If You Want to be Financially Free ... Stop Doing Sh!t Work!

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing, or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom, and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

All right, welcome back, Business Builders. It's going to be an awesome episode. I had the pleasure of being on Kent Ritter's podcast recently and sort of very different worlds, but similar, because we're just trying to get after it. We're trying to keep the balls in the air in our business, and then we're trying to sort of do the same thing in our families. And Ken, I'm going to give you a couple minutes to just introduce yourself, you know, so kind of hook us in why we should listen. But then the real hook is that when you explained sort of this pyramid concept and the colors in terms of time management, and I thought it was just a very eloquent way to explain it all, and it really hooked me in. So that's the hook. Just keep listening or watching, depending on where you're consuming this. But, Kent, give us an intro and then we'll kind of get into your color coding. You know, brown, light green, dark green, gold, and all of that goodness. So let's. Let's hear a little bit about you.

Sure. So my name is Kent Ritter, grew up in the Midwest from Indianapolis, Indiana, and I currently own a real estate investment firm. And what we do is we go out and we have about just under 700 units under management right now. We're growing quickly, and we buy multifamily, which are apartments.

Right.

Normal way to say apartments. We buy apartments, we fix them up. We bring in private investors into those deals. And that's really what I'M doing currently in the current business I'm working on. We've been going at it since 2019. Prior to that, I started my career in management consulting. So I spent 12 years flying around the country every week with new clients helping businesses solve problems that they couldn't solve on their own. That's exactly what they hired us for. So it just gave me a great understanding of the levers that make businesses work and not work.

Right.

You started seeing a lot of common themes and one of the things that we're going to talk about today. Well, before I get there. So into that career, started a management consulting firm with several partners. Sold that in 2015. So, you know, I've been through the building the business scaling, scaled it to 30 million in annual revenue, sold that at the end of 2015. That kicked off that whole real estate journey. I started talking about before that, which is really my, my new passion and love. The ability to give people financial freedom through real estate investments that they can't, can't get otherwise. But what we're zeroing in on today, I think really is around one of those things that was one of those common themes as I was a management consult and something that's really been drilled into me by one of my personal coaches and really helps solidify the concept, which is really time management and just be. Because we just need. There's only so much time.

Right.

And we have to best leverage that time and we have to be as productive as possible to get the most out of our businesses. But we also have to make sure that we have balance and that, you know, we're not so involved in our businesses, which is easy as entrepreneurs to get that we're neglecting other parts of our lives, right. Our family, our friends, the other things that are really important out there, our health. And so just I think the framework that we're going to talk to is a really easy way to first like dissect your day and diagnose how much time you're spending in high value tasks versus low value tasks and where you're spending that time. And then from there really a framework on how to reimagine your schedule into your ideal. What would your ideal week look like?

Right.

Your ideal day and how much time would you be spending in each of these categories. And it's a really simple way to look at it. And I think if you do it, you can have a profound impact on where you're focusing your time and then it really lets you make strategic decisions on in a couple ways.

Right.

What should you start doing more of? What should you keep doing? What should you stop doing? And for those things that you need to stop doing, Right. Like what can you outsource, what can you automate?

Right.

How do you delegate those tasks? How do you automate those tasks? So I think it allows you to look at where, I think most of us don't know how much dead time we just have during a day and how much time we spend doing low value tasks when we really need to be focused on the things that are driving value in our business or building relationships with our family, friends, coworkers, whoever it is. Right. Because those are the things that really matter. We spend so much time and all this other stuff, like, I can't tell you how many times me personally, I've been stuck in my email, right. You come up a couple hours later and you're like, what did I do? Like, you feel productive, you just answered a bunch of emails. But like, what did you actually accomplish? And did you really move the ball forward? And that's at the end of the day, what we're trying to do, right? Move the ball forward? Yeah.

That's awesome. And you know what's funny is that when, when someone is on your podcast, you as the podcast host, you don't get to tell your story to them. So I didn't even know that part that you, you built a $30 million management consult. Yeah, and I have a background in acquisitions and strategies, so I, you know, flew around the world and acquired all these companies and our job post acquisition was to kind of chop them up and get rid of the, these sort of inefficiencies, which is probably similar to what you did as a management consultant. Like, so that's, that's really cool. That's an awesome background. So if that didn't hook you into what we're going to talk about, I don't know what would have given just your breadth of expertise and in, you know, I would say in some aspects, in a little over three years, you know, you've acquired 700 units essentially, which is, which is just awesome. And I'm going to give an opportunity for you to share your best way to get in touch with you, whatever that looks like, you know, if it's for sure investing in your assets or I don't know what, what it is, but whatever it is, we'll, we'll definitely call it out at the end here. So, so let's get into the framework. Just, just lay it out and just tell us, tell us the truth. About your, the way you look at your time. And we all struggle. So there's no shame in any of this if you're. You called it. We're allowed one curse word on this podcast and it is the word shit. So when you describe that one, you can say that word, right? I've kind of opened the door there. So.

So you go ahead.

I'm going to let you lay it out for us.

Okay. So it's a simple framework, right? There's essentially, if you draw a pyramid on a piece of paper, right, there's three or there's four levels to that pyramid. And those are, those are the different categories of. Of kind of value, value of tasks, I would say, right? The first one, the bottom layer is brown time, right? That's your shit time, right? That's the, that's the binging Netflix, right? It's. It's watching, watching the football game. It's. It's just the zone out, you know, scrolling through your phone. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? That's the stuff that creeps in that really doesn't provide a ton of value. It's really more of an escape because, you know, we don't want to face whatever else, whatever else is going on, right? And we all need, we all need some of that. We all need time to relax. It's not a bad thing. You just need to be very cognizant of how much time you're spending in that space. The next one is your light green time. So your light green time, those are all the tasks in your business that aren't driving your revenue, but are just things that have to get done, right? Bookkeeping is a great example.

Right?

Bookkeeping has to get done. But is bookkeeping driving value in your business, driving revenue? No, it's not, right? You know, paying invoices, other stuff, all that stuff goes in that light green time. The next one is up is dark green time. So. And there's really a split in the pyramid, right? The bottom two, you want to get out of the top two, you want to spend more time in as much time in as the dark green time. That, that's your high value tasks. That's your highest and best use. And those are the things that drive real value in your business and real revenue in your business, right? A really good way to think about this in the split between light green and dark green is identify what your hourly rate is. How much is an hour of your time worth? For me, it's $1,000 an hour. So let's say if I'm not making $1,000 an hour, then that's my light green time. And those in the light green, that's the critical area where you want to start to delegate or automate.

Right.

Because those are things that have to be done, but it shouldn't be you doing it. The dark green are those things, you know, building relationships, creating partnerships, getting sales done.

Right.

All that stuff that's going to drive value in your business. You want to spend as much time there as you can. And then even above that, because our businesses are not the most important things in our lives, is the gold time. The gold time is the top of the pyramid. That's time with family, friends, exercising, meditating, yoga, studying the Bible. Whatever your whatever keeps you balanced, whatever makes you healthy, whatever builds your inner circle of relationships. That's that gold time. And we need to be spending as much gold and dark green time as possible and trying to get rid of everything else.

Awesome. So let me go a little bit deeper on a couple of these concepts. So tell me how you view the concept of your hourly worth. So maybe run. Run through that part of it. I. I know how I sort of teach it and how I view it, but yeah, number is a thousand two, and it's not always perfect. It's a million bucks divided by a thousand hours.

Yeah.

You know, I don't really need to make 2 million because maybe I'll have to work more hours than I want. So, yeah, it's the math that I use. It's like my target. And I just play a different game, you know, automation and delegation. So dig into more about that conversation. Like, what do you do if you're at 20 bucks an hour and, you know, and. And you want to sort of get up to 100, 250, 500. So talk through that a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, I think it. So some of it. Some of it is practical. Some of it is based on, you know, how. How much you can actually earn.

Right.

To set how much you've earned in your career and past experience or how much you can earn doing a sale and what that takes to get that done.

Right.

But some of it is just simple mindset.

Right.

You need to value your time higher than you're valuing it right now.

Right.

If you're, if you're sitting in that light green time and you're. You feel productive because you're getting all this stuff done, but you're not driving that revenue to your business, what that means is you're just Priorities aren't right.

Right.

There's a difference between being busy and being effective. And so you've got to start thinking about things differently. And you got maybe Your number is $100 an hour, right. And you start to say, okay, if I can, if I can get somebody to do this for less than a hundred dollars an hour, then those are things that I'm going to look to outsource.

Right.

And maybe that's bookkeeping. Maybe it's even like, maybe it's mowing your lawn.

Right.

Maybe you spend a couple hours a week mowing your lawn and you could pay the neighborhood kid 20 bucks or 30, 40, whatever, to do that. And in that time, you could be generating leads.

Right.

You could be doing market research, something that's going to drive value into your business.

Right.

So I think it's just thinking about it that way, and whether it's a hundred, whether it's a thousand, it's more about picking that number and saying, okay, anything below that, that's where I'm really going to look to delegate or automate and get rid of those things and get those things off your plate is how I think about that. Yeah.

And so if you're in a business where there is sort of quote unquote, unlimited earning potential, which is, you know, what, what you do, what real estate agents do, you know, if you can eliminate the, the brown and the light green, you do have the opportunity to make clear $500,000 a year working a normal work week, which is 2,000 hours. So 500,000 divided by 2,000 is $250 per hour. And then to your point, it's like there are licensed real estate agents that would show homes for you. You know, there are administrators or runners. You know, I'm in a big market. I can advertise on Craigslist for a courier, you know, just someone to run errands for me all day long or part of the day for like 10, 12 bucks an hour, plus gas cards.

Yeah.

You know, so a lot of the times we're. And even in the investor world, you know, you're. Maybe you're putting up ugly signs, you know, which you should, if you're acquiring, like, local real estate or whatever.

Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of things that I think what this forces you to do is really dig in, take a look at how you're spending your time. And I think what, what's really powerful with this is actually doing a time study.

Right.

Which I know, Lars, I think you, you teach and, and have kind of a way of doing that. The way that I've seen it done in the past is you're, you're just logging, you know, your 15 minute increments of your day from when you wake up to when you go to sleep. And then, and then, because I think one, you'll be surprised. Wow, I can't believe I spent that much time doing this. Whatever it was or this took that long. I thought it would take half as long.

Right.

But then what I think is really cool is you actually kind of code that time study with these colors. And then you start to really say like, wow, I'm spending 20% of my time in dark green and 40% of my time in light green. And man, 30% of my time was in that brown. I just watched, you know, I just watched football for like 12 hours this week. You know, things like that. And it just brings that awareness to you so you can start to make better decisions about how you spend your time. And that's what really matters. And I mean, you should be seeking to push as much gold time as possible and have some gold time every day.

Right?

Same thing. Dark green time as much as possible in that dark green time every day. Yeah.

And, and it's. When you say it that way, you know, the only way to have like a significant amount of that really meaningful goal time is to just be honest with yourself about, you know, the brown and the light green.

That's right.

You know, like, and just work, you know, 90 days at a time or whatever your cadence is work for a period of time to do less brown and less, you know, light green. And the, the brown is typically like, they're just bad habits. So I got in a rut where it was. I had avoided the news for like 10 years. 10 years.

A good thing.

Good thing. And then I totally went into like thinking that me watching the news is going to change the geopolitical landscape somehow. And there's this end of the world craziness that, and that, that lasted for me for about a year and I had to physically remove a TV from my bedroom just to get out of the habit, you know, so to me, that was. And then Netflix is like, every series is like a hundred million dollar production. Like it's irresponsible to not watch all.

Of them, you know, and you have.

To guard yourself because that's, that's like, that's not going to lead you closer to a lot of gold times. So talk about that a little bit.

Well, and I think that's where you have to be clear on your goals, right? Because, because it's so. Look, I love Netflix just like the next guy, right? And it's so easy to get sucked in. I mean, everything in their algorithms and everything they do is to get you to engage and continue to watch, right? But that's where you got to be really clear on your goals. Because especially if you're taking a lot of that brown time. And now that you're. And look, first of all, you got to be honest with yourself because you may not like what you see when that time study is done and you're like, oh crap, you know, I'm spending a lot of time in that brown and you have to make that conscious decision to turn that into gold time. Well, that's going to mean giving up. Maybe it's those TV shows that you like. So I think that's where. And that's a hard thing to do, right? That, that, that's going to take some willpower. But, but we only have so much willpower, right? You can only force yourself to do something for so long and that's kind of that, that push, right? You're pushing yourself to do this. It's why New Year's resolutions don't work, right? Because you have only so much willpower until it's gonna, it gives out and you give in. This is why you gotta, you gotta get really clear on your goals. Because your goals and, and more specifically with that goal that why, like, why are you doing what you're doing and getting real deep on that? Is it to make a better life for your family? Is it so that you and your wife can retire the way that you want to without having to worry about it? Is it just so you can be financially free from worry, right? Like what's that? Why that? Because that's what's going to pull you through in those tough times when it's like, I want to watch one more show, right? And you'll say, well, no, because you know me, me being able to retire at 45, whatever your goal is, is more important than me watching that one more Netflix episode, right? And those are the things are going to pull you through in those tough times because like, life is all the balance of trading short term gratification for long term gratification, right? And like as humans, our brains do not work like that. We're real bad at that, right? And so you got to be able to limit that short term gratification to push it into the long term. That's what those long term goals are all about. It's like that, that serotonin kick you're going to get from that show.

Right.

You got to be able to get through that. And so it's all about getting really clear on your goals and what you're really trying to accomplish. And that's how you're going to turn that brown time into that in that more valuable time.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I've, I've used, you know, there's like the carrot and the stick. So the carrot is, you know, you at 39 thinking about, you know, financial freedom at 45 or 50. And it's, it's really impossible for some people to connect their eating the donut now to the fat. Like if you ate a donut and you saw the fat go onto your belly, you wouldn't eat any donuts.

That's exactly.

But somehow we don't, we don't see the Netflix, you know, just another episode leading to sort of coming up short in other areas of life that we say are more important. But I've also, you'd used. It's a little depressing but it's worked for me so that's why I'll mention it. I, I saw my dad sort of suffer a really like a five year death. Just made some like poor choices with his health and had a major stroke and kind of took him essentially five years to die. So in a very morbid kind of way, I get up at 4:45am to work out. Not because I'm drawn to working out, not because I want six pack abs, not anything. But it's to, to control my health as much as possible so I don't end up, you know, putting that on my family because it was a tough five years for all of us. So there are different ways to trick yourself to do the things that, that you need to do. So I would just thought I'd mention that. A little bit of a downer but you know, hopefully it'll serve somebody in, in some respects. So I want to make sure I, I leave a little bit of time. I love all of it and I know I wrote it down last time when we, when we chatted but I'm gonna totally swipe the color coding in our time study. So when people put in the like the, yeah. Have like these codes like BA is business admin, PA is personal admin. So when they put those in it's going to turn like a crap color or like a light green.

I like that. Yeah. Use it.

Tell us like what, how do people get into your. If they want to sort of learn more about you and kind of get into your world for sure. Give us the podcast info and then anything else you want to cover with the audience.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me say one thing first on this and then I'll give you the info on how to get in touch with me. Because the, the only other thing I wanted to say because I mean this sounds daunting, right, Is chunk it out. Baby steps are better than no action at all.

Right.

And that's one of the best lessons I learned where like I would come out of something with like 12 goals, right. And, and it's impossible and be like, I'm gonna do all this in the next three months.

Right.

And it's really impossible to you. You have to really chunk it down to. I like working in 90 day cycles and trying to chunk out two to three things every 90 days. If you do that, you will accomplish so much. I mean and it builds on, on each other. But I'd say so, you know, if you're watching two, three Netflix shows, right, Cut, cut one of them out. You know, keep one for now and then maybe you'll realize, hey, this isn't so bad and your, your goal will grow and your why will grow and you take, you cut another one out. But baby steps are better than nothing. So just don't be too hard on yourself in this process because it is difficult and it doesn't feel good.

Yeah, that's really, really good. And, and you know, comparing yourself to someone even on the, the like X dollars per hour, like, dude, I'm at 30 bucks an hour. Like I gotta, I got a baby.

I can't even imagine what it'd be.

Like to, you know, but that, that comes as, as like so 15 years in business. I made 18 an hour my first 10 months in real estate. And so that was 15 years ago.

Yeah.

You know, so 15 times four. I, I work in a quarterly world as well. So that's 66, zero quarters that I've been making decisions on automations and delegations and working out of the, out of the brown and light green. So play the long game is basically the advice there. So how do we get into your world? Kind of give us that.

Yeah. So you guys could go to HudsonInvesting.com that's the name of my real estate business. If you're interested in learning more about what we do investing alongside of us, we bring our investors in right alongside us in our deals. Also I'd say check out Ritter on Real Estate, which is my podcast. It's all about investing in real estate, how to get started and how to learn tips from the pros.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. And I'll tell you so we, we offer a just a free time study if you go to Rebs. So Real estate B School, R E B s productivity pack. I've got like a whole time study that you guys can grab. So. And there's, I mean you got to opt in and give us your email, but there's. I just want to get that thing in the hands of as many people as possible. It's literally a 14 day time study. 15 minute increments. You coded every day. You do the math at the end of it, so you guys can grab that as well. Kent, this has been awesome, man. I. I think this, you know, brown to gold is, is. It's been really cool. So I appreciate you sharing it. Definitely. So it was hudsoninvesting.com Hudson Investing H.

U D S O N investing.com awesome.

And definitely check out Ritter on Real estate. I've checked out some episodes and it's really all good stuff. All right, brother. Appreciate you. We'll talk soon.

Absolutely. Thanks, Flor.

See you guys.

Bye.

Bye.

We'll see you.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiebook.com to get a free copy of my book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so. So that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.