Building A Business That Runs Itself - Part 1

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Today we start another three part series where I interview one of our most successful members. And the awesome part about Dave Friedman's journey is that he entered into my world when he was a solo agent with a part time administrator. He went From I think 60 deals to 375 deals, grinding 70 hours a week in his business to complete freedom, working about a day a week and he doesn't go to the office anymore. So stay tuned for part one of a three part series. And if you're at the point in your journey where you're like, man, that sounds awesome, maybe, I believe it's out of reach for me, you know, we just launched a program called our case study program. Go to rebscasestudy.com to get more information about how you can be our next case study. So stay tuned for part one of Dave Friedman and his journey to complete the freedom in his real estate business. All right, let's, let's do it. Let's get back, let's get back. Turn video on. And then I think I can pin. Should I spotlight or pin Dave?

You can pin him. Either is fine.

Then I can pin myself. There we go. All right, we're good. All right, so let's, let's get after it here. So some of you will know this guy, Dave Friedman. So we had the pleasure to work together, I think over six years, just at about six years. So I don't even know how we met. I don't even remember how we met. But I know I met Dave when he was just, I think in his like second full year of real estate. And he definitely knew he wanted to, to build a business. And really back in the early days of real estate, B school, where it was, we were running and gunning, he was running and gunning and just kind of put our stuff together and I was able to consult into his business. And we're going to go through this conversation. You know, Dave has built. What'd you guys do in 2020, Dave?

About 375 homes.

So. 375 homes. And how many weeks would you say you took off?

Gosh, I would say probably 12 to 13.

Yeah. So, you know, I think when I first met you, Dave, I think you had, you were on like into your third year of not taking any vacations and just doing what the industry tells us to do, which is just grind and just put your head down, do the activities, you know, bang out the transactions. And so it goes. So we're gonna unpack, Dave's. Journey today, but in a very specific way. And I want you guys to be active in the chat as we're going through this. Ask questions that are relevant to to where we are in the conversation. So that's my only ask as we go along here. Instead of leaving questions till the end, I want you guys to really understand the conversation that we're having. Many of you have moved past a stage, move past the stage, but you didn't do the thing that was required in the stage or two before to allow yourself the ability to ascend beyond the stage that you're at. So a lot of you are stuck in a stage. And when I say stage, the first session tomorrow I'm going to go through the real estate Business Growth Navigator. There are six distinct stages that you'll go through as you, you know, go from solo agent, which is where the whole industry lives, into just full on business owner out of all the day to day with just a handful of people reporting to you or even less. And so Dave, let's start with real quick overview of like just getting into real estate. You know, you move from a different market and just give that quick story.

Sure, yeah. You know, I grew up in Michigan and went to college and after college I decided to I knew that I was going to get into real estate, so I ended up working for a national home builder and selling homes for them for about six to seven years in that we went through the downturn in 2008. So I moved out of Michigan where it was the economy and the housing market was just completely devastated. It was one of the worst hit markets in the country. So from there I searched around and found Charleston, South Carolina, decided to move there and loved the company and organization. So I transferred to Charleston. I quickly learned that the culture was much different. So I didn't love the company as much as I thought I did. I loved the division that I worked for and the culture that I worked for at the time in Michigan and in Charleston, it was completely different. So after working with them in Charleston for two and a half years or so, I decided to leave and get into general brokerage. And so as soon as I did that, I decided to start coaching. I figured if I've been a big advocate that all the conversations that we're going to have with each other and all the ideas that I might have are not the first time that they've been talked about or not. I'm not the guy that came up with any idea. There's all these conversations that have already been had. So I've always wanted to just go find the people that have, like, already achieved the things at a high level that I want to go out and find the people that have done that and. And set up some kind of coaching relationship with them. And that way you can collapse time and get to where you want to go faster. So my first go at coaching with somebody first year in real estate was not the right coach. And it helped me set up a couple of things in the business. And at the same time, that's actually how I met Lars. Lars was like the poster child at a different organization. And so when I found out that Lars was not with him anymore, I called him up and said, hey, will you coach me? Because you seem to be the guy that actually has this stuff together, and I want to model what you've already done. And he said, yeah, I actually just started a coaching company, so it all worked out for us. And that was about 2000, I think you were about one year into your coaching company. So when did you start at Lars? 2000. 2014.

Started 2013. And I use the same line on Peterson. I guess it was my standard line that I used with everybody. Yeah, I just started coaching program.

It'll be great, right?

Love it.

Yeah, the script worked. And so we started coaching together in 2015.

Yeah. That's awesome. And how many homes did you sell? So your first full year on the residential side was 2013, 2000?

Yeah, it was about late. 2013 really is about 2014 was my first full year.

And how many homes? That's the year that I think we met that year. How many homes did you sell in 2014?

30.

Okay, okay. So that's the year. And I'm going to share my screen real quick and we'll dive deeper into what I'm about to show you tomorrow. But I want to give just a little bit of construct for this conversation. So when I talk the. The stages of growth, it's distinctly sort of three categories, but six stages. So start and ramp. That's where I do it. It's 100% on you to do 99% of the. Of the effort you put into your business and the results that you get then build and lead. That's 500k to 1.5 million. That's we do it. So you're still doing those core activities that got you to the point where you sort of went through 500k GCI, but now it's. It's we do it. You're surrounding yourself with an administrator or two or Some buyer agents or other agents that are now doing the activities that are going to scale your business beyond that 1.5 million, that 1.5 million to 3 million plus. That's where they do it. And so they're. We're going to try to have the conversation, Dave, and I'll push you a little bit to talk about like what gets you out of each of these different stages. And so in 2014, that's when I think we met. You had a part time assistant. I'll let you tell the story. But did you know at that point that you were going to like, at what point did you know you wanted to go, you know, go all the way with building a true business?

I had no idea that that was even a thing. So when I got into general brokerage, I was just like, I've got to find something better than new home sales. But as soon as I learned about, I thought it was a hoax. I thought when I first heard that people had a team where agents would go on appointments on their behalf and completely represent the team lead and the team lead was behind the curtains the entire time and not meeting anybody, I thought the whole thing was a hoax. I was like, this has got it, this is. And I thought it was a hoax because it sounded too good to be true. And if you're doing 30, 36 deals on your own, you know what I'm talking about, when that sounds too good to be true, like just kind of sitting back operating everything while you have people going out and answering the phone calls and going on appointments and doing the price reductions and everything else. So right when I heard about that, I was like, all in. I was like, show me the way and how to do that. Because what I'm currently doing, I've already hit ceiling and I. And I just don't operate here forever.

And what were the, when you say hit the ceiling, what were the, what did that look like? What are the kind of hours you were putting in? What were the personal sacrifices you were making in those early days when you went From I think 35 to like 60 something? The year that we started working together.

Yeah, the year we started working together, I went from about 32 and then to 60. The year before 32, which was the year we first met but didn't start working together yet. I was around like 30, so I only added a couple deals from like 2013, I'm sorry, 14 to 15. And when we started working together, it really helped me get more time back to at the time, just sell more homes was the objective. And you know, when I had first met you, I think I had. I had already taken a stab at hiring an assistant. And I think I had like four different assistants in one year in 2014. And it was a complete mess. I didn't know who to hire or how to hire or how to work with an assistant and how to lead or manage. And it showed because they kept quitting on me or I kept firing on one or the other. But when we ended up getting together, that was one of the first things that we ended up talking about was how to hire the right person and what to start delegating right off the bat. And so the first thing I started doing at the time was I actually just outsourced my closing coordination. It was the easiest and quickest thing to do. I found out that there were people out there that you could just pay per transaction. And I just wrapped my head around the more that I could delegate off of the admin and operation side of the business, the more I could just go focus on selling more homes. And so I wasn't really looking to work less time. I was just looking at trading my time to higher dollar producing activities. And that way I could work the same amount of hours and potentially more. At the time, I was all in on working as many hours as I could, but I just wanted to spend all of my time on the dollar producing activities. I started outsourcing the closing coordination stuff in 2015 and I also hired an admin on top of that and she happened to have her license. And at the time I was mostly pay per click leads and setting a lot of buyer appointments. So she happened to be licensed. And I was double booking appointments for I was prospecting for three hours in the morning and then going on appointments in the afternoon. And what I found is that I would fill my entire schedule up with appointments and I still had time in the morning to lead gen. So I started setting appointments, double booking myself in. Whichever one I wanted to send my admin on to go show homes for, I would send her on. So then my goal became signing buyer agencies with people and showing homes, but also having my assistant show homes for the other people that I had in buyer agency. So I started leveraging my time in those two capacities as far as showing homes go and closing coordination. And I was super buyer heavy at the time. I was almost all pay per click and I had just started calling expireds and for sale by owners. So that was my lead generation strategy for 2015 and my delegation strategy for 2015. And so by focusing in on the leverage and adding more leads into 2016, I ended up selling about 60 homes. And the only other thing that I added for a lead generation strategy in 2016 to get to 60 homes was our database. Lars had introduced me to Frank at Viral marketing and they helped me put together our database marketing plan. And outside of that, the only other thing I did was started outsourcing my closings to a second closing coordinator because the first one was pretty busy. So I had two different closing coordinators that I was paying per deal to close our deals at the time.

And that took you from 60, 65 transactions to what was it, the next year?

Well, yeah. So everything that I just talked about was your start and ramp phase right there. And then beyond that went to build and lead. So after finishing the start and ramp phase into 2017.

Actually, let me interrupt you because I want to make sure everyone understands this point because I think when people get to build, a lot of our members aren't moving past build. So as you were going from that 30 to 60 and setting appointments, focusing on the front stage of the business, marketing and sales, what was your mindset? And, you know, agents that, you know, do things traditionally, you know, team leaders that maybe fail to scale, what do you think was different about your mindset during those early years that allowed you to push through because you didn't want to. Like, your end game wasn't to be inside sales for your team.

Right.

You were doing those things not because you love them. It was a means to an end. But what was your mindset and how was your mindset different from other team leaders that are not scaling like you did?

You know, I really wanted to identify something I could do to generate business that I could teach other people to do. And I also wanted to be able to get leads without spending a lot of time on it because. So in other words, I was trying to find a way to generate as many leads as I could possibly generate with spending zero time on it. So it was almost fully automated, which you can really automate. Pay per click expired in FSBO marketing and your database, it doesn't take very much time. And that way I could spend all of my time on actually converting that business. I just needed the leads in front of me so I could call in prospect and convert them into appointments and meet with them to convert them into closings. And so I was, I was really disciplined at narrowing my focus on just a couple things to do at a really, really high level and delegate the rest to either other people or choose automated things because I knew that I couldn't scale, you know, go from 30 to 60 deals very easily. I wasn't confident I could go from 30 to 60 deals confidently by having coffee with a bunch of people, you know, and that type of thing. And maybe that's something that if I focused really hard on, I could have done it just so I think I was just very dedicated to focusing on a couple things to go deeply on. So that way I could get the most out of it and learn how to do it a high level.

Awesome. All right, so let's talk about leaving the ramp stage. So when you were at 60 deals, your average commission check was probably, probably not quite 10, probably 8 to 9 in those early years. Is that about right?

That's about right, yes.

That took you to about 500k GCI. And at that point you had one administrator. Full time or part time?

Full time.

Okay, so full time administrator. And then you still were outsourcing all of your closings on both sides, listings and buyers.

Yep, that's right.

Okay. All right, so let's talk about the couple years after that. So you're moving from, you know, stage two to three and four to build and lead sort of 500 to a million. A million to a million five. What were the next few things that you worked on?

Yeah, so I ended up hiring a buyer agent because I couldn't get past 60 on my own. So I hired a buyer agent. I think when I got to about, I think it was like unrolling 12 months, maybe about 55 deals. And she really helped me with a lot of things. I mean, she helped me obviously take a lot of buyer business. I got my administrative assistant that was also a showing agent and just got.