The Good, Bad & Ugly: The Power of Strategizing Your Mindsets

Hey there, Business Freedom podcast listeners.

Another edition of the Good, Bad Ugly.

Of building a real estate team. This is Lars Edinburgh, founder of Real Estate B School. And today, probably one of the most fascinating things that I've realized over my at this point, I consider my entrepreneurial career starting in 2007. So we're about 11 years in is the shift that I've made really just ever since I got started in business, which is 2007.

So I had a corporate career before.

I got into real estate. And it's the shifts that I've had with my mindset and the fact that mindset really determines everything. And it's sort of an easy thing to say because we see lots of examples of.

You know, just businesses that start out of thin air and they're like multi billion dollar valuations and Silicon Valley and startups and, you know, like who. There's obvious examples of people that had no business starting a business that became a multi billion dollar company and they still did it. And what kind of mindsets did they bring into the world to do what they did? And you know, in real estate, it's a challenging industry because as an industry, it's set up to not promote building a business. The whole industry survives if millions of agents sell a handful of homes. And so if there's five, let's say there's 5 million homes that are sold in a year, 10 million commission checks. And I'm not sure I'm doing the math right, but the point will still translate. Let's say there's 10 million commission checks and there's 2 million agents. So 2 million real estate agents, maybe 1.4 realtors, and then 6,800,000. Let's just do round numbers. So 100 million, 210 million checks, 2 million agents. There's five commission checks available for each agent. And if the business went to each agent had to sell a dozen homes or get a dozen commission checks to survive, that would mean more than half the roster would have to fall out and it just wouldn't work. MLS and local boards would implode and it would be ugly. So the benefit though is as someone that's going into the industry or in the industry with a mindset toward building business, as long as you can shift your mindsets, you can be wildly successful. And that's where I've really spent my time, my energy over the last, you know, I hired my first buyer's agent in 2009. So I was at that point, I was one, let me see, 2008. So about two and a half years into the business, I hired my first buyer's agent. About a year into the business, I hired my first assistant. And so that first nine months I did about 27 sides, and then I did 45 sides with an assistant. And I didn't went to 58. 118, 178. That, that was my, my progression. And I do believe it came with a mindset of building a business that gave me time and money freedom. Like that was really early on when I figured out all the different jobs of the real estate agent and how many I wasn't suited for. You know, I, it really changed the way that I was thinking about the business. And so when you have this mindset, a particular mindset, you know, it's. And this is true if you're building a team in the real estate industry, it's choosing to look at the world a certain way. And if I look at the industry this way, I'm going to get this payoff. And it's not looking at the existing rules or what the status quo looks like. It's just deciding to look at it a certain way and then getting the payoff as a result of looking at it that way. Here's the thing, and especially true in real estate, that the vast majority of real estate agents, or really the general public, don't choose their mindsets. They don't choose their mindsets and they don't know how their mindsets are restricting or preventing their ambition. So I learned from a coach of mine that your mindsets are directly attached to your ambition. So if you have limiting beliefs or limiting mindsets, your ambition is limited, if that makes sense. So now that we can sort of view success in the context of mindsets, it becomes a tool that we can use to transform ourselves personally and our business. And it's, you know, in real estate, we've gotten good at measuring external progress, but we really haven't talked about, and this is, in general, we really haven't talked about, like, how you can measure mindsets and how you can use just an understanding of where you are with a particular mindset and how to move that mindset forward to the next level. And it'll make sense here in a second. I'm going to attach a couple scorecards in the form of PDFs along with this podcast. So make sure you go to the podcast man. What is the name of the podcast? I think it's the, the business freedom podcast.com I'm like 80% sure that's the website that we chose for you to get the additional resources that I mentioned on the show. Thebusinessfreedompodcast.com almost sure that's it. So if it's not, make sure you find us somehow. But now that we can measure these internal mindsets, so how you look at the world with respect to a certain mindset, you can translate that internal mindset to external performance. You know, when I studied under Tony Robbins, he says, change your story, change your life. And so the story that you're telling yourself with respect to a particular mindset, you could change that story. You will change it changes everything. So if you jump on the podcast resources, so go to thebusinessfreedompodcast.com you'll see, I think it's one PDF, but you'll see two versions. There's the Business Freedom Scorecard and then that Personal Freedom Scorecard. And when I created these scorecards, I looked at the eight mindsets that you need to consider when looking at how your business is going to evolve. And I'm going to go through the eight mindsets I'm going to let you print out and download. So download and print out and kind of read through these and score yourself. There's an exercise you'll go through where you'll pick on a scale of 1 to 12, where you fall in these particular mindsets. So number one for the business freedom scorecard is strategic focus. Number two is implementation of technology. Three, digital presence. Four, new prospect pipeline. Five, new client acquisition. Four, world class client experience. I mean, six world class client experience. Seven. Cash flow and profitability and eight, team development. So if you look at these scorecards when you download them, you can also watch the, watch the video version of this podcast because we posted on the podcast as well, you can kind of see this there as well. So let me give an example here. Strategic focus now, implementation of technology. So the low end of this would be you use little technology in your real estate business. You think the Internet is a fad that will pass. Ha ha ha. That's a 1, 2, or 3. All the way up to the point where you embrace technology as a platform for growth. You're looking for new technologies to make to fuel growth and ease of business. And so there's this spectrum of the realm of how you view these different mindsets, if that makes sense. And the next one is like a personal freedom scorecard. So the mindsets here that you want to measure yourself on is number one is big ambition. Number two is you're always growing. Number three, no more competition. Number four, Willingness to change. Number five perseverance. Six. Abundance. Seven. Expand your freedom and eight, self multiplying team. So always growing. The low end of this spectrum would be something like you rely on others for everything. Personal growth is a concept that you will never grasp. And the other end of the spectrum, the transformative area is you're a lifelong learner. You are constantly educating yourself and applying new ways of thinking to your business and personal life. And so if you look at the scorecards, so either jump onto the blog, the podcast, the businessfreedompodcast.com or watch the video, you can see that the four areas of mindsets this one to 12. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The first category is failure, where you just feel sorry for yourself. Individuals who feel sorry for themselves are failures to interact with because they habitually see themselves as victim of their current circumstances. There's a slice of our industry that absolutely feels sorry for themselves. The second sort of bucket is frustration. That's if you score yourself 4, 5, 6 in a particular mindset where you don't know how to help themselves, you don't know how to help yourself. Individuals in this column know that their lives could be better in many ways, but they keep running into obstacles with every attempt to improve themselves. The third bucket is called conventional success. So these are top producing agents, quote, unquote, they don't know there's anything better. These individuals play by the rules, got to the top of other people's ladders, and see that all of the uncertainty and hard work of their careers is in the past in real estate, especially with the economic shift coming, with the consumer shift, and with the technology shift coming, conventional success will have you out of business in a year or two or three years. And the level that I'm looking to get to personally is where it's transformative. And you're always making, we're always making ourselves better. These individuals are passionate about and committed to always growing in new and unpredictable ways. They seek things that are new, better and different. And so that kind of gives a little bit of an idea. The point here is that you can absolutely measure your mindsets. And there's a professor, Carl Pearson, basically credited with this simple but powerful business reporting. He says that which is measured improves, that which is measured and reported improves exponentially. And that's the same with your mindset. Dan Sullivan, a coach of mine, this, this whole concept of mindsets and scoring yourself, this is something that I got directly from the work that I did with him and every 90 days, we would score ourselves on this. It was an entrepreneurial mindset scorecard. And basically that's what drove me to develop the Personal Freedom Scorecard and the Business Freedom Scorecard, where basically every 90 days I would score myself, and I'm asking you to do the same. Score yourself in each of these mindsets. And you basically say where you are now and where you want to be 90 days from now. Add them up, and every 90 days you're working to change those mindsets. And as I just said, those who measure their progress improve. Those who measure and report their progress improve exponentially. When you measure and score your mindset, you are giving yourself the opportunity to expand your ambition so you open yourself up to this new world of opportunity. When you measure your ambition, you experience faster growth and bigger results. And so the point here is to use these scorecards every 90 days to measure your progress and to create a plan of action. There's one other sort of attachment here that you'll see on the. On the blog, businessfreedompodcast.com, hopefully that's the right website, is basically a very simple. In each of these areas, Business Freedom Scorecard and Personal Freedom Scorecard, I want you to pick two mindsets in each that you want to strengthen over the next 90 days. Basically, just write down, you'll see in the PDF, write down the mindset you want to strengthen, write down the ideal outcome, what success looks like, and the specific actions you're going to take with respect to that particular mindset. So print out two of these, and you'll have four mindsets that you're working on every quarter, and probably going to be the two lowest in each of the respective scorecards. And just put a recurring appointment in your calendar, the, you know, the first Monday of every quarter or, you know, for the next four quarters, and print out, you know, two of these pages where you have the strategizing your ambition mindsets, and then print out those Business freedom and Personal freedom scorecards. And hopefully what I'm trying to get across is translating it sounds a little bit more complicated than I think it really is. You basically just print out the scorecards, read the individual mindsets in the four boxes, and just score yourself a 1 through 12. Pick the category that you fit into. And then if you're closer to the, you know, lower part of that category or the upper part of that category, and then just do the work. And again, if you've heard any of my podcasts, you've heard me kind of pick on this quote from Thomas Jefferson. And it really holds true for this work, especially when you're thinking about your mindsets and how to show up in the world differently and all of that. If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done. And I don't take that statement lightly. For me, I feel like I'm just getting started. So I'm 45 years old, involved in two businesses at this point. And I feel like in Real Estate B School there's so much opportunity to be the premier business coaching company to our industry. And that requires that I have an unshakable confidence. And that all starts with the same work I'm asking you to do with the personal freedom and business freedom scorecards and how we show up mentally. Like how the mental fortitude that we need to succeed as business owners and entrepreneurs in an industry that really doesn't encourage what we're getting after every day. Right. It only comes with this, protecting your confidence and minding your mindsets. And so you've got to do the work. I say to all of our members at Real Estate B School, you know there's. This is not the easy path, right. So building a business, small business owners, I think it's by year five, there's like 92% of small businesses go out of business. In real estate it's 82% of real estate agents don't renew their license by their second renewal. And so how are you going to be different? How are you going to protect your confidence and mind your mindset? So much love and respect. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.