Tangible Steps You Can Take To Level Up Your Business and Build The Life of Your Dreams

What is up, real estate team builders. Lars Hedinborg here, the founder of Real Estate B School. And today we're going to dive into what I call the real estate Business Growth Navigator. It's a tool I put together after all the pain and suffering of having grown a leveraged, legit run on its own. Real estate business, residential sales, real estate business. And had a great conversation with Brett Jennings. And this is a follow up episode to what Brett had done where he kind of took us through his journey and the, the uncomfortable parts of pushing yourself to grow and, you know, the, well, not the theory behind it. The, the, the reality is if you're not pushing yourself to grow, you are not going to create enough opportunity to surround yourself with true talent. So if you're listening to this podcast, you have this insatiable growth mindset. And there are times where I wish I didn't have it, but I do, God bless me with this ability to see in the future and make these things up in my mind and then do the work, put the plans in place and do the work to achieve those goals. So Brett took us through his journey, solo agent, you know, small team doing a million GCI and not a big team to go to 3, 4, 5 million GCI. And then pivoted in terms of the real ability to scale was that he wanted all agents and all the top agents to be able to operate in his world. And that was just an unbelievable journey. He'll do. I think last year he did 30 million top line. 30 million GCI, not 30 million volume. 30 million top line. And I think what did you say was like 500 million, right? 500 million worth of real estate. I think his goal this year is like a billion or yeah, some crazy number, like a billion in a year. And so it's just an awesome, awesome story. So what I want to do today, and it's been a while that I've done it, is. And you can grab a free copy of what I'm about to go through. It's the Real estate Business Growth Navigator. And there are six distinct, distinct stages of growth that you'll go through from, you know, newly licensed to, you know, full business owner doing 2 to 3 million dollars plus in GCI. So we're going to go through the mindsets required. We're going to like the actual tools and systems. If you're watching this on YouTube, you will see that I'm going to just share my screen. And if you go to real estate business growth, you should be, you can grab a free copy of this. So head over there and grab a copy. And so here's what we're going to do. We're going to break down these six stages of growth. And in particular, the way I want to frame this conversation is that there's six stages. The first stage is the start stage, zero to a hundred thousand GCI. The ramp stage is 100,000 to 500K GCI. So start and ramp are stages one and two. And those two stages combined is what I call I do is you doing it. A lot of folks try to get out of I'm going to do the work. And they try to go to leverage and it's a big disaster. Stage three is called the build stage, 500k to a million. Stage four is the lead stage, 1 million to 1.5. That is called we do it. So it's I do it all myself and. And then we're going to do it together from 500 to 1 million five. And then stage five is the exit stage where you can exit production. And then stage six is the owner stage where you can sit in the owner's box and you don't have to be on the field.

Right?

So that's 1.5 million to 2 million and then 2 million to 3 million plus. So I want to frame the conversation here with this concept that I learned a long time ago, probably 2008 or so. I know it was early 2008 because I came off 2007. I did a calculation. I looked at the adjusted gross income from the year prior from real estate, and I divided it by the number of hours that I worked just to see what I made per hour, and it was $18.50. I grossed like 250 GCI in my first 10 months in real estate. I gave my broker like 75 grand. I didn't realize that I splits and I just didn't realize that whole thing. I generated all my leads on my own. And then from the 175,000 that I kept, I spent whatever, you know, that minus 37,000. So roughly $140,000, you know, over $10,000 a month on a whole bunch of crap that didn't work. And so this concept, you know, we didn't call it Business Freedom Index back then, but it's essentially your hourly worth in your business. Most agents don't make 100 bucks an hour. Most agents don't make 50 bucks an hour. They'll work 2,000, 2,500 hours a year. And they're not making 100 grand or 125 grand. And so it's a very simple calculation. In real estate, it's possible to make more than top attorneys and top surgeons, which is really cool. But you've got to do it with a mindset toward detaching yourself from doing everything in your business. So that's kind of the backdrop to this. Let's, let's go stage by stage. So the start stage is where the whole industry lived. It's, you know, you're making less than 25 bucks an hour. You're probably not even working full time. Honestly, I feel like, you know, you could be resourceful enough at least to get busy. This is in terms of the feelings. You're excited, you're naive, but there's an 80% dropout rate. Some crazy statistic like 80% of agents don't make it to their second anniversary. So they're not paying their MLS dues for the second on the second anniversary.

Right.

Because they're not selling any homes. Average two year agent makes $9,000 gross commission. The average 16 year agent makes 72 or $79,000. Those numbers are straight from narrow crazy. And generally speak. Well, not generally speaking. The whole industry, traditional methods are failing.

Right.

So the strategic question is not very strategic in the start stage. I also, I actually used to call this the survival stage. But the key question is where is my next deal coming from? You know, and to graduate and to get into a six figure plus GCI realm. It's all about keystone habits like time blocking for lead generation, lead follow up building skills. I remember I wore out a script. I generated one lead source and I wore out a script and I organized my leads and I followed up with them. That's all I did for like three years. And I went from 27 sides my first 10 months to 44 my first full year to 58 in my second full year in real estate. Just doing those things.

Right.

Um, and what you need to know about each of these stages that you can't stop doing the things from the stage before when you graduate stages. So I'll see agents, you know, get up to 250 or so GCI and then they, their habits go downhill. They're not learning new skills because they don't have an eye toward growth. They don't believe that business ownership is possible or whatnot. And the structure in the start stage is you're a solo agent. 85% of agents don't have an administrator. It's crazy, crazy, crazy. So stage two is the ramp stage. This will take you from 100k to 500k and it'll take you to about 50 bucks an hour all in. If you're building it with an eye toward growth so you can make more, you can, you know, you could probably make a hundred bucks an hour if you're milking the business. You don't have an administrator, you're working way too many hours, that sort of thing. So this stage, there's a feeling of hopefulness and you're really busy. You're wondering if there is more to life than real estate. And the strategic question is, where do I need leverage the most? Keep in mind these strategic questions. You're only asking yourself these questions if you have an eye toward growth, right? If you somehow trip into stage two and you're not growth minded, you're not asking yourself where do I need leverage the most? You're asking yourself the same question you did at the start stage, which is where's my next deal coming from? Where's my next deal coming from versus I was asking myself, where do I need leverage the most so I can continue to grow, right? So to get to the next level, which is the build stage, 500k to a million, you have to delegate administrative tasks. You can't be running signs around town, you can't be taking pictures of your listings or entering your listings in mls. You can't be designing marketing collateral or posting stuff on social media. And you've got to figure out leverage. Lead generation and selling is the thing you need to do more of all the time. You get busy with paperwork and closings and that's what top agents, this is what is considered a top agent. They'll, they'll get wrapped up in all the administrative details, work too many hours, they'll burn out and they won't grow. So as far as team structure goes, with an eye toward growth, you're going to want a really good, I prefer a local, licensed, full time administrator. And probably as you're moving through, you know, 3, 400 GCI, 400,000 GCI, 500,000 GCI. You're going to have to hire a showing agent or a buyer agent or two and you're going to work on getting out of buyers. And so in the build stage, this takes you from 500k to a million. Stage three, now we're moving from exclusively for the most part, I do it, which is, means you do it to we do it right. So this is where you can earn up to a hundred and even a little bit more per hour. You're still heavy in production. And now you're bringing people into your world. So you're probably actually working more hours than you did at in the ramp stage, which is a little bit crazy. You definitely hit a steep ceiling. And at this stage you are feeling real full all the time because you're still in production and it's super, super stressful. And without a clear roadmap, you're really not going to know what to do. Most of the members that enter into our paid coaching program now exp is sort of a different, a different animal. But most folks that enter into our paid coaching program, they're at like 500 to 750 GCI and they do not have a clear roadmap. And so the strategic question that you want to ask yourself if you want to blow past a million what systems do I need to build or firm up? And then in terms of getting to the next level and continuing to, to kind of move forward in the business, you need leverage on the buyer side. So you cannot be working with buyers going out evenings and weekends. You're going to lose your mind, you're going to lose your marriage, you're going to lose your physical health. It's just not going to be good for anybody. And you need to start thinking about client care systems at this stage. Like really truly, how can I deliver, deliver a world class buyer and seller experience without me being involved in every aspect of it? And this is where I failed miserably to become a sales leader. Essentially. How do I start to bring other agents into my world and lead salespeople and learn how to motivate them and coach them and come along side by side and do this work together? So at this point you have one administrator, maybe two to four agents. Then we go to stage four, which is the lead stage, 1 million to 1.5 million and you can make upwards of $250 an hour net. And this is where you're starting to think potentially of easing back on production. You probably have gotten out of buyers at this point. You're thinking about like maybe I can just go, go down to just soi listings and still make a crazy living.

Right?

It feels uncomfortable at this stage because you're learning new skills and you're having to let go of a lot of things in the business. This is when, if you've heard me talk about the E Myth revisited, where the E Myth question is, how would I think about my different, my business differently if I were to replicate it 10,000 times? That question really comes into play when you're making the transition into a seven figure business, you've got to let go and you've got to learn new skills around leadership and management and planning and tracking and vision and all of those sorts of things. Right? You've got to make the shift to CEO and think like a CFO and a CMO and a coo.

Right.

You got to essentially live in the C suite even though you're a small business. And the strategic question that you're asking yourself is how do I help my team members get ahead? In my big growth years, I was so overwhelmed not having a roadmap like this where I put people in place to make my life easier. Where the question I was asking myself is how can my team members help me get ahead? Oh, that's so painful to admit to everyone here. Really, really hard to admit. And it just was the way that it was. It was a lot of production. It was a feeling of overwhelm. I had never been trained to lead people. I'd never been learned how to manage people or any of that. And so I wasn't asking myself that question of like, how can I really serve my team members, really understand where they are in their personal life, what their skill sets are, where I can help them develop and achieve more because of them being in my world than them being out of my world. To get to the next level. So to go from lead and leave the we do it, that's the build and lead. The stages three and four are we do it. The next level issues are really this culture and a cadence where the business has an energy, a momentum, a cadence, a culture of its own. Outside of you, it's critical. And every time I go through this, the right economic model really needs to be considered at the early stage. Stage three. So really not in the lead stage, you want to make sure you have the right economical economic model. We do a lot of training around economic model so that you know, when you build this thing out fully and also, you know, provide massive value to your team members, sales and administrative folks alike. Your team is probably a couple of admins at this point, maybe four to six agents. Now we leave stage four, we go into exit, which, which is stage five and own, which is stage six. I'm going to go through these a little quicker. This is pretty rare error when you get to a one and a half, two million, three million dollars plus business and this is where they do it. So it's start and ramp or I do it, build and lead are we do it and exit and own are they do it. And this is where you can go, you know, to 500 to 1,000 plus. This is where the year we did like 3.2 million GCI, the net was almost seven figures. I think I made almost $3,000 a year in that business in 2014, which is pretty cool. Your time investment in the business can come down drastically. And that's true of stage five exit and stage six own. They can come down from 50 hours a week to 35, 40 hours a week, to 25, 30 hours a week. It feels like in the exit stage. So this is one and a half to two million. This is where you're literally taking steps towards exiting production. Like giving the opportunity to work with buyers and sellers exclusively to your agents. Not everybody wants to do that and we don't teach everybody to do that. Some people want to stay in production, which is fine, but it feels scary, you know, succeeding through others can feel scary. It's this more letting go, more trusting. And the strategic question at this point, you're looking for the couple leaders, we call them transformational leaders that you can grow to run the front stage of the business and the backstage of the business. So you can ultimately take the step into stage six, which is the own, the owner's box or the owner's seat, to get to the next level, to leave the exit stage. Systems for client care. You're still developing those systems for lead gen, you know, systematic lead gen and then sales systems, buyer consultation framework, listing consultation framework where everybody knows how to win business service business. At this point, you're elevating an ops person to run the backstage of the business and you're elevating a sales leader as well. So you've got a key operations manager. You're probably still in the sales manager seat at this point. You probably have three to four administrators at this point and six to eight agents roughly. That's what the team complexion will look like if you build it out the right way with productive agents that are, you know, accountability based and you're holding your expenses accountable and your people accountable. So then the stage six own stage is two to three million. You know, where you 1,000 plus I made almost $3,000 an hour at this stage in my journey. You have to, you know, you've probably grown comfortable to running the business and still being involved in the day to day so that you've had some level of comfort. But now there's another level of discomfort to become the business owner, which is crazy to think of, right? And the question that you're asking yourself is, is where can I have the greatest impact? Where can I have the greatest impact? And in going to the next level, again, heavy reliance on the culture and cadence. This is now a business. This isn't there to serve you. It's a business that's there to impact buyers and sellers and to impact your team members. And then knowing your numbers, probably you have two leaders at this point. A front stage, a backstage, the sales, you know, director or sales manager and operations manager, probably four admin or so and maybe eight to 10 agents at this point. And so that my friends, is how the journey looks, what it looks like. The reason I wanted to do it is because it's kind of easy to almost dismiss this. The stories that we hear from those that have kind of done this journey ahead of us. And when I say dismiss, I don't mean that we don't honor, you know, like a Brett or you know, others that have kind of done this journey. But, but people don't kind of put the pieces together. People aren't like saying okay, but here, how do I go from like stage one to stage two or stage two to stage three? We coach and train exclusively on, on this model. And that's in real estate, B school paid coaching or in, you know, if you ever would consider, you know, opening your mind to the EXP platform, I would work with you directly to navigate these different stages as well. And again, from any point to any point, there's no requirement to go to stage three or stage five or you know, most agents do not want to be in stage one. I will say that most, most agents want to be making six figure income which is probably less than 2, 3% of the industry.

Right.

So we definitely want to coach you out of stage one. The question is, do you want to go to stage two, 500k, do you want to have a million dollar small ninja, you know, sort of real estate team?

Right.

You can have a couple agents and a good administrator doing a million ticket home 6, 700,000 working 40, 45 hours a week. Right. There's different ways to slice this thing. So if you would consider partnering with me directly, go to partnerwithlars.com for sure. I would jump over to realestate business growth.com and I will end with this thought. You know, real estate team builders and my life's work has become to help agents succeed at a very high level, yet not define their success merely by the number of homes that they sell.

Right.

I'm going to show you how to sell a ton of real estate. But I want you to do it in a way where you have time and freedom.

Right?

Time, freedom and freedom from stress and money. Freedom to enjoy the things that matter more. You know, your children, your spouse, exploring adventures, traveling, right, Whatever your thing is, taking care of your physical body, your spiritual journey, all the stuff that really matter. We tend to as an industry lose sight of those things. So that's the true motivation here. So tune in next time. We've got some awesome guests coming up. And the cadence here, if you haven't figured it out for the most part, is Monday interview, a subject matter expert interview. And then I break it down on that following Thursday and I do a follow up solo episode. So we will see you guys soon. Until then, man, just go out there, make a difference. There is so much challenge in communities and chaos in the world. I feel like we just have an opportunity to step in, up as leaders, even in just little ways, and connect with folks that might be struggling. So that is my challenge to you and we'll see you on the next episode.