Dave Went From Working 80+ hrs A Week To Taking 15 Weeks Of Vacation

Hey there. Lars Hedenborg, founder, real estate B school. Today I've got Dave Friedman with me in Charleston, South Carolina. Dave, what's going on, brother?

Lars, everything's great. Thank you.

Awesome. Why don't you give like a 60 second intro of yourself and kind of where you do business?

Sure, absolutely. Dave Friedman here in Charleston, South Carolina. I've been down here for about 10 years. Grew up in southeast Michigan and started building a team in 2014. Got into general brokerage in 2013 from new home sales. Decided to want to build a team in 2014. Fast forward, it's 2018. We'll close 400 deals this year. I stepped out of production at the end of 2015, beginning of 2016. So it's been a couple years since I've been meeting with buyers and sellers and yeah, run an awesome team. We have seven outside sales, three inside sales, operations, closing coordinator, listing coordinator, director of sales, director of lead gen, and a director of talent.

Awesome. Cool. So when we first met, I think it was August 2014 when we first met, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Big picture. What did you want to achieve when we first started working together?

Sure, absolutely. I knew that I was at the point where I was starting to scale up my business and I've always been really good at sales. The corporate background taught me to appreciate systems and processes and also tracking. And at the time I had an admin who I was paying $8 an hour. And what I needed was somebody to implement a lot of tools and systems to keep the train on the tracks as we continued to scale up and I knew that my time was valuable, generating revenue and cash and selling. So what I did is I recognized that you had a lot of great systems and tools. So I wanted to hire you just to take all of those resources and have my one admin implement them. So week over week, I would give her one to three things to implement into the team. And when I say team, it was just the two of us and she would take those and implement them. And from there we just continue to grow. And without that, we definitely wouldn't have kept the train on the tracks. Yeah.

What kind of problems were you facing, you know, in the business and personally? You know, when we first got started working together.

So in the business, you know, initially we didn't really have any clear visibility into not only what we're doing in the past, but also what we need to be doing in the future, you know, to be able to hit the goals that we had that we had put down on paper. And so tracking it made all the world of difference. And so you have some great technology and tools to help with tracking. And so by putting those things into place, it really helped with knowing whether we were on track or not on track. And before that, it was a problem just because simply I didn't know. Also, at the same time, I was scaling up my listing inventory so there were simple tools like at the time, the listing inventory balance sheet, which now we're using some different kind of software that you've put together for that. But there were things that I would not have been able to stay on track with without certain things to help me with those. And for example, I Got up to 97 coming soon, active and pending sellers. There's no way that you could effectively keep up with that kind of inventory without a good system to help you with, you know, also recruiting, hiring and training were big things too. And so again, you had put a lot of those models together, so we were simply able to swipe those and implement them into the business.

And back in 2014, 2015, you know, I remember back in that time, you didn't have a lot of bandwidth with your time. The money wasn't like it is today. What did it mean back then? Getting on track, getting this thing back on track and getting it in a trajectory of growth, but not only growth and just for growth sake, which is a lot of what we track in the industry, but time and money freedom. What did that mean in your business and for you personally to get on that right track?

I mean, at the time, it was about making the most amount of money and that I possibly could. And that was my mindset back then. My mindset today is completely different. And it's not focused on that. Money doesn't fall into any of the goals that I have anymore. But at the time, you know, it was about money and also spending more time with my family and friends. I had become just completely swamped in the real estate business. And it was. It had literally crept into every single aspect of my life to where the only thing that I was spending time on was real estate. So at the time, it was hurting my marriage, hurting relationships with family and also relationships with friends. And so on the personal side, that all needed to be fixed.

Yeah. And so how many hours were you working back in? 14, 15.

You know, I would say at least 80 hours a week.

Yeah. And I know you're still a hard charger. Is it's better than 80 now, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's no question about that.

All right, so let's get into the nuts and bolts of the things that you implemented. So specifically two or three tools or systems that made the biggest impact in your business.

Two or three tools are said the business tracker was huge. It's a 360 degree view of your business and that's massive. If you're not tracking what you're doing in your business, then it won't be long before you're out of business, especially with a shift coming up in the market. So that's huge. Trello has been a huge asset in our business also and it's a great piece of software, but it's also the way you design and the way you set it up is what makes it function at a high level. And then I would also say looking at budgeting correctly and know ROI correctly, most people don't look at it the way they need to. And that's been a massive help for us also.

Yeah. So let's go a little bit deeper into, and you mentioned recruiting and hiring as well. Let's go a little bit deeper into tracking because it's, it's the one thing when you say it to like a prototypical real estate agent, they sort of begin to sweat and shiver and it kind of just freaks them out a little bit. Like I'd rather, I'd rather just work with buyers until I'm 77 than start tracking. How was the implementation? Because back then you had an admin for about 18 months. You were slinging houses and your admin was implementing the systems. Right. So talk about the implementation of that tracking system and how you were able to do it without getting so bogged down in it.

My goal was to put my push my foot down as hard as I could on the revenue pedal and just keep it there and producing cash so that way we could continue to afford to purchase more leads and more people to help. And so as far as implementing wasn't cumbersome for me and it wasn't painful for me at all. And it was largely because I had probably of the whole process about 3% to do with it and my admin implemented the rest of it. And you know, she wasn't a, I mean she's an amazing person. When I first met her, she was working at, as a hostess at a pizza place and they were cutting back on her hours so she needed something else and I was in like desperation mode. So I hired her. And you know, my point with that is, you know, to put these things into place in your business, it's not rocket science and it's not complicated. It's just a matter of getting somebody to do it and staying consistent with it. So, you know, as far as the amount of time that I spent on it, I literally would like look and try to figure out which was the next best tool that we needed to implement and then I would give it to her and she would take care of it.

Yeah. Awesome. So it's not like she came in with a 20 year history or work experience in real estate and she did all this for you. She just was eager to work and you kind of gave her the direction one tool system at a time and she was able to implement it for you?

Yeah, absolutely. I think she was like just out of college at the time and living with her parents and I mean it was. Yeah, not, not. I don't even think she actually went to college. But anyway, point being, you know, you don't need somebody that's very high level to put this stuff together for you.

Yeah, let's. Let's talk a little bit specifically about the results that you've achieved. So talk about 2013, 2014. You know, production numbers, stress, hours worked. And then let's talk about every year since then. Kind of just give a few minutes on what, what the progression has been in real estate.

B School. Sure. Single agents. In 2013, I sold 30 homes and then hired a buyer's agent and an admin. In 2014 we did 60 and then 2015 we did 127. 2016 we did 197. And then we did 270 in 2017 and we'll do 400 in 2018.

Awesome.

I was definitely working about 80 hours a week. 2013 and 14, 2015, we made some really, really good hires and I was able to get down to about 50 hours a week when I was working. And I took off about 15 weeks that year. So Haley and I took some serious vacations and travel and educational retreats and things like that too.

In 2013, 14. What would the vacation look like in those years.

If I actually did go on a vacation? I was working the entire time. If I actually did leave Charleston.

So I would say in 15, 16, 17 in this year. How many weeks total in those four years do you think you've taken or.

Will take at least 15 a year at minimum? Yeah. And all, you know, there is, I'm down to about 12 hours a week in my business. And because we're so growth minded, you know, I create a lot of work for myself that is not necessary for us to sell 400 homes this year. So at this point I'm spending as much time as I want to in it.

Yeah. So when we first met, what, what were any hesitations you had about real estate, B school or kind of in your mind objections that you were kind of circling through? Like I almost didn't join because what.

I had zero hesitations. I did. I had done so much research on all these different kinds of coaching programs out there. To me it made sense because I always felt like it was, it is a more business minded coaching program and there's amazing content and coaching as it relates to sales and there's a lot of organizations out there that do that, that do an okay job at that. Right. However, this is, this is about every single component in the business. It's about leadership, it's about sales, it's about training, recruiting, onboarding. There's literally fantastic, amazing content that no matter where you are in your real estate career, that you could stand up in your business to build it the right way and a real blueprint to follow it. So, you know, I feel like some coaching programs make sense for people when they're ready for it. You know, if you want to take like an ISA coaching program, like obviously you're going to do that when you're ready to hire an isa. However, I think what's great about your coaching program and why I been a part of it since 2014 is that there's components to every single piece of the business that have, that have a literal blueprint on how to stand up in your business and they are more or less one size fits all. So your business doesn't have to look a very specific way to be able to implement these things, which I feel like in some other coaching programs you almost need to break down everything we have going on to be able to implement some of this stuff.

Yeah. And I think a lot of folks have a fear. You know, I've never managed people, I've never built a business. I'm not good with numbers. And it's, it's just speak to that just for a minute, you know, because it's not like you had a, you had built two other businesses in different industries or you know, you basically just, you had the commitment to build a business and you went after it using these systems. So speak a little bit about, you know, someone that might be sort of hesitant because they don't have this leadership or management background.

I think the name of the program is appropriate. It's B school. It's business school. Right. So I don't think that anybody needs to have a degree in business school or, you know, focus in leadership or accounting or anything, because, you know, you're getting a master's program, you're getting an undergraduate and master's program. You can even go as far as to say doctorate, you know, in how to run a business, especially in real estate, through your program. So you can come in at the ground level with no experience in anything whatsoever and graduate through the process the way that it's designed to help you.

Tell me, what's been your favorite part of real estate B school?

I think my favorite part has been the personal growth side of it and then also sharing that kind of stuff with my team. And yeah, it hasn't been like the sides or the volume or the GCI or, you know, the money has been cool as it relates to how it's changed the people's lives on my team. But that goes back to the personal side of it more so than anything, right?

Yeah.

That's awesome.

So who would you recommend? Real estate B school? I know you talked about a little bit there, but who would you recommend real estate B school to and why?

Yeah, I think if you're spending any more than 30 to 40 hours a week in real estate, then this is for you. It really is. You know, you. There's. There's no reason that you can't build a big, you know, life by design in real estate with spending, you know, more than 30, 40 hours a week in it. So even if you're selling, you know, 20 deals or 15 deals, I still think it applies at any level. Or if you're selling 2,000 homes, you know, I think there's. There's people that I've met in the program that have come in, you know, that. That sell a serious amount of real estate, and they realize that they've missed out on many, many years of running a real business. And after getting integrated into the program, they figure out what it's like to run a real business. So I think at any level, you could be at 10 deals, or you can be up to 2,000 deals.

Yeah.

Awesome.

All right, Dave, thank you so much. Hey, if you want to see if real estate B school could help you take your business to the next level. And like Dave said, it really doesn't matter where you are in your business growth journey. Just have to have that willingness to grow, take action. There's instructions here on the page, or you can go to realestatebschool.com and we'll see you there. Thanks so much.