Free Workshop: 5 Steps to Scale to $1M+ in GCI During The Coming "Shift Storm"

All right, so let's go. My name is Lars Hedenborg. We're going to cover the five steps to scale your real estate business to $1 million and beyond as it specifically relates to the coming, what I call a shift storm. Take one letter out of, of that shift storm and, and I think we can. That's what I expect some of this to be. I think some of it is going to be mentally impacting agents more so than a housing market shift. But the bottom line here is that I am here to help you guys make more money so that you can have more freedom, so that you can have more impact. That's what I've been doing since 2013 when I launched real Estate B school. My first part of my real estate journey was not, you know, financially rewarding. I put a lot of time into it. I, I didn't have freedom at all. And I figured some things out that I'll share with you. So if you're an agent or team leader, you know, there's another, another level of growth, growth in your business. You are in the right place here today if you want to hang out with the, the best of the best, the folks that have cracked the code on business growth rather than the average agents. And you know, you want to build a significant business so that you can systematically increase your net worth and time off. And ultimately you want to make the shift from real estate agent to business owner. Here's the slightly darker side of the reality of most folks that, you know, come to a session like this and even just in our industry, that there's a lot of folks that aren't where they want to be financially. They don't have a clear path to financial freedom. You're working evenings and weekends and you're stressed more than anyone you know, and you're missing out on the stuff that really matters. My only ask of you is to suspend disbelief. Everything I'm going to cover today will help you. I want you to take notes. Just know that not only is what I'm going to teach you today possible growing your business from wherever you are today to 500,000 GCI, a million GCI. Know that it's possible, but it's also predictable. I've done it. I've helped hundreds of others, agents and team leaders, go down this path and, and just know that scaling your real estate business is not hard. Even in today's climate, there's a proven path. So here is the agenda for what we're going to learn today. Number one, how to think like a business owner when it comes to leverage growth. Tony Robbins says that 80% of success in business, in life, comes down to your psychology. So we'll talk about mindset Number two is adapting your approach given, you know, given the changing real estate climate and market. And I'll talk about there's a lot of different things going on that'll that I'll dig into. Number three is to fill your pipeline with high quality, low cost leads and stop playing their game. The lead aggregator, the Zillows, the realtor.com and so forth. Four is to bust bust the myth that you need to put in more hours to make more money. It's just not true. And number five, and definitely last but not least, how to strategically implement the tools and systems so that you can scale your business a little bit About Me I cherish my role as dad and husband. I love business. I love all of it. When it's going well. When it's not going well. I've got a podcast, Real Estate Business Builders that I'm passionate about. I'm an author. I wrote this book Scale or Die and it's kind of just a journey my journey documented and how you can do the same in terms of scaling your business. I went from a solo agent in 2008. That was my first full year in real estate. I sold 44 homes, all sorts of stress and out of bounds. Didn't make a lot of money. Five years later over 400 transactions and 5,000 plus families served in the journey. I've helped hundreds of agents scale grow first of all and then scale their businesses without losing their life. At this point. Multiple seven figure liquid net worth and residual monthly income over $80,000 per month which is $1,000,000 run rate in terms of my residual income. I work an awesome work week generally Mondays through Thursdays I work from 12 to 5 5:30pm Take lots of vacations. But I have made all the mistakes. So I am not here to preach. I'm here to teach the good, bad and ugly of my journey so that you can crush life. What's about to happen in the real estate market and a little bit more about me. I didn't have a silver spoon upbringing. I would say lower middle class upbringing. My parents divorced when I was young four years old. My father was an active alcoholic until I was about 15. I went into engineering and had a bunch of student loans. I never pursued that career outside of the first 18 months. Uh, didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got into real estate. Um, but I did have desire to grow and a willingness to bet on myself, but it was not easy. This is November 2007. I am what, March to November. So I'm about eight months into real estate at this point. I got, I left my corporate job. On March 5, 2007, Andrews was born. Our son Andrew and I had to make this work. The thing was that it wasn't working right. So I was constantly working when I should have been present with my son, helping my wife with the challenges of a newborn. And I was working seven days a week, all crazy hours, super stressed all the time. But I was committed to making it work most. It sort of hit me really hard when our second child came. We had a couple of miscarriages in between Anderson and Kendall. Kendall came in April 2010. That was the year I just started the team. And we did 118 transactions, but I did 66 of them. And I was like super, super committed to making it work at this time. So it did work. We did figure some things out. This is like the, the Facebook version of it. The reality is more like this. It's like, it's a little bit messy most of the time. This was our Christmas card one year. We sent this out to like 500 people in real estate, B school, our whole real estate database, VIP database, and all of our friends to show that, like, it's never as pretty as it looks. And it's. There's a life lesson there for sure. So my question for you is, are you willing to take a risk and better yourself?

Right.

I was back in the early days of my journey and I hope that you are too. So let's get into it and let's get after it. Step number one is, you know, to think like a business owner when it comes to leverage growth. And the principal idea here, and each one of these steps has, as a principal idea, these are worth screenshotting or taking notes and writing them down, is that you don't have to be a business owner to think like one, but you do have to think like a business owner to become one.

Right?

So most of the activities that a real estate agent does all day long are administrative in nature. And they don't. They aren't making you very much money. They're super important, but they're not making you a whole lot of money. And so the guiding question, and this is from a book, E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It's the first business book I ever read. After getting into real estate, I actually got my MBA at Duke, which Was useless. Masters of business administration and I read some business books then, but the first practical one where I can apply those concepts was that book. The question is, and this is something that you need to think about even if you never get out of the, out of the real estate sales part of your business is how would you have to think about your business differently if you were to replicate it 10,000 times? And just think about that. How could I be in 10,000, you know, showings at once or 10,000 listing presentations or like, you just have to start thinking about your business differently. This is my dad. He was the E myth. E myth, if you don't know what it stands for, is the entrepreneurial myth where he was a business owner, but he was the guy, he was a hairstylist. My parents met in Sweden. They're both hairdressers. Cosmetologists is the fancy word for it. Um, so he was doing the color, which is like the, the highest level. That's like the listing appointments of being a hairdresser. But he was also cutting hair, which is a little bit like, a little bit maybe working with buyers. He was also shampooing hair, which is a little bit like entering listings into MLS and sweeping the floors, which is a little bit like going out on a rainy day and picking up a yard sign and getting your shoes muddy.

Right.

So he was doing all of the things in the business because he was a one man operation. He was the entrepreneurial myth and I was too.

Right.

So this is 2007. No, this is probably 2008. So I sold 44 homes, made really, I didn't make great money, but I made a six figure net take home income. So it was, it was reasonable. But I was, I was failing as a husband. This is our first family vacation. I won't ask you to actually raise your hand digitally, but kind of raise your hand a little bit. If you've ever worked on a vacation and let down a loved one as a result of it, that was me.

Right.

Actually the deal fell apart, never went through. I was working the deal, you know, most of the vacation. It was an $850,000 short sale and I let down my wife severely. So the question here really is, do you have any limiting beliefs when it comes to building a real real estate business where, you know, maybe it's not like an actual real estate team, but you're going to think about the business differently. Hire a part time administrator, hire some virtual assistants, you know, for four or five bucks an hour to help you do some button Pushing to generate leads or put in lead management systems.

Right.

Do you have limiting beliefs around building a real estate business? That's the question. Dan Jones, I'm going to give you some examples of folks that I've worked with to kind of illustrate some points here when it comes to mindset. You know, Dan was actually on my real estate team before he. He launched on his own. He went at it alone for a couple of years, did about 65 transactions. It was him, his brother, part time as a buyer agent, and Gwen, who was his administrator, started part time and then went full time. And he was failing on the fronts exactly as I was. And I was still obviously friends with him because he was on my real estate team for a few years, got licensed to join my real estate team. And I said, dan, let me just. Let me show you how to go about this. And we started working together. He went from 65 transactions to 105 to 175 to 225 to 275. And he runs about 275, 300 transactions per year, fully leveraged out of the business, works Monday through Thursday. He takes his daughter to school and from school every day. And so it is possible, right? He was putting in 80 hours a week when I met him. Now he's putting in 30 hours a week and he's making 10 times the amount of income.

Right.

And it all came down to the mindset shift that I had to kind of help him achieve in the process. So here are the steps to shift your mindset. First of all, you have to think long game in the business, right? Begin with the end in mind and ask yourself, like, are you building a franchise prototype? Are you building systems in the business that can do the heavy lifting? Success in anything is 80% psychology. And guard your heart and mind around what people are telling you you can or cannot do. You have to get that emotional leverage. For me, you know, having an alcoholic father growing up, I wanted to be a great dad and I wanted to be present for Anders and Kendall. That was my emotional leverage that I needed to make that mindset shift and to view my business differently. All right, Tom, let's get into step number two. Adapt your approach. Given the changing real estate market now, I'm not a doom and gloom, bleeding headlines kind of guy. I just think there are some challenges going in, going on in the global economy, in. In the domestic economy that will ultimately impact more. So the mindset of real estate agents in terms of the fear, uncertainty and doubt and their reactions to it, and also Buyers and sellers, I think are getting wrapped up in all of that. And so the guiding principle here is that your ability to scale your business is directly correlated to your ability to serve your clients at the highest level. So creating this virtuous cycle of, you know, acquire a client, give them amazing experience and that turns into a couple more clients at the end of it. And as a result, your business grows exponentially is possible. So this is the ultimate shift storm, right? When you think about all of the four major dynamics that are going on right now, and this is even pre Covid or pre some of this recent stuff with our economy, is that consumers are changing. They're demanding more, they want instant gratification, they want things easy, they want two clicks and they can get an Uber. They don't want you to make a real estate transaction complicated. Technology is evolving at a very rapid pace and brokerages are changing the game there as well and making technology the center point of a transaction. And then the industry is changing. You know, there are big lawsuits right now that are attacking the whole construct of co op agents and commissions and you know, there's always downward pressure on commissions and how much money we make. And the big lead aggregators are going after our commission. You know, the Redfins, the open doors, the ibuyers, all of that stuff is going on. And then lastly, and most recently, the biggest factor is our economy, the housing market, interest rates and all of that. All of that is coming together at this moment in time and it's severely impacting the way we need to approach our businesses. So the question here is how am I thinking about my business in terms of my ability to scale 100% based on the service that I provide? Meaning you acquire a buyer client, you deliver a service and that client turns into multiple clients after that. It's no longer a burn and churn strategy, right? We want to get away from that. So this is the game we're playing. Whether or not you care to admit it is that I really don't. There's a lot of things that could work on the left hand side, direct mail, you could do YouTube, you could do Facebook ads. I did Craigslist back in the day. Yard marketing works, email marketing, you could do mass media referral marketing or even you know, telemarketing. All of those things work, right? And we have lead gen levers in real estate B school, about seven lead gen levers. When you're in our any one of our programs that all produce about 25 to 50 plus transactions per year. When you fully implement them. So that's the left side. The question is, you know, are you having the meaningful conversations? You know, you're meeting with buyers, you're, you're setting appointments, you're meeting with would be buyer and seller clients. You're getting them signed to loyalty agreements or listing agreements, you're getting them closed. And if you do all of that right, it takes care of itself. But the question is, are you doing all of that right? Is your business sort of a self fulfilling prophecy in terms of scaling on the service you provide? So very, very quick story. Me and Drew on the top part of this picture. We're on a guys trip and this was probably a month before spring break. We were talking about where we're going on spring break and I'm like, I'm going on a Disney cruise. It's like our fourth one. You guys should come along. And they're like, well, we already have a trip book. It's a different week. I'm like, you need to take your kids out of school because Disney cruises are unbelievably awesome. They did. And I think they've been on like four cruises now. And I'm not even a cruise person, but a Disney cruise with young kids is the way to go. So it's that, it's that sphere, sort of peer to peer, word of mouth marketing. This is a note, a handwritten note from a flight attendant on an American Airlines Friday. You know, Mr. And Mrs. Hedinburg, thank you, you know, for flying with us today. Have a wonderful evening. I'm walking off the plane, checking my phone. I get this email from American Airlines. I take a Net promoter score survey, give them a 10. And so the whole point is that you need to rethink your funnel. This here, you need to rethink your entire business. This is worth screenshotting. You need to rethink your entire business based on. Are you doing all of this in a way where your business builds as a result of the client care that you're giving? And do you have touch points along the way that that sort of kind of poke your clients for referrals? And are you tracking if you're getting referrals from your clients? That is the key. You got to rethink the funnel and get clear on what makes you different?

Right.

If it's not the service you provide, I don't think there's a chance you can be in business long term with the kind of monsters that are going after us. You know, the open doors in the Zillows, they have like $5 billion between the two of them. Like just monster businesses that are going after our commission checks, checks. And given those forces that I described earlier, the question is what will your response be? How will you navigate the changing dynamics in the market?

Right.

That's the real question. Dave Hook is a guy I had the pleasure of working with. His wife Jenny was pregnant with their first child when we started working together. Dave was a top agent selling 75, 80 homes. I think he had a part time administrator and a part time buyer agent who are actually running his business now. He was working 70, 80 plus hours per week and they'll do about 300 transactions this year. He spends 90 minutes in his business every week. And 80% of his business is referrals from past clients. So either repeat business or referrals from folks that have been through the his business. And the level of service that he provides through his team members allows him to create that virtuous cycle which is, which is what you want. So let's go through the specific steps to take to shift your service. So this is the fun part. We get to study other service industries and say, hey, that was really cool that the flight attendant wrote me that note and then I then sent me the email. How could we take that into our, into our real estate business? So think of ways where you can actually implement the cool things that other service providers are doing. Make it fun, embrace the challenge. Leverage is the name of the game. You've got to utilize leverage in the form of systems and people and you've got to make this life and death. The level of service you provide is direct correlation with your ability to survive in this business in the long term and track your progress by soliciting feedback from clients. You've got to ask clients, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to refer us based on the service we just provided? How likely are you to refer us to friends or colleagues?

Right.

Net promoter scores are real thing you've got to implement in your business and we have systems for all this in real estate B school. But you've got to get these things implemented and then get social proof to scale. And I've got more on that here in a little bit. But you've got to get your, your best clients saying kind words about you so others can see that social proof and want to work with you. So step number three is to fill your pipeline with high quality, low cost leads. Stop playing their game. And the guiding principle here is that marketing is the biggest leverage point in your Business and it requires letting the world know that you can serve their real estate needs like no other agent in your market. And the question here is, am I truly using marketing as leverage and building lead generation pillars that can run without me? And I mentioned, you know, real estate B school in our paid coaching, we have seven, I think we're actually rolling out the eighth lead gen lever. Each are good for 25 to 50 plus transactions. Here's what I see. Even in bigger businesses we're struggling agents. An agent that's doing 20 transactions, they have like three or four different things, things that they're trying to do to generate business and they're, and they're never really drilling down. That's why the visual here of these oil rigs or wells, they're never really drilling down and going deep enough on a single legion leverage. And so that is the question here. Are you, you know, installing these levers in your business that can generate 25 to 50 plus transactions, each of them as you get them fully installed, massive leverage. There's nothing more leverage than you can do thing that you can do in your business than put your marketing hat on and develop systems that generate leads that are reaching out to you, buyers and sellers that are reaching out to you versus cold calling or you know, forced registrations on a, on a home search site or those sorts of things. And you've got to stop being a hostage, right? The Zillows, the realtor.com, those, those people are not your friends, right? Their goal is to take as much of the commission check as they possibly can take. And there it's an admission we got out of the whole mass media game, the whole paid home search leads, all of that game because it's an admission that they're just a better marketer than you. And on a local level they can't possibly be a better marketer.

Right?

We know the market, we have a presence in the market and we do this by telling the success stories of our clients, right? The same way that I'm going through this presentation and I'm talking about folks, you know, Dave Hook and Dan Jones and I'll go through a few more. I'm telling their stories because it's about their success, but it's not about like the large show here. Same thing in your real estate business. You want to tell the story of the for sale by owner that you helped the expired, that you helped the, you know, notice the default, right? You came in and you helped them avoid a foreclosure. You get the property sold before they had to short sell it, right? Tell their stories and that's the way you're going to get more business. And this is through social proof. It's everything in marketing, getting others to tell your story. Here's the power of social proof. A very specific, specific example with a dentist. So my dentist is Valentine Dentistry. And this is, I think it's pretty recent. They have 1100 Google reviews, right? So you can see best dentist in where I live 28277. I actually live just south of there. But this is the main sort of retail area Valentine Dentistry comes up. There's not a paid ad, it's just on the, on the map. There's 1100 reviews, right? The question is I went to Valentine Dentistry Dentistry when they had, I think about six or 700 reviews. And it's the first time I had been there. I switched dentists and when I was checking out, the receptionist asked me, she's like, hey. And she kind of pointed to my phone and she said, hey, have you Left us a 5 star review yet? And I'm like, I haven't left you a five star review. And she said, go ahead and open up a browser, go ahead and type this in. Go ahead and hit that button. Like, did we give a five star, five star service today? She's like, oh yeah, go ahead and hit the five. Anything you want to say? Yeah, go ahead and type that in there. Hit submit. And I'm like that was awesome. It was probably, probably more than a minute, less than two minutes, the whole process. And I asked her, I said, man, these guys were on the same radio station that I was on, the same stations that was on. We were at that time we were probably spending 15 to $20,000 a month on mass media. This was years ago before we gave it up. And I said, why do you think I've got two questions for you. I told her, I said, why do you think the owners are asking you to do this? And they, and she said almost exactly like the owners told me that in a team meeting that mass media, the radio and the TV that they've done for years is not returning anymore. And most of them, their clients are coming in off of their Google reviews. And I'm like, wow. I said, my second question is, do you get paid like a little bonus when you get these reviews? He's like, yeah, I get paid a small dollar for each one that I get in a day. And I'm like, that is amazing. I went right to our office and I grabbed our operations, our main admin and I grabbed our transaction coordinator. I'm like guys, I know I'm probably a little out of bounds here but we've got to install this system right away. We've got to become the best agent in our market. So you could see high performance Real Estate Advisors. 1500 reviews. This is a business I've since exited November 2020. I exited this business when I joined EXP, but we are the best real estate agent in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not paid. It comes up like we're the third in the search here. I don't know how they work the algorithm but 318203 and 1500 so we regularly get business. We were at like 40 something reviews when I left the dentist's office and came into the office and I, I had a goal to, I think in that first year to get to 500 and then the 750, then a thousand, then 1500 was the goal. So this is absolutely something that you can install in your business. And it's not very hard because when I think of Dave Friedman, he's in Charleston, South Carolina, very similar story. He was the year before I met Dave he did 35 transactions. That was his, I think his first full year. He came over from New Home Sales. The year I met him he did 65 transactions or so last year he did 450 transactions. He took a 30 day vacation to the Galapagos Islands. He went from taking home about 125,000 or a hundred thousand take home on the 65 transactions to a 10x more than a 10x increase in his take home pay just from that one business. And he's traditionally working, you know, maybe a couple full days in that business typically rather. And he did it, you know, using some of the principles that we talked about here where you know, his presence in terms of social proof is a big driver in how he gets business. And he kind of stacked all of these steps that we're doing here. Everyone that I'm talking about stacked all of these steps here. But specifically he's made a name for himself. I think he's like number one best voted realtor in his market or whatnot. So in terms of the specific steps to shift your marketing, you've got to track everything, right? You've got to know what's working and what's not working. You've got to drill down deep versus going wide. And don't start a lead source or a marketing system unless you know and you could, you can provide proof that it's good for a minimum of 25 transactions a year.

Right.

Some of you are like, I wish I could even sell 25 homes in a year.

Right.

But taking the mindset that my database and doing it right and feeding it the right way and putting a client for life program in place and, and some client care systems in place, that's good for, you know, one to two plus transactions for every closing you do. So if you're at 10 transactions and you don't have any of that in place, you can go to 20 to 30 transactions with that one system.

Right.

That's the mindset that I need you to adopt. And imagine you couldn't spend any money on leads and use social media sparingly. Sparingly and strategically. Be careful. It can be a complete waste of time and it can also mess with you mentally. And if you haven't seen what's the movie Social dilemma, you probably want to watch it. It impacted me, my wife, we made our kids watch it as well. Install a process for getting testimonials. We just have an email and a text that we send out to clients and we secure those. There's testimony and actually we do it at closing as well while we're with them. Same. Same as the dentist did this with me. And then use those testimonials in your marketing. All right. I think I'm on track here in terms of our time. Step number four, this is busting the myth that your, your time is linked to the amount of money that you can make in your business. Traditional methods would have you believe that, but we're going to bust that myth right now. So the guiding principle here is that the income you've been making in real estate is simply the result of of the choices you've made with where you spend your time. And here's the question I have for you. What are the most dollar productive activities in a real estate business? And then are you spending 80 plus percent of your time doing those activities? So there's only five. If you're taking notes, you've got to write these down. The goal is to get you to a point where you can spend 8, 80% or more of your time on these five activities. If you're working a 50 hour workweek, that's 40 hours a week, you're going to do these five things. It's P, L A N S. P is for prospecting, which we call new business development. That's looking for buyers and sellers. L is lead, follow up. Right. 90 plus percent of buyers and sellers leads are not ready to transact the first time you, you contact them. So you've got a lead, follow up. The A is for appointments, this is first time appointments with buyers and sellers to have them sign buyer loyalty agreements or listing agreements. N is negotiate. That's getting buyers under contract, that's getting listings under contract. Not repair negotiations. That's more administrative nature. And then S is systems. So prospecting, lead, follow up, appointments, appointments, negotiating deals and working on systems in the business, those are the dollar productive activities in your real estate business. Literally everything else, it may be critically important that it gets done. They're just not dollar productive. And so the question is, if you're not spending 80% of your time in those dollar productive activities, why not?

Right?

I get it. Time is finite. That's the cool thing about business. There's 168 hours in a week. You know, total hours take out seven times seven, take out about 50 hours of sleep. There's 138 waking hours. You know, and you want to spend time, time with your family, time with your creator, time with your, you know, working on your physical body.

Right?

There's only so much time. And I totally get that. Being, being a real estate agent, being married, having kids, doing all these things and wanting to show up. And it's, it's extraordinarily hard, right? There's so much you could do with your time. And on top of it, there's Netflix, there's social media, there's all the things. This is a concept that I have to make sure you understand. This is a calculation that I ran back in. It had to be early 2008 because I used 2007 numbers. It's called, we call it now, I didn't call it this back then. The Business Freedom Index, where essentially I take my AGI, my adjusted gross income from my tax returns. Even though you can say I run some things through the business that maybe aren't business related, doesn't really matter. I just use my adjusted gross income. So it's essentially profit before taxes and owner's compensation divided by the total annual hours you're working as the team owner, right? And hours are, it's all hours. If you're doing administrative business work or if you're working in the business or on the business. If you're in the office with clients or you're at home working in the evenings, it's all the hours. So very simple. Example, when I first ran this calculation from my first 10 months in the business, it was $18.50 an hour. I declared in that moment this was early 2008 that I was going to make $500,000 take home clear profit. So this is post expenses, anything like that. And I wanted to work 40 hours a week. I want, I didn't want to work, you know, crazy 60, 70 hour work weeks. So 500,000 divided by 2000. This is my, my aspirational BFI Business Freedom Index. 500,000 divided by 2000 is $250 per hour. So if you compare where I wanted to be with where I was at 20 bucks an hour, a little less than 20 bucks an hour in my first 10 months in real estate it only meant that I was spending a lot of time doing things that weren't making me money. Wasn't a bad person. I wasn't like any less or more smart than anyone else. I just made a commitment to stop doing the things that I can get others to do. And they were willing to do them for 15, even 10, 15, 20 bucks an hour so that I can focus all my time on the five things P, L A N S. Right? So there is no better person in terms of leverage than Stacy Peterson. I call her the business leverage queen. I met Stacy, she was doing, I know she almost quadrupled her business but similar story, she was a top agent working with buyers and sellers seven days a week. All the stress, all the stuff and she more she, she got to over 300 transactions. She was able to exit production, you know, three, four times the amount of take home income working, you know from seven days a week down to five. And she actually became a business coach for Real Estate B school. Ended up running the business for as the CEO of Real Estate B school for a period of time as well. So got down to two days a week in her business, actually sold her business for a seven figure valuation in a market where that's never done been done before. But it's, it's because she understood that only certain things get you paid in real estate. And she actually, from a systems perspective, she had one administrator because she was so sort of checklist and systems oriented that it was able to close 222 transactions. That was the year before they did over 300 transactions. They had to hire a second administrator to get over 300. But this is possible if you really understand this concept of leverage and BFI and where you spend your time. All right, so the steps to shift your productivity first is to think in terms of your highest and best use, right? All day long I'm thinking like is this my highest and best use? I'm here, you know, talking to, you know, dozens of real estate agents that want to grow their business to a million beyond. Even though the market like, is this the best thing I could be doing right now? This is the best freaking thing I could be doing right now. My goal, my passion is to impact as many agents as possible. So all day long you need to be thinking, is this the highest and best use of my time? You have to have time blocks in your calendar. Work on business. If you're part of real estate B school, any of our programs, you know exactly what to work on. But you've got to work on the next generation of the business that sells more homes, that allows you to work less, that's more predictable, that systematically increases your net worth and time off, right? Calculate your current BFI and your desired BFI. So if you made 100 grand last year and you worked, you know, 2500 hours, 50 hours a week on average, 100 grand divided by 2500 hours, that's $40 per hour. Let's say you want to, you know, you're okay with the 2500 hours, but you want to go from 100,000 to 250,000. Take home, that's $100 per hour BFI, right? So to go from 40 to 100, that's a 250% increase. You need to know those numbers if you're ever going to make it happen. There will be necessary endings, right? You've got to sort of stop doing some things to start doing different things and get on the same page with your loved ones, though. I made all the mistakes you can make in terms of managing my time in the early days, but I was always open line of communication with Julie, my wife, letting her know there is a bigger plan here, there's a bigger purpose. I promise you I'm going to build this thing out in a business way where my income is not directly correlated with the homes that I sell, the buyers and sellers that I work with, and then follow a simple roadmap with a proven plan. And we went through Stacy there. All right, step five. So how do you strategically implement tools and systems to scale your business and how to do that today? So not only is it possible to scale your business without losing your life, but it's predictable when you have a clear roadmap in place. And so the question is, based on where you are today, how confident are you in terms of where you're going? You know, I just got off a call with folks that are in their early 50s. They're I asked them a question. On a scale of 1 to 10, you know, 1, you have nothing, you're not going to be able to retire anytime in the next 10 years to 10, you can retire today. And they were at 2.5. And that might have been, you know, better than they were really at, because nobody really wants to talk, talk about this stuff. So based on where you are today, how confident are you in terms of where you're, where you're going? We have the predictable path to real estate success. There are six distinct stages that we guide folks through in our different programs to get to. Through the start stages, getting to 100 to ramp is 500, build is a million.

Right?

And we go through everything that has to happen. The questions, the things you need to be doing, all of that stuff. So the bottom line is, and this is where I started, is to help you make more money so that you can have more freedom, so that you can have more impact in your family and your community and potentially around the world. So the question is, who do you hang out with? Who do you hang out with? 95%, according to a study done in Harvard University Department of Psychology, 95 of your success or failure in life is determined by the people you habitually associate with. Another study done was that those who hang out with underachievers see their performance suffer. Those that hang out with high achievers, they rise up to that level, so their own performance increases. And another study out of University of Chicago Booth School of Business. People with multiple strong social networks have early access to valuable information, earn more money and receive more recognition.

Right?

So the circles that, that you're running in have a direct correlation with, with the success that you're achieving in business and life. So I think this is the last example. And I just got off that call I was talking about was with Cody. We were talking to someone else. I met Cody. She just told her story on this call, 2015. She was coming out of the really bad years, Great, great Depression, great recession years. She's doing about 300,000 GCI and she was ready to give up real estate, right? The great recession years just kicked her butt. Last year she did 2 million GCI 7 figure take home net income, lean and mean team, not more than five other agents. She only did soi listings. She took like five or six legit vacations, doesn't work evenings or weekends. And she was ready to get out of the business when I started working with Cody, but it was all about systems. Her approach was like, how can I stop doing this? How can I stop doing this? How can I stop doing this? How can I stop doing this over and over and over again, Right? So there is method to the madness. So in terms of shifting your approach, choose faith over fear. Some of this stuff will make you uncomfortable, but just trust that there's a path created by those that have gone before you. Think like a business owner and less like a real estate agent. Even though all of your income is made potentially working with buyers and sellers directly, you still have to shift your mindset to become a business owner more than just a real estate agent. Growth isn't easy, so expect the tough days and create the vision for your business and then break it down. And we have a process for that. So this is what we went through, right? We talked about the mindset shift for thinking like a business owner, adapting your approach given the shift storm, filling your pipeline, right? Stop the insanity, playing their game, bust the myth that your time is linked to the money you make and then talk about lastly, we talked about implementing tools and systems. So the mission is clear, right? My entire sort of business existence revolves around helping agents like you build highly profitable businesses through the use of sustainable systems and empower people so that you can make more money, experience less stress and take more time off. So for those that want to go further faster, which hopefully is all of you, I'm looking for a very specific agent to help guide to really whatever level you want to get to. If you're at 100, you want to get to 250 or 250, you want to get to 500. Or if you're at 250, you want to get to a million in the next two to three years. The question is, will you be one of the agents? I just launched a program called Business Foundations. I'm calling it the Case Study Program because I'm looking to directly impact folks along this journey. And it has three parts and it's the same three parts. More money for the lifestyle you deserve, more freedom to focus on the things that matter most and then ultimately more impact so you can make a difference in the world. So we are a match. If you're currently running less than 500,000 GCI, we've got a different program for folks that are running at a higher level. If you're business minded and growth oriented, if you have two to three hours a week and we can help you find those hours. But you need to be willing to carve out some time to work on the business. If you're coachable and willing to challenge the status quo. If you're tired of feeling underpaid and overworked, you're ready to scale your real estate business and you're tired of giving, giving up your personal life. If you're this is you, you'll be obsessed with business foundations and specifically this case study program. You're going to get everything, all of our tools and systems. Nothing is held back. You're going to get all of our foundational tools, which is the net worth calculator, your personal wellness assessment, tracking your leading indicators in the business, your financial performance, the strategic business assessments, any all of the foundational tools. Live business coaching from Stacy Peterson and one of our other business coaches, typically Ben Gray, who does a couple hundred transactions twice per week. So you get them live twice per week. Every quarter I do a quarterly planning session that you'll get access to. It's about a two hour session. That's the cadence here. Three year vision, one year plan. We help you build these three year vision, one year plan. Then a quarter at a time, 90 days at a time, then we chunk it down into weeks and your daily tasks and then two digital summits per year and those are two day events that you'll attend every week. We do a production mastermind that you'll have access to and you'll get access to our private online community. Plus all of our drivers. Each of our four drivers has three accelerators. So four drivers, 12 accelerators, accelerators. You get all the database marketing, all the listing marketing, all the, all the buyer marketing, all the swipe and deploy templates, ads, all of it. In terms of convert, that's the second driver. All the lead management, email sequences, text sequences, all the appointment setting scripts and best practices to increase show rate, the consultation process, the buyer packets, the listing packets, swipeable buyer presentations, swipable listing presentations, all of it. In terms of deliver world class service. That was one of the steps I talked about in you get all the client care checklists, all the trello boards that we run our businesses on, all the client servicing to drive referrals, transaction management, and all of our critical technology tools. And then you get the scale driver as well, which is all about creating your future, which is planning, knowing your numbers, which is becoming the CFO of your business and all the tracking tools, very simple and we train you on them. And then also how to grow your team, which is hiring and onboarding. Even if it's just one admin and one showing agent and maybe one VA, you can go to 100 transactions, right? Have 80% margin on a very small nimble team, right? So conservatively $8,000 there. And then I would say the real benefit here is to learn from my mistakes. I suffered a lot of mistakes in the business, right. I went from a solo agent. I figured out how to scale, right? And I only worked 42 days. The year we, I think we wrote like 453 contracts. And 2016, 14, maybe 2014, I worked like 42 days. We did 453 transactions. So I figured out leverage at a high level. I figured out residual income, I figured out how to generate net worth, all that good stuff. And my mission is very, very laser focused. It's just to help other agents do the same. So there's two options in terms of membership. You go the monthly route, it's 497 per month. There's no long commitment, no long term commitment. You can cancel at any time. 30 days notice. If you go to the annual plan, you'll actually get two months for free. So you'll save almost $1,000. You'll run for a full year if you've got the cash. I would suggest making the actual commitment to the program, but you can cancel anytime after the year with 30 days. And there really isn't a coaching and training program like real estate B school. Here's our guarantee. 100% results guarantee. So the process is clear. The roadmap is there. The support, the production mastermind, the online community, live business coaching. Twice a week, you, you show up, you will get the results. There's no money back guarantee, right? If you're unsure if this is the world for you, just go the monthly route. You know, it's a minimal investment, but we know our approach works. So if you do the work, you will get the results. And there's some bonuses that will include as well. Every past intensive workshop, which were two day live sessions, we shifted over to digital summits during COVID and we've sort of kept that format. You'll get access to all of them dating back to 2014. There is monumental nuggets of gold in that right there. All of our past weekly trainings and production masterminds, you get all of those instantly when you join. And there are sessions in there that will show you how to install one thing in your business to get a 20 times return on your marketing.

Right?

That's just a recent one that we did. We called it the power of giftology. I think the, the person that presented got a 25 times return. She put in like $6,000 and got like $150,000 out of it. And so it's like trainings like that, very tactical, very specific that you'll swipe and deploy. Also our team toolbox so if you onboard a new agent, you know, if you actually hire an agent you'll get all the lead conversion training and all the role play calls and all that. So this was the quote that I was on my business plan back in the day. Napoleon Hill whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve. So conceive, believe, achieve. That's the path we're going to go down together. So be come our next case study. That's the invitation, right? There's no agenda here other than to make you successful. Help this, you know, get clear on the three year vision, chunk it down to one year plan and just absolutely crush it. Every quarter, every week, every day. Go to get business foundations dot com. That's get business foundations dot com. We're not going to have time to check out the toolbox or the online community but go to get business foundations dot com. It's, it's something I'm really, really proud of and the motivation is to find the next case study. So I hope that's you. Go to get business foundations.com and we'll see you over there. Man. I only have love and respect for all of you for even being in the real estate industry and I cannot wait to see you on the other side. So go to getbusinessfoundations.com and we'll see you over there. Be good.