This transcript is from a YouTube episode by Lars Hedenborg (founder of Real Estate B School) describing a six-stage model for scaling a real estate business sustainably and profitably without excessive hours. He frames each stage with a revenue range and a strategic question: Start (to $100K) — where is my next deal coming from; Ramp ($100K–$500K) — where do I need delegation/leverage; Build ($500K–$1M) — what systems to build (buyer-side, client care); Lead (~$1M–$1.5M) — how to help team members get ahead (culture, cadence, economic model); Exit (~$1.5M–$2M) — how to grow transformational leaders to move out of production; Own ($3M+) — where can I have the greatest impact as owner while leaders/run cadence do heavy lifting. Lars shares his personal trajectory (2007→2014 growth to 400+ homes while working ~42 days that year) and emphasizes incremental next-step focus, leverage (delegation, systems, technology), and leadership development. The episode ends with a call to learn more at partnerwithlars.com.
What's up there? Real estate team builders. Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School and the creator of this podcast. And the focus of the podcast, if you're new, is to really illuminate the business tools, systems, strategies and tactics to allow you to grow and scale your real estate business without losing your mind. Without losing your mind. And to do it sustainably, meaning you are not going to grind 12 to 15 hours a day and to do it profitably. And so that is the mission here. If you tuned in the last episode, Tara Lindbergh, who I had the pleasure of working with for probably five years or so in her real sort of heavy growth years and she talked about like the journey from, you know, solo agent to last year they did 648 transactions. And what does that journey look like and how do you navigate it? And you know, what, what gets in your way, what challenges do you have? And just the whole concept of leverage. I'm going to share my screen if you're on YouTube and if you're not on YouTube, what I'm going through you can get a copy of by going to I think realestate business growth.com so realestate business growth.com and I'm going through the real estate business growth navigator as it relates to this conversation of leverage and like how do we navigate business growth? And so if you've heard me talk about this before, you know there are six stages of growth. And my journey, 2007 left my corporate job, figured out somehow how to sell 27 homes. I didn't do it profitably in that first 10 month period. Then I went into 44 transactions in 2008, then 58, 118, 178, 248, 312, four something 320 or 412, something like that. And the year 2014, we sold over 400 homes with a pretty lean team, super profitably. I only worked 42 days that year. And so that's sort of the claim to fame is that I, I built every piece or I approached my business in a way where it was all about leverage. Literally asking myself the question, how can I get out of this job? How can I get out of this job? How can I get out of this job? Some of them were really obvious, like if I'm pushing paperwork or I'm designing. I remember my first 10 months I was designing marketing postcards and I was running them through the copier and then cutting them myself, double sided cardstock and using like one of those cutting things like it worked, the postcard worked. But all I should have been involved in is maybe the design of it, right? And how to target, you know, a mailer like that. And I remember just like Saturday afternoon, just like sitting at that copier. So leverage, right? So a copy machine is a form of leverage, but we want to leverage out of the jobs in our business that don't pay a lot of money. So that, that was the focus, that was the journey. And the six stages are, you know, start gets you to 100k, ramp gets you to 500k, build gets you to a million, lead gets you to 1.5 million, exit gets you to 2 million, and own gets you 3 million plus. And I want to go through really the strategic questions and some of the things you need to do to get to the next level so that you can kind of identify where, where you are in the journey and what you need to do to get to the next level. So when you're 0 to 100k, your strategic question is not very strategic. It's where is my next deal coming from? You know, and to get to the next level, that a hundred, two, fifty, five hundred K, gci, It's all about habits, skill, build, skills building and a determination to grow, like a burning desire to grow. 95 plus percent of agents live at the 100k and below. So it's where the industry lives. It's where the industry wants agents to live. Because most services, all the associations, the local boards thrive off a lot of agents selling a few homes. It's, it's the biggest thing that's wrong with our industry, honestly. But let's leave that for another podcast episode. When you get to the ramp stage, that's 100k, 250k, 500k, where you're asking yourself, if you have a mindset toward growth, where do I need leverage the most? And this is all about delegating administrative tasks. You can't be putting out signs, doing brochures, lockboxes, picking up a check at the attorney. Like, those are errands. You're essentially most like. Half of a top agent's time, if you follow them around for a period of time, is just running errands, right? And so you need leverage and you need to set your marketing systems on autopilot and focus on selling. When you get to the build stages is 500k to a million or so. The question is, what systems do I need to build? So where do I need leverage the most? And then what systems do I need to build or firm up? And this is really getting leverage on the buyer side, at least getting out of showings, maybe exiting buyers altogether, getting a buyer agent and now focusing on client care systems and then stepping into the again, if you have a mindset towards growth, you need to learn how to lead others from a sales management perspective. So lead stage, stage four is a million to a million and a half or so. The strategic question is, how do I help my team members get ahead? So now we're shifting from how do I get ahead and build leverage and systems for me to shifting how do I help my team members get ahead? It's all about a culture and cadence, you know, not stopping the things that got you busy, you know, honoring that morning time block for new business development and lead follow up and running the right economic model. We've pre taught you at this point the right economic model in real estate B school terms. But you want to make sure you're running the right economic model. Then you go into exit, which is exit production. So if you have a desire to get out of production, the question you should be asking yourself is how do I grow transformational leaders? Because all of these questions, you're asking yourself the question with the next stage in mind. So as you're in the lead stage, a million to a million five, you're asking the question, how do I help my team members get ahead? Because you have an eye towards exiting, you're asking yourself, how do I grow transformational leaders? Because you have an eye towards sitting in the owner's seat, right? There's no requirement to go to any stage or anything. It's all about your journey. But you definitely want to focus on systems for client care, you want to focus on elevating your ops and those sorts of things. So then we focus on client care systems, lead gen sales, elevating your ops leader, your sales leader, that sort of thing. And then we go to stage six, which is all about asking the question, where can I have the greatest impact? So again you're thinking about now that I'm in the owner's seat in this business, like where I'm going to have all this time on my hands. The business is running Profitably, it's a $3 million plus business. Where can I have the greatest impact? And in the business, the culture and the cadence are doing the heavy lifting. And your job is just to know your numbers and elevate and feed into and serve those two or three key leaders in the business. So again, the reason I wanted to do this follow up episode is more so that you understand. You don't have to understand every step of the journey just to know that it's possible. But also it's predictable, right? Took me six years or so to go from new license to fully leverage out of production, working one day a week in my real estate business. We've had hundreds of members come through real estate B school and sort of do that same thing. And that's my encouragement to not worry so much about what it looks like when I get to stage six. Just worry about, like, what you need to do to get to the next step. The next step? The next step. You know, there are six stages, but there's probably four or five steps, you know, big steps within each stage that we teach. And it's just taking one step at a time. And that's the key and that's what we focus on. So if you're interested in learning more about, like, what would it look like to partner with Lars directly? Like to partner with me directly to help, like, I will put my hands into your business and help you build your business without investing in paid coaching, getting all the tech you need, all the tools you need, all the systems you need. Go to partnerwithlars.com that's partnerwithlars. Com. It lays out the entire. I'm building a platform that has never been seen in the real estate industry before and I would love for you to be a part of it. So go to partnerwithlars.com and we'll see you over there. Much love. Be good.
