Lars Heddenborg shares hiring mistakes from his real estate career. He breaks down three essentials: hire for core values first, verify someone fits the role and has capacity, and hire based on what they've actually done, not potential. Prove you can do the work yourself before you hire.
Questions this video answers
First nine months: 27 homes; 2007–2008 year: 44 homes; subsequent years: 58, then 118, then 178 transactions.
Late 2009 (the year he did 58 transactions).
realestatebschool.com
Hey there. Welcome back to the Good, Bad, Ugly edition of the Business Freedom Podcast. This is Lars Heddenborg, founder, Real Estate B School co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors in Charlotte, North Carolina. Today, I want to get into a conversation around how I've failed miserably when it comes to the people side of my business, what I figured out, and why you don't have to fail. And today I want to have a conversation around, you know, what it means to have the right person in the right seat. If I could teach you anything in our time together on this podcast, it is what I'm about to teach you. Your ability to scale your business requires that you surround yourself with people that are the right fit in terms of culture and being able to do the job. And we call that right person, which is culture in the right seat, which is fitting in the position you need them to do. You've heard me, hopefully you've heard me talk before about potential versus patterns. Generally, as visionaries, as entrepreneur types, we like to see the good in people. So when we sit down to have a conversation with someone about joining our team, whether it's your first administrative hire, if it's your hundredth buyer agent hire, this tendency never goes away. And it's the tendency to look at someone's potential and what they tell you rather than their patterns, what they've actually done before in their professional career, let alone in real estate. You know, someone that has no sales experience, has never sold a single home before, convinces you that they're going to be a great addition to your buyer agent team. That is 100% potential. And one out of 10 of those people work out one out of 10. And so the question is, how do you minimize your chances, you know, to hire the wrong person? And it comes down to right person, find the right person, and put them in the right seat. So let's say you have a buyer agent hire. So you're, you've got to the point where you've scaled your business enough. You're doing, let's say, 40 to 50 transactions, and you have an assistant that's full time now, and you want to take your business to the next level. You also want to take your life to the next level because working with buyers will suck the life out of you and you'll be working hours you don't want to work, which will, you know, impact your relationships. So let's say you're at that point. That's the perfect client for real estate B school, because that's where we built everything. From that point where you're traditionally successful, traditional success in our industry will have you on the verge of divorce working seven days a week. We don't want that for you. So let's say that you're hiring for that buyer agent. You know, you have to decide really by looking at your values, what it took for you to get yourself successful. And that's the first time I did core values. That's exactly what I did. I said, how did I get to the point? So my first nine months in the industry, I sold 27 homes. 2007, 2008. Our market was shifting. This was even before the crisis. I did 44 homes. Yeah, 44 homes in that 12 months. Then I did 58 and then 118 and 178. When I made my first buyer agent hire. That was late 2009, the year I did 58 transactions. I looked at what it took to be a conventionally successful agent really quickly, and it took hustle, it took hard work, it took accountability, it took discipline. You know, I had to have a positive mindset, attitude. I had to really look to grow. And those are my set of core values. I'm like, if I can find more people like that, or if I could surround myself with people like that, we're going to be okay. And so that's exactly what I did. I went on a hunt to find folks that were willing to work hard and hustle and be accountable. And, you know, they already had self discipline, they had a growth mindset, and they really did have a positive attitude because the market was complete crap. And so that became my set of core values. And everything I did was through that lens. When I talked to somebody. Doesn't mean I didn't make mistakes, because I made plenty of mistakes. The second part was right seat. So could they do the job? Did they get it? Did they want it? Did they have the capacity to do the job? And that was. We have a process in place now where we look at, you know, what does it take to be a buyer agent? What should have they proven already? What patterns can we identify in this person to know that they can they actually get the position? They want the position, and then they have the emotional physical capacity and the time capacity to do the position. So hopefully this is serving you because you can avoid making a whole bunch of mishires if you just pay attention to these three things. Right person, right seat, and patterns, not potential. Right person is decide your core values. Right seat. Do they actually understand and can they do the job of being a Buyer, agent, and then look for patterns, not potential. And don't kid yourself when you're sitting with somebody that's never done anything related to what you need them to do, and you convince yourself it's going to be great. It's just your natural tendency of a visionary entrepreneur type to see the best in people. And you can't hire to someone's potential. It just doesn't work. I've proven that probably a hundred times over. You can't do it, so don't do it. And so hopefully this has helped you just put a little bit of a construct around. You know, the challenges in finding folks that are attracted to our industry. The baseline is that there's a bunch of folks attracted to real estate that generally just suck at life. And I mean that, not that everyone does. There are a lot of folks that just think it's easy and they're not willing to put in the time it takes to be successful. Hopefully, hopefully. Hopefully that's not you. And you can't let people into your world that already have that mindset or they've already adopted that way in other areas of their life. And you can avoid it by just having a good process in place to identify those things. So, right person, core values. What are your core values? What do you stand for? Surround yourself with that. That only works, though, if you've already proven yourself to be traditionally successful. So if you're struggling in real estate, don't go out and hire someone not having proven to yourself that you can do the work it takes to be successful. That's a disaster waiting to happen, because now you're convincing someone to follow you and you haven't proven that to yourself or to anyone that you can do the work. Don't do that. Let that person be on their own before you take them down and your flames kind of go down and burn in flames or whatever the expression is. So do the work. Build your business to the point where you can invite folks into it and then look for someone that fits your values, that actually knows how to do what you need them to do, and you'll be successful. We'll talk to you later. Oh, actually, if you're at the point where you're sort of bursting at the seams and you want to know the path, there's only one step you can take with us. Just go to realestatebschool.com and, you know, getting on the phone, just have a conversation about what your business, what it looks like. That's the only step we would take and if there's a fit, great, we'll talk about it. If there's not, that's totally fine too. So, realestate. Bschool.com, the obvious next step. There's a business growth strategy session. Be good. Much love and respect. Bye.
