How to Achieve True Freedom in Your Business - Part 1

Hey there. Lars Hedenborg, Founder of Real Estate B School, co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors out of Charlotte, North Carolina. You probably heard it before. I'm just going to mention it again. My business growth journey. Among the many, many, many failures that have experienced in the last 13 years or so. Since 2007 when I got into real estate, I have achieved some success as well. I built a real estate team. About 4,000 families served over the last 13 years or so. And I launched Real Estate B School about seven years ago to help folks that wanted to build a real business and give them the installable tools and systems to do that. I only mentioned all of that because I want to go into a three part series with you that I think will really serve you at a very high level regardless of if we ever do business formally together. And I'm going to entitle this series, how to achieve True freedom in your Business. And so this is a three part series. If you're coming in on part two or part three, make sure you go back and listen to the appropriate piece first. So I want to take you through the process we use in Real Estate B School with our members, what we call the Business Freedom Planner. It's proprietary planning system that we use to make sure our members are doing the next right thing in their business to get the results that they say they want. So most members come into our world there. They've all achieved traditional success in some way in our higher levels. We're getting ready to launch a lower level program here in the next week or so. So stay tuned for that little teaser there right now. Our higher levels, they run a very specific cadence. They come to us where something is out of whack with time, money and stress. So there's this tension. Usually they have money, they're making good income, they're working way too many hours to generate the income. And their stress is a level 8, 9 or 10. Typically they're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Their stress is not at a sustainable level. And the money most oftentimes doesn't make the effort. The time they put in and the stress they endure even worth it. And actually just got off a call this morning with a potential new member who's working on average 70 hours a week. Last year netted about 175. So I always just go to and the stress level is eight and a half, nine consistently. Two young children, you know, strained marriage, that sort of thing. That's kind of like a typical, like I know I can help someone like that I can bring their hours from 70 down to 50. And so when I talk time and money, I take out a calendar and I ask somebody and I want you to go through this exercise. This is going to set the stage for true business freedom and understanding it. I do simple math. If you're watching the video, I've got my calendar out, I do 175000 divided by 3500 hours. 70 hours a week times 50 weeks is 33500 hours. And I do the math, it's $50 an hour. And so the only reason in this example that person was making $50 an hour is it's most likely for about 2,500 of the 3,500 hours they worked last year, those activities were $20 an hour or less activities. This person was telling me later today they're going to run signs and input a listing and they're a top, top agent. And so I'm always having the conversation around time, money and stress and this system and this three part series is going to give you a little bit of a context on how you actually turn your business into something that gives you freedom versus what traditional success in our industry, you know, calls for everyone that's traditionally successful. They it doesn't matter if you're running a team or if you're a top agent or where you are, if you're going to be conventionally successful. You're working evenings and weekends consistently, 50, 60, 70 plus hours a week consistently. And it doesn't really matter at what point you are in your journey. We have guys that are 5 million plus in their businesses and they're working 80 hour weeks. And so this chronic basically giving folks credit for their top line success, the number of homes they sell, when we're not looking at the hours they're putting out, putting in the stress they're enduring. That's this conversation around true freedom. You know, when I say business freedom planner, this proprietary planning system, it is intended to delink time and money and bring your stress way down so you can work less hours, make more money and have less stress in your life. So let's get after it. I'm going to break this into three parts and I'm going to kind of walk you through the process that we go through with our members specifically. And so the first thing that we do, and this is a quarterly rhythm that we follow. So our annual planning is a little bit different because we are looking at a new year. We have a 3, 190. I have done some podcast episodes on our three 193 year vision. One year plan. 90 Day World. The magic happens in the 90 Day World. The first thing we do every 90 days is that we restate annual goals. And these goals were built out in a very specific way. We make these goals smarter. I'm going to go through that in a second. It's not like smart goals. It's actually a little bit different. So we restate our top five business goals and our top five personal goals every quarter. And so we're real clear that, you know, it's not about, you know, succeeding just at work and losing at home in our personal lives. So business and personal goals. So if you don't have. I find that about 10 goals for the year is about all that you can really achieve at a high level. And I break it down into five business and five personal. And depending on where you are in your business growth journey will kind of dictate, you know, what your business goals look like. It could be for the year. Your goal is to get your database in order to the point where you increase it from 57 contacts to 500 contacts in a year. And you're sending out value, you know, items of value twice a month. That could be an annual goal. That's a great annual goal for a lot of folks. A personal goal could be, you know, getting your physical body in order. You know, I will weigh 182 pounds by, you know, September 30, having worked out, you know, an average of four times a week all year long. Great personal goal. Right? And then so that's a critical part of this system, is to constantly restate where you want to be moving on an annual basis. And then the next thing we do is that we say every quarter is a new start. So every quarter you can ask yourself these four questions. What is the biggest personal goal you would like to crush this quarter? That's number one. So you look at your personal goals and you grab one that's saying, this quarter, I'm going to crush this personal goal. And then the next question is, what's the biggest professional goal you'd like to crush this quarter? And then you look at your business goals for the year and you pick one that you're going to crush this quarter. Next question. Who or what motivates you the most? What gets you out of bed in the morning? So every quarter you're filling this in and you're asking yourself, why am I doing this? Why am I willing to sustain this level of pain and the hours and the Stress, you know, what's the point? What's motivating me to do this? What gets you out of bed in the morning? For me, it was my family creating a life for my family that they never thought was possible. And then last question is to write some words of encouragement to yourself to read during tough times. So that kind of gets this quarterly process running. And then the next part of this, the differentiator in terms of building a business versus being a real estate agent. There's nothing wrong with being a real estate agent. But if you're not focused on building a business and installing systems and building tools that you can get help from others to run, is that you're constantly going to be working seven days a week, you'll be on call 24 7. And it's just not sustainable if you want to succeed at any level in any other area of your life. So the next thing we do and we have a few filters that we put our members through that are a little bit more involved. There's a personal wellness assessment, there's a strategic business assessment, and then there's a business freedom blueprint. Then we also have a pipeline analysis tool that we use. So we have them kind of go through and look at their business and get a feel for where they are in their business against our drivers and accelerators. And then they just brainstorm everything that you could do this next 90 days. So you could just do this in your growth journal. What are the next 10 to 15 things I could work on in my business? And I'm talking like systems in your business. A recruiting system, a database system, a listing marketing system, a lead management system. That's the kind of, you know, an appointment setting process, a listing consultation framework, a buyer consultation framework. Maybe there's a critical technology tool you need to employ this this coming quarter. So you write those all down, you brainstorm those and then the next thing you do is probably the most critical part of this. Let me check. Time to see where I want to split these episodes up. Yeah, I'm going to finish it out strong. So the next thing you do. Actually I may, yeah, I'll be in good shape. Alright. So the next thing you do is based on that brainstorm list. This is where immense discipline comes in. You need to choose your rocks for the quarter and commit to just a handful of rocks. Not even, I mean three to five rocks. Those are big projects, they're not boulders. Boulders are year long goals. Rocks is something you can start and finish in a single quarter. And so I'm going to leave you with that. In the next podcast episode, I'm going to pick up in how these need to look and then how to analyze these. These rocks. And then we'll get into an exercise that we call you must delegate to elevate. And then we'll get into the weekly and delegate. So let me save the next step for the next podcast. So tune in if you're at a point in your journey where the language I'm speaking is either hitting you, like, right in the chin, and you know you need to start working this way, and you just don't know how to bridge the gap. The only thing we have to offer you in a week, we have a program that we're going to launch, which is going to be super exciting. If you're a top producing agent, you're building a team.