Slow Down to Speed Up: How to Get Out of the Grind & Build a Systems-Driven Real Estate Business (Even If You’re NOT a Systems Person)

Our last episode we got into Dave Friedman's business and he revealed how he went from 65 transactions or so with a part time administrator, this was about five years ago, to over 300 transactions. I think this year he'll do 350 transactions where he is elevated completely out of his business. He was sharing with us that he took 30 days off the grid unreachable from his business. So how does someone go from working 70, 80 plus hours a week selling 60 to 65 homes to selling over 300 transactions on the right economic model? I will say that we do not ever want to bring anyone onto this podcast to talk about anything other than a business that is built on sound business principles. And so the right economic model, seven figure profit plus. And now he's able to take 15 weeks vacation a year and even 30 days at a time away from his business. And it came down to this simple. Well, I'll say simple and it's not easy for everyone to wrap their head around. And so this follow up episode I want to go deep into what to do if you're not a systems person. So Dave talked about how he built a business or how he looked at his business as a system of systems, how he looked at simple things. He talked about listing packets and preparing for listing appointments. How could he get that activity off of his plate? It would take him 30, 45, maybe even 60 minutes to prepare for listing appointments. How could he build a system, you know, come alongside somebody and sit down with them and have the patience to teach them that system so he can be out of that activity forever? And that is what I want to spend some time on today, you know, taking it a little bit to my journey. This was my mindset as well. I viewed my business as what if? Or this was my guiding question. What if I couldn't do any of it and I still had to own this business? It's the E Myth question. How would I think about my business differently if I were to replicate it 10,000 times? So let that sink in for a second. Think about the activities you did in your real estate business over the last week or so. And if you had to replicate your business as it is today 10,000 times, how could you possibly do it? So it's a mindset challenge, right? If you're not a systems person, how do you break it down and make this commitment to get out of the grind of real estate? You know, you're committing in the short term to go through a little bit of pain in that you have to slow down a little bit. You have to slow down in the near term so you can speed up in the long term. And if you look at a 10 year journey, let's say from where you are today, no matter how many homes you're selling, to where you could be even five years from now, what's the thing that's going to allow you to make more money in less time with less stress? And it is the trade off. You're making the trade off, building a system, slowing down, taking some time to do that, hiring someone who will make a whole lot less money per hour than you. And they're also more gifted at the things that you struggle the details I remember before I had administrator, before I built out a system for listing packets or preparing for listing appointments, I was the one doing it and I was not ready for listing appointments. I didn't have packets together where I could just grab three on a Saturday. That was my rhythm for two to three years on a Saturday I would 9, 11 and 1. I would just go out and list two to three homes on a Saturday. They were all prepped for me, including all the market comparables and equity evaluation tool that we use in real estate B school and all the listing of pack packets to take the listing the right way where I could hand it off to my administrator. And all the information was in there on the Monday to launch the listing. And so it's a commitment to think about what your business could be like in the future if you viewed it with a mindset of I can't do all of this myself. And it's the willingness to let go of the things you're doing now in your daily routine that aren't leading you closer to meaningful goals in the areas of life and business that matter most to you. And it always came down for me and for Dave. I want to make more money in less time and I don't want to experience a bunch of stress. So we naturally had a systems mindset and we naturally spent time in the entrepreneurial vision casting type type role. Right? E Myth I've talked about E Myth on the podcast here before. E Myth is there are three people inside of us. The technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. And. And most of the time folks spend all of their time in the technical role and they don't spend time as a manager thinking about and building systems or hiring people to do those systems. And they surely don't spend any time as the entrepreneur visioning about what the business could look like and then working with their inner manager. To get the business closer to what they see in their mind or they write on paper for their vision. And so I want to give a little bit of tactical here. And this applies to Dave's journey, it applied to my journey, all of our most successful members. And this is for someone that you're an emerging team or you're an established team, yet the business is not scaling and there's way too much chaos consistently. So it's bringing a whole bunch of stress that you're carrying into your home life. You're out of bounds on your calendar. Those sorts of things start with a vision. In real estate B school we call it a 3:1:90. It is a three year vision, a one year plan and then you live 90 days at a time. And when it comes to this approach where you're actually building out a new business so it doesn't matter where you are today, it's the vision of what you see in the future and then bringing what you have today as close to that vision as possible in a series of one year plans and then 90 days at a time. So four quarters per year in each quarter, all you're deciding to do is work on two or three systems. So basically one system per month. And it could be as simple as having someone either virtually or physically an assistant or an administrator prepare for listing appointments. That's an example of one system. If you're running a team already and you know your agents aren't converting at a high level on buyer consultations, you probably don't have a buyer system in place. So you need a buyer presentation, you need a pre appointment process put in place with scripts and bombbomb videos and potentially, you know, we send out brownies to folks before we meet with them. You're thinking about what system can get the result on the buy side and what can I spend time building and then have people follow the system and buyer packet. Same thing. All of the, the information is in there in a packet for you to list buyers. That's an example of another system. Tracking. Tracking. In your business that is something that most team leaders don't do the way they should do. Yet. It's just an example of another system. What's another example? There's, there's like dozens and dozens of systems that we have at real estate B school. You just need to decide on your biggest pain point right now. What's the thing you're doing repetitively in your business every day or every week? And how could you build out a protocol which is simply opening up a Document and writing out the steps and maybe recording some videos on either bombbomb or software called Loom L o o m. It's just a screen share software. And then you're just putting those, do this, this, this, watch this video for this next step, then do this, this, this, watch another video. And that's the system. Right? So that's the second thing I want to go through here is how do you actually build a system? And Dave talked about it a little bit. Once you wrap your head around. The first thing I wanted to share, which was the 3190 in the 90 day world is deciding on which, prioritizing which systems need the most attention right now and, and working to get those built and off your plate before you move on to the next one. And then I would say the third thing I want to impress upon you is a willingness to be open and honest with yourself about where you are spending your time. I believe the biggest obstacle to get us from where we are today to where we want to be in the future. And this is in any area of your life in which business is only one, there are eight to 10, depending on how you measure it, eight to 10 big buckets of your life. Business should only be one. So when you think about where you spend your time, be honest with yourself. Are you saying that you want to show up in business and make double the amount of money? Are you saying that you want to spend more time with your kids? Are you saying that you want to spend, you know, you want to get physically in shape or spend more time with your creator and your spiritual journey, yet you're watching two to three hours of Netflix a night. You say you want to show up and have the energy to achieve in all these areas, yet your diet is really poor and you're not carving out the time to work out and you're making excuses about how you don't have time to focus on those things, right? So it's the constant struggle with the urgent versus the important. And that's where I want to end. This is be honest with yourself. What's urgent versus what's important. And often the urgent trumps the important and you can't get the important back. Your health, your physical health. If you keep saying no to eating well and keep saying no to working out and keep saying no to getting better sleep, you're going to have a very urgent situation in a heart attack, right? And then all of a sudden the urgent, you know, the stuff that was not urgent but critically important now becomes life and death. I mean, that is a dramatic example and it's a real example. Someone I'm really close with, this happened to them recently where they're just kept kicking the can on their health and they kept selling a ton of real estate, working seven days a week out of bounds all the time, working evenings and weekends, good money, supporting their family. And at the, at the end of it was a potentially life threatening situation. Luckily, this person is okay. They're on the mend. Yet that's a real example of someone that I know and I care about that kicked the can on some of those things. And so we just have to be honest with ourselves and have real conversations. And so if you're at the point in your journey where some of this stuff resonates and you, and you want to understand how to build more leverage and you know, you want to understand how do you possibly balance being a team builder with, you know, being a life builder and you know, a family builder and you know, how do you win in real estate and how do you win in your home and in your physical body and be emotionally well and be connected to God and all of those things. Just have a conversation with us. Let's, let's, let's engage in conversation. Go to joinrebs.com joinrebs.com and you you can see exactly what our program looks like and exactly how you can plug in to our program. I only have love and respect for you. We bring you this podcast because we care about you more than just the amount of homes that you sell. Much love and respect. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other team leaders who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. If you want to learn step by step how to build a profitable real estate team that allows you to get out of the real estate grind and live the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. Visit us@joinrebs.com that's joinrebs.com Our coaching, training systems and support will help you get more high quality leads, increase your conversions and sales, improve your client experience and allow you to scale your real estate business, all while reducing the amount of hours you work and the stress you endure. Just go to joinrebs.com for more info now. See you on the next episode. Sam.