Getting Rich in Real Estate Sales is Simple

Here is a shocking fact. The average real estate agent in the US grosses less than $60,000 per year. The average two year agent grosses less than 10,000 per year. And the average veteran agent grosses around 92 $94,000 a year. If you Google NAR income study, you will see that for yourself. So how can I come in here and say that getting rich in real estate sales is simple. Less than 1% of real estate agents last year sold 25 homes or more.

The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses. And I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share it all with you. The good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results.

You just gotta do the work. So how do you build a business, right, that allows you to generate leads in excess without having to pay for them? Without having you to do the soul sucking cold calling that is so prevalent in our industry, or door knocking or all those crazy things and stack the transactions right? Real estate gets really, really fun. When you get to 2, 3, 4, 5 plus transactions per month. That allows in most markets that will allow you to put away above and beyond a really healthy lifestyle price tag. You know, you can live off 15, 20,000amonth and you could put away 15, 20, 30,000amonth if you're selling 4, 5, 6 homes per month. Okay, so for some of you, this is going to blow your mind. For others, lean in and do everything you can to just take your time with this information and take it for what it is. It is me and my journey. It was not an easy journey, but I did figure out how to sell a lot of homes and in a not so crazy amount of time. Okay, so if you don't know me, I'm Lars Hedenburg, the founder of Real estate B school. 2000 plus agents served in Real Estate B School, my, my coaching company and 5,000 plus families served in my real estate sales journey. So my first 10 months in real estate, that was right before the GFC, the great financial crisis. So I got into Real Estate March 2007. I sold 27 homes those first 10 months. So I figured out some of these things really early on. I had one lead source, one script and one simple activity that I did. And I pretty much did that my first full year in real estate, which was the onset of the Great Financial Crisis 2008, I sold 44 homes. Six years later, 2014, we closed 453 homes. And I had cracked the code on every aspect of the business to the point where, where I didn't even have to show up anymore. Now I realize for some of you that is not the desire and in Million Dollar Agent method, this is our core 90 day implementation program. Doesn't matter where you are in your journey. We're going to set up the lead conversion, lead generation elite conversion systems. You will need to be successful and grow at least add two to three transactions per month within the 90 days that we work together. But many of our members have gone on to scale their businesses to really, as far as you want to, right? Two to three or 20 to 30 deals per month. You can do whatever you want with the systems we build out in the 90 days we work together. So this is inspired by Dave Hook, whose journey in real estate started out where he was just a solo agent, right? And we do this math in real estate B school, where we calculate how much money we're making per hour we work in our business. And so my first 10 months in the business, it was less than 20 bucks an hour. I did sell a lot of homes. I wasted a lot of money. I did not take a lot of money home. But then it went, you know, from 20, it went to 100 to 150 to 250 to 500 to 1,000 to 2,000 to 4,000. And then basically as I was like less and less in the business, it basically went to tens of thousands of dollars per hour because I wasn't spending a lot of time, time in that business. And so Dave Hook, we met, this was probably back in 2015 or 16 or so, his first number, he was hustling, he was selling homes, but he was making about $83 per hour. And he shared, his most recent number is $44,000 per hour. So he's able to run a business that sells hundreds of homes per year working 90 minutes a month. 90 minutes a month. So I know that's a head, a mind bender for some of you, but I really want you to focus on there are four things that you must do to make this process of getting massively free. From a time and money perspective, there's only four things you need to focus on. And that's why this is really simple. It's not really easy, right? So only 1% of agents are going to sell 25 homes or more per year. So obviously the masses aren't figuring out how to sell 2, 3, 4, 5 plus homes per month. But these four things will allow you to massively increase your chances of doing that. Okay, so the first thing, and we actually chatted about this, I had Dave come on for one of our trainings and I asked him, you know, I said what are the few things, the few needle movers that you see that hold agents back in terms of their ability to do multiple transactions per month?

Right.

So if we want to be in the 1% or you know, the promise of million dollar agent method is that we're going to install the lead generation and lead conversion systems and all of our sales frameworks for you to scale the four stages of growth. So get to 100k annual GCI, get to 250, get to 500 on your way to a million. So I asked him the question, what's the first thing, the first advice you would give an agent that wants to become a million dollar agent, and this is the first thing on my list as well, is that you must figure out a way to sit still three hours a day for new business development. And new business development has a couple components. The first component component is having conversations with folks that you haven't talked about, haven't talked to yet. And so this is, you know, new buyer and seller prospects are having conversations with folks in your database, basically having a two way conversation with a decision making adult about real estate. And some of you may say yeah, that's all well and good, I have nobody to talk to and I'll get to that one. That's actually the second thing that we need to work on. But this concept of time management, time blocking and productivity, it is really simple, right? So like raise your hand virtually if you have never heard of time management or time blocking or productivity.

Right?

Nobody's raising their hand. So everyone knows this stuff. One out of 100, I would say one out of 10. But it's more likely one or two out of 100 agents are diligent about this. And I know that because only 1% of agents are selling 25 homes or more per year. If you manage to, and we'll, we'll get to the lead gen systems. That's number two, spoiler alert. If you can just structure your calendar. And the first thing we do when we help agents structure their calendars is we time block out all the time that they're not working and we have A system to make sure our clients know that we have appointment slots available. And, and it's not willy nilly they have access to everything in our calendar.

Right.

So there is a time system that we can help you put in place. But if you're not focusing on the most important thing in your business, which is new business development, which is the two components are, you know, those first time conversations, which is lead generation and then the follow up conversations, which is lead follow up.

Right.

So a time block, you know, 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off for three hours in the morning, a short break for some admin or to take a walk and then you're going right into your lead follow up. If you could manage your morning in that way, you will be swimming in money.

Right.

There's this rough rule of thumb. If you could manage to do an hour a day of new business development, you will sell one home per month. If you can do two hours per day, you'll probably sell around two homes per month. One to two homes per month. Leaning towards two. If you could sit down and sit still and actually have conversations for three hours a day, you will do three plus transactions per month and it'll probably compound from there. There's no getting around this. It's super simple, not easy, right? So I didn't promise any of this was easy. There's no easy button to making a ridiculous amount of money and being in the 1% of the 1%, which is really what I want from you. And there's that amazing opportunity for you to get there. So that's number one is a focus on productivity. That's step number one. Step number two is that you have to have lead generation systems in place. You cannot go down the path. And I'm not talking about paying for leads or paying referral fees at closing or cold calling or door knocking or open houses that nobody shows up to or social media posts that fall flat. You know, I'm not talking about those types of things. I'm talking about two things we have in Million Dollar Agent method there are 10 legion levers. Two form the foundation that will take you to whatever level of production that you want to get to. Database touch Blueprint and brand authority Builder Agent, Brand authority builder. Essentially your digital footprint. And so the whole game is for you to just build a database and can, you know, do a one time build of a database, continue to add people to the database as you network, as you talk to for sale by owners or expireds in an inbound lead generation perspective, I'll cover that In a second. And you're just building a database and 10% of that database with a touch system, our touch system installed, 10% of that database will transact either via referral or they're going to sell their own property.

Right?

So this is not rocket science. We have a community member sold 42 homes from her database via referral or you know, folks in her database selling. She only had a Google sheet to organize it and she did 42 transactions from 250 people in her database. So some of you will say I don't want to talk to people, I don't want to. You got to do something to generate business. And I hope you get this next point. Paying for leads. There is no freedom in it. I don't know any agents that are paying for leads that have a business that is in this virtual growth cycle, this virtuous growth cycle which is, you know, it's, it's the compound effect. The more you double down into the systems we teach, the more business will happen over time versus you putting your hope and dreams in a paid lead source or pay at closing through 30 to 40%. That is not sustainable. There's no freedom in it, right? So you have to build out these foundational systems, the database, touch blueprint and the Brand Authority Builder which is essentially your Google business profile, your online social proof, Google reviews and how you present yourself and the content you put out there on the social platforms and we automate it and it's only two 15 minute time blocks per day to, to do the, the Brand Authority Builder. So that's lead gen system. So if you're sitting here and you don't have any lead gen systems in place, you're not really in the game, right? You're not in the game of building an actual business, relying on someone else or thinking that this next lead source that you're going to get on a call with is going to be the answer. It's not going to be the answer. We've got to or you've got to. We can help if you want us to help. You've got to commit to actually doing the work of building out the systems that provide the opportunity. And you know, even if you only start with 50 people in your database and you commit to adding one person, just one person to your database five days a week, Monday through Friday, in 50 weeks, two weeks off for vacation, you will add what's five times 50, 250 people to your database that can go into your touch system. So once a week there's a Value add touch that we help you put in place. And there could be 50 or 250 plus 50 or 1000 in there. And it pretty much doesn't take any more time for you to, you know, for you to run that system. So if you get 300 people, so after 12 months at adding one contact per day, Monday through Friday, you'll have 300 people in your database. If you install the touch system and you run it properly, 30 deals will come out of your database, right? But you've got to start at square one. So that's, that's number two. Legion Systems. The third step here or third thing that is simple about getting rich in real estate is you must especially as you get to, you know, two to three transactions, you must automate and delegate. So there's little, little tech tools that we put in place for client care, for helping with your social media presence. And we've got some really solid systems even around business tracking and whatnot, and even bringing on a virtual assistant. We've got a really great relationship with a virtual assistant company that brings in pre trained for the most part, they double down as your, or triple down as your marketing coordinator, your listing coordinator and your closing coordinator. The only thing you'd have to get locally potentially if you don't want to work evenings and weekends, would be a showing agent or someone like a courier or runner to run business and personal errands around town, right? So automating and delegating. Here's the fact is that 80% of what a real estate agent does on a normal regular basis is not very dollar productive, Critically important, but not dollar productive. So picking up a earnest money check at an attorney's office and bringing it or from a buyer and bring it to an attorney's office, does it have to happen? Yes, it has to happen. But essentially you're being a courier at that point. Couriers in my market get paid 10 to $15 per hour, right? So when you do those types of tasks, installing a yard sign, yard sign installers, these are not rocket scientists that go out and install yard signs, right? Does it have to happen? Yes, it has to happen. But can you do it all the time? If you want to make a ridiculous amount of money, you cannot. So automating and delegating, even the smallest of things, right? So that's the third thing, the fourth step or thing that we need to do to get ridiculously rich in real estate sales is patience is patience, right? So there is no quick and easy way to just ramp up your business and get these Legion systems in place. When we do this work, and we've been doing it for going on 12 years now, thousands of agents have been through our systems, our build out. It takes time to do this. The only way to get, like use the, use the physical body analogy, the only way to get truly fit and to change your habits and to restructure how you live your life physically and how you take care of your body is to. There's only three elements, right? It's your diet, what you consume. It is, and your hydration, sleep and sort of all that. It's your workouts, your cardio, your hiit, you know, high intensity interval, your weight training, whatever you're doing there. And then the third element is accountability, making sure you actually do it. But if you do those things with accountability for 90 days, you will, it will become part of who you are. I know this because this specific example has like, I've lived this out in my own personal life around my physical body. You can't keep me away from getting my workout in now and I wasn't always that way. But I committed to a 90 day focus on my physical body and now you can't keep me from doing those things. Same thing with my, with my nutrition and my sleep and I track all of it. And it wasn't always like that. So basically you need to be able to do the boring things over time. And the benefit and the gift you'll receive as a result of doing those things is you're building out systems in your business that are sustainable. So take our database touch blueprint. Is it going to be a little bit of work for you to go through your phone and your social media and your email and to go through a list of 100 questions like who's your hairdresser, who's your dry cleaner? And get all those contacts put together in a database? Yeah, it's going to suck. It's probably going to take 10 to 12 hours. We have members doing multiple seven figures per year of GCI on that one system that they started with a database of zero.

Right.

So is it quote unquote hard work? Yeah, it's not the most exciting stuff to work on, but it's the work that very few agents are willing to do.

Right.

So it's patience in the boring things that allow for this compound effect where anything we focus on, you know, or anything you should be focusing on should be a core system that is going to be in your business for three to five years. And you're going to love doing it, right? I'm an introvert. I don't love being the life of the party. So I set up all of my systems around me, not having to really communicate with many people at all, you know, and even if you want to stay in production, you know, you could still get to 100 transactions with a couple of junior agents, a local licensed admin. And you're only working business hours, no evenings and weekends, just working on listings, right? Or maybe your, your end game is getting to 50 transactions, you know, and you have one showing agent, one local license admin and you're, you know, you're not showing homes because your junior agent, your showing agent does that and you work mainly listings, right. And you're taking home probably 35, 32 to 35,000 net per month in that model, right? So there's different ways to slice this thing, but those are the four things. They're simple, not easy, right? Productivity managing your mornings, building Legion Systems, building them, not paying for leads, not cold calling. That's number two. Number three is automating and delegating. Number four is patience doing the boring things. We have an expression, it says marry the process, divorce the result. So every day you've got to do the work, you've got to build the systems, you got to have those conversations and over time the series of automating and delegating, you will be surprised the things you're getting out of in your business. You know, showing homes will be something that is you don't have time for anymore. You know, going on listing appointments was one thing I was able to give up on my up in my business because I built the business out the right way. So if you need help doing this in terms of building this out, implementing these systems, go to million dollar agent method.com that's million dollar agent method.com and we can take you through a process called a strategy session. Just, just to learn about you, your business and just to see if you're a fit for what we do. It's a 90 day engagement. We get into your business alongside you and we help you implement all of these systems into your business. So if that's you, go to milliondollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you on the other side. Be good.