Sustainability - What Is It and How do We Achieve It?

All right, welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. This is Lars Hedinborg, founder of Real Estate B School and co founder of a real estate team in Charlotte, North Carolina. High Performance Real Estate Advisors. If you're new to the podcast, a little bit of context. I started in real estate 12 years ago, 12 and a half years ago. Served close to over three under 4,000 families at this point. Built a real estate team that was able to run 99% without me for the last sort of six, seven years or so. So that is the basis of this podcast. It's the good, bad and ugly of doing all of that. Six and a half years ago, I launched Real Estate B School to help others that are coming along this path of building a team just to make it easier for them. So that's a little bit of context. And today I want to talk about something that I am really passionate about, and it is really the backbone, the foundation of why Real Estate B School was launched in 2013. It's this concept of sustainability. And so the title of today's podcast is Sustainability in Business. What is it and how do we achieve it? And I want to give an example. Well, first, I want to start out by defining sustainability. So in business, to have a sustainable business means that you have a business that has a life outside of you. And it doesn't mean that everything needs to happen in the business without you. I mean, clearly most real estate team leaders won't leverage themselves 100% out of their business where they have no responsibility whatsoever. So it's okay to have a position in the business, and it's good to stay in production if you want to stay in production. So it's not the end all, be all to build this thing as it just runs without you. And there's no such thing as mailbox money or passive income, really, from a business. The concept, though, it calls us into action as business owners, as business builders, to build the business in a way where it's systems driven. So you build systems in the business and you have people run those systems. So even if you're listing homes, you know, that's still part of the job that you do in the business, or you're managing people, you have systems that are in place where if you had to replace yourself in the position of a listing agent or the position of a sales manager, or, you know, if you're the CEO of the business, you could replace yourself because you have a system in place. You have meetings that run, you have data that you track, you have leads that are Generated automatically, they're followed up in a certain way. Your consultations with buyers and sellers are consistent. Your transaction coordination process is consistent. The way you onboard a new listing is consistent. The way you follow up, you know, with leads or the way you follow up with folks after they close is consistent. And it's all systems driven. So all of that to me is a definition of sustainability. And, and I want to give you an example of something that I did that was not sustainable. And now I figured out how to bring sustainability into the area of my life, which is my physical body. So this is a really funny example when I look back on it because it really lends itself what I did in my physical body to take care of myself physically is what a lot of us do in business. It's these grand gestures. And so in 2000, I guess it was 2014, I decided to, well, 2015 probably I wasn't a runner necessarily, but I decided that I was going to get in shape and I was going to run a marathon. Hadn't ever run more than really anything until I think I started running the latter part of 2014. And so of course I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in DC. It was October 2015. My goal was to do it under four hours, which was pretty aggressive. Of course I blew it in the early part of the race. I ran way too fast my first six or eight miles. I had nothing left for the last six or eight miles. So I didn't achieve the goal of four miles. The point though is that training for a marathon is not sustainable. Like to me I didn't want to, I didn't, I didn't really want to become a runner. Going out for four hours on a Saturday and leaving my family to train or being on vacation, having to run a 20 mile run when I should be with my family. So it wasn't done with a focus on sustainability. Now what I figured out in my physical body is that all I need to do every week is two strength workouts and two cardio workouts, 45 to 60 minutes each. Really intentional, really focused. And then I have a bunch of self care things that I work on. I do a two hour massage every week. I make sure I get seven and a half hours of sleep. I drink a gallon of water every week. What else do I do for my physical body? So anyway, those are the practices that I put in place that are now it's just sustainable. I don't do these grand gestures in my physical life to take care of my physical body that most of us do as hard charging type A sort of D if you follow the disc personality visionary business builders. We're always looking for these grand gestures. The problem is in business it can kill momentum in your business and it can really discourage your team. An example of this, of a great gesture in business or like this is the thing we're going to do now, like I did in my physical body was like, alright, I'm going to train for a marathon. Everyone was like, you're not even a runner, what are you doing? It's like it's going to be great. It's going to get me in shape. It's going to be. The thing I didn't tell you about the marathon is that I took off two and a half years from running after that marathon. I was so discouraged, I was so put off by running. I hated running. I hated everything about running. And so the grand gestures in business, let's say you go to a conference and you hear a new idea and you come back and you implement this idea for your team or you're advertised to about a new seller lead gen platform. I've heard people paying $5,000 for a setup fee, $3,000 a month for instant offer leads plus a 30% referral fee. Like the craziness that that goes on, that wasn't even in any plan whatsoever. It's these grand gestures, these things that we do that are. It's the end all, be all, it's a game changer quote unquote. I hate the term game changer. So nothing very little actually changes the game in business. And so watch out for these grand gestures because they're not sustainable. The last part here, and I've kind of touched on it a little bit, is that it's this shiny object syndrome, right? You are constantly distracted in your business by the things that aren't going to have the long term results. So if you really take a long term view of your business, you wouldn't be so easily distracted. You would know that the whole game in real estate is, you know, yeah, I've got to generate some leads, I've got to set appointments, I've got to meet them, I've got to sign them, I've got to service those buyers and sellers, get them under contract, get them to closing in a way where they're going to just scream great things, you know, sing your praises at closing and you can utilize that testimonial back in the marketing. And this is virtuous cycle that we create in business. The shiny object syndrome would have you thinking and I, we onboard clients all the time. In the last three or four years, they've been on more platforms like Commissions Inc. A Firepoint, a Boomtown, a Sierra Interactive. They've been on more platforms than they. So less than every year. So, like, you know, every nine months they're changing platforms, thinking that that's the thing that's gonna help them achieve at a high level. I've been with Boomtown since 2008, and it's not so much that Boomtown is or isn't the best platform. It's the fact that I've been consistent staying with a single platform, knowing that there's no game changer, you know, out there that's gonna. That's gonna be worth changing and losing momentum for. So it's this going deep in your business, going deep in your personal, in your physical body, with your spiritual body, your spiritual health. A good example for me spiritually is, you know, I would do a grand gesture, you know, of, you know, reading the Bible in a year and getting so focused on the grand gesture, the reading the Bible in a year, that I wasn't even really spending quality time with God. And now I've shifted it to I'm still reading a Bible plan. It's just 30 to 45 minutes a day where I'm quiet, I'm reading, and I'm actually in the Word and then I'm meditating right afterwards. So it's just this practice that I put into place that's absolutely sustainable, that over time I will develop a deeper relationship with God. Good example, like Bible in a year. To me, it works for some people. For me, though, it was just checking the box. And now I just commit to the sustainable practice of. Of 30 to 45 minutes. And it's not even seven days a week. So I took a step back. I wanted to do something that I knew could be sustainable. And as part of my Monday through Friday ritual, I do 30 to 45 minutes where I read and then I meditate and I use the Abide app, A, B, I, D, E, which I think is phenomenal. So hopefully that is a little glimpse into what I've discovered about me personally. And I think my personality type is quite similar to a lot of us that get into real estate. And we know that there's more than just ourselves doing this business. We know that we can have a bigger impact with a team and building leverage around us through sustainable systems empower people. And in all of that, we can build a profitable business that has a life beyond ourselves. And it's this balance between time, money and stress that I talk a lot about. And if that balance is messed up for you, we've got to have a conversation. The only thing I can offer you is a conversation about your business, where you are today, where you want to go, and what the heck is holding you back. It's a business growth strategy session and it's a way into our pilot program. So it's 30 days of free coaching to help you set up a three year to help you get really clear on where you want to be three years from now to build a one year plan and to chunk that out in the first 90 days and build cadence. This weekly cadence. We follow his 3190 practice in real estate B school. And that's what the pilot program is, helping you build that out. If you qualify, there's no charge whatsoever for the pilot program. Just go to realestatebschool.com and there's a clear call to action there. There's an orange banner just to see if you qualify. Get in there and take action. And we look forward to seeing you there. Have a good one. By.