The Business Growth Navigator - Part 3

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Today we're part three of a three part series called the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator. There are six stages of growth to go from agent, struggling agent to owner in your business and that's what this series is about. If you're just tuning into the podcast now, go back two episodes and make sure you listen to part one of this three part series. You will not regret it at any point in your journey with the Business Freedom Podcast or anything we put out there to add as much value as we can. If you ever want to take the conversation to the next step, go to rebskstudy.com and find out how to be our next case study and work with us for free for 30 days. So go to rebscasestudy.com and stay tuned for part three of the business the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator. So let me ask this question. So give me some numbers because I think this may help us with some of our training. Scale of 1 to 10, your client care. So like a buyer being in the prospect stage all the way through to closing and a seller, same thing. Like compare your business to the best service you've gotten at a hotel. Or like the best client care is a level 10. Where are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Go in the chat and give me an idea around that. I think small businesses, the whole game in the future is client care as a lead gen lever. So we got some five, seven, nine, six. Kittle's an eight. That's pretty good. Chris is a five. Couple sevens six. Megan's a nine. Nice. JK's a 9.5. And then the follow up question is without you in it. So like if you're the one doing client care then you know, and it's a 9.5. What if you couldn't do it? Like what if you had to extract yourself from parts of it? What would it go to? So it's just another way to ask the question around leverage. So the next level of motivation for me was our daughter being born. So this was 2010. So going into 2011, the year we went from 118 to 118 and I was still pretty heavily involved in the business. Jess, I feel like this is the year you came into the business. So I was still, I think that year I did like 66 transactions. Half of them were buyers. I didn't do a lot of showings but it was still pretty wild negotiating. We were just coming out of the crap market 2011, 2012. And so the pressure was really on to build out the business even more, more leverage, more systems extracting me from more parts of the, of the business. So then we talk about exit and this is where, you know, not everyone thinks they want to exit production, but you have to build the business as if you're going to because there will be a time where something forces you to take a step back from the business. Right. Hopefully it's, you know, could be health, it could be a personal issue in the family. If your business is not set up the right way, the people in your business will suffer. Right. So good examples. With my personal stuff going on with my daughter, I felt like I just needed to make some, clear up a whole lot of margin in my life. If Stacy, Jessica, Mallory and Denise weren't able to. Basically the cascade effect of me making that decision if they weren't in a position that's like me exiting production in that business even though I wasn't doing one on one coaching. And so we were forced to think about, okay, like how do we go from transactional management to transformational leaders? Right. And that's what been Stacy's work with her three leaders. And it's just changed the relationship between Stacy and I as well. Now I'm coaching her in like a half hour a week from like we used to do daily calls together. So everything has changed now. She's had to rely on people differently and then that level has had to push things down. And so you never know what's going to happen that's going to require you to pivot out of the business. And so just think about that. Leverage systems for client care, elevating ops and sales leaders at the simplest design. Like if you look, if, you know, if you've seen Dave Hook present, he has two leaders essentially, Jenna and Drew. Jenna was with him for like seven years. His first administrator, Drew was his first agent and he worked with them over 5, 7, 8 years to get them into a position to run. Drew's running the front stage and Jen is running the backstage. And that's as complicated as that business is. And he's down to I think two days a week in that business. And it's a two to $2.2 million business, the right economic model. He's been out of production for about three years now. And I think this is the most important piece here is mindset work around your importance. And I say I put importance in quotes. There was actually a sermon where it shows you I wasn't paying attention. I have no idea what the sermon was about. But the title was you're not that important. And I remember sitting there thinking like, the reason I haven't extracted myself from this or that is because of this feeling like only I can do it. And so for most of us that's just not. It's just not true. Right. So it's really leaning into that mindset and any challenges you have around mindset at the exit stage. When you exit production, you are the sales manager and you've got an operations manager. And you're looking to develop one of your agents into a sales manager. And you've probably got three administrators, maybe some VAs, six to eight agents. Your BFI can go from 250 to $500 per hour and your hours are coming down 10 to 15 hours less than the stage before. And so mine was intentional. Me getting out of production was super intentional. The year we did 248 transactions in 2012, I did one deal. The year before, I think I did 66 of the 178. So I just decided in advance that I was not going to have a business where I was doing sales. And you may want to do sales, but no matter where you are in the different stages, you know, you need to make the decision that this is the three year vision and this is what I need to do this year and this quarter and this week and today to move closer to that vision. That's why the 3190 is super important. And I really urge you guys to use Business Freedom Planner. So without that 3190 and the business freedom Planner, the chances that you'll move along in these stages are, are much lower. And then there's the decision. Do you want to just sit in the owner's seat? Which is like getting like. John Mikish lives in Bozeman, Montana. Jamie runs his business, like really runs his business. And what could that look like? So your hourly wage can go up, you're working less hours if you thought you had discomfort, you know, making the shift from agent to manager, sitting in the owner's seat is even more uncomfortable. And now the question is, where can I have the greatest impact? Like in my family, in my community? In, like now you have way more margin to think about your team members. Like, where is this team member struggling? Like personally as a person where. And I have only made this shift recently, like in my being. So that is why we. I mean money's great. You know, freedom's great impact really is the reason why that, why we're all here. And it takes a level of trust with your leaders. If you're like me, you have an opinion about everything and there are so many decisions that will be made that you might have made different decisions and it doesn't matter because it still gets to an end result. And you need to be really comfortable with that, that the people around you are going to make the right decision given all the facts, which you never have. If you're making the decision to exit out, you just need to trust that. And this is like the highest level accountability and knowing your numbers, right? So numbers don't really lie, you know. So you have to trust that, you know, set met sign has to happen in a real estate business. Whether you're the one prospecting or now it's you and three or four agents next to you, or now you're either exiting production or you're in the owner's seat. But you need to run the business by those numbers. We did that training. We might want to post it. Cody Riddle I did a training on the sales scorecard. That's where the sales scorecard training is pretty if you're struggling to sort of step back from the business, you probably don't have enough clarity on what's going on from a sales perspective. And yeah, so real estate B school wasn't born out of anything else. Except the journey that I went through took about six years. It was really hard. I messed up in all the ways you could possibly mess up and I just wanted other people to make less mistakes. So this is probably worth screenshotting. You can also get a copy of the we I put a PDF together that kind of runs through all this, which I think is really good. I'll leave you with this quote. If you haven't read the book Profit first, at some point this is going to be a rock for you to implement Profit First. You just have to trust me on it. I don't geek out about many people, but I got a chance to hang out with Mike Michalowicz at an event and just a cool guy. His mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. So in real estate and all small businesses, there's not a lot of wealth being generated. And so that's his mission. And this quote is really appropriate for real estate. Putting your nose to the grindstone is a really easy way to cover up an unhealthy business. We think that if we can just work harder, longer, better if we just hold out, something good will happen one day. And it really does. The cool thing is about this journey is there is little competition like There are not many people obsessing over systems and client care and not spending a whole lot of money as the holy grail. Very few people are doing what we're doing together. And so I just take a lot of comfort in that. It may not be the easiest path, but there's not a whole lot of competition. And so just, just be encouraged by that. And I'll end with this is that as a community, the more we challenge each other, the more vulnerable and open we are. The more you guys engage, you know, in our daily coaching, you know, in, you know, when we call you and get you on a quarterly business review or you feel yourself sort of disengaging, you will go further, faster the more you lean into the things that we ask you to do. And a lot of it is just suspending disbelief, right? Like some of these tools and systems may make you feel uncomfortable and that is ok, right? I told you they are going to make you feel uncomfortable. So just expect it and together we will be stronger and go further, faster. Peterson. So that's it on this session. Peterson, what do you think? A quick nature break or. No, let's do Donna's here So let's do 30 seconds. Okay, how about like five minutes? At least three to five minutes. I will do a quick break and then we'll come back for our next session is going to be super awesome. We'll see you guys in a few minutes. I hope you enjoyed the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator and and just learning more about these stages of growth. They're predictable like clockwork. These are the six stages that I went through my business growth journey to go from 58 side, well 44 sides. My first full year as an agent just grinding, working 7 days a week to over 400 sides. So almost 10x growth in my business about 6 years later. So this is the exact journey that I went through and all of our most successful members have gone through. So I'm hoping you enjoyed it. If you want to take the conversation to the next level level, go to rebscasestudy.com you can learn how to work with us for free. Get access to all of our tools and systems, all of our coaching, all of our training. We'll set up a three year vision, a one year plan, get you situated in a 90 days. We'll get you set up on the real the business freedom planner. We'll get a personal wellness assessment done, we'll get a strategic business assessment done and you get access to all of it for free for 30 days. So go to rebscasestudy.com and we'll see you over there. 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 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 realestatebschool.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 now.