Give Yourself A Break From Your Self Induced Insanity!

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Lars Hedinburg here for another edition of the podcast. The title of this podcast is give yourself a break from your self induced insanity. And so let me give a little bit of context to this podcast. I am addicted to to business. Just straight up everything about it. If it's good, if it's bad, if it's. Doesn't matter if I'm making a lot of money, if money is tighter. It's all just this game that I love. And you know, when I transitioned from the corporate world in 2007, I had an amazing corporate job. So I did acquisitions and strategy for an aerospace company. When I graduated high school, I wanted to go to college to be, to study to become an aerospace engineer. It turned out that it wasn't the time for aerospace and I shifted to mechanical engineering. And I've just always had this love of aerospace and defense and technology and all of that. And so worked for a few years as an engineer out of undergrad and then took a position on Wall street as a financial analyst. Worked for a couple years there. In one week I was telling the story. The other day, one week in New York, I worked 138 hours out of 168 hours. I was physically in the office. Couple nights, maybe three of those nights I slept under my desk for a couple hours. And so when I left that crazy environment, I knew I loved business. I love strategy. I just loved that part number crunching and val. And so I was looking for an acquisitions and strategy job. I never imagined I would work for an aerospace company. So that was super awesome. Anyway, back to the story. When I made that transition from corporate life to business, it was, there was no turning it off. Like I got exposed to a world where there's a never ending amount of information and learning and development you could do as a business owner. Like in the beginning it was how do I generate leads and have conversations and sit down with buyers and sellers and convert them into clients and do a great job. And that was like, man, the first four or five years that's all I obsessed over. And then making the transition to more to managing and helping others manage and what's the business operating system so I don't have to have my hand in everything that was like the next phase of that growth. And then you know, how do I run this thing without being in it? Like that was just fun. And you know, all the while this whole time money game that I play, if you haven't heard me talk about delinking time and Money and stress. And how can I make like just a crazy amount of money every hour I put into the business because I'm adding that much value, or I put in the systems, or I put the people in place. And so this game I just love and I'm totally addicted to it. And so over the course of, I would say the last three or four years, the real estate business is running super smooth. The coaching business, I'm getting it to a point where it's running mostly without me. Most of what I do is one to many. Like this. I'm sharing some perspective, or I'm doing a webinar, or I'm doing a weekly training for our group on something. It's like a one to many and I love it and it's awesome. Or a building system. Still love building systems and tools for our members. And so I love all of it. And I got to the point where I did work down to four days a week, one day in the real estate team, three days in the coaching business. Then the pandemic hit and it gave me the excuse to go back to seven days a week. Just my natural response was like, give me the ball. Gonna run with it. And not great. Not a great leadership move. That's for a whole nother podcast. The thing I want to share with you is that in all of this, you know, in the last, since, you know, whatever, 2007, 2008, I hired my first administrator and went from 44 to 58 to 118 to 178 to 248. You've heard me say all that before. The year we did 248, I did one of those transactions that was just my journey. I wanted to see if I could do it, if I could build a business that didn't rely on me. And I did it. The last three or four years have been pretty decent. And I've learned to sort of temper this addiction that I have. Yet what I've found is that I'm always spinning in my head and obsessing about business. And I have a great life. I spend time with my kids, I'm present with my wife. And so someone challenged me, you know, here's how obsessed I am. And you may relate to this. When I go for a run or when I work out, working out is an opportunity for me to listen to a book or a podcast. It's hardly the workout that I'm interested in. It's this opportunity to get. I mean, part of it is just mental, you know, just a breakaway from the house and to get out and be in know in our neighborhood and all that. But I'm always listening to something like my brain is on 24 7. There are nights and it's not often but there are nights I lay in bed and I'm spinning on something in my head and I can't go to bed and I know I've worked a long day, I know I'm tired. I know my body is ready to relax and it can't because my brain is on. So someone challenged me to go for a walk. To go for a walk without any technology, without anything, any airpods in my ears, not listening to a podcast or anything. And this is going to sound stupid when I say this and just hang with me and I'll explain. So when I left my house and it was probably about 20, 25 minute walk, I went on and it's a 1.2 mile loop around my neighborhood, small neighborhood, we live in this just one loop. And before I got to the other side of the road in front of my house, I started thinking about like man, like I am going to take a break and just be with my thoughts. And I got emotional. Like I didn't sob, cry yet. I teared up with emotion and what I realized the, what was behind the emotion. And I'm okay getting emotional. You know, I've cried on stage, I've cried on virtual stuff. I've done like, it's, it's okay. So I'm not, it's, it's not that I was surprised by it as much. Well, I was surprised by it because there was nothing to, there was nothing to cry about when I thought about it afterwards. The challenge was to go on a walk for at least 20 minutes and then come back and journal and just write out what happened, what you thought of how it was. And I shared this with my coach who challenged me to do this. And of course I got emotional again sharing it. And it was in a group environment which is a little bit, you know, weird. And I'm okay with it because I think it's really served the group this pressure that we put on ourselves as business owners and the mental rack space that we take up all the time with all that we have going on in our business, we don't ever give ourselves a break. And at least that is true for me. I don't know if you suffer with the same, you know, self induced insanity as I titled this podcast. And so here's the crazy thing. I made a commitment and I haven't stuck with it full on every day. I made a commitment. Well, let me say I made a commitment to do that more often, just to be still, cease striving. The Bible tells us to be still. Know that I am God, which translates from the original text is cease striving. And so I made a commitment to cease driving and just go for walks and. And sit outside and listen to the birds. And what happened since I've done that is that I am sleeping better. I'm having dreams at night. You know, I never would have dreams or remember my dreams, I think, because I just clogged my head up with all this other stuff. And the truth is, there's not really much more. I'm not saying I know everything. There's not all of this stuff I'm shoving in my brain, these podcasts or these books that I'm listening to. I. I'm not saying that any of it's bad. I'm just saying make sure. This is me preaching to me. I need to make sure that I'm going to leave pockets of downtime, of nothing, do nothing at all, space in your day so that you can breathe and you can just take a break from the pressure we put on ourselves. So the reason I'm sharing all this, I just thought in the group I shared it with, it really struck a chord, you know, like the pressure we put on ourselves. And our reaction to the pressure is just to learn more or, you know, consume more, to become more knowledgeable. And the truth is, the opposite is true. For you to show up, even if you're not running a team right now, but to show up as a better real estate agent, let alone team leader, if you're running a team, if you have one administrator and one buyer agent and that's all you've got, or if you're running 10, 15, 20 people on your team, you have to do everything you can possibly do to show up and serve those folks at the highest level. And that includes having a clear mind, to be able to be present in every moment possible in those interactions. Our ability to shift someone's life forever because of just this ability to be engaged and enthusiastic and energetic and just present in the moment with your team and your loved ones is something that. It's just priceless and I don't do enough of it. And there's no preaching here because this is just my struggle. And so I encourage you to, a few times a week, if not every day, go for a walk and just listen to the birds. I also, twice when I did this I sat down, there's a little pond in the middle of our neighborhood, and I just sat down on a bench in the middle of my walk and I just looked at the water and the little fish coming up and it was like the coolest thing ever. And so you may already have this part of your life together. This may not be applicable, but for me, it was. I feel like this one thing is going to be a life changer for me. And I know that sounds super dramatic. I don't call it a game changer. I hate when people say it's a game changer. It's like it's not a game changer. Like, not everything's a game changer. This one for me, though, based on my cramming stuff in my head all the time, is going to be a life changer. A lifesaver. Even a better term for it is a lifesaver. And I'm going to be able to serve those around me. I'm going to be more patient with my kids. I'm going to be more present with my wife. I'm going to serve in my men's group. At a higher level, I'm in this Christian business owners group, and I can come to those interactions with a mind that's free and clear to engage with what's in front of me. And so I hope there's encouragement here around this. Here's the crazy thing I was going to mention a second ago. I was already doing a practice of meditation, the Abide app. So there's a scriptural meditation. And then I do the. What is it? It's on my phone here. Headspace. And that's good. But it also became like me just checking a box and I was just kind of getting through it to get through it. And so I'm bringing a different awareness to that time as well. And I'm trying to do that time, you know, out of one spot that in my house that I sit in, if it's nice outside, I'm trying to sit outside and do those things. So anyway, hope this serves you. You know, if you're at the point in your business growth journey where, you know, you need a roadmap. We just launched a new program. So typically, so traditionally real estate B school, we only served folks that had already achieved 500,000 GCI. This program called Business foundation serves the entire community under 500,000 GCI. So, yeah, if you know you want to build a business and you want to build it on the right foundation, yet you're not at 500,000 GCI yet. That's why this is called Business Foundations. It includes everything you could possibly need to build your business. Everything from lead generation to lead conversion to client servicing to all the tools you need to scale your business. All the planning tools, all the tracking tools, and all of the team building, recruiting, culture, cadence. All of that's included. Also, live coaching four times a week and live training. And so go over to get Business Foundations. There's a webinar that you could watch if you want to getbusinessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com this program, my friends, will be a game changer if you opt into it and you do the work. So go to get Business Foundations and we'll see you over there.