Stop Selling and Start Building a Business - Part 2

Hey, welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. This is part two of Stop Selling and Start Building a Business where Andy Mulholland basically goes through his journey of, you know, real estate agent, super busy, you know, time and money, that whole thing not making sense to true business owner, where he was able to exit his business, go down to one to two days a week. He shared with me when we first met that he wanted to be completely out of his business and to be able to take an RV trip with his family and buy a farm out in the country. And he achieved all of those things within three years of meeting Real Estate B School and coming into our world. I didn't do any of the work, so I don't take the credit. And I know I was pretty jealous when he took a 67 day RV trip and he goes into that in part one. You probably heard him talk through that. So if you're listening to this part first or you're new to the podcast, go back and listen to part one and go back and listen to every podcast episode because I believe they're all awesome if you want to make that shift from agent to owner. And that's what Andy's talk is about. So stay tuned for part two. The only thing I ask is, because this is our inner circle, this is members only content. You have to be a part of Real Estate B School to attend our intensive workshops. I ask that you share this on social media and you know, let the word out about Real Estate B School if you're enjoying the podcast and the Business Freedom Podcast in particular and leave us a five star review that's super helpful in rankings and just getting our stuff up there and relevant and just help us achieve our mission of helping agents become owners and their businesses can help them live a life where they can have time and money, freedom and eliminate stress. That is the goal of Real Estate B School. So much love and respect. Stay tuned for part two.

You know, being financially smart is another key piece to my story as well. And I give my wife credit for this. You know, we don't live a lavish lifestyle. We live on a little farm and, you know, we don't drive fancy cars and we, you know, just really are very, very clear about our goals in life. And our goals are my goal and her goal was for me and her to be able to stay at home with our kids. She has for several years, for seven years. And now I am as well. And it's just, it's really great. So that's a little bit about my story you know, thanks, Ryan. Appreciate it. All right, we got that over with now to the fun stuff. So why listen to me? I guess for me. Let me show you and I'll show you. You know, I really built a business that served me and I was really stubborn about that. I wouldn't allow myself to do, to just chase the next transaction. It just wasn't what it was about to me. So I'm not somebody who's going to be able to teach you a lot on how do you sell, you know, a thousand homes? Our team would sell two to 300 homes a year. And we do that pretty consistently and without me heavily involved. And that's really kind of my claim to fame with, with real estate is building a business that served us. Really had a strong mindset about building a business versus a job. I was just, like I said, stubborn about that. This is the picture I want to show you. This is the RV that we bought and the first trip. Where did we go? Black Hills. In fact, we just did all kinds of stuff with it. Here's a couple pictures. But what's cool about this, this isn't about the rv, right? It's about that conversation I had with Lars three and a half years ago. And I was really clear about where I was going. I wanted freedom and the financial ability to spend an entire summer or longer in an RV with my family traveling all over the country. And that's what we do now. So a couple quick photos just because I've got the stage so I get to share photos of my family, which I love doing. Just a few of your. We have a son named Noah. So of course we went to the actual replica of the Noah's Ark. We, you know, 1880s town. Anybody been there? If you have not been there on i90 on your way to South Dakota, like, that is the coolest place. And we actually, you know, we actually did a. What do they call that, a duel. And you can clearly see that I did win because he's barely, he's like, that's our eight year old Noah and he's just got his gun out. We love airplanes, so we do a lot of air shows and things, which is just unbelievable quality time with my kids. I sent Lars a video over the summer when we were traveling of our one year old Leo walking first steps. Like those are things I missed on the first three. And I got with Leo because of what we decided to do with our lives and how we decided to run, you know, our business for the last eight years. That freedom is There, I mean, on the back of my shirt it's says it has the word freedom. What does it say exactly? Business freedom. Right? What is business freedom? Time and money freedom. And that's what we were able to create, by the way. Best way to keep a baby entertained on an RV is a box of Kleenex. Is if you ever take an RV trip, we would fill it up every morning, give it to him whenever we drive. And he would just pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck all day long. All right, so let's get into the actual plan here. So let's talk about the reasons we fail. Then we're gonna go into three areas that I think you gotta focus on. Right? It's all about focusing and keeping it simple. And so there's just three main areas that I found that I had to focus on in order to grow the business and then some tactics to go from the business to the job. Just so I know who I'm talking with. Really quick, just raise of hands here. Who, team size. If you're a solo, anybody in here? Just kind of just themselves. Okay, how about like yourself and one main administrator person? Okay, how about two to five, you know, two to five of you on your team? Okay, that's probably the majority of us. How about, you know, maybe 15ish, 10 to 15 somewhere in there? 5 to 15. Okay. All right, so pretty good sized teams in here. How many of us are team leaders that are still in production? Okay, how many of us are team? So almost all of us. How many are not in production? The rest of you, okay, how many of you that are in production want to get out? If that is your goal with it long term? How many of you do not want to get out and your plan is to at least maintain production, Some production. Okay, so the majority of us are in production, but want to get out and have good sized teams. The great news is you're all in the perfect position to be able to structure it to where you can do that. Right? And you're in the point where I was when I started with real estate B school three and a half years ago. Was that desire maybe not necessarily there yet. So we'll talk about that. All right, here's the question I wanted you to ask yourself. What is holding me back from building the real estate business? I really want. I will tell you. It's, it's. It's important to keep the answer to this question simple. Don't complicate it. We tend to do that to ourselves. Well, this and then this and then this other thing and that there's probably only a couple of things that are really holding you back. The biggest one is probably just the mindset. If you don't have the business you want, meaning the time and money, freedom, because I believe that's what the majority of us want here. What is stopping you? Is it possible to. The next question here, I think we have to ask ourselves this question is, do we truly own a business or do we simply own the place that we go to work? This comes from Michael Gerber's book, the E. Myth, right? So do I truly own a business like a business, Right. Or do I just own the place that I go to work? Do you own a team that is essentially just a brokerage and you're just the broker and that you own the brokerage that you work for? Right. But you own it and you're responsible for all those things. So keep that question in mind as we go through some things today. So the reason that we fail, we make the fatal assumption, right? I made the fatal assumption when I got started, which was if I understand the technical work of a business, I can understand a business that does the technical work, right? This is Michael Gerber's key foundation to the E. Myth. If you haven't read the E. Myth book, read it. It's how I structured my mindset when building my business. But if I understand the technical work, I can do the business that does that technical work. It's just not the case. It's why businesses fail, right? So he talks about the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. Let me just go back and make sure I didn't miss anything there. This is all about the shift. This term is all about the. Or this quote is all about the shift where we move from successful real estate agent to business owner. The problem with real estate in my mind is to become that successful real estate team. Most of us become successful agent first. We've just set ourselves up to be the technician in our business, right? And that's the shift that happens from the moment we're that top producing agent to the moment we decide to build a business. Forget about being in real estate. And there's that mental shift that happens there. So let's talk about these things. The entrepreneur has the vision, right? The entrepreneur personality turns the most trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity. They're the visionary, the dreamer, the energy behind any human activity. Imagination is another word that's used for that. They're the catalyst for change, right? So we all show up in our business as this Entrepreneur. At times, the manager is the implementer of the vision, right? They are pragmatic. Without the manager, there would be no planning, no order, no predictability, right? Some of us are great at this, some of us not so great. I am not a great manager. That's the third role here. In any business, as we're starting here, is the technician. They get the things done for the vision to be manifest. The technician is the doer. If you want it done right, do it yourself. That's the technician's credo, right? Can we see how that can get in the way of building a business? The entrepreneur changes the business. The manager runs the business. The technician masters the craft that the business does. In the beginning, you're all three, right? Who feels like they're all three right now in their business? So let's talk about the role, the different stages of any business. There's really three stages that you'll see. Adolescence begins at the point in your business when the technician decides to get, I'm sorry, infancy. That's when you are the business. You're doing everything. You're that top producing agent, maybe that single agent with an admin. You work all the time, you're having fun. You're not only doing the work you know how to do, but the work you don't know how to do. Then you move into adolescence. This is where, at the point of your business when the technician decides to get some help, right? We've all been there. It's like, I can't do this all myself anymore. Business has grown. The technician can't do it all. So you hire someone like yourself or somebody that can fill that role to help you and you grow. Then there's that maturity, and that is where the technician is past your comfort zone. You either have three options, and I think this is where a lot of us are in the room. You can get rid of everybody and go back to being the infant. You can go for broke, continue to grow and grow until you self destruct or adopt the entrepreneurial perspective. So I think it's important to understand where you're at, what stage your business is at, and how you need to show up in which role you need to show up as. When you embrace entrepreneurial thinking, you shift your relationship to your business by understanding that, number one, your business is not your life. Number two, the business is there to serve your life. You're not there to serve the business. And number three, to have more life, the business cannot depend on you. You have to get out of the way. So We I think a lot of. As I've been coaching and working with more and more agents, I think there's a confusion on the model in some cases, right? And not even with real estate B school, but outside of our group. There is definitely a confusion on the model. The model that works, right? So I have always explained this to our team as the difference between a school of fish and the shark and the feeder fish model. So you just pictured looking, you know, you're snorkeling and you see, see underwater a school of fish, right? All the fish are the same size. They're all like, you can picture this group of fish and they all turn at the same size at the same time. They're all working as one unit and they're a pretty large mass in the water. And you can picture a shark in the water with these feeder fish, right? And they're there to kind of pick up the leftovers from that main. That the shark, right? The common real estate team that I'm finding is that shark and feeder fish model, right? The main agent takes what they want. The rest of the agents get the leftovers. And then there's just cycle and turnover, and turnover. And one fish leaves and the next fish latches on, right? And one fish leaves, the next fish latches on. And the leader, that shark isn't in the minds, in the right mindset to realize that they need to build a school of fish, right? So today's common team is really just a broker within the broker and is not the model for long term time and money freedom for the main agent. Everyone's really an individual, they're doing their own thing. Could leave any time. There's no systems accountability. The lead agent hunts for themselves. The feeder fish gets whatever is left over. And really the lead agent will always be feeding, will always be in production, looking for the next meal. If that's the continued mindset, the next the. The school of fish is a true business, a true school of fish. Everyone's working together, swimming in the same direction, adding value. They are a larger mass in the water because there's a reason for every player, right? We dissect the model and we say, okay, from marketing all the way to closing the sale. And there's an ISA to convert the sale, convert the lead into an appointment. There's the agent to convert the appointment into a signed client. There's a showing assistant to convert the signed client into a purchase agreement. There's a close and so on, right? And every role is super important. And now we have more Of a business. Now we have something that, you know, serves everybody in the whole. The way I always looked at this was I'm gonna build my business from me outside of the circle looking in. I'm not gonna build this to where I'm building systems around me. I'm building systems where, you know, I think the best way for me to explain this is to say, like, when you build a system, you need to remember which hat you're wearing, right? You might be the listing agent, but don't build it for yourself as a listing agent. Build it for. If you replaced yourself, how would that person function in that system? Not how would I, as the team owner that just wants to have more freedom function in that system. Your freedom comes from building the system and replacing yourself. Not necessarily building a system that just gives you that more freedom, if that makes sense. So are we creating a model that requires us to stay in production? Is everything centered around us, like the shark and the feeder fish, right? Is that our business or what we call our business? Are team members serving us or are we serving them? Right? So the team, I mean, you picture these feeder fish going up to the shark and literally cleaning the shark skin. Like, is that what our team members are doing for us? Are we that main agent and they're just taking care of us? Are we building the business from the right perspective, looking in without us involved? That's how I always looked at my business. And I was stubborn about that fact. And I really believe that that's when I made that shift after going to that other brokerage, seeing how that second group of agents that I thought I wanted to be was running their business. I made that shift and never, never looked back. So again, as you consider those things, do you currently own a business or do you simply work or, I'm sorry, own the place that you go to work? If so, what are the areas that are keeping you in a job rather than on the move toward true business ownership? Those are the areas you've gotta focus on. Here's the areas that I focused on. Number one is vision. And here's how I always explain this, is that a business in my mind isn't terribly complicated, right? Business is a reverse engineered plan. So picture building a home, right? You've got the blueprints. It's just a reverse engineered plan from what you want the end result to be. But that's delivered from a vision that's fueled by a why and executed over time. To me, that's the definition of what my business was. It's A reverse engineered plan, very simple, easy to digest chunks, easy to understand. That's derived from a vision that I had of how this could be. That was fueled by my why, of why I wanted to do that and just execute it over time. That's it. It's really that simple. In my mind. The key here is that it starts with a why. Through those difficult times we have to remember, why am I doing this? It's one of the reasons why it was so easy for me to understand why I was ready to get out and be done with the business. I financially and otherwise had the ability to do it. I had options which I had put the time in to build over time. But I knew why. It was so that I could serve my family and be there for my family while my kids were young. And when I realized that that wasn't the case, but I had the option to do that, it was a clear, clear path for me. So you must have a vision then. You must have that vision. Can you actually see it? Can you see yourself out of production? Can you see yourself at home four days a week, showing up in the office one day a week providing huge amounts of value? If that's what I wanted to build. But you actually, can you, can you see it? Can you have that vision around what that looks like? This is what's so great about a group like this is you don't necessarily have to have the vision. I know I didn't, I didn't really believe it could happen. I had to get around other people that were doing it and all of a sudden I could see it. Then you have to have a business plan. That's our vto. For those of you that run, I'm not going to get too deep into eos, but you have to have a plan. We use the vto, the Vision Traction Organizer. It's just a one page strategic plan broken down into bite sized chunks. And I'll show you an example of it. Those have to be focused on leading indicators. So again, it starts with a why from the why. You can create a vision from your vision. You just create a plan and you break it down into bite sized chunks, focusing on those leading indicators. One of the challenges I'm finding as I've been getting involved in more and more in the coaching is I get a lot of agents that are focused on those lagging indicators. They're focused on, well, here's what I want to accomplish. Okay, how do you do that? Well, I don't know. I'm just going to make it happen. Okay, And I think you will. But let's break it down into something that's more digestible and that's those leading indicators that will affect the lagging indicators. So in other words, we're not just going to focus on gci, we're going to focus on how many appointments you got to set this month in order to hit that number. Right. So again, business is a reverse engineered plan derived from a vision fueled by a Y and executed over time. And I think that's the case for any business. So let's see here, are we moving? There we go. So here's an example of a vto. This is a two page document and I'm not going to go into every detail here. But the point here, the key things in here, as you can see, it says 10 year target. Like I'm looking out 10 years and what we're going to do then it has a three year picture on the far right hand side. So I'm breaking it down to three. And that's really where the rubber meets the road is in that three year picture. Okay. On the backside of this we now break it down into a one year plan. How do I now, how do I now execute on the one, how do I stay in line with my 10 year, my three year. What do I have to do this year in order to do that? And then very simply from that, what do I got to do this quarter and maintain my projections for the first for this year? Right. So you can break that down. It's pretty basic and simple. Don't over complicate this part of it in my opinion. And we'll get a little bit into that as well here with the remaining time. A little deeper. But people, again, the right people in the right seats. This comes from EOS as well. You know, it's not just about having people to help you. It's about having the right people and making sure that they're in the right roles. And I think a lot of us in this room have, we understand that, we learn that, we know about it. Leadership, you have to develop it in yourself before you can develop it in others. The biggest mistake I made in leadership was just assuming that my leadership didn't matter and assuming that other people were just going to have it. Or I could buy leadership, right? I could just pay for it and people would show up and lead. It doesn't work that way. It's woven. It's like built over time. It's not just bought or outsourced. It's a learned skill. This was so great about it though. It's not a God given gift. Although some people are more inclined to be great leaders. You can learn this stuff. And the final kind of piece around the people part that I would say is let go of the vine, right? You have to be able to eventually get to the point where you can let go. And this was difficult for me as well. The key around learning to let go is keeping your why in check. When I would get frustrated over an agent not doing something the way that I wanted them to do it, or the way that they were trained to do it a million times we taught them how to do this one thing and they just can't get it right. It would drive me crazy. I would look at the picture on my wall of my family and say I is that really that important? Remember why you're doing this. Easy to let it go, right? Or look at it in a different way. It's not that big a deal, right? So keeping your why in front of you will help motivate you to let go a little bit. Let others try it, let them fail, and that will build it. And really the failure is a big part of it. It's like tempered steel. Make the leadership stronger over time. You have to let people fail. It's not a bad thing. Let him mess up, right? It's part of the process.

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 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 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 Real Estate B school 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.