The Pre-Loaded Year | Put Your Marketing on Auto-Pilot for 2023!

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedenborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was depending. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you could possibly make in this business. Through Real Estate B School, I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any fluff or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

What's up, Real Estate Business Builders? This is Lars Hedinborg, founder of Real Estate B School, and we're going to chat about the Preloaded year. And yes, this is a year end topic. But no matter when you listen to this episode, it will be on point, I promise you. And the subtitle to this episode is put your marketing on autopilot. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And I actually did a live training on this topic inside my free Facebook group, Real Estate Business Builders. So jump into the Facebook group. There's actually a set of scorecards that I gave away as part of this training. There's the marketing ROI multiplier. There's a sample marketing scorecard which has all the weekly metrics that you need to track if you're going to grow and scale your real estate business. There's the content calendar and then the social calendar as well. So jump into the Facebook group Real Estate Business Builders and grab that. So let's get into it. Why does this even matter when we talk about this concept of the preloaded year? And beginning with the end in mind and you know, pre deciding what next year is going to look like. As I'm recording this, not that any year is easy in real estate, but as I'm recording this, we're probably on the precipice of what will go down as, and I hope not, and I'm not a doomsdayer, but we're on the verge of Something that's not going to be great. I think it's going to be an 18 to 36 month sort of fallout from a bunch of can kicking politics aside, just stuff that we have not dealt with and it's rippling through our economy. Now as I'm recording this, we are in a year where interest rates doubled, more than doubled. And so if you're going into next year without a marketing plan or any year, if you're in the midst of a year and you don't have a marketing plan, so you don't pre decide what you're going to sell and how you're going to sell it and the lead sources and what your ROI is going to be. All of that must be pre decided because here's the deal is that there still are a lot of folks, you know, going after our commission checks. I say say this a lot in our coaching program that we have no friends, right? The real estate agent or team leader, those that are trying to take their unfair share of the market. I call these, you know, business minded real estate entrepreneurs, business builders. We have no friends. The industry wants us to stay at 6, 7, 8 transactions per year. The whole industry revolves around the fact there are so many of us, right? That's why Zillow for example, that's why they can have Zillow Flex where they charge 35%, they want 35%, a third of our commission. And you might be able to get that work if you're a solo agent and you never want to have any freedom of money or freedom of time, but you can't get that to work if you want to sell 50, 100, 200 homes and have absolute time and money freedom. So just realizing that it's you against the world and letting anyone in between you and your would be buyer or seller client is not a real good idea. The other topic here that I want to talk about in terms of why this conversation about, you know, pre deciding what your year, your business is going to look like from a marketing standpoint is that we don't have the opportunity to run a profit optional company, right? There are big players in our market that are venture capital backed, meaning they have money that we don't have. They can run a business for years not making money. You know, Pick Open Door is a good example. They haven't made money. Pick Compass is a good example. You know, probably the sexiest, glitziest real estate company. They've lost billions of dollars in their existence. You as a solo agent, you know, you have to live off your cash flow. You have to grow your business from your cash flow. So we have to keep this in mind. You have to go into the year with you're knowing that just a few lead sources are gonna produce 2, 3, 4 sales per month each. And you know, what the investment of your time and money and what that return on time and that return on your financial investment is going to be ahead of time. Here's the other brutal fact and why, you know, I think this conversation is appropriate is that as an industry, our service isn't very good. The public doesn't necessarily put us on to a high standard. Right. We are a commodity for the most part. It's a low barrier to entry to get your real estate license. If you're listening to this and you're a pro, this is not. This does not apply to you as an industry, though. It's like 90% of the homes are sold by 10% of the agents. So there are a lot of folks out there, agents out there that are not giving great service. And there are a lot of agents. I hope this isn't you, where, you know, you're number one in your market and you're. I call this, you know, you need more cattle and less hat. Big hat, no cattle is, you know, you're putting on a front and you've got that shiny belt buckle and this massive sort of cowboy hat, but you've got nothing to back it up. And so in our industry, there are a lot of folks like that that are just sort of playing the part. And this pending economic shift will cleanse all of that out, which is really, really awesome. The last thing in terms of setting the stage here for the conversation that I want to leave you with is, and it's a really good quote by Gary V. I don't agree with all of his sort of hustle grind, at least what I've heard from him publicly. But this is a really good quote and it kind of goes with this concept of, you know, to succeed in a service industry where you're not going to just drop your commissions and sort of chase everyone to the bottom, it's like going back in time. And I think this is from the book. Thank you, Economy. The quote here, I believe we're living through the early days of a dramatic culture shift that's bringing us back full circle and that the world we live and work in now operates in a way that is surprisingly similar to the one our great grandparents knew. Social media has transformed our world into one great big small town dominated as all Vibrant towns used to be by the strength of relationships, the currency of caring and the power of word of mouth. So the strength of relationships, the currency of caring and the power of word of mouth. So in terms of how to approach those facts, you know, the, the fact that the big lead aggregators are against us, the fact that there are folks operating on no profit models and as an industry we're not generally regarded very highly and there's a lot of folks in our industry that are just playing the part, but they have nothing to back it up. The response is this currency of caring and ultimately the power of word of mouth. So in terms of how to adapt and how to think about, you know, pre deciding what you're going to sell in a year, the first, and I've got three points actually, five points here that I want to go through. The first point is to rethink your funnel. I would say this is worth going into the Facebook group. I've got a really good visual that I want you to see on this. But essentially rethinking the funnel is the whole point of the funnel. And this is, this is everything in business, any business really. You generate leads on the front end of the funnel, called a top of funnel. On the back end you want someone that is so unbelievably raving fan lunatic good book raving fans by Ken Blanchard on the back end of the funnel, like a client for life. Someone that's going to, you do this whole thing right, they're going to sing your praises and they're going to bring you more business. In between there's a five step process. You have to have meaningful conversations, you have to set appointments, you have to meet appointments, you have to sign clients to work with you and then ultimately get them closed. And if you do that in a way where they love you at every step of the point and you wow them at every step of the point, your business will take care of itself. Every client you work in will turn into two or three more clients. And that's how I want you to frame your mindset going into, well, not even just going into a shifting market forever and always. I think that's going to be the way to compete and to dictate your pricing. The second point here is to ask yourself the question, are you actually any different than the thousands if you're in a major metro market? I'm in a major metro market and I think we're up to 20,000 agents in our market. Hopefully the rosters are turning now. I think they are. But Transactions have turned dramatically and ultimately rosters will go down. Hopefully they go down quite a bit. When I first got into Real Estate 2007, there were 15,000 agents in my market. By 2011 or 10, it got down to 5,000 agents. And I remember deciding, knowing that I was a commodity, or at least that's how I was perceived, I decided that I was going to present myself in such a way to buyers and to sellers that there was no shadow of a doubt that I was the best option for them. And if you look at the experiences consumers are getting, this is a part of the shift storm as I call it. And this was pre pandemic, this was pre economic shift, the doubling of interest rates. Consumers have been experiencing businesses that just blow them away. They just knock their socks off of in terms of convenience and service. And you know, any example, think of all the examples of amazing businesses, restaurants, you know, we have topgolf in our market, which is like a sort of bleeding edge, you know, fun environment for a driving, like a competitor driving range. We have lifetime fitness, you know, that competing with other gyms. And then you have these, these consumers experiencing all these great businesses and then they come to work with a real estate agent. They realize on a, let's call it a $500,000 home, like this agent is getting paid $15,000 to work with them for like 60 days and they don't get a great experience and they're like, what is going on? You know, so you have to, you better believe that you've got to earn that commission. You know, I decided early on that, that on the buy side, just because there was a co broke in the mls, I actually thought to myself, what if that wasn't offered? What if I actually had to go in and prove to my buyer that I was worth x percent of the transaction? 99% of agents can't do it and it's crazy. So the third thing I want to talk about in terms of pre deciding your business and putting yourself on a trajectory to, to dictate what you charge and the amount of business you do is that you must offer, or at least aspire to offer legendary service. Now, the fact that results don't necessarily matter in our industry, you know, for the most part, yes, There are the 5, 10% of agents that play the game at a high level, but for the most part, the industry has let down consumers. Right? So for you to thrive and you know, not be impacted what happens with technology or discounters or all the stuff that's still coming our way, You've got to compete on the service you provide. That's the only way to win this. All right, let me go through the last two points here and then we'll talk about how do we actually put some of this stuff into place. So the la. The fourth point here is that social proof is everything. So I talked about that, that funnel and the virtuous cycle. You know, you have leads coming in the front end. You have conversations, you meet with them, you know, set appointments, you meet with them, you convince them to be clients, you get them under contract and into closing, and then they become clients for life. They are raving fans of your services. They're going to tell everyone they know, go out of their way. Right. That social proof, we have to capture it so that you present yourself online as the only option in your market. And it takes a little bit of effort. When we first started this, we had less than 100 reviews. Google, combination of Google, Facebook and Zillow, we had less than like maybe a hundred, maybe 200. Now we have 12. Not 12, 2500. I've since exited that, that real estate business. But we still, we have 2500 reviews, five star reviews on those three platforms, up from like 150, 200. So. And now business is coming in as a result of that social proof out there, and it really didn't cost much, right? A little bit of effort, a little bit of coordination, you know, making sure we had a system in place to ask for the review at the closing table and that sort of thing, but not a lot of effort there. And the last point here is to ask yourself, in your business, in your marketing, who's the hero? As an industry, we've sort of had this kind of, I don't know, this way of going about ourselves where it's mostly about us. You look at, you know, big agents in your market with billboards and, you know, their arms crossed on the billboard, or you go to any agent's website and what's the thing on the front page of the website? It's a picture of them. How does a picture of the agent, you know, make that would be buyer or seller feel like this is the person that's going to take care of them? Is it like, does the agent think. And I've done it, so I guess I feel like I'm probably coming off a little bit preachy, but I've done it, so I've been there. But when someone comes to your website, who's the hero, right? Is it a family that you helped? Do you have case studies on your website. Right. There's a really good book, StoryBrand Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, that kind of outlines a framework that you would follow in most situations, whether you're writing emails, whether it's a website that you should follow, if you're gonna really pivot toward, you know, when people come into your world, you're putting your clients and their successes on a pedestal and not yourself on a pedestal. All right, so let's talk and wrap this up here. How do we get there? So we've kind of set the stage here. We've talked about, you know, these things that you need to know, but let's talk about how you get there. This is a quote that I've. I've probably said this quote a thousand times. It's by James Clear. Atomics Habits. I feel like I've dropped, like, five books, so probably don't have time to read them all. But Atomic Habits is probably. Of all the ones I've dropped on this episode, this is one that I believe is worth reading. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times in the book. This quote. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Think about that. Just because I say I want to double my production next year and I want to work, you know, 50% less hours, you do not rise to the level of those goals. You fall to the level of your system. So in order to achieve your goals, you need to elevate your systems, which I think is the coolest part of business. Once I figured that out, and it wasn't from that book, but once I read that quote, I'm like, this is my quote, first business book. I'm gonna stop mentioning books. It's. It's too much at this point. But I've got a few points to. To kind of bring us home here in terms of getting there, in terms of pre deciding where you want to be in the future, whether it's 12 months, 24 months, or 36 months. And there are those tools. I would jump into the Facebook group because you need these tools. But number one is to begin with the end in mind. You have to decide pre decide. Like, literally just decide what you're going to do next year. I was going on a run with an agent of mine. He. Since he left our team and he became a solo agent, and he's nervous about the market, and, you know, I just told him, and he was talking about, like, other things to do and going into the discount broker brokerage business. And I'M like dude, you just need to decide how many homes you're going to sell next year. And it sounds like even saying it now, it sounds like, what do you mean just decide? I said, well, if you sold 20 homes this year, just decide you're going to sell 40 next year. And you know there's in a down market and not a down market in pricing. Our market's still pretty strong from pricing. We have low inventory, less, less transactions. But there's still like 30 to 32,000 sales in the MLS, which means there are 64, 65,000 or whatever sides or commission checks. So you mean to tell me you can't go out and find 40 of them? Like what? I don't even understand what kind of conversation are we having right now? You can't find 40 out of 60,000 plus, like come on, that's. I don't even know what.00% that that even is that. One of the tools that helps with this though is the marketing ROI multiplier. Where it looks at there are only so many lead sources. So we spread all the lead sources out on the top and we talk about if there's a financial investment, you know how many deals you could expect from each of those lead gen levers. If you've used them in the past, you, you calculate, you know how much money you spent, how many deals you've closed, the, the actual gci. So you can calculate a return on the investment and then you just add maybe one lead gen lever. Maybe you'll double down on, you know, squeezing the lemon and getting better at lead conversion on the existing lead gen lever and you add one more and then you're at 40 to 50 transactions. Every lead gen lever that we teach in real estate B school is good for minimum a couple of transactions a month, upwards of four plus transactions per month. I remember when I was scaling my business, I wouldn't enter a lead gen lever unless I knew it could get me to 50 sides in that one lead gen lever. Didn't have to get me there year one or even year two, but I had to see a path in the third year to get me to three to four sales per month for me to enter that lead gen lever. Really powerful mindset. So the second thing I want to talk about when it comes to how do we get there is that cash follows the calendar. Cash follows the calendar. So if you don't have a marketing content calendar or a social media calendar, you're not in the game of business. Now we give away these in that training I was talking about in real estate, business builders, Facebook group, you're not in the game. And you know, I'm trying to think of when I even put these into my business. It was pretty early where, you know, the two that I'm referring to, one has 57 touches, and these are high ROI. These are a little bit of labor, not a heavy lift. You know, all these are actually swipeable in our member platform, but it's not hard stuff. You just need to pre decide that you're going to do 57, you know, marketing content touches for your clients, for life program, your database, and then social media, you know, 90 to 100 or so. We do more than that. But like core posts, at least a couple a week, right? So if, and these are something that you can contemplate once, maybe work on once a month, you know, set the calendar in place before the year starts and then you work on it once a month in these larger time blocks where you're putting together content. But it's just a commitment to do it right. There's no shortage of opportunity to take business, but you have to employ content and social media that actually works. And the last thing I'll cover here is that you must, you must know your numbers. When I talk about the marketing scorecard, this is a tool that you could swipe. It calculates on a weekly basis all your inbound seller leads, all your inbound buyer leads, all your inbound referrals, what your total database is in terms of the number of people in your database and then by lead source code, how much pending business you have for the year. And that goes into all your social metrics as well. And these are things that you calculate on a weekly basis is preferred. Now I've got a quick story I want to tell you about Kirby and Christina Skurat in Minnesota. When I met these guys, it was just the two of them and a licensed administrator and they were putting in a lot of effort. Kirby was still in production on the listing side and Christina was working with buyers and just the best folks imaginable. I think they had one kid at the time, they have four now. So they were in it. They're growing their family, growing their business. They were working too much, they were stressed. They didn't have exactly the roadmap that they have now. Fast forward a handful of years later. They did 777 transactions last year for 7.7 million GCI. If you've been following me for a while, I'm a believer. 7 in scripture is the number of completion. I told them, literally told them. I'm like, you guys should just hang it up. 777 for 7.7 million. I mean, God is telling you guys something for sure, but they have a seven figure profit business and he's exited the business maybe four or five hours a week. And Christina's the CEO of that business and they're just amazing folks. But they went from, you know, sort of haphazard, you know, questioning things I was challenging them on at the time in terms of how to run listing appointments and like, know, basic blocking and tackling of real estate to like just complete bad to the bone entrepreneurs that are just crushing it in their business. And he's launched several other businesses and just really, really amazing folks. So I, I would say jump into the Facebook group. That's all I wanted to cover in terms of predetermining your year and preloading your year. If you know you're at the point where you want to talk about growing and scaling your business and getting on a plan to do it, you can jump on a growth assessment call with me or one of my coaches. It's Rebs growth assessment.com that's R E B S growth assessment.com these are calls that, you know, we're just going to look at where you are, where you want to be, what's holding you back, very simple framework and if we can help you, we will. If we can't, we'll point you in the right direction. So rebs growth assessment.com much love, much respect. We'll talk to you in the next episode. Thanks for listening.

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