Become a Productivity Warrrior | What Every Agent Must Know That Most Coaches Won't Tell Them

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

Welcome back, Real Estate Business Builders. This is Lars Hedinborg, founder, Real Estate B School. Today we're going to talk about what every agent must know that most coaches will not tell them when it comes to becoming a productivity warrior. If you're in our Facebook group, Real Estate Business Builders, you will see that we dropped in a critical document. It's our critical activities success tracker and you really do want to get in there to grab that document. It goes along with this podcast. There was a quote that I stumbled upon from Tim Tebow and he didn't have the most illustrious professional football career, but he went on to build a platform and doing some really cool things. But this quote really grabbed me. Don't worry about what you can't control. Our focus and energy needs to be on the things we can control. Attitude, effort, focus, these are the things we can control. So this really convicted me, you know, so I feel like a lot of times I do these episodes here and I sound preachy. But guys, I gotta tell you that I'm preaching to myself in all this stuff. So the question that came to mind for me is attitude, effort and focus are the inputs we can control. When where am I coming up short? Is it my attitude? Is it my effort? Is it my focus? So for me now personally, it's a hundred percent my focus. I have bit off a little bit more than I can chew in like one or two business opportunities, more than I've proven that I can focus on. It's typically it's not the attitude with me, it's not my effort, but right now it's focused. So for you, where are you coming up short when it comes to those three things? So in terms of like productivity and time management and this whole conversation, this really does bring a level of frustration to most agents that I talk to. Whether you're a top agent, whether you're running a team, whether you're struggling as a newer agent, is that there's no doubt you have competing parties, right? We're trying to be good spouses, we're trying to be good parents, we're trying to do all the stuff, take care of our physical body so we don't gain a hundred pounds being spending too much time on real estate. So there's definitely competing priorities and it's a crazy time. Like with social media and news and all the ways that stuff can get into our brain, there's no doubt that we can get off track, right? And there's a lot to do when it comes, you know, comes to being a real estate agent. Traditional agents are doing all the different jobs. There's like 10 or 12 different job functions that a real estate agent does to generate leads, you to have conversations, set appointments, have listing consultations, service buyers, service sellers, go through the contract to closing portion, and then keep in touch with clients through whatever Clients for Life program that you have. So there's a ton of stuff to do, but there is hope you guys know what I stand for. If you've been a listener of the podcast for a while, I want to help you guys make more money, take more time off and put the things that matter most first in your real estate business. You know, I don't take a lot of time usually to kind of tell my story. I want to, I want to just give you guys a little bit of a perspective of about me. You know, I didn't have a sales background when I got into into real estate. I didn't have any business building experience, you know, so I just kind of fumbled into the industry and I learned really quickly that there's only certain activities that make you Money. I sold 44 homes in my first full year. I went on a handful of years later to build a lean and mean real estate team that sold 453 homes that year. I worked 42 days. So when it comes to productivity and really figuring out the best use of my time, I definitely cracked the code on that. You know, 5,000 plus families served in my real estate career. Thousand plus agents have been through real Estate B school I've got financially, I'm, I'm never thought I would be where I am. I take, you know, 10 to 12 plus weeks of vacation a year. My, here's the thing though, you know, that said, and I do it also. So I'm going to preface what I just said with, you know, I had a really challenging upbringing. So there was no silver spoon. None of this was sort of given to me. I had to fight for everything that, that I was able to achieve. I had student loans for a career I didn't pursue. You know, like I said, I didn't have a background of business building. And I've made all the mistakes that you could make personally, professionally, I' all the mistakes that you, you can make. But I did figure out how to put it together. I did sort of trial and error my way through in terms of, you know, every year I would have a different three year vision. Like my three year vision was this moving target in a healthy way of moving target. You know, I just had a vision of what I wanted for my business and I built a plan to do it to get closer, called an annual plan. And then I just got to, to, to work on it a quarter at a time and, and it, and it did work. And that's how real estate B school was. I only say all that because some of you are listening and I've done this where I listen to someone who's maybe a little bit ahead of me on a business growth journey and I'll just say easy for you to say or easy for you to do and I'll kind of dismiss what they're saying because that's not my situation. Like my situation isn't where Lars is and I can't relate to it. So I just want to encourage you that I'm giving you, I'm kind of feeding into you from a place of. I remember vividly what it was like to be a struggling real estate agent, not knowing how to balance anything, not knowing where to spend my time, doing all the 12 different functions of a real estate agent and having no boundaries in any of it. So I have definitely been there. I definitely feel your pain. And in some ways recently I've, you know, like I said earlier, I've bitten off more than I can chew in some kind of startup ventures where I've had to go back into the grind and doing all the different things, doing all the 10 or 12 functions myself. And it gets messy and it gets out of bounds and it's like, what am I doing? And it's. It's kind of building up a business all over again. So I've definitely been there. I've definitely felt your pain. I'll let you know that here. Some of this stuff is going to come off as very basic, but this is the stuff that will help you make a ton of money in real estate. You guys have heard me, and there's just a few points that I want to cover here. You need to know your worth. That's number one. You need to declare right now the money you want to make in real estate and the hours you want to work. And we call that the Business Freedom Index. I know you guys have heard me talk about it before, but without that target, you're going to keep doing all the things that you're doing that aren't making you a lot of money. You've heard me talk about productivity, right? Productivity. There's a great definition by Dan Kennedy. It's the deliberate strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. So using that definition, if you were to grade yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on a daily basis in terms of how productive you were and deliberate, strategic, with your time, energy, resources, did you move closer to meaningful goals that matter to you in the areas of life that matter most? Real estate agents, even top agents and folks that are running teams would not grade themselves very high on that scale. And I've been using that definition for over 10 years now to measure, you know, where I'm spending my time and am I making the best use of my time. So in terms of drawing this topic of productivity out a little bit more, you've got to see your business as a system of systems. And you know, we in real estate B school, we talk about four drivers later on. I'm going to give you a website where you can see me talk through this. It's our case study program. It's REBS case study program. You can actually see me talk about the development of these drivers and accelerators. But working on your business, you know, actual time blocks in your calendar where you're working on your business, you're installing systems into your business to allow the business to run more smoothly and for you to get out of some of those 12 jobs, you only want like one or two of the 12 jobs of a real estate agent so you that you can grow and scale and make the kind of money that you want. So the four drivers, the 12 accelerators, just know that there's a better explanation at Rebs case study program. The next point I want to cover, and this is this one's really, really important, is that there's freedom in structure. This is an absolute oxymoron. Most people will look at my calendar and that they will say, there is no freedom in your calendar. Like, I look at your calendar and you're time blocked, you know, like, all your waking hours. Like, what freedom is there in that? And I would argue, you know, so as I'm recording this, I'm in Oaxaca, Mexico, you know, on a mission trip with an organization called Open Eyes. And that's awesome. Like, and this is the first trip, granted, I'm working a little bit while I'm here, so a little bit of a, you know, I'm not totally, totally free, but I still have this big mission to help agents. So I'm willing to take a little bit of time here on a morning. But this is one of, I think, 13 epic adventures that I'm going to do this year. This year I turn 50 years old. I'm going to Tokyo and Hawaii, and I'm doing a snowmobile trip in Jackson, Jackson Hole. And I've got, like, a bunch of other Trips and like, 10 different tournaments, you know, for my son's volleyball. And just like, a lot of great stuff that I was able to put into this year and to be able to financially afford it without putting our family in any difficult position financially. Because when I'm working, I am on point and I know the stuff that needs to get done. And even if I'm traveling, you know, there's like two or three hours of work maybe I'll need to get done in a week if I'm not able to prepare to completely check out. There are a few trips a year that I completely check out. But my point is, is that if you don't have an ideal week, right? If you don't have, like, a written plan for how you want your perfect week to go, if you're not a master of time blocking, if you're not protecting time daily to do the things that matter most in your business, and this is the hardest one, is that if you're not honest with yourself about where you're spending your time, we all have the same amount of hours. And if you're spending 10, 12 hours a week on social media or watching TV or the news or whatever, you're not going to be successful financially. Maybe you'll get to a certain point, but you will not be all you can be in all the areas of life that matter to you, if you're spending a chunk of time doing things that aren't moving you closer to meaningful goals in the areas of life that matter. And here's the good thing, is that when it comes to, you know, just really owning your time and really being deliberate with how you spend your time, most people won't do this. Right? There's not a lot of agents that are going to slice and dice their calendar and be willing to sit still for three to four hours every morning to generate new business and focus on the parts of their business that are going to lead them to the kind of freedom that. That you want, right? So the cool thing is, is that. And I've been able to. And it hasn't been perfect every year, and it's been different every year, but I've been able to, for the most part, detach the time that I work against the money that I make. So I haven't made the same amount of money every year. I haven't worked the same amount of hours. But I've realized that the income that I make, it's simply the result of the choices I make with my time. Now, that's me, right? But as I say that, how can you use that realization in your own life if you're not where you want to be financially? What choices have you been making with your time and, you know, newer agents or agents that are struggling to put 6, 10, 15, 20 deals together, you know, and you're just. Maybe you're in a different position where this is. This might be coming off a little bit like, well, you know, you've already achieved it, so it's easier for you to look back and kind of see the things. But when I was new in the business, I didn't have a sales background. I was. I didn't know what I had gotten into. I focused on one lead source, one script, and, like, one activity. And it was. It was a buyer home search lead. I had one simple script, and I would meet with them with a buyer consultation, and I would sign them before I showed them homes. And. And that got my. That was for like three years I did that. And then I was able to put a system together where I didn't have to do it and I could have showing agents, show homes where at least I got my evenings and weekends back. But I was willing to do the thing long enough to move on to the next thing. And so for some of you, it's just doing that one thing long enough so that you can get out of doing that thing. And we don't think about our business as like an incremental sort of building on top of a system, on top of a system, on top of a system. And hopefully this is encouragement for some of you. For some of you, this will be really convicting. You'll be a little bit pissed off at me for hitting you in the face with some of the reality of your current situation. But you have to be willing to kind of face, face that truth, face that reality, own it and be responsible for where you are right now and just use it as a way to move forward. I had a business coach tell me once and this was really impactful. It was actually Dan Sullivan, strategic coach. I was in his program. It was four meetings a year and it was 20 grand for the, for the year. So $5,000 a day. But I was invited to his home and I got the chance to talk to him and asked him, you know, what's been the secret of success? How have you. I think at one point he told us he was a 30 or $35 million company and he essentially said that, you know, nobody does it long enough, nobody's consistent enough to get that level of success. He's like, nobody thought I was impressive when, you know, we went from 10 million in revenue to 5 million in revenue or when we were doing 2 to 3 million in revenue. And I, it was sort of haphazard and I didn't figure out the marketing and you know, I was still fumbling with developing these models and you know, he had a couple bankruptcies, I think, and like nobody was looking at him as a $30 million, you know, the preeminent, you know, sort of teacher in his space. But he was consistent with it and he did the activities long enough to get the leverage to move on to the next activity. So that's my encouragement for you. Hopefully there's some good stuff in here. Like I said, if you want to look at or at least consider what it would look like to come into my world in a very low key, guaranteed results. So we have a 10x your investment guarantee or double your investment back. So go to rebscasestudyprogram.com I will never pitch you guys anything except considering turning your investment into 10 times in a 6 month program. So go to rebscasestudy.com we'll see you guys on the inside.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiebook.com to get a free copy of my book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.