The Good, Bad & Ugly: How to Increase Your Levels of Commitment

Hey there, Business Freedom Podcast listeners. Lars Hedinburg, founder of Real Estate B School this is the Good Bad, Ugly edition of the podcast and today I want to chat a little bit about how do I want to title this why Willpower Doesn't Work. So I'm not going to take all the credit for this title. I am actually reading a book called Willpower Doesn't Work. And there's two big takeaways so far that I have from some time in this book. And I think I'm 12 of 17 chapters in. And I want if you're taking notes, if you're driving, then just take mental notes. If you're taking notes, these are worth writing down. So there's two things I want to cover for me as I look back on my business growth journey and even just things I've done professionally in areas of personally rather in areas of my life where I had a certain result and I was able to change some things to get a different result. And so number one is your environment. So that is one thing I want you to take away from this talk is, and I'll break it all out and what it's meant for me in my business growth journey and my personal growth journey. But number one is an environment and number two is your commitment level. So your environment, number one and two, your commitment level. So let's talk about your environment. And so let's take an area of your life. Let's put business on the back burner for a second. Let's take the most obvious one, the easiest one to talk about and the one that I've been really successful at and the one I've struggled with, it's the area of your health. So when you think about the environment that you're in, when it comes to taking your physical body from where it is now and moving it to whether it's losing weight or just getting in better shape or let's take losing weight for an example. And let's look at the environment that you've been in. Let's say that you're overweight now. So let's use an example of a guy who is let's say he's managed to end up at a point where he's 50 pounds overweight and he's not working out consistently lacks energy, right? And let's look at his environment. It's likely in his environment that he's surrounded by people that maybe they don't put health as a priority. And he may be surrounded by it's easier in his home or in his work environment to make bad choices about his health. So good example for me. I'm kind of, you know, always have this 20 pounds that I gain back and then I lose, and I gain it back and I lose it. And I really looked at it. I haven't really achieved consistent levels of optimal health, you know, where I am my ideal weight for a sustained period of time, where it is not an effort to be there, and it is just part of my identity. And that is what I am working on now. And I have made really big strides toward that. And one of the biggest things was my environment, was making the commitment to eliminate anything from my environment that would have it be easy for me to make a bad choice. And that for me, it was cleaning out my pantry and controlling. There are elements of your environment that you can control that are pretty easy to control, and so that's one of them. So let's move that to the area of business. What's the environment? You know, if you haven't achieved what you want to achieve in business, what's the environment that you're currently in? Are you surrounding yourself with folks that want to build a real real estate business? Right. I mean, obviously there's no real plug here, but one of the best things about real estate B school is the fact that you're around folks that are getting after it. If they're at 250GCI, they want to get to half a million GCI. If they're at a half a million GCI, they want to get to a million GCI. But not only do they want to get to a million, they want to be making more money, having more time off. Right. With more solid systems in place, building a business worth owning. And so if you're not surrounding yourself with the right folks every day, then it's gonna be harder to be successful, you know, if you're not going into a team environment or going into an office where, you know, you're seeing other teams succeed at a high level, and that sort of invigorates you and energizes you. It's just going to be harder. What's another good example for environment? So is your day structured? Right. Nobody really wants to talk about, like, how unsexy it is to be successful.

As a real estate agent.

When I was in my early years, I mean, this was the first three, four years, you couldn't get me out of my new business development time blocks. Like, it was the most important thing I did during the week. About 12 to 15 hours of dedicated laser focused Tracking my numbers. Old school. Just tick marks with a pen on a tracking sheet. New business development time. And that was the most important time in my business. And it was highly structured.

It was in my calendar. I wouldn't miss it.

It was the most important thing that I did in those days. And now we do it. It's just our team that does it. And so what environment are you creating for yourself when it comes to your calendar and the choices that you make first three hours of your day? On our team, we call it protected time. Are you creating an environment where you can get through your morning routine? Well, that's a whole other separate thing. Do you even have a morning routine? Let's not cover that on this podcast, but let's say you do have a morning routine. The first part of your day, right? Brian Tracy, eat that frog. Are you set up to get in? You have the highest amount of willpower early on in the day. Are you six set up to be successful out of the gate? Right. Are you really setting yourself up for success in an environment where you can get after that, those new business development time blocks? So environment, really look at your environment. If you're not succeeding in a certain area of your business or your life, your personal life, look at the environment that you're in. You know, sometimes a spouse, you know, can they think they're maybe supportive in a certain area that you're trying to change? You know, let's take health as an example. If you have one spouse who's just sideways in their health and one that's trying to get after it, the one who's not making the best choices with their health is creating an environment for the one that does want to move forward in that area. It's making it harder for them. And so really check your environment. And then number two, we talked about your commitment and we're actually in the midst of a lead conversion challenge in real estate B school. So this is something that we offer to team members of principals, of our actual members. We coach team leaders or top producing agents that are building a team that's.

Sort of our niche.

And so we offer this lead conversion challenge. It's a paid lead conversion challenge. They commit to a 90 days of, you know, there's probably 10 things that they commit to. And we are. So it's a 13 week challenge, one week of prep, three phases, four weeks each of the challenge. And we're just starting phase two. And so this is week so one plus four. So this is the start of week six. So we're not even halfway through the challenge. And we're just beginning phase two. So the challenge really is there's three phases, four weeks each, one week of prep time. And each of the phases, we're looking for you to level up, whatever that means. Right. It could be the amount of focus time you have each day toward new business development. The challenge ultimately is to consistently get to 25 meaningful conversations every day if you're outside sales and 50 meaningful conversations.

Every day if you're inside sales.

And the more conversations you have, the better you get. You're challenged to role play and script train and there's coaching calls and there's all this stuff, right? And so we're at the beginning of phase two and we are seeing a significant drop off in participation. Significant drop off of participation.

These are folks that invest in themselves.

They got the buy in of their team leader and they're giving up on themselves. You know, only a third of the.

Way through the challenge. And my head first goes to like, were you really committed to begin with?

And if you look at an area of your life that you really want.

To succeed in, let's use the health example. So if you have a one year old and a three year old and you are carrying around 50 pounds of extra weight and you are not making great choices, you are drinking during the week, you are eating poorly, you have sugar in your diet, you're not getting the best sleep, you're watching too much TV and you say you want to be successful as a parent, really what is the commitment level? Are you more committed to doing things that are easier? Are you really committed to showing up as the best dad possible, the best spouse possible, the best business person possible, the best person of faith, Right? And a lot of times, I may use the physical health example, but a lot of times our physical health serves us. It is the foundation of everything else in our life. So if you are giving up on your health and you are not serving your physical body, it is going to be tough to show up in any area of your life. So check your commitment level. And if you say you are committed to something, check the reason for the commitment for. For me, back in the early days, I left a really nice corporate job to get into real estate. A lot of folks were like scratching their heads, like, man, how could you leave? I was doing acquisitions and strategy for an aerospace company and I came from nothing growing up. So that was a monumental achievement.

And I was able to get my.

MBA at Duke University paid for by the company that recruited me to Charlotte from New Jersey. And it was just really amazing career. I mean, it was exactly what I wanted, what I saw for myself when I kind of went on this corporate finance and strategy. It was a decision I made to kind of go down this path. And I achieved director of acquisitions and strategy for an aerospace company, and so got into real estate.

And, you know, my commitment was there.

Were many parts of it, a lot of things that got me going every day. So I committed to building a lifestyle for my family, A life where we had choices. You know, we could decide where we wanted to go, when we wanted to go there. Just time, money, relationship, impact, freedom, you know, all the things we talk about at real estate B school.

We had a new child at that point.

Anders was born in late 2007. And I got into the business in 2007, so had this new baby at home. And Julie suffered a couple miscarriages. And we finally did have Kendall in 2010, April. And so that was really. That grounded my commitment to be able to do this, to lift my family to a different point, you know, something we never thought was possible. And then it shifted over the years, too. Now it is, you know, more like, how can I really serve my team members at a high level to have their life stand for something or have them show up differently? And so it changes. Your commitment level changes as you get the thing you think you wanted or the reason you thought you were doing it, you actually achieve, and then you figure out for something different. But I would ask you to really check your commitment level. It's easy to say you want to be successful in real estate or building a real estate business. Are you really willing to carve out those time blocks to work on systems? Are you really willing to fail with people? Right, you're going to fail with people. Even if you have a roadmap that real estate B school offers, and you get trained on all the pitfalls and the things to avoid, you're still going to make all those mistakes. We just asked you to make them fail way faster than you would otherwise.

Are you willing to do that though, right?

Are you so committed to the outcome, you know, building an actual sustainable real estate business that you're willing to suffer through some of the things that are uncomfortable, maybe not in your nature. So two things we talked about, right? Check your environment. Are you setting yourself up with an environment that is going to be conducive to getting you the results you're looking for?

And then check your commitment level.

Are you really committed to the thing you're saying you're committed to. And then once you commit, are you sharing it with somebody that can hold you accountable?

Right.

Part and this is not a pitch for real Estate B school, but the part of having a coach that knows what you're committed to and they can take you down this path and hold your hand. Part of it is there are times they're going to be dragging you, you know, and pushing you. And other times you're going to be running so fast and getting those quick hits of success that it's going to, you know, it's this sort of dance that you do. But the question for you and your commitment level is are you sharing the commitment with somebody that ultimately will hold you responsible?

Right.

So at any time whatsoever, you know, if you want to have a conversation about your business, that is always something we can do. That's not the reason for this podcast, although I say it just to let you know that that's always an option for you. Just go to rebstrategy session.com or go to realestatebschool.com and you can see it there on the website. So as I say, you're part of the family. As a podcast listener, I consider you part of the real Estate B school greater community. And I always tell our members, I have a lot of love and respect for you and what you do and how you show up every day in your business. And even thinking about building a business rather than just selling homes is admirable. And so I just honored to be part of your journey. And we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Bye.