How to Build a Business the Right Way (Eating More Greens)

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Lars Hedinborg here, the founder of Real Estate B School. And today I want to chat about is it time for more greens and salad and healthy stuff in your business? A good buddy of mine told me a while back, you know, after kind of, I think about three years in real estate B school and going from just grinding it out, him and his spouse were probably working 120 hours combined a week, so 6,000 hours a year, making probably 40, 50 bucks an hour. To think they're putting in combined 2,200 hours a year and they're making probably, I don't know, probably 500 bucks an hour or something crazy in that business. And he made a comment to me once, he said, you know, we were talking about marketing real estate B school and how marketing in any industry and online is just noisy and it's hard. And we were talking about marketing real estate B school and he made a comment like, how do you market green juice, salad, broccoli, and working out to an industry that is obsessed with fast food and, and rock concerts and like, just the immediate hit of stuff that feels good and in the long term is going to hurt them. And so it's always stuck with me and I've always taken it on as a badge of honor that, you know, the good thing about, you know, green juice and salad and just taking care of your physical body, if we're going to use that analogy, is that it's the only thing that works. Like in the long term, if you want sustainable health, like if you systematically want to be healthy, you have to do the right things that will keep you healthy and you have to get in shape, right? You have to push hard with your workouts, you have to eat more greens, you have to stop eating fast food or drinking or just being lazy and not working out. And in business, it is so true. And I guess part of me may not have cracked the code how to market something generally that there's only so many ways to sugarcoat the fact that there are just some required business disciplines if you want to actually have a business that serves you in the long term, not serves you from, you know that the business is there to bow and serve to you, helps you achieve time and money freedom and brings your stress level down. And, you know, when we look at our approach in Real estate B school, it is a holistic approach. Like we're going to use fixing the business as the way in to help someone. And at the end of the day that doesn't matter. Helping Them sell more homes in less, less time and make more money. Doesn't matter if we can't bring their stress level down, if we can't create some margin in their life so they can show up as a better, you know, dad or mom, or they can, you know, show up a little bit more productive at home, or could they be a better friend or sibling or son or daughter, have a bigger impact in their community? Like, there's so much and that doesn't even get into the fact about their physical body, their spiritual journey, their emotional well being. So we have this, you know, in, you know, with business, we have all these really great case studies of folks that we've kind of come into their world and we've helped them 5, 6, 7x their business and even more in terms of their income and take their hours down from 70 to 40 hours a week and take their stress down to nearly nothing. We have a bunch of those case studies. Those case studies, you know, we're built upon green juice, salad and working out regularly. And we had to eliminate the stuff that our industry is constantly pushing us toward. And that is, you know, first and foremost, it's a measure of how many homes did you sell? Not profit, not profit per home, how many homes and what was your top line? Gci. It's the only thing that's celebrated in real estate. That's the first thing that is, like, just wrong with our industry. I'm always calling, and this isn't a great trait of mine, and I'll be honest with y', all, which is pretty much what I get to do on this podcast when I hear someone just selling a lot of homes. I've done over a thousand strategy sessions. At this point. It's the equivalent of a listing appointment in a real estate team or real estate environment. A strategy session for us is where we just have a conversation with a top agent or team leader about their business. And many of those conversations revolved around like, how much money are you spending? You know, how much money are you taking home? What is your net worth? How many hours are you working? Do you have the margin to be a good dad or, you know, to help out at home? Those kinds of your physical body, you know, are you have any kind of spiritual health or emotional? Like, those are the conversations I'm having with folks. And it's a complete crap show. And without the proper foundational tools and systems, the green juice and salad and the regular workouts, the chances that you're healthy, your business is healthy. When you scale, it is It's a long shot if you don't do the right things up front. And so I don't even know if this is an encouraging message to some of you. Just know that if you're at the point where you're done with the french fries and you're done with the stuff that feels good, that hasn't given you any freedom. That's why we're here. That's why I built Real Estate B school. This is the narrow path. And you know, as I'm hearing myself give this podcast, the motivation is this and the silver lining is this, is that there is a roadmap. There is a step by step way. It just requires that you take a step back and be honest with yourself about where you are in different parts of your business. You know, the some of the first things that we do in Real Estate B school are a series of assessments. One in particular is called a Personal Wellness Assessment. And then we do a strategic business assessment. The Personal Wellness Assessment. We evaluate eight, nine areas of your life. Just ask them questions to see where you are in a scale of one to five in your business. The Strategic Business assessment is the six sort of key drivers in your business. That being your ability to attract buyers and sellers, your ability to convert buyers and sellers, your ability to deliver systematically in a leveraged way to buyers and sellers. And then your ability to create your future or plan, know your numbers and then grow your team. With all the culture, cadence, hiring and onboarding and all that good stuff. Those are the six areas that we evaluate from a business perspective. And we're just willing to have the conversation about where you're out of shape in your business and where you're out of shape in your personal life. And without that level of just transparency and just brutal honesty, I think it's going to be tough for anyone to turn things around. You know, there's a lot of folks out there. The numbers don't lie around net worth in our country. And I have to believe in it's worse in real estate. Definitely not better than the general average. Is about, you know, like 70 something percent of American households can't cover $1,000 emergency. Something like, I don't know, like 60 something percent have a negative net worth. There's just some scary statistics out there. And being healthy financially, being healthy emotionally, you know, comes down to fixing the business first and just getting on the right path. Doesn't matter where you are in your journey, doesn't matter if you're a solo agent, doesn't matter if you are running a small team or if you're running a big team, you've just got to be willing to break the vicious cycle of thinking that if I just keep doing this, if I just keep grinding and if I just keep, you know, responding to all these emails of these different lead sources that are marketing marketed to me or you know, if I just post more Facebook lives or if I just take a better headshot or just like complete crap stuff that doesn't move you any closer to business freedom. And when I use the term business freedom, it's, you know, there's sustainability built into the business through systems and through people. Even if it's just a part time administrator, there's a way where you can get to 250 bucks an hour with a single person helping you and delegating all those administrative tasks. So business freedom is systems, it's people. So that you can systematically increase your net worth, you can systematically take more time away from the business and you can systematically decrease the, the stress that you endure as a result of being in the real estate business. And I know it's stressful. If you've been listening to the podcast for a period of time, you have heard my story. I was a grind it out agent 2007 and 2008, 10 months and 12 months. So 22 months. I sold 71 homes and I didn't have a lot of cash left over to show for. I think it was probably about 600,000 of GCI I think I spent between my broker and doing all the squirrel chasing and shiny object syndrome that I had back then. I probably only kept about 100 grand of it in 22 months. So I know your pain, I've been there and I just committed to doing it a different way. And so if you're caught up in this, all of your hunger is you're attempting to satisfy by stuff that is short lived. And there's no long standing impact of the stuff you're working on on a day to day basis and you don't have a system to work on. A three year vision, break it down into one year plan, 90 day world, you know, weekly commitments, a daily cadence and all of that. If this is foreign to you, I have to ask you just to take a step back from all of it and reconsider what you're doing. The thing I can offer you that will be just an easy way to come into this world and get a little bit more, just go a little bit deeper into the understanding of how time and money relate to each other. Is our 21 day time freedom challenge. So so it's thetimefreedomchallenge.com thetimefreedomchallenge.com I'm going to spend 21 days with you, coaching, training, holding you accountable, answering live Q and A sessions, taking you through exercises that will change everything for you forever. The big claim, the big guarantee is to give you 20% of your working hours back to you in a 21 period. So go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com and it's not the easy way yet. It's the only way to get healthy in your business is just to have a little bit of discipline, to step onto the narrow path and to work along a roadmap that has you going to the destination that you want to end up at. So thetimefreedomchallenge.com, we'll see you over there. Thanks for listening to the Business Freedom Podcast. If you're getting value from the podcast, would you please leave us a five star review and share it with others who might benefit from the content I'm sharing? And if you're ready to scale your real estate business sustainably and profitably, there are a couple options for you. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual GCI, our business foundations Program program is for you. Head over to get businessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from overwhelmed real estate agent to true business owner. If you're doing more than 500,000 in annual Team GCI, there's our graduate program designed for top producers and team leaders who want to grow their team and scale their business. If that's you, go to real estate and apply for a free Business Growth Strategy session. No matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tools, systems, strategies, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future, so take action now.