Real Estate Productivity: 3 Essential Elements for Success

Without a calendar, there's zero chance of you being productive. And some of you are like, I'm too spontaneous. I can't really live in that way. There is massive freedom and structure. The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share it all with you. The good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results. You just got to do the work. Welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. My name is Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School, where the B stands for business. I teach agents how to grow and scale their business without losing their life, without the grind. Today's episode is going to be about the essentials. Three essentials to a great productivity system. And what I mean by that is that my wish for all of you is to make the kind of money that you want to make, working the kind of hours that you want to work and not having to endure the levels of stress that traditionally successful agents have to endure. And I want you to detach money from time and this productivity system. And I'm going to be a little bit in the clouds on this one and then I'll land it with some tactics. But there are three essentials when it comes to a great productivity system. And I will say that I have been working on this for every bit of, what is it, 16 plus years since I got into business for myself. I left my corporate job in March, March 5, 2007, just as our market was turning. Here you could look at, I remember in like late 2008 when everything hit the fan, I remember looking back into our local market stats and you saw in June 2007, this was a full 18 months after getting into real estate. After I left a cozy multiple six figure corporate job. Looking back at the market stats and just seeing inventory shoot straight through the roof. We had like at one point we had 20 months of inventory. So radically different market than today, but it was a bloodbath. Fully 2/3 of the agents in my market got out of the business. And we're in a similar time now in terms of agents getting out of the business. But it's driven by different dynamic. Not going to get into it too much, but there's just not enough inventory. There's just not enough sales because the shortage of inventory and rates and, you know, buyers sitting on the sidelines and wondering, hoping if, you know, rates are going to come down and if prices are ever going to come down. I don't think they will because I don't think the, the supply and demand issue is going to normalize or level out for who knows, if, if ever. So a topic for another podcast. Today we're going to talk about the essentials of great productivity systems. So number one, and this is going to sound basic as I look at my journey, and my journey was one of, you know, how do I make a lot of money in real estate and, and not have to give up my life in the process? And I was talking, my vision was to make seven figures and working a reasonable work week. So less than 40 hours. My goal was 20 hours a week and not all the time have I made seven figures and not all the time do I work less than 20 hours a week. That's just the goal. That's my guiding principle and it forces me to work on the things that only make me that kind of money. So the number one thing thing here essential is time blocking and living by your calendar. In real estate B school, we have a very, very specific system for this. Every quarter we look at where we spent our time, we actually do what we call a time study. It's a 14 day, somewhat painful. Some don't make it through the full 14 days, but we take an inventory of where we spent our time in the last 14 days on a 15 minute from the moment you wake up till you go to sleep for 14 days in a row where you spend your time. I know it's not the thing that's going to be like, lars, can I work with you? I can't wait to get into real estate B school. Most of you are like, okay, you know, I definitely don't want to do that. The thing it'll do for you, though, even if you do one or two of these a year, you're going to be acutely aware of the fact that you're just wasting time. And you can either give that time back to your family, you can give it back to yourself, you can give it back to, you know, dollar productive activities in the business that will make you the kind of money that you want to make. But bottom line, it comes into creating this ideal week and shedding off the things every quarter that aren't making you money. So once you do a time study, you have an inventory of all the things that you worked on. You get to spread them on what we call a passion versus pay grid. And then delete, delegate or automate the things that just aren't that dollar productive. And then put the things into your calendar that make you the kind of money that you want to make after you put in all the personal things that you want to accomplish. Right? So that's the number one essential, is that the backdrop to all of this is you knowing what you're supposed to do all the time. So when I open my calendar and I live in my calendar, right, there's another cool thing I'm going to show you here. I live in my calendar. So when I look at, you know, my work week for one Monday, I've got a cool work week now, I don't start my days until noon and I end them at 4, but I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, you know, from the time I'm going to work. Also, I know that I'm going to wake up at 6:45, roughly a little bit early. Usually I'm going to spend 30 to 45 minutes with my wife. We're going to go work out together before, well, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we work out together those days we wake up a little bit earlier so we can still get our connection time with our devotional and stuff like that. And then I've got a big time block to take care of care of my physical health. I do a weekly financial review. It's all in here. I do my value post in the real estate business Builders free Facebook group, which you should join by the way. It is all scripted for me. There's no guesswork. If you're watching the video version, I'm, I'm showing my calendar right now, right. But if I click on this and I click off my calendar and I click on the ideal week, you won't see this if you're, if you're just listening, but we actually have. I'll put that up there if you can see it. Well, you probably can't see it too much, but there's actually an ideal week, right, where it, the afternoons are appointments, the morning is, you know, new business development. And you've got the time blocked in red there for family time or buffer time or exercise time, you know, when you're with the family, when you work out, when you're doing date night, when you're going to church, when you're working on the business, all those things, right. So without a calendar, there's Zero chance of you being productive. And some of you are like, I'm too spontaneous. I can't really live in that way. There is massive freedom and structure. That's what I'll end this, this first essential with. There's massive freedom and structure. The reason I'm able to take off whenever I want and time block. My work week essentially is Monday through Thursday, 12 to 4. It wasn't always like that. First year in real estate, my first full year, I sold 44 homes. I know I say that all the time. Bear with me. I was working 24, 7. I was sneaking out of, you know, bed to answer leads that came in or to take a client call. Or we would be at the zoo with my son and you know, I'd be on my phone or you're feeding him a bottle. I'd be on my phone and just not present one picture my wife has. You know, I was, we were on our first vacation after I got into real estate and I was working a deal that ultimately fell apart and it just destroyed the connection I had with my wife at the time. Right. So there's all these things we do to get where we are. And I can't say I did all of it perfectly. But over time, the thing I realized that the essential here is that you have to time block. You have to live in your calendar and there's freedom in structure. That's number one. Number two is you have to establish a weekly cadence. This is essential. And what I mean by weekly cadence, I'll break it down starting with a week into the daily. And this fits into a bigger framework in real estate B school where we call it a 3190. Well what I call 3190137 so. Or five, five days in a week. So three year vision, one year plan, 90 day world, 13 weeks in a quarter essentially, and then seven days in a week. But the weekly cadence, let me just focus on that now in terms of like the day to day, week to week productivity system. There's three parts in it. So once a week you're going to have a weekly planning session. This is when you're looking back the prior week and you're answering a few questions. You know, what did I, did I actually achieve the things I set out to achieve last week? What went well, what didn't go well for the things I didn't achieve that I said I wanted to achieve, you know, what got in the way? Anything based on this last week that I should start doing or stop doing that didn't lead me to be more effective or to actually achieve meaningful goals in the life that matter to me. And you're just sort of sitting with a look back in that same weekly planning session. You're looking forward and saying, okay, based on, you know, this is more the quarterly rhythm, you know, based on the projects that I commit to working on this quarter or the focus areas for the quarter, my business, you know, what are the three big things I want to accomplish this coming week, you know, and, you know, what other things are going on this week that I need to sort of take, be aware of as I consider these three projects that I want to move forward or chunks of projects that I want to move forward. Right. So you're kind of thinking of the week ahead. And then in the daily, there's two things you do. One is you start the day and one is you. You shut down the day or you stop the day when you start the day. The most important, there's two parts to it. First part is the top three action items that you're going to do that fit into those three, three big project, three big moves for the week that I just talked about in weekly planning. The three things you must get done today. These are not necessarily like you already know you're going to go on a listing appointment. You already know you're going to show some property. Not those types of things, but it's above and beyond those types of things, things that you have to get done that are going to move your business forward in a meaningful way. Also in the daily, to start today is just writing down three things that you're grateful for. Very simple. It's going to sort of instill this. This contentment, you know, this attitude of gratitude by always looking for the things that you're grateful for. That's to start the day. Top three, three things you're grateful for when you end the day. You know, this daily debrief, as I call it, you're looking for three amazing things that happened today, just, you know, not necessarily tied to your business, but just three amazing things that happened. Again, it's going to sort of fuel this psychology of contentment and fulfillment. So three amazing things that happened. And then what did I accomplish today? Did I actually accomplish the three things that I set out to accomplish, if not what got in the way? That's it. That's your daily. Your daily cadence. So top three for today, your daily debrief and the weekly planning session. That's the weekly cadence. The third essential of an effective, monumentally productive system in terms of getting stuff done is yet to be able to organize tasks and projects. So I've used a bunch of different stuff over the years. I have just found an app. There's a. So I'm a Mac Apple user and this is. I think it's probably the same for, for Android. It's cross platform. It's called Tick Tick T I C K T I C K It is unbelievably powerful. I'm going to show you my. That's sort of like my different folders there. So it's essentially a task manager that bleeds into your calendar. You, you sync it with your calendar. There's an Eisenhower matrix where you can, if you don't know the Eisenhower matrix, it's essentially, you know, a quadrant for a 22 by 2 quadrant where there's urgency and importance. So if it's not urgent and it's not important, just don't do it. If it's really urgent and really important, do it immediately. Right? And then if it's not urgent but really important, you schedule it. And if it's not important but urgent, I think you delegate it or something like that. So it's like the 4DS. It's a. It's a 4D calendar system. There's that in there. Then there's also a cool habit tracker which is awesome. I used to have a different app for my habit trackers and then it all rolls up into like a daily list. So I look at today and I've got all my habits and all my different tasks for today. It is just about the coolest thing, knowing what I know now. This is the system and I could do, probably do a deeper dive on, on that one platform and how I'm using it. But essentially when I look at my main screen here, I have the inbox is where my inbox is empty, which is good. You need a system. Bring it back to the productivity system. You need a way to just get stuff out of your mind. So as I think, I'm laying in bed and I think of something. My phone is in the bathroom. But I'll run up and I'll just put it into my inbox. So I'll capture it and then I'll decide where it goes. What business? Is it a project? Is it personal? A podcast idea. So right now I'm recording the three essentials of a great productivity system. I can check it off because I have put it in my podcast idea folder. So that's just a good example of how I use it planning. I've got different templates. I've got my fitness stuff, the things I'm waiting on. Sometimes it'll be. I've got my goals, my vision, my purpose in here. I'll come up with stuff that it's. Someday it's just an idea that I had, maybe a good idea, but I don't want to lose it. But I'm not going to work on it even this year or maybe even next year, you know, maybe a trip that we want to go on or, you know, something I saw somewhere, you know, about a health hack or a YouTube video that I want to view later or whatever it is. You need a way to organize all of this and then just a way to make sure you're not missing out on the things that truly matter and a way to integrate it back into your calendar. And now. So when I look at, you know, I mentioned the weekly cadence in here, I've got recurring tasks in here that remind me to. To do my startup for the day. So my top three, my gratitude for the day. I've got a. It pops up as a daily debrief with the template that. With the questions laid out there that I want to answer. Let me get those exact questions because they actually weren't. I didn't cover them. Exactly. So the daily review. Yeah. So what did I accomplish today? What's the highlight of today of the day? Did I encounter any difficulties? What's my mood and any special thoughts? Right. So, and then my weekly planning session, you know, kind of went through that. And my daily top three are the three gratitudes and the three, three things I must accomplish in the day. So they just show up in that productivity app and it's. It. The app doesn't come formatted anyway. So you sort of have to bring this mindset of everything has to integrate into the calendar. You have to have this cadence of start today, stop today, weekly planning session. And then just a way to get stuff out of your brain and into something that can hold all of it. So that is my wish for all of you, is in order to achieve great things, to build a massive business that allows you to make the kind of money that you never thought was possible, but not give your life away in the process. Right. I'm all about helping you grow your sales, grow your income, you know, grow your net worth without the grind, without the stress. So hopefully these three essentials will get you on your way. I want to ask you to jump into my free Facebook group, Real estate business Builders. I do a weekly live stream training in there. There's no agenda in there except to add massive value to your business. At some point, you may decide to have a conversation with my team about what that might look like. But the. The nature of that group is to give as much as I possibly can to help as many agents as I possibly can. This is going to be a squirrely time in real estate the next 12, 24, even maybe 36 months. I watch some guys that are thinking it's going to be a lost decade in terms of the kind of turbulence that we're going to go through and the reckoning of politics aside, just kicking the can in terms of some of our fiscal habits and, you know, quantitative tightening and easing and, you know, all of it, I think, is going to come to a head. So that said, you want to be in a community that doesn't give a crap about any of that. We're aware of it, but we're still putting our heads down. We're doing the work that is real estate business builders. Go to Facebook, get on real estate business builders. A couple questions to answer. We'll let you into the group. We, we'll tag you in trainings, we'll find out exactly what you're struggling with. I do a weekly live stream in there as well, which is pretty cool. And that's all I've got. So apply these three essentials to your business, to your life. See massive success and we'll see you on the next episode. Much love.