How to Capitalize During an Economic Shift

Do you struggle with all the fear, uncertainty and doubt in the market right now? Do you struggle to stay on task and do the things that you need to do to be massively successful? In today's video, I want to dig into maybe a handful of things that I'm thinking about right now as we enter into uncertain economic times, times of what I believe could be pretty chaotic. The things I'm thinking about and what I'm doing about them. My name is Lars Hedenberg. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School and I help real estate agents and team leaders grow and scale their business to take on a life outside of them so that they don't have to give away every evening, every weekend, and do all of the drama that comes along with real estate so they can scale their wealth and also scale their impact in their families, in their communities. So let's get after it. There are a handful of things that I'm thinking about right now as it relates to your ability to grow and scale your real estate business. Even if the economy and the real estate market might have you thinking that you can't do it right. There are less sales, probably 2 million less sales that will happen this year in the United States versus in prior years. And how can you still grow your business even though there are less sales available? That's what we'll tackle today. So the first thing that I'm thinking about is this is the time to get excited. This is where most real estate agents will get in their head and think that they can't grow as the market is contracting. And I'm going to go through a few things that you can practically and tactically do. But this is the time to get excited as most agents are doom and gloom about what's going on. So whatever you need to do to keep your mindset right, do those things on a daily basis. For me, it's reading personal development books or listening to podcasts that are life giving versus life sucking. So do what you need to do to stay excited because these are fun and exciting times for those that believe they can take advantage of economic uncertainty. The second thing that I want you to consider is that you can't follow all of the news sources. You can't be in the 24 hour news cycle, one or two sources of news. I have started listening to one podcast a week that really brings out the news that's happening that will actually impact my business, that will impact business in general. And so you need to decide what that's going to look like for you most real estate agents will be in all of the news, they'll be in all of the sources, right? They'll be wrapped up in the news cycle. I actually was out of the news for 12 years straight and then I got in the rabbit hole. I thought that, you know, watching the news and being involved in the news cycle, the 24 hour news cycle, somehow that would, you know, help me control what was going on in my family or in our country or in my business or in my personal economy. And it wasn't the case. Right? So stay out of the 24 hour news cycle. Pick one source that you're reading on a weekly basis or listening to on a weekly basis so you know what's going on, but you're not sort of in that fear, uncertainty and doubt which is paralyzing for the most part. The third thing that I'm thinking about right now is that I want to know what's going on with my personal economy, right? It's easy to get wrapped up in like, you know, what's going on with the fed funds rate and how's that impacting real estate and interest rates and what are buyers doing and what are sellers doing. But if you're not, you know, monitoring on a regular basis your personal economy. For me, this is a 30 minute time block every Monday morning where I'm just looking at what came into my world in terms of cash flows, what went out of my world in terms of, you know, outflows of cash. But what's my net worth? How am I going to move money around this week? Where am I placing my savings dollars, my giving dollars, putting money aside for taxes? You have to know what's going on with your personal economy as the general economy might go into chaos. I do think there is some potential downside in the economy. I think if one or two big world events happen, I think it's going to have a negative impact on the general economy, which is, which I think will trickle into real estate. So are you monitoring your personal economy? That's the question I've got for you. The fourth point I want to go through is you need to pay attention to the fud, but stay out of the FUD and the FUD is the fear, uncertainty and doubt. And a good example of this. It's basically the headlines that are out there that are there to draw you in, which is very paralyzing. A headline recently was that bankruptcies or foreclosures rather have doubled like some crazy percentage increase. And that's the headline, right? So your Sellers and your buyers are reading those headlines, maybe your sellers, and it is allowing them to stay in this paralysis mode, where the reality of it is that foreclosures are way below, like, four or five times lower than where they were in the Great Recession years. And so, you know, I think we had 325,000 foreclosures in the US in 2022, which is up from 150,000 in 2021. So on a relative basis, that's a massive increase. But it doesn't show you that there was like 2 million foreclosures, you know, when everything hit the fan back in the Great Recession years. And a normal level of foreclosures in our country is 5, 600,000 foreclosures every year. Right. So we're not even back to a normal level, but the headline will have you thinking that it's the end of the world. So don't go there. Don't go into the fud. So the fifth thing that I want you to consider, and what I'm considering and focusing on right now, is that this is the time to focus on yourself and to run your own race. And what I mean by that is that it's easy to get wrapped up into what others are doing. You know, how does this agent sell so many homes? Or this team that sells hundreds of homes per year? You know, you know nothing about their business. You don't know anything about the hours they're working, the income that they're making, the stress that they're enduring. So do your best to keep your eyes on your own race. Right. There's this visual of a horse race that I use. You know, some horses have to wear blinders, you know, which are those cups around their eyes so they don't get spooked by the horse next to them. That's how I want you to think about your real estate business and what you do every day. This is where the money is made. When there's uncertainty and there's chaos, this is where you can double down on the activities that it takes to be successful. I'll give you a quick story about my journey. You know, it was the Great Recession years. I didn't know it at the time, but I got into real estate in March 2007. June 2007 is when everything hit the fan locally in my market. Inventory went straight to the roof. Three or four years of really hard times. Foreclosures were like 30, 35% of the homes that we're selling. And I grew every year from 27 sides in my first 10 months to 44, to 58, to 118, to 178, to 248, to 312 to 453. The year I did 453, we were out of the Great Recession and I was out of production for a couple of years at that point. And I had built my business based on this mindset of automations and delegations. But the key overriding point of was that my mindset was always tilted toward, you know, selling homes. You know, I would tell myself as a solo agent, nobody can tell me I can't sell a home today, meaning I could go out and sell one or two or three homes every day if I wanted to. I had that level of confidence even though I didn't do it right as a solo agent. I didn't sell 365 homes in a year, but I did sell 44 homes in my first full year in real estate, which was like top 0.5% of the market. And it came with that mindset that even though it was really challenging from an economic standpoint and we went from 15,000 agents in my local market to 5,000 agents, I was confident that I could weather that storm. I could do the things that I needed to do, keep my eyes on my race, run my race right with the blinders, I, I could do the things that I needed to do to be massively successful. And the market had nothing to do with this success that I was going to achieve. Alright, so that is what I want for all of you. Those are the five things that I'm thinking about right now. And I don't think we're going to experience what we did back in 2008. Housing is not leading us into an economic collapse. So it's quite a different environment. It's a supply demand issue. And I think the real estate market is generally healthy even though there are less homes home selling. But I do think something can happen from an economic, you know, macro and microeconomic, global and national economic standpoint that might throw everyone into a frenzy. And I want your mindset to be where it needs to be to be able to double down on the things that actually get you the success that you're looking for. So much love, much respect. If you want to take it to another level in your business and you want to come into a world, you know, where you have the ability to dictate the money you make, the hours that you work and the freedom that you're able to experience in your life, check out our case study program. I'm not going to sell it to you. I want you to get on a call to see if it's even a fit for you. It's a free coaching call. It's a business growth assessment call. We'll look at where your business is now, where you want it to be. You know what's held you back in the past. So go to rebsgrowthassessment.com that's rebs growthassessment.com and we'll have a quick conversation about your business, your goals, and if you're a good fit for our business Foundations case study program. We'll see you over there. Bye. Bye.