Faith Over Fear - In Life and Business

Hey there, Business Freedom podcast listeners. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we're going to talk about choosing faith over fear in business and life. So that means something very specific to me. And risking alienating folks that don't have a religious faith. That's not what this is about. And so I look back on my journey in business, which started in early 2007, just before the real estate market went to the crapper. And then I started another business in 2013, luckily, as the economy had recovered. And I've been doing real estate B school for six and a half years and running a real estate team for 12 and a half years. And so I have a lot of experience when it comes to making a decision to choose faith and believe that you're on the right path over fear, which is easy to let set in depending on external factors. And so this was inspired by a sermon that I just heard as I'm recording this. It is a Monday, so this was yesterday at church. And there's going to be awesome business applications. And so for me, I was saved in 2009, so my faith didn't really start or really pick up steam into just a new believer in 2009. So this doesn't really have a context as much in faith, although some of the things I will talk about have a faith perspective to it. So I will challenge you in your faith always, because it has been so meaningful for me. So there are three things I want to cover as I look back on my journey in business and the good, the bad, the ugly. And you know, I bring every bit of all of that to the podcast here. There's three things, and if you're taking notes mentally or writing these three things down, they're going to be super helpful for you no matter where you are in your real estate business growth journey. Number one, when I think about in business, as competitive as it's been, as it always is in real estate, we have 15,000 agents, actually, I think 16,000 right now, fighting over like 80,000 transaction sides. So 80,000 commission checks, it's about like five to six average commission checks per licensed real estate agent in my market, which is Charlotte, North Carolina. And so you think about that and, you know, the ability to grow and take your unfair share of a market. What's been really helpful for me is point number one is I began with the end in mind. So number one is begin with the end in mind. And what I mean by that is that being in real estate is really, really hard. Doing it the traditional way is ridiculously challenging for a bunch of reasons. Mostly that it will rob from the areas of your life that are likely more important than the business of real estate. So if you're a top producing agent or you're running a team of any size, it is likely, unless you've set it up the right way with sustainable systems and empower people, it's likely that the thing you've set up is enslaving you. And you're working way too many hours. You're completely consumed with the business. It might not even be returning financially what you thought was possible. And it's keeping you super stressed out all the time. Especially if you're a team leader and you're involved in transactions and you're building and managing a team. It's just you've got like four jobs that you're doing and it's just not sustainable in any way you can be successful in business. Although I've seen folks do that, you know, with the traditional real estate team model. But they've had to sacrifice other areas of their life, Their spiritual walk, their physical body, their relationships. They're not showing up as a great parent or a great spouse in their marriage. So when I say begin with the end, for me, I knew that I was going to build something that had a life beyond me and I didn't really know what it would look like. I didn't really envision, you know, exactly the way that it turned out. But in 2008 when I hired my first assistant, I knew that at that point I had sold 27 homes the first nine months. 44 that first 2008 when I hired a part time assistant and then she graduated to full time, pretty quickly, knew that the majority of the work a real estate agent did could be hired. You could design a system and you can hire someone else to run that piece of the business. And it's not as easy to do as I just made it sound. Because there's probably 12 different jobs that go into successfully generating opportunities with buyers and sellers, converting them to appointments, getting those folks to show up and doing a consultation process on the buyer or seller side, getting them to become a loyal client and then doing a great job showing them homes, getting them under contract or getting their property active on the market, marketing it and securing a great offer, the contract to close process and then keeping in touch with them, doing a great job. They give you great referrals or referrals and testimonials that you use in your marketing and creates this virtuous cycle. So that's the whole business of a real estate agent and a real estate team. The only difference is that you're leveraging all those pieces out into individual system or a process or a person that handles that part of the business. So for me, begin with the end in mind was that I was not going to be the one doing, you know, the eight to 12 different jobs with a real estate agent. I just couldn't make the kind of income that I want, wanted to and work the amount of hours that I wanted to and endure the level of stress that was fair to my family if I did it all. So for me, the business plan I wrote in late 2009, that's when I hired my first buyer agent. By 2012 I was out of actually I think I predicted that I was going to be out of buyers by then and still working listings. Only in January 2012 I was out of production completely because that was my end game. And then I ra I was able to promote someone from my inside sales department into sales management and my listing client care. I was able to promote, promote into operations management. That allowed me to get from the six to seven days a week to five to three to two and then I went down to one day a week. So that was the end game for me was to build a sustainable business. So my question for you, what is your end game? Like what are you building? What are you going toward? Or are you going to be one of those agents that has a 25, 30 year career and, and you're in your mid-60s and you haven't built anything that has any life whatsoever and you have no net worth to speak of all the effort that you put into the business. That's number one, begin with the end. Number two, I just kind of touched on it a little bit. It's this view of the long game. And so number two is, how do I want to phrase it? Take a long view of your business. And so what I mean by oh, play the long game is a better way to say it. So when you play the long game in business, you're not so frantic about having to like bang out transactions or get this system installed or get a lead gen source that you didn't plan to bring into your business before the year started or change CRMs or like it's this franticness that I see that people that are selling a lot of homes or they're running teams, they don't view it as like If I had 25 years to build this thing, what decisions would I make this year? You know, the first of 25 years, if you break down a year into quarters and you give yourself 25 years to build a world class business, that's a hundred quarters, 190 day periods that you have to build something that's amazing. And I don't see many team leaders taking that approach to their business. Like let's just slow this thing down. What if we don't define growth by just number of transactions actions? We define growth as like, you know, foundational systems installed this year that will make growth easier in the future or that will make our client experience better in the future or that will make the lives of our agents and our team better. Or you know, we can shift from paying for leads and letting someone else do the marketing to us, to, you know, creating our own lead gen sources. You know, that's a shift that we've gone through over the last three years that's been phenomenal for us. We've cut 6% off of our lead gen spend by taking a long view of the business and cutting off lead providers. And so how are you viewing your business in a long game sort of way where it's not this like frantic approach to growth? And so that's. Number two is play the long game. And number three is something that's probably the most important. I should have went 3, 2, 1 on these. Number three, I'm going to say an attitude of gratitude. So when you think about choosing faith over fear, number one is begin with the end in mind. Number two is play the long game. Number three is bring an attitude of gratitude to your business, to your personal life every day. And what this looks like for me and the psychology of this is that if you're always looking for things that you're grateful for or the wins in your day, you're going to have this psychology of contentment and fulfillment because you're constantly looking for the things that are going well. And it 100% works. Even when times are not so great in the business or your personal life, look for the things that are great. And over time, if you do this every day, over time, you will just be so enamored with your business and your personal life. Despite anything, any trial or tribulation that is going on, you will constantly see the good things in all areas of your life. And this will translate. If you're running a team, you translate this practice to your team members. So you're all looking out for amazing things every day, every week that you're grateful for, that you're proud of, things that you did really well that you could build upon for future success. So it's this attitude of gratitude that keeps me sane. You know, I have two businesses now and it doesn't get any easier in terms of like being a business owner and keeping your sanity. So I'm a little further ahead maybe than some of you in terms of the business growth journey on my real estate team. And I'm just getting out of production in my coaching business. You know, I just got out of sales recently in my coaching business. So I started this business six and a half years ago. It took me about six years to build the systems, to get the momentum to build the revenue up where I can get out of, you know, I built the structure and the systems and I built out all the tools that you can now swipe and deploy where I don't have to be the one bringing magic to a one on one situation. I got out of, I got out of one on one coaching probably I guess three years ago. And so it's the system that real estate B school has built that gives success to our members. They're able to go from 50 to 100 to 200 transactions in three years because we have all the tools and systems that you can swipe on and deploy. And so we, even in this business we began with the end in mind. So I began with the end in mind. It's okay if we take a year to build out. Our most recent launch of our toolbox took probably a year to build out of two people working on it, probably part time. So 20 hours a week, times two, 40 hours a week for probably 2,000 hours we have into that toolbox. And plus like 12 years of business experience in building a real estate team. We were able to invest in that toolbox because we know the results that are bring to our clients. And that toolbox is only available to our full on paying members. And so it's this attitude of gratitude. Got a little off track there. A little bit of a mini commercial, little teaser in there, if I'm being honest with you. Attitude of gratitude. So as we transition, if you're listening to this around the holidays, which is when it'll launch, how are you thinking about your business and your life in those times where you can go one way or the other, you know, choosing fear or choosing faith and just faith is like just knowing that you're doing the right thing, knowing that you're building something, you're, you're beginning with the end in mind. You're building something foundationally strong that you could have a platform for growth later that you're taking this eternal perspective in your business that hey, if I was going to be in business, if this real estate business was going to be around 100 years from now, what would I have to build now to lay that first brick that's going to make it foundationally strong? And then just every day looking for things you're grateful for, that attitude of gratitude that's going to make all of this bearable. Because building a business ain't nothing easy about it. And it's super fun and it's super frustrating and super rewarding. There's all sorts of good, bad and ugly laced all over it that make it like the most challenging and the most rewarding thing you will ever do. And so if you're at the point in your business growth journey where maybe what I talked about today stung a little bit or challenged you a little bit, you're not. You don't have this clear plan about where you're going. You don't have this long game. Like how would I even go about building a real estate business? I've figured some things out. I've gotten to a, you know, traditional success. I'm a top agent, I've built a small team. I've got the admin support. I just don't know how to double it and double it, you know, I don't know how to get to 100, 150200 plus transactions. I don't know how to make choices with my time and what's valuable in my business. How do you work on systems? What does it even mean to work on the business? You know, if that's you and you know there's more in you, you know you've got a business owner inside of you and you've got administrative support, you've achieved, you know, 3 to 500,000 GCI is typically our entry point in real estate B school. The only thing I can offer you is conversation about where your business is today, where you want it to be in the future and what has traditionally held you back. And if a conversation about real estate B school makes sense, we will have it. We've got our pilot program which you can go on to real estate B school and you can apply. That's your entry point into our world. We'll have a conversation about your business first and if you're a fit for our program, we'll talk about the pilot program which is our free 30 day coaching. And there's no obligation whatsoever. We'll help you build in the pilot program. We'll help you build that three year vision, that one year plan 90 day world. And we'll build a weekly tracking system of the critical numbers that you need to track in your business so that you can scale your business from where you are today to wherever you want to be in the future. And we do that weekly. We build it quarterly. Four quarters makes for an awesome year. Three awesome years makes for a crushing of your three year vision. So go to realestatebschool.com if that is you. And this conversation, you know, ignites your passion for business ownership. And you just need that push. You need those systems that are pre built for you to install. So we'll see you@realestatebschool.com.