The Good, Bad & Ugly: What Is Your X-Factor?

Welcome back to another edition of Business Freedom podcast. And this is the Good Bad, ugly edition.

This is Lars Hedinburg, founder, Real estate B School.

And today I want to chat about something that, man, I wish I dug into earlier in my real estate career. And not that it would have been like the holy grail of scaling my business quicker or making it any easier or it's just that where we sit now with the way just the world is changing, artificial intelligence technology, different business models coming into real estate and economic shift upon us, it is the X factor. And so the title of this podcast is what is your X factor? And so this will be a fun one. And it really, it's what is going to set you apart as you scale your real estate business. That's the true question. And so if you have any interest in diving deeper into some of the tools we talk about here on the podcast or you know, it's getbschool.com this is not a pitch fest. Some of you have been asking questions, reaching out to me. How do we go deeper with real estate B School? That's just a good first step.

It's the reps toolbox.

Same stuff, our high end clients using their businesses.

So what is your X factor?

And if you think about different brands, right, if you think about BMW, right, it's the ultimate driving machine, you know, really it's more than just a car, right? You can buy a Kia, nothing wrong with a Kia, or you can buy a BMW and there's just a difference. And BMW surely has an X factor, you know, more than just a military branch becoming a Marine, right? The good, the few, the proud. And even if you go to their website, so if you're watching this version of the podcast, you can see some of the images that we're talking about or just go to becoming a Marine, I think dot com. And it's more than just a military branch, so they definitely have an X factor. And then if you're an Apple person, every Apple product, you know, it's more.

Than just a watch, it's more than just.

A phone, right? So there's definitely an X factor when.

It comes to certain brands that we.

And it doesn't even mean that you love them or hate them. You just know that that brand has.

Something particular about it, something special about it. And I do believe for real estate agents moving forward and if you've tracked me for any period of time, right, we're all about building high performance real estate teams. It's a different version of teams that are out there right now. And I'm talking a team that's going to compete and dominate in the future of real estate. And I think there's going to be a larger divide between brokerages, traditional agents, discount models and the high performance version of a real estate team, which is what we're building with our team. So just some thoughts on branding and it's not that I have any regrets about how I built my real estate business by any stretch of the imagination. You know, went from it was 58 sides, 118, 178, 248, lots of eights in there. I think we did 312 and then 453 or something like that. And I got out of production the year we did 248. And so that my, my last closing was January that year. And then, you know, I went on to build it, you know, from, from there and I think I worked 42 days the day, the year we did want 453 sides. So it's really leverage systems driven business. It lacked an X factor really. Truly if I think about it, and that's the only regret I had, I wish, and it's not a regret, if I could have done something different, I wish I would have spent time on this one thing sooner in my real estate career from a branding perspective and creating something special, really just a rudderless ship for many, many years. And I'll say this so branding will not make the phone ring necessarily, you know, but you need to know who you are and what you stand for before prospects knock on your door. So if you have a seller come into the office or a buyer come into the office, if you don't have that X factor right, you're really not going to stand out. And some of your promises may be idle lip service. You know, everyone in the industry is truly unique, you know, and you can build a business you want. So it's not even that what I'm striving for has to be what you're striving for. The best part is that we really have no competition. So when it comes to your X factor, that's the thing that's ultimately going to separate you from your competition, which nobody is like you, which is awesome. And I would say, I would say this so that there are a lot of guys, a lot of girls that do different, have different business models. And I would just say be careful who you model your business after. And what I mean by that is that make sure it's built on an economic model that's sound, make sure it's built on something that is ultimately sustainable for you as the owner. You know, real estate, B school. It's not the end all, be all, but what we stand for is something that ultimately will give you time and money, freedom and freedom from stress. Right. We talk about time, money, stress all the time. And is the trade off, is that equation working for you to really be careful who you model your business after? And I know that sounds funny coming from a guy that you're potentially looking to model their business after. Hopefully not the bad and the ugly. Right? We talk about the good, the bad, the ugly on here as well. Your business is a reflection of who you are as a person. It's your vision, your mission, your purpose, your standards all wrapped into one as you scale the business. So let me define X factor. And so the X factor in business is the. And this might be worth writing down, the ability to find a way to add intangible value, value that goes way beyond what anybody can really measure. It's the ability to find a way to do more for your customers than absolutely anybody else and to consistently maintain that standard.

And so the reason I would have.

Done something different in the past is because I would have had a business that really, truly. And we're getting there. We're making leaps and bounds. I feel like we're playing catch up. When I look at some businesses outside of our industry, when I look at Apple, when I look at Zappos, or when I look at businesses that Nordstrom, Disney, those are the businesses that we're modeling our business off of. And so it's a truly unique, emotionally charged service that is by no means a discount service, but it's going to leave your clients feeling like they were treated like royalty. And that's the goal. And it's really your ultimate competitive advantage. If you're not thinking about this X factor, you know you're going to miss out on the future. I fear three to five years from now, you'll be suffering in a big way. And your X factor, so now we have the definition of it. It can be expressed in a number of different ways. At its core, it's a form of leadership and a way of thinking about who you are and what you bring to the marketplace. It's about who you are and what you bring to the marketplace. It's a vision and a way of gaining clarity around your outcomes. So it's the true vision of what you're building and being really clear about what you want to be in the future around your outcomes. It's critical thinking and the power to anticipate because you understand how to read seasons within your marketplace. So depending on when you're listening to this or watching this, depends on the season that we're in. Right? So now in many markets we're going through a shift. We've had a run here probably from 2012. Last six years has been straight uphill, right? In a good way. Easy to make money in real estate. And it's not going to be that way in the future. You know, that's just the normal sort of economic cycle, housing cycle that we go through. Hopefully it's not a catastrophic shift like it was in 2008. 9. We're going to get a shift going here, which is great. It's a great, great to cleanse the market and all of that stuff. But so we've been anticipating this for about three or four quarters now. So this is no surprise to us. And our goal, high performance Real estate advisors, is to perform at a really high level in the shift and to be able to give really amazing advice and service to our buyer and seller clients and to do the same for our team members. So high performance is an external and internal thing and it defines what's special about us. And it's your ability to influence people and it's about making strategic decisions. So when we meet with a seller and we maybe we're the second agent in right there and expired and you know, high performance means something, you know, it's not, you know, we come in with a level of authority and expertise and an advisor status that that means something. So it's not this stuff really translates. And when it comes to leading a team, so depending on where you are in your business growth journey, you know, when we really dig into the definition of X factor as a leader, it's your ability to maximize your resources to constantly improve the quality of life and experience for our customers. And like I said, this is internal and external. So make no mistake, as a team leader, I made this mistake. Don't make this mistake. You're building your team for them, not you. You're building your team for your team, not you. So you're serving your team. They're not there to serve you and you're serving your customers. It's that whole servant, you know, servant leadership, which is an overused term in the business community. I really do think it's applicable to a real estate team because if you're building it to serve you, you're going to have, you know, you're going to go bankrupt culturally. And I really, I've been there, I've done that. It's not fun. You don't want to do that. And this ultimately is about creating business breakthroughs that maximize value. So think about sometimes just having a culture of productivity in a real estate team is a business breakthrough. When you go into, if you were to visit a hundred teams across the country at random and you were to kind of look into what they do every day, they're not really productive. They're not really, you know, looking for buyers for their sellers, you know, and getting after it every day. So that's a business breakthrough in our industry and creating an X factor. So if you kind of are the rudderless ship I was talking about, creating this X factor requires using a combination of skills, psychology and experience to find that edge that makes a difference for your customers. You know, it's any distinction you could make which will change it all. And so let's go through a few examples. So in our industry there's not a high level professionalism. Maybe that's your expert factor, right? Maybe straightforward advice is your X factor. You know, there's so many commission hounds in our industry and that are attached to the outcome. We'll take a listing that's overpriced, we'll work with a buyer that's unreasonable. You know, being able to give straightforward expert advice could be your X factor. Maybe it's your work ethic, the fact that you and your team are willing to get there in the morning at 7:30 so you can role play before you hit the phones at 8. Maybe it's the market knowledge, like hyper local real estate agents with a level of professionalism, straightforward advice, work ethic, market knowledge are going to dominate in the future, right? That hyper local team environment where there's a team of specialists, even if it's not a big team. Right. Most of our clients, you know, don't build, you know, 15, 20 person teams, but they do build leverage into their lives. They use technology at a high level.

Marketing at a high level, and even.

It'S a small team, maybe a couple assistants, a showing agent and a couple buyer agents. You know, I do 150 sides with that model. Maybe it's your sales skills, maybe it's your marketing prowess, right? Maybe it's your negotiation skills. A lot of agents don't talk about negotiating because they only negotiate about 10 times a year, right? So maybe you're a top producing agent and your X factor is your ability to, you know, to get 4% more than the average agent in your market. Maybe it's your team's culture, your mission, you know, your systems approach to delivering a high level service and getting a better result for your clients. Maybe it's your team. I think teams if designed, right? I'm talking high performance real estate teams. Hpret that's a huge competitive advantage and huge X factor. And so what is your X factor really when it boils down to it, what is your X factor? That's really all I have for you today. So I would challenge you. This is sort of our, if you've listened to some of these podcasts before, this is kind of our guiding quote here lately. It's by Thomas Jefferson and he says if you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done, right? So if you are stuck in the grind and you've done 15 to 20 sales forever or you've got a small team and you can't break through that hundred side mark, you know, or you're running a larger team and you just, it's not profitable, maybe you're failed foundationally, you're flawed. You know, the question to ask yourself or the this quote is really, and I use this on myself too because we're looking to have a huge impact in my real estate team and with real estate B school, I asked myself, if I want something I've never had, I must be willing to do something never done. So if I want to have a huge impact in the real estate space, I must be willing, I have to be willing to step up as a leader, right? The biggest lid we have on our businesses is the fact that we aren't advancing our skills, our leadership skills quick enough, you know, so that's something that I need to really come to grips with. But what is it for you, right? What's the thing you must be willing to do to get what you've never had before? Like I said, you know, if there's any interest in digging deeper into real estate B school, just go to getbschool.com and you can get access to the Toolbox. There's no contract, cancel any time, that sort of deal. If you're not happy 30 days, we'll give you a money back guarantee. So it's not a big hard sell. It's my mission to get all the tools that help me build my business into the hands of folks that are looking to scale their businesses rapidly, profitably based on the right system. So that's all I've got. For you today. As I tell our members all the time, I just have a lot of love and respect for the work that you do and for just showing up every day and be willing to fail and fail, hopefully fast enough where you can have more successes than failure. So much love, much respect. We'll talk to you guys soon. Bye. Bye.