The Key to Success Lies In Keeping Your Values At The Core Of Your Company

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders podcast. I am Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School, and I want to chat today a little bit about something that Jose Luis Morales, who was on our prior episode, he touched on it, but he didn't go very deep on it. And it's a conversation that most everyone struggles with as they're building out a real estate team and they're looking for leverage. It's this conversation around hiring and core values and culture. And so that's going to be the conversation today on the podcast. If you are new to the podcast, I would say for sure go back one episode. So there's a little bit of context around this conversation. Jose was able to scale from his big dream was to break 100,000 GCI in his real estate business and he'll break through 2 million this year. And I've had the pleasure to work with him to help him build his business. And so the podcast exists. My mission for the podcast Real Estate Team Builders is in an industry that rewards top line and number of homes, but ignores profit and ignores like the stress endured by these team owners and the hours that some of these team owners are working. And if you strip out their production, is there any profit left in the business or. Right. So we are the sworn enemy of the traditional team model. Right, the traditional model. If you really study these folks in your markets, most likely because I've had more than a thousand conversations with top agents and team team leaders. Most likely when you strip out their business, they don't have a business and they're working out of bounds on their hours and there's a lot of stress there. So if that's where you are, there's no judgment. I was there at a certain point in my journey and I just cracked the code on some things that will allow and have allowed hundreds of folks to kind of get, get through that part of their journey and get to the other side where there is margin, there is a sustainable business, there's more time, there's more money. Right. There's more freedom, there's more impact on the other side. So let's have the conversation around hiring. This is the biggest struggle that I see team leaders have. And it's also a big reason why someone, some, sometimes a top agent will go down the team building path and then they'll have a couple bad hires and they'll retract out of, well, they'll retreat back into like a solo agent, maybe with a part time administrator. And so these were some hard lessons. If you talk to any successful, like, I mean successful where it's on the right economic model. They're a tight knit group of people, so they have similar core values. This was the hardest lesson for us to learn because nobody really has the book on how to do any of this stuff. I mean it was a hard journey for me, which is the only reason real estate B school exists at this point. And it all comes down to core values and really understanding how. What do you mean when you say core values and culture? Like we think a lot of times it's just on a big company's website, you can go there and you can click on our core values. It's like integrity and trust and customer service and like these generic lukewarm core values where when I'm talking about core values and I'm going to pull up my team's core values because I think it'll be a valuable conversation is how do you, how do you know what, what core values are? How do you higher to core values? Like, and it's way easier than you think. When you're looking to bring someone into your world, when you're looking to bring someone into your world, like how do you know that they are actually the person that they are saying they are? When someone's in, in a conversation with you about earning a position or winning a position on your team, especially if they're a salesperson, they're going to sell themselves on you. And salespeople sometimes have a tendency to exaggerate the truth. And so you're putting someone in a position where they have a natural ability. Hopefully if you're hiring a salesperson, they have a natural ability around sales and you're asking them to sell you on why they're a good fit. The flip to the whole thing is to slow down, stop your recruiting system. What's funny is that as I'm, as I'm recording here, there's a squirrel that's constantly going around. There's two windows on this side of me. If you're watching the YouTube version and I have a squirrel on my desk, a gold plated squirrel to remind me that there's, we're distracted all the time as business owners. So I just scrolled out there for a second. So you're putting someone in a position where they're just going to embellish and they're going to tell you all the things you want to hear. So, so that you hire them and then 60, 90, 120 days in, you realize this person is not going to do the things that you need to do to be successful as a real estate agent. And so here, here's how it goes. You need to think about what you stand for. And what I mean by that is like what, let's say you've had some mishires. There's a couple of ways to do this. You can look at the things that have helped you be successful, right? If you're at the point where you've, you're selling 40 to 50 homes with a part time administrator and now you're ready to get out of the buyer side of the business and you're ready to, you know, hire your first buyer agent. And you know that like these three things were critical for me achieving at a high level to get to 40 to 50 sales. Do not hire someone that doesn't have those things. And just think real hard, like what does it take to get to 50 sales as a solo agent? It probably takes hard work, one that sounds like a great core value. It probably takes discipline. You embrace accountability, maybe an accountability partner, you hold yourself accountable, you probably have a growth mindset. So there's only, only 1.8% of agents in the US will sell more than 25 homes. So if you're selling more than 25 homes, you clearly are not doing what everyone else is doing. So you have a growth mindset. Maybe there's a lot of tough things that happen in real estate. So you've had to develop this thick skin and bring a positive attitude to a bunch of the parts of the job that we get involved in. So that would be a good place to start, right? Hard work, you're disciplined, you're willing to be accountable, you have a positive attitude and you have a growth mindset. If you can't think of any, borrow those five. I promise you two of those five. The hard work and embracing accountability and discipline are prerequisites to being successful in real estate. And if you let people into your world that don't have, and I don't care, maybe you have different core values and maybe you stand for something different than those two. But if you're bringing people into your world that don't have those things, whatever you determine those things to be, I recommend that there's some version of that. I've yet to meet a team leader that's selling a ton of real estate that scales a team that didn't have those two things. And I've seen many team leaders hire people that don't have those two things and they have like no pattern of hard Work. No pattern of being disciplined in anything. They're negative. They have a fixed mindset, and they bring them onto their team and they think it's going to be great. Here is what I can say. So figure out your core values, write them down, and then put some words behind them. We even have. So I'll give you an example. I'll actually read this. So our number one, right, we hustle and work hard. We actually have scripture. So I'm a Jesus follower. My faith is super important to me. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Colossians 3:23, right? And then Abe Lincoln had a quote, things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. And then we say, we are not afraid to put in the hours or do the jobs that nobody wants. No task is too small or too big. We are hungry for success. We do not wait for things to happen to us, but rather proactively seek those opportunities. We are also not afraid to fail. The faster we fail, the faster we succeed. We don't overthink things, we just do it. Right? And then our second one, we embrace accountability and discipline. For the moment, all discipline seems. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11. Then a Jim Rohn quote, which is an awesome quote. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments. And then a little bit of fleshing out of this core value. We hold ourselves accountable to time blocking the most important activities. First, constantly growing and getting better. We are not afraid to dream big and crush our written goals. No excuses, just results. We know our numbers in order to understand where we are, where we are in the present, and where we are heading in the future. So those are two really good examples of core values that in my opinion are necessary if you want to build a team of people that are willing to do what's necessary to compete at an over saturated market. Right? In my market we were, when I got in, there was 15,000 agents, it went down to 5,000. We're up to almost 20,000 agents in our market with no more home sales than where we were at with 5,000. And so figure out your core values before you bring people into your world. Now here's the second critical part. It's like, okay, great, so now let's make. Let's pretend you decide to only have two core values. We hustle and work hard and we embrace accountability and discipline. Let's say those are literally your only two core values. How would I even know that I'm talking to somebody that has these core values? It's not as complicated as you think. And I'm going to go through. And I don't even have these written out, but I'm just going to, I'm going to wing it before I do that. If you go to YouTube. I was actually saved in a church called elevation church in 2009. My pastor was Steven Furtick. So F U R T I C K relationship advice. Go to YouTube and type in Steven Furtick relationship advice. And I think it's like a minute long video. He gives the example of a girl talking about a boy and the difference between potential and patterns. As I heard this sermon live and I probably missed the actual message because in my mind it was my gosh, Lars, you are totally looking at people's potential and, and you're ignoring their patterns. So Furtick, in the minute long video he talks about like women like this guy is living at home at age 32, he has 100,000 of debt and he has a porn addiction. And somehow you think he has all this potential. He has demonstrated the pattern that this person has is one of not high performing, right? A very low performing person. You're not going to save this person. And it hit me like a ton of bricks or a kick to the head that you're Lars, you're doing this in business. You're seeing people's potential when they're clearly telling you that they don't have these patterns. So let's work on the first one. Let's say I'm interviewing a 24 year old couple years out of college and I'm trying to figure out if they hustle and work hard. I would say, you know, Steven can give me a couple examples of maybe in college, you know, where you kind of put in more effort than others, or maybe you held down a couple of jobs and were on student council and you took, you graduated in three years. Like I really want to understand where you hustle and work hard. That's something that we've identified as like a core characteristics of our most successful salespeople. So give me an example, specific examples of where you maybe out hustled somebody or where you work harder than somebody else. Like do not overthink it. You need to directly. And you could do these for references as well. You're calling their references and you're asking like, hey, Mr. Jones, this is Lars with ABC Realty. I'm considering hiring Steven to the team and put you down as a reference. And our core values are everything to us. Most important one is we hustle and work hard. Can you give me a few examples of how Steven showed up at work and he hustled and worked hard above and beyond your other people? Like, no, I don't really think he did that. Like, he was always leaving earlier right on time, clock puncher. It's like, oh, okay, interesting, right? And let's use it. Embrace accountability and discipline. You know, you're sitting across from somebody that clearly doesn't have themselves put together and you can kind of sense that a little bit and how they talk and present themselves. I remember it was a great hire. I remember hiring someone. I asked this question, Steven, give me an example. One of the things that we pride ourselves on here on our team is we embrace accountability and discipline. And we believe that accountability is love and it pushes us to achieve more. And that delayed gratification, which is discipline, is the thing that is going to help us bridge the gap between our goals and our actual accomplishments. So can you give me examples of how you use discipline in your life and maybe you've disciplined yourself to achieve something or, you know, you maybe held, held yourself accountable or held someone else accountable or they've held you accountable. Can you just give me specific examples of that? So again, you're not going to get all the answers, but you're going to talk to that Mr. Jones or whatever, that reference check and you're going to ask them a question about like, hey, can you tell me specific instances where Stephen, you know, was put in a situation where he was highly accountable and he, you know, exhibited discipline where maybe your other employees didn't. Right. So it's not. You can even talk to their. If they're fresh out of college, you could talk to their college. Maybe they played sports in college. Right. Or maybe they're coming from the service industry and you could talk to their shift manager. Right. You need to figure out if this person is a pattern of being a high performer or if they're not. And so that's really all I wanted to talk about in this follow up episode. It is such a. What's the word for is like the biggest challenge that we see when we help real estate team builders. Maybe we go into their business and we see where things are not going well. And a lot of the time it comes down to there are no core values. They're just a totally loose collection of misfit people that aren't guided by the same sense of purpose and the culture is all over the place. And so hopefully this has served you at a very, very high level. On Jose's podcast, I talked about grabbing a copy of the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator that goes through step by step every stage of this journey right from start, which is getting to 100,000, all the way up to 2 million plus, which is the own phase. Right. And we talked about Jose. You know, his first goal was to get break that six figure GCI and this year he'll break 2 million. So he's just exiting stage five, which is exiting production and getting into and we're actually going to do a call about and talk about what it looks like for him to exit production in the system to do that. So this journey is possible. So go to realestatebusinessgrowth.com to grab that real Estate Business Growth Navigator report. But also if you know you want to have a conversation with real estate B school and maybe just unload sort of where you've been in your journey and where you want to be and what's held you back from achieving those goals, go to the website, go to realestate bschool.com there's orange buttons everywhere. It either says apply now or book a call where we're just going to have a conversation with you about what your business looks like and how we might be able to help you actually achieve what you see for the future of your business. And there's no shame in where you are. Everyone's struggling in the industry. The problem is nobody's talking about it. So let us help you through that. So go to real estatebschool.com or, or and go to real estatebusinessgrowth.com and we'll see you over there. Much love, much respect. We'll talk soon.