The Mindset of a Business Owner: 6 Stages of Growth

Alright, so I talk a lot about business growth and business freedom and time and money freedom and you know, freedom from stress and all of it. And I want to put some context around that today for you. No matter where you are in your real estate business growth journey. I want to help you start to understand. I just did a training on this in a time freedom challenge that we have going on where I was talking about the mindset around building systems in the business and time blocking, you know, three 90 minute time blocks in your calendar to work on business. All caps, work on business, 90 minutes three times a week and do not let those appointments go. And then the question comes up, what are systems and what would I work on and all of that. And so you know, there are as I have seen it and my journey had six distinct stages of growth. If you haven't grabbed a copy of our where can I send you? Realestate Business growth dot com. Let me make sure that is the right one. Realestate Business growth dot com. Make sure you head over there. So I go through the six stages there. I did it a little bit on a couple weeks ago, a training that I did like this. But you want to grab that whole report. It is just pure wisdom. Not in an egotistical kind of way, but pure wisdom when it comes to like identifying the stage that you're at, maybe something you missed in a prior stage that's not allowing you to move to the next stage, that sort of thing. Today I want to talk about the mindset that a business owner has to have in terms of systems and what does it mean to work on your business and what systems would you work on if you've watched the movie? So I'm gonna tell a story about a movie and then I'm gonna take you through a little bit about my journey to give you like things to attach to that you can actually go work on and implement the movie. The founder Michael Keaton, he it's basically Ray Kroc story. He's not really positioned that great or he kind of comes out not glowing in terms of his personality and what he did to the McDonald's brothers. Yet there's a scene in the movie if you go to YouTube after this is done, make sure you pay attention here and you Google or go on YouTube and the founder parking lot scene. I think there's like a 4 minute 56, like 4:56, almost 5 minute video where you could basically just get. You see him sort of thinking of the business as a system versus the McDonald's brothers flipping burgers in this small thing that they couldn't duplicate or scale. And so the same thing goes for your real estate business no matter where you are in those six stages. So if you grab, you know, if you grab that report, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. No matter where you are in your growth journey, you know, whether you're 0 to 100,000, GCI, 100 to 500, 500 to a million, million, 2 million, 5 million, 5 to 2, 2 to 3 million plus, those are the six stages. They all have names and you can see it in the report. If you don't have this mindset around building systems to do the heavy lifting, you're never going to be able to have true freedom from the business. You know, we talk about more money, more freedom, more impact. You won't get to more freedom. You may get to more money, but if you don't crack the code on this mindset around systems, you won't have more freedom, which will limit your ability to have more impact in every way within your family, within your business, with your clients, within your community, within the world. Right? So the first thing that most real estate agents wants is money. I work my butt off, I'll work way too many hours, but I want money. They get that, then they want more freedom, freedom of time, freedom from stress, and then they want impact because there's more to life than selling houses. So that's that journey that we talk about. And so take it back to like a real estate agent journey. You know, back when I was doing every job of a real estate agent In 10 months, I sold 27 homes, which is top, top agent status. I did all the jobs in real estate agent, did all of my closings myself, did all the legion, all the marketing, you know, put together my database, worked on the email te emails and text sequences, I ran ads, I built out sales presentations and processes, I built out client care checklists and just everything you could possibly think of. I did it all myself. And it left few hours in the day or in the week to be able to do anything except all of those jobs. And so I committed to just having these 90 minute time blocks three times a week which for me were at, they were longer than 90 minutes and they were like 10pm to 2am because none of these systems exist. There was no real estate B school, there was no anything that we have now. And so that mindset though forced me to, I was like the three things I have to systemize are marketing, listing, coordination. So when I Took a listing, getting it all pictures and into the MLS and measurements and brochures and all that. And then closing coordination. So my first administrative hire, I built those systems because I did the job of those three jobs. And then I brought someone in to run those systems. She started at 14 bucks an hour part time. She quickly told me, in like less than two weeks, you got to pay me 20 bucks an hour and I'm going full time for you. And she was with me for seven years. And so she instantly became my marketing coordinator, my listing coordinator, my closing coordinator. Yet she had like most of the systems built out, and she just improved those systems. And that allowed me to go from 44 sides the year I hired her as a solo agent to 58 to 118 to 178 to 248. The year we did 248, I did one transaction. Um, and the only difference between 2012, where I did one transaction of 248 and doing 44. Doing 44. Bringing her as on as administrator was harder, way harder than when we did 248, and that was harder than the next year. We did 312 and that was harder than the next year. We did over 400 transactions. And so it was only because I thought of the business as systems. And if you just think of take a blank piece of paper. This is my challenge for you. Take a blank piece of paper and just write down all the different jobs that you do in a couple week period and write down that list, all of them and just categorize them. A for administrative. O is working on the business, and I is working in the business. So examples of working in the business are like new business development lead, follow up, going on buyer consultations and listing consultations. Even showing homes is working, you know, in the business. Attending closings could be administrative. Actually showing homes could be administrative too, depending on how. Where your mindset is around, you know, showings being something that only you could do, which, you know, is. Is another conversation. And then working on the business, those are things like, you know, that 10pm to 2am time where I was like designing my expired system and putting the steps into a checklist and, you know, designing postcards that I would send out to expired, which then became letters. We still run that expired system today and it'll do like 700,000 GCI. And so think with a systems mindset. The book E. Myth Revisited is the. In that book, you know, Michael Gerber talks about the Ray Kroc story and how he viewed flipping burgers in a hamburger stand in terms of a system that he could roll out all over the world. Like, that was the vision. And how would you have to think about your business differently if you were to replicate it 10,000 times? That to me, I forget I read the email so long ago. That question though, as is the thing that has stuck with me. How would I have to think about my business differently if I were going to replicate it 10,000 times? Quickly, as a real estate agent, you start to see, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't. I. I kept asking myself that question to the point where I work one day a week, I have like three meetings, and I shoot four videos twice a month. Like the major responsibilities of my real estate business. So how would you have to think about your business differently if you were to replicate it 10,000 times? And I will leave you with this. This is a little spinner I have. There's no purpose to this except for you to realize that the money here in real estate is building the system to do the thing and just start to think of yourself as less important. You know, my pastor did a sermon which shows I wasn't paying attention. My message from the sermon, the title was, you're not that important. As I was hearing it, it was during my growth phase where I was trying to control everything in the business. And this might resonate with some of you, even if you're just solo agents, sort of even in the start or ramp phase, which are the two stages of growth that you'll experience. And it was, you're not that important. I'm like, he's right. I'm not that important. Like, as long as I can build a system that delivers the thing 80% as good as I can, which most of the time you build it better than you do it on your own because you can find someone that actually wants to do the thing. It's off to the racist. The question then becomes, how quickly can you put systems in place and get the right person to run those systems, right? And so there's probably 36 systems that we have that are swipeable in real estate B school. So it's sort of never ending. In terms of what systems, the question is, like, the right system installed at the right time, so you can go from like this level to this level to this level. To this level. Most folks want to go from this level, you know, all the way. They're modeling after $3 million real estate team and they're doing, you know, 150,000 GCI or 75,000 GCI and they want to do what a business 20 times their size are doing. Like, it's just your next right move. I talk about this, you know, blinders on. If you look at a horse running a horse race, they have these blinders on. So they run their race really fast. They worry about their lane, and they're not distracted by the horse that's next to them. If they didn't have those blinders on, they would get spooked by what everyone else is doing and they wouldn't run the race. And so keep your blinders on. Think with the systems mindset. How would Ray Kroc think about a real estate team? Right. He would not do it the way that we do it. Right. So that's the challenge. If you're at the point in your journey where you just want to have a conversation about what's possible in your real estate business, no matter where you are in your journey. We have coaching and training programs for every one of those six stages. You know, even if you're starting out our business foundations, if you're less than 500k, we have business foundations. If you're 500 to a million five, we've got our graduate program. And then 1.5 plus is more, you know, invite only, but that's our boardroom program. So it doesn't matter where you are in your business growth journey. We want to have a conversation with you about where you are at right now, where you want to go in the future, and what is holding you back. Right. So. And our business foundations is our new program. So if you're below 500k, GCI, which is like 99% of real estate agents out there, but you have this mindset of building a business that has leverage and you can, you know, have some freedom in terms of evenings and weekends. Then business foundations is for you. So either way, just click on the link below and get some more information on a business growth strategy session or, or information directly on our business foundations program. So as I always say, much love and respect. We'll talk to you soon.