Discussing Broken Business Fundamentals w/Business Bros Podcast

Welcome to another episode of Business Bros. I'm on here with Lars Hedinburg, right, from the real Estate B school. And I'm excited to talk to you guys a little bit more about the real estate industry. I mean, let's. Let's face it, we're talking about a business that you've gotten into. You decided you wanted to get into business, you wanted to find free time, you wanted to, you know, enjoy what life has to offer after you've made a profit and you start maybe reinvesting that profit into something. I always kind of push things to say the objective in anytime we start a business is to make a profit, right? Our purpose in business is to be of service to others, but our business's purpose is to make a profit. So I'm excited to talk to Lars about what he teaches real estate agents at Real Estate B School to see what, you know, to help them get to the next level, basically. I love how you have it right there posted, so I didn't even have to think about it. It's right there. Helping insurance or insurance agents, real estate agents, get to the next level. So, Lars, welcome to the program.

Yeah, appreciate it. And it's funny in that, and this is probably in other industries. In the real estate industry, though, it's. There's so much ego and, you know, chasing growth for growth sake. You know, even if you're working eight days a week and you're a top producer or, you know, you're doing like $2 million of gross commission, which is how we sort of measure the money we bring in the front door of a real estate team. But you're making no money. Like, nobody really pays attention to, you know, just like basic business fundamentals. And, you know, business is there to ultimately not serve you necessarily because you need to serve your people. And at the same time, it's supposed to give you time and money, freedom, you know, if you set it up.

The right way, 100%, I think. I think the dichotomy, the disillusion that people have is they have this negative connotation on making a profit. Like, all of a sudden, if your business is making money, you're a bad guy, right? Like, there's something wrong with that, and there isn't anything wrong with that. Your purpose, like, again, your purpose in business is to be of service to others, but your business has a purpose, too. And if you're not focusing your attention on what your business's purpose, which is to make a profit, then what the hell are you doing it for? Let's be honest. I mean, you're. There's one part where we're in here to make a living, and there's another part where you're just trying to break even and get by. Like, I've never heard of a business model that sounds even remotely enticing. If I sold it to you, as you're going to do this, you're going to work your ass off and you're barely going to get by. You want to jump on board. I mean, it doesn't work that way.

Yeah. And there are guys in our industry that are doing some. Posting some big numbers, top line. Like, all they have to show for it is like a. Drawn like $200,000 in a home equity line.

Yeah. Well, it comes down to, again, money management. I know people. My background is in taxes and accounting. I've had a tax practice since about 2006. And I can tell you I have some of my own personal clients make a lot of money. I'm talking, you know, quarter of a million, half a million dollars a year. However, when it comes down to how much are they keeping, it's close to zero. They're just as broke as the guy I know who's making $50,000 a year. It's just their broke looks a little different.

Right.

Their broke looks like a shinier car in a bigger house, but they're still paycheck to paycheck regardless.

Yeah. And that's that. I mean, let's talk about an industry that's all image. It's real estate, you know, so we do. We teach some basic fundamentals. And it sounds stupid to think you need to. You need to teach somebody to spend less than they make. Right. You know, and make sure you have rules and bumpers around, like the different expense categories. And we teach the least sexy stuff to an industry. I sort of joke to an industry, the real estate industry, where everyone wants like a rock concert and french fries. You know, real estate. B school is salad and green drinks. You know, it's. It's like the boring stuff, but it's the stuff that works.

But it's the stuff that's important, right. It's the stuff that is gonna actually make you live that rock star life, right? That's gonna, it's gonna put you in the fast lane. It's not a. It's not a quick turnaround. There's not. I mean, I've never seen a rich, quick scheme other than winning a lotto ticket, right. That actually is get rich quick almost all the time. It's you need to put the work in. You need to build something, you need to have cash reserves. You need to reinvest your cash into your business. And even that bot. That, that line right there, reinvest your cash in your business. That's scary because people don't have certain limitations. They don't understand the first thing about budgeting. Maybe they have a budget for a two week, maybe a one month, you know, depending on their, you know, where they're, where they're living at. But, but very few people look at a budget in an annual basis. Are you looking at your seasonal. When is your cash flow high? When is cash flow low? Are you accounting for these types of things? Do you have maybe a line of credit to keep you backed up during those downtimes? Do you have cash reserves to keep you backed up during this downtime? Can you forecast your business? Do you know exactly where you're going six months from now, nine months from now, ten months from now? Do you have any of that stuff in place? Oftentimes, no.

Yeah. And it's funny, in real estate, like there are, in some markets there are, you know, three to four. In other markets there are, you know, four to five months where it's just generally slower, you know, around the holidays and kind of getting into the springtime. And every year, you know that there are these team leaders, these business owners that they're losing money in the same months every year. Like, we just decided as a business that we're not going to lose money anymore and it doesn't matter what month it is. You know, we know like 90 days ahead of time that December is going to be a slower month. Like we're adjusting in September, October, for we're either doubling down on new business development and we're, you know, putting more effort into finding new business. We're doing that and we're looking at the expenses that we don't, you know, we'll scale back radio we'll scale back a lot of things that aren't productive for us or they're productive for us, we just don't need to run it 12 months a year, you know, and committing to ourselves that let's not lose money anymore like every other business owner in our industry does. And I'm sure in lots of industries, they're just months that just use some common sense and just decide that you're going to think ahead and you're not going to lose money in those months. It's really helpful.

Let's cut to the chase. I mean, it's common sense. If you're actually looking at your numbers on a regular basis, if you're actually paying attention to your P. Ls, if you're looking at whatever's happening in the particular months, if you even have a means of forecasting.

Again.

I can't understand for the life of me why people would get into business and not be able to project what their next month is going to look like, what their next quarter is going to look like, or what the year is going to look like. It's kind of scary to think that you're just kind of taking in what comes in and maybe there's some leftover and maybe there's not. That's a different approach to. I wouldn't even call that business. That's just a different approach to handling your money versus what you're trying to teach young people to do. I say young people because I try to teach the same similar course in high school class to manage funds, to actually budget it out, to sit down and do those numbers. The biggest objection I always get is something simple and it's something that you can overcome. But it's things like, well, I'm not good at math. You know, I don't, you know, I never. That's not my field. I don't really like that very much. I don't really do accounting. It's not my thing. And it kind of blows my mind in the sense that that's cool if you don't like it, but you should still have somebody helping you out with that. Like, if you don't like to do it, that's fine. Hire somebody to do it. It's absolutely vital to your lifeline of your business to know where it's at at any given time.

For sure. Yeah. And it's. Yeah. Especially maybe in a lot of these service industries where the person that's attracted to the industry has a personality or skill set around, you know, they're extroverted, they're more sort of good face to face where they just. They do have this sort of limiting belief where they just check out when you talk about numbers and it's like, you better make sure if you're gonna have, you know, 500 grand pass through your hands, you better make sure you know how to make sure 300,000 stays in your bank or 200,000 stays in your bank. Otherwise you'll be working forever. And we're going through, we're going through total money makeover as a. In my real estate team, you know, and there are folks on My real estate team, you know, that are making poor decisions, like they're taking on debt because they're living a life they can't afford. Or, you know, it's really easy. Like the math is basic. Like you have, you know, 4,000 coming in the account in a month and you're spending 5,000. You could just see it on the two right columns on your Wells Fargo account. So a lot of it's common sense and people are trying to keep up with the Joneses and all that stuff.

Yeah, it's a, it's a scary time. You're talking about the total money makeover. You're talking about the Dave Ramsey one. Yeah, yeah, that, that's. I mean, it's funny because I've read a number of different books. I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey's model, especially for personal finance. I think it's, it's huge for personal finance. You should have zero debt. You should be sticking to an all cash budget. I use the cash budget envelope system myself. I love it. I think it makes all the difference in the world in your own personal budget. I think when you run a business, there are changes that you can go through. Maybe the all cash model doesn't always work for a business, depending on your cycles or whatever, but for a personal standpoint, I think that's a great thing to start with for pretty much any employee or anybody getting into business themselves to separate the two, to understand that on a personal level, you need to manage your lifestyle.

Right.

And I think one of the biggest problems right now is that definition of success. We have this definition or this implied definition of success in our heads and it's a matter of, you know, it's that nice BMW, it's the six bedroom house. It's in this specific neighborhood. Like things are defining what our success is rather than what makes us happy. Right. I mean, if you might not be making a ton of money, but if you wake up every day doing what you love to do, that's a success. And I don't think we put enough emphasis on what it means to be successful versus what, you know, what we're looking at, what success is versus, you know, what it should be.

Yeah. And I've got a 9 year old and an 11 year old and, you know, so just. And they're living a different life than I lived. You know, I'm looking at out my window here and looking at all the beautiful houses and they've got a swimming pool in the backyard, you know, and I didn't grow up that way, like, not even close. Like I lived in like essentially like projects as a kid and just, just a, I wouldn't want my upbringing for my kids. And at the same time I'm, I know I'm messing them up because they just think, you know, you pull up the phone and like my daughter's nine and she hits the prime button. Like if I'm searching for something for her, she said make sure you know how you filter on prime only. She's, she can't wait. She can't wait for a non prime Amazon. And we have a distribution center here in Charlotte. So probably about a third of the items can even be here same day, you know, so it's like this instant gratification which is bleeding down into our finances. So I'm going to start them, I'm literally in the midst of starting them on the save, spend, give the envelope system. And you know, we're going to have a chart of commissions that they're going to earn different commissions for different things around the house. And so it's, it's the same stuff. You know, we just don't learn this early on and society is, it's hard when you're on everything, you're looking at social media and like I go on Instagram and I literally, I literally get a headache. I feel less than within five minutes and my life is amazing and yet I go on Instagram, I'm like, how did he do this? Or man, like he really has his stuff together or you know, so I think it's all wrapped up in the same thing. And it comes down to finances and business and finances and personal.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of that has to do with what we're projecting, right? What we think is going on versus what actually is. I kind of, I kind of relate it to like a photo album. If you, if you look like at your wedding album, for example, every single picture in that album is everybody who's, you know, perfect in their tux, their dress is nice, their hair is done perfect. You know, every picture is a, is perfection in essence.

Right.

But that's not really what we remember. What we remember is when people were dancing on the dance floor, the spilled drinks, you know, the food on the shirt, like all the mess ups in life are the things that are memorable. And I think to me, when you look at social media, if you have somebody who just has the photo album pictures and we look at that and thinking, wow, how perfect is that? We're not looking at the whole picture. You know, in between there are the tears in between, there's a laughter in between there's the mess up. I think that authenticity makes a bigger difference and a bigger impact on what people should be doing with their social media versus, you know, the, the photo album effect that we're getting right now.

Yeah, and, and, and it forces, in business, the way it translates is that it forces you to do, to do more with less and focus on the things that actually matter. Like, you know, in my, in my real estate team, I'm not in sales anymore. In my coaching business, I am in sales. And so like you can hardly get anything in my calendar unless it's I'm creating content like this or I'm doing my podcast or on a sales call with somebody, you know, because I know that's the one thing I can do to impact my business that nobody else right now on my team can do. And a lot of times in business, people are spending money on stuff that really doesn't matter. Like, man, if I only get this website right, or if I only get this business card right, or, you know, and they tend to focus and do the activities that aren't leading them to, you know, a better life, a more leveraged business. And like you said, they're measuring success by stuff that's outward and it's not this inward contentment. And if that makes sense.

No. Yeah. Well, I mean, what you just kind of talked about a little bit, you kind of grazed on it is the difference between busy work and money making activities. Right. I mean, you're in sales, whether it's on the real estate side, on the coaching side, you're in sales and there's only certain things that you can do. What I noticed about yours was, you know, I spent a lot of contact with your, with your secretary or your admin to get stuff for your, for your calendar. Like that's one of the next steps for me. It's just because managing my calendar is getting ridiculous. Right. It's, you know, I don't have time to go through all the emails again because I'm focusing my effort and my time on the money making activities. You're right. I could be designing certain things and looking at the colors and all that stuff, but none of that really matters. What are you focusing your attention on? You're focusing your attention on things that are going to bring in revenue because that's what your business's purpose is, to bring in revenue. And the way you do that is by providing a value, a value add to somebody that you're Going to be talking to Face to Face on the phone, via social media, via the podcast, right?

Yeah. Really good. So I. So this person that you're referring to, I met her when she reached out to me to get me on someone else's podcast. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. So there's someone that will do everything you need to get done where the thing you can outsource it for a whole lot less than you want to make. There may be that pinch period where you maybe I don't really have the money, but give me three months. If I can save three months to get this girl, she'll book me on, you know, 12 different shows that'll drop in and, you know, so and so just to say she's totally freelance and you can reach out to her and she does an amazing job. My point is like, there's like depending on how you're setting your business up and who's listening to this because this is cross industry, this podcast. You're spending 80% of your day doing stuff that is not making you money. And you know, in real estate to a certain extent, still in my coaching business, I am still hustling. I am still like two days. Last week my family was traveling to Kentucky to visit their, you know, my in laws. And I work till 8 o' clock both nights. I'm like, sweet, I can close more deals. Like, that's just where we are in that business, in the real estate team. My first three to four years, was that where I was just hustling, building momentum for me to take that next step where I had enough money to be able to hire that administrator. And I only needed to save 90 days worth because for 90 days, she can help me free up more time so I can put down more sales. And a lot of times people at every level in every business to get psyched out because they think they're committing a $35,000 salary. It's like committing to $10,000 three months or $8,000, you know, and it's just looking at the things that you do. Every 90 days, I do an activity, it's called Delegate or die, where basically you're putting your activities into like four buckets and like above the line. You keep below the line. You have to delegate. And it's like, great. You love is the upper left good, you're good at it and you like it is number two. And then you're good at it, but you don't like it is number three. And then you're not good at it and you don't like it and just be honest with yourself and do that exercise every day. It's literally just drawing an X on a paper. And those four categories. If you did that every 90 days for the next two years, eight quarters, you would be blown away at the things that you're putting below the line.

Yeah.

You know, like for a real estate agent, getting listings is the holy grail of a real estate agent. It only took me like two quarters to have that thing below the line. I'm like, I'm good at it. I do not like it. And so that's, that's a below the line activity and I've got to get rid of it. There's someone that can do that better. I'm robbing that opportunity from somebody because I'm doing it. So it's just that mentality. You apply that mentality to every freaking thing you do in your business, it's game over. Because then you can, you know, the three things I do in my coaching company, I do content. So I'm either doing a podcast or I'm on a podcast or I'm going live in my external Facebook. I do sales or I do training still for our clients. So I do group training. Takes me about three hours to prep for it and it's an hour a week. And then I do team meetings. So four things. I do those outside of those four things. You know, those are high value things that I don't do anything else outside of those. So it's pretty, pretty cool, dude.

But that's prioritizing, that's really focusing your attention on because there are a number of things you can be doing. None of those said email and none of those said creating a logo. None of those said working on your website. Right. Those are other things that need to be done in your business for sure. They're just not things that you need to do in your business. That's a huge, a huge, you know, mind shift, a paradigm shift in what other people are doing. They get into business and they think they have to do it, all, right? And now I'm spending all this time learning how to write some HTML code or learning how to use WordPress or learning how to, you know, handle QuickBooks, or learning all these different things that aren't necessarily the things that are gonna make me money. They're things that have to get done in my business, but they're not my money making activities.

Yeah. And it brought up a thought. When I first got into real estate, I came from a corporate job And I did pretty well in my corporate job, but I sort of drew a line in the sand. I wanted to make 500 grand in real estate, take home, pre tax, take home. I wanted to work 2000 hours. And very few real estate agents work 2000 hours. And so it's 500,000. Divided by 2000 was $250 an hour. Like, in order to earn 500,000 and work 2000. It's simple math. It's like 90% of what a real estate agent does. You can pay someone to do for less than $50 an hour, including show properties to buyers, including right offers for buyers. Listing properties is about 75 to $100 an hour is what the compensation looks like. Even that, though, is less than 100 bucks an hour. So there's $150 Delta between what I wanted to make and what I can get everything else done for. So it's just a series of delegations to get you to the point where, you know, I had one year where I made like, I worked 42 days and I made like, it was over 700,000, and it was, it was like 16 grand a day. I worked like 42 Tuesdays and that's it. And it's. It was. And there was lots of stuff that was messed up in my business because I did that, because there were culture issues and probably some resentment. And so I'm not recommending it for everybody. But it was after like four or five years of just delegating, elevating, where I finally got to the point where the business could essentially run without me outside of these culture issues. So, yeah, so it's just, it's just committed, like you said, it's mindset.

So let's talk about that a little bit. You have a real estate team, and I know there's a lot of teams out there that are built and built for the wrong reasons. They're built because they're told they're supposed to have a team. They're told they're, you know, they build a team because, you know, once you leave, once you reach a certain level of production, that's the next graduated step. Kind of like you graduate high school and you're supposed to go to college. It's just the next step in the evolution of a real estate agent. The problem is when a lot of people build a team, they might, you know, love the fact that they have 10 people on their team, 20 people on their team. They've amassed these large groups of people that are making all kinds of deals or closing you know, 400 deals a year or whatever it is. But when you ask them to sit down and look at their bottom line, what do they net? You know, they end up netting, you know, less than 5% sometimes for some of these guys, which is, you know, when you actually look at the numbers, I mean, you probably could have made three times as much money if you stayed a solo agent with maybe like a TC and an admin. Right. You could have made a lot more money doing that. Yet they sit here and they create these teams because they got this ego. Now all of a sudden it's, I have prestige, there's people under me, I have a title, I have a team, I have, I get plaques and awards and recognition. But profit, that goes out the window.

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's way more common than people would think. That's kind of the scary thing. I talked to a guy that went from, he claims he has a team, although he has single digit profit. A team set up the right way can do 30 to 40% profit before taxes with the team leader out of production. So that's just the economic model that real estate B school teaches. And we help you structure the business to go that way. The marketing, the lead conversion, how you deliver services to clients. Yet there are teams out there that will do exactly 5% profit margin, 2.4 million, top line, 120 take home. And it's like, it's because they're loose with the people on their team. They don't have any lead management policies. They don't, they haven't actually put the work into it. To have a business that is sort of tight and it's driven, it doesn't rely on someone showing up if they want to or don't want to. You know, it's really hard to build. So I'm not saying that it's easy to build a real estate team that does 30 to 40% profit. You've got to have that as the target. Otherwise you're gonna have this marginal thing where you're not holding anything accountable in the business. People, expenses, anything. And it's just a complete crap show and you've got more stress, you got less time because you need to stay in production. Now in any industry, if you set this thing up the wrong way and you bring other salespeople alongside you and you don't, you don't look at it like a business that you're exiting, you will have inefficiencies that force you to sell a lot of real estate. Just to maintain some sort of quality of life. And it's, it's. It's a crazy. It's a crazy thing. And we see it all the time in real estate.

And that this is one of those things where, you know, when I sit down with people and I look at, you know, the entire picture, that's one thing that, that really takes people back is like, if you have a great team and everything's great, but you. You subtract out your own personal production, you know, is your team even profitable at that point? Because if you, if you're building a true business, the idea is that you're not in there doing the sales stuff and closing the deals. If you take out your personal production, do you have enough money to pay the overhead of your office? Do you have, you know, to keep the lights on? Do you have enough revenue coming in to do that and then maybe put some money in your pocket if that doesn't happen, you are definitely better off as a team. Otherwise, you're working to keep other people's lights on, to keep other people's computers on, to keep the copy machine that you probably don't even use as much on and the door open. Like, there's a big, you know, and right now we're in a good market. Right now, things are hot. So what happens when things change and your team is not as productive and they start looking at you like, you know, hey, you know, commission's not working out for me. Maybe I might need salary right to be a buyer's agent, you know, all these different, you know, ideas, you know, when. When many of these agents have never been through a down market and, and they don't understand the business aspect of it. Now all of a sudden, your production is vital to the survival of your team. It's not a very good team.

Yeah, we took on a new. A new client recently. This is about six months ago, because we're through the storm with him. He was doing 3.3 million, top line. His net was just over 200,000 before expenses. Yeah, his net, like his profit. And that was after his 400,000 of his own production was included. Take away his production and he's negative 200. So he's selling a lot of houses, he's managing a bunch of agents that. Who knows what they're doing? He's got a huge lease. He's got all this overhead and stress. No time freedom, no money freedom and a whole bunch of stress. You know, we sort of look at time, money and stress as like a report card for how successful you are. You know, if you have low stress, low money, you know, and you have a lot of time for yourself, maybe that's okay. You know, our goal is to have, like, more time, more money, and less stress. To have all three. A lot of corporate jobs, you know, people are okay with owning their time outside of their business or their job, but they're not paid very well. And sometimes it's stressful. You know, real estate, you can. You can set it the right way. So, yeah, so it's. It's. It's just crazy. And it's. It's. You know, I just don't think there's enough conversations around this that are happening and all the different.

Well, I don't know. I don't know how you feel about. About exp. But this is one of those reasons why, to me, that's one of. One of the avenues that if you are not really good at building a team, but you do want to talk to people to bring them on. Like, that's a model that, to me, works because you don't have the overhead of the offices. You don't have to manage all these teams. You're not the managing broker, so you don't have to worry about litigation and all this stress stuff. You want to bring people on and mentor them and then, you know, let them, you know, cut ties and still be able to earn revenue. That's an option for you. Like, I just feel like there's a lot of people who have this idea of or have this clout that they can. They can attract people really. Well, they know that people want to work with them, but what they don't understand is they may not be good managers. They may not be good business people. They may not be able to handle all those things. So to me, you know, that's one of those things where I thought, you know, I don't know if you have any broker affiliates or anything like that, so sorry if I, you know, step on those shoes. But to me, it's one of those things where, like, you need to look at the options out there and look at everything. And based on how you're doing, is this a viable option for you? Is this what you're doing? Or maybe you should just, you know, stop being the team and go back to your own personal production, because that's what works for you. You know, I just. I just. I'm big on options. Like, look at your options. Don't get cloudy to your point.

Look at what, you know, I like to say, because I'm a believer. I like to say, look at what God created you to be.

Yes.

If he created you to be a solo agent, at least get a killer licensed assistant. Get someone who can hustle, open some doors, you know, so you can have some quality of life. Traditional success in real estate is really hard. And the only thing I'll say, I've had lots of guys, I know lots of guys are in exp. I'm not an exp Only because if you go into the exp, make sure you're ready to call agents the next day versus sellers, you know, like, I see a lot of people going into exp, but you sucked at new business Development before you joined exp, and now all of a sudden you think it's gonna, you know, you're just calling different people, you know, and you're using social media to attract different people.

And if you're not 100%, you got to remember, no matter what brokerage exp. Keller Williams. I don't care what brokerage you are, first and foremost a real estate agent. Your job, number one job is to help people buy and sell real estate. Like, you have to do that. Well, it doesn't matter what brokerage you go to. There is no success rate if you cannot sell real estate hands down. After that, after beyond, you know, after that, there's. There's opportunities in every single brokerage and different levels and based on what you want to do. But first and foremost, I 100% agree with you. You have to sell real estate.

Yeah. That's awesome. Very, very cool. Yeah. So I'm trying to think of what else, what else I can add here to kind of to your.

Well, tell me really quick about, you know, real estate B school. If I checking in, I need to learn to operate my business. What's that like? What's that process like?

Yes, sir. We kind of take over where other coaching companies leave off. You know, our sort of minimum GCI is about 500,000, you know, where you already have an assistant, you have a buyer agent or two. All the way up to. We coach and consult with teams that are doing 5, 6 million GCI, you know, so it really is focused on, like, building the thing out in a way where you're not going to be stuck in it three to five years from now. Our most successful members have gone from, like 60 sides, they just hired their first administrator to 250 to 300 plus sides, and they went from 70 hours to 40 hours. You know, not in production, super profitable. On the right economic model. Really systems driven, you know, where as a. As a business owner, your time spent building systems, you know, say you're good at sales, but you can't. You don't have the presentations or the scripts or the forms or the listing packet, like, to teach someone else how to do it. You're gonna always be the one doing it, or you're just gonna get pissed off at someone that you hire that's not as good as you because you haven't actually built out the system. So, I mean, that's. That's who we really appeal to, is someone that's already achieved traditional success or they already have a real estate team, and it's just not set up the right way. They're not making the kind of money like, I'm working this guy really hard that's doing 2.5 million GCI, and he's taken home about 125. And nobody would know that he actually has that situation going on. And he has a big fat home equity line to show for it. That's our ideal client. Because I can turn that into, you know, a 5, 6, $700,000 profit business in 12 to 18 months just by following a process.

Yeah, it makes sense. It's not lack of hustle, it's lack of structure.

That's right. I mean, he'd die on the treadmill next to Will Smith. Right. He's got the hustle. It's just. He's not. He hasn't set it up foundationally the right way. So there's a little bit of work involved in that. But, yeah, that's. That's kind of what we do.

Perfect, Lars. Well, hey, man, thank you for taking the time to come on the show and talk to me about real estate. B school. I think everything that we spoke about today are topics that don't really get discussed, that are taboo in a brokerage. Because if we start talking profits, if we start talking bottom line, you're gonna make agents really take a look in the mirror and say, what am I doing here? Is this really where I want to be? Is this really what I want to do? And, of course, most brokerages don't want that happening inside their office. But you, as a real estate agent, you really do need to take a look in the mirror and decide, you know, is this the right path for me? Am I on the right path? Have I built the right thing? Do I have the right foundation in place? And, you know, I'm glad, you know, I have somebody to hop on the show and, you know, get down and dirty in there and just, you know, you know, say it, say how it is.

I want to tell one quick story on that. So one of our members and this guy has coached with me for four years and he went from about 100 sides to 300 sides this year and he's running our economic model. So it's, you know, he's probably going to be about 35% profit out of production and he's about 200,000 price points. So he's not in some big price point where he has a lot of money. He went to like a top, a KW top team panel and these are like three or four of the hitters. Kw and he asks, he raises his hand and he says, hey, can, do you guys mind talking about profit? And like, you know, Mrea says that, you know, when you build this thing out the right way, you're, you know, the goal is about 40% profit because he's running this, he's running, you know, 35, 40% profit. And it was crickets. It was like silent. Nobody wanted to take the first one. Guy finally chimed in and said, you know, that model's not, it was never proven. It's not life. And you know, I know some of these teamers are running like maybe low double digit, but high single digit profit. And it was awesome because he came back on me and he boxed me and he said, you know, I can't thank you enough for as hard as it was the three years it took him to do it and he's been out of production for 18 months, but really thanked me for just leaning into like, you can do this. You just got to tighten it up, tighten it up. Don't let people on your team that suck at life like every, every other team leader does, you know, So I just thought it was funny that you said that, you know, because people don't want to talk about it. They want to think that, you know, 10 to 15% is the best you can do when you set up a business. And it's just not true.

Yeah, if I don't look at it, it's not really a problem. Yeah, that's the mentality. Right? That's the mentality. Again, thank you for being on the show, man. I really appreciate it. It's not very often I get to get into the nitty gritty, so, you know, really appreciate that.

Awesome. This has been fun. Appreciate it.

Cool, man. If anybody would like to get ahold of you, what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Just realestate. B school dot com. So if you go on there and what I described is the. Is you. It's literally just clicking on a link and you'll have a conversation with me personally.

Perfect. Yeah. Get on his calendar. He's always open for a sales call. All right, Lars. Thanks a lot, ladies and gentlemen. Really appreciate time. Just a quick reminder. 365 pairs of shoes by the end of the year is what we're trying to raise. So if you have any shoes that you need to donate, cash, used, New either way, 619-884-0045 or jamessfirst.com he's not with me here today, but he'll hop on his Harley right out and pick those up. Now, you're in Texas, right?

No, I'm in Charlotte.

Oh, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Yeah.

Yeah. So he's not gonna ride out to North Carolina. This is only for the San Diego people, but. But if you need anything, let us know. All right, Lars, you have a wonderful day.

Awesome. Thanks, brother.