How Andy Mulholland Doubled his transactions and tripled his team!

Hey there everyone. Lars Hedinburg, founder of Real Estate B School. I'm psyched today. I've got Andy Mulholland out of Rochester, Minnesota with me today. And really I've been doing these interviews, these case studies to just kind of highlight one of our members that's been in the community for a while, that's had some success. And just to let you in on the journey of what it really is like to go from a production type mindset to more of a business ownership and to scale the business and to get some time and money leverage from the business. Andy, why don't you kind of just introduce yourself, kind of give everyone that's watching here a little bit of an idea personally and professionally. Who is Andy Mulholland?

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me. So I'm in Minnesota. We're up in Rochester, Minnesota, home to the Mayo Clinic here. Small community, 150,000 people. Grew up here, born and raised here. You know, met my wife in high school. We've got four kids. We live on a farm here in southern Minnesota and just enjoy, you know, family time. That's like the big, that's like the big thing that, you know, we really focus on here is just being with our kids. So a lot of family time. You know, I'm just somebody who came from a non business background. Non. You know, I mean, I learned some basic things growing up watching my dad kind of build a business, but didn't really. Had no idea what it was all about and you know, just kind of got into it. So that's a little bit about me.

Yeah. Awesome. What did you want? When we first, when we first started working together, like, where, where were you at? What did you want to achieve? When we first met up, I think it was probably like three and a half years ago where we had that first conversation. But what did you want to achieve?

Great. Yeah, I mean, I'll never forget the call. I remember exactly. It's funny, like, you remember exactly where I was. I remember like my mindset, all of those things. And I remember because we, that year we were, you know, a small team. It was like me, an admin and like maybe two, maybe three buyer's agents. And we were going to do 100, 110, maybe 120 deals that year and I was going to do like 80 of them. I think at that point I had like, you know, 80 deals under contract and closed that were my personal production, most of them listings. There were some buyers in there as well. But you know, I was just Kind of done. My mindset was like, if this is the way it's going to be. We had another baby on the way. It was our second of four. And I just was like, if this is the way that it's going to be, it's just not worth it to me. Making great money. Like we were living a lifestyle. We had just bought this nice big two story home that I remember. My wife was like, I don't think we can live in a house like that. Like that's not okay, you know, like it's going to be fine. And it was. Financially life was great, but just no time, no time to be present. And that's what the big issue was in my life. The problem I had was I knew it wasn't what I wanted anymore. I just didn't know what to do about it. And either I was just going to bang my head against the wall and just slowly figure this thing out or I was going to find somebody that had done it before me. And that's when I was like, all right, I'm calling Lars. I've seen his stuff, I know he's done this. I'm not sure if it can work for me. I really didn't believe it in my heart of hearts, but I'm like, you know what, what else am I going to do? I'm either going to do that or I'm going to get out. So let's make this happen. And that was really my mindset on that call. I mean, what I wanted out of it. I told Lars exactly, I told you exactly what I wanted, which was I said, lars, I want to be able to take my family and leave for however long. I want 30 days, 60 days longer in an RV and travel the country. And I don't know why that was. Thinking back and I'm like, was that just because I threw that out there just to kind of be like, alright, see if you can do this, Lars. Like, see if you can help me do this crazy thing. I think I really wanted to do it because growing up that was just always something. I did a lot of camping with my family and I want to be able to do that with my family, but really take it to the extreme and travel all over the country. But in my current position, there was no way that was going to happen. There just was no way.

So, and what, what was it like? What was the time requirement in the business and what was the structure like back before we started working together?

Well, I mean, I think it's. It was like every top Producing agent at the, you know, at that point where, you know, you kind of realize, like, this is my life. I don't have anything else. I don't even have presence with my family.

Right.

Like, and if I do, it's just for, like, tiny little short bursts at a time. So that was my reality again. Financially, that was great, but the trade off just wasn't worth it to me because there just was no. Everywhere I went, I mean, I remember, you know, my wife's grandpa's funeral. I was sitting there, like, trying to do deals, like, and I'm just thinking, like, this is crazy. Like, this is stupid crazy. And yet everybody in my market and other markets were like, wow, you're so successful. You're doing wow. They're putting me on a pedestal. In my mind, I'm thinking, like, you don't want this. Like, this is not what you want. So it's just this weird place to be, you know?

Yeah. And we talk about it in real estate, B school, you know, conventional success in our industry is not a life worth living. Like you said, the money might be good, but the time is not your own and the stress is unbearable. You mentioned it a little bit. But what did it mean, you know, to get. To get this figured out and to make the shift from, like, the business is you to. To the business runs without you, or at least the stress and the time, it's more balanced. What did it mean to you and your family to get this thing on track and get it in the right direction?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I know the answer to that yet, because I think the benefits of that shift come when my kids are, you know, older. I mean, I think that's really when I see the value, when I see how they respect their family and they respect the time with their kids and try to be present because they saw how much I worked to make sure that happened. You know, I think that's when I really see the reward of it. But personally, my reward, the value I'm getting out of it right now is that I'm getting the time with them like I've never had before. Specifically, like, with our youngest right now, Leo. He's our fourth. He's a year and a half old. My wife said the other day, she's like, you've held him more than you've held any of our babies combined.

Right.

Like, and that's like a huge deal. I had sent you, Lars, this summer, a video of us in our rv. We were in, I think, at the time we were in Kentucky, just traveling all over the place, and Leo took his first steps down the length of the rv. And I've never seen any of our kids take their first step. So I guess that's just a sample of what it's meaning to me right now. And I'm excited to kind of see, you know, the effects of our family and the dynamics of our family and our kids and all those things as time goes on. For me, making that shift.

Yeah, that's awesome. Let's talk a little bit about the kind of the stuff you worked on in your business. Kind of the framework, the tools and systems. What are like two or three tool systems or areas of your business that you feel like real estate, B school made the biggest impact for you?

Well, specifically, you know, I think that having a lead management and protocol and procedure in place. So what I mean by that is when a lead comes in, like, you know, what happened? Keeping that lead accountable, keeping the money I spent on that lead accountable. I think before B school, it was a lead came in and I just kind of hoped and prayed that or probably didn't even pay attention to whether something was happening with that lead or not. And so when that happened, we were just kind of plucking off the hottest leads and doing deals, and that was it. But I was able to scale the buy side of my business, add more agents, and have confidence they were being converted at the highest level possible because we put an actual lead management system that I'd learned from B school in place. So that's probably one of them. Whether that's the most valuable one or not, I don't know. But that was definitely a big one. That shifted for me. And I think when that happened, I was able to like, grow revenue scale and so that I could see myself getting out of the listing side eventually. Because we're able to grow that side of the business. I would say another one would be a business tracking system.

Right.

So knowing, like, really looking at it helped me look at my business like a business. So I didn't realize that businesses actually did this, is that they looked at like, where did our leads come from? Where did our business sources. What were the sources of our business? What was our investment into those sources? And is it worth investing there or not? So almost looking at it like an investment, starting to look at my business. Like, if I put money here, this is what I get out. And before you, before, I didn't track any of it. So how did I know what was going on? And so that was helping Me shift to look at it really like a business. And then third would be, I don't know what to call it exactly, but maybe a leadership system. Like.

Right.

So like it's one thing to be a great leader, it's one thing to be a horrible leader. And there's some, definitely some things I've learned along, along those lines. But then like a leadership system, like how do you lead systematically and not just kind of lead randomly.

Right.

And so having a structure around leadership, I think has helped me not only become a better leader and cast my vision more effectively, but also help other people in my business become leaders and then they teach others to become leaders. I think that's how you get out of the grind is that you teach other leaders to become leaders and having a system around that. So those are probably the three most impactful kind of things that I learned through my journey in B school.

Yeah. And it's, you know, when I think about the things that you just mentioned, you know, and I. If you take like a stereotypical top producing agent and you ask them what would be your three fears about building, you know, building a business and growing, it probably would be in systems like a lead tracking system. It would be, you know, how do you run a business through numbers? And then it would be, I've never really let or manage people before, you know, so it's kind of like the three things where. And they're all learned. It's not like this crazy out there thing. We can just learn them and you fail. I mean, you need to fail at it to get good at it. That's really, really good. Let's talk about like the results you achieved. And I like to think about it, you know, business growth, maybe number of team members, but also time, money, stress. What did you achieve personally in your financial world over the three little over three years that we worked together? What did your results look like and how did it impact you personally?

Yeah, so I mean as far as the, the business and kind of what that looked like, I mean we went from that year doing whatever, just over 100 deals. When I first kind of started talking to you and coaching with you guys with B school and by the, you know, this last year we were, you know, 250 transactions basically. So our team size went from, as I mentioned, four or five people at the time I started with B school to about 12. And my intention was to always keep it. My goal and I learned this through B school as well is more is not better.

Right.

So having this huge team with 20 or 30 people. That is not the answer. It's systems and leverage and accountability in place to allow our agents to produce at a higher level and having fewer of them. And so that was always my goal and learning that through B school. And so that's what we had a lot of the, you know, about half of those were admin, a little under half the other half were agents. So we didn't have a huge sales staff. We didn't need to because of the systems and scalability through leverage with people and systems that we're able to build. So that was the team size. I mean, my time when I first talked to you and got into B school, I mean it was seven days a week. I was pretty good about trying to really keep Sundays, you know, sacred, I guess, you know, with my family and with church and things like that and trying to do that. But there, I mean, there were things that just sometimes had to happen. So it was seven days, you know, I mean, I was down to one and a half, one some weeks days in the business. After we built this, I would go in for our team leadership meetings and really cast that vision, do some training, kind of pour into the people that were on my team. But I didn't need to be there every single day because those systems and accountability were in place. So that was my kind of time. Of course the stress level decreased dramatically because I didn't have to be there all the time and the systems could kind of take the stress level off of me and kind of work things without me, money wise. I mean, I guess I can say I went from. Money was never the big issue. But what I found out was that because I, I mean, maybe that's the fourth thing I learned from B school. Probably one of the most important ones was the right economic model.

Right.

Because if I didn't set this up right and I was on track to not set it up right, my economic model, if it wasn't right, the splits, all the things and really understanding what to look at in my P and L and what to focus on, I would have grown my team and actually made less money. So that wasn't a good thing. And then I was just growing for growth sake. That is not what I wanted, but I didn't know how else to do it. So for me it was making more money but being involved in the grind less and less and in production and so, I mean now, I mean, we live well in the sense that, you know, I get to, I have options. I guess I'll leave it with that is that I have the ability to do what I want, when I want, with who I want. And that is. Was my definition of success. So financially I'm able to do that.

So.

And then, yeah, I mean, for me personally, what it's done for me personally is, like I said, just given me options. It's given me options which has just been something I didn't realize would come with the end result. But it's just a great feeling to be able to, you know, not maybe live like everyone else lives, where they're kind of. They work to live and they live to work. You know, I don't have to do that. So anyway, that's, that's how I'm. How I'm kind of benefiting from it. It's.

It's really good. And, you know, just recently had a couple conversations with, like, the largest teams in the, in the, on the continent, guys that have, you know, their margins are slim. They're. They both went through divorces. You know, they both lost their faith. Like, you know, there's way more to life than the number of homes you sell. And I feel like as an industry, you know, we've completely lost track of that. So that's. That. That fourth piece, though, is really important. You know, if you set this thing up wrong, you will have a business that has. It's, it's. There's marginal profit with. And it keeps you in production forever, and you can't add the kind of value that you really want to in your business. So that's really, really good. F1. What objections did you have? You made a comment earlier. You know, you didn't really know what to believe. Like, my pitch, quote, unquote, sounded good, but you didn't know what to believe. What objections did you have? Like, I almost didn't join real estate B school because.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I mean, there was a cost factor to it. That's always something you got to consider is the financial investment that you're making. And it wasn't so much about the cost. It was whether or not I was going to be able to do what I thought I needed to do.

Right.

I thought it was, you know, so I didn't want to invest thinking, like, andy, are you just going to invest in something and not follow through on this? You know, and there was some elements of that. I mean, the first few months, like, I probably didn't dive in as deep as I should have right away. I probably didn't, you know, get on every call I should have been on and really kind of committed 100%. It took me a little while to really commit, but on that first call it was like, honestly, I don't know that I had a ton of deep objections because I was in a mindset where it was like, it's this or I'm not gonna keep doing this just for the money. I'm just not. I didn't want that long, that long term vision of 20 years from now me sitting there doing the same thing. Successful or not, you know, it wasn't gonna happen. So it wasn't a hard decision for me. But if I had to think of something, it would be like, man, are you really going to put the effort into this? The great news was as long as I just chunked some time every week and had this mindset of a little bit at a time, then it just happened. It just happened.

Right.

And so it's like everything else, just little bits at a time. All of a sudden you make big progress. So anyway, that's what I would say.

Awesome. What's been your favorite part of real estate B school.

Gosh. I mean, you know, just being surrounded by people who are trying to do the same thing. I mean, there's so many different options out there and I've been a part of different things, different Facebook groups, different coaching programs, all these things. But I guess the problem is, is that I've never, other than B school, I've never found one that everyone is trying to build a real business. Like we're not, we're not just trying to do more deals right now. The funny thing is when you build a business and you leverage and scale through systems and people and processes, all of a sudden you do sell more homes.

Right.

We doubled and you know, almost tripled our sales by doing this. But that wasn't the focus. And so I think that's the big.

Difference for me is being around like.

Minded people who are also looking at this like a business and really seeing it as a true team approach versus you know, just adding agents to add agents to do more deals. It's like, no, no, no, no. More is not always better as far as size and all those things. And everybody is, is in that same mindset. And that's a powerful thing when you get in, into a community of that. So I mean, that's probably the most powerful, powerful piece in my mind of B school.

Yeah. Who would you recommend real estate B school to and why?

Yeah, I mean, I would recommend it to anyone that has a long term vision of really building a business. And that doesn't mean you have to want to get out of production right away. It doesn't mean you have to be where I'm at, where it's like it's this or nothing. It could be, you could be really just kind of getting your feet wet with this idea of building a team. You could have nobody in place, it doesn't really matter. But the mindset has to be I'm going to build this like a business and not my long term vision is not just to have a job. And maybe that goes to the point where you have to actually have a long term vision. And your long term vision can't just be I just want to sell more houses. There's tons of coaching programs that will just help you track numbers and convert at a higher level and that's it. But like that's not what this is. And if you don't have the mindset of I'm going to build this as a business, then you shouldn't be in B school. I would say that's who you shouldn't be because you're not going to, you know, you're going to miss really the true value in the program. I think so, yeah.

That's awesome Andy. You know I have a lot of respect for you as man of God, a husband, a dad, and now to be able to do some business with you has been awesome as well. If you are watching this or listening to it and you think there might be a next step here, like you want to see if real estate B school is a good fit for you, we can help scale your business in a very particular way so that you have a business worth owning and a business that gives you a little bit more breathing room with your time, your money and ultimately stress. Click on the link somewhere on this page for a next step or go to realestate b school.com andy thanks again brother. Appreciate you.

Yeah, thanks Lars.

Alright.