How to Keep Momentum Going in Your Business when it Gets Hard

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Lars Hedenborg here, founder of Real Estate B School and co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors. And I want to talk about what do you do when it gets hard, when business gets hard and it's exhausting and how do you keep momentum going in something where it feels like it's just you're dragging this thing along or you're pushing a boulder uphill, whatever visual, whatever analogy helps you get the picture that real estate is freaking hard, how do you push through those times? How do you keep the momentum going? The worst thing that I see happen or one of the common things that I see happen is that, you know, there are these different phases of growth that we've seen over the years in Real Estate B School and there's six different phases, phases, and we call it the Business Freedom Code. Everything from sort of struggling new agent all the way up to team owner, like true owner, no production, just an owner seat in the business. And each of these phases has like a ceiling that if you don't do the right things in that phase to set you up to move to the next phase, you're constantly going to hit this wall and your momentum is going to slow down or come to a screeching halt. And so there's a few things I want to go through to kind of keep the momentum going. When it's really hard and it's going to be hard. Building a business is hard. And I like to say to our members, another non inspirational motivational quote by Lars is that it's going to suck either way. It's gonna suck. The life of a traditionally successful real estate agent, in my humble opinion, sucks. It's horrible because you sacrifice so much for your business. You never get to take a vacation and not work. Right? I've been there. I know the pain. And so I just think that the existence of a traditionally successful real estate agent is really, really hard. So let' about the things that I've done and the things that our members are doing and have done to break through each of those ceilings to get to the next level and keep the momentum going. The first thing, this is the first thing. Without this, you have no shot. And it is to have a really clear vision of where you want to go, a really clear vision in multiple areas of your life. We will focus mainly on business for this podcast. The same theory applies for any area of your life. It's a three year vision, very specific three year vision of where you want your business to be, what you want your position in the business to be what you're willing to do, the hours you're willing to work. If you're just working on listings, if you're, you know what your team looks like, all those things and the income you're making, what your net worth is, you're really painting a picture of what three years is going to look like. That is the number one thing. Proverbs, what is it, 7, 27, 27, 17 or I forget what it is. Where there is no vision, the people perish. Where there is no vision, the people perish. And I feel like that is 100% true for you as the business owner. And so that's number one, is to have a clear and compelling vision. It's important for you. It's also important for your first hire, your second hire, your 22nd higher. They need to see where you're going so they can be excited about helping you get there. Right. The industry is changing rapidly. There are lots of folks, licensed folks that are looking to do administrative work or to show homes, to give you leverage because they can't do it on their own. So it's our time to rise up and to stand in this dark industry and just to be a bright light and say, hey, listen, I figure some things out or I'm willing to, to draw a line in the sand and do this differently. Why don't you come along and let's do this together. So that's number one is a clear vision. Number two is leverage. And what I mean by leverage, actually number two and three are both leverage. And I'm going to explain it two different ways. The first way that I mean, leverage is something that you can pull on or go to to remind yourself why you're doing it. And so for me, in the early days, I was married in 2006. We had our first child November 2007. That's the year I got into real estate. We had a couple miscarriages and we had our second child in April 2010. So all of that was happening while I was, I left a cozy corporate, multiple six figure corporate job and I got into real estate. And unbeknownst to me, I had no idea what a real estate agent did. I had no idea how to generate business. I'd never built a business before, I'd never sold anything before, I'd never managed people before. And I was just thrown into this awesome opportunity of being a real estate agent. And the leverage, though the vision was a little fuzzy at first, took me a couple years to get that straight in my head, the leverage that I was able to pull on was the fact that I wanted to create a life for my family that they never thought was possible. My wife Julie came from super humble, you know, upbringing. Both. We were both really poor, so not even lower middle, I would say just poor. I don't know what poor class is. I guess it's just lower. It's middle class, upper class and lower, lower class. And we are both lower class. And we just had a challenging go of it growing up in terms of there not being a lot of financial means to do anything with. And so the leverage for me was that I didn't want my family to have that. And even if it was, you know, I came from a really great corporate job, so it's not like I had a fear of that necessarily. It wasn't an obvious fear. It was just enough leverage, though, where I just wanted to create a life for us that we never thought was possible. And the leverage has since changed for me. So that was the first. You'll find as you go through these different phases of the business freedom code, as we call it, the six phases, you'll find that your motivation, your leverage changes. For me now it's to empower our team members to live amazing lives and to impact the community in the world and to learn more about God and be able to share the gospel with folks so that my vision is changing and my leverage is changing. Back then though, it was really just sort of acute in the fact that it was right in front of me. I even with our members that when I was back coaching one on one, I would have them find their leverage. Matt Greco, who is a good, good friend of mine, I met him at a conference back in April 2007, my second month in real estate. When I was coaching and working with Matt, I made him print out and frame like a picture of his family. He had three. Four. Yeah, twins and two other kids. So four kids total. And his wife and I had him print out a picture and put it near his bedside and have like a sticky note, like a little bubble saying, you know, we're relying on you or don't let us down. I forget what exactly I had him write on it or like, you can do it, you know, get up and kick butt today. Something, whatever it takes for you to remind yourself why you're doing it, that's what you need to do. And you need to put those reminders out there. So you have this vision and it's exciting and it's compelling. So that is the carrot, the stick is waking up every morning and getting reminded why you're doing it. And you know, I've done lots of, I've done episodes on morning routine and what that looks like for me. And that's an important part of it as well. Just making sure you're constantly reminding yourself you have a system around reminding yourself what the leverage is. And so that's number two. So number one is a clear and compelling vision, right where there is no vision that people perish. Number two is leverage in the form of like, why are you actually doing this? The why behind the why behind the why. You know, for me, that probably wasn't even the why. The why behind the why was that I was just scared of going back to what I had as a kid and then one up from that is I wanted to, you know, create a life for my family that they never thought was possible. And so the third point I want to make here and it's, it's leverage. It's leverage in a different way. And there's a few forms of leverage. The big leverage point for me back in the early days, and we still teach this as the number one driver in real estate B school is marketing. The ability to attract buyers and sellers to you, not paying for leads marketing and being able to attract high quality buyer and seller prospects to you through database marketing, listing marketing and buyer marketing. That remains the highest source of leverage and doing it in a systematic way. And like I said, not giving money to Zillow, not giving money to realtor.com, we don't spend, we're a multi million dollar real estate team, super profitable. We spend no money on paid home search leads, no money on paid home search leads. There isn't a real estate, real estate team, the 3 million GCI in a 275 average price point market that doesn't spend money on paid lead sources and no referral sources. So we're not doing any of the paid seller lead sources as well. Just database and some outbound marketing, direct mail, that sort of thing. And so marketing is the first point of leverage in the business. Then systems is the second source of leverage. When I was doing everything in my business, I was only doing it so I could build a system around it so I would never have to do it again. If I was showing a home, I would document like the showing packet. The, you know, I would get there early, I would have water in my car, I would, you know, when I wrote an offer, I would write it down on an offer sheet. You Know, and I didn't even do it that great, but I just did it only so that I could replace myself. And same thing with the listing side of the business. I did it. I didn't love it. I did it. I went on hundreds of listings listing appointments every Saturday, 9, 11 and 1 for like three years in a row. I went on listing appointments if I was in town before I really figured out how to get out of that side of the business. And, and, but I only did it knowing that I didn't have to do it forever. And so the vision was for me to be out of that so that I could actually do it. It didn't bother me. I got to a point where I was sick of giving up most of my Saturdays. I was doing it knowing that the end was that I was going to be out of it. And the system was so strong. We have an eight step process that we follow when we teach at real estate B school. So the leverage there was a system that somebody could plug in to do it. And that's the third part of the third part here. Leverage. It's marketing systems and people. And 85% of real estate agents don't have an administrator. So that means they're doing all of the administrative work in their business. And that pay is typically 15 to 25 bucks an hour. And if you want to make 15 to 25 bucks an hour and then there's no, you're good, you should keep doing administrative work. If you want to make 250 to 500 bucks an hour in your real estate team, for every hour you work, there's a different conversation to have. And so people have to come into the equation. And you've got to build a system and have a person run the system. Even if it's one administrator and a couple buyer agents. And you want to sell 100 homes, a million dollar business where you're taking home, you know, 600,000 and you're working 40 hours a week, you're only doing listings. That's a cool business, right? That's a business you can do for a whole lot of years. Working seven days a week, working buyers and sellers and selling, you know, 20 homes a year. That's not a sustainable business. You're going to drive your spouse crazy. You're going to lose your physical health, your emotional well being. It's going to be a crap show. So this has been a little bit heavy, this one. I feel like I've been preaching at you, yelling at you. I only do it to tell you that there's a way to keep you going as you're on this journey. Right. The momentum will wane as you're breaking through these different phases of growth. And unless you have this vision and you're using your personal leverage, your personal why and leverage in the form of marketing systems and people, it's going to be a challenging road for you. So what I do have to offer you is just to spend 21 days with me. Thetimefreedomchallenge.com thetimefreedomchallenge.com where I will coach you, I will hold you accountable, I will train you, I'll make you do work, I will answer live Q and A Once a week we will spend a full I think it's even 24 days together where we can just dig into your business and dig into your limiting beliefs around time, money and stress and go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com we will see you over there. Thetimefreedomchallenge.com be well. 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 is for you. Head over to get business foundations.com that's get business foundations.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 realestateb school.com 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.