The Good, Bad & Ugly: 10 Productivity Strategies to Start Using Now

Hey there. Welcome back to another Business Freedom podcast episode. And this is the Good, Bad, Ugly edition of the podcast. My name is Lars Hedenberger, the founder of Real Estate B School. And really this is for me just to share, you know, some of the lessons that I've learned in building businesses over the last decade or so. And some of the failures, some of the things I've done right, really some ranting I do on this. And today I want to dig into one of the things I'm probably most passionate about. And it's the fact that we all are given the same amount of time and it's this just productivity, right? What kind of decisions are you making with your time in this day and age? It is ridiculous how much stuff we have coming our way. Information, marketing, email, text, our phones. If you're running a real estate team, you know, you've got, and you're probably in production, you've got buyers and sellers, you've got lead generation, you've got. I mean, there is an infinite amount of stuff coming your way. And my goal during our time together on this podcast is to help you drastically re engineer your relationship with time. And so that is the big promise for this, for this podcast episode. And I love this definition of productivity. This is a Dan Kennedy definition. And I did a lot of direct response. Dan Kennedy, no BS stuff back in 2007, 8, 9, when I was first getting started in business. And this definition is really impactful. It's worth writing 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. So when we use that as the backdrop of productivity, do this. Rate yourself on scale of 1 to 10, one being according to that definition. This past week, I was a level one. I was miserable with strategically investing my time, intelligence, you know, meaningful goals. And that's a one versus a ten. You know, I'm consistently in over eight. Some weeks are a nine. Where because I'm constantly working toward getting into my sweet spot, my unique ability, where are you right now? Truly, when you think about productivity, answer that question. And the thing are, you know, there's not many secrets that I'm going to go through in our time here. So I'll give that as the caveat is that there are things that I'll go through that, you know, but you aren't really doing at a very high level. So keep an open mind and really check yourself to see if you're actually doing these things. So let's get into the 10 productivity strategies to start using now. And like I said, we all have 168 hours and the question is, what are you actually doing with that time? Number one, and I've covered this in another podcast episode, is that we must do the work. I know some of you are thinking, thanks for stating the obvious, we must do the work. But really, there are no shortcuts in business. There are no shortcuts in business. And you know, real estate B school gives you the straightest path that I know of in our industry to build a business worth owning, a systems driven business built on a profitable economic model, you still have to do the work, you still have to install the systems or get someone to install the systems that we teach, right? And it's on you to actually put in the work. And so for a lot of our members, it's splitting their time between production, managing their team and installing the systems. And eventually you're making more money working less hours in your business. And that's the time money trade off that we talk about a lot. I love this quote by Brian Tracy. He says the ability to discipline yourself, to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success. Right? So it is about discipline, Right. Our traditional success in our industry will have you selling 24 to 30 homes. That's top producer status in our industry. Right. But will you discipline yourself in the short term to build something amazing in the long term? Right. To go from 24 sides to 240 sides in two to three short years. Right. That's what we're talking about. I love Gary Vaynerchuk. I like all his books. Really short, simple quote, stop whining and start hustling. Right? There's not a lot of that in our industry. And if you haven't read the book by Brian Tracy, what is it? The frog book. Eat that frog. Everyone has frogs no matter where you are in your business journey. For most folks, it's that new business development time, that lead generation time. And usually there's a couple of frogs that you need to eat every day and it's making a decision, getting the frogs eaten every day for a period of time where others can eat the frogs for you. That's honestly what building a real business is all about. Number two, productivity strategy is to know what your time is worth. And I did a simple calculation when I got into the business. I want to make $500,000 working 2000 hours a year, 40 hour work week. I didn't do it out of the gate. So I put in a lot of hours in that first 18 months, 24 months. But then as I continue to build systems and delegate those systems to people at a lower pay grade, I was able to get to 250 and beyond, you know, so I don't work, you know, more than, definitely not more than 40 hours now. And I'm probably at about. My goal is $1,000 an hour. So I'm working on delegating everything that's. I'm probably about, about 500 bucks an hour for every hour that I work. And that's, that's me knowing my numbers. I went from 250 to 500 to 1,000. There's nothing special I did to get out of the things that were at a lower pay grade. I just surround. I just built the system, then got someone to run the system. And it's not a lot of people, right. I run a multimillion dollar coaching company that only has like five people, five, six people on staff, you know, so it's a really profitable business. But I know what my time is worth and what I can touch in this business. So that's number two. And the question you have to ask yourself is, what is your number? Right? You've got to make that decision. My number is going to be $200 an hour, and I'm going to build systems and delegate stuff out that other people can do. And you need to find people that are willing to fight for your number. You know, oftentimes, if you're looking at the visual version of this podcast, there's a picture of a guy with his feet up on a desk with two middle fingers up. A lot of time we let people into our world that don't resent the fact that we want to build a business. And they think, you know, as a business owner, you're creating opportunities for people around you, and there are people that don't want to see you succeed. So you've got to surround yourself with the right people and ultimately better leverage your team. You need a system for delegating things, properly building a system and then delegating those tasks to someone that can do it for 12, 15, $20 an hour. And you can consistently delegate and elevate your position on the team. Number three is that you need to fight to link everything to your goals. So back to that definition of productivity, right? Deliberate strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. Is what you're working on today moving you closer to a goal? If it's not, you've got to fight for those time blocks where you can work on a system or a tool that will move you closer to a goal. So going on a listing appointment is good. Is it really serving some longer term vision you have for your life? Right. So you've got to do the listing appointment, take the listing, get it marketed properly so you can generate buyers and then close some buyers, end the listing and then get repeat referral business. All that's good. But do you have time blocks in your calendar that you're actually moving your life and your business forward? And this, what I'm about to tell you is worth writing down. I want you to stop and think on a regular basis. Write this on a sticky note and put it on your computer. Is what I'm doing this minute moving me measurably closer to my goals? I am recording a podcast right now that 100% is moving me closer to my goals. My goal is to impact a broken industry with my thoughts on where I think the industry is going, what I did right, what I did wrong, and to be open and vulnerable and honest and authentic with all of you. And so I can answer that question 80% of the time that it absolutely. I'm focused on things that are moving me closer to my goals. If you're heavy in production in real estate and you're not working on things that are going to get you out of the whole world relying on you and every part of the transaction, you're not, you're not doing stuff enough of the day. That's moving you closer to your goals. And ask yourself at the end of every day, what did I produce today? What did I produce today? That's another sticky note on your computer. You're gonna have all these sticky notes on your computer with questions I want you to ask yourself consistently. What did I produce today? And I mean produce like what do you have to show for the time you put in today? You know, I'm thinking about what I worked on today. I worked for two to three hours on a webinar that I held at 2:00'. Clock. It was about 75 minute webinar. We'll probably close 15 to 20 folks. That 83 people showed up, which is great for us. It's hard to get people to show up. So that was cool. That's going to Evergreen. So now we're making that part of a masterclass Series. I'm recording a podcast now that is going to be listened to, probably downloaded 5, 600 times in the next 30 days or so. I had a couple of strategy sessions with new clients. I think definitely one of them will sign up and they'll on average stick around for 15 or 16 months. So I'm constantly asking myself these questions. What did I work on? What did I actually produce today? And you need to ask yourself that same question. All right, number four, you need to crush your digital addictions. This thing, I'm holding my phone up, this thing right here is not moving you closer to anything. 90% of what's on that thing is not good for you. And you need to take Facebook off your phone. We do this digital addiction assessment on our team with our new hires. And I think you can Google digital addiction assessment PDF. It's a Darren Hardy document from his insane productivity. I think it's literally online. You can take it. You've got to make a decision. You know, most of you, some of you might know my personal story. My father was an alcoholic. He passed away three and a half years ago, almost four years ago. He drank until I was 15. And, you know, he was in AA from 15 until he basically until he had a stroke in whatever, 2000. I forget the year. It was five years before he passed away. And 12 steps, right? Addiction, right? How do you. Alcoholics Anonymous, NA, Narcotics Anonymous. Like, it's literally electronics, your phone are as addictive as a substance. They're just generally more accepted. You know, there's science now around how people are hearing their phone ding and feeling it vibrate when it isn't. It's a crazy addiction. And so you've got to figure out a way to get out of those things. Very little value in Facebook, you know, espn email. Like, there's not a whole lot of value in it. You know, you've got to figure out a way to use your technology profitably, right? So when I'm in Facebook, it's to serve existing real estate B school members and to serve folks that are in our greater community. When I'm on a zoom meeting or recording something, it's to serve. It's to do something that will impact the industry and people will be drawn to real estate B school. One thing that I'll say is that I use inbox by Gmail. So some of you aren't at the point where you can leverage out your email, but inbox by Gmail is something worth checking out. I generally end the day with a zero inbox Call it Inbox zero. And because the cool feature of Inbox by Gmail is that you can snooze emails and just really. It's really super nimble. And you only have to spend like 15 probably. I spend 30 minutes in email and I just. I'm able to triage email super quick. And so something to check out. Number five is it. Need to stop. Got a minute. Meetings. So if you have a team and your agents are constantly like little birds in a nest, like waiting for you to feed them or give them advice or you've got to stop that. That behavior. Building a team adds complexity. So if it's you and three other team members, so there's four total. There's six lines of communication. If there's you and four other team members adding one person, the lines of communications go from six to 10. If you go to seven team members, which is a small real estate team, you know, it's you, an admin. Yeah, maybe you two admin and four buyer's agents. You could probably do about 150 sides with a small team. Seven people. So there's seven people. There's 21 lines of communication. So you go from four people to seven people. Your lines of communication go from six to 21. If you have a team that it's 14 people, it goes to 91 lines. Communication. So you've really got to figure out a way to hold the highest level meetings. We call these Level 10 meetings, where you've got an agenda, you've got this cadence in your team where everyone is communicated with and you're making the business better consistently. We've got a process for that. I'm not going to dive into the process. But you've got to think about the complexities in business as you add people, even just in the confusion of communication. Number six is that you have to stop multitasking. There are definitive studies about multitasking and studies of workers and how much interruptions sabotage their productivity. I won't go through the exercise, but there's this. Multitasking is worse than a lie. If you Google that and you go through that exercise, I'll have you do that. Just Google multitasking is worse than a lie exercise. And basically it goes through writing out multitasking is worse than a lie. And then writing out numbers 1 through 27 under it, timing yourself for that exercise and then timing yourself to write M1, U2, L3, T4, I5. And so you're switching between the numbers and letters. And generally it's about three to four times less productive to switch tasks. So multitasking is not an actual thing. You can't do two things at once. You can switch tasks and it's, it kills your productivity. Making use lists. You've got to figure out a way, you know, we, one of the things we do really well at real estate B school is we have a productivity system, a way to capture things that go on and lists to prioritize. It's our business freedom planner. And basically we have you live in this 90 day world where every day of every week of every quarter, so 13 weeks and a quarter, four quarters in a year, three years in a three year picture. So we help you build out this three year plan. We have you a way to sort of work through and capture important things. And so it doesn't get you off track, but it still gets captured. Number seven, you have to master your morning. You have to figure out a structure for your morning where you set the tone for your day every day. This is one of the 66 day challenges I took on. If you're watching the video version of this podcast, you can see a really big board. That was my 66 day challenge board. I still have it where basically for 66 days I took the challenge to wake up at 5am and you know, from about 5 to 6:30 I had a loan to do read my bible, serve my physical body through some kind of green shake and then move my body and getting into some sort of cadence and some sort of predictable rhythm in the morning. To be a high performer you've got to figure out a way to do something like that. I've gotten away from it. I still have that time in my day to be able to still have that 90 minutes for myself before my day starts. But I really encourage you to take on some kind of challenge and then number eight kind of goes along with it is time blocking. You know, I know a lot of salespeople are very like unstructured. You've got to figure out a way to make a decision on what has to happen every day. And you know, on our team we have, you know, very distinct time blocks. 8 to 11 is new business development time. We call it protected time. It's 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off for three hours. You're two and a half hours of new business development time where we focus on dollar productive activities. In real estate we get paid literally for four things. And you can write this down. The acronym is plan prospecting. Three hours a day lead follow up, one to two hours a day appointments Right. With new buyers, new sellers showing appointments, even that is arguable. That you can, you can outsource that pretty easily. And then n is negotiating deals, contracts, not really repairs. You should be able to get a licensed assistant to handle repairs for you. So must so you have to plan as much as possible every every day. Along with that is become fanatical about prospecting. There's a really good book called Fanatical Prospecting by Deb Blount or Blount B l o u n T. We make it required reading for everyone in our agent incubator program. They've got to read the book out of the gate. It's another high level sales manager, you know, sales, high level salesperson turned really world class sales manager. Teaching your team how to become a fanatical prospector. And so if you don't have a cadence of, you know, tracking meaningful conversations, to appointments set, to appointments met, to appointments signed every day and you know that cadence for yourself and your agents. You've got to rethink what you're actually doing. We're building sales organizations and you've got to think sit met sign all day long. Number nine is to maximize our energy levels. And I will go through this quick. There are four parts of this equation taking care of your physical body. Number one is to get more sleep, seven to eight hours a night. There is no way to hack this. If you take that 66 day challenge. That means you need to go to bed at 9:30. If you are getting up at 5am Studies have shown that you will suffer through all sorts of different measures if you try to hack your sleep. If you get less than seven hours per night. Number two here is to eat more vegetables. A plant based whole food diet is proven. You know there's all these documentaries will totally freak you out. You've got to figure out a way to get more green into your body. It alkalizes your body. Inflammation generally will have you stiff and not energized and lead to disease and you don't want that. Number three is to drink more water. I think 92% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. If you commit to drinking eight 8 ounce glasses of water, which is a little low, I drink about half my body weight in ounces, so just over 100 ounces. If you commit to drinking just 64 ounces and just do it throughout the day, if you're not a water drinker, your energy levels will skyrocket. I promise you it will change everything for you. Just that one commitment and number four here on just physiology is to move your body. It doesn't have to be this grand gesture. I do 30 minutes of walking every morning. That's when I am listening to my bible and I am getting a brisk walk in and it is just quiet time and it is about the best part of my day and I have got a great rest of my day. I have got two great kids, a great wife and that morning quiet time where I move my body is really important. Number 10 here is to harness the power of a grateful heart. And you know, I've been involved in Make a Wish, which is a national organization basically with children with life threatening diseases, are granted a wish and go to Disney World and with their family and it just allows them to check out of their current situation. And I've seen some really sad stuff there. I'm also involved in A Child's Place, which is a local organization that serves homeless children in a very rich city city which is Charlotte, North Carolina. We have 10,000 homeless children in our Greater Charlotte Seven county region. Sad. And so every day I put myself through an exercise. In the morning, what I am grateful for in the evening, what three great things that happened. Every day I use this app on my phone called five Minute Journal. It is also part of our business Freedom Planner. And just constantly looking for the great things will give you this psychology of fulfillment. Well, you will always feel content, you will always feel blessed and happy. And it's just a daily practice about doing it. You know, when I think about the pain and suffering that exists in my local city, you know, let alone in other countries, if you ever had the opportunity to serve on a mission trip in a third world country, that would change your life forever. And this constant practice of gratitude is about it's everything. There's this concept called the gap where you know, instead of looking back on everything we've achieved, we tend to look forward at what we haven't achieved or what others have achieved or what others are posting on Facebook this ideal that we may never achieve. And so having this attitude of gratitude forces us to look back on everything we have achieved and all that we have in our life. And it will instantly change your psychology to that of contentment and fulfillment. And it's not about keeping up with this person. You're only seeing their outsides. You're comparing the way you feel inside and what's going on with you, your marriage, your children, your physical health to some poser that's posting how great their marriage is or how blessed they are. Or, you know, it's just complete bullshit. It's fake book, right? It's not Facebook, it's fake book. And a little bit of a soapbox there, but it's all good. And last thing, last couple thoughts I have here is don't miss the good stuff, you know. Yeah, it's cool building businesses. It's not cool missing out on opportunities to be with your children, to be with your spouse and really be present at that end part of the day. To be present that two hours when you get home from work. Six to eight, eight for me. You know, 5:30 to 8:30. Really, it's about two and a half, three hours for me. And then I've got that 8:30 to 10:30 time with Julie. Super laser focused, even on work nights and school nights. And then Sunday mornings I take each of the kids to alternating to breakfast and we do church and we do a Sunday evening dinner with my mom, who still is with us, and we, my sister and I get together with my kids and. And so it's all those good, the good things, the rituals that we have in our life that make the difference. And then I just, you know, don't major in the minor matters. You know, there's so much good stuff that we have to be thankful for, especially living in the country we live in. You know, I'll say this. Ask yourself the question, what will make the next year or two any different than the last couple years, right? If you don't have a plan to, if you're not where you want to be and you have no plan to get there, what's going to change for you, right? If you ever study, really successful people, they're working on the big things, the things that will move the needle for them, they're not sweating. You know, maybe a big deal that a deal blows up for you, but it's not the end of the world, right? It doesn't impact your bigger mission if you have one. And then this quote, I do like Kobe Bryant and I'm not a big sports guy. I just like the quotes. You know, success isn't a mystery. You know, it's not like all of a sudden like someone just appears in the scene. Like, if you really study success, you know, he says that great things come from hard work and perseverance, no excuses. And so that's my encouragement to you. You know, it's really to ask yourself, how productive are you every day? And are you linking, you know, are you linking your goals, Are you linking your goals to things that matter? And Are you moving closer to achieving those goals? You know, it's not. It's just not this elusive thing. It's not like we haven't figured it out. It's not. It just takes a consistent approach and being persistent and just doing it every day and being on the right path. Right. I mentioned if, you know, if you do have a dream of building a business worth owning in the real estate space, of course we'd love to talk to you. If you just want to swipe our tools, you can go to getbschool.com you can go to real estate B school. If you want to jump on the phone with me or one of my coaches and talk about how we could approach, you know, building your business, we'll go through a business growth assessment and see if that, that's something that would work for you. That's not what this podcast is about, but I just want to say it because some of you do want to take the next step in your business and hopefully this stuff is good for you. You know, I say every time my close out to the podcast and really, anytime I get in the phone with anybody or I train anybody, it's, you know, I just have a lot of love and respect for, for those of you that are doing this work, even if you'll never go beyond yourself, you're doing a profession that is not easy. You know, a lot of times we're not respected, our time isn't respected, and we've got a better path. You know, there is a better way to do this. So let me know if you're interested. Until next time, be good. Go sell some houses and don't forget the good stuff. Right? Don't forget those moments with family, friends. And there's more to real estate. There's more to life than real estate. So we'll talk to you soon. Bye.