Real World Lessons on Leadership Part 1

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Lars Hedinborg, Founder of Real Estate B School Co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors I've been in the real estate business since 2008 and I launched Real Estate B School in 2013. These next three podcasts is going to be a series that I'm calling Lessons on Leadership from Three Team Leaders With a thousand homes sold per year combined. And this is a members only session that we had at our intensive workshop, which was virtual and some of it is timely because it's in the midst of COVID and just the drama around all of that. And most of it, I'd say 95% of it, 90 to 95% of it is timeless in terms of just what it's like to lead from the trenches, the good, bad, ugly of building a real estate business. All three of these folks have been in our world for more than three years. And so Drew Richmond leads the sales team at Dave Hook Team in Central pa. And Dan Jones was actually on my real estate team in Charlotte, North Carolina. He broke off. I helped him. We started together back in 2014 or 15. Maybe he'll close 300 homes. He almost closed 300 homes last year and totally out of production. And then we've got Greg Miller. He, I think he did about 350 last year and he's been in our world for a few years as well. So just an amazing wealth of knowledge. The only thing I ask is that since this is members only content, please do me a big, big favor. All I ask is for you to share it if it's useful, if it's helpful for you, the podcast is helpful for you. Share it on your social media and leave us a five star review. The reviews are super important in terms of getting our content to the top of a very overfilled, I want to say overfilled, just a very full podcast feed that y' all have. So we want to be toward the top because this mission that we have is meaningful. It's to just change a broken industry. Traditional success, in my opinion, isn't worth having in the real estate industry. It has you working every evening, every weekend, and then most of the time you don't have a lot to show for it after all of those efforts. So, so share it and leave us a five star review and stay tuned for part one. This is going to be three parts. Part one of lessons on leadership from three team leaders. With 1,000 homes sold per year combined, it's a pretty lengthy title. I may change that before I Launch it, but you get the gist of it. We'll see you there. This session is just a conversation about how we're leading in our businesses. So I'm gonna bring on three folks. Dan Jones, Greg Miller, and Drew. And I want to chat a little bit about them real quick. Dan Jones was actually moved to Charlotte to be on my real estate team. Well, he didn't move here for me. I wouldn't be so lucky. He moved here to take care of his mom. I don't want to make you cry, Dan, so I'm going to stop. Stop getting emotional. Just like the best guy in the world. Here's the thing about Dan. He's one of our coaches. If you ever get a chance to get to know him, you'll find that he doesn't over complicate things. When we first started real estate B school, he tried it a couple years on his own. He left my team. He tried it a couple years on his own, and he would. He's the only agent I ever had in my brokerage. I owned a brokerage for five years that wasn't on my team. And so he would come into my office for our coaching sessions and he'd have his financials just written out on a yellow piece of paper. And I'm like, on the one hand that I can. I can appreciate that you're tracking your numbers. On the other hand, Dan, it's time to hire a bookkeeper. And so we'd have his whole month of financials written out and it would show his profit. And I'm like, that is the best thing ever. And then, same thing we did on the real estate team. We would generate a lead. We would work the heck out of it. We would block our time. We would track ourselves, you know, track our numbers and hold ourselves accountable. He's built his business. How many sides did you do last year, Dan?

Like unmuted? Yeah, there we go. We knocked on the door. 300.

Yeah. So just someone to listen to. And then Greg Miller didn't grow his business in real estate B school, but the more I get to know Greg, the wisdom that he brings is, like, beyond. I don't even know how old Greg is, but it's just beyond his years. The care and diligence that he takes, like, he just takes responsibility for his role as leader. He. It is not. His team is not there to serve him. He is there to serve his team. He knows the net worth of every one of his team members, and he works through, like, how can we get you closer to achieving your financial goals. And so just. Just. And he brings that same passion for helping people to real estate B school. And then Drew Richmond. She runs sales for Dave Hook David, the Dave Hook team. I've just gotten to know her. She was Dave's first sales hire, if I remember correctly. And she has been doing an amazing job and just leaning into everything that leadership requires and the challenges of becoming a leader and going from player to coach and that transition, we're all making it or we've made it. And so I just thought that actually it was Peterson's idea to bring. Bring Drew on as well, to give a perspective of having gone from agent to leader. So let's give him a big round of applause, like, a virtual round of applause, and let's get it going here. So I don't know how we can do. I guess if you guys all unmute yourself. No, not all of you. Just Dan, Drew, and Greg. Because I don't think I can put you. Just the four of you on my screen. I don't think we can do that. Right, Stacy? No, they have to unmute themselves, and then they should come to the top.

If you guys are looking at, like, speaker view.

Yeah, if you guys put on speaker view, like, the little. Yeah, speaker view, then. Dan, if you start speaking. Drew, unmute yourself and speak. And Greg, I think you guys will pop to the top of my screen so at least I can see you.

What's up, Lars?

What up? What up? Greg, you there?

I'm here.

Drew, you there? Hi. All right. They didn't come to the top. That's okay. Nope, they don't. Sorry. Let's see. I thought you were right, though. I thought that was what's supposed to happen. Let me see if I can. They're not on page one. It'll be all right. We'll get through it. Well, with speaker view, is it at least pulling them up to speaker view when they talk? It should.

Cold air.

Okay. Jessica says they are. So we're good. All right, so let's do a quick, like, one minute, Dan, give some perspective on your journey as a leader in a minute. Gives, you know, let people know who you are, what all that stuff, and then Greg will have you go. And then Drew will have you go.

Awesome. So, yeah, we're. We're in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. Our goal this year was roughly 3.25 million GCI, but with good old Rona, we are back to square one kind of replanting things. Stepped out of production early 2017 as a leader on the team. I love to lead. And I forget. I think Dave Hook, he gets brought up a lot. Dave, you're a smart dude, but people are here because of us as team leaders. And I love the responsibility and love to impact lives on our team. And whatever we give and this is what we preach to our teams, whatever we give you guys, it's so that you guys can go impact your friends, family, and the people you meet. But I kind of stuck with that. You know, that's what I love, and that's what I'm passionate about personally. But impacting other lives and passing that loan to other people and watching other people grow my passion.

Awesome. I should have did. Ladies first. Drew, why don't you jump in here, give a quick intro.

Okay. I feel like a super small fish on this panel here, but I have been in this position for exactly one year. I started as a sales director in April of 2019, 2018, and before that I was in full production as a player like you mentioned, and moved into this position a year ago. Last year, we did about 255 sides, and this year we are hoping for just over 300.

Awesome. And do not underestimate your impact in this time we have together because you bring a very, very unique insight that we may not get otherwise.

I would say what might make us a little bit different right now is we've been shut down for a full seven weeks of no in person activities.

Yeah, that's tough. All right, so, Greg Miller, give us your quick intro.

I too, have been shut down, so I understand your pain there. I am in southwestern Michigan. Been in real estate for about 17 years. Been married 26, 27 years. Have four kids. Start out with a team long before a team was a thing. And just slow growth. Very, very slow growth. Did about 330 units last year. Goal was 400 this year. We'll see if we make it or not. And been working on really targeted. Working on leadership skills for about five years now in every manner I can. A lot of bumbling around, but getting closer.

Yeah. So I like what you said there. You know, it's not. It's slow growth. I feel like everyone in our industry is like, I'm just going to grow no matter what. You know, it doesn't matter if I lose a relationship or my physical health. I'm just going to grow. So I appreciate you mentioning that. I want to start out with a question. Just how are you guys managing personally through. Through the last couple months? You know, just like, you know, I've Got kids, everything hit the fan. Like, just speak openly about. And Drew, I'll let you go first. How are you managing personally? How has life changed personally? How are you managing to have all the business be at home and the kids at home and all of that?

Yeah, I think that. I think it's gone in waves throughout the seven weeks. I know that in the first couple days of it, we really bumbled a lot with a schedule and a routine for our family. We have one 8 year old who's in second grade, and it is great to have an older child throughout this, but also he doesn't have a sibling that is kind of playing with him throughout this and keeping him engaged throughout the day. So there is an aspect of I have to do both, but I think about. So we were shut down on a Friday, and I think by Wednesday we finally found like a routine and came up with a lesson plan and like a schedule for the day, which most of you have, and got him involved in doing those things. And I think it might have been the Holloways who mentioned this of just being able to match your schedule and your business schedule with your kids schedule so that you were able to give, you know, wherever you were, you got to be all there. And so that. That is the one thing that has helped me get through this, is just having a schedule and being able to be all there in each of my activities.

Man, it only took you three days to figure out the schedule. We're like, I'm like five weeks in, and we're like, what?

It was a rough three days.

All right, all right, Greg, how are things changed? Personally, unmute.

I'd like to move on to the next question, if we could please.

Just.

Train wreck. I mean, popcorn all over my bedroom floor. Popcorn in my bed. We're watching movies every night. I watched some terrible series on Netflix. My kids, pretty sure they're not studying anything right now. Luckily, they're all old enough that they can read and write, so I figure at least they can get on to society and be some. Some help there. I worked through the last economic downturn and I did not handle that well. And my personal relationships and I got really cranked up. And I generally worked a lot to begin with, so I just worked more and more at the expense of everything. So I've just been kind of relaxed. Like, yeah, if we lose our house and cars and money, like, there's. It'll be all right. And I'm just much more calm and I think I have a better perspective this time. We're working hard. We're trying the best we can. Well, I don't think we're trying the best we can, but we're trying something and it's just kind of a mess and I'm not letting it bother me. Probably for the first time in my life.

Awesome. That's good honesty. Take Dan.

Yeah, so I went from having, in my opinion, really, really, really close to a perfect schedule before all this. And it was about a week and a half, two weeks prior to Rona. Good old Rona. I had Friday half day planned out strategically for writing, clarity, break, spend some time with my daughter, finish up in the office, just, you know, any loose ends from the week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had planned going to the gym on the calendar from 12 to 2 and this hit and I was like, well damn, that's everything for a flip. I've been lucky because our office is about four minutes away from my house so I can drive through the neighborhood and I have some privacy. So the beauty of this and kind of coping with it is I'm a little bit more. I was pretty deliberate already with time blocking and how I spent each half hour time block of the day, but just being more deliberate about spending time, number one, with our admin staff and leadership teams in the morning and then working on X, Y and Z. But also at least three, if not four days of the week, getting out by three, 3:30, heading to the house and spending proper quality family time. And what I found has been really, really important when I do get home. I've always been, at least for the last two, three years, pretty good about setting the cell phone down in real estate stocks. Even more deliberate just with everything that's going on. You can get so overwhelmed with the what ifs if this is going to happen. Oh my God, I need to re budget the mindset for me anyways has been 80% bring it on anxiety but, but it seems like I can leave a lot of that stress here at the office. Even more so of the unknown versus bringing it back to the house and totally unplugged from real estate when I'm with the family. So that's just being just more deliberate at this point and trying to be enforced into it because turn on the news and it's negativity, negativity and you know what? Number one, I'm not going to watch it and number two, when it's family time, let's be even more deliberate than it was. So that's, that's kind of the personal side and makes for a little bit of the business.

Awesome. 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 a 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 businessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.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 realestatebschool.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.