Can Time Freedom & Business Growth Coexist?

Alright, so now that we've really gone super deep on the pain that exists in traditional success in our industry, and if you missed part one of this series, I definitely want you to go back and listen to it or watch it. I really go deep into the early days of my journey and what I see in our current members in terms of the things that they get wrapped up in that they think are going to lead them to growth. And when I measure growth, I'm not talking about just more deals. I'm talking about growth in all the areas of life that matter. And traditional success in our industry does not lead you to a very full, rich life because you're spending seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, evenings, weekends, all of it, and you're sacrificing relationships and things that matter more ultimately than the next deal. And so that was part one. Quick summary of part one. Now I want to spend time on, like, how do you get around that? What's the process you have to go through for you to begin to separate yourself from the business? Even if you're the only one in the business right now, how do you start to view the business as something that, that isn't you? And I don't even know if that makes sense. And here's what I mean by it. You know, when I first got into real estate, I read a book called E Myth Revisited Michael Gerber. And it didn't really tell you the answer. Didn't tell you how to do the thing, it didn't tell you how to move from technician to manager to entrepreneur. The thing that has stayed with me forever is how would you, how do you have to think differently about your business if you have to replicate it 10,000 times? So basically, if you were to take your job as a real estate agent and replicate it 10,000 times, how would you think, how would you be able to pull that off? When I heard that question, the E. Myth question, I obsessed about it. I'm like, well, that means that I couldn't do any part of, of anything involved in a real estate transaction. And so how would I think about the business differently? Anything I did in the business, I would do with an eye toward me not doing it someday really, really soon. And so if I was showing a home and I did certain things that I think clients liked, like bring water to a showing, or I would make these showing packets, you know, with a cover sheet and I would have folders and, you know, I just had certain things that I did which I think they liked. And I Would just create a system, stock, a process so that the next person that did it. You know, when I hired my first agent, my first agent, even though they did their own deals, they also acted as showing agent for my deals. My great leverage point, they can make money, which was good money. I think I paid 20 bucks an hour to show homes. And that was good money. Still is good money in our market. And so I just had a different eye toward or a different way that I looked at every part of the business. And same with like marketing, like how can I set up my database marketing strategy system in a way where I didn't have to tinker with it and I still don't have to tinker with it. You know, we still run the same basic methodologies. The basic approach that we use with our database today is the same that it's been for, you know, since 2008, 9, 10, when I was really building that system up, very, very strong. And it's been running consistently and systematically ever since. And so the thing I want to spend a little bit time on is to have you think about where you spend your time in your business. And so if you're a solo agent. For me, back in the day, 2007, 2008, when I was, you know, going from selling 27 homes in 10 months to 44 homes to 58 homes in 2009, where I hired my first buyer agent late in that year, I think I sold 55 of the 58. So I went from 27 to 44 to 55. Me alone with one administrator essentially. And that process of bringing on an administrator, before I had an administrator, I'm like, man, so much of this job administrative in nature. And when I say administrative, I came from a corporate environment where, you know, I had a little bit of leverage in my corporate job. We had like one administrator that was shared by four executives. And so like booking travel or making copies or answering the phone. For us, you know, there was just a bunch doing our expense reports. There was a bunch of things that this administrator would do for us that, you know, didn't make sense for us to do them because, you know, we were paid at a different rate at that time. I was getting paid about 100 bucks an hour. I would made about $200,000 a year. And I worked roughly 2,000. I probably worked more than 2,000 hours with travel. So maybe I made 80, 75, 80 bucks an hour in that position. But the corporation knew that. Why would they have a hundred dollar person doing the job of a $20 person just didn't make sense. And so I brought that sort of philosophy into my real estate business. And I got to work on dissecting the different jobs of a real estate agent. And I'm not going to go into all of them. You can really just start to think of and just get a white piece of paper and write down like all the things you do in a couple week period. Just write them down. Like, you know, you'll show homes, you'll list homes. Your enter enter listings into mls. You'll take photographs, you'll create brochures, you'll run a sign out, you'll go to a closing, you'll do appraisal negotiations, repair negotiations, you'll type up repair requests, you'll, you know, lead generate, you'll put out a newsletter, maybe an electronic newsletter, maybe you'll do some Facebook lives, maybe you do some social posts. You know, there's all these things that you do as a real estate agent because as an agent, even though you're a single person or even if you're a small team, all of those things have to happen because the single person is the entire business. So all I did different from everyone else in my, in my market was to break down all of those things. As I was doing it. I built a system for someone to take it over. So when I hired my first licensed administrator, all of the listing coordination, all of the closing coordination, and all of the marketing coordination was off of my plate. And it was just, I created the system, the process by which that person could take it over and I would never get it back. And 80% of it was done exactly the way that I wanted and I could care less about the other 20%. I even got to the point with my administrator at the time where I trust you, she was licensed. I don't need to come back into this transaction even if it falls apart. I'm so focused on building the business and putting more systems in place and driving the growth of the business that I didn't think, and I did get involved in deals that were blowing up, but I really didn't think my time was the best spent in anything that was already under contract. And this is embarrassing, and I'll say it anyway, I was so busy, busy back in these days and embarrassingly not focused on client care, not the way that we've done it in the last five to seven years. More than once did I walk into a closing room late. So first of all, I was late. So buyers, sellers, the other agent and the attorney, sometimes a lender we're already sitting in the room. I come in late and I don't know who my client is. Oh my gosh. It couldn't be the worst thing. It's so embarrassing. And I'm even. The only reason I tell you is because I was pushing so hard in all of these different areas and I was so committed to just being the business owner that there were times where I kind of stepped over the client. The client was like an incidental. And that's not a proud statement. I'm not coaching you or training you to do that. Now we have folks that it is in their DNA to have the high level administrative skills and also like a high empathy and to want to serve and love and be in the drama of a deal and get someone to the other side. So the business now takes care of our clients where I don't have to be the one doing it. I'm not wired that way. So part of this is also an awareness around how you're wired. There's a lot of low level activities now. We call it passion versus pay. You know, there's this exercise we do in our business freedom planner. It's this planner. If you're watching the video, I can hold it up. It's a quarterly planner. I'm actually going to find that passion versus pay. There are things that you have to do in business that you love and there are things that you have to do in business that you don't love. And there are things that you do in business that pay you really good money. And there are things that you do in business that don't pay you very good money. And so we have this matrix of passion versus pay. I'll show it here, the video. So it's this, you know, upper. Let's say you're just drawing this. You could draw it out. Draw. Get a piece of paper. Draw four quadrants. Upper left hand corner is high passion, high pay. Upper right is low passion, high pay. Lower left is high passion, low pay. And lower right is low passion, low pay. So the questions I went through at the time were what are the things I love to do in my business that pay really well? I want you to list them out. What are the things in your business that you love to do that pay really well? We call those high passion, high pay. On the upper right, it's what are the things you don't love doing in your business that pay well? So you don't love doing them, but they pay really well. Low passion, high pay, lower left, high passion, low Pay. What are the things you love to do in your business that don't pay that well? So you love to do them, but they don't pay that well. This one for most every agent is showing homes. I love going out with buyers and I love the process of helping them pick a home. And I love it. I just love it. I'm passionate about it. That doesn't pay well. It doesn't pay well. You know, we can hire a really good showing agent in our market that loves to do that for about 20 to 25 bucks an hour. So if, you know, if you followed me for any period of time, you know, I made this commitment when, early on when I got in the business that I wanted to make $250 an hour working 2000 hours a year. In my real estate business, I wanted to make $500,000. So 500,000 divided by 2,000 hours is $250 an hour. And when I started to go through this low level versus high level and then bringing someone into my world that I can delegate everything below the line, anything that's high passion, low pay, low passion, low pay, I could delegate. We go through this process, this business freedom Planner process every 90 days. So every 90 days I still get another crack at getting rid of the things that don't make me money. And even if I'm passionate about it, I have to offload it. I do. In my professional world, I want to work on the things that I love doing that pay really, really well. And so in my real estate team, it's high level strategic thinking, it's vision, it's I still like systems, I still love marketing in that business. Those are the things that are high passion, high pay in this business. Real estate B school, it is stuff like this. I'm getting to speak to someone through something that's highly leveraged. It's a one to many sort of thing where I can speak truth into your life and I can train you, maybe shift your mindset. That's high passion, high pay. It may motivate you to take a next step with us. Right? So that's the kind of things that I love doing. I love training our members. I do a training every week for our members where I'm teaching them something to make their journey easier. High passion, high pay. Because it's a one to many sort of thing. And so when you think about the things you're doing in the different jobs of a real estate agent, you know, are you taking any sort of inventory? You know, we have a process that we go through. We meaning like people in my world, on my real estate team and in the coaching business, in real estate B school and our members, they go through a 14 day time study challenge every 90 days. So every 90 days they're taking inventory in 15 minute increments of where they're spending their time. And as a result of going through that exercise, they are able to lay it out in those four quadrants and then work to get rid of anything that's low pay. So every 90 days you're showing up with a new set of things you've been working on as a result of the shedding of the things that you Learned in the 14 day time study challenge. And that's the part that I think most folks aren't willing to do. You know, when you really want to study, what makes, you know, let's take my journey versus someone else's journey. Let's take an agent. In my market that's, that's selling 25 to 30 homes a year, which in my market that's like their top line is maybe 250,000. They're paying their broker probably 30,000. Their expenses are probably 50, 60,000. You know, all said and done, they're probably taking home $150,000. They're probably working 3,000 hours to do it. On average 60 hours a week. And they have no time freedom. That's 50 bucks an hour. That person is working way harder than I am, way harder than I am in terms of the hours they're putting into their real estate business. And that's the only thing they know how to do now. And so every year they're just hoping to get that 250 top line, spend about 100,000 on expenses and split 150,000 with the government. And so I want to encourage you as you're sort of dissecting the things that you're doing and you're thinking about, you know, wow, like maybe if I did less of the things that paid me less and I got those off my plate, maybe I could do more things that get me paid more like build systems, you know, hire an administrator, hire that agent or a showing agent, right? Think about the vision of, you know, actually come up with a three year vision for your life and your business. And there is this, you know, it's, it's a pretty, it's, it's not easy to wrap your head around. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to say it, where to contemplate being a real estate agent and not doing every bit of the transaction may be a bit of a hurdle for you. The encouragement, though, whatever motivates you. Some people are drawn to, you know, like, pleasure seeking and others are, like, are going to repel.