The 8 Must-Do's for Agents to Prepare for Turbulent Economic Times

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got.

Into real estate, I was willing to.

Bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

What's up Real Estate Business Builders? Lars Hiddenborg here, the founder, Real Estate B School. And I'm going to do every once in a while, probably every four, six, eight weeks, I'm going to give an update on what's going on with the economy as it relates to real estate, as it relates to your ability to grow and scale your business. While most agents are going to run for the hills and fall prey to all the fear, uncertainty and doubt that is out there, all the bleeding, blood gushing headlines, right? If it bleeds, it leads in the news industry. So today's episode is the eight must dos to take advantage of the current market, the market of the moment. And I'm talking about turbulent economic times. There are things going on right now that are crazy, crazy, crazy. And the giveaway, Usually for these podcast episodes, I have a giveaway. These are sort of sister episodes to a full training, a deep dive training that I do in our free Facebook group, Real Estate Business Builders. You can just go find that group. You'll see my mug associated with it and the the giveaway. I actually gave away a KPI tracker so most agents aren't great at tracking. So I built a tool that's very easy to use and when I say KPI, it's key performance indicator. So that one of the keys getting through a crazy market where there's a lot of chaos and there's fear, uncertainty and doubt and many agents will get out of the business is you need to have a tool to help track your course to predictable business growth. And the KPI tracker, it's a monthly tracker, will help you do just that. So in general, you know what I'm thinking about in sort of in the midst of what I think will go down ultimately as one of the most. I don't even know what the right word is for it, but I think there are some things converging that are going to make for a challenging two, three, five years. You know, there, I don't know if you've seen the. There's a video by Ray Dalio in a book. The book is pretty long, but there's a 45 minute video. Ray Dalio D A L I O and, and the video is called Changing World Order. Now I don't tell you that to introduce any kind of fear, uncertainty and doubt. So the risk here is that you can go into this Rabbit hole on YouTube, watch that video, and then there's a whole bunch of suggested videos and all of a sudden you're, you know, you're prepping for the end of the world, right? That is the risk. I tell you this because he's a smart guy that knows the macro environment. So macroeconomic factors, you know, nothing is new, nothing that's happening now, you know, probably hasn't happened before. It's a little different because there's, you know, there's digital currencies and there's, you know, nuclear weapons and there's, you know, there's different things that might impact it, but it's, it's all about cycles. So it's just an interesting look at history and where we may be headed in terms of a changing world order. And, and I think. So that's just a backdrop, right? It's a data point. It shouldn't freak you out. I think it's time to be really excited. Nar so the national association of Realtors says that our roster is going to reduce by 30% of agents. When I got into real estate in 2007, 2008 was my first full year. There was 15,000 agents that went down to 5,000 agents over a two to three year period. They're calling for a 30% reduction. So that is when you get excited because you're going to be one of the ones that is going to stay in the industry and take your unfair share. So yes, there will be less income for a period of time as agents get out of the industry and then the income will pick up and then we'll be able to take our unfair share and life will Be good again. I warn you, as we get into this topic, you know, preparing for turbulent economic times, follow like a couple sources. I follow. I listen to a podcast called the All In Podcast. I'm actually checking it now because as I'm recording this, the episode should be coming out and it did. So I will be listening to that after I'm finished with this episode. So the all in podcast is really good. I get a daily news summary called the Pour over tpo and it's, it has a Christian sort of biblical perspective of the news. I'm a Jesus follower, so I'm unashamed of that. It doesn't matter if you're not. There's. There's another one similar to the Pour over if, if you don't share my faith. What the heck was it called? The Morning Morning Brew or something like that. So it's just like snippets. You can read the whole thing in five minutes and you don't have to fall Prey to the 24 hour news cycle. That is my recommendation. I am passionate about what's going on as it relates to real estate and what are the factors, economic factors, that are impacting real estate. There's a really good resource called Keeping Current Matters that I highly, highly, highly recommend you subscribe to. I think it's like 30 bucks a month. They're even doing weekly market updates. They do a really deep dive on a monthly basis, but they do weekly market updates as well. And they give you a bunch of like, they give you a blog, they write all the material for you, they make it easy to share on social. It is a phenomenal tool. Highly recommend it. The next thing I want to consider here, or have you consider, is that you really need to be monitoring your personal economy. I did a training. Let me see if I can find it so I can point you in the right direction. Yeah, it was called Financial Freedom Mastery. So again, if you jump into the Real Estate Business Builders Facebook group, you can look up Financial Freedom Mastery and you can grab. Just go into that thread and type whatever word I probably said like freedom or financial freedom or something to grab that. And I gave away a copy of my Net worth tracker. So if you're not tracking your net worth, I don't think you're in the game. You're not climbing the mountain of time and money freedom. So if you're not tracking your net worth, I don't think you'll ever be free. You'll constantly be working, not knowing if there's something to show for your Efforts, Right? And we don't, we don't want that. I mentioned it earlier, you know, I want you to pay attention to the fear, uncertainty and doubt. The fud. All the headlines are intended in every. This is politics aside. All of the headlines are intended to get you to climb into their rabbit hole and consume their stuff, right? It's not intended to be a fair representation or an accurate representation of what's actually going on. So I want you to pay attention to the fudge because you're going to need to explain to your buyers and sellers that those are headlines and that's not the truth of what's going on.

Right.

If you plug into keeping current matters, I promise you this will solve this for you. Because they have such good perspective in calling out the headlines but then showing you the reality. So I want you to pay attention to the FUD, but I want you to stay out of the FUD. Don't. If you're in the 24 hour news cycle or you're watching like Rumble or you're reading like you're obsessed with something that you're like constantly sort of getting updates on, it could be anything. I've done this a little bit with crypto, so I'm tracking, I own like six or seven, I think seven coins and I track what's going on with crypto, but most of it is the same crap. It's like all the headlines, the banking crisis as it relates to crypto and like, what's the fear, you know, what are the bleeding headlines that's going to get me to click on that YouTube video, right? So this, this is not just as it relates to the 20, like to politics or, you know, here, a shooting over here and what that shooting means and who's to blame and you know, all of that, none of that is gonna lead you closer to achieving the goals that you've set for you and your family, right? So really be aware of that. The real money is made though. You know, when I look back on my journey and, you know, my first full year being the worst, quote unquote year to be in real estate, and then 9 and 10 being even worse, I think, I think it got pretty bad in there for a three year period, but I went from 44 to 58 to 118 sides and I sort of blew by agents that were just sort of paralyzed because, you know, they had never seen this. I just got to work. I ignored everything. I didn't listen to any news, I didn't listen to anybody, you know, and I Just focused on what I could do every day. You can only focus on what you could do every day. I've done other trainings on a time freedom mastery training where you have your ideal week and you time block and you honor those time blocks. That's all you can control. You can go to bed a little bit earlier, you can not watch Netflix, you can eat a little bit better, you can hydrate, do the things that you can do, get up a little bit earlier, get a workout in, focus on the things you can control. I like to say your world versus the world. Your world has your spouse, your children, your physical body, your faith walk, your business. That's your world. That is a lot. That's way too much for one person. It's pure chaos and insanity to take on all those things, let alone try to be in the world, which is all the news and what's happening here and there. None of it is going to impact you. I promise. None of it is going to impact you. So in terms of specifically navigating the chaos, there are just a few things that I want to highlight here. Is that when what's going to win this game is that, yes, it's going to be chaotic, right? Most agents are like chickens with their heads cut off. But you need to be clear on your definition and your measure of productivity. So as you complete a day and you measure on a scale of 1 to 5, was I productive today? And this definition I'm going to give you, I want you to really maybe even pause and rewind and write it down. Productivity is the deliberate strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. That's from Dan Kennedy's book called no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs. If you were to measure your day on a scale of 1 to 5 with that definition of productivity, if you give yourself a one, you know, because you didn't move measurably closer to meaningful goals, you weren't investing your time and energy and resources in, you know, calculated ways, right? That's what you need to start doing is really be intentional with your time and only work on the things that make you money and get leveraged. There's going to be a ton of licensed agents that will happily do hourly work. They'll enter listings into mls, they'll do your contract to closing, they'll show homes for you, you give them a little bonus, but like maybe 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour so you can focus on five money making activities that's what I want to end this episode with. There are five things that make you money in real estate. Everything else does not make you multiple hundreds of dollars per hour.

Right.

My goal is to help you work 2000 hours a year, which is 40 hours a week. And I want you to take home a minimum of $500,000. Take home to split with the government post expenses. So 500,000 divided by 2000 is $250 an hour. The only way to make that kind of money consistently is to work on these five things. Number one, I'm just going to say them first and I'll go a little deeper. Number one is prospecting. Number two is lead follow up. Number three is appointments. Number four is negotiating deals. And number five is systems. It's P, L, A, N S. Prospecting is what I like to call new business development. Three hours a day minimum. If you want to be super successful, where you're trying to connect with buyers and seller prospects that you haven't had conversations with before. L is lead. Follow up conversations with buyer and seller prospects or leads at this point that you have already had a conversation with but they weren't ready to go yet. A is getting having appointments with a potential buyer client and a potential seller client. So listing appointments and buyer appointments. We call them buyer consultations and listing consultations. N is negotiating a home under contract, not appraisals, not repairs. Getting a home under contract on the list side and the buy side. And S is building systems that will give you leverage to elevate in your business and make more money in less time. Those are the only things I really want in your calendar. If I could direct you every day, those are the five things that would be time blocked in your calendar. You'd work, you know, if you really want to get after it, you'd work 50 hours a week. But that's the only things that you're doing. And you'd have leverage around everything else. And that is the way you get through this uncertain environment.

That's the way.

And just defend your time. You know, we talked about creating an ideal week and time blocking and protecting your time every day. I get that the struggle is real. But if you're honest with yourself, if you're really honest with yourself about where you're spending your time in and out outside of your business, what things could you say goodbye to? Could you get out of your calendar and and stop doing so that you can have a legitimate chance of adding a 0 or 2 to your net worth and turning around your Financial picture forever, right. This is going to be like building a muscle. It's not going to happen overnight. Most agents won't do this, so you don't need to worry. You know, most agents aren't going to do the work, right. So don't even worry about it. And like I said, the Keeping Current Matters. One other thing you need to do in this market, and this is a key, key point, so I know I said I was going to end it there, but you need to be the expert, you need to be the authority on what's going on in the market so you can have educated conversations and lead your buyer and seller clients and your database, lead them via video or whether you're face to face consultations or you're having consultations or conversations with buyer and seller clients in real time after their clients. All of those conversations have to be grounded in the reality of what's going on.

Right?

So it is a crazy market. The narrative out there is not what is actually going on in real estate. So there's this snippet from Keeping Current Matters. I'm going to read it to you. Neuroscientists have found that people spend about 90% of their lives using what's called narrative circuitry rather than direct experience. In other words, we spend 90% of our lives telling ourselves what is happening. We tell ourselves this narrative and it probably doesn't match what's actually happening in Keeping Current Matters. It has a. The next chart is the top 20 cities and it's a year over year comparison of the appreciation of the top cities. And all but three cities, four cities out of the 20 were positive year over year growth. That's crazy, right? So you would think the headlines and, and we may have some, some more shifts going on, right. But the 16 of the top 20 cities, Charlotte is up 8%. I'm out of Charlotte. Metro.

Right.

Atlanta's up 8%. Boston's up 4%. Chicago's up 4.8%. Phoenix is flat. That got hit hard back in 2008 and it's flat now.

Right.

San Diego's down 1.4%. San Francisco's down 7.6%. Seattle's down 5.1%. So some of the tech, you know, economies or left coast or west coast, that wasn't a political statement. It was literally left, you know, left on a map. Some of those markets are hit more, but they, they had more upside. And the upside in those markets went back to like the 90s, right. So they're, they're just sort of Normalizing out. But you need to know your numbers. You need to know the reality of what's going on. And if you look at the projections for price performance, the forecast in 23, 24, 25, 26 and 2723 is only calling for a 1.6% decrease in home values across the country. And then you have 2, 3 and a half, 4, 4 and a half percent in 24, 25, 26 and 27.

Right?

So if buyers are going to sit in the headline and believe the headlines, you know, yeah, they may have a little bit of downside, but three, four years from now, as long as they're going to stay in the home, they're gonna win.

Right?

Because there's not as much traffic as there was now. There's still a tight market, but there's not. It's not as frenzied as it is as it was, you know, 612 months ago. Right. So you gotta know what you're doing. You have to take, take your profession seriously.

Right?

You need to be a professional. A professional knows what they're doing. They know their numbers. Make sure you go into the Facebook group, grab that monthly key performance indicator tracker. And like I said on other podcasts, the only thing I have to offer you is a conversation about your business. It's going to be a fruitful conversation whether we do business together or not. Just go to rebs growth assessment.com that's R E B S growth assessment dot com. Let's do the work. We're not going to leave this economic turmoil with any regrets whatsoever. We're going to leave it all on the field. Much love. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on.

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And make sure you visit ScaleOrDiebook.com to get a free copy of my book. It's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so that you can live your life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.