How Can You Scale from Agent to Business Owner? - the Business Growth Navigator

So here's the question. Have you ever wondered how, you know, some real estate agents are able to scale from being a real estate agent to, you know, starting a team and then kind of building that team into a legitimate business? Our mission at real estate B school, that is the mission to turn agents into business owners. And it's not that there's anything wrong with selling homes. Right. It is just probably the most intimate and valuable experience and service we can provide. And I firmly believe that. The challenge, though, if you're the person doing it, if you're the real estate agent and you're doing it at a high level, or if you started a small team and you haven't set it up the right way, or if you went from a small team to a large team and you never set it up the right way, the different phases of growth can be pretty tricky. And, you know, real estate B school, we really stand for a few things. You know, we know that every real estate agent or team leader, they want to make more money. They also want more freedom, because traditional success in this industry leads to less freedom. You're working seven days a week evenings, and just the insanity and stress of it all. And then we want more impact. And whether that's in our relationships, you know, with our spouses or our children or in our community, with our church, you know, we're so spun out all the time in real estate that we're not having the impact that we really want in other areas of our life that matter, honestly, more than real estate. I want to share something with you that I actually went through on a training that we did this week. And this is from our Business Growth Navigator. So the real estate Business Growth Navigator is. It's really, you know, in my journey in real estate, I was a solo agent that was grinding out transactions seven days a week. The challenge was I was doing that and sacrificing time with, you know, my new wife at the time. And then we had a child, and then we had a second child. And so I was a young. I wasn't young. I was in my mid-30s. Young to being a dad and wanting to be a really great husband and finding my faith and just all of that kind of going on in my first two, three, four, five years in real estate. And I realized that there had to be a better way to do it. I had traditional coaches. I, you know, my first full year in real estate, I sell 44 homes. So 44 homes in my market was in easily in the top 1%. It was probably like the 0.5%. So I was doing more production than one out of every 200 agents. And it sucked. It sucked. It was so hard. You know, I didn't come into real estate with any sales background or marketing experience or never started a small business before any of that. And so I just made a commitment to see the industry differently. Like, what if I can make a shift from doing the technical work that's called technician, straight from Michael Gerber E. Myth, you know, making a shift from technician to leader or entrepreneur, what would that even look like? One step at a time. What would that even look like? And so that's how I came up with a real estate business growth navigator. And this was looking back, you know, on not only my journey, but hundreds of members that we've helped through this ascension process to go from struggling to make a decent living real estate agent to owner. And it doesn't matter what your vision is for your business. All of the principles apply to the different phases of growth here. I'm not going to spend a lot of time to go over all of these phases. I just want to talk about. Your ability to ascend from phase to phase really relies on a few things, a handful of things that I want to go through. And that's what I want the training to be on today. First and foremost, it's a mindset shift around what it would look like to go from agent to owner. It doesn't matter if you're running a small team now or whatever you're doing right now, or if you're a solo agent right now. It's this mindset shift around time and money. Like, how could I deliver the services of a real estate agent without me doing everything? If you're doing everything as a real estate agent, you're making the amount of pay that most administrators make. Because 80% of what a real estate agent does is administrative work. It's not like, it's not important work. I didn't say that. I get. I get criticized a lot because I say, you know, showing homes is a lower dollar productive job. Doing a walkthrough or attending an inspection, those are lower dollar productive activities. What I mean by that is that I committed to making $250 an hour or more as a real estate agent in my mind. When I got into real estate and I wasn't my first year, I made 18. Well, I think 14, somewhere between 14 and 18 bucks an hour. And so I had to shift in my mind first around like, hey, where am I spending my time? Where I'm only ending up with X amount of dollars for the time I'm putting into into the business. And that's where that bfi, if you're looking at the screen here, that's where BFI comes into play. BFI is just your pre tax income. The money you're going to split with the government on an annual basis divided by the annual hours that you work. You know, I started out below $20 an hour and I got up to $2,300 an hour in my real estate business by kind of ascending this process. So first thing is mindset, right? And then the choices with your time to really look at your time. I have in front of me here Business Freedom Planner. It is the, it's a foundational tool. It's like the tool that we use with our members to help them organize this, you know, three year vision, one year plan and then we land this thing in 90 days. Then we have weekly, a weekly process and daily process and the choices you make with your time and how you delegate so that you can elevate and you know, your high passion activities, your high pay activities, getting those in the same quadrant and delegating other things, your ideal week and how that looks. So it's the choices you make with your time then the willingness to learn. Our industry has I think everyone brainwashed to think that you're the only one that can do different pieces of the job. Right. Even as a team leader, most team leaders, I would say 80% plus are still in production. They're still selling homes, working with buyers and sellers because they never set the thing up the right way. They weren't willing to learn a new way of doing something and how systems and people can provide a better experience to their clients. And assuming they set it up on the right economic model, they can have massive success. That's number three. Number four is a deep desire to grow, you know, like doing the same year over and over again. That to me is insanity, you know, that is not unfulfilling. I don't think it's going to lead to any life worth living really. Just being a real estate agent for me personally, and this isn't a Critique if you're 25 years in the business and you love going out on a Sunday afternoon and showing homes and you know, going on listing appointments on evenings during the week. I mean, God bless you, I was not that person, you know, so if you're like me, those times where you're being pulled away from other things are. That's what drove me crazy. And so I had this deep, deep desire to grow and do something different with my business. That is a requirement. And then number five is comfort with the uncomfortable, right? Comfort with the uncomfortable. Every phase of this journey, it will make you uncomfortable, truly will make you uncomfortable. And here's the thing though, it's hard either way. You know, being a traditional real estate agent with no leverage, no systems, right? Is really, really hard. You know, being a small team leader, you know, doing 250 to 500 to 750,000 GCI, but being in production, not having systems in place, you know, no tracking, no leverage, no cadence in the business is really, really hard. You're working way too many hours and you don't have a lot of money to show for it. And I won't even get into economic model in terms of how you provide value to people that join your team. And there's still margin left over so you don't have to sell homes if you don't want to. That's the topic of another training. And so as you ascend here, you know it is going to make you uncomfortable. But doing the same year over and over and over again and just, you know, that is hard too. You know, working, who knows this coming week, what six of the seven days you are work, or maybe you plan to work five, but you end up working seven, right? You are going to go on a vacation and you have to work on vacation and it is time away from your family. So there are all these trade offs that, that we get into when we're doing it the traditional way. And the last statement I'll make here is that here's the thing, if you can be honest and vulnerable really with yourself, and this was an internal training, that's why the words are a little off there. But if we can be honest with each other in this training as you're watching this and just say, am I living the kind of life that I want, making the kind of money I want, working the kind of hours that I want to work, a stress level that's manageable and am I having the kind of impact that I want in my business with my clients, but also and with your team members, but also in your family? Right. If you can answer that question, like enthusiastically, yes, I'm good to go. This industry is awesome because I've figured out I've cracked the code, then I might not have anything for you. If you want to look at what this journey would look like and you've already really sort of figured out the basics of real estate, apply for a business growth strategy session. We have something for everyone in terms of, you know, anyone that wants to make the shift from agent to owner. Even if you're a solo agent right now or you're running a small team, a mid sized team or a large team, we work with anyone from really 100k to we've got a team that's doing 6 million plus GCI that has its own set of really tough problems, you know, because it wasn't built the right way. And so anywhere in that journey we can help you. Just click on the button below and we'll spend a little bit of time together. We'll ask you a few questions about your business so we can serve you at the highest level. So take action right now if that's you and you want more for your life, for your business, you know, want more money, more freedom and more impact. We'll see you over there. Be good.