How Robin Leigh Plans to Grow to 12 Offices in the Next 3 Years

The reason why I thought it would be cool to have Robin on the call today. She's at an interesting point in her real estate career. She's done real estate for a while and then shifted over to another business and now she's sort of combining the two and I'm going to let her share a little bit on that. One of the brightest women that women or men that I've really come into contact with and she's had experiences before with other, I call them coaches. I like to refer to myself as a consultant, but I'll let you go on that one, Frank, because there really are a lot of coaches out there that don't do what they preach. And I'm passionate about what I do as a consultant because my business is living proof of what I'm helping other people to do. So, Robin, spend a minute or two giving us a little bit about your background. It's a unique background, but kind of tell us where you've been in real estate and then we'll kind of get into what traditional coaching has done for you and what you've experience so far working with me.

Great. Nice to see you, Lars. I started in the real estate business 28 years ago and I've always been in residential real estate. There really isn't any part of residential real estate that I haven't been involved in. My last real estate company, I had 13 offices and over 150 people in my company. So I'm very experienced in the function of residential brokerage and all the things that go on there. I have coached my own agents, I've hired and trained and done all those things. About 14 years ago I got involved in real estate coaching as a customer because I wanted to improve the quality of my business and become more professional. I aligned with a very well known national real estate coach who I have to say really did help me take my business from doing it by myself, self employed, into a more professional method of tracking how I was working and learning how to make better presentations and that kind of thing. That was all great. But that coach also had a sliver of a real estate career and didn't actually come out and practice what we do in the field. Then I moved from him to another company who did that and then I moved. All of these coaches that I was with I would stay with for usually for about three or four years, some a little bit longer or less, really gave it a try and used their systems and got better. But in 20, the real estate market died here in Phoenix, Arizona where I'm located. I mean, died, really died. I got out of the real estate business in the brokerage management side and just did things for myself and did some investment property and so forth. Last year, what Lars is talking about, my second business, I also have a home staging business because I like what staging does for my real estate sales. So I got involved in that, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

Lars Robyn, let me ask you this. What's the whole end game here with your business? What's the whole end result you're looking to achieve?

Well, what I'm trying to do is create a business model that allows me to predict results. When I started my staging company, it allowed me to predict the salability of properties because I could change the condition of them. And that was a huge factor. I wanted to get back into the real estate side of things because our market has certainly improved. I started into coaching again because I like the accountability, although there are some days I like that better than others. I am involved in a lead generation program, and in December, that's when I met Lars at that event. Lars was talking about doing things in real estate that only a fraction of 1% of the people in the industry know anything about.

What are those things, Robin? What were those things that sparked interest? What Lars was doing, his level of.

Production in the amount of time that he'd been in the business. I got my license in 1986. He got his in 2007. The volume of sales that he's doing is something I never learned how to do. And I know very few agents nationally that know how to do what he does. So length of time in the business was no determining factor of his skill set. I was incredibly impressed with what he had put together. And then when I found out how much time he was working in his business on a weekly basis to create those numbers, I just knew that he knew a lot of things that I didn't know anything about. And I wasn't hearing from anybody else in the industry. Nobody that's doing this is sharing what they're doing. They're very stimulant about that information. He told me that I had an option of working with him if I was interested. That's how I ended up aligning with him. What I love about Lars. There are a lot of things I love about Lars, but one of the things that I see as a huge difference for me is this is not about getting up in the morning and doing cheers and chants and that kind of thing. There's nothing wrong with that, having your attitude is great, but when you reach a certain level of, I think of business maturity, I really don't need somebody to have me direct my thinking there in my daily practice. What I need are practical, hands on direction ideas, systems that I can put into place and make my business grow. What Lars has done is taken everything he's done so successfully and worked so hard on and said here, here it is now, it's a lot, there's a lot there. So I have learned that it takes some time to implement everything that he's done because he's showing me how you go 150 miles an hour and if you're starting at 25 miles an hour, you really probably shouldn't step on the gas that hard. It takes some time to learn how to handle it.

Robin, I got to ask you, what were some of the things that Lars implemented right away that were like, wow, I wish I would have known this. What are some of these systems that weren't shared with you that are giving you this business systems to grow?

Well, Lars is using, in my opinion, the most cutting edge technology programs that are available in the real estate industry today. And he's tried everything and he hones them down and then lets you know what he's used that really is giving him the effects and the value because he's always testing what he tries, he's willing to try anything and then he only stays with the things that he can prove to himself and his business plan actually are effective. There literally is a long list of systems that he's shown me. Your program leads to listings, if by phone and voice pad and a lot of things. And I've seen some variation of some of these products in the market, especially over the last few years, but never really knew which ones would work or how to use them or who to talk to and how to implement them and what scripts to use and how to go. I mean, he just said, here, here it is, this is how you do it.

What are the top one or two things right now you're working on with Lars?

Recruiting. Absolutely.

Now why recruiting?

Because I've got enormous level of leads coming in from all these things that he's taught me to use. And you have to have people to work them.

One thing when I work with clients, and Robin is, and I'm not just saying this over and over again, but she's at a point where she needs to be in the trenches, but that's not the long term play. So you're generating leads and she doesn't have as many agents as she needs to follow up with them. But as she brings on agents, there is a recruiting system. There is a system that you bring a buyer agent into, and there's probably like six or seven things that we present to a buyer agent to let them know that what you have is legitimate. So there's a buyer lead management policy. There's position agreements, there's a buyer appointment tracker, There's a buyer client pipeline report. There's a weekly success tracker. There's all these different things that we use to operate the business. But it also makes what Robin has more legitimate and a system that someone can follow. It's not just about what's the latest and greatest thing and the shiniest object. That's the kiss of death in real estate. The cool thing about what I do is that it really is sort of simple stuff. Like you generated a lead. Like you generated 50 leads last week and you didn't call any of them within five minutes. Aha. I have revealed the problem with your business. It's not rocket science. But most agents that are attracted to me, and I'll let Robin speak on this as well, they do have a big vision, and sometimes bridging the gap can be a bit of an issue. And that's where I keep us grounded and I keep us working from call to call. Where the three year vision is for Robin to own a dozen major a new business model in the real estate industry. And she's going to have a dozen of them in the next three to five years across the country. But intermediate. Like right now, she needs to call Internet leads. Awesome. On the phone. And when she brings someone into her team, they need to hear her talk on the phone. She has 100% conversion rate. When she gets someone on the phone, a new buyer agent might come in and say, well, Internet leads, they don't work or whatnot. But Robin will show them that when you get someone on the phone and you can work within, knowing your personality, knowing their personality, knowing when to dial it up, there's all bits and pieces that we work on, and it really is tailored to where the client's needs are. So I've talked a lot, but I'll let Robin. Oh, great, Rob.

Well, Rob, we got about five minutes here. And what I'd like to really get at here is you've been selling real estate for how many years?

28.

28 years. And you've seen a lot of things. You've seen a lot of things come and go. You see a lot of vendors come and go. You see a lot of different coaching companies. Let's call it come and go. All right.

Yep.

You tried a lot of different things. Can you break down the key differences of Lars versus what else is available for us?

Speaking for myself, what I see in Lars and what he brings to me is his ability to clearly identify what works best. And just like he was talking about right now, I'm in the trenches, and I'm great in the trenches, but that's not where I want to be. I want to be doing what he's doing, which is managing a business that I've set up, that's creating an ongoing revenue stream. And he's not going to show me or tell me or share with me anything that he hasn't already already done himself. And that is a real qualifier in our business. There are a lot of people out there trying to tell us what we're supposed to do in the real estate business, and very few that have done it. So it's theory rather than practice. Lars has done it, he is doing it, and he has the ability to take anyone's business and say, okay, this is where you are now. Here are the things that we need to focus on to help take you to the next step and the next step. So, yeah, I see lots of things come and go. What Lars has done is put together a package of systems, information, trainings. If somebody came to me and said, robin, you need to hire agents, you need to teach them how to call leads, and you need to make sure that they know how to write contracts, I already know how to do that. I don't have any system. Before I met Lars, in place where I actually gave the agent a list of tasks that they were accepting when we hired them, a system to follow to use that we can identify their results and then help correct those things to help them get the results, which are the results I want. And that's not just with buyers. It's buyers, it's listings, it's marketing, it's advertising, it's lead generation. It's all of those things. It's not one small sliver. It's the entire package.

Is there anything, Lars, that you like to ask Robin of working with her, that you think would be a good question to ask for someone wanting to learn more about the coaching process?

No. I mean, I think the perspective that Robin has, I mean, being in the industry for 28 years, I mean, I appreciate the compliments, but what I've been able to do for Robin is just boil things down to very simple terms. And Robin is a really big thinker, and most agents are entrepreneurs and can get sidetracked, but I think it's the ability to be willing to get down and roll your sleeves up and make things happen. So I think that's where Robin has excelled. And I'm just so thrilled to be part of her life because it's going to be an amazing journey with Robin. I know. We'll see. Whatever she calls it, there'll be a dozen of them around the country, and they'll each be selling 3, 400 homes. I can see that vision right now. And I'll be there.

The way Robin, give me two last questions. Give me a picture of what your life looks at. What does your life look like one year from now? Then what would you tell someone about who's on the fence about getting involved with Lars? What does your life look like one year from now?

One year from now? I have both of the companies that I'm working on developing really well entrenched in the systems and the production and all the things that I want to create so that it's moving along smoothly. And I can actually take that entire package and start replicating it in market areas outside of here. We are really trying to create an ocean liner. This is not a tugboat. It's a big project. It's not that it can't be done. It just requires a lot of work. So that's my goal for the next 12 months. I won't get into the other business, but the real estate side needs to be honed in, like what Lars is doing. My aspiration for the next 12 months is to be at the same level Lars was at in 2010 and then grow from there. Because you can't take a small real estate firm and turn it into a 400 deal a year producing company overnight. You really have to grow into that. You have to bring people in and implement systems as you grow. So that's really what I see for the next 12 months.

What would you tell someone who's on the fence about getting involved with kind of the business coaching that Lars provides, which is a little bit wider scope maybe, than just sales training?

I talked to somebody three days ago, and he said, why are you coaching with Lars? And I said, I've been in the real estate business 28 years. I've seen and or worked with every single one of them. I've been invited to be a coach in some of these organizations, which I have never taken on. And I can tell you that what Lars is teaching is where the industry is going. If you aren't doing what he's teaching right now, if you're not learning how to do it, you will be working for somebody who is doing it in the next five years. And that's a guarantee. I know that's what's going to happen. So you either you truly you lead, you follow or you get out of the way. Those are your options.

Great. And Lars, how should someone get a hold of you?

Probably best way is to jump on the website Larsheadenborg.com, l A R S H E D E N B O-R-G.com and there's plenty of ways on the website to kind of track me down and follow up the baseline. The sort of next step with me would be a 30 minute consult call. So you can kind of get some information ahead of the call and then we sit down and see if there's a good fit. Because it's really not everyone that I want to work with or that really wants to work with me. So it's a very selective process.

Great. Well, Robin, thanks a lot for being on the call today. I appreciate your time. And Lars, thanks for your input.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks.

Great seeing you guys. Thanks.