Taking a Holistic Approach to Your Business - Part 3

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. This is part three of taking a holistic approach to your business. So if you missed part one and part two, you've got to go back two episodes. If you're just new to the podcast or the order got messed up as you're going for a run or a walk or whatnot and you're downloading episodes out of order, this is, I'm hoping you're just appreciating what Dave is going into and how he's digging into how he measures growth foundationally, how he looks at his business and his life and how he grew his team and how he's using his business to bless others. That's the biggest challenge that Dave had for me in my business was to, you know, how could I use my business as a ministry to bless others. And you know, he has Project Lamplight, he calls it now, where he serves random urgent needs in the community. We have Compassion Impact program where I think we're up to like $250,000. We've served over the last four years since we've launched this nonprofit and it's all because of meeting Dave Hook and just a cool cat. And you're going to love, I know you're loving it. This is part three and the only thing I ask, and I've asked it for a while now, is for you to share this podcast. Got to get the message out about real estate b school that there is a path to freedom to if you make the right moves in your business and also leave us a 5 star review, that'd be much, much appreciated and as I always say, much love and respect. The love comes from the fact that we're all brothers and sisters and I just have a lot of love for you if you're on this path and respect, I respect you if you're willing to step out of your comfort zone and go down a different path and challenge the status quo in our industry. So stay tuned for part three and we'll talk soon.

I want to talk about the legacy of a holistic business and wrap up the setting a vision for something a little bit bigger. Six steps to building a Compassion program and measuring growth and success by how much is given. When I decided to get out of real estate when I was 30, 31 years old and came back from Haiti, some very wise counselors talked to me and they I was going to start like a homeless shelter and they told me that homeless shelters have the same budgetary issues and financial issues and HR issues as a real estate company. So I talked to them and they convinced me that as real estate agents we're positioned in people's home and they're telling things about their problems and their grief and their celebrations before often they're telling their closest friends and I'm asking them to sign a listing contract and what would it look like to have a business that's a for profit business but had a not for profit purpose? What would it look like to ask them a 16 word question? Who do you know in the community with a random urgent need that we can serve? And so we started a non profit called Project Lamplight and we wrapped our business around it to help serve a bigger cause and use our vehicle to do that. And I got back into real estate and I hooked up with Lars and he helped me and real estate b school helped me to build that kind of a business. Six steps to build a Compassion Program in your business who here has some sort of a compassion program in your business? Raise your hand A good many awesome. So here's six simple steps to how we first built our Compassion program. Every time a closing comes in. Number one, put a percentage of your profit into a bank account. Number two, get bank checks without your name on them so they're anonymous. Number three, consider two or three events per year that you'll invite your database and ask the 16 word question. When you send the mailers out to invite the people to your event, just call behind the mailers, ask them if they're going to make it. Feel free to ask them if they know of anybody buying a home, selling a home or investing in real estate. And before I let you go, who do you know in the community with a random urgent need that we can serve? If you put that on some of your mailers and newsletters here and there and you ask that question just like home referrals, over time you'll start to get text calls and emails and you'll be surprised at the conversations you have with people in your database. And before long those text calls and emails will come on a regular basis with people in your databases, neighborhoods and at church or at work with a random urgent need. See, in our community it's really hard to get emergency money. You can get food stamps, you can get long term housing care from the government. But it's really hard to get money in 48 hours if you have a major problem. As the text calls and emails come through, deploy an eight question Google form to the person referring the need. And then when it comes in and populates a spreadsheet Deploy somebody on the team to deliver the check to the person referring the need and just instruct them when they deliver the check to the recipient. To coach the recipient that it's just coming from an anonymous local business that wanted to help them out and ask them to celebrate how the recipient received it with you and your team. Then ask the 16 word question to team members at each and every meeting. This is just a spreadsheet that is populated whenever random urgent needs come in. And it's a challenge in my business to measure the growth and success of my business by a number of things. I talked about measuring the growth and success of our business first by all three or four components in the business. Putting measurables around ourselves, Finance, operations and sales. I talked about measuring the growth and the size of our business, not by the number of people in it, by the growth of the people already there and the development of them. Using a vision for the future for next year that they can graduate to providing traction to let them know how they're getting there and then using an agent performance agreement to help them put measurables around ourselves. Finance and operations. And the last section is measuring the growth and success of our business. Maybe all that stuff is flat for one year, but if we're able to give generously to something bigger and use our business as a vehicle to do that, I'd call that a successful business. And these are some of those stories. We're able to help about 40 or 50 people each year. They come through the program. Just a few weeks ago, a woman named Sarah Lynn came into the office. Sara Lynn's 38 years old. And Sarah Lynn was one of those determined recipients who asked the person who gave her the check, by the way, who gave that to you? And they said no. They want to remain anonymous. But Sarah Lynn was super persistent. She wouldn't take no for an answer. She was a good objection handler. And the person from our ministry didn't know how to handle objections. In fact, he can't speak because he's handicapped, so he just wrote on his iPad who it was. And Sarah Lynn showed up in our office a few weeks ago and a couple of our team members were there. And Sarah Lynn's 38 years old, she has four kids and she just wanted to thank us. And we don't get this all too often, but with tears in her eyes, she said, my mom and dad died a number of months ago and we lost our safety net. She said, my husband was in an accident at work and he lost his ear. Couldn't work and I started to have heart trouble and I lost my job. Her youngest son was sitting there at the conference table playing a video game and he's autistic. They live on a really busy road. And the youngest son understandably had some behavioral issues, was running out into the road and the other kids were chasing him out into the road. And with tears in her eyes, Sarah Lynn looked at my team and I and said, I know 100% for fact that if it wasn't for you, I would have lost my kids. See, what happened was somebody called social services and social services delivered Sarah Lynn some papers and said that they were going to take her kids from her and she didn't have money to put up a fence. They just wanted her to put up a fence. It was $2,000. So she lowered her pride and did what anybody would do. She asked for help and somebody knew of a little ministry locally and they submitted an eight question Google form. I didn't even see it come through. We approved it. We had a check. And she said with conviction, if it wasn't for you guys and the homes that you're selling, I would have lost my kids. When we focus on things that don't matter that much, we lose sight of the things that do. I just want to end here with a few action steps that might be helpful to help you build a business that gives back to you and your family, enriches the lives of your team members, and maybe has the capacity to give back to your community. Number one, think about your 2019 business goals if you could just for a moment. I know you may already have them documented, but what would it look like to reconsider those goals next year? Even pause or slow sales? If you were going to grow by 50%, what would it look like to grow by 15 in exchange for a goal or measurable relating to improving yourself, time spent with your spouse, your finances or your systems and operations and share that with your coach to hold you accountable. Number two, what would it look like to think about each team member or team members? Think about your 2019 goals. What would it look like to ask to consider written goals related to yourselves, days per year with your spouse, your finances, net worth, or improving the lives your lives with systems or leverage, and ask your team leader to hold you accountable or somebody else on your team. Think about people in the community, something outside yourself and your business that you care about. What would it look like to include a small goal related to how much your team can give to that cause? In 2019, over and over again, I compare my insides, my whole self to other people's 10% of the iceberg. And the reality is I never stop to think that they have other stuff under the hood. And so do I. This isn't me advocating for taking our eye off sales. The reality is there's an epidemic in our industry. We're afraid often to lead, generate, to be in the office for a couple hours every morning, making our calls, prospecting. And it's hard, but it has to be done at the highest level, especially with the market that we're going into, or all of this won't work. So it's not me advocating to not measure sales. If anything, sometimes accountability and measurement on sales is the thing that drives us forward. But it is me also advocating that there's other components to our business. And a healthy business isn't just focused on sales because what we measure is what we focus on. And what we focus on expands. And if we focus all of our attentions on things that don't matter as much, we often lose sight of the things that do. Thanks so much.

We got any questions?

That was awesome, Dave.

Really good. Give him some questions. Let's not let them off the stage yet. So kind of a random question, but when you ask people if they know anyone that has a random need, what do you say to them if they ask you what you're asking that for?

Yeah, great question. So if they're asking me that question, I just tell them we have a local faith based ministry that our business helps to fund that seeks to take care of random urgent needs in the community. So if they know of anybody, we'd love for them to partner with us by delivering the check in an anonymous way so that the recipient doesn't know where it from, came, came from. And they've earned the right to partner with that friend. We don't know them, we're not in social work, but they obviously know of the need and so they have the capacity to talk to them like a friend when they deliver the check.

The one thing I'll say, and man, that was just awesome. So I don't think he said it exactly, but it was. When you take a long term view of the different areas of your life, business, business included, I think you see things differently, you know, and that's. I think what you've helped me with is just take a longer term view, you know, if you're taking a longer term view of your marriage, work this year isn't as important.

Right.

Because I want to be married in the future, you know, instead of just like when I get the work done, then I'll be able to spend more time with the kids and then I'll be able to love my wife more and, you know, I'll get the net worth built up. So. So it's just this long. That's been my biggest shift in the last two, three years is just this long term view of life and succeeding at a really high level in all the areas of your life and it's not talked about in our industry. So again, just give a huge round of applause for Dave. All right, one more question.

So it's not really a question, but I really want to commend you for your generosity because this is why we do this at least. You know, I really connected with you on how much you give of yourself. And in this business, we do get tied up and drawn in. I was an educator before I did real estate. And I had to stop and really come back to what do I value most and just really think about that. So what you're doing by giving back to the community is exact. I mean, I connected with Richard Branson when he said once, just have fun, do your passion, and the money will come. It just follows. And that's exactly what you're exemplifying. You're doing what you love most and the money will just fly. So I want to say thank you.

You're welcome. And thank you for saying that. He did and I did and things got a little better. The girl with the dentist, he still hadn't graduated dental school yet. So I started talking to her. See, my brother married her sister, so we saw each other on the holidays, a little bit of inroad on Easter. So I asked her to come back and move back to our town. I sold her a house. It was the best sale I ever made. And I asked her to marry me. And she. She said yes. And things got really good. But under the guise of family, in my mid to late 20s, I told my wife that I really needed to. I really needed to focus on building a net worth and a passive income so we could retire. Because, see, my dad had a net worth that was high when he was 30, and so I probably should too. So I pursued that with everything I had. When I turned 30, 31, I had met my net worth goals and I was worth a million dollars. Had done three or four hundred sides in our brokerage that I oversaw. Voted best realtor for 100 years since 1902. And I was empty. So I went to the country of Haiti for the third time with my wife. And it was a little bit different this time. I met a little girl named Lovely who was 7 years old, about this tall, and I met her in a village called Canaan. And I bent down and I got to know her and I learned that she wasn't going to eat that day. And she doesn't know any day she wakes up if she was going to eat. And yet her family and her relationships were more faithful and more content and more happy than I was on a good day. So I decided to quit real estate and get out of it altogether and go into some sort of ministry. And I prayed to that God that I had been focusing on things that didn't matter and lost sight of the things that did. If he would take me back, I would follow him. And he did and I did. And I'll jump back in that story in a minute. I want to get into what we're talking about, about a holistic business, but real quick. For that 12 year period, I had compared my insides, my whole character to other people's outsides, to their 10% that people could see. And I didn't know what was going on in their lives. I was just shooting for what I could see. The top line sales and transaction count, what made my ego feel good. And it sucked the life out of me. The businesses sucked the life out of me and my relationships and almost killed me at times. And the reality is I didn't know anything about Dawn. I didn't know, and now I do, that her family was a wreck, she lost custody of her kids and she was arrested for fraud in the state of Pennsylvania and lost her broker's license. It consumed two years of my life. My dad is a good man. I love him to death. He taught me a lot. I should have known. But on his insides in pursuit of his business success, which was awesome, he went through three divorces and was working on his fourth relationship. And when we focus on things that don't matter as much, we lose sight of the things that do.

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 is for you. Head over to getbusinessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from overwhelmed real estate agent to 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 realestatebeastchool.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.