This episode is Lars Hedenborg (founder of Real Estate B School) announcing a podcast pivot to Real Estate Team Builders focused on helping team leaders scale profitably while preserving life outside work. Lars summarizes his own real-estate trajectory (starting in 2007; numerous transaction milestones including a year with 400+ transactions and a claim of selling 27 homes in 10 months), critiques the industrys obsession with gross commission income over sustainable economics, and previews in-depth weekly episodes and guest interviews (multiple named team leaders with specific transaction counts and profit margins). He issues a call for listener questions via email and reiterates the show's mission to teach systems, leadership, and business-owner thinking so teams can scale without burning out.
This is Real Estate Team Builders and I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Yes, you heard it right. It's Real Estate Team Builders, not the Business Freedom Podcast. And here's the reason for the pivot in my podcast over the last eight years. Serving the community I built at Real Estate B School, I've never been more clear on who I'm best equipped to serve and who the podcast really delivers value to. And that's Real Estate Team Builders. A brief summary of my journey in business. I got into real estate in 2007, instantly overwhelmed as a top agent. Sold 27 homes in 10 months. That was like the top 0.5% of agents in my market. Went on to 44 to 58 to 118 families served to 178 to 248 to 312 to 400 plus. The year I did 400 plus transactions. I worked 42 days that year. And the journey was not an easy one. I made all the mistakes you could possibly make. Yet I was inspired in 2013 to launch real Estate B School to help folks build profitable real estate teams. Here's the thing though. The real estate team building world has become driven by massive egos and folks that talk almost exclusively about top line sales, gross commission income. We don't hear a lot about profitable economic models, sustainable business practices or lead source return on investment. In fact, I've discovered that most real estate teams, when you really dig into these businesses, I've done over a thousand what we call business growth strategy sessions. So I feel like if nothing else, I'm well equipped to talk about the typical real estate team. They're actually losing money when you consider the amount of personal production that their owners must do to make ends meet. I know a guy that run. He went from roughly, what was it, about 900 transactions to 1200 transactions. The GCI difference was 4 million to 6 million in GCI. This guy, Big presence, massive team. He actually made less money, 300,000 less in profit at 6 million than he did at 4 million. He dropped from 1.2 million net on 4 million to 900,000. And even at the 4 million with 1.2 million net, he was still doing between 150 and 200 transactions. Personally, it's insanity. And here's the thing, worse than the lack of sound business principles in our industry is the lack of focus on things that truly matter. Your life outside of real estate. Like how many date nights did you have last month? You know how you're crushing it in your health routines or how you're loving your kids. Well, I'm obsessed and will continue to obsess over one thing on this show. It's to help real estate team leaders scale their businesses profitably. Key word, don't miss it. Profitably. So that you can live an amazing life outside of real estate. You definitely won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype on this show. So this is just the real world stuff that works and is proven. So if you're struggling with long hours and you have a real estate team and there's unbearable stress, you find yourself coming up short in the, in the areas of life that truly matter, then this show absolutely is for you. And so here's what you can expect moving forward with the podcast. I'm going to shift away from these shorter, more frequent episodes to more in depth topical episodes. Once a week, some will have guests and then I'll follow up a guest appearance with a deeper dive into that specific strategy, specific tool or system that we covered. And so here's a preview. Dan Jones, who was actually on my real estate team back in the day, we just recorded an episode where he goes deep into how he went from working like 10 men to to teaching 10 men how to work. So how he went from player to coach in his business, right, he went from 60 sides to over 300 sides in about five years, which is impressive. At 300 sides, though, he's completely exited production and he's doing more than a 30% profit margin on the business. Dave Hook just did a call with him where we dove deep into how he built his business In a way, 34% margin on 325 transactions. He started at 80 transactions. He, his superpower has been leadership development. He works 90 minutes a week in that business. Dave Friedman, who I met the year he did 65 transactions, he was working 80 hours a week. How does he go from working 80 hours a week to one day per week in his real estate team? Last year he did 450 transactions. Crazy. The crazier thing is that he has a life that means something. Stacy Peterson, who was the first member ever to real estate B school, she scaled her business, tripled the size of her business, but she got out of production, was able to exit that business with a seven figure valuation. Misty Solwich, Des Moines, Iowa, she's one of our business coaches and so is Dan Jones. Misty is one of our business coaches. She consistently does over 400 transactions on the right economic model and she is the queen of Trello. We're going to do deep dive on Trello. Kirby Screwraut. He'll do 700 to 800, 750 to 800 transactions this year. And when I met him, it was him and his wife and a licensed assistant. He works about one hour a week in that business. How does that happen? He's over 30% profit margin. John Mikish, in my market, runs his real estate team from Bozeman, Montana, 1300 miles away. He puts an hour a week into his business, profitable business. What was the stuff that enabled him to do that? Cody Riddle did a million and a half last year, up from 300,000 as a solo agent. Built a team on the right economic model. Tara Lindbergh was about a million in GCI when I met her. She'll do about 4 million GCI and has exited every position in her business. Chris Craddock does about 600 transactions and he runs it in a way where he gets to focus on the things that he loves. Greg and Stephanie Citizen at a Myrtle beach. They do about 400 units and they're both in their sweet spots. AJ and Crystal Johnson went from 30 million to over a hundred million. And 80% of their business is from their sphere of influence. And there's going to be a ton of more guests. And the goal is to go really deep and tactical and position you as the listener, to be able to act on what we're teaching and to do this right. I'm going to need feedback from you, the listener, you know. So my question for you and my challenge for you is what is the toughest, gnarliest issue, challenge or question that you have that you're unable to get over in your business that you keep asking yourself? You keep bumping into this glass ceiling. I want you to send those questions to me@larsharsarshedinborg.com and I'll cover them in an upcoming episode and I'll end with this and hopefully this inspires you to tune in to future episodes. This is my fundamental belief in why I'm doing this podcast. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. Enjoy what's ahead for real estate team builders and I look forward to serving you in your business growth journey, coming alongside you and helping you in any way possible. We'll see you soon.
