Ben Gray grew his sales while cutting back his hours

Foreign working with Lars and B School, I was doing about 125 transactions by myself and one assistant. And a lot of those were REO or foreclosure transactions and just had no system set in place. And so it was constantly running around with our hair on fire trying to get everything done on time. My biggest pain point was we were coming up against the same problems every single day, every single week, the same issues. And I knew there had to be some kind of systems that we could implement because they were just basic problems, but they were consistent, and I wasn't smart enough to crack the code on. You know, I was too busy in production to really look at how do I build this into a business. I knew I needed something else other than what I was doing. And I heard Lars on a podcast in February of 2019 while I was on vacation, and I said, I gotta work with this guy, because I knew he had what I needed. And it wasn't until September of 2019 that I finally decided to pull the trigger and give it a shot, because it was pretty significant investment for me and the price point and volume I was doing. And I'm really glad I made the decision at that time because I thought my business was doing great. I was getting ready to add more office space. And the business coach at B school said, no, you're completely out of whack on your economic model. We need to rein things in. They gave my wife and I a challenge of cutting $2,200 a month out of our budget. And that all happened in the fall and winter of 2019, in the beginning of 2020. And, boy, if we didn't have B school, we would not have been prepared for what happened to us with, you know, the spring of 2020 and the COVID pandemic. What B school helped us set up was instrumental in keeping my business afloat and keeping it where it is now. So one of the big things that the B school coach helped me with was my mindset around bringing on a team. I was doing a lot of transactions myself, and I just didn't feel like I had what it took. I didn't have all the, you know, swag to. To offer other agents to join me. And the B school coach I was working with just g the right mindset for recruiting, and that helped me bring on buyer's agents. Now they're, you know, doing both buyers and sellers. But the freedom that I gained from bringing on those agents and not just bringing them on, because I had agents before, but it was the wrong economic model. And so the agents before didn't work out because there was no profit in it. Now I have the right economic model. I have a team of buyers and listing agents that are freeing up my time to help me work more on the business and enjoy my family more. So one of the quotes that Lars references a lot is from James Clear and talking about, we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. And that's been so apparent in my business that B School has helped me implement these systems to where now, you know, I'm doing less production, but I'm making more money, and I have more time, and it's still set up to where my agents are making money. And I've also included them in some other income opportunities that they can produce on a residual basis. And it's all because B School has helped me set up systems that they took time to work on, but it's definitely been worth it. B School was kind of a stretch for me financially. My average price point in our market is $175,000. And so, you know, if you're in a different market and you're making a lot more gci, it's a little bit easier to spend the money. But I knew I needed something. And I remember my accountant said, you know, be careful. That's a lot of money, for one thing. And now, three years later, he's laughing at it together with me, knowing that it's produced just incredible results for me. So if anybody's, you know, nervous about spending money, I would say do it. Be prepared for a lot of work, but it'll pay off in the end.