have a marriage, and I want to have kids that. That know me and like me. So this will be a good conversation.

Today that is important. I Didn't know that about Elon Musk. I thought he was, he had been single this whole time. That's, that's crazy. But yeah, when I look at, when I look at Gary Vee, when I look at Grant Cardone, I respect what they've done a lot. Uh, but I would not want their day to day life. I. So I'm the same way. I look at that, those guys and, and I think you and I both have the, the mental, maybe flexibility and the intellectual curiosity to read all their stuff and understand where they're coming from and take the bits of it that, that we can apply and reject the stuff that leads to the place that we don't want to get to. I don't know that everybody else approaches it that way, but I can, I can go read Gary, you know, Gary Vee's next book and take something out of it without then making myself feel guilty for not being Gary V. And I think that's a very important skill to build the ability to take the little bits and pieces from the people that don't live the life that you want to and apply the stuff that works for you and then reject the rest of the stuff. But let's talk about, let's talk about kind of the success that we do admire. Is there anybody that you really look up to in the business world that you say they really do have My ideal life.

I was all ready to go. Let me first go off on that tangent that you were going to. Before we get to the guys that we do model, it's the hashtag rising grind. And there's something that you said in that intro. Most people are modeling that they actually can't take, take what's maybe good. They're going to say, okay, well, if Gary Vee tells me to get up at 5am and he tells me to work until 1am you know, that's four hours of sleep and I'll figure it out, I'll get it done. And there's all this collateral damage. And so I think it goes. I think we have to acknowledge the fact that these guys are big personalities all over social media and they're leading people into this hustle fallacy where if you just, you know, there's only one Grant Cardone, there's only one Gary V. Right. You're not going to, you're not going to be able to, to just do what they do. And the damage that you'll do to your family, to your physical body, to your spiritual health, you know, is, is significant. And those Guys don't, you know, they don't really talk about it. I was in a group once. I went to an event, and you would know the group if I. If I mentioned this was back in 2015, and I came as a guest and I was invited to join this group. It was a. It was a mastermind. And so the. After the event, the guy, you know, the guy that ran the event, we had a conversation. I said, you know, it's so glaringly obvious that there's no conversation about, you know, they had these, like, five pillars, and there was nothing around family. Like, it's just an obvious, you know, left out. And it just so happens there's nothing wrong with divorce, I guess. You know, I don't want to be divorced. But the three guys that had started this group were all divorced, you know, and so they had charged so hard in business, and they were super successful in business, and they. They showed everybody their net worth and, you know, all these sort of material successes. But they had. They had children and divorces and, you know, just like, I don't need to. I don't want you to teach me how to do business if it's. If the way you did it led to divorce potentially. And so there's. There's not. It's not even a judgment statement. It's just like, you just need to be really freaking careful the people that you listen to, you know. And so, anyway, so that's just all that came up as you were kind of giving your intro, and I didn't want to. Didn't want to lose it.

I love it, and I feel the exact same way. I am very careful who I. Who I model. And I look at more than just the business success, because for the. For a lot of the same reasons. Like, Gary Vee, to me, is just as much a cautionary tale as a success tale. Even if he gets everything that he says that he wants, even if he ends up buying the jets and all that stuff, and that's all great, but just the process of what I know that it takes for him to get there, if he gets there, I've already determined that's not worth it. Like, that's not a trade I'm willing to make. Right. So let's get into who you do admire. What's one person that comes to mind?

Yeah, so I've studied a lot of Michael Hyatt's work. His. His whole thing is the double win. You know, how do you win it at work and win at home? And so his story, he had A, you know, he was a corporate executive for a publisher and did the 90, 100 hour work weeks and all the damage, you know, physically in his relationship and with his children and then finally figured out, you know, that's not going to lead, lead to anything good. So his, well, one of his books in particular is called Living Forward, where you actually, you write a life plan and you write it for, you know, 10 areas of life, you know, and he talks about a concept called drift. You know, how does a 20 year marriage end up separating when the kids go to college, right? It's because it kind of just drifted a little bit every year and then you're 20 years in and your kids are gone and you're like, you're so far away from your spouse in terms of the level of connection. So I really like his stuff. He's a believer as well and he's open with his faith, which I think is cool. A lot of guys kind of hide their faith, you know, and when they're in a position where they're coaching others, that's the first one that comes to mind. How about you?

So for me it's Richard Koch, the guy that wrote the 8020 principle. So if you look at, so he was that guy like ex consultant, you know, working 80, 90 hours a week. And then he, he ended up starting his own consulting company, socks away a little bit of money and made his first investment, right? So he invests in this, it was a betting exchange based in the uk. And I remember Tim Ferriss asking him, like, hey, how did you decide, like you put in like a million and a half dollars into this investment. How did you decide to put in that money? Richard Koch goes, because it was everything I had, right, that made something like 100x returns, right? So right now Richard Koch sits at a net worth of around 500 million. Most of that money has been made on less than 10 investments. He doesn't invest constantly. He's not a venture capitalist in the traditional sense of the word. Splits his time between the south of France and South Africa, works two to three hours a day, mostly email and jumping on phone calls to check in with the CEOs of the companies that he's invested in. But he's not a workaholic, lives the exact lifestyle I'd want to live and made his money in the exact way that I would want to make it. So the goal for me, based on listening to conversations and I've read, I think I've read everything Richard Koch has ever written, following that lifestyle and that 8020 approach, it really, it changed my life plan. Right. My life plan was going down a certain path and I decided, no, like I want to build my company to a certain point and then probably not going to go become a real estate investor or start flipping notes and multifamily and all this stuff. I'll eventually like invest in a business and invest in businesses and that will be my life at a certain point and go down that track because that's way more fascinating and interesting to me and has a huge payoff potential if you get the right business. So that's someone that spends more time thinking and reading than they do doing, but they made it work for them in exactly the right way. So that's somebody that I really look up to.

Yeah, it's interesting. And I've even seen, I always wonder like, is this a day that Matt is on today or is he off today? Like what, what kind of work are you doing today? You're doing this stuff with the, I forget what you're calling it with the, with the, the music work that you're doing.

Oh, prayer prompts.

Yeah, yeah, the prayer prompts. And I know I can't get you over email, so now I, now I email your operations person if I want to get a message to you. So I definitely see you modeling, you know, even if you may not be at the 500 million net worth at this point, I definitely see you modeling how you want to live your life even, you know, and I think there's something to be said for that. I think a lot of guys that are like the Gary Vee wannabes, you know, they want it now where I think, you know, what I've seen in you and I know I've done this, it's, it's like what's, what's the rush, you know, you know, like make the, make the right moves but don't be so impatient. You know where you're going to in the real estate team building world. It's like I'm going to spend all this money on Zillow leads and it's just going to snap all of a sudden, be this high functioning team and it never is. It's inefficient and it's losing money and super stressful and it never turns into something that is of any lasting nature. So any comment around that we're in a similar space but any comment that you've seen around people just wanting this success instantly versus, you know, none of these guys had instant success?

No, no, no, Nobody. That's had lasting success. You know, the people that I really respect are, you know, they're on their 10th book. They're on their 12th book. I mean, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, I think, said that the coaching business didn't even really take off until he was in it for over 15 years.

Yeah, it's. It's funny. I. I was in Strategic Coach in his. In his highest level, and so I'm literally in his home in. In Toronto and talking to him face to face. And I asked him that question. Exactly. I said, you know, why. How is it that. Because I think I figured out he was about a $30 million company at that point. And I said, how, how. How is it that you made it to this point? Like, what was the. Give me the answer. Like, give me the one answer. And you know what he said? He said the only. What did he say? I'm the only one that. That stayed in it long enough. Like, so his. So his reason for success was that he just stayed consistent. He said, you know, we had years where we would. We scaled up to 5 million and then we went down and then we scaled to 10 and then all the way back down to five. And, you know, it was. It wasn't this, like, just logical. Everything worked out perfectly. He bankrupt twice, you know, so it's just interesting to hear him say, you know, just a normal guy. He's like, I didn't do anything special at all. You know, he's like, I was just consistent with it over 30 years. Like, and we're, you know, where we get a little antsy. You know, I'm only, what, eight years into real estate, B school, and I'm like, when is this thing going to scale? It's like, I have 22 years left. Like, if I'm going to. If I'm going to be in it as long as. And stay committed as long as Dan Sullivan, it's like, we just need to be engaged and love our businesses long enough, you know, and not have them drive us crazy to the point where we want to get out of them. That's my biggest struggle. So I thought that was just an interesting comment.

It is. I love it. I wasn't sure what the timeframe was, but I had heard that from a couple of other people just kind of through the grapevine over the years. And there's a couple things to piggyback off of that. Number one, I think when we look at the urge to grow the business as fast as we can, I think the first question to go back to, like, Just inwardly is how much of that is ego, right? How much of that is wanting to get on the podium on the next event or be called out by your brokerage as the, the top team in your state, top team in the country, then it's the top team in the world. And it like, it just, I think once you get like in the circles that we run in, you realize that that never stops, right? Like if you, if you're, if your drive is, oh, I'm going to be the number one team in the office, just realize that will satisfy you for less than a half a second until you realize that you could be the number one team in the city. The, then it's the state, then it's your brokerage for the entire country, then it's the brokerage for the. And then it's then, well, now I'm not at the biggest brokerage. Now I gotta go from this brokerage to that brokerage and start the bottom of that rung again, right? And then you'll find yourself sitting around going, should I, you know, should I bring my private plane pilot on from part time to full time? Cause I really need to go to more event, you know what I'm saying? Like, it just, it never ends, right? If that, if that is the, if the reason that you want to grow is like this deep gnawing inner need from the ego side to be recognized and stuff, just, just understand that never gets fulfilled. It is a D is a yawning chasm that will never ever be filled. And then I think the second thing is that both you and I need to keep in mind because we're far enough into our businesses to have this issue, is that it's easy to get caught up in the growth mindset so much that we lose sight of who we're serving and why we got into it to begin with. And I think one of the best things to remind ourselves of is to refall in love with the client. You know, and if you're, if you're a real estate team leader, maybe that means more re falling in love with your agents than the end consumer. And that's, that's fine. It might mean both. But I think for, for team leaders, if you've been in the game for a while, I think the challenge is to focus. Yes, Set your goals. Yes. Build the systems. Yes. Do the stuff. Will keep on pushing the team forward. But fall in love with the right person and that's the person that you're, you're serving. Like Jay Abraham says you always wanted like, don't be in love with the business. Be in love with the client.

Yeah, that's awesome. And it is, you know, you get to the point where, and I've reached it in different businesses where you're so stressed because you're involved in the technical work alongside of building the business side of things, where you can't help but, you know, have less patience and you know, not give time to where time needs to be given. So that's a really interesting and super convicting, you know, for, for any business owner is to just remember, you know, that I got into Coach because it was hard for me to do what I did, you know, because I did it on good margins, I did it on systems, I did it on without overpaying or buying a bunch of crap lead sources or whatnot. And then just to realize that my clients are struggling with those same things. I think that's really, really important. Any final thoughts on kind of guys that you've been emulating and following and life lessons you've learned?

Yeah, there's a gentleman named. Is it Greg McCune and wrote the book Essentialism, which is amazing and just came out with a book called Effortless. And kind of the big idea of the book is that for the most part you could reach the same destination in one of two ways. You could reach it having exhausted yourself and burnt yourself out to the point where you cross the finish line and immediately collapse. Or you can achieve most of the almost all the same goals in a way that's sustainable. Right. And doesn't leave you exhausted to finish and doesn't burn your life out and doesn't burn your relationships and your physical health and all that stuff. And he talks about just a lot of it is just a mental reframe. It's just deciding, hey, I'm going to go on the sustainable path and not the unsustainable path because a lot of times they lead to the same destination. They'll one just get you there in a way that leaves you exhausted and burned out and, and ruins a lot of the other things that you love about your life. So Essentialism is a really great book to keep you focused. So if you are. If you find yourself like scattered too many priorities, the to do list never seems to quite get done. Like all those things that people feel like on a daily basis, most of the time it's because you're over committed, especially as a leader. Man, there was a, there was a great show. Do you remember the show Suits back in the day? All right, so it was a show on like TNT about a law firm. And I remember one of the guys, the managing director at the time, somebody walked in and he was just kind of had his feet propped up and was drinking a scotch at like 2 o' clock in the afternoon and they're like, what? You don't have any, you don't have any work to do? And he just looks at the guy straight faced and says, if I have work to do, I'm not doing my job. Great line. I love that line. So I think that's a, that's a great reminder that if you have a to do list that isn't getting done and you're the one that's always scattered like as the leader and you're the one that's burned out by your business, you're just, you're over committed and it's time to, to do your job better.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I appreciate the conversation, brother. And yeah, I would just say if you're at the point in your business journey, you know, where just having a conversation with someone who's been there ahead of you, just go to realestatebschool.com, grab a free coaching session and we can have that conversation. There's definitely a more elegant way, a more profitable way, a more sustainable way to scale your real estate business. So head over to real estatebschool.com and we'll see you over there. Thanks, Matt.

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

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